«. •-T'>iSB CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GOLDWIN SMITH HALL FROM THE FUND GIVEN BY GOLDWIN SMITH Beouesi " " Wm .P . Chaoman . Jr . , 1 94 7 Cornell University Library PR5612.A1 1898 The history of Henry Esmond, esq., writt 3 1924 013 562 263 p^ Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013562263 THE BIOGRAPHICAL EDITION THE WORKS OF WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY WITH BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTIONS BY HIS DAUGHTER, ANNE RITCHIE IN THIRTEEN VOLUMES Volume VII. THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND, Esq. AND THE LECTURES THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND, Esq. WRITTEN BY HIMSELF THE ENGLISH HUMOURISTS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY THE FOUR GEORGES AND CHARITY AND HUMOUR BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEORGE DU MAURIER F. BARNARD, AND FRANK DICKSEE, R.A. HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON 1899 ($.S.Si^g THE BIOGRAPHICAL EDITION OF W. M. THACKERAY'S COMPLETE WORKS Edited by Mrs. Anne Thackeray Ritchie The volumes are issued as far as possible in order of original p7thlication 1 VANITY FAIR 2. PENDENNIS 3. YELLOWPLUSH PAPERS, Etc. /,. BARRY LYNDON, Etc. 5. SKETCH BOOKS 6. CONTRIBUTIONS TO "PUNCH," Etc. 7. HENRY ESMOND, Etc. 8. THE NEWCOMES 9. CHRISTMAS BOOKS, Etc. to. THE VIRGINIANS 11. PHILIP, Etc. 12. DENIS DUVAL, Etc. 13. MISCELLANIES Illustrated. Crown 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, Uncut Edges and Gilt Tops, Ji 75 per volume HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK AND LONDON Copyright, 1898, by Harpbr & Brothers All ri£hts rtttrvtd CONTENTS PAOE INTRODUCTION . xiii THE HISTOEY OP HENEY ESMOND, ESQ. BOOK I THE EARLY YOUTH OF HENEY ESMOND, UP TO THE TIME OF HIS LEAVING TRINITY COLLEGE, IN CAMBRIDGE OHAP. I. AN ACCOUNT OP THE FAMILY OF ESMOND OF CASTLE- WOOD HALL . . .14 II. RELATES HOW FRANCIS, FOURTH VISCOUNT, ARRIVES AT OASTLEWOOD . . 19 III. WHITHER IN THE TIME OF THOMAS, THIRD VISCOUNT, I HAD PRECEDED HIM AS PAGE TO ISABELLA . 26 IV. I AM PLACED UNDER A POPISH PRIEST AND BRED TO THAT RELIGION — VISCpUNTESS CASTLEWOOD 36 V. MY SUPERIORS ARE ENGAGED IN PLOTS FOR THE RESTORATION OP KING JAMES THE SECOND 42 VI. THE ISSUE OF THE PLOTS THE DEATH OP THOMAS, THIRD VISCOUNT OF CASTLEWOOD ; AND THE IMPRISONMENT OP HIS VISCOUNTESS . 52 VII. I AM LEFT AT CASTLEWOOD AN ORPHAN, AND FIND MOST KIND PROTECTORS THERE . . 65 VIII. AFTER GOOD FORTUNE COMES EVIL ... 72 viii CONTENTS CHAP. IX. I HAVE THE SMALLPOX, AND PEEPAEE TO LEAVE 80 97 CASTLEWOOD ....... X. I GO TO CAMBRIDGE, AND DO BUT LITTLE GOOD THERE .....-■• XI. I COME HOME FOR A HOLIDAY TO CASTLEWOOD, AND PIND A SKELETON IN THE HOUSE . .104 XII. MY LORD MOHUN COMES AMONG US FOE NO GOOD . 115 XIII. MY LORD LEAVES US AND HIS EVIL BEHIND HIM . 124 XIV. WE RIDE AFTER HIM TO LONDON . . . .136 BOOK II CONTAINS ME. ESMOND'S MILITARY LIFE, AND OTHER MATTERS APPERTAINING TO THE ESMOND FAMILY I. I AM IN PRISON, AND VISITED, BUT NOT CONSOLED THERE . . ..... 150 II. I COMB TO THE END OF MY CAPTIVITY, BUT NOT OF MY TROUBLE ... . . 159 III. I TAKE THE QUEEn's PAY IN QUIN's REGIMENT . 167 IV. RECAPITULATIONS . . . . . . .176 V. I GO ON THE VIGO BAY EXPEDITIONS, TASTE SALT- WATER, AND SMELL POWDER . . . .181 VL THE 29th DECEMBER .... 191 VII. I AM MADE WELCOME AT WALCOTE . 197 VIII. FAMILY TALK .... . 206 IX. I MAKE THE CAMPAIGN OF 1704 . . . .212 X. AN OLD STORY ABOUT A FOOL AND A WOMAN . 220 XI. THE FAMOUS MR. JOSEPH ADDISON . . .229 XII. I GET A COMPANY IN THE CAMPAIGN OP 1706 . 239 CONTENTS ix CHAP. piQI, XIII. I MEET AN" OLD ACQUAINTANCE IN FLANDEES, AND FIND MY mother's GEAVE AND MY OWN OEADLE THERE . . . . 244 XIV. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1707, 1708 .... 255 XV. GENERAL WEBB WINS THE BATTLE OF WYNENDAEL 262 BOOK III CONTAINING THE END OF ME. ESMOND'S ADVENTURES IN ENGLAND I. I COME TO AN END OF MY BATTLES AND BRUISES . 285 11. I GO HOME, AND HARP ON THE OLD STRING . 297 III. A PAPER OUT OF THE "SPECTATOR" . 309 IV. BEATRIX'S NEW SUITOR ... . 326 V. MOHUN APPEARS FOR THE LAST TIME IN THIS HISTORY . . ... 335 VI. POOR BEATRIX . .... 347 VII. I VISIT CASTLEWOOD ONCE MORE . .352 VIII. I TEAVEL TO FRANCE AND BRING HOME A PORTRAIT OF RIGAUD . ... 361 IX. THE ORIGINAL OF THE PORTRAIT COMES TO ENGLAND 370 X. WE ENTERTAIN A VERY DISTINGUISHED GUEST AT KENSINGTON . ... 382 XI. OUR GUEST QUITS US AS NOT BEING HOSPITABLE ENOUGH ....... 395 XII. A GREAT SCHEME, AND WHO BALKED IT . . 404 XIII. AUGUST 1st, 1714 409 CONTENTS THE LECTURES THE ENGLISH HUMOUKISTS SWIFT ... CONGEEVE AND ADDISON . STEELE ... . . PRIOR, GAY, AND POPE . HOGAETH, SMOLLETT, AND FIELDING STEENE AND GOLDSMITH . PAOB 423 456 488 520 557 587 THE FOUR GEORGES GEORGE THE FIRST . GEORGE THE SECOND GEORGE THE THIRD GEORGE THE FOURTH 621 643 663 686 CHARITY AND HUMOUR . . . . . .711 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS THE DUEL IN LEICESTEE FIELD Frontispiece JOHNSON AND BOSWELL STEENE .... CAPTAIN STEELE . A LECTUEE . FIGURE OP A LADY MEMOIRS OF LIEUT. -GENERAL WEBB SIR CHARLES GEANDISON-ESMOND MALBEOOK S'BN VA-T-EN GUERRE EXTERIOR OF CLEVEDON COURT INTERIOR OF CLEVEDON HALL DRILL ..... DR. JOHNSON A CONFERENCE . . ; . . pac/e XIV u xiv )) xiv To face -page xvi page xvii (I-) To face page XX (II-) •n XX (III.) ») XX page xxiii 1» xxvi xxvii n xxviii f) XXX 11 • 11 xxxi xlvi THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMO'ND, ESQ. HENRY ESMOND FINDS FRIENDS BEATRIX .... To face page 14 198 xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS RECONCiLiATiox To face page 332 MONSIEUE BAPTISTE THE LAST OF BEATRIX . 374 416 THE ENGLISH HUMOURISTS DEAN SWIFT AT COURT .... ADDISON AT " CHILD's " . . CAPTAIN STEELE LORD BATHUEST INTRODUCES HIMSELF TO MR. STERNE ...... GOLDSMITH AT PLAY .... 438 484 500 592 614 THE FOUR GEORGES THE DEATH OP KONIG SHARK AN IMPROMPTU DANCE DR. JOHNSON AND THE ACTRESSES THE LAST DAYS OP GEORGE THE THIRD . THE FIRST GENTLEMAN IN EUROPE . 634 654 673 682 698 INTRODUCTION TO ESMOND AND TO THE LECTURES 1851-1853 Part I. "My dear Smith," my father once wrote, "how would the lectures do with no end of illustrations ? — T. O. — I was drawing these, and that made me write to you, — Yours, " W. M. T." Here are the sketches over the page in this book as they are in my father's letter — Captain Steele with his cane and periwig, Mr. Sterne in his bands and buckles. Dr. Johnson pacing the street with Boswell by his side. As one reads the Lectures on the Humourists, one feels how much my father was at ease with all these people, whom he loved and admired. He trod in the actual footsteps of Johnson and Goldsmith, and Steele and Addison. He saw the things they had seen, heard the echoes to which they had listened, he walked up the very streets where they had walked. He was one of them, and happy in their good company. Sir Walter also wrote of these times, also admired and appreciated all these personalities, but he belonged to a different and more romantic world of chiv- alry and adventure. As for my father — so he says in one of his letters — " the eighteenth century occupies him to the exclusion almost of the nineteenth," and he carried its traditions along with him. The first lecture was given on the 21st of May 1851. Char- lotte Bronte has described it, and Mrs. Kemble has described it and Willis's Rooms, the assembled company, the undoubted fjlJ^v ^I*^ CAPTAIN STEELE. INTRODUCTION xv success of the venture. Mrs. Kemble's friendly, funny story is well known, of the lecturer's nervousness and of her trying to encourage him, and in her confusion and sympathy letting his manuscript fall from tlie desk ; and there is that saying of my father's which she records — "that she had just given him occu- pation and distraction in sorting the manuscript, during the ten minutes he had still to wait." I was scarcely in my teens at the time, and it is so long ago, that the facts are somewhat confused, so that I have no details to add, except that we all drove home together, and I do remember his comfortable look of relief as we settled down in the family brougham and started away from Willis's Rooms to homelike Young Street. Very soon the lect- ures ceased to alarm ; they became an integral part of his daily life. He used to make a little joke of his own reading, and describe " Mr. Thackeray as having recited with unusual pathos the poem of 'Plow doth the little busy bee' to a large and enthusiastic audience." We give a page from the "Orphan of Pimlico," which is too much to the point to be overlooked. The original drawing belongs to Mr. Leslie Stephen. Requisitions and invitations came froTn every part of the coun- try, written in neat copperplate handwriting, from various young men's associations and literary clubs. As time went on, there arose a great deal of discussion over the lecturing. Friends remonstrated ; some said it was not proper work for him (our old friend Sir Edward Hamley was among these) ; others applauded ; others asked him to give private readings at their own houses — not for payment, but for their pleasure. It was certainly not for my father's pleasure. Before long he began to get dreadfully tired of "the business," as he used to call it. But he was glad to get a rest from quill-driving, and to earn so much money — very much more than he ever earned in the same time by writ- ing. The plans were maturing for the American journey, and meanwhile the lectures were being repeated in London, and con- tinued at Oxford and Cambridge, and all over the country. Mrs. Shaen has given me the following letters, which were addressed to her father at Cambridge in the November of 1851 :— " Dear Dr. Thackeray, — I want very much to get the Uni- versity opinion about some lectures which I delivered in June 1 b xvi ESMOND AND THE LECTURES and July last to a great audience in London, as you may have heard. . . . What pleased me most and best, Mr. Macaulay and Mr. Hallam came ahnost every time. I am going to take these lectures to America, and to malvc a little fortune out of them, I hope, for my little people. If I ever get another fortune, I will keep it. I must have the Vice-Chancellor's authority. ... My man, S. James, is tlie bearer of this, and destined to be my con- fidential man in America. He has a commission to find his way to Mr. Macmillan's Library to see the person who arranges Mrs. Kemble's readings for her, and settle about bills, tickets, and announcements. I hope he will bring me the news that you arc very well, and have got ray leave from the Vice-Chancellor." * "Kensington, November 13, 1861. " My DBAE De. Thackeray, — A sudden panic has seized me lest, in your good nature and desire to serve one of our race, you should think of purchasing tickets for you or any of my cousins for those lectures which begin to-morrow. Don't you remember coming to prescribe for me when I was ill at Cambridge, and asking me ' if I thought you were a cannibal,' when I made some little proposition regarding a fee ? In like manner it would shock me to see my cousins bleed. ... I did not ask your ladies the other day, because of my natural blushing bashfulness, and be- cause I did not know whether ladies could attend ; but at Oxford there were dons and their donnas on Thursday, and 1 hope there may be some ladies at Cambridge too, and that my cousins and Mrs. Thackeray will favour me, if they are so inclined." " Old Stoddart is my host at Oxford," he writes to his mother. (It may be remembered that in one of his schoolboy letters he speaks of " a friend of mine called Stoddart.") " It is curious, isn't it, to be arrived actually at the date when some money will be put by for the young ones ? They will probably be worth £30 apiece to-night." * My father had to obtain leave from the University before lecturing, and when he went to Oxford, he was advised to apply in the proper quarters him- self. He was somewhat taken aback to find that his name was not known to the dignitary to whom he had to apply, nor had this gentleman ever heard of " Vanity Fair." Some one happily was found to vouch for the lecturer's respectability. ^ r A I.KPTT'KK. ' The Lectnror's hiimrmr rdiiviil^ocl the :iii.licMir,. wilh l;nii;lilrr Mr Tliankoniy's maiiiior of roiHlint; ' H(.u- dolh lli,. Iilllc lin^y \w.-- n;i, ln-lili- ihi|irr-nc , inj.l 1 viviil yd ilfili.-iili- dpsrniitinri nf llii- Aiillhir nl llnlHii-mi |-rii,-r,r ' n, ili,. I'lllnry, ilrrw tears from i'\-.Ty pye Ainon^' llio ((iiniiany i.r-r.^.Mit \\r rrniark^it \h'vsrs, MrllnlfK? Mnniilllc Mi'Ciillio Itcyd M.'rfM's M.-Minii ainl McMi... Mrs I'ol \rriia.,|.M- ("f (lli-n hogiPI, Mrss MiCruv, in a uunl all the Valaljllilirs iif hiu- town ' —Kddram„il- W.ir.Irr 1 X T K O D U C T 1 N xvii Here is a note about one of those eavly ventures : — " My dear Nan, — Your dear papa had a hundred subscribers and about two hundred more people at the first lecture, which was very successful on the whole. And he begins to think America is farther off than it was, and that it will be a pity to leave England. . . . " And he sends his gals his blessing, which they arc a hun- dred pounds richer to-day than yesterday at this time." FIGURE OF A LADT. In December he went to Scotland for three weeks, and wrote to his friends Dr. and Mrs. John Brown, with whom he had been staying : — xviii ESMOND AND THE LECTURES " Westbdrt, January 5, 1852. " My dear Mrs. Brown, — The children write me from afar oS that you have written them a kind letter, and though I think it is twenty years ago since I left Edinburgh, I have not for- gotten you, and write a stupid line to say how do you do, and the Doctor and Jock and Helen. " Since I came away I have been out a-visiting, and write this on this grand, thick official paper from a grand house, where I am treated very hospitably as usual, and propose to pass two or three days more, very possibly. to try and work a little. All this pleasuring has unfitted nie for it, and I begin to fancy I am a gentleman of £5000 a year. ... I have no earthly news to send you, only the most stupid good wishes. But I wish, instead of waiting in my room up here for dinner and three courses and silver and champagne, I was looking forward to 23 and that dear old small beer, and then we would have a cab and go to the Music Hall and hear Mrs. Kemble. I sometimes fancy that having been at Edinbro' is a dream, only there are the daguerreotypes, and a box of that horrid short-bread still, and the hat full of money to be sure. It was not at all cold coming to London, and the town of Berwick-on-Tweed looked beautiful, and I think ray fellow-passenger must have wondered to see Low cleverly I slept. He was a young Cambridge man, and knew your humble servant perfectly well. It was on the railroad I got the great news of Palmerston's going out. It didn't frighten you in Rutland Street much I dare say, but in the houses where I go we still talk about it, and I amongst the number as gravely as if I were a Minister myself. Why do we ? What does it matter to me who's Minister? Depend upon it, 23 Rutland Street is the best, and good, dear, kind friends, and quiet talk, and honest beer. "You see by the absurd foregoing paragraphs that I have nothing in the world to say, but I want to shake you and the Doctor by the hand, and say thank you, and God bless you. " W. M. Tl-IAOKERAT." In January he says, "They make me an offer of £150 at the Portman Square Rooms — pretty well for six hours." I have been surprised sometimes, reading the various criti- INTRODUCTION xix cisms of my father's work, to find how much — especially when he iirst began to lecture — people dwelt on his powers of criti- cism, his severe judgments, his sarcastic descriptions, whereas the other liealing qualities are almost passed over. And yet the gift of appreciation was his in no common degree, the instinct of discerning true dignity and beauty in humble things ; that Christian gift of making simplicity great, of seeing what is noble and eternal in the most natural and commonplace facts. It takes a Newton to divine the secrets of nature from a hint; a Bach can create a new heaven upon earth with the tinkling wires of a spinet ; working in his own line, a week-day preacher, as my father loved to call himself, takes peaceful reiteration of daily duty for his text, and preaches the supremacy of goodness. Who will not remember the passage in which he says of great men: "They speak of common life more largely and gener- ously than common men do ; they regard the world with a man- lier countenance. . . . Learn to admire rightly, try to frequent the company of your betters in books and life." On the last day of her life Mrs. Brookfield, my father's life- long friend and mine, quoted this sentence to me, with a smile and that bright steadfast look in her eyes, which ever seemed like an accompaniment to her voice. Here is a quotation from a letter of these times, in which, writing to his mother concerning some people in trouble, he says, " Cowardly self-love cries out Save^ — save, or you may starve too. ... So please God we will, and do that work resolutely for the next vear. I am very well in health, I think, having staved off my old complaint ; and the only thing that alarms me sometimes is the absurd fancy that, now the money making is actually at hand, some disaster may drop down and topple me over. But that's a fancy only. . . . The novel is getting on pretty well, . . . and now let's call a cab and go to Oxford." The novel, of course, was " Esmond." " Esmond" did not seem to be a part of our lives, as " Pen- dennis" had been. Although I have seen the MSS. as it was written by Mr. Crowe to dictation, and also with pages in our own youthful handwriting, I cannot remember either the writing or the dictating, nor even hearing " Esmond " spoken of except very rarely. XX ESMOND AND THE LECTUEES My sister and I were a great deal away at this time, staying in Paris with our grandparents, who were living just out of the Champs Elysees, in the rue d'Angouleme, a street which has changed its name with succeeding dynasties. (The Champs Elys6es happily remain Champs Elysees still, impartially appro- priate to the various governments in turn, whether monarchical, imperial, or popular.) " As you are to be in Paris, my dearest fambly, for the fites," my father writes in August 1852, "I send you a word and a good morning, and such a little history of the past week as that time affords. " Eliza does for me, and her brother runs my errands. I have been twice to Richmond, where Mrs. F receives me with the greatest graciousness, and announces to all her friends that I am the most agreeable of men — that she looks upon me in the light of a son. At one of these dinners was Mr. B and his daughter, and if I had a daughter like that, all I can say is, that I should have a bore for a daughter. She scarce ceased speak- ing to me the whole of dinner-time; and told me that the sum- mer was hot, the mountains were high, and so forth, and next me, on t'other side, was a very nice, natural, ugly girl, that was worth a hundred of her. My favour with Mrs. F is not yet over ; she sent me a tabinet waistcoat of green and gold, such an ugly one! but I shall have it made up and sport it in Amer- ica, and keep the remainder for pin-cushions. ... I sent away the first sheets of ' Esmond ' yesterday. It reads better in print ; it is clever, but it is also stupid, no mistake. Other parts will be more amusing, I hope and think." "I have been living in the last century for weeks past, in the day, that is ; going at night as usual into the present age, until I get to fancy myself almost as familiar with one as with the other, and Oxford and Bohngbroke interest me as much as Russell and Palmerston — more, very likely. The present politics are behind the world, and not fit for the intelligence of the nation." About the translation of " Esmond " into French he writes to his mother: "I was going to write on this very little sheet of paper when your letter came in. Mr. De Wailly's is the best offer, but is it possible he can give us as much as 4000 francs? There must be some mistake, I fear. I have given up, and only <-V V* u,^ p^ <4*<4j^ olftwXb «c.^itU. f*UM\n^ oy_ ft^ l^U Mt iutjXiJ. uVurVi, tW \nM UrltUw ftu, lU-tl -i^ U'luu'HtiJ ^Aun^vUi- l*»^>AMilini. INTRODUCTION xxi bad for a day or two, the notion for the book in numbers; it is much too grave and sad for that." . . . " The great Revolution's a-coming, and the man not here who's to head it. 1 wonder whether he is born, and where he lives. The present writers are all employed as by instinct in unscrewing the old framework of society and getting it ready for the smash." To Lady Stanley he writes about the same time, " I am writ- ing a book of cut-throat melancholy suitable to my state, and have no news of myself or anybody to give you which should not be written on black-edged paper, and sealed with a hatchment." My father used often to go off into the country with his work for a day or two, and among other places he liked Southborough, near Tunbridge Wells, where he used to stay at an inn and write. The summer when he was busy upon "Esmond," his cousins, Mrs. Irvine and Miss Selina Shakespear, were living on Rustington Common, and he used to go over sometimes and spend the day with them. It was on one of these occasions that he drew the scenes from the life of Li cut. -General Webb here given, and which Miss Sliakespear has kept all these years. Meanwhile the Lectures continued their coui'se. He under- took a northern tour, during which, however, he still worked at his book. W. M. T. to Mrs. Carmichael-Smvth. " Glasgow, 1852. " Saturday, Snndfii/, Monday. — My dearest mother, I have had a working fit on me for the last many days, and have slaved away without a day's intermission ; at home, at Brighton, and regularly since I have been here too. I wish I had six months more to put into the novel : now it's nearly done ; its scarce more than a sketch, and it might have been made a durable history, complete in its parts and its whole. But at the end of six months it would want other six. It takes as much trouble as Macaulay's History almost, and he has the vast advantage of remembering everything he has read, whilst everything but im- pressions—I mean facts, dates, and so forth— slip out of my head, in which there's some great faculty lacking, depend upon it. " I came on Tuesday night. What a comfort to journey four hundred miles in twelve hours, reading a volume of Swift, and xxii ESMOND AND THE LECTURES noting it, all the way, and got up like a man next morning to my work. It's true I couldn't sleep for the infernal noise of the place. On Thursday I went off, accompanied by Mr. Jeames, to Balloch, on the brink of Loch Lomond, and passed two days there scribbling away, but in quiet and fresh air. I had a boat on the loch, and it's very pretty, but not so very pretty after all. It's nothing to the Swiss lakes or Killarney. And I'm glad I didn't bring the little women, as I had half a thought of doing. . . . " The air is choky with the smoke of ten thousand furnaces for miles round, and the whole landscape blacked all over with Indian ink. The steamers smoke more, and there are more of them than anywhere ! — and after the pure air of London I can't breathe this, nor sleep in the noisiest Babel of a place I've ever . . . " A man interrupted me in this paragraph yesterday, and we went out a-lionizing, after which no work was done. Now my dearest old mother conies in at the fag end of a day's writing, and that's sure to be a stupid, yawning letter. Indeed, when isn't there a day's work of some sort in my life as it now is ? You would have had many a letter but for that weariness which makes the sight of a pen odious, and sends me to sleep of a night at home when I don't go into the world. A man must live his life. Circumstance makes that for us partly, indepen- dent of ourselves. . . . " The folks here don't understand in the least what I'm about, but are very cordial and willing to be pleased. One fat old merchant to whom I brought a letter mistook me, or rather took me, for an actor (and so I am), and said, ' Have the goodness to call upon me to-morrow at one o'clock.' Well, I should have gone, just for the fun of the thing, only the old boy, who had never heard of me from Adam, heard in the meantime who I was, and came puffing up my stairs yesterday and took me out sight-seeing, and to dinner afterwards at his hideous house, where he dispensed hospitality very kindly to a dozen people, and put me in mind of T 's good-humour and jollity and Want of education. The rich man had toadies about him too, just as in otlier places. It was good to watch them — two of them were painters anxious for commissions from him. "I looked at Carlisle as we passed through with a queer feel- ing. I was offered, do you remember ? to be editor of the Car- 1 N T R O D U C T I O N xxiii lisle Patriot tlie first ywir of my marriage, and refused, I think, because it wax too Tory for me (it was in the Lonsdale interest). What queer speculations tiic might have beens are ! . . ." " Thursday, February 20, 1852. I don't tliink I have got much good news, or otherwise, to tell you since I last wrote. But my book has got into a more cheerful vein, that's a com- fort, and I am relieved from the lugubrious doubts I had about it. Miss Bronte has seen the first volume, and pronounces it 'admirable and odious.' Well, I think it is very well done, and very melanclioly too ; but the melancholy part ends with Vol. 1, and everybody begins to move and be more cheerful." " I wish the new novel wasn't so grand and melancholy,'' he repeats elsewhere ; " the hero is as stately as Sir Charles Grandison — something like Warrington — a handsome likeness of an ugly son of yours. There's a deal of pains in it that Sm CHAKLES GRANDISON-ESMOND. xxiv ESMOND AND THE LECTUEES goes for nothing ; and my paper's full, and I am my dearest mother's affectionate son, W. M. T." Again he writes from Birmingham, from a friend's house, "Such a nice family — nice children, a sweet, kind wife, Yorke a perfect prize parson — pious, humble, merry, orthodox to the most lucky point, liked by everybody. How I should like to be like Yorke ! — not for the being liked, but for that happy ortho- doxy, which is as natural with him as with Addison and other fortunate people, and which would make iny dear old Granny so happy if I had it." Part TI. It will be remembered that E. FitzGerald, writing to F. Ten- nyson in 1852, says, "Though I have had to march to London several times, I generally ran back again as fast as I could, much preferring the fresh air and the fields to the wilderness of monkeys in London. Thackeray I saw for ten minutes ; he was just in the agony of finishing a novel, which has arisen out of the reading necessary for his lectures, and relates to those times — of Queen Anne, I mean. He will get £1000 for his novel; he was wanting to finish it and rush off to the Continent to shake off the fumes of it." Here is another mention by my father of the new book: — " Esmond looks very stately and handsome in print, and, bore as he is, I think will do me credit. But the printers only send me one hundred pages a week, and at this rate will be three months getting through the novel." . . . "I have just recovered from a fine panic," he says in Sep- tember 1852; "my third volume was lost at the publishers. What on earth was I to do, thinks I ? That will keep me six weeks more at home, and that will enable me to have the chil- dren ; but the missing volume cast up again an hour ago." By this time the American journey was settled, and the time was getting very near for his going. " Four more days gone, and again this is the very first minute for writing. I have been to Alderley for a day since ; said adieu 1 N T R (J D U (; T I ( ) N XXV to Liverpool, and liad plenty of audience; come to London by the night mail train, and arrived at poor dreary old Kensinjj-ton yesterday, Sunday morning, and all to-day have been busy till now. I found at home my women's letters, and my dearest old mother's postscript. I am glad to have such good accounts of you all, and have just sent off positively the last sentence of the ' Esmond ' dedication ; and if I had three hours more on Satur- day, I would have been off by that boat I think, so beautiful the weatliei' is, and so tempting the sunshine. "I hope to send you over 'Esmond' next week. God bless my children, and kiss everybody all round for the sake of son and father." " Now I am going to work for three liours, and to re-read ' Vanity Fair ' for a cheap edition." One of the things I remember his saying about "Esmond" I have already put into print. It was when lie exclaimed in pleasure and excitement, that a young publisher called George Smith — almost a boy, he said — had come with a liberal cheque in his pocket, to offer for the unfinished novel. 1 have also written of a sort of second sight my father used sometimes to speak of. Occasionally when he described places, he said he could hardly believe he had not been there; and in one of the battles in " Esmond," he told us that the very details of the foreground were visible to him as he wrote, even to some reeds growing by a streamlet, and the curve of the bank by which it flowed. I find a sentence in one of his letters which corroborates this impression. " I was pleased to find Blenheim," he wrote to his mother in August 1852, " was just exactly the place I had figured to my- self, except that the village is larger ; but I fancied I had actu- ally been there, so like the aspect of it was to what I looked for. I saw the brook which Harry Esmond crossed, and almost the spot where he fell wounded, and walked down to the Danube, and mused mighty thoughts over it. It seems grand to walk down to the Danube ; but the Thames at Putney is twice as big and handsome as the river liere." We give a version of " Malbrook " going off on his campaign, which may interest my readers. "Esmond" was the only book of my father's that was first ESMOND AND THE LECTURES MALBROOK S EN TAT-EN GCEKRE. published in all tlie dignity of three volumes. It came out in periwig and embroidery, in beautiful type and handsome pro- portions. How well I can remember the packet arriving at Paris after be had sailed for America, and our opening it and finding the handsome books, and reading the dedication. There are but one or two descriptions of places in the whole of " Esmond." It is by allusion rather than by statement that tbe impression is given of that brightly painted, crowded, event- ful time, which he gives back to ns. Does not one almost breathe the morning air when Esmond comes out of Newgate ? " The fellow in the orange-tawny livery with blue lace and facings was in waiting when Esmond came out of prison, and taking the young gentleman's slender baggage, led the way out of that odious Newgate, and by Fleet Conduit down to the Thames, where a pair of oars was called, and they went up the river to Chelsey. Esmond thought the sun had never shone Sebright; nor the air felt so fresh and exhilarating. Temple INTRODUCTION xxvii Garden, as they roweil by, looked like the (Jarden of Eden tci him, and the asj)ect of the quays, wharves, and bnildiiigs by the river, Somerset House, and Westminster (where the splendid new bridge was just beginniuL;), Lambeth tower and [ndace, and that busy shining scene of the Thames swarming with boats and bai'ges, filled his heart with pleasure and cheerfulness — as well such a beautiful scene might to one who had been a prisoner so long, and with so many dark thoughts deepening the gloom of bis captivity. They rowed up at length to the pretty village of Chelsey.'' It is well known that Castlewood was Clevedon Court in Somersetshire, and by the kindness of Sir Edmund Elton we are EXTEKIOR OF CLEVKDDN COURT. able to give the sketch of the interior of the old hall (page xxviii). It is Kensington that cclioes through the latter part of "Esmond." Once when we were walking with him through " the S([iiare," as Kensingtonians still call it, he pointed to No. 1 and said, "That is where Lady Castlewood lived," and I think he added something about tlie back windows looking across the lanes to Chelsea. I have sometimes wondered where Esmond's lodgings were. Perhaps he lived in one of those old xxviii ESMUiSID AND THE LECTURES INTERIOR OF CLK.¥EDON HALL. houses among' the gardens at Bromptoii ; for he meets Addison one night walliini;- back to his lodgings at FLilham. We all know how Colonel Esmond from Chelsea spent one night at the "Greyhound" "over against" Lady Castlewood's house in Kensington Square, the house to which the portrait of Frank Castlewood by Rigaiid was sent. There is a picture of the old Pretender, magnificent and blue-ribboned, in the gallery at Dres- den, which may have suggested the Castlewood picture in very fact, for ray father must have oeen it when he was in Dresden about 1851. Mr. Egg, R.A., painted a picture of Beatrix and Esmond, which is now in the National Gallery, and which my father went to look at in the artist's studio ; but there is a much more striking picture painted in the pages of " Esmond," when Harry, INTRODUCTION xxix with his terrible news, walks into the room where all the shop people and mantua-makers are crowdincr. The well-known epi- logue will not be forgotten, when Esmond drives the crier away from under Beatrix's window, where he is proclaiming the death of the Duke of Hamilton. " The world was going to its busi- ness again, although dukes lay dead and ladies mourned for them. . . . Esmond thought of the courier, now galloping on the North road to inform him, who was Earl of Arran yester- day, that he was Duke of Hamilton to-day, and of a thousand great schemes, hopes, ambitions, that were alive in the gallant heart, beating a few hours since, and now in a little dust quiescent." . . . A few topographical notes for " Estnond " remain in my father's writing. "Statue of the King in Stork's Market, a^very magnificent statue of Charles II. and Time on horseback trampling upon an enemy, all in white marble, at the sole cost of that worthy citizen and Alderman Sir II. Viner, Knt. Bart." '^ Golding Square. — Fleet Brook. — This mighty chargeable beautiful work, rendering navigable the Fleet Brook, a ditch from the river Thames up to llolborn Bridge ; the curious stone bridge over it; the many huge vaults on each side thereof to treasure up Newcastle coals for the use of the poor." " The prisons were Newgate, Ludgate, and Queen's Bench, Fleet, Marshalsea, New Prison, Whitechapel, and Westminster Gate House." "Exchange. — There be many Exchanges in London, besides markets and tlie Royal Exchange — as that stately building called the New Exchange and Exeter Change, both in the Strand, where all attire for ladies and gentlemen is sold." " St. Paul's buihUiKj in 1 702 appeared, through a wood of scaffolding, the wonder and glory of the kingdom." There are also some notes about the Duke of Marlborough. "Lord Oxford's knowledge of the Duke's misdeeds; and that Lord Oxford, making the Duke know that his life was in his hands, was the reason of Marlborough's voluntary exile in the year 1712." Also there are a few incidental notes — " The ranks wore their wigs in bags, and all have swords." XXX ESMOND AND THE LEGTL'KES "Plum broth at Christmas, and sillabub in May, were consid- ered suitable dishes." "QucLMi Anne had forty-eight chaplains in ordinary." The following- letter to a friend of his in Paris has remained among- oui- papers: — "Dear Forgubs, — I have just read the article in the Revue dcs deux Mondes, and am glad to write a line of thanks and goodwill to the author, with whom, as I think Pichot has already told you, I have been angry for these three whole years. "In 1851, a projjos of my Lectures, you wrote in a French paper published here that I had praised Addison in order to curry favour with the English aristocracy. My honour was wounded at the idea that a friend should make such a charge against me. A critic may like or dislike my books, and of course is welcome to his opinion, but he has no right to attribute to INTRODUCTION xxxi me mean motives, or at least, I have a right to be angry if he does. And now I will give you the history of Addison, whom I don't like personally, but whose hnmour I admire with all my heart; more than his humour, I admire his conduct through life ; rich or poor, he was an upright, honest, dignified gentleman, a worthy man of letters; he underwent bad fortune with admirable serenity. I thought it was right to praise him as one of our profession, and leave the reader to make his own moral from what I said. You have seen there has been »n absurd outcry here about neglected men of genius, about the excuses to be made for literary men ; they are to get drunk, to bilk their tradesmen, to leave their children without bread ! . . . " I have been earning my own bread with my pen for near twenty years now, and sometimes very hardly too, but in the worst time, please God, never lost my own respect !" DR. JOHNSON. The picture of " another worthy man of letters " may perhaps not unfitly illustrate this correspondence. xxxii ESMOND AND THE LECTURES Tart III. When we went abroad the summer before my father sailed for America, we met our grandparents on the Rhine ; then we travelled on to Switzerland, where my father left us. We did not see him again after we parted from him in Switzerland. But he wrote to us very often. Here is a letter to my sister from Augsbui-g : — " My dearest Min., — This morning came a little letter, which they might as well have given to me yesterday. (You see I give you my other hand* as when we walk together I give one hand to Anny and one to you.) They might, I say, have given me the letter when I went to the post for it yester- day, for there it has been lying these three days. Yesterday when I arrived it was all rain and melancholy here, and to-day, Sunday, it's all sunshine and pleasure, the great streets thronged with people — such ugly women in such caps ! and bands of brass-music blowing beautifully all about the town. It's full of the most extraordinary churches, pictures, statues, and gim- cracks of every sort. I went into many churches yesterday — one something like the splendid St. Ambrogio at Milan, you remember, but spick and span new, and most byooootifully gilt painted and decorated with tableaux representing St. Ambiogio's life and miracles, in which latter anybody may believe who chooses. In one of the confessionals of another church, another most byoooooootifle sham-antique church, where I was at dusk, I heard whisswhisswhisspering in the confessional, and then hnmmummumbrum the priest talking, and all this excited my awe and curiosity, and I thought to myself, perhaps there is some lovely creature in there on her knees to a venerable friar, confessing some most tremendous crime. But presently hopped out of the confessional a little old speckled hunched-back frog of a creature in a green shawl, and plopped down on its knees and said some prayer — which it was quite right no doubt to say — but all the romance was gone at the sight of the queer * He used his upright handwriting when he wrote to my sister, his slantiu" handwriting when he wrote to me. INTRODUCTION xxxiii little trot of a woman, who I am sure could have only had the most trumpery little sins to chatter about, and so I came out of the church not a bit better Catholic than 1 went in. Don't you see, if she had been a lovely countess who had just killed her grandmother or smothered her babby, I raii;ht have gone on being interested and awe-stricken? but Polly the cook-maid, who owns to having given a pie to the policeman, or melted the fat into the grease-pot, I can't go for to waste my compassion and wonder upon her. And here's the mistake about these fine churches, pictures, music, and splendid and gracious sights and sounds with which the Catholics entrap many people — their senses are delighted, and they fancy they are growing religious; it's a romantic wonder, not a religious one. We must set to work to have the truth with all our hearts and soul and strength, and take care not to be juggled by rumanticalities and senti- mentalities. This church of St. Louis is ornamented with the most beautiful dolls you ever saw, the size of life, and painted and tickled up in the most charming way, with pink cheeks, fi-esh gilt glories, white eyes, wooden lilies, and everything' that's nice. And the people kneel before them in crowds and worship Ma- donna and her Sacred Infant, and the beautiful St. Louis of Gonzaga and the beautiful St. Francis of the Indies — that is to say, charming figures representing these holy persons, and act- ing them in wood. But do I believe that the souls of the blest go about with gilt cart-wheels round their heads ! Fiddledce. These are but childish symbols and play — and there's the dinner bell; and as I love my children on earth, I know the Father of lis all loves us." The following letter was written to me : — - " My dearest A., — I must and will go to America, not be- cause I like it, but because it is right I should secure some money against my death for your poor mother and you two girls. And I think if I have luck I may secure nearly a third of the sum that I think I ouglit to leave behind me by a six months' tour in the States. And you children during that time must consider yourselves as at college ; and work, work with all your heart. You'll never have such another opportunity ; when xxxiv ESMOND AND THE LECTURES I come back, please God, your studies will be interrupted, as I shall want a secretary. So now please to learn French very well, and to play the piano if you can. It will be a comfort to me in future days, when we shall be in some quieter place and manner of life than here in London, and I shall like my women to make music for me. I should read all the books that granny wishes, if I were you ; and you must come to your own deductions about them, as every honest man and woman must and does. When I was of your age I was accustomed to hear and read a great deal of the Evangelical (so called) doctrine, and got an extreme distaste for that sort of composition — for New- ton, for Scott, for the preachers I heard and the prayer-meetings T attended. I have not looked into half-a-dozen books of the French modern reformed churchmen, but those I have seen are odious to me. D'Aubigne, I believe, is the best man of the modern French Reformers ; and a worse guide to historical truth (for one who has a reputation) I don't know. If M. Gossaint argues that because our Lord quoted the Hebrew scriptures therefore the Scriptures are of direct Divine composition, you may make yourself quite easy ; and the works of a reasoner who would maintain an argument so monstrous, need not, I should think, occupy a great portion of your time. Our Lord not only quoted the Hebrew writings (drawing illustrations from every- thing familiar to the people among whom He taught, from their books poetic and historic, from the landscape round about, from the flowers, the children, and the beautiful works of God), but He contradicted the old scriptures flatly ; told the people that He brought them a new commandment — and that new com- mandment was not a complement, but a contradiction of the old — a repeal of a bad, unjust law in their statute books, which He would suffer to remain there no more. It has been said an eye for an eye, &c., but /say to you no such thing ; Love your enemies, &c. It could not have been right to hate your enemies on Tuesday and to love them on Wednesday. What is right must always have been right, before it was practised as well as after. And if such and such a commandment delivered by Moses was wrong, depend on it it was not delivered by God, and the whole question of complete inspiration goes at once. And the misfortune of dogmatic belief is, that the first principle INTRODUCTIOi\ xxxv granted that the book called the ]!ible is written under the direct dictation of God ; for instance, that the Catholic Church is under tlic direct dictation of God, and solely communicates with Hitn ; that Quashimaboo is the direct appointed priest of God, and so forth — pain, cruelty, persecution, separation of dear relatives follow as a matter of course. What person possessing the secret of Divine truth by vvliich she or he is assured of heaven, and which idea she or he worships as if it was God, but must pass niglits of tears and days of grief and lamentation if persons naturally dear cannot be got to see this necessary truth? Smith's truth being established in Smith's mind as the Divine one, persecution follows as a matter of course — mar- tyrs have roasted all ovei' Europe, all over God's world, upon this dogma. To my mind, scripture only means a writing, and Bible means a book. It contains Divine truths, and the his- tory of a Divine Character; but imperfect, but not containing a thousandth part of Him ; and it would be an untruth before God were I to hide my feelings from my dearest children ; as it would be a sin if, having other opinions, and believing literally in tlie Mosaic writings, in the six days' cosmogony, in the ser- pent and apple and consequent damnation of the human race, I should hide them, and not try to make those I loved best adopt opinions of such immense importance to them. And so God bless my darlings and teach us the truth. " Every one of us in every fact, book, circumstance of life sees a diilerent meaning and moral, and so it must be about religion. But we can all love each other and say, ' Our Father.' " I have another letter of October 18.52. It is dated Manches- ter, Liverpool, Alderley, Kensington, Covent Garden. "I am writing this at the station, having missed the quick train, and not sorry to have half-an-liour to myself and my dearest girls. I have just said good-bye to Manchester, and stopped this morn- ing to hear Mr. Scott address his College, of which he is Prin- cipal. A gentleman, a Mr. Owen, left a hundred thousand pounds to found an institution for educating his townsfolk, and Scott is the iirst head of the College, and a very noble speech I thought he made to his boys and young men, and I wished I was a boy myself that I might learn something, but I am too xxxvi ESMOND AND THE LECTURES old a boy to learn ranch now, I fear. You two must try and do so, and when you are at work, work with all your heart, and don't play with learning." He sailed for America from Liverpool on October 30th by the Canada, Captain Lang. The house in Kensington was shut up. Mis publishers gave him a despatoh-box, his mother sent him a lifebelt, and made him promise not to leave it behind. We were all very anxious and sad, but very glad he did not go alone : Mr. Eyre Crowe went with him as secretary. " Six months tumbling about the world will do you no harm," he wrote, offering the post to his young friend. As the steamer was starting, a messenger arrived on board with letters from Messrs. Smith and Elder and the first copy of " Esmond." One of the farewell notes was addressed to Dr. John Brown* of Edinburgh. W. M. Thackeray to Dr. John Brown, M.D. "8.5 Renshaw Strket, Livetjpool, " Wednesdat/, October 6 (1852). " My DEAR Brown, — Your constant kindness deserves, not more good will on ray part, for that you have, but better marks of friendship than my laziness is inclined to show. My time is drawing near for the ingens aequor. I have taken places for self and Crowe, Junior, by the Canada, which departs on the 30th of this month, a Saturday, and all you who pray for trav- ellers by land and water (if yon do pray in your Scotch Church) are entreated to offer up supplications for me. I don't like go- ing out at all ; have dismal presentiments sometimes, but the right thing is to go ; and the pleasant one will be to come back again with a little money for the young ladies. I hope to send you ' Esmond ' before I sad ; if not, it will follow me as a legacy. I doubt whether it will be popular, although it has cost me so much trouble. " I wish this place were like Edinburgh, but I only get a small audience, say 300, in a hall capable of holding 3000 at least, and all the papers will cry out at the smallness of the *It is Dr. John Brown's son who with a traiiitiotial kindness has sent me the correspondence to quote from. INTRODUCTION xxxvi i atteiidaiico. At Manchester the audience isn't greater, but looks greater, or the room is small, and though pecuniarily the affair IS a failure, it is not so really; I air my reputation, and the people who do come seem to like what they hear hugely. " Carlyle is away in Germany looking after ' Frederick the Great.' 1 don't know what Literature is about. I heard James Martineau (the Unitarian) last Sunday, and was struck by his lofty devotional spirit, and afterwards an old schoolfellow on the Evangelical dodge — ah, what rubbish I and so is this which I am writing. I think it is partly owing to an uncomfortable pen ; but with bad pen and good I am always yours and your wife's, sincerely, \V. M. T." From Liverpool he wrote to Lady Stanley, " Not above 200 people come to the lectures, and the Philharmonic Hall, the most beautiful room I've seen, is made for 2500, so that the little audience shudders in the middle, and the lecturer stands in a vast empty orchestra, where there is a place for 150 musi- cians. It is like a dinner for twenty and three people to eat it. They go away and say unto each other what a good dinner and so forth, but I don't think they'll have the courage to come again. " Who would like to be one of six in a theatre with a good actor performing a good douche for a man's vanity? " There is a Boston boat sails on the 30th of Octobei', and that will be the steamer which will carry Titmarsh and his lectures." Mr. Crowe describes the passengers on board the Canada. " Lowell, fresh from Italy, coming up the companion-laoston : Literary Breakfast of a family of opulence mo\'- ing in a select circle, residing in a select square. " Clever Daughter. Decidedly I esteem Mr. Thackeray, the fort esprit of his time : strongly resembling Bussy de Rabutin, but with a more introspective cast. He reminds one constantly of the subtle companion of Faust: no moral obliquity without its palliative, no human weakness without a claim to a tender extenuation. We learn to love the vice, but hate the sinner ; I would say, hate the sinner and love the vice — vice-versa. " Sentimental Da.ughter. I'm sure I wish I had been born in Queen Anne's day, when all the gentlemen were so enthusiastic, and wore red cloaks and green stockings. They seem to have had such a ceaseless flow of spirits. " Pert Son. Well, they didn't have anything else. " Oruff Papa. A pack of d — d scamps as ever 'scaped hang- ing. If I'd had any idea of such characters being raked up at a lecture in Boston, no son or daughter of mine should have set foot in the hall, 'if they grew up ever so ignorant.' " Clever Girl, But, dear papa, genius is ever eccentric : can- xlvi ESMOND AND THE LECTURES not be cabiu'd, cribb'd,' confined to ordinary limits. Their ' noble rage ' will burst out, and, like the Pythian priestess, they are borne away by the afflatus of the tripod. Byron had his faults, but " Si/li/ Mamma to Oruff Papa. I'm sure, my love, Mr. Thackeray has made a decidedly favourable impression on our most fashionable people : which could not have happened if these authors really were to blame in their behaviour. If it was the fashion to be ' gay,' and to be carried about in chairs, it was not their fault, but that of their rulers. . . . " Fossil Grandmother (timidly), Mr. Thackeray ought to be spoken to — dispassionately." A CONFERENCE. In 1855 my father returned to America and delivered the second series of his lectures, "The Four Georges," wliich for convenience are bound up with the Humourists in this present volume. The American letters which he wrote during his second visit are included in the preface to "The Virginians," and are alto- gether omitted here. A. I. R. THE HISTOEY HENRY ESMOND, Esq. A COLONEL IN" THE SERVICE OP HEE MAJESTY QUEEN ANNE WRITTEN BY HIMSELF . SERVETUR AD TMUM QUALIS AB INCBKTO PROCBSSEBIT, BT SIBI CONSTET TO THE EIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM BINGHAM, LORD ASHBURTON MY DEAR LORD, — The writer of a book which copies the manners and language of Queen Anne's time, must not omit the Dedication to the Patron ; and I ask leave to inscribe this volume to your Lordship, for the sake of the great kindness and friendship which I owe to you and yours. My volume will reach you when the Author is on his voyage to a country where your name is as well known as here. Wherever I am, I shall gratefully regard you ; and shall not be the less welcomed in America because I am Your obliged friend and servant, W. M. THACKERAY. London : October 18, 1852. PREFACE THE ESMONDS (JF VIRGINIA THE estate of Castlewood, in Virginia, whicli was given to our ancestors by King Charles the First, as some return for the sacrifices made in His Majesty's cause by the Esmond family, lies in Westmoreland county, between the rivers Potomac and Rappahannoc, and was once as great as an English Principality, though in the early times its revenues were but small. Indeed, for near eighty years after our forefathers possessed them, our plantations were in the hands of factors, who enriched themselves one after another, though a few scores of hogsheads of tobacco were all the produce that, for long after the Restoration, our family re- ceived from their Virginian estates. My dear and honoured father. Colonel Henry Esmond, whose history, written by himself, is contained in the accompanying volume, came to Virginia in the year 1718, built his house of Castlewood, and here permanently settled. After a long stormy life in Englaiid, he passed the remainder of his many years in peace and honour in this country ; how beloved and respected by all his fellow-citizens, how inexpressibly dear to his family, I need not say. His whole life was a benefit to all who were connected with him. He gave the best example, the best advice, the most bounteous hospitality to his friends ; the tenderest care to his dependants ; and bestowed on those of his immediate family such a blessing of fatherly love and protection as can never be thought of, by us at least, without veneration and thankfulness ; and my sons' children, whether established here in our RcpubUc, or at home in the always beloved mother country, from which our late quarrel hath separated us, may surely be proud to be descended from one who in all ways was so truly noble. My dear motlier died in 1736, soon after our return from England, whither my parents took me for my education ; and where I made the acquaintance of Mr. AVarrington, whom my 6 PEEFAOE children never saw. When it pleased Heaven, in the bloom of his youth, and after but a few months of a most happy union, to remove him from me, I owed my recovery from the grief which that calamity caused me, mainly to my dearest father's tenderness, and then to the blessing vouchsafed to me in the birth of my two beloved boys. I know the fatal differences which separated them in politics never disunited their hearts ; and as I can love them both, whether wearing the King's colours or the Eepublic's, I am sure that they love me and one another, and him above all, my father and theirs, the dearest friend of their childhood, the noble gentleman who bred them from their infancy in the practice and knowledge of Truth, and Love, and Honour. My children will never forget the appearance and figure of their revered grandfather ; and I wish I possessed the art of drawing (which my papa had in perfection), so that I could leave to our descendants a portrait of one who was so good and so respected. My father was of a dark complexion, with a very great forehead and dark hazel eyes, overhung by eyebrows which remained black long after his hair was white. His nose was aquiline, his smile extraordinary sweet. How well I remember it, and how little any description I can write can recall his image ! He was of rather low stature, not being above five feet seven inches in height ; he used to laugh at my sons, whom he called his crutches, and say they were grown too tall for him to lean upon. But small as he was, he had a perfect grace and majesty of deport- ment, such as I have never seen in this country, except perhaps in our friend Mr. Washington, and commanded respect wherever he appeared. In all bodily exercises he excelled, and showed an extraordinary quickness and agility. Of fencing he was especially fond, and made my two boys proficient in that art ; so much so that when t"he French came to this country with Monsieur Eochambeau, not one of his officers was superior to my Henry, and he was not the equal of my poor George, who had taken the King's side in our lamentable but glorious War of Independence. Neither my father nor my mother ever wore powder in their hair ; both their heads were as white as silver, as I can remember them. My dear mother possessed to the last an extraordinary brightness and freshness of complexion ; nor would people believe that she did not wear rouge. At sixty years of age she still looked young, and was quite agile. It was not until after that dreadful siege of our house by the Indians, which left me a widow ere I was a mother, that my dear mother's health broke. She never recovered her terror and anxiety of those days, which ended so fatally for me, PREFACE 7 then a bride scarce six months married, and died in my father's anns ere my own year of widowhood was over. From that day, vmtil the last of his dear and honoured life, it was my delight and consolation to remain with him as his comforter and companion ; and from those little notes which my mother hath made here and there in the volume in which my father describes his adventures in Europe, I can well understand the extreme devotion with which she regarded him — a devotion so passionate and exclu- sive as to prevent her, I think, from loving any other person except with an inferior regard ; her whole thoughts being centred on this one object of affection and worship. I know that, before her, my dear father did not show the love A\'hich he had for his daughter ; and in her last and most sacred moments, this dear and tender parent owned to me her repentance that she had not loved me enough ; her jealousy even that my father should give his affection to any but herself; and in the most fond and beautiful words of affection and admonition, she bade me never to leave hiin, and to supply the place which she was quitting. With a clear conscience, and a heart inexpressibly thankful, I think I can say that I fulfilled those dying commands, and that until his last hour my dearest father never had to complain that his daughter's love and fidelity failed him. And it is since I knew him entirely — for during my mother's life he never quite opened himself to me — since I knew the value and splendour of that aflfection which he bestowed upon me, that I have come to understand and pardon what, I own, used to anger me in my mother's lifetime, her jealousy respecting her husband's love. 'Twas a gift so precious, that no wonder she who had it was for keeping it all, and could part with none of it, even to her daughter. Though I never heard my father use a rough word, 'twas extra- ordinary with how much awe his people regarded him ; and the servants on our plantation, both those assigned from England and the purchased negroes, obeyed him with an eagerness such as the most severe taskmasters round about us could never get from their people. He was never familiar, though perfectly simple and natural ; he was the same with the meanest man as with the greatest, and as courteous to a black slave girl as to the Governor's wife. No one ever thought of taking a liberty with him (except once a tipsy gentleman from York, and I am bound to own that my papa never forgave him) : he set the humblest people at once on their ease with him, and brought down the most arrogant by a grave satiric way, which made persons exceedingly afraid of him. His courtesy was net put on like a Sunday suit, and laid by when the company went 8 PREFACE away ; it was always the same ; as he was always dressed the same, whether for a dinner by ourselves or for a great entertainment. They say he liked to be the first in his company ; but what com- pany was there in which he would not be first 1 When I went to Europe for my education, and we passed a winter at London with my half-brother, my Lord Castlewood and his second lady, I saw at Her Majesty's Court some of the most famous gentlemen of those days ; and I thought to myself none of these are better than my papa ; and the famous Lord Bolingbroke, who came to us from Dawley, said as much and that the men of that tiine were not like those of his youth : — " Were your father, madam," he said, " to go into the woods, the Indians would elect him Sachem ; " and his Lordship was pleased to call me Pocahontas. I did not see our other relative. Bishop Tusher's lady, of whom so much is said in my papa's memoirs — although my mamma went to visit her in the country. I have no pride (as I showed by com- plying with my mother's request, and marrying a gentleman who was but the younger son of a Suffolk Baronet), yet I own to a decent respect for my name, and wonder how one who ever bore it should change it for that of Mrs. Thoniai Tusher. I pass over as odious and unworthy of credit those reports (which I heard in Europe, and was then too young to understand), how this person, having left her Jamily and fled to Paris, out of jealousy of the Pretender, betrayed his secrets to my Lord Stair, King George's Ambassador, and nearly caused the Prince's death there ; how she came to England and married this Mr. Tusher, and became a great favourite of King George the Second, by whom Mr. Tusher was made a Dean, and then a Bishop. I did not see the lady, who chose to remain at her palace all the time we were in London ; but after visiting her, my poor mamma said she had lost all her good looks, and warned me not to set too much store by any such gifts which nature had bestowed upon me. She grew exceedingly stout ; and I remember my brother's wife, Lady Castlewood, saying: "No wonder she became a favourite, for the King likes them old and ugly, as his father did before him." On which Papa said : " All women were alike ; that there was never one so beautiful as that one • and that we could forgive her everything but her beauty." And hereupon my mamma looked vexed, and my Lord Castlewood began to laugh ; and I, of course, being a young creature, could not understand what was the subject of their conversation. After the circumstances narrated in the third book of tliese Memoirs, my father and mother both went abroad, being advised by their friends to leave the country in consequence of the trans- actions which are recounted at the close of the volume of the PEEFACE 9 Memoirs. But my brother, hearing how the futv/re Bishop's lady had quitted Castlewood and joined the Pretender at Paris, pursued him, and would have killed him, Prince as he was, had not the Prince managed to make his escape. On his expedition to Scotland directly after, Castlewood was so enraged against him that he asked leave to serve as a volunteer, and join the Duke of Argyle's army in Scotland, which the Pretender never had the courage to face ; and thenceforth my Lord was quite reconciled to the present reigning family, from whom he hath even received promotion. Mrs. Tusher was by this time as angry against the Pretender as any of her relations could be, and used to boast, as I have heard, that she not only brought back my Lord to the Church of England, but procured the English peerage for him, which i\i% junior branch of our family at present enjoys. She was a great friend of Sir Robert Walpole, and would not rest until her husband slept at Lam- beth, my papa used laughing to say. However, the Bishop died of apoplexy suddenly, and his wife erected a great monument over him ; and the pair sleep under that stone, with a canopy of marble clouds and angels above them — the first Mrs. Tusher lying sixty miles off at Castlewood. But my papa's genius and education are both greater than any a woman can be expected to have, and his adventures in Europe far more exciting than his life in this country, which was passed in the tranquil ofiBces of love and duty ; and I sliall say no more by way of introduction to his Memoirs, nor keep my children from the perusal of a story which is much more interesting than that of their affectionate old mother, RACHEL ESMOND WARRINGTON. Castlewood, Vieginia : November 3, 1778. THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND BOOK I THE EARLY YOUTH OK HENRY ESMOND, UP TO THE TIME OF HIS LEAVING TRINITY COLLEGE, IN CAMBRIDGE THE actors in the old tragedies, as we read, piped their iambics to a tune, speaking from under a mask, and wearing stilts and a great head-dress. 'Twas thought the dignity of the Tragic Muse required these appurtenances, and that she was not to move except to a measure and cadence. So Queen Medea slew her children to a slow music : and King Agamemnon perished in a dying fall (to use Mr. Dryden's words) : the Chorus standing by in a set attitude, and rhythmically and decorously bewailing the fates of those great crowned persons. The Muse of History hath encumbered herself with ceremony as well as her Sister of the Theatre. She too wears the mask and the cothurnus, and speaks to measure. She too, in our age, busies herself with the affairs only of kings ; waiting on them obsequiously and stately, as if she were but a mistress of court ceremonies, and had nothing to do with the registering of the affairs of the common people. I have seen in his very old age and decrepitude the old French King Lewis the Fourteenth, the type and model of kinghood — who never moved but to measure, who lived and died according to the laws of his Court-marshal, persisting in enacting through life the part of Hero ; and, divested of poetry, this was but a little wrinkled old man, pock-marked, and with a great periwig and red heels to make liirn look tall — a hero for a book if you like, or for a brass statue or a painted ceiling," a god in a Roman shape, but what more than a man for Madame Maintenon, or the barber who shaved him, or Monsieur Fagon, his surgeon 1 I wonder shall History ever pull off her periwig and 12 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND cease to be court-ridden ? Shall we see something of France and England besides Versailles and Windsor] I saw Queen Anne at the latter place tearing down the Park slopes, after her stag-hounds, and driving her one-horse chaise — a hot, red-faced woman, not in the least resembling that statue of her which turns its stone back upon St. Paul's, and faces the coaches strugghng up Ludgate Hill. She was neither better bred nor wiser than you and me, though we kaelt to hand her a letter or a washhand basin. Why shall History go on kneeling to the end of time ? I am for having her rise up off her knees, and take a natural posture : not to be for ever per- forming cringes and congees like a court-chamberlain, and shuffling backwards out of doors in the presence of the sovereign. In a word, I would have History familiar rather than heroic : and think that Mr. Hogarth and Mr. Fielding will give our children a much better idea of the manners of the present age in England, than the Court Gazette and the newspapers which we get thence. There was a German officer of Webb's, with whom we used to joke, and of whom a story (whereof I myself was the author) was got to be beheved in the army, that he was eldest son of the hereditary Grand Bootjack of the Empire, and the heir to that honour of which his ancestors had been very proud, having been kicked for twenty generations by one imperial foot, as they drew the boot from the other. I have heard that the old Lord Oastle- wood, of part of whose family these present volumes are a chronicle, though he came of quite as good blood as the Stuarts whom he served (and who as regards mere lineage are no better than a dozen English and Scottish houses I could name), was prouder of his post about the Court than of his ancestral honours, and valued his dignity (as Warden of the Butteries and Groom of the King's Posset) so highly, that he cheerfully ruined himself for the thank- less and thriftless race who bestowed it. He pawned his plate for King Charles the First, mortgaged his property for the same cause, and lost the greater part of it by fines and sequestration : stood a siege of his castle by Ireton, where his brother Thomas capitulated (afterward making terms with the Commonwealth, for which the elder brother never forgave him), and where his second brother Edward, who had embraced the ecclesiastical profession, was slain on Castlewood Tower, being engaged there both as preacher and artilleryman. This resolute old loyalist, who was with the King whilst his house was thus being battered down, escaped abroad with his only son, then a boy, to return and take a part in Worcester fight. On that fatal field Eustace Esmond was killed, and Castle- wood fled from it once more into exile, and henceforward, and after the Restoration, never was away from the Court of the monarch OUR MOST EELIGIOUS KING 13 (for whose return we offer thanks in the Prayer-Book) who sold his country and who took bribes of the French king. Wliat spectacle is more august than that of a great king in exile? Who is more worthy of respect than a brave man in mis- fortune f Mr. Addison has painted such a figure in his noble piece of " Cato." But suppose fugitive Gate fuddling himself at a tavern with a wench on each knee, a dozen faithful and tipsy companions of defeat, and a landlord calling out for his bill ; and the dignity of misfortune is straightway lost. The Historical Muse turns away shamefaced from the vulgar scene, and closes the door — on which the exile's unpaid drink is scored up — upon him and his pots and his pipes, and the tavern-chorus which he and his friends are singing. Such a man as Charles should have had an Ostade or Mieris to paint him. Your Knellers and Le Bruns only deal in clumsy and impos- sible allegories : and it hath always seemed to me blasjihemy to claim Olympus for such a wine-drabbled divinity as that. About the King's follower, the Viscount Castlewood— orphaned of his son, ruined by his fidelity, bearing many wounds and marks of bravery, old and in exile— his kinsmen I suppose should be silent ; nor if this patriarch fell down in his cups, call fie upon him, and fetch passers-by to laugh at his red face and white hairs. What ! does a stream rush out of a mountain free and pure, to roll through fair pastures, to feed and throw out bright tributaries, and to end in a village gutter? Lives that have noble commencements have often no better endings ; it is not without a kind of awe and reverence that an observer should speculate upon such careers as he traces the course of them. I liave seen too much of success in life to take off my hat and huzzah to it as it passes in its gilt coach ; and would do my little part with my neighbours on foot, that they should not gape with too much wonder, nor applaud too loudly. Is it the Lord Mayor going in state to mince-pies and the Mansion House 1 Is it poor Jack of Newgate's procession, with the sheriff and javelin-men, conducting him on his last journey to Tybiu'n 1 I look into my heart and think that I am as good as my Lord Mayor, and know I am as bad as Tyburn Jack. Give me a (thain and red gown and a pudding before nie, and I could play the part of Alderman very well, and sentence Jack after dinner. Starve me, keep me from books and honest people, educate me to love dice, gin, and pleasure, and put me on Hounslow Heath, with a purse before me, and I will take it. " And I shall be deservedly hanged," say you, wishing to put an end to this prosing. I don't say No. I can't but accept the world as I find it, including a rope's end, as long as it is in fashion. CHAPTER I AN ACCOUNT OF THE FAMILY OF ESMOND OF CASTLEIVOOD HALL WHEN Francis, fourth Viscount Castlewood, came to his title, and presently after to take possession of his house of Castlewood, County Hants, in the year 1691, almost the only tenant of the place besides the domestics was a lad of twelve years of age, of whom no one seemed to take any note until my Lady Viscountess lighted upon him, going over the house with the housekeeper on the day of her arrival. The boy was in the room known as the Book-room, or Yellow Gallery, where the por- traits of the family used to hang, that fine piece among others of Sir Antonio Van Dyck of George, second Viscount, and that by Mr. Dobson of my Lord the third Viscount, just deceased, which it seems his lady and widow did not think fit to carry away, when she sent for and carried ofl^ to her house at Chelsey, near to London, the picture of herself by Sir Peter Lely, in which her Ladyship was represented as a huntress of Diana's court. The new and fair lady of Castlewood found the sad, lonely, little occupant of this gallery busy over his gi-eat book, which he laid down when he was aware that a stranger was at hand. And, know- ing who that person must be, the lad stood up and bowed before her, performing a shy obeisance to the mistress of his house. She stretched out her hand — indeed when was it that that liaiid would not stretch out to do an act of kindness, or to protect grief and ill-fortuned "And this is our kinsman," she said; "and what is your name, kinsman 1 " " My name is Henry Esmond," said the lad, looking up at her in a sort of delight and wonder, for she had come upon him as a Dea eerie, and appeared the most charming object he had ever looked on. Her golden hair was shining in the gold of the sun ; her complexion was of a dazzling bloom ; her lips smiling, and her eyes beaming with a kindness which made Harry Esmond's heart to beat with surprise. " His name is Henry Esmond, sure enough, my Lady," says Mrs. Worlcsop, the housekeeper (an old tyrant whom Henry Esmond FKIENDLESS, I FIND FRIENDS 15 plagued more than lie hated), and the old gentlewoman looked significantly towards the late lord's picture, as it now is in the family, noble and severe-looking, with his hand on his sword, and ids order on his cloak, which he had from the Emperor during the war on the Danube against the Turk. Seeing the great and undeniable likeness between this portrait and the lad, the new Viscountess, who had still hold of the boy's hand as she looked at the picture, blushed and dropped the hand quickly, and walked down the gallery, followed by Mrs. Worksop. When the lady came back, Harry Esmond stood exactly in the same spot, and with his hand as it had fallen when he dropped it on Ids black coat. Her heart melted, I suppose (indeed, she hath since owned as much), at the notion that she should do anything unkind to any mortal, great or small ; for, when she returned, she had sent away the housekeeper upon an errand by the door at the farther end of the gallery ; and, coming ba(!k to the lad, with a look of infinite pity and tenderness in her eyes, she took his hand again, placing her other fair hand on his head, and saying some words to him, which were so kind, and said in a voice so sweet, that the boy, who had never looked upon so much beauty before, felt as if the touch of a superior being or angel smote him down to the ground, and kissed the fair protecting hand as he knelt on one knee. To the very last hour of his life, Esmond remembered the lady as she then spoke and looked, the rings on her fair hands, the very scent of her robe, the beam of her eyes lighting up with surprise and kindness, her lips blooming in a smile, the sun making a golden halo romid her hair. As the boy was yet in this attitude of hunulity, enters behind him a portly gentleman, with a little girl of four years old in his hand. The gentleman burst into a great laugh at the lady and her adorer, with his little queer figure, his sallow face and long black hair. The lady blushed, and seemed to deprecate his ridicule by a look of appeal to her husband, for it was my Lord Viscount who now arrived, and whom the lad knew, having once before seen him in the late lord's lifetime. " So this is the little priest ! " says my Lord, looking down at the lad. " Welcome, kinsman ! " " He is saying his prayers to mamma," says the little girl, who came up to her papa's knees ; and my Lord burst out into another great laugh at this, and kinsman Henry looked very silly. He invented a half-dozen of speeches in reply, but 'twas months after- wards when he thought of this adventure : as it was, he had never a word in answer " Le pauvre enfant, il n'a que nous," says the lady, looking to 16 THE HISTORY OF HENKY ESMOND her lord; and the boy, who understood her, though doubtless she thought otherwise, thanked her with all his heart for her kind speech. "And he shan't want for friends here," says my Lord, in a kind voice, "shall he, little Trix?" The little girl, whose name was Beatrix, and whom her papa called by this diminutive, looked at Henry Esmond solemnly, with a pair of large eyes, and then a smile shone over her faoe, which was as beautiful as that of a cherub, and she came up and put out a little hand to him. A keen and delightful pang of gratitude, happiness, affection, filled the orphan child's heart as he received from the protectors, whom Heaven had sent to him, these touching words and tokens of friendliness and kindness. But an hour since he had felt quite alone in the world ; when he heard the great peal of bells from Castlewood church ringing that morning to welcome the arrival of the new lord and lady, it had rung only terror and anxiety to liim, for he knew not how the new owner would deal with him ; and those to whom he formerly looked for protection were forgotten or dead. Pride and doubt too had kept him within- doors, when the Vicar and the people of the village, and the servants of the house, had gone out to welcome my Lord Castle- wood — for Henry Esmond was no servant, though a dependant ; no relative, though he bore the name and inherited the blood of the house ; and in the midst of the noise and acclamations attending the arrival of the new lord (for whom, you may be sure, a feast was got ready, and guns were fired, and tenants and domestics huzzahed when his carriage approached and rolled into the courtyard of tlie Hall), no one ever took any notice of young Henry Esmond, who sate unobserved and alone in the Book-room, until the afternoon of that day, when his new friends found him. When my Lord and Lady were going away thence, the little girl, still holding her kinsman by the hand, bade him to come too. " Thou wilt always forsake an old friend for a new one, Trix," says her father to her good-naturedly ; and went into the gallery, giving an arm to his lady. They passed thence through the music gallery, long since dismantled, and Queen Elizabeth's Rooms, in the clock- tower, and out into the terrace, where was a fine prospect of sunset and the great darkling woods with a cloud of rooks returning ; and the plain and river with Castlewood village beyond, and purple hills beautiful to look at — and the Kttle heir of Castlewood, a child of two years old, was already here on the terrace in his nurse's arms, from whom he ran across the grass instantly he perceived his mother, and came to her. " If thou canst not be happy here," says my Lord, looking round at the scene, " thou art hard to please, Rachel." DR. TUSHEi;, VICAR AND CHAPLAIN 17 " I am happy where you are,'' she said, "but we were happiest of all at Walcote Forest." Then ray Lord began to describe what was before them to his wife, and what indeed little Harry knew better than he — viz., the history of the house : how by yonder gate the page ran away with the heiress of Castlewood, by which the estate came into the present family ; how the Roundheads attacked the clock-tower, which my Lord's father was slain in defending. " I was but two years old then," says he, " but take forty-six from ninety, and how old shall I be, kinsman Harry 1 " " Thirty," says his wife, with a laugh. " A great deal too old for you, Rachel," answers my Lord, look- ing fondly down at her. Indeed she seemed to be a girl, and was at that time scarce twenty years old. " You know, Frank, I will do anything to please you," says she, " and I promise you I will grow older every day." " You mustn't call papa Frank ; you must call papa my Lord now," says Miss Beatrix, with a toss of her little liead ; at which the mother smiled, and the good-natured father laughed, and the httle trotting boy laughed, not knowing why — but because he was happy, no doubt — as every one seemed to be there. How those trivial incidents and words, the landscape and sunshine, and the group of people smiling and talking, remain fixed on the memory ! As the sun was setting, the little heir was sent in the arms of his nurse to bed, whither he went howling ; but little Trix was promised to sit to supper that night — " and you will come too, kinsman, won't you 1 " she said. Harry Esmond blushed : " I — I have supper with Mrs. Worksop," says he. "D — n it," says my Lord, "thou shalt sup with us, Harry, to-night ! Shan't refuse a lady, shall he, Trix ? " — and they all wondered at Harry's performance as a trencherman, in which character the poor boy acquitted himself very remarkably ; for the truth is he had had no dinner, nobody thinking of him in the bustle which the house was in, during the preparations antecedent to the new lord's arrival. " No dinner ! poor dear child ! " says my Lady, heaping up his plate with meat, and my Lord, filling a bumper for him, bade him call a health ; on which Master Harry, crying " The King," tossed off the wine. My Lord was ready to drink that, and most other toasts : indeed only too ready. He would not hear of Doctor Tusher (the Vicar of Castlewood, who came to supper) going away when the sweetmeats were brought : he had not had a chaplain long enough, he said, to be tired of him : so his reverence kept my Lord company for some hours over a pipe and a punch bowl ; and went 18 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND away home with rather a reeling gait, and declaring a dozen of times, that his Lordship's affability surpassed every kindness he had ever had from his Lordship's gracious family. As for young Esmond, when he got to-his little chamber, it was with a heart full of surprise and gratitude towards the new friends whom this happy day had brought him. He was up and watching long before the house was astir, longing to see that fair lady and her children — that kind protector and patron ; and only fearful lest their welcome of the past night should in any way be withdrawn or altered. But presently little Beatrix came out into the garden, and her mother followed, who greeted Harry as kindly as before. He told her at greater length the histories of the house (which he had been taught in the old lord's time), and to which she listened with great interest ; and then he told her, with respect to the night before, that he understood French, and thanked her for her protection. " Do you 1 " says she, with a blush ; " then, sir, you shall teach me and Beatrix." And she asked him many more questions re- garding himself, which had best be told more fully and explicitly than in those brief replies which the lad made to his mistress's questions. CHAPTER II RELATES HOW FRANCIS, FOURTH VISCOUNT, ARRIVES AT CASTLE IVOOD TIS known that the name of Esmond and the estate of Castle- wood, com. Hants, came into possession of the present family through Dorothea, daughter and heiress of Edward, Earl and Marquis Esmond, and Lord of Castlewood, which lady married, 23 Eliz., Henry Poyns, gent. ; the said Henry being then a page in the household of her father. Francis, son and heir of the above Henry and Dorothea, who took the maternal name, which the family hath borne subsequently, was made Knight and Baronet by King James the First j and being of a military disposition, remained long in Germany with the Elector-Palatine, in whose service Sir Francis incurred both expense and danger, lending large sums of money to that unfortunate Prince ; and receiving many wounds in the battles against the Imperialists, in which Sir Francis engaged. On his return home Sir Francis was rewarded for his services and many sacrifices, by his late Majesty James the First, who graciously conferred upon this tried servant the post of Warden of the Butteries and Groom of the King's Posset, which high and confidential oflice he filled in that king's and his unhappy suc- cessor's reign. His age, and many wounds and infirmities, obliged Sir Francis to perform much of his duty by deputy ; and his son, Sir George Esmond, knight and banneret, first as his father's lieutenant, and afterwards as inheritor of his father's title and dignity, performed this oflice during almost the whole of the reign of King Charles the First, and his two sons who succeeded him. Sir George Esmond married, rather beneath the rank that a person of his name and honour might aspire to, the daughter of Thos. Topham, of the city of London, alderman and goldsndth, who, taking the Parliamentary side in the troubles then commencing, disappointed Sir George of the property which he expected at the demise of his father-in-law, who devised his money to his second daughter, Barbara, a spinster. 20 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND Sir George Esmond, on his part, was conspicuous for his at- tachment and loyalty to the royal cause and person ; and the King being at Oxford in 1642, Sir George, with the consent of his father, then very aged and infirm, and residing at his house of Castlewood, melted the whole of the family plate for his Majesty's service. For this, and other sacrifices and merits, his Majesty, by patent under the Privy Seal, dated Oxford, Jan. 1643, was pleased to advance Sir Francis Esmond to the dignity of Viscount Castlewood, of Shandon, in Ireland: and the Viscount's estate being much im- poverished by loans to the King, which in those troublesome times his Majesty could not repay, a grant of land in the plantations of Virginia was given to the Lord Viscount; part of which land is in possession of descendants of his family to the present day. The first Viscount Castlewood died full of years, and within a few months after he had been advanced to his honours. He was succeeded by his eldest son, the before-named George ; and left issue besides, Thomas, a colonel in the King's army, who afterwards joined the Usurper's Government ; and Francis, in holy orders, who was slain whilst defending the House of Castlewood against the Parliament, anno 1647. , George Lord Castlewood (the second Viscount), of King Charles the First's time, had no male issue save his one son, Eustace Esmond, who was killed with half of the Castlewood men beside him, at Worcester fight. The lands about Castlewood were sold and apportioned to the Commonwealth-men; Castlewood being concerned in almost all of the plots against the Protector, after the death of the King, and up to King Charles the Second's restoration. My Lord followed that King's Court about in its exile, having ruined himself in its service. He had but one daughter, who was of no great comfort to her father ; for misfortune had not taught those exiles sobriety of life ; and it is said that the Duke of York and his brother the King both quarrelled about Isabel Esmond. She was maid of honour to the Queen Henrietta Maria : she early joined the Roman Church ; her father, a weak man, following her not long after at Breda. On the death of Eustace Esmond at Worcester, Thomas Esmond, nephew to my Lord Castlewood, and then a stripling, became heir to the title. His father had taken the Parliament side in the quarrels, and so had been estranged from the chief of his house ; and my Lord Castlewood was at first so much enraged to think that his title (albeit httle more than an empty one now) should pass to a rascally Roundhead, that he would have married again, and indeed proposed to do so to a vintner's daughter at Bruges, to whom his Lordship owed a score for lodging when the King was BOLIJ THOMAS ESMOND 21 there, but for fear of the laughter of the Court, and the anger of his daughter, of whom he stood in awe; for she was in temper as imperious and violent as my Lord, who was much enfeebled by- wounds and drinking, was weak. Lord Castlewoocl would have had a match between his daughter Isabel and her cousin, the son of that Francis Esmond who was killed at Castlewood siege. And the lady, it was said, took a fancy to the young man, who was her junior by several years (which circumstance she did not consider to be a fault in him) ; but having paid his court, and being adndtted to the intimacy of the house, he suddenly flung up his suit, when it seemed to be pretty prosperous, without giving a pretext for his behaviour. His friends rallied him at what they laughingly chose to call his infidelity ; Jack Churchill, Frank Esmond's lieutenant in the Koyal Regiment of Foot-guards, getting the company which Esmond vacated, when he left the Court and went to Tangier in a rage at discovering that his promotion depended on the complaisance of his elderly affianced bride. He and Churchill, who had been condiscipuli at St. Paul's School, had words about this matter ; and Frank Esmond said to him with an oath, " Jack, your sister may be so-and-so, but by Jove my wife shan't ! " and swords were drawn, and blood drawn too, until friends separated them on this quarrel. Few men were so jealous about the point of honour in those days ; and gentlemen of good birth and lineage thought a royal blot was an ornament to their family coat. Frank Esmond retired in the sulks, first to Tangier, whence he returned after two years' service, settling on a small property he had of his mother, near to Winchester, and became a country gentle- man, and kept a pack of beagles, and never came to Court again in King Charles's time. But his uncle Castlewood was never reconciled to him ; nor, for some time afterwards, his cousin whom he had refused. By places, pensions, bounties from France, and gifts from the King, whilst his daughter was in favour, Lord Castlewood, who had spent in the Royal service his youth and fortune, did not retrieve the latter quite, and never cared to visit Castlewood, or repair it, since the death of his son, but managed to keep a good house, and figure at Court, and to save a considerable sum of ready money. And now, his heir and nephew, Thomas Esmond, began to bid for his uncle's favour. Thomas had served with the Emperor, and with the Dutch, when King Charles was compelled to lend troops to the States, and against them, when his Majesty made an alliance with the French King. In these campaigns Thomas Esmond was more remarked for duelling, brawling, vice, and play, than for any conspicuous gallantry in the field, and came back to England, like 22 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND many another English gentleman who has travelled, with a character by no means improved by his foreign experience. He had dissipated his small paternal inheritance of a younger brother's portion, and, as truth must be told, was no better than a hanger-on of ordinaries, and a brawler about Alsatia and the Friars, when he bethought him of a means of mending his fortune. His cousin was now of more than middle age, and had nobody's word but her own for the beauty which she said she once possessed. She was lean, and yellow, and long in the tooth ; all the red and white in all the toy-shops in London could not make a beauty of her— Mr. Killigrew called her the Sibyl, the death's-head put up at the King's feast as a memento mori, &c. — in fine, a woman who might be easy of conquest, but whom only a very bold man would think of conquering. This bold man was Thomas Esmond. He had a fancy to my Lord Oastlewood's savings, the amount of which rumour had very much exaggerated. Madame Isabel was said to have Royal jewels of great value ; whereas poor Tom Esmond's last coat but one was in pawn. My Lord had at this time a fine house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, nigh to the Duke's Theatre and the Portugal ambassador's chapel. Tom Esmond, who had frequented the one, as long as he had money to spend among the actresses, now came to the church as assidu- ously. He looked so lean and shabby, that he passed without difficulty for a repentant sinner ; and so, becoming converted, you may be sure took his uncle's priest for a director. This charitable Father reconciled him with the old lord his uncle, who a short time before would not speak to him, as Tom passed under my Lord's coach window, his Lordship going in state to his place at Court, while his nephew slunk by with his battered hat and feather, and the point of his rapier sticking out of the scabbard — to his twopenny ordinary in Bell Yard. Thomas Esmond, after this reconciliation with his uncle, very soon began to grow sleek, and to show signs of the benefits of good living and clean linen. He fasted rigorously twice a week, to be sure ; but he made amends on the other days : and, to show how great his appetite was, Mr. Wycherley said, he ended by swallowing that fly-blown rank old morsel his cousin. There were endless jokes and lampoons about this marriage at Court : but Tom rode thither in his uncle's coach now, called him father, and having won could afford to laugh. This marriage took place very shortly before King Charles died : whom the Viscount of Castlewood speedily followed. The issue of this marriage was one son, whom the parents watched with an intense eagerness and care ; but who, in spite of WE ARE DISGRACED AT COURT 23 nurses aud physicians, had only a brief existence. His tainted blood did not run very long in his poor feeble little body. Symp- toms of evil broke out early on him ; and, part from flattery, part superstition, nothing would satisfy my Lord and Lady, especially the latter, but having the poor little cripple touched by his Majesty at his church. Tliey were ready to cry out miracle at first (the doctors and quacksalvers being constantly in attendance on the child, and experimenting on his poor little body with every conceiv- able nostrum) — but though there seemed, from some reason, a notable amelioration in the infant's health after his Majesty touched him, in a few weeks afterward the poor thing died — causing the lampooners of the Court to say, that the King, in expelling evil out of the infant of Tom Esmond and Isabella his wife, expelled the life out of it, which was nothing but corruption. The mother's natural pang at losing this poor little child must have been increased when she thought of her rival Frank Esmond's wife, who was a favourite of the whole Court, where my poor Lady Castlevvood was neglected, and who had one child, a daughter, flourishing and beautiful, and was about to become a mother once more. The Court, as I have heard, only laughed the more because the poor lady, who had pretty well passed the age when ladies are accustomed to have children, nevertheless determined not to give hope up, and even when she came to live at Castlewood, was con- stantly sending over to Hexton for the doctor, and announcing to her friends the arrival of an heir. This absurdity of hers was one amongst many others which the wags used to play upon. Indeed, to the last days of her life, my Lady Viscountess had the comfort of fancying herself beautiful, and persisted in blooming up to the very midst of winter, painting roses on her cheeks long after their natural season, and attiring herself like summer though her head was covered with snow. Gentlemen who were about the Court of King Charles, and King James, have told the present writer a number of stories about this queer old lady, with which it's not necessary that posterity should be entertained. Slie is said to have had great powers of invective ; and, if she fought with all her rivals in King James's favour, 'tis certain she must have had a vast number of quarrels on her hands. She wa« a woman of an intrepid spirit, and, it appears, pursued and rather fatigued his Majesty with her rights and her wrongs. Some say that the cause of her leaving Court was jealousy of Frank Esmond's wife ; others, that she was forced to retreat after a great battle which took place at Whiteliall, between her Ladyship and Lady Dorchester, Tom Killigrew's daughter, whom the King 24 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND delighted to honour, and in which that ill-favoured Esther got the better of our elderly Vashti. But her Ladyship, for her part, always averred that it was her husband's quarrel, and not her own, which occasioned the banishment of the two into the country ; and the cruel ingratitude of the Sovereign in giving away, out of the family, that place of Warden of the Butteries and Groom of the King's Posset, which the two last Lords Oastlewood had held so honourably, and which was now conferred upon a fellow of yesterday, and a hanger-on of that odious Dorchester creature, my Lord Bergamot ; * " I never," said my Lady, " could have come to see his Majesty's posset carried by any other hand than an Esmond. I should have dashed the salver out of Lord Bergamot's hand, had I met him." And those who knew her Ladyship are aware that she was a person quite capable of performing this feat, had she not wisely kept out of the way. Holding the purse-strings in her own control, to which, indeed, she liked to bring most persons who came near her. Lady Castle- wood could command her husband's obedience, and so broke up her establishment at London ; she had removed from Lincoln's Inn Fields to Chelsey, to a pretty new house she bought there ; and brought her establishment, her maids, lapdogs, and gentlewomen, her priest, and his Lordship her husband, to Oastlewood Hall, that she had never seen since she quitted it as a child with her father during the troubles of King Charles the First's reign. The walls were still open in the old house as they had been left by the shot of the Commonwealth-men. A part of the mansion was restored and furbished up with the plate, hangings, and furniture brought from the house in London. My Lady meant to have a triumphal entry into Oastlewood village, and expected the people to cheer as she drove over the Green in her great coach, my Lord beside her, her gentlewomen, lapdogs, and cockatoos on the opposite seat, six horses to her carriage, and servants armed and mounted follow- ing it and preceding it. But 'twas in the height of the No-Popery cry ; the folks in the village and the neighbouring town were scared by the sight of her Ladyship's painted face and eyelids, as she bobbed her head out of the coach window, meaning, no doubt, to be very gracious ; and one old woman said, " Lady Isabel ! lord-a- mercy, it's Lady Jezebel ! " a name by which the enemies of the * Lionel Tipton, created Baron Bergamot, ann. 1686, Gentleman Usher of the Back Stairs, and afterwards appointed Warden of the Butteries and Groom of the King's Posset (on the decease of George, second Viscount Castlewood), accompanied his Majesty to St. Germain's, where he died without issue. No Groom of the Posset was appointed by the Prince of Orange, nor hath there been such an officer in any succeeding reign. SAYING OF LADY SARK 25 right honourable Viscountess were afterwards in the habit of desig- nating her. The country was then in a great No-Popery fervour ; her Ladyship's known conversion, and her husband's, the priest in her train, and the service performed at the chapel of Gaatlewood (though the chapel had been built for that worship before any other was heard of in the country, and though the service was performed in the most quiet manner),, got her no favour at first in the county or village. By far the greater part of the estate of Castlewood had been confiscated, and been parcelled out to Commonwealth-men. One or two of these old Cromwellian soldiers were still alive in the village, and looked grimly at first upon my Lady Viscountess, when she came to dwell there. She appeared at the Hexton Assembly, bringing her lord after her, scaring the country folks with tlie splendour of her diamonds, which she always wore in public. They said she wore them in private, too, and slept with them round her neck ; though the writer can pledge his word that this was a calumny. " If she were to take them off," my Lady Sark said, " Tom Esmond, her husband, would run away with them and pawn them." 'Twas another calumny. My Lady Sark was also an exile from Court, and there had been war between the two ladies before. The village people began to be reconciled presently to their lady, who was generous and kind, though fantastic and haughty, in her ways, and whose praises Doctor Tusher, the Vicar, sounded loudly amongst his flock. As for my Lord, he gave no great trouble, being considered scarce more than an appendage to my Lady, who, as daughter of the old lords of Castlewood, and possessor of vast wealth, as the country folk said (though indeed nine-tenths of it existed but in rumour), was looked upon as the real queen of the castle, and mistress of all it contained. CHAPTER III H'HITHER IN THE TIME OF THOMAS, THIRD VISCOUNT, I HAD PRECEDED HIM AS PAGE TO ISABELLA COMING up to London again some short time after this retreat, the Lord Castlewood despatched a retainer of his to a little cottage in the village of Ealing, near to London, where for some time had dwelt an old French refugee, by name Mr. Pastoureau, one of those whom the persecution of the Huguenots by the French king had brought over to this country. With this old man lived a little lad, who went by the name of Henry Thomas. He re- membered to have lived in another place a short time before, near to London too, amongst looms and spinning-wheels, and a great deal of psalm-singing and church-going, and a whole colony of Frenchmen. There he had a dear, dear friend, who died, and whom he called Aunt. She used to visit him in his dreams sometimes ; and her face, though it was homely, was a thousand times dearer to him than that of Mrs. Pastoureau, Bon Papa Pastoureau's new wife, who came to live with him after aunt went away. And there, at Spittlefields, as it used to be called, lived Uncle George, who was a weaver too, but used to tell Harry that he was a little gentleman, and that his father was a captain, and his mother an angel. When he said so, Bon Papa used to look up from the loom, where he was embroidering beautiful silk flowers, and say " Angel ! she belongs to the Babylonish scarlet woman." Bon Papa was always talking of the scarlet woman. He had a little room where he always used to preach and sing hymns out of his great old nose. Little Harry did not like the preaching : he liked better the fine stories which aunt used to tell him. Bon Papa's wife never told him pretty stories ; slie quarrelled with Uncle George, and he went away. After this, Harry's Bon Papa and his wife and two children of her own that she brought with her, came to live at Ealing. The new wife gave her children the best of everything and Harry many a whipping, he knew not why. Besides blows, he got ill names from her, whirh need not be set down here, for the sake of old Mr. FATHER HOLT 27 Pastoureau, -who was still kind sometimes. The \in happiness of those days is long forgiven, though they cast a shade of melancholy over the child's youth, which will accompany him, no doubt, to the end of his days : as those tender twigs are bent the trees grow after- ward ; and he, at least, who has suffered as a child, and is not quite perverted in that early school of unhappiness, learns to be gentle and long-suffering with little children. Harry was very glad when a gentleman dressed in black, on horseback, with a mounted servant behind him, came to fetch him away from Ealing. The noverca, or unjust step-mother, who had neglected him for her own two children, gave him supper enough the night before he went away, and plenty in the morning. She did not beat him once, and told the children to keep their hands off' him. One was a girl, and Harry never could bear to strike a girl ; and the other was a boy, whom he could easily have beat, but he always cried out, when Mrs. Pastoureau came sailing to the rescue with arms like a flail. She only washed Harry's face the day he went away ; iior ever so much as once boxed his ears. She whimpered rather when the gentleman in black came for the boy ; and old Mr. Pastoureau, as he gave the child his blessing, scowled over his shoulder at the strange gentleman, and grumbled out some- thing about Babylon and the scarlet lady. He was grown quite old, like a child almost. Mrs. Pastoureau used to wipe his nose as she did to the children. She was a great, big, handsome young woman ; but, though she pretended to cry, Harry thought 'twas only a sham, and sprang quite delighted upon the horse upon which the lacquey helped him. He was a Frenchman ; his name was Blaise. The child could talk to him in his own language perfectly well : he knew it better than English indeed, having lived hitherto chiefly among French people : and being called the Little Frenchman by other boys on Ealing Green. He soon learnt to speak English perfectly, and to forget some of his French : children forget easily. Some earlier and fainter recollections the child had of a diff'erent country; and a town with tall white houses; and a ship. But these were quite indistinct in the boy's mind, as indeed the memory of EaKng soon became, at least of much that he suff'ered there. The lacquey before whom he rode was very lively and voluble, and informed the boy that the gentleman riding before him was my lord's chaplain, Father Holt — that he was now to be called Master Harry Esmond— that my Lord Viscount Oastlewood was his parrain — that he was to live at the great house of Oastlewood, in the province of shire, where he would see Madame the Viscountess^ who was a grand lady. And so, seated on a cloth 28 THE HISTORY OF HENEY ESMOND before Blaise's saddle, Harry Esmond was brought to London, and to a fine square called Covent Garden, near to whicli his patron lodged. Mr. Holt, the priest, took the child by the hand, and brought him to this nobleman, a grand languid nobleman in a great cap and flowered morning-gown, sucking oranges. He patted Harry on the head and gave him an orange. " O'est Men 9a," he said to the priest after eyeing the child, and the gentleman in black shrugged his shoulders. " Let Blaise take him out for a holiday," and out for a holiday the boy and the valet went. Harry went jumping along ; he was glad enough to go. He will remember to his life's end the delights of those days. He was taken to see a play by Monsieur Blaise, in a house a thou- sand times greater and finer than the booth at Ealing Fair — and on the next happy day they took water on the river, and Harry saw London Bridge, with the houses and booksellers' shops thereon, looking like a street, and the Tower of London, with the armour, and the great lions and bears in the moat — all under company of Monsieur Blaise. Presently, of an early morning, all the party set forth for the country, namely, my Lord Viscount and the other gentleman; Monsieur Blaise and Harry on a pillion behind them, and two or three men with pistols leading the baggage-horses. And all along the road the Frenchman told little Harry stories of brigands, which made the child's hair stand on end, and terrified him ; so that at the great gloomy inn on the road where they lay, he besought to be allowed to sleep in a room with one of the servants, and was compassionated by Mr. Holt, the gentleman who travelled with my lord, and who gave the child a little bed in his chamber. His artless talk and answers very likely inclined this gentleman in the boy's favour, for next day Mr. Holt said Harry should ride behind him, and not with the French lacquey ; and all along the journey put a thousand questions to the child — as to his foster- brother and relations at Ealing ; what his old grandfather had taught him ; what languages he knew ; whether he could read and write, and sing, and so forth. And Mr. Holt found that Harry could read and write, and possessed the two languages of French and English very well ; and when he asked Harry about singing, the lad broke out with a hymn to the tune of Dr. Martin Luther, which set Mr. Holt a-laughing ; and even caused his grand parrain in the laced hat and periwig to laugh too when Holt told him what the child was singing. For it appeared that Dr. Martin Luther's hymns were not sung in the churches Mr. Holt preached at. I FIND NEW FRIENDS 29 " You must never sing that song any more : do you hear, little mannikin 1 " says my Lord Viscount, holding up a finger. " But we will try and teach you a better, Harry," Mr. Holt said ; and the child answered, for he was a docile child, and of an' affectionate nature, " that he loved pretty songs, and would try and ^ learn anything the gentleman would tell him." That day he so pleased the gentlemen by his talk, that they had him to dine with them at the inn, and encouraged him in his prattle ; and Monsieur Blaise, with whom he rode and dined the day before, waited upon him now. " 'Tis well, 'tis well ! " said Blaise, that night (in his own language) when they lay again at an inn. " We are a little lord here ; we are a little lord now : we shall see what we are when we come to Castlewood, where my Lady is." " When shall we come to Castlewood, Monsieur Blaise ? " says Harry. " Parbleu I my Lord does not press himself," Blaise says, with a giin ; and, indeed, it seemed as if his Lordship was not in a great hurry, for he spent three days on that journey, which Harry Esmond hath often since ridden in a dozen hours. For the last two of the days Harry rode with the priest, who was so kind to him, that the child had grown to be quite fond and familiar with him by the journey's end, and had scarce a thought in his little heart which by that time he had not confided to his new friend. At length, on the third day, at evening, they came to a village standing on a green with elms round it, very pretty to look at; and the people there all took off their hats, and made curtseys to my Lord Viscount, who bowed to thera all languidly ; and there was one portly person that wore a cassock and a broad-leafed hat, who bowed lower than any one — and with this one both my Lord and Mr. Holt had a few words. "This, Harry, is Castlewood church," says Mr. Holt, "and this is the pillar thereof, learned Doctor Tusher. Take off your hat, sirrah, and salute Doctor Tusher ! " " Come up to supper. Doctor," says my Lord ; at which the Doctor made another low bow, and the party moved on towards a grand house that was before them, with many grey towers and vanes on them, and windows flaming in the sunshine ; and a great army of rooks, wheeling over their heads, made for the woods behind the house, as Harry saw ; and Mr. Holt told him that they lived at Castlewood too. They came to the house, and passed under an arch into a court- yard, with a fountain in the centre, where many men came and held 'my Lord's stirrup as he descended, and paid great respect to 30 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND Mr. Holt likewise. And the child thought that the servants looked at him curiously, and smiled to one another— and he recalled what Blaise had said" to him when they were in London, and Harry had spoken about his godpapa, when the Frenchman said, " Parbleu, one sees well that my Lord is your godfather;" words whereof the poor lad did not know the meaning then, though he apprehended the truth in a very short time afterwards, and learned it, and thought of it with no small feeling of shame. Taking Harry by the hand as soon as they were both descended from their horses, Mr. Holt led him across the court, and under a low door to rooms on a level with the ground ; one of which Father Holt said was to be the boy's chamber, the other on the other side of the passage being the Father's own ; and as soon as the little man's face was washed, and the Father's own dress arranged, Harry's guide took him once more to the door by which my Lord had entered the hall, and up a stair, and through an ante-room to my Lady's drawing-room — an apartment than which Harry thought he had never seen anything more grand — no, not in the Tower of London which he had just visited. Indeed, the chamber was richly ornamented in the manner of Queen Elizabeth's time, with great stained windows at either end, and hangings of tapestry, which the sun shining through the coloured glass painted of a thousand hues ; and here in state, by the fire, sate a lady, to whom the priest took up Harry, who was indeed amazed by her appearance. My Lady Viscountess's face was daubed with white and red up to the eyes, to which the paint gave an unearthly glare : she had a tower of lace on her head, under which was a bush of black curls — borrowed curls — so that no wonder little Harry Esmond was scared when he was first presented to her— the kind priest acting as master of the ceremonies at that solemn introduction — and he stared at her with eyes almost as great as her own, as he had stared at the player-woman who acted the wicked tragedy-queen, when the players came down to Ealing Fair. She sate in a great chair by the fire-comer ; in her lap was a spaniel dog that barked furiously ; on a little table by her was her Ladyship's snuffbox and her sugar-pkun box. She wore a dress of black velvet, and a petticoat of flame-coloured brocade. She had as many rings on her fingers as the old woman of Banbury Cross ; and pretty small feet which she was fond of showing, with great gold clocks to her stockings, and white pantofles with red heels; and an odour of musk was shook out of her garments whenever she moved or quitted the room, leaning on her tortoisesheU stick, Kttle Fury barking at her heels. MY LADY VISCOUNTESS 31 Mrs. Tusher, the parson's wife, was with my Lady. She had been waiting-woman to her Ladyship iu the late Lord's time, and, having her soul in that business, took naturally to it when the Viscountess of Castlewood returned to inhabit her father's house. "I present to your Ladyship your kinsman and little page of honour. Master Henry Esmond," Mr. Holt said, bowing lowly, with a sort of comical humility. " Make a pretty bow to my Lady, Monsieur; and then another little bow, not so low, to Madame Tusher — the fair priestess of Castlewood." " Where I have lived and hope to die, sir," says Madame Tusher, giving a hard glance at the brat, and then at my Lady. Upon her the boy's whole attention was for a time directed. He could not keep his great eyes off from her. Since the Empress of Ealing, he had seen nothing so awful. " Does my appearance please you, little page 'i " asked the lady. " He would be very hard to please if it didn't," cried Madame Tusher. " Have done, you silly Maria," said Lady Castlewood. " Where I'm attached, I'm attached, Madame — and I'd die rather than not say so." " Je meurs oil je m'attache," Mr. Holt said with a polite grin. " The ivy says so in the picture, and clings to the oak like a fond parasite as it is." " Parricide, sir 1 " cries Mrs. Tusher. " Hush, Tusher — you are always bickering with Father Holt," cried my Lady. " Come and kiss my hand, child ; " and the oak held out a branch to little Harry Esmond, who took and dutifully kissed the lean old hand, upon the gnarled knuckles of which there glittered a hundred rings. " To kiss that hand would make many a pretty fellow happy ! " cried Mrs. Tusher; on which my Lady crying out "Go, you foolish Tusher ! " and tapping her with her great fan, Tusher ran forward to seize her hand and kiss it. Fury arose and barked furiously at Tusher ; and Father Holt looked on at this queer scene, with arch, grave glances. The awe exhibited by the little boy perhaps pleased the lady on whom this artless flattery was bestowed ; for having gone down on his knee (as Father Holt had directed him, and the mode then was) and performed his obeisance, she said, "Page Esmond, my groom of the chamber will inform you what your duties are, when you wait upon my Lord and me; and good Father Holt will instruct you as becomes a gentleman of our name. You wiU pay him obedience in everything, and I pray you may grow to be as learned and as good as your tutor." 32 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND The lady seemed to have the greatest reverence for Mr. Holt, and to be more afraid of him than of anything else in the world. If she was ever so angry, a word or look from Father Holt made her calm : indeed he had a vast power of subjecting those who came near him ; and, among the rest, his new pupil gave himself up with an entire confidence and attachment to the good Father, and became his willing slave almost from the first moment he saw him. He put his small hand into the Father's as he walked away from his first presentation to his mistress, and asked many questions in his artless childless way. "Who is that other woman?" he asked. " She is fat and round ; she is more pretty than my Lady Oastlewood." " She is Madame Tusher, the parson's wife of Oastlewood. She has a son of your age, but bigger than you." " Why does she like so to kiss my Lady's hand ? It is not good to kiss." " Tastes are different, little man. Madame Tusher is attached to my Lady, having been her waiting-woman before she was married, in the old lord's time. She married Doctor Tusher the chaplain. The English household divines often marry the waiting- women." "You will not marry the Frenchwoman, will you? I saw hex laughing with Blaise in the buttery." " I belong to a Church that is older and better than the English Church," Mr. Holt said (making a sign whereof Esmond did not then understand the meaning, across his breast and forehead) ; "in our Church the clergy do not marry. You will understand these things better soon." " Was not Saint Peter the head of your Church 1 — Dr. Rabbits of Ealing told us so." The Father said, "Yes, he was.'' " But Saint Peter was married, for we heard only last Sunday that his wife's mother lay sick of the fever." On which the Father again laughed, and said he would understand this too better soon, and talked of other things, and took away Harry Esmond, and showed him the great old house which he had come to inhabit. It stood on a rising green hill, with woods behind it, in which were rooks' nests, where the birds at morning and returning home at evening made a great cawing. At the foot of the hill was a river, with a steep ancient bridge crossing it ; and beyond that a large pleasant green flat, where the village of Oastlewood stood, and stands, with the church in the midst, the parsonage hard by it, the inn with the blacksmith's forge beside it, and the sign of the " Three Castles" on the elm. The London road stretched away towards I BEGIN TO HAVE A VOCATION 33 the rising sun, and to tlie west were swelling hills and peaks, behind which many a time Harry Esmond saw the same sun setting, that he now looks on thousands of miles away across the great ocean — in a new Oastlewood, by another stream, that bears, like the new country of wandering ^neas, the fond names of the land of his youth. The Hall of Oastlewood was built With two courts, whereof one only, the fountain-court, was now inhabited, the other having been battered down in the Cromwellian wars. In the fountain-court, still in good repair, was the great hall, near to the kitchen and butteries; a dozen of living-rooms looking to the north, and com- municating with the little chapel that faced eastwards and the buildings stretching from that to the main gate, and with the hall (which looked to the west) into the court now dismantled. This court had been the most magnificent of the two, until the Protector's cannon tore down one side of it before the place was taken and stormed. The besiegers entered at the terrace under the clock- tower, slaying every man of the garrison, and at their head my Lord's brother, Francis Esmond. The Eestoration did not bring enough money to the Lord Oastlewood to restore this ruined part of his house ; where were the morning parlours, above them the long music-gallery, and before which stretched the garden-terrace, where, however, the flowers grew again which the boots of the Roundheads had trodden in their assault, and which was restored without much cost, and only a little care, by both ladies who succeeded the second viscount in the government of this mansion. Eound the terrace garden was a low wall with a wicket leading to the wooded height beyond, that is called Cromwell's Battery to this day. Young Harry Esmond learned the domestic part of his duty, which was easy enough, from the groom of her Ladyship's chamber ; serving the Countess, as the custom commonly was in his boyhood, as page, waiting at her chair, bringing her scented water and the silver basin after dinner — sitting on her carriage-step on state occasions, or on public days introducing her company to lier. This was chiefly of the Catholic gentry, of whom there were a pretty many in the country and neighbouring city; and who rode not seldom to Oastlewood to partake of the hospitalities there. In the second year of their residence, the company seemed especially to increase. My Lord and my Lady were seldom without visitors, in whose society it was curious to contrast the diff'erence of behaviour between Father Holt, the director of the family, and Doctor Tusher, the rector of the parish— Mr. Holt moving amongst the very highest as quite their equal, and as commanding them all; while poor 7 c 34 THE HISTOEY OF HENKY ESMOND Doctor Tusher, whose position was indeed a difficult one, having been chaplain once to the Hall, and still to the Protestant servants there, seemed more like an usher than an equal, and always rose to go away after the first course. Also there came in these times to Father Holt many private visitors, whom, after a little, Henry Esmond had little difficulty in recognising as ecclesiastics of the Father's persuasion, whatever their dresses (and they adopted all) might be. These were closeted with the Father constantly, and often came and rode away without paying their devoirs to my Lord and Lady — to the Lady and Lord rather — his Lordship being little more than a cipher in the house, and entirely under his domineering partner. A little fowling, a little hunting, a great deal of sleep, and a long time at cards and table, carried through one day after another with liis Lordship. When meetings took place in this second year, which often would happen with closed doors, the page found my Lord's sheet of paper scribbled over with dogs and horses, and 'twas said he had much ado to keep himself awake at these councils : the Countess ruling over them, and he acting as little more than her secretary. Father Holt began speedily to be so much occupied with these meetings as rather to neglect the education of the little lad who so gladly put himself under the kind priest's orders. At first they read much and regularly, both in Latin and French ; the Father not neglecting in anything to impress his faith upon his pupil, but not forcing liim violently, and treating him with a delicacy and kindness which surprised and attached the child, always more easily won by these methods than by any severe exercise of authority. And his delight in their walks was to tell Harry of the glories of his order, of its martyrs and heroes, of its Brethren converting the heathen by myriads, traversing the desert, facing the stake, ruling the courts and councils, or braving the tortures of kings ; so that Harry Esmond thought that to belong to the Jesuits was the greatest prize of life and bravest end of ambition ; the greatest career here and in heaven the surest reward ; and began to long for the day, not only when he should enter into the one church and receive his first communion, but when he might join that wonderful brother- hood, which was present throughout all the world, and which num- bered the wisest, the bravest, the highest born, the most eloquent of men among its members. Father Holt bade him keep his views secret, and to hide them as a great treasure which would escape him if it was revealed ; and, proud of this confidence and secret vested in him, the lad became fondly attached to the master who initiated him into a mystery so wonderful and awful. And when little Tom Tusher, his neighbour, came from school for his holiday, I KEEP THE SECRET 35 and said how he, too, was to be bred up for an English priest, and would get what he called an exliibition from his school, and then a college scholarship and fellowship, and then a good living — it tasked young Harry Esmond's powers of reticence not to say to his young companion, " Church ! priesthood ! fat living ! My dear Tommy, do you call yours a church and a priesthood 1 What is a fat living compared to converting a hundred thousand heathens by a single sermon t What is a scholarsliip at Trinity by the side of a crown of mai'tyrdom, with angels awaiting you as your head is taken off! Gould your master at school sail over tlie Thames on his gown? Have you statues in your church that can bleed, speak, walk, and cry 1 My good Tommy, in dear Father Holt's church these things take place every day. You know Saint Philip of the Willo^ss appeared to Lord Castlewood, and caused him to turn to the one true church. No saints ever come to you." And Harry Esmond, because of his promise to Father Holt, hiding away these treasures of faith from T. Tusher, delivered himself of them nevertheless simply to Father Holt ; who stroked liis head, smiled at him with his inscrutable look, and told him that he did well to meditate on these great things, and not to talk of them except under direction. CHAPTER IV / AM PLACED UNDER A POPISH PRIEST AND BRED TO , THAT RELIGION— VISCOUNTESS CASTLEWOOD HAD time enough been given, and his childish inclinations been properly nurtured, Harry Esmond had been a Jesuit priest ere he was a dozen years older, and might have finished his days a martyr in China or a victim on Tower Hill : for, in the few months they spent together at Castlcwood, Mr. Holt obtained an entire mastery over the boy's intellect and affections ; and had brought him to think, as indeed Father Holt thought with all his heart too, that no life was so noble, no death so desirable, as that which many brethren of his famous order were ready to undergo. By love, by a brightness of wit and good-humour that charmed all, by an authority which he knew how to assume, by a mystery and silence about him which increased the child's reverence ibr him, he won Harry's absolute fealty, and would have kept it, doubtless, if schemes gi-eater and more important than a poor little boy's admission into orders had not called him away. After being at home for a few months in tranquillity (if theirs might be called tranquillity, which was, in truth, a constant bicker- ing), my Lord and Lady left the country for London, taking their director with them : and his little pupil scarce ever shed more bitter tears in his life than he did for nights after the first parting with his dear friend, as he lay in the lonely chamber next to that which the Father used to occupy. He and a few domestics were left as the only tenants of the great house : and, though Harry sedulously did all the tasks which the Father set him, he had many hours unoccupied, and read in the library, and bewildered his little brains with the great books he found there. After a while, the httle lad grew accustomed to the loneliness of the place ; and in after days remembered this part of his life as a period not unhappy. When the family was at London the whole of the establishment travelled thither with the exception of the porter — who was, moreover, brewer, gardener, and woodman — and his wife and children. These had their lodging in the gate-house hard by, with a door into the court ; and a window looking out on 1 BEGIN TO OBSERVE 37 the green was the Chaplain's room ; and next to this a small chamber where Father Holt had his books, and Harry Esmond his sleeping closet. The side of the house facing the east had escaped the guns of the Cromwellians, whose battery was on the height facing the western court ; so that this eastern end bore few marks of demoli- tion, save in the chapel, where the painted windows surviving Edward the Sixth had been broke by the Commonwealth-men. In Father Holt's time little Harry Esmond acted as his familiar, and faithful little servitor; beating his clothes, folding his vestments, fetching his water from the well long before daylight, ready to run anywhere for the service of his beloved priest. When the Father was away, he locked his private chamber ; but the room where the books were was left to little Harry, who, but for the society of this gentleman, was little less solitary when Lord Castlewood was at home The French wit saith that a hero is none to his valet-de-chambre, and it required less quick eyes than my Lady's little page was naturally endowed with, to see that she had many qualities by no means heroic, however much Mrs. Tusher might flatter and coax her. When Father Holt was not by, who exercised an entire authority over the pair, my Lord and my Lady quarrelled and abused each other so as to make the sei-vants laugh, and to frighten the little page on duty. The poor boy trembled before his mistress-, who called him by a hundred ugly names, who made nothing of boxing his ears, and tilting the silver basin in his face which it was his business to present to her after dinner. She hath repaired, by subsequent kindness to him, these severities, which- it must be owned made his childhood very unhappy. She was but unhappy herself at this time, poor soul ! and I suppose made her dependants lead her own sad life. I think my Lord was as much afraid of her as her page was, and the only person of the household who mastered her was Mr. Holt. Harry was only too glad when the Father dined at table, and to slink away and prattle with him afterwards, or read with him, or walk with him. Luckily my Lady Viscountess did not rise till noon. Heaven help the poor waiting-woman who had charge of her toilette ! I have often seen the poor wretch come out with red eyes from the closet where those long and mysterious rites of her Ladyship's dress were performed, and the backgammon- box locked up with a rap on Mrs. Tusher's fingers when she played ill, or the game was going the wrong way. Blessed be the king who introduced cards, and the kind inventors of piquet and cribbage, for they employed six hours at least of her Ladyship's day, during which her family was pretty easy. Without this occupation my Lady frequently declared ehe 38 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND should die. Her dependants one after another relieved guard— 'twas rather a dangerous post to play with her Ladyship — and took the cards turn about. Mr. Holt would sit with her at piquet during hours together, at which time she behaved herself properly ; and as for Doctor Tusher, I believe he would have left a parishioner's dying bed, if summoned to play a rubber with his patroness at Castlewood. Sometimes, when they were pretty comfortable to- gether, my Lord took a hand. Besides these my Lady had her faithful poor Tushei', and one, two, three gentlemen whom Harry Esmond could recollect in his time. They could not bear that genteel service very long ; one after another tried and failed at it. These and the housekeeper, and little Hairy Esmond, had a table of their own. Poor ladies ! their life was far harder than the page's. He was sound asleep, tucked up in his little bed, whilst they were sitting by her Ladyship reading her to sleep, with the "News Letter," or the "Grand Cyrus." My Lady used to have boxes of new plays from London, and Harry was forbidden, under the pain of a whipping, to look into them. I am afraid he de- served the penalty pretty often, and got it sometimes. Father Holt applied it twice or thrice, when he caught the young scape- grace with a delightful wicked comedy of Mr. Shadwell's or Mr. Wycherley's under his pillow. These, when he took any, were my Lord's favourite reading. But he was averse to much study, and, as his little page fancied, to much occupation of any sort. It always seemed to young Harry Esmond that my Lord treated him with more kindness when his lady was uot present, and Lord Castlewood would take the lad sometimes on his little journeys a-hunting or a-birding ; he loved to play at cards and tric-trao with him, which games the boy learned to pleasure' his lord : and was growing to like him better daily, showing a special pleasure if Father Holt gave a good report of him, patting him on the head, and promising that he would provide for the boy. How- ever, in my Lady's presence, my Lord showed no such marks of kindness, and affected to treat the lad roughly, and rebuked him sharply for little faults, for which he in a manner asked pardon of young Esmond when they were private, saying if he did not speak roughly, she would, and his tongue was not such a bad one as his lady's — a point whereof the boy, young as he was, was veiy well assured. Great public events were happening all this while, of which the simple young page took Kttle count. But one day, riding into the neighbouring town on the step of my Lady's coach, his Lordship and she and Father Holt being inside, a great mob of people came I AM ASSAILED BY THE MOB 39 hooting and jeering round the coach, bawling out " The Bishops for ever ! " " Down with the Pope ! " " No Popery ! no Pojiery ! Jezebel, Jezebel ! " so that my Lord began to laugh, my Lady's eyes to roll with anger, for she was as bold as a lioness, and feared nobody ; whilst Mr. Holt, as Esmond saw from his place on the step, sank back with rather an alarmed face, crying out to her Ladyship, " For God's sake, madam, do not speak or look out of window ; sit still." But she did not obey this prudent injunction of the Father ; she thrust her head out of the coach window, and screamed out to the coachman, " Flog your way through them, the Ijnites, James, and use your whip ! " The mob answered with a roaring jeer of laughter, and fresh cries of " Jezebel ! Jezebel ! " My Lord only laughed the more : he was a languid gentleman : nothing seemed to excite him commonly, though I have seen him cheer and halloo the hounds very briskly, and his face (which was generally very yellow and calm) gi-ow quite red and cheerful during a burst over the Downs after a hare, and laugh, and swear, and huzzah at a cock-fight, of which sport he was very fond. And now, when the mob began to hoot his lady, he laughed with something of a mischievous look, as though he expected sport, and thought that she and they were a match. James the coachman was more afraid of his mistress than the mob, probably, for he whipped on his horses as he was bidden, and the postboy that rode with the first pair (my Lady always rode with her coach-and-six) gave a cut of his thong over the shoulders of one fellow who put his hand out towards the leading horse's rein. It was a market-day, and the country people Mere all assembled with their baskets of poultry, eggs, and such things ; the postillion had no sooner lashed the man who would have taken hold of his horse, but a gi'eat cabbage came whirhng like a bombshell into the carriage, at which my Lord laughed more, for it knocked my Lady's fan out of her hand, and plumped into Father Holt's stomach. Then came a shower of carrots and potatoes. " For Heaven's sake be still ! " says Mr. Holt ; " we are not ten paces from the ' Bell ' archway, where they can shut the gates on us, and keep out this canaille." The little page was outside the coach on the step, and a fellow in the crowd aimed a potato at him, and hit him in the eye, at which the poor little wretch set up a shout ; the man laughed, a great big saddler's apprentice of the town. "Ah! you d little yelling Popish bastard," he said, and stooped to pick up another; the crowd had gathered quite between the horses and the inn door by this time, and the coach was brought to a dead stand-still. My Lord jumped as briskly as a boy out of the door on his side of the 40 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND coach, squeezing little Harry behind it ; had hold of the potato- thrower's collar in an instant, and the next moment the brute's heels were in the air, and he fell on the stones with a thump. " You hulking coward ! " says he ; " you pack of screaming blackguards! how dare you attack children, and insult women? Fling another shot at that carriage, you sneaking pigskin cobbler, and by the Lord I'll send my rapier through you ! " Some of the mob cried, " Huzzah, my Lord ! " for they knew him, and the saildler's man was a known bruiser, near twice as big as my Lord Viscount. " Make way there," says he (he spoke in a high shrill voice, but witli a great air of authority). " Make way, and let her Ladyship's carriage pass." The men that were between the coach and the gate of the " Bell " actually did make way, and the horses went in, my Lord walking after them with his hat on his head. As he was going in at the gate, through which the coach had just rolled, another cry begins, of '• No Popery — no Papists ! " My Lord turns round and faces them once more. " God save the King ! " says he at the highest pitch of his voice. " Who dares abuse the King's religion 1 You, you d d psalm- singing cobbler, as sure as I'm a magistrate of this county I'll commit you ! " The fellow shrank back, and my Lord retreated with all the honours of the day. But when the little flurry caused by the scene was over, and the flush passed off his face, he relapsed into his usual languor, trifled with his httle dog, and yawned when my Lady spoke to him. This mob was one of many thousands that were going about the country at that time, huzzahing for the acquittal of the seven bishops who had been tried just then, and about whom little Harry Esmond at that time knew scarce anything. It was Assizes at Hexton, and there was a great meeting of the gentry at the " Bell " ; and my Lord's people had their new liveries on, and Harry a little suit of blue-and-silver, which he wore upon occasions of state ; and the gentlefolks came round and talked to my Lord ; and a judge in a red gown, who seemed a very great personage, especially complimented him and my Lady, who was mighty grand. Harry remembers her train borne up by her gentlewoman. There was an assembly and ball at the great room at the " Bell," and other young gentlemen of the county families looked on as he did. One of them jeered him for his black eye, which was swelled by the potato, and another called him a bastard, on which he and Harry fell to fisticufis. My Lord's cousin. Colonel Esmond of Walcote, was there, and separated the two lads — a great tall gentleman, with a handsome good-natured face. The boy did not know how nearly in after-life he should be PLEASANT TIMES 41 allied to Colonel Esmond, and how much kindness he should have to owe him. There was little love between the two families. My Lady used not to spare Colonel Esmond in talking of him, for reasons which have been hinted already ; but about which, at his tender age, Henry Esmond could be expected to know nothing. Very soon afterwards, my Lord and Lady went to London with Mr. Holt, leaving, however, the page behind them. The little man had the great house of Castlewood to himself; or between him and the housekeeper, Mrs. Worksop, an old lady who was a kinswoman of the family in some distant way, and a Protestant, but a staunch Tory and king's-man, as all the Esmonds were. He used to go to school to Dr. Tusher when he was at home, though the Doctor was much occupied too. There was a great stir and commotion every- where, even in the little quiet village of Castlewood, whither a party of people came from the town, who would have broken Castlewood Chapel windows, but the village people turned out, and even old Sieveright, the republican blacksmith, along with them : for my Lady, though she was a Papist, and had many odd ways, was kind to the tenantry, and there was always a plenty of beef, and blankets, and medicine for the poor at Castlewood Hall. A kingdom was changing hands whilst my Lord and Lady were away. King James was flying, the Dutchmen were coming ; awful stories about them and the Prince of Orange used old Mrs. Worksop to tell to the idle little page. He hked the solitude of the great house very well ; he had all the play-books to read, and no Father Holt to whip him, and a hundred childish pursuits and pastimes, without doors and within, which made this time very pleasant. CHAPTER V MY SUPERIORS ARE ENGAGED IN PLOTS FOR THE RESTORATION OF KING JAMES THE SECOND NOT having been able to sleep, for thinking of some lines for eels which he had placed the night before, the lad was lying in his little bed, waiting for the hour when the gate would be open, and he and his comrade, John Lock wood, the porter's son, might go to the pond and see what fortune had brought them. At daybreak, John was to awaken him, but his own eagerness for the sport had served as a rdveillez long since — so long, that it seemed to him as if the day never would come. It might have been four o'clock when he heard the door of the opposite chamber, the Chaplain's room, open, and the voice of a man coughing in the passage. Harry jumped up, thinking for certain it was a robber, or hoping perhaps for a ghost, and, flinging open his own door, saw before him the Chaplain's door open, and a light inside, and a figure standing in the doorway, in the midst of a great smoke which issued from the room. "Who's there?" cried out the boy, who was of a good spirit. " Silentiiom ! " whispered the other ; " 'tis I, my boy ! " and, holding his hand out, Harry had no diificulty in recognising his master and friend, Father Holt. A curtain was over the window of the Chaplain's room that looked to the court, and Harry saw that the smoke came from a great flame of papers which were burning in a brazier when he entered the Chaplain's room. After giving a hasty greeting and blessing to the lad, who was charmed to see his tutor, the Father continued the burning of his papers, drawing them from a cupboard over the mantelpiece wall, which Harry had never seen before. Father Holt laughed, seeing the lad's attention fixed at once on this hole. "That is right, Harry," he said; "faithful little famuli see all and say nothing. You are faithful, I know." " I know I would go to the stake for you," said Harry. "I don't want your head," said the Father, patting it kindly ; "all you have to do is to hold your tongue. Let us burn these papers, and say nothing to anybody. Should you like to read them ? " THE SECRET OF THE WARDROBE 43 Harry Esmond blushed, and lield down his head ; he had looked as the fact was, and ■s\'ithout thinking, at the paper before him; and though he had seen it, could not understand a word of it, the letters being quite clear enough, but quite without meaning. They burned the papers, beating down the ashes in a brazier, so that scarce any traces of them remained. Harry had been accustomed to see Father Holt in more dresses than one ; it not being safe, or woith the danger, for Popish eccle- siastics to wear their proper dress ; and he was, in consequence, in 1)0 wise astonished that the jiricst should now appear before him in a riding-dress, with large buff leather lioots, and a feather to his hat, plain, but such as gentlemen wore. "You know the secret of the cupboard," said he, laughing, "and must be prepared for other mysteries;" and he opened — but not a secret cupboard this time — oidy a wardrobe, which he usually kept locked, and from which he now took out two or three dresses and perruques of different colours, and a couple of swords of a pretty make (Father Holt was an expert practitioner witli the small-sword, and every day, whilst he was at home, he and his pupil practised this exercise, in which the lad became a very great proficient), a military coat and cloak, and a farmer's smock, and placed them in the large hole over the mantelpiece from which the papers had been taken. " If they miss the cupboard," he said, " they will not find these ; if they find them, they'll tell no. tales, except that Father Holt wore more suits of clothes than one. All Jesuits do. You know what deceivers we are, Harry." Harry was alarmed at the notion that his friend was about to leave him ; but " No," tlie priest said, " I may very likely come back with my Lord in a few days. We are to be tolerated; we are not to be persecuted. But they may take a fancy to pay a visit at Castle wood ere our return ; and, as gentlemen of my cloth are suspected, they might choose to examine my papers, which con- cern nobody— at least not them." And to this day, whether the papers in cipher related to politics, or to the affairs of that mysterious society whereof Father Holt was a member, his pupil, Harry Esmond, remains in entire ignorance. The rest of his goods, his small wardrobe, &c.. Holt left un- touched on his shelves and in his cupboard, taking down— with a laugh, however — and flinging into the brazier, where he only half burned them, some theological treatises which he had been writing against the English divines. "And now," said he, "Henry, my son, you may testify, with a safe conscience, that you saw me burning Latin sermons the last time I was here before I went 44 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND away to London ; and it will be daybreak directly, and I must be away before Lock wood is stirring." " Will not Lookwood let you out, sir 1 " Esmond asked. Holt laughed ; he was never more gay or good-humoured than when in the midst of action or danger. "Lockwood knows nothing of my being here, mind you," he said ; "nor would you, you little -i^Tetch ! had you slept better. You must forget that I have been here ; and now farewell. Close the door, and go to your own room, and don't come out till — stay, why should you not know one secret more 1 I know you will never betray me." Li the Chaplain's room were two windows : the one looking into the court facing westwards to the fountain ; the other, a small case- ment strongly barred, and looking on to the green in front of the Hall. This window was too high to reach from the ground : but, mounting on a buffet which stood beneath it, Father Holt showed me how, by pressing on the base of the window, the whole frame- work of lead, glass, and iron stanchions descended into a cavity worked below, from which it could be drawn and restored to its usual place from without ; a broken pane being purposely open to admit the hand which was to work upon the spring of the machine. "When I am gone," Father Holt said, "you may push away the buffet, so that no one may fancy that an exit has been made that way ; lock the door ; place the key — where shall we put the keyl — under 'Chrysostom' on .the bookshelf; and if any ask for it, say I keep it there, and told you where to find it, if you had need to go to ray room. The descent is easy down the wall into the ditch ; and so once more farewell, until I see thee again, my dear son." And with this the intrepid Father mounted the buffet with great agility and briskness, stepped across the window, lifting up the bars and framework again from the other side, and only leaving room for Harry Esmond to stand on tiptoe and kiss his hand before the casement closed, the bars fixing as firm as ever, seemingly, in the stone arch overhead. When Father Holt next arrived at Oastlewood, it was by the public gate on horseback ; and he never so much as alluded to the existence of the private issue to Harry, except when he had need of a private messenger from within, for which end, no doubt, he had instructed his young pupil in the means of quitting the Hall. Esmond, young as he was, would have died sooner tlian betray his friend and master, as Mr. Holt well knew ; for he had tried the boy more than once, putting temptations in his way, to see whether he would yield to them and confess afterwards, or whether he would resist them, as he did sometimes, or whether he would DOCTOR TUSHER 45 lie, which he never did. Holt instructing the boy on this point, however, that if to keep silence is not to lie, as it certainly is not, yet silence is, after all, equivalent to a negation— and therefore a downright No, in the interest of justice or your friend, and in reply to a question that may be prejudicial to either, is not criminal, but, on the contrary, praiseworthy ; and as lawful a way as the other of eluding a wrongful demand. For instance (says he), suppose a go(xl citizen, who had seen his Majesty take refuge there, had been ii.skcd, "Is King Charles up that oak treeT' his duty would have been not to say, Yes — so that the Cromwellians should seize the king and murder him like his father — but No ; his Majesty being private in the tree, and therefore not to be seen there by loyal eyes : all which instruction, in religion and morals, as well as in the rudiments of the tongues and sciences, the boy took eagerly and with gratitude from his tutor. When, then. Holt was gone, and told Harry not to see him, it was as if he had never been. And he had this answer pat when he came to be questioned a few days after. The Prince of Orange was then at Salisbury, as young Esmond learned from seeing Doctor Tusher in his best cassock (though the roads were muddy, and he never was known to wear his silk, only his stufl' one, a-horsebaok), with a great orange cockade in his broad-leafed hat, and Nahum, his clerk, ornamented with a like decoration. The Doctor was walking up and down in front of his parsonage, when little Esmond saw him, and heard him say he was going to pay his duty to his Highness the Prince, as he mounted his pad and rode away with Nahum behind. The village people had orange cockades too, and his friend the blacksmith's laughing daughter pinned one into Harry's old hat, which he tore out in- dignantly when they bade him to cry " God save the Prince of Orange and the Protestant rehgiou ! " but the people only laughed, for they liked the boy in the village, where his solitary condition moved the general pity, and where he found friendly welcomes and faces in many houses. Father Holt had many friends there too, for he not only would fight the blacksmith at theology, never losing his temper, but laughing the whole time in his pleasant way ; but he cured him of an ague with quinquina, and was always ready with a kind word for any man that asked it, so that they said in the village 'twas a pity the two were Papists. The Director and the Vicar of Castlewood agreed very well; indeed, the former was a perfectly-bred gentleman, and it was the latter's business to agree with everybody. Doctor Tusher and the lady's maid, his spouse, had a, boy who was about the age of little Esmond ■ and there was such a friendship between the lads, as 46 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND propinquity and tolerable kindness and good-humour on either side would iDe pretty sure to occasion. Tom Tusher was sent off early, however, to a school in London, whither his father took him and a volume of sermons, in the first year of the reign of King James ; and Tom returned but once a year afterwards to Castlewood for many years of his scholastic and collegiate life. Thus there was less danger to Tom of a perversion of his faith by the Director, who scarce ever saw him, than there was to Harry, who constantly was in the Vicar's company ; but as long as Harry's religion was his Majesty's, and my Lord's, and my Lady's, the Doctor said gravely, it should not be for him to disturb or disquiet him : it was far from him to say that his Majesty's Church was not a branch of the Catholic Church ; upon which Father Holt used, accoriling to his custom, to laugh, and say that the Holy Church throughout all the world, and the noble Army of Martyrs, were very much obliged to the Doctor. It was while Doctor Tusher was away at Salisbury that there came a troop of dragoons with orange scarfs, and quartered in Castlewood, and some of them came up to the Hall, where they took possession, robbing nothing however beyond the hen-house and the beer-cellar ; and only insisting upon going through the house and looking for papers. The first room they asked to look at was Father Holt's room, of which Harry Esmond brought the key, and they opened the drawers and the cupboards, and tossed over the papers and clothes — but found nothing except his books and clothes, and the vestments in a box by themselves, with which the dragoons made merry, to Harry Esmond's horror. And to the questions which the gentleman put to Harry, he replied that Father Holt was a very kind man to him, and a very learned man, and Harry supposed would tell him none of his secrets, if he had any. He was about eleven years old at this time, and looked as innocent as boys of his age. The family were away more than six months, and when they returned they were in the deepest state of dejection, for King James had been banished, the Prince of Orange was on the throne, and the direst persecutions of those of the Catholic faith were appre- hended by my Lady, who said she did not believe that there was a word of truth in the promises of toleration that Dutch monster made, or in a single word the perjured wretch said. My Lord and Lady were in a manner prisoners in their own house ; so her Lady- ship gave the little page to know, who was by this time growing of an age to understand what was passing about him, and something of the characters of the people he lived with. " We are prisoners," says she ; " in everything but chains we DOCTOR TUSHER 47 are prisoners. Let them come, let them consign me to dungeons, or strike off my head from this poor little throat " (and she clasped it in her long fingers). " The blood of the Esmonds will always How freely for their kings. We are not like the Chiirchills— the Judases, who kiss their master and betray him. We know how to suft'er, how even to forgive in the royal cause " (no doubt it was that fatal business of losing the place of Groom of the Posset to which her Ladyship alluded, as she did half-a-dozen times in the day). "Let the tyrant of Orange bring his rack and his odious Dutch tortures — the beast ! the wretch ! I spit upon him and defy him. Cheerfully will I lay this head upon the block; cheerfully will I accompany my Lord' to the scaffold : we will cry ' God save King James ! ' with our dying breath, and smile in the face of the executioner." And she told her page, a hundred times at least, of the particulars of the last interview which she had with his Majesty. " I flung myself before my liege's feet,'' she said, "at Salisbury. I devoted myself — my husband — my house, to his cause. Perhaps he remembered old times, when Isabella Esmond was young and fair ; perhaps he recalled the day when 'twas not / that knelt — at least he spoke to me with a voice that reminded me of days gone by. ' Egad ! ' said his Majesty, ' you should go to the Prince of Orange, if you want anything.' ' No, sire,' I replied, ' I would not kneel to a Usurper ; the Esmond that would have served your Majesty will never be groom to a traitor's posset.' The royal exile smiled, even in the midst of his misfortune ; he deigned to raise me with words of consolation. The Viscount, my husband, himself, could not be angry at the august salute with which he honoured me ! " The public misfortune had the effect of making my Lord and his Lady better friends than they ever had been since their courtship. My Lord Viscount had shown both loyalty and sjiirit, when these were rare qualities in the dispirited party about the King ; and the praise he got elevated him not a little in his wife's good opinion, and perhaps in his own. He wakened up from the listless and supine life which he had been leading ; was always riding to and fro in consultation with this friend or that of the King's ; the page of course knowing little of his doings, but remarking only his greater cheerfulness and altered demeanour. Father Holt came to the Hall constantly, but officiated no longer openly as chaplain ; he was always fetching and carrying : strangers, military and ecclesiastic (Harry knew the latter, though they came in all sorts of disguises), were continually arriving and departing. My Lord made long absences and sudden reappearances. 48 THE HISTOEY OF HENEY ESMOND using sometimes the means of exit which Father Holt had employed, though how often the little window in the Chaplain's room let in or let out my Lord and his friends, Harry could not tell. He stoutly kept his promise to the Father of not prying, and if at midnight from his little room he heard noises of persons stirring in the next chamber, he turned round to the wall, and hid his curiosity under his pillow until it fell asleep. Of course he could not help remarking that the priest's journeys were constant, and understanding by a hundred signs that some active though secret business employed him : what this was may pretty well be guessed by what soon happened to my Lord. No garrison or watch was put into Castlewood when my Lord came back, but a guard was in the village ; and one or other of them was always on the Green keeping a look-out on our great gate, and those who went out and in, Lockwood said that at night especially every person who came in or went out was watched by the outlying sentries. 'Twas lucky that we had a gate which their Worships knew nothing about. My Lord and Father Holt must have made constant journeys at night : once or twice little Harry acted as their messenger and discreet aide-de-camp. He re- members he was bidden to go into the village with his fishing- rod, enter certain houses, ask for a drink of water, and tell the good man, " There would be a horse-market at Newbury next Thursday," and so carry the same message on to the next house on his list. He' did not know what the message meant at the time, nor what was happening : which may as well, however, for clearness' sake, be explained here. The Prince of Orange being gone to Ireland, where the King was ready to meet him with a great army, it was determined that a great rising of his Majesty's party should take place in this country ; and my Lord was to head the force in our county. Of late he had taken a greater lead in affairs than before, having the indefatigable Mr. Holt at his elbow, and my Lady Viscountess strongly urging him on ; and my Lord Sark being in the Tower a prisoner, and Sir Wilmot Crawley, of Queen's Crawley, having gone over to the Prince of Orange's side — my Lord became the most considerable person in our part of the county for the affairs of the King. It was arranged that the regiment of Scots Greys and Dragoons, then quartered at Newbm-y, should declare for the King on a certain day, when likewise the gentry affected to his Majesty's cause were to come in with their tenants and adherents to Newbury, march upon the Dutch troops at Reading under Ginckel ; and, these over- thrown, and their indomitable little master away in Ireland, 'twas JUNE 1690 49 thought that our side might move on London itself, and a confident victory was predicted for the King. As these great matters were in agitation, my Lord lost his listless manner and seemed to gain health ; my Lady did not scold him, Mr Holt came to and fro, busy always; and little Harry longed to have been a few inches taller, that he might draw a sword in this good cause. One day, it must have been about the month of June 1690, my Lord, in a great horseman's coat, under which Harry could see the shining of a steel breastplate he had on, called little Harry to him, put the hair off the child's forehead, and kissed him, and bade God bless him in such an affectionate way as he never had used before. Father Holt blessed him too, and then they took leave of my Lady Viscountess, who came from her apartment witli a pocket-handkerchief to her eyes, and her gentlewoman and Mrs. Tusher supporting her. " You are going to — to ride," says she. " Oh, that I might come too ! — but in my situation I am forbidden horse exercise." " We kiss my Lady Marchioness's hand," says Mr. Holt. " My Lord, God speed you ! " she said, stepping up and em- bracing my Lord in a grand manner. " Mr. Holt, I ask your blessing : " and she knelt down for that, whilst Mrs. Tusher tossed her head up. Mr. Holt gave the same benediction to the little page, who went down and held my Lord's stirrups for him to mount ; there were two servants waiting there too — and they rode out of Castle- wood gate. As they crossed the bridge, Harry could see an ofScer in scarlet ride up touching his hat, and address my Lord. The party stopped, and came to some parley or discussion, which presently ended, my Lord putting his horse into a canter after taking off his hat and making a bow to the officer, who rode alongside him step for step : the trooper accompanying him falling back, and riding with my Lord's two men. They cantered over the gi-een, and behind the elms (my Lord waving his hand, Harry thought), and so they disappeared. That evening we had a great panic, the cowboy coming at milking-time riding one of our horses, which he had found grazing at the outer park-wall. All night my Lady Viscountess was in a very quiet and subdued mood. She scarce found fault with anybody ; she played at cards for six hours ; little page Esmond went to sleep. He prayed for my Lord and the good cause before closing his eyes. It was quite in the grey of the morning when the porter's bell rang, and old Lockwopd, waking up, let in one of my Lord's 50 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND servants, who liad gone with him in the morning, and who returned with a melancholy story. The officer who rode up to my Lord had, it appeared, said to him, .that it was his duty to inform his Lordship that he was not under arrest, but under surveillance, and to request him not to ride abroad that day. My Lord replied that riding was good for his health, that if the Captain chose to accompany him he was welcome ; and it was then that he made a bow, and they cantered away together. When he came on to Wansey Down, my Lord all of a sudden pulled up, and the party came to a halt at the crossway. " Sir," says he to the officer, " we are four to two : will you be so kind as to take that road, and leave me to go mine ? " " Your road is mine, my Lord," says the officer. " Then — " says my Lord ; but he had no time to say more, for the officer, drawing a pistol, snapped it at his Lordship ; as at the same moment Father Holt, drawing a pistol, shot the officer through the head. It was done, and the man dead in an instant of time. The orderly, gazing at the officer, looked scared for a moment, and galloped away for his life. " Fire ! fire ! " cries out Father Holt, sending another shot after the trooper, but the two servants were too much surprised to use their pieces, and my Lord calling to them to hold their hands, the fellow got away. "Mr. Holt, qui pensait a tout," says Blaise, "gets off his horse, examines the pockets of the dead officer for papers, gives his money to us two, and says, ' The wine is drawn, M. le Marquis,' — why did he say Marquis to M. le Vicomte? — ' we must drink it.' " The poor gentleman's horse was a better one than that I rode," Blaise continues : " Mr. Holt bids me get on him, and so I gave a cut to Whitefoot, and she trotted home. We rode on towards Newbury ; we heard firing towards mid-day : at two o'clock a horseman comes up to us as we were giving our cattle water at an inn — and says, ' All is done ! The Ecossais declared an hour too soon — General Ginckel was down upon them.' The whole thing was at an end. " ' And we've shot an officer on duty, and let his orderly escape,' says my Lord. " ' Blaise,' says Mr. Holt, writing two lines on his table-book, one for my Lady, and one for you, Master Harry ; ' you must go back to Castlewood, and deliver these,' and behold me." And he gave Harry the two papers. He read that to himself, which only said, " Burn the papers in the cupboard, burn this. You know nothing about anything." Harry read this, ran upstairs to his mistress's apartment, where her gentlewoman slept near to THE SOLDIERS ARRIVE 51 the door, made lier bring a light and wake my Lady, into whose liands he gave the paper. She was a wonderful object to look at in her night attire, nor had Harry ever seen the like. As soon as she had the paper in her hand, Harry stepped back to the Chaplain's room, opened the secret cupboard over the tlrc- ]ilacc, burned all the papers in it, and, as he had seen the priest do befoiT, took down one of his reverence's manuscript sermons, and lialf burnt that in the brazier. By the time the papers were (piite destroyed it was daylight. Harry ran back to his mistress again. Her gentlewoman ushered him again into her Ladyshiji's chamber ; she told him (from behind her nuptial curtains) to bid the coach be got ready, and that slie would ride away anon. But the mysteries of Iicr Ladyship's toilet were as awfully long on this day as on any other, and, long after the coach was ready, my Lady was still attiring herself. And just as the Viscountess stepped forth from her room, ready for departure, young John Lockwood couies running up from, the village with news that a lawyer, three officers, and twenty or four-and-twenty soldiers, were marching thence upon the house. John had but two minutes the start of them, and, ere he had well told his story, the troop rode into our courtyard. CHAPTER VI THE ISSUE OF THE PLOTS— THE DEATH OF THOMAS, THIRD VISCOUNT OF CASTLEirOODi AND THE IMPRISONMENT OF HIS VISCOUNTESS AT first my Lady was for flying like Mary, Queen of Scots (to /-\ whom she fancied she bore a resemblance in beauty), and, -' *■ stroking her scraggy neck, said, " They will find Isabel of Castlewood is equal to her fate." Her gentlewoman, Victoire, persuaded her that her prudent course was. as she could not fly, to receive the troops as though she suspected nothing, and that her chamber was the best place wherein to await them. So her black Japan casket, which Harry was to caiTy to the coach, was taken back to her Ladyship's chamber, whither the maid and mistress retired. Victoire came out presently, bidding the page to say her Ladyship was ill, confined to her bed with the rheumatism. By this time the soldiers had reached Castlewood. HaiTy Esmond saw them from the window of the tapestry parlour; a couple of sentinels were posted at the gate — a half-dozen more walked towards the stable ; and some others, preceded by their commander, and a man in black, a lawyer probably, were conducted by one of the servants to the stair leading up to the part of the house which my Lord and Lady inhabited. So the Captain, a handsome kind man, and the lawyer, came through the ante-room to the tapestry parlour, and where now was nobody but young Harry Esmond, the page. "Tell your mistress, little man," says the Captain kindly, "that we must speak to her." " My mistress is ill a-bed," said the page. " What complaint has she t " asked the Captain. The boy said, " The rheumatism." " Rheumatism ! that's a sad complaint," continues the good- natured Captain ; " and the coach is in the yard to fetch the Doctor, I suppose 'i " " I don't know,'' says the boy. "And how long has her Ladyship been ill?" " I don't know," says the boy. LADY CASTLEWOOD'S SICKNESS 53 " When (lid my Lord go away 1 " " Yesterday night." " With Father Holt 1 " "With Mr. Holt." " And which way did they travel ? " asks the lawyer. " They travelled without nie," says the page. " We must see Lady Castlewood." "I have orders that nobody goes in to her Ladyship — she is sick," says the page ; but at this moment Victoire came out. " Hush ! " says she ; and, as if not knowing that any one was near, " What's this noise 1 " says she. " Is this gentleman the Doctor ? " "Stuff! we must see Lady Castlewood," says the lawyer, pushing by. The curtains of her Ladyship's room were down, and the chamber dark, and slie was in bed with a nightcap on her head, and propped up by her pillows, looking none the less ghastly because of the red which was still on her cheeks, and which she could not afford to forego. "Is that the Doctor V she said. " There is no use with this deception, madam," Captain West- bury said (for so he was named). " My duty is to arrest the person of Thomas, Viscount Castlewood, a nonjuring peer — of Robert Tusher, Vicar of Castlewood — and Henry Holt, known under various other names and designations, a Jesuit priest, who officiated as chaplain here in the late king's time, and is now at the head of the conspiracy which was about to break out in this country against the authority of their Majesties King William and Queen Mary — and my orders are to search the house for such papers or traces of the conspiracy as may be found here. Your Lailyship will please to give me your keys, and it will be as well for yourself that you should help us, in every way, in our search." " You see, sir, that I have the rheumatism, and cannot move," said the lady, looking uncommonly ghastly, as she sat up in her bed, where, however, she had had her cheeks painted, and a new cap put on, so that she might at least look her best when the officers came. " I shall take leave to place a sentinel in the chamber, so that your Ladyship, in case you should wisli to rise, may have an arm to lean on," Captain Westbury said. " Your woman will show me where I am to look ; " and Madame Victoire, chattering in her half French and half English jargon, opened while the Captain examined one drawer after another ; but, as Harry Esmond thought, rather carelessly, with a smile on his face, as if he was only conducting the examination for form's sake. 54 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND Before one of the cupboards Victoire flung herself down, stretch- ing out her arms, and, with a piercing shriek, cried, " Non, jamais, monsieur I'officier ! Jamais ! I will rather die than let you see this wardrobe." But Captain Westbury would open it, still with a smile on his face, which, when the box was opened, turned into a fair burst of laughter. It contained — not papers regarding the conspiracy — but my Lady's wigs, washes, and rouge-pots, and Victoire said men were monsters, as the Captain went on with his perquisition. He tapped the back to see whether or no it was hollow, and as he thrust his hands into the cupboard, ray Lady from her bed called out, with a voice that did not sound hke that of a very sick woman, " Is it your commission to insult ladies as well as to arrest gentle- men. Captain 1" " These articles are only dangerous when worn by your Lady- ship," the Captain said, with a low bow, and a mock grin of politeness. " I have found nothing which concerns the Government as yet — only the weapons with wliich beauty is authorised to kill," says he, pointing to a wig with his sword-tip. " We must now proceed to search the rest of the house." " You are not going to leave that wretch in the room with me 1 " cried my Lady, pointing to the soldier. " What can I do, madam 1 Somebody you must have to smooth your pillow and bring your medicine — permit me " " Sir ! " sc]'eamed out my Lady. " Madam, if you are too ill to leave the bed," the Captain then said, rather sternly, " I must have in four of my men to lift you off in the sheet. I must examine this bed, in a word ; papers may be hidden in a bed as elsewhere ; we know that very well, and " Here it was her Ladyship's turn to shriek, for the Captain, with his fist shaking the pillows and bolsters, at last came to " burn " as they say in the play of forfeits, and wrenching away one of the pillows, said, "Look! did not I tell you so? Here is a pillow stuffed with paper." " Some villain has betrayed us," cried out my Lady, sitting up in the bed, showing herself full dressed under her night-rail. ■' And now your Ladyship can move, I am sure ; permit me to give you my hand to rise. You will have to travel for some distance, as far as Hexton Castle, to-night. Will you have your coach t Your woman shall attend you if you like — and the Japan box 1 " " Sir ! you don't strike a man when he is down," said my Lady, with some dignity : " can you not spare a woman 1 " " Your Ladyship must please to rise, and let me search the THEY SEEK FOR PAPERS 56 bed," said the Captain ; " there is no more time to lose in bandying talk.'' And, without more ado, the gaunt old woman got up. Harry Esmond recollected to the end of his life that figure with the brocade dress and the white night-rail, and the gold-clocked red stockings, and white red-heeled shoes, sitting up in the bed, and stepping down from it. The trunks were ready packed for depart- ure in her ante-room, and the horses ready harnessed in the stable : about all which the Captain seemed to know, by information got from some quarter or other; and whence Esmond could make a pretty shrewd guess in aftertimes, when Doctor Tuslier complained that King William's government had basely treated him for services done in that cause. And here he may relate, though he was then too young to know all that was happening, what the papers contained, of which Captain Westbury had made a seizure, and which papers had been trans- ferred from the Japan box to the bed when the officers arrived. There was a list of gentlemen of the county in Father Holt's handwriting — Mr. Freeman's (King James's) friends — a similar paper being found among those of Sir John Fenwick and Mr. Cople- stone, who suffered death for this conspiracy. There was a patent conferring the title of Marquis of Esmond on my Lord Castlewood and the heirs-male of his body ; his appoint- ment as Lord-Lieutenant of the County, and Major-G-eneral.* There were various letters from the nobility and gentry, some ardent and some doubtful, in the King's service ; and (very hickily for him) two letters concerning Colonel Francis Esmond : one from Father Holt, which said, " I have been to see this Colonel at his house at Walcote, near to Wells, where he resides since the King's departure, and pressed him very eagerly in Mr. Freeman's cause, showing him the great advantage he would have by trading with that merchant, offering him large premiums there as agreed between us. But he says no : he considers Mr. Freeman the head of the firm, will never trade against him or embark with any other trading company, but considers his duty was done when Mr. Freeman left England. This Colonel seems to care more for his wife and his * To have this rank of Marquis restored in the family had always been my Lady Viscountess's ambition ; and her old maiden aunt, Barbara Topham, the goldsmith's daughter, dying about this time, and leaving all her property to Lady Castlewood, I have heard that her Ladyship sent almost the whole of the money to King James, u proceeding which so irritated my Lord Castlewood that he actually went to the parish church, and was only appeased by the Marquis's title which his exiled Majesty sent to him in return for the ^^15,000 his faithful subject lent him. 56 THE HISTORY OF HENEY ESMOND beagles than for affairs. He asked me much about young H. E., ' that bastard,' as he called him ; doubting my Lord's intentions respecting him. I reassured him on tliis head, stating what I knew of the lad, and our intentions respecting him, but with regard to Freeman he was inflexible." And another letter was from Colonel Esmond to his kinsman, to say that one Captain Holton had been with him offering him large bribes to join, you know who, and saying that tlie head of the house of Castlewood was deeply engaged in that quarter. But for his part he had broke his sword wlien the K. left the country, and would never again fight in that quarrel. The P. of 0. was a man, at least, of a noble courage, and his duty, and, as he thought, every Englishman's, was to keep the country quiet, and the French out of it; and, in fine, that he would have nothing to do with the scheme. Of the existence of these two letters and the contents of the pillow, Colonel Frank Esmond, who became Viscount Castlewood, told Henry Esmond afterwards, when the letters were shown to his Lordship, who congratulated himself, as he had good reason, that he had not joined in the scheme which proved so fatal to many concerned in it. But, naturally, the lad knew little about these circumstances when they happened under his eyes : only being aware tliat his patron and his mistress were in some trouble, which had caused the flight of the one and the apprehension of the other by the officers of King William. The seizure of the papers effected, the gentlemen did not pursue their further search through Castlewood House very rigorously. They examined Mr. Holt's room, being led thither by his pupil, who showed, as the Father had bidden him, the place where the key of his chamber lay, opened the door for the gentlemen, and conducted them into the room. When the gentlemen came to the half-burned papers in the brazier, they examined them eagerly enough, and their young guide was a little amused at their perplexity. " What are these ? " says one. "They're written in a foreign language," says the lawyer. " What are you laughing at, little whelp ? " adds he, turning round as he saw the boy smile. "Mr. Holt said they were sermons," Harry said, "and bade me to burn them ; " which indeed was true of those papers. " Sermons indeed — it's treason, I would lay a wager," cries the lawyer. " Egad ! it's Greek to me," says Captain Westbury. " Can you read it, little boy 1 " DICK THE SCHOLAE 57 "Yes, sir, a little," Harry said. "Then read, and read in English, sir, on your peril," said the lawyer. And Harry began to translate : — " ' Hath not one of your own writers said, " The children of Adam are now labouring as much as he himself ever did, about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, shaking the boughs thereof, and seeking the fruit, being for the most part unmindful of the tree of life." blind generation ! 'tis this tree of knowledge to which the serpent has led you ' " — and here the boy was obhged to stop, the rest of the page being charred by the fire : and asked of the lawyer, " Shall I go on, sir? " The lawyer said, " This boy is deeper than he seems : who knows that he is not laughing at us 1 " " Let's have in Dick the Scholar," cried Captain Westbury, laughing: and he called to a trooper out of the window — "Ho, Dick ! come in here and construe." A thick-set soldier, with a square good-humoured face, came in at the summons, saluting his officer. " Tell us what is this, Dick," says the lawyer. " My name is Steele, sir," says the soldier. " I may be Dick for my friends, but I don't name gentlemen of your cloth amongst them." " Well then, Steele." " Mr. Steele, sir, if you please. When you address a gentleman of his Majesty's Horse Guards, be pleased not to be so famihar." " I didn't know, sir," said the lawyer. " How should you 1 I take it you are not accustomed to meet with gentlemen," says the trooper. " Hold thy prate, and read that bit of paper,'' says Westbury. "'Tis Latin," says Dick, glancing at it, and again saluting his ofiicer, "and from a sermon of Mr. Cudworth's ; " and he translated the words pretty much as Henry Esmond had ren- dered them. " What a young scholar you are ! " says the Captain to the boy. " Depend on't, he knows more than he tells," says the lawyer. "I think we will pack him oif in the coach with old Jezebel." " For construing a bit of Latin t " said the Captain, very good- naturedly. " I would as lief go there as anywhere," Harry Esmond said simply, "for there is nobody to care for me." There must have been something touching in the child's voice, or in this description of his solitude — for the Captain looked at him very good-naturedly, and the trooper called Steele put his hand kindly on the lad's head, and said some words in the Latin tongue. 58 THE HISTOKY OF HENRY ESMOND " What does he say 1 " says the lawyer. "Faith, ask Dick yourself," cried Captain Westbiiry. "I said I was not ignorant of misfortune myself, and had learned to succour the miserable, and that's not yoTM" trade, Mr. Sheepskin," said the trooper. " You had better leave Dick the Scholar alone, Mr. Corbet," the Captain said. And Harry Esmond, always touched by a kind face and kind word, felt very grateful to this good-natured champion. The horses were by this time harnessed to the coach ; and the Countess and Victoire came down and were put into the vehicle. This woman, who quarrelled with Harry Esmond all day, was melted at parting with him, and called him "dear angel," and " poor infant," and a hundred other names. The Viscountess, giving him her lean hand to kiss, bade him always be faithful to the house of Esmond. " If evil should happen to my Lord," says she, "his successor, I trust, will be found, and give you protection. Situated as I am, they will not dare wreak their vengeance on me noiu." And she kissed a medal she wore with great fervour, and Henry Esmond knew not in the least what her meaning was; but hath since learned that, old as she was, she was for ever expecting, by the good oifices of saints and relics, to have an heir to the title of Esmond. Harry Esmond was too young to have been introduced into the secrets of politics in which his patrons were implicated ; for they put but few questions to the boy (who was little of stature, and looked much younger than his age), and such questions as they put he answered cautiously enough, and professing even more ignorance than he had, for which his examiners willingly enough gave him credit. He did not say a word about the window or the cupboard over the fireplace ; and these secrets quite escaped the eyes of the searchers. So then my Lady was consigned to her coach, and sent off to Hexton, with her woman and the man of law to bear her company, a couple of troopers riding on either side of the coach. And Harry was left behind at the Hall, belonging as it were to nobody, and quite alone in the world. The captain and a guard of men remained in possession there ; and the soldiers, who were very good-natured and kind, ate my Lord's mutton and drank his wine, and made themselves comfortable, as they well might do in such pleasant quarters. The captains had their dinner served in my Lord's tapestry parlour, and poor little Harry thought his duty was to wait upon Captain Westbury's chair, as his custom had been to serve his Lord when he sat there. AN ARMY OF MARTYRS 59 After tlie departure of the Countess, Dick the Scholar took Harry Esmond under his special protection, and would examine him in his humanities, and talk to him both of French and Latin, in which tongues the lad found, and his new friend was willing enough to acknowledge, that he was even more proficient than Scholar Dick. Hearing that he had learned them from a Jesuit, in the praise of whom and whose goodness Harry was never tired of speaking, Dick, rather to the boy's surprise, who began to have an early shrewdness, like many children bred up alone, showed a great deal of theological science, and knowledge of the points at issue between the two churches ; so that he and Harry would have hours of controversy together, in which the boy was certainly worsted by the arguments of this singular trooper. " I am no common soldier," Dick would say, and indeed it was easy to see by his learning, breeding, and many accomplishments, that he was not. " I am of one of the most ancient fiimilies in the empire ; I have had my education at a famous school, and a famous university ; I learned ray first rudiments of Latin near to Smithfield, in London, where the martyrs were roasted." "You hanged as many of ours," interposed Harry; "and, for the matter of persecution, Father Holt told me that a young gentle- man of Edinburgh, eighteen years of age, student at the college there, was hanged for heresy only last year, though he recanted, and solemnly asked pardon for his errors." " Faith ! there has been two much persecution on both sides : but 'twas you taught us." " Nay, 'twas the Pagans began it," cried the lad, and began to instance a number of saints of the Church, from the Protomartyr downwards — " this one's fire went out under him : that one's oil cooled in the caldron : at a third holy head the executioner chopped three times and it would not come ofi'. Show us martyrs in your Church for whom such miracles have been done." " Nay,'' says the trooper gravely, " the miracles of the first three centuries belong to my Church as well as yours. Master Papist," and then added, with something of a smile upon his countenance, and a queer look at Harry — " And yet, my little catechiser, I have some- times thought about those miracles, that there was not much good in them, since the victim's head alwaj's finished by coming off at the third or fourth chop, and the caldron, if it did not boil one day, boiled the next. Howbeit, in our times, the Church has lost that questionable advantage of respites. There never was a shower to put out Ridley's fire, nor an angel to turn the edge of Campion's axe. The rack tore the limbs of Southwell the Jesuit and Sympson the Protestant alike. For faith, everywhere multitudes die willingly 60 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND enough. I have read in Monsieur Eycaut's ' History of the Turks,' of thousands of Mahomet's followers rushing upon death in battle as upon certain Paradise ; and in the Great Mogul's dominions people fling themselves by hundreds under the cars of the idols annually, and the widows burn themselves on their husbands' bodies, as 'tis well known. 'Tis not the dying for a faith that's so hard. Master Harry — every man of every nation has done that — 'tis the living up to it that is difficult, as I know to my cost," he added with a sigh. " And ah ! " he added, " my poor lad, I am not strong enough to convince thee by my life — though to die for my religion would give me the greatest of joys — but I had a dear friend in Magdalen College in Oxford : I wish Joe Addison were here to convince thee, as he quickly could — for I think he's a match for the whole College of Jesuits ; and what's more, in his life too. In that very sermon of Doctor Cudworth's which your priest was quoting from, and which suffered martyrdom in the brazier " — Dick added with a smile, " I had a thought of wearing the black coat (but was ashamed of my life, you see, and took to this sorry red one) ; I have often thought of Joe Addison — Doctor Cudworth says, ' A good conscience is the best looking-glass of heaven ' — and there's a serenity in my friend's face which always reflects it — I wish you could see him, Harry." "Did he do you a great deal of good?" asked the lad simply. " He might have done," said the other — " at least he taught me to see and approve better things. 'Tis my own fault, deteriora seqwi." "You seem very good," the boy said. " I'm not what I seem, alas ! " answered the trooper — and indeed, as it turned out, poor Dick told the truth — for that very night, at supper in the hall, where the gentlemen of the troop took their repasts, and passed most part of their days dicing and smoking of tobacco, and singing and cursing, over the Castle wood ale — Harry Esmond found Dick the Scholar in a woeful state of drunkenness. He hiccupped out a sermon ; and his laughing companions bade him sing a hymn, on which Dick, swearing he would run the scoundrel through the body who insulted his religion, made for his sword, which was hanging on the wall, and fell down flat on the floor under it, saying to Harry, who ran forward to help him, " Ah, little Papist, I wish Joseph Addison was here ! " Though the troopers of the King's Life Guards were all gentle- men, yet the rest of the gentlemen seemed ignorant and vulgar boors to Harry Esmond, with the exception of this good-natured Corporal Steele the Scholar, and Captain Westbury and Lieutenant Trant, who were always kind to the lad. They remained for some weeks or months encamped in Castlewood, and Harry learned from them, from time to time, how the lady at Hexton Castle was treated, and the partioidars THE DOWAGER IN PRISON 6l of her confinement there. 'Tis known that King William was disposed to deal very leniently with the gentry ^v\m remained faithful to the old King's cause ; and no piinee usurping a crown, as his enemies said he did (righteously taking it, as I think now), ever caused less blood to be shed. As for women conspirators, he kept spies on the least dangerous, and locked up the others. Lady Oastlewood had the best rooms in Hexton Castle, and the gaoler's garden to walk in ; and though she i-epeatedly desired to be led out to execution, like Mary, Queen of Scots, there never was any thought of taking her painted old head off, or any desire to do aught but keep her person in security. And it appeared she found that some were friends in her mis- fortune, whom she had, in her prosperity, considered as her worst enemies. Colonel Francis Esmond, my Lord's cousin and her Ladyship's, who had married the Dean of Winchester's daughter, and, since King James's departure out of England, had lived not very far away from Hexton town, hearing of his kinswoman's strait, and being friends with Colonel Brice, commanding for King William in Hexton, and with the Church dignitaries there, came to visit her Ladyship in prison, offering to his uncle's daughter any friendly services which lay in his power. And he brought his lady and little daughter to see the prisoner, to the latter of whom, a child of great beauty and many winning ways, the old Viscountess took not a little liking, although between her Ladyship and the child's mother there was little more love than formerly. There are some injuries which women never forgive one another : and Madam Francis Esmond, in marrying her cousin, had done one of those irretrievable wrongs to Lady Castlewood. But as she was now humiliated, and in misfortune, Madam Francis could allow a truce to her enmity, and could be kind for a while, at least, to her husband's discarded mistress. So the little Beatrix, her daughter, was permitted often to go and visit the imprisoned Viscoimtess, who, in so far as the child and its father were concerned, got to abate in her anger towards that branch of the Castlewood family. And the letters of Colonel Esmond coining to light, as has been said, and his conduct being known to the King's Council, the Colonel was put in a better position with the existing govern- ment than he had ever before been ; any suspicions regarding his loyalty were entirely done away ; and so he was enabled to be of more service to his kinswoman than he could otherwise have been. And now there befell an event by which this lady recovered her hberty, and the house of Castlewood got a new owner, and fathexless little Harry Esmond a new and most kind protector and friend- Whatever that secret was which Harry was to hear from my Lord, 62 THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND the boy never heard it ; for that night when Father Holt arrived, and carried my Lord away with him, was the last on which Harry ever saw his patron. What happened to my Lord may be briefly told here. Having found the horses at the place where they were lying, my Lord and Father Holt rode together to Chatteris, where they had temporary refuge with one of the Father's penitents in that city ; but the pursuit being hot for them, and the reward for the apprehension of one or the other considerable, it was deemed advisable that they should separate ; and the priest betook himself to other places of retreat known to him, whilst my Lord passed over from Bristol into Ireland, in which kingdom King James had a court and an army. My Lord was but a small addition to this ; bringing, indeed, only his sword and the few pieces in his pocket ; but the King received him with some kindness and distinction in spite of his poor plight, confirmed him in his new title of Marquis, gave him a regiment, and promised him further promotion. But title or promotion were not to benefit him now. My Lord was wounded at the fatal battle of the Boyne, flying from which field (long after his master had set him an example) he lay for a while concealed in the marshy country near to the town of Trim, and more from cataiTh and fever caught in the bogs than from the steel of the enemy in the battle, sank and died. May the earth lie light upon Thomas of Castlewood ! He who writes this must speak in charity, though this lord did him and his two grievous wrongs : for one of these he would have made amends, perhaps, had life been spared him ; but the other lay beyond his power to repair, though 'tis to be hoped that a greater Power than a priest has absolved him of it. He got the comfort of this absolution, too, such as it was : a priest of Trim writing a letter to my Lady to inform her of this calamity. But in those days letters were slow of travelling, and our priest's took two months or more on its journey from Ireland to England : where, when it did arrive, it did not find my Lady at her own house ; she was at the King's house of Hexton Castle when the letter came to Castlewood, but it was opened for all that by the officer in command there. Harry Esmond well remembered the receipt of this letter, which Lockwood brought in as Captain Westbury and Lieutenant Trant were on the Green playing at bowls, young Esmond looking on at the sport, or reading his book in the arbour. " Here's news for Frank Esmond," says Captain Westbury. "Harry, did you ever see Colonel Esmond?" And Captain West- bury looked very hard at the boy as he spoke. Harry said he had seen him but once when he was at Hexton, at the ball there. POOR HARRY AND POOR DICK 63 " And did he say anything ? " " He said what I don't care to repeat," Harry answered. For he was now twelve years of age ; he knew what his birth was, and the disgrace of it ; and he felt no love towards the man who had most likely stained his mother's honour and his own. " Did you love my Lord Castlewood t " " I wait until I know my mother, sir, to say," the boy answered, his eyes filling with tears. " Something has happened to Lord Castlewood," Captain West- bury said iu a very grave tone — " something which must happen to us all. He is dead of a wound received at the Boyne, fighting for King James." " I am glad my Lord fought for the right cause,'' the boy said. " It was better to meet death on the field like a man, than face it on Tower Hill, as some of them may,'' continued Mr. Westbury. "I hope he has made some testament, or provided for thee some- how. This letter says he recommends unicum filium suum dilec- tissimum to his Lady. I hope he has left you more than that." Harry did not know, he said. He was in the hands of Heaven and Fate ; but more lonely now, as it seemed to him, than he had been all the rest of his life ; and that night, as he lay in his little room which he still occupied, the boy thought with many a pang of shame and grief of his strange and solitary condition : — how he had a father and no father ; a nameless mother that had been brought to ruin, perhaps, by that very father whom Harry could only acknowledge in secret and with a blush, and whom he could neither love nor revere. And he sickened to think how Father Holt, a stranger, and two or three soldiers, his acquaintances of the last six weeks, were the only friends he had in the great wide world, where he was now quite alone. The soul of the boy was full of love, and he longed as he lay in the darkness there for some one upon whom he could bestow it. He remembers, and must to his dying day, the thoughts and tears of that long night, the hours tolling through it. Who was he, and what? Why here rather than elsewhere 1 I have a mind, he thought, to go to that priest at Trim, and find out what my father said to him on his death-bed confession. Is there any child in the whole world so unprotected as I am ? Shall I get up and quit this place, and run to Ireland ? With these thoughts and tears the lad passed that night away until he wept himself to sleep. The next day, the gentlemen of the guard, who had heard what had befallen him, were more than usually kind to the child, especi- ally his friend Scholar Dick, who told him about his own father's death, which had happened when Dick was a child at Dublin, not 64 THE HISTOEY OF HENEY ESMOND quite five years of age. " That was the first sensation of grief," Dick said, " I ever knew. I remember I went into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping beside it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fell a-beating the colfin, and calling papa ; on which my mother caught me in her arms, and told me in a flood of tears papa could not hear me, and would play with me no more, for they were going to put him imder ground, whence he could never come to us again. And this," said Dick kindly, " has made me pity all children ever since ; and caused me to love thee, my poor fatherless, motherless lad. And, if ever thou wantest a friend, thou shalt have one in Richard Steele." Harry Esmond thanked him, and was grateful. But what could Corporal Steele do for him "i take him to ride a spare horse, and be servant to the troop? Though there might be a bar in Harry Esmond's shield, it was a noble one. The counsel of the two friends was, that little Harry should stay where he was, and abide his fortune : so Esmond stayed on at Castlewood, awaiting with no small anxiety the fate, whatever it was, which was over him. CHAPTER VII I AM LEFT AT CASTLEWOOD AN ORPHAN, AND FIND MOST KIND PROTECTORS THERE DURING the stay of the soldiers in Castlewood, honest Dick tlie Scholar was the constant companion of the lonely little orphan lad, Harry Esmohd : and they read together, and they played bowls together, and when the other troopers or their officers, who were free-spoken over their cups (as was the way of that day, when neither men nor women were over-nice), talked unbecomingly of their amours and gallantries before the child, Dick, who very likely was setting the whole company laughing, would stop their jokes with a maxima dehetur pueris reverentia, and once oft'ered to lug out against another trooper called Hulking Tom, who wanted to ask Harry Esmond a ribald question. Also Dick, seeing that the child had, as he said, a sensibility above his years, and a great and praiseworthy discretion, confided to Harry his love for a vintner's daughter, near to the Tollyard, Westminster, whom Dick addressed as Saccharissa in many verses of his composition, and without whom he said it would be impos- sible that he could continue to live. He vowed this a thousand times in a day, though Harry smiled to see the love-lorn swain had his health and appetite as well as the most heart-whole trooper in the regiment : and he swore Harry to secrecy too, which vow the lad religiously kept, until he found that oflficers and privates were all taken into Dick's confidence, and had the benefit of his verses. And it must be owned likewise that, while Dick was sighing after Saccharissa in London, he had consolations in the country ; for there came a wench out of Castlewood village who had washed his linen, and who cried sadly when she heard he was gone : and with- out paying her bill too, which Harry Esmond took upon himself to discharge by giving the girl a silver pocket-piece, which Scholar Dick had presented to him, when, with many embraces and prayers for his prosperity, Dick parted from him, the garrison of Castlewood being ordered away. Dick the Scholar said he would never forget his young friend, nor indeed did he.: and Harry was sorry when the kin