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ANNALS OF AN EVENTFUL LIFE
VOLUME [.

ANNALS OF AN EVENTFUL LIFE.
BY
sº, GEORGE WEBBE DASENT, D.C.L.
Then take the Spring while it is Spring,
Live warm in Summer while it glows,
Nor wait till Winter comes as king
With crown of thorns that bear no rose.
jourtſ (inition, #tlist).
IN THIR E E W O L U M E S.
VOL. I.
LONDON :
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
13 GTREAT MART,BOROUGIT STREET.
1870.
The Right of Translation is Rºscºvcd.
- LoN DON:
STRANGEwAys AND WALDEN, PRINTERs,
23 Castle St. Leicester Sq.
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II.
III.
IV.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
CONTENTS
OF
THE FIRST WOLUME.
How I WAS BORN, AND WHAT HAPPENED
AIFTERWARDS • e e º
HOW MY FATHER BECAME A WEST INDIA
PROPRIETOR . e
HOW MY FATHER MADE UP EIIS MIND
TO GO TO THE WEST INI).IES e º
Flo W WB WISNT TO THE WIEST INDIES º
HOW WB LIVED IN THE WEST INDIES
FIOW W E LIVED AT TWO RIVERS º e
HOW WIE STAYED IN THE WEST INDIES
How I WENT HOME IN THE ‘DELAFORD !
How I WENT TO MY AUNT MANDEVILLE . .
AUNT MAND EVILLE AT HOME & tº
HOW I WENT TO DE. CUTBRUSH. .
J-IOW L WENT 'l'O W ESTMLINSTEIR tº ſº
PAG3
13|
vi
CONTENTS.
XIII.
XIV.
XVI.
XVI i.
XVIII.
XIX.
XX.
XXI.
HOW THINGS W ENT IN ST, SACGIH ARI SSA .
HOW I WENT TO OXFORD
HOW som ETHING H APPEN ED AT MAN DE-
VII, L.I., HAI, T, • tº
HOW THINGS WI, NT AT MAN DEWII, LE BALL
HOW WIL WENT TO II, FRACOMBE.
HOW I SAW SOME BODY ON BOAR
STEAMER tº
TH E
El OW WIE LANDED AT II, FRACOM BE .
HOW I SAW NOTHING OF ARETHUSA
HOW I SAW som. ETHING of ARETHUSA
HOW I SAID SOMETHING TO ARETHUSA
HOW I PARTED FROM ABETHusa
How I Took MY DEGREE tº Q
How I wºn't To Eventso CHURCH, AND
GOT UP NEXT MO]{NING WITH
SWEEPS . & e
TE]]E
PAGE
143
I68
I91
326
ANNALS OF AN EWENTFUL LIFE.
--- CEIAPTER I.
HOW I WAS BORN, AND WHAT HAPPENED
AFTERWARDS.
I was born in the year 181–. I am not going
to tell you the exact year; and am not likely
to bore any of my readers with recollections
of the Peace of Amiens or the Campaigns of the
Duke of Wellington. Yes, I was born, but
before I was born my existence was blighted.
Not that I came into the world a rickety thing,
for I was a most healthy child; morally blighted,
I mean. Every cne had maue up their minds
that I was to be one thing, and I came out
another. In a word, it had been settled that I
was to be a girl, and I was born a boy.
‘Amphora coepit
Institui; currente rotá cur urceus exit 2'
We were a boy family, and we had been a
WOL. I. - IB
2 Annals of
boy family time out of mind. Every now and
then, after a run of fifteen boys or so, Nature,
or whatever it is that settles these things, threw
us a girl by way of a sop; but I am bound to
say, they had far better have been boys; they
were merely boys in girls' clothing, but inwardly
they were thorough males. One such sop had
been my father's sister. At first the terror, and
afterwards the delight, of my existence, I fancy
I see her now, and hear her say, ‘Oh, child,
that you had been a girl l’ Well ! this strong-
minded woman had settled it with my parents
that I was to be a girl, that I was to be called
after her, to be adopted by her, and though last,
not least, to have her money and her land. I
have heard it whispered that my father had
doubts on the matter, and that he was seen to
wring his hands when baby’s sex was talked of
as a foregone conclusion. But my father was a
wise man, and kept his doubts to himself, think-
ing, perhaps, that time would show ; and ac-
cordingly, when time did show, and our old
nurse ran downstairs to tell him that baby was
born ; and born a boy, my father was almost the
only one in the house who was not surprised.
My mother fortunately, under the circum-
stances, could say very little; but as for my
Aunt, who was about as old as my father, and
an Eventful Life. - 3
rather bullied him, I have heard nurse say, ‘She
was neither to haud nor to bind, but went about
the house just like a rampaging cow.’ What ‘a
rampaging cow' may be I can scarce say, even
out-of-doors; but indoors, and ‘about the house,”
it must be a most unpleasant phenomenon. If
tossing was any part of the performance, my
aunt could have done it beautifully. No one
ever tossed up her head higher, and no one ever
kept her head so long at tossing pitch. To see
her do it was as good a sight as a mountebank
balancing a donkey on a ladder—a spectacle
now, alas ! very rare in London streets. But
even a rampaging cow, if left to herself, must
wear herself out; and so it was on the day of
my birth. The other children were sent over to a
neighbour; my father drove over his estate, there
was no governess to rampage over or with, and
the doctor, when he took his leave of my Aunt,
insisted that the house must be kept as still as
death ; not so much as a mouse should be heard to
stir, she could not be too cautious, and so on, with
a bundle of commonplaces which meant, ‘Dear
Mrs. Mandeville, if I had power to turn you
out of this house I would ; but as I haven’t, I
expect you to be quiet so long as you stay here.”
No wonder, them, that after Dr. Mindererus
had departed Mrs. Mandeville took some sal vola-
4 Annals of
tile, sat down and had a good cry, and went to
sleep. -
Now I daresay you will say, Then let her
sleep for ever, for what we care; why do you
raise her up thirty years dead, to make the
beginning of your story hideous P Yes! that is
just the reason why I raise her up. She did all
she could to make my life hideous, and she very
nearly succeeded. First of all, she was always
Snubbing me, and I have heard nurse say, ‘If
Mrs. Man-Devil had had her way, Master
Teddy would have had a humpback.” Once or
twice she was caught trying to drop ‘the little
innocent'—yes! me, the little innocent—on the
floor, and several times she cut my nails to the
quick; once, in cutting my hair, she snipped off
a bit of my ear; in fact, she was always brandish-
ing steel about, and scaring me out of my wits.
Then she persuaded my parents that pastry and
fruit were bad—not for all the children, but for
me in particular. Oh the agonies I have en-
dured at seeing the whole family circle devouring
flaming mince-pies like so many devout fire-
worshippers, while I was condemned to eat
tapioca or Sago pudding. Then she said she was
sure that plays and pantomimes were too exciting
for me, that I should have water on the brain if
I went ; and the result was that I was packed off
an Eventful Life. 5
to bed while all the rest went in a merry party
to the theatre. You will ask, of course, why this
tyranny was borne; but I can give you a very
good answer. Though I had not proved a girl
—for which, on the bended knib of my pen, I
most devoutly thank Heaven—I was considered
to be in some sort Mrs. Mandeville's property;
and as it was supposed that she would add to that
property all she had, or, in other words, make
me her heir, my father and mother agreed that
Auntie must be humoured, and that she should
have her way with the boy.
Now, I may as well confess that Aunt Mande-
ville's property,+that is I, Edward Halfacre,
was very undutiful to her. Whether it was that
my digestion rose against her interference with
its sacred right to ruin itself with mince-pies—
whether it loathed tapioca and Sago as much as
that dear old man of Tobago—who can tell?
Certain it is that if, according to nurse, Aunt
Mandeville plotted against my baby life, I, in my
turn, put her in some peril of hers. As a little
boy I was of a very lively, sprightly turn, much
given to what a horse-dealer told me one of his
horses was also given to—‘badinage.’ ‘Well!? I
Said, ‘that 's a queer quality in a horse; is it a
virtue or a vice P’ ‘I can’t 'xacly say, sir, but
that 'oss of mine as is given to badinage 'ud
6 Annals of
pitch Fordham over his 'ead in five minutes.’
By which I mean that I was a very wicked little
boy to Auntie. Sometimes I would roll myself
up like a ball, and lie in her way, that I might
trip her up; every day, as soon as I could reach
up to her collar, I put pigtails on her. Once—
I confess it with bitter shame—I heated the
handle of the poker, and put it close to her, that
she might burn her fingers; and, though last, not
least, I remember, when she was standing up to
carve a leg of mutton at luncheon, slipping gently
off my chair, and suddenly drawing away hers
just as she was in the act of sitting down. I
fancy I see my father and mother both lifting up
their hands aloft, and hear their shrieks, as down
went Aunt Mandeville, knife and fork in air, flat
on her back; the result being that I was sent off
dinnerless to bed, while Auntie was picked up,
feeling herself all over to see if she had any bones
broken. * -
But where all this time, you will ask, was
Mr. Mandeville P That is soon answered. Dead
and gone. Stretched comfortably out among
the rude forefathers of the hamlet ; and if con-
scious, dreading lest the sound of the last trum-
pet should recall him to the side of Mrs. Mande-
ville. “Poor old fellow ! He had a good heart,
and a good constitution, nurse used to say; ‘but
an Eventful Life. 7
1aw ! child, what was that if one had to live alone
with Auntie? No | No 1 he couldn’t abide it.
He made a good fight, though Lived with her
better than three years, and then, all at Once,
he died. Dr. Mindererus do say it were apo-
plexy, or sunstroke, or compression on the brain ;
but I tell you it was Auntie on the brain. She
was fond of him, but for all that she killed him.
Women often do kill them as they love, and then
they cry for them, and build their tombs. Did
you ever see Squire Mandeville's tomb at Man-
deville Hall? . . . . Well, well! child, you’ll
see it some day; for if you’re a good boy, they
do say Auntie means to leave it all to you, and
then you’ll remember your old nurse, won’t
you? there’s a dear.’
So much for old Mandeville, whose time could
not have been a jolly one. He left his wife
Mandeville Hall; and so, what with his property
and hers, Auntie was a person of consequence in
the neighbourhood. Before I go any further,
let me say that all these terrible accounts of
Aunt Mandeville were mere nursery gossip.
Nursie hated Aunt Mandeville, and painted her
in hideous colours. It is perfectly true that
she was bitterly disappointed that I was not a
girl; that she took care of my digestion, and
that I was very ungrateful to her for her pains.
8. Annals of
She was a woman of strong will, and as such
much the better horse when she was Squire
Mandeville's yoke-fellow. My father and mother,
too, for the same reason, were terribly afraid
of her. But in after-years, when I really
became her property, I found her as good as
gold—when she had her own way.
an Eventful Life. 9
OHAPTER II.
HOW MY FATHER BECAME A. WEST INDIA
PROPRIETOR.
WHERE did we live? Why, reader, you are like
a child at a watering-place, so curious and in-
quisitive. Next you will ask what we were P
what my father did P had we a carriage? how
many horses? how many servants? I had better
answer at once. We had all these; and my
father was nothing. He was well off, but that
was no concern of mine, for did I not belong to
Aunt Mandeville P. As for our house, it was in
the Midland Counties. I will even go so far as
to tell you it was in Warwickshire, but further
as to my father’s abode in England I do not
mean to go. Besides his English estate, he had
land beyond the sea. An old uncle had been a
planter in the West Indies in the good old time,
and when he died he made my father his heir.
Now to what shall we liken a West Indian estate
in this bad new time P A millstone round your
neck is not a pleasant thing even on land, nor is
10 Annals of
it mice to walk up a mountain when the snow
reaches mid-thigh. Water-lilies are lovely to
look at from the bank, or out of a boat, but they
are death to the strongest Swimmer; and so it
is with a West Indian estate. Sweet is sugar to
those who eat it. Sweet to old women in
their tea, and to little boys in tarts; but gall
and wormwood to those who have to make it
dear, and sell it cheap. Well! I belong to Aunt
Mandeville, and so I am not going to moralise on
Sugar-candy, clayed muscovadoes, jaggery, date-
Sugar, beet-root, maple, diabetes, or any other
of the sugar-stuffs or processes. All I say is, woe
to the man now-a-days who has a West Indian
estate | But it was not so bad then, fifteen years
before the emancipation; and my father was
thought to be a lucky man when it was noised
through the Forest of Arden that old Colonel
Ratoon had died in the West Indies, and made
Squire Halfacre his heir. Then in due course
Messrs. Steele, Penn, and Quill, old Ratoon's
solicitors, wrote from Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields to
inform my father that they were ready to
prove the will; and Messrs. Short, Ready, and
Stump, his bankers, advised him of the balance
standing at their bank in the late Colonel
Ratoon's name; and though last, not least, Messrs.
Claw, Tooth, and Nail, of Vulture Yard, Great
an Eventful Life. 11
St. Helen’s, the late Colonel Ratoon’s merchants,
who sold his sugar and rum and molasses for
him at ten per cent commission, and sent him
out vacuum pans and mill-wheels, and condensers
and boilers, and cane-crushers, also at ten per
cent commission, which ten per cent became
twenty, if in their jargon they came under
advances,’—this most respectable firm, I say,
‘notified my father that they were ready to
transact the business relating to the Two Rivers
Estates, in the Island of St. Saccharissa, on the
same terms as those which had been agreed on
between the late lamented Colonel Ratoon and
their firm.
Strange to say, all these letters reached my
father on the same day. He was a good, easy
man, who lived happily on his estates, and thought
all months endurable except June and July, when
there was nothing to shoot. Norway was not
then discovered, or he would have rushed off to
fish there; but as it was, he managed to exist
through May with a little rook and rabbit shoot-
ing; and on the 12th of August he went as regu-
larly to Scotland to destroy grouse, as the puffins
depart on the same day from their island off
Anglesea.
As for business, he had an agent, who used to
come over once a-month or so, and have a dreary
12 Annals of
morning of accounts with him at Halfacre Hall;
not that his estates were at all encumbered, but
my father hated accounts, and, to tell the truth,
he would much sooner have gone to the dentist
once a-month than see his agent for half-an-hour.
You may fancy then how he felt when he had
three business letters, each signed by a trine of
partners. - . -
‘Steele, Penn, and Quill,’ ‘Short, Ready, and
Stump,’ ‘Claw, Tooth, and Nail,” he murmured,
‘ nine men of business; why, I shall have to go
up to town.”
And to town he went, and in town he stayed,
to my mother’s amazement, a month before he
returned. This was long before railways, and
people used not to rush backwards and forwards
by express. It was also before the penny post ;
in the good old times of which I spoke, when no
general post-letter cost less than eightpence, and
when people, even men, were wicked enough to
cross their letters. In those days, too, when you
had written a letter you had to fold it—no such
easy thing, let me tell you, to do neatly; and if I
wished to show, in one sentence, how much better
off we of this generation are than our forefathers,
I would simply say—‘Then there were no enve-
lopes.’ My father hated letter-writing, but he
was good, and wrote often to my mother; but his
an Eventful Life. - 13
letters were so full of ‘Short, Ready, and Stump,'
* Claw, Tooth, and Nail,” and ‘Steele, Penn, and
Quill,’ and entered so much into probates, and
balances, and consignments, and brokers, that my
mother could make neither head nor tail of them;
and even my Aunt Mandeville, whose knowledge
of business was supposed in the family to be pro-
found, confessed herself puzzled.
‘Brother Halfacre has got into a new world,’
she said. “I hope we shall have him back safe,
and that he will not be torn to pieces by Messrs.
Claw, Tooth, and Nail.’ -
‘I do wish though,” added my mother, ‘that
he would tell us whether he has seen the king;
and what’s the truth of this story about poor
Lord Castlereagh, and whether ladies’ waists are
longer, and their bonnets Smaller, this season
than last.’
At last he came back, but it was only to talk
incessantly of the mystic nine who made up the
three firms. It was plain though that the three
that had the firmest hold on him were, as might
be expected, Messrs. Claw, Tooth, and Nail. As
for bankers, they are very obliging, but it is
rather in deeds than in words. I once spent a
day in Switzerland with three bankers, all of one
house, and it was by far the dullest day I ever
passed in my life. No one can spend a day with
14 Annals of
a banker; it is a contradiction in terms. As for
conversation, they have none—‘How will you take
it P’ is their longest sentence. No l you may
shoot, fish, and hunt with a banker, and you may
dine with him, and do all well; but with bankers
it is as with your destiny in a future state, you
must bring your happiness with you, and trust to
no one else. A lively banker is a dangerous
banker; he ought to be gazetted out of the firm
as soon as possible.
Nor are solicitors, as a rule, lively. Besides,
the more respectable a firm is, the more likely are
you to sneeze when visiting them, and I hate
sneezing. Inwardly, like old port, they may be
cheering and cheerful, but outwardly they are
sawdust and cobwebs. But a merchant may be
very lively and pleasant. In them there is more
of that speculative nature so attractive to generous
minds. There is something spirited and genial
even in their ventures; and as the finest bird
often lives in the dingiest nest, many a merchant,
when he wings his way west from the sunless
prison of Vulture Court, may shine in society at
night as brilliant as a firefly of the south.
So it was with my father's merchants. Claw,
the senior partner, lived in a street which opened
on Park Lane. He had a few fine pictures;
statues by Thorwaldsen and Canova; a choice
Q
C!??, Eventful Life. 15
library, and gave good dinners at which all the
wits of the town were welcome.
Tooth was not so grand. He lived in Bry-
anston Square, a spot then, as now, of infinite
respectability. The Bryanstonians in their inner
hearts, I believe, think it fashionable, and mean
next season to have chairs and a Row of their
own, even more rotten and more frequented than
that on the south side of Hyde Park; but let
that pass. In the year 182— Tooth lived there;
he was the oldest of the partners, and was one
of those mysterious persons who are said to have
come to London with half-a-crown in their
pockets, and to have realised a splendid fortune
all by their own exertions. The truth, I believe,
was that Tooth had been warehouseman to old
Claw, the father of Claw the second. He was
industrious, and more, he was handsome. Old
Claw and his son and daughter lived in Vulture
Yard, that was the cradle of their race, their
Stammhaus, like the Rothschilds’ in the Frankfort
Judengasse. Miss Claw never saw any one but
the warehouseman, fell in love with him, and
had the sense to tell her father. Old Claw, if
this were a mere common novel instead of a most
truthful story, would have flown into a fury,
set his face against the match, wedded his
daughter to an attorney who had red hair, black
16 Annals of
teeth, limped like Vulcan and squinted like John
Wilks; the warehouseman would have become
a highwayman, waylaid the attorney, who just
then had his pockets full of thousand-pound notes,
robbed him, blown his brains out, married his
widow, who would never have discovered that he
was her long-lost lover till she was on her death-
bed of consumption, brought on by pining for
her first love. In which supreme hour the ex-
highwayman would have confessed that he had
gone over to the Church of Rome when he took
to the road, and that his spiritual director had
laid this penance on him to purge him of his
sin in murdering the attorney. He was to
marry the widow, and never to tell her his
history. This confession would have been too .
much for the consumptive widow, she would have
died in the arms of her husband and lover now
happily united. The bereaved husband, then left
to his own reflections, would have founded a
monastery, subsisted on herring-bones and po-
tato-parings, of which he partook on all fours
out of a trough, and died at last in the odour
of Sanctity, a thoroughly holy man.
But this is not a sensational novel, but plain
matter-of-fact, and as plain truth is often much
more astonishing than fiction, old Claw simply
give his consent, let his daughter marry the
an Eventful Life. 17
warehouseman, and made him his partner. And
old Claw was quite right. One of the clerks
who had served the firm for fifty years, and was
allowed to be facetious, said, “Our Mr. Tooth is
the eye-tooth of the firm,’ and so it was. Old
Claw’s business increased twenty-fold after the
partnership; and when he died and left it to his
son and Tooth, and the name of the firm, which
had been first Claw, then Claw and Son, then Claw,
Claw, and Tooth, became Claw and Tooth, the
two surviving partners were wealthy enough to
take another partner into the firm, on con-
dition that he brought a hundred thousand
pounds into the concern. This partner they
found in Mr. Nail, whose father was, like Alex-
ander in the Acts, a coppersmith, and had dealt
largely with Claw and Tooth in manufacturing
sugar-boilers and such gear for the West Indian
estates on which they had mortgages.
Mr. Nail was the youngest of the firm, which
now became Claw, Tooth, and Nail. He was a
bachelor, and lived in lodgings in St. James’s
Street. He often went to the theatre ; not like
Tooth, who was devoted to the Kembles, and
took a prominent part in the O.P. riots, if any
one remembers what they were. If Mr. Tooth
had a pain in the face he called it an ache, not
an ake, because that was how Mr. John Kemble
YOL. I. C
;
A g
*
| |
18 Annals of
pronounced the passage in the ‘Tempest”—“For
this thou shalt have aches.” If he ever took a
holiday it was to hurry away to the 'third row
of the pit at Drury Lane, where he took his seat
comfortably before the overture began. But
Nail was not so “legitimate.” He was not like
Tooth, he cared little for the Kembles. Farce
and comedy were his delight. He adored Lis-
ton, and still more Westris. Another of the
clerks, one of those people who hear and see
everything either with their own eyes and ears, or
those of their friends, had heard Mr. Tooth’s
greengrocer say that he knew an oilman, who
knew a sceneshifter, who said that once ‘Our Mr.
Nail’ had been seen to slip a nosegay—now-a-
days we call it bouquet—into the hand of Madame
Westris as she retired from the stage.
But this is not a history of Claw, Tooth, and
Nail, they are only of interest as being my
father's merchants, though I cannot help speaking
a little of them. When he came back, as I said
before, he was full of the firm. On such a day
he had dimed with Claw, and met Mr. Canning,
Conversation Sharpe, and a very pleasant and
agreeable young man, though quite a revolution-
ist, Mr. Thomas Duncombe. He had quite meant
to write down all the clever things he heard,
but somehow he put it off from day to day till
an Eventful Life. 19
it was too late. Then he told of Claw's pictures,
and statues, and books; and how he patronised a
Scotchman, David Wilkie, whose works were
really of great promise. Another day, too, Claw
took him to dine with the Goldsmiths' Company,
of which Claw was that year Master, or Warden,
or whatever it is. Such a dinner, and such plate
There, too, he tasted turtle for the first time, and
confessed that Claw had made him have two
helps. Then Tooth asked him to dine at five
o'clock at the Bedford Hotel in Covent Garden
Market; and they had marrow-bones, a delicacy
undreamt of before; and after that they went to
see John Kemble play Hamlet, and Mrs. Siddons
the Queen ; and another day they went to see
Mrs. Siddons as Lady Macbeth ; and all through
both tragedies my father confessed he still
thought of the marrow-bones of the Bedford
Hotel, and wondered how it was that the War-
wickshire marrow-bones, on which his own Devon
bullocks so often said their prayers to the Power
who sends sweet grass, never had any marrow
in them, and how it always seemed to run up
to the innermost end of the bone out of the reach
of the marrow-spoon, like the quicksilver in a
barometer, when it sinks below zero. Even in
the famous soliloquy over poor Yorick’s skull
my father's fancy still wandered on, and he won-
20 Annals of
dered whether there was any marrow in Yorick's
shanks, and why a man shouldn’t moralise over
a marrow-bone as well as over a skull.
Mr. Nail also belonged to a City Company.
He was that year Renter Warden of the Fish-
mongers', and my father dined with him too, and
he used to say that he could not tell whether the
Goldsmiths' or the Fishmongers’ gave the better
dinner. Perhaps the turtle was better at the
Goldsmiths’, and the fish at the Fishmongers’,
but then it must never be forgotten that first
turtle is, like first love, a thing altogether apart
and exquisite, not to be compared with any love
or turtle that may come upon us afterwards.
Another thing in which the Goldsmiths excelled
the Fishmongers was this. After dinner they
gave each guest a box of Sweetmeats to carry
away with him ; thus suffering him, unlike the
little boy in the story, to fill his pockets as well
as his stomach. Besides, this box gave a kind of
reality to my father’s trip to London, for it was
brought down to Warwickshire, and shared
amongst the children—all save me, for did I not
belong to Aunt Mandeville, and did she not
exercise her right of property on this occasion
too, and forbid my father and mother to ruin
the child’s digestion with sweetmeats?
an Eventful Life. 21
CEIAPTER III.
HOW MY FATHER MADE UP FHIS MIND TO Go To THE
WEST INDIES. -
NOTHING of any note happened with us in War-
wickshire for some time. My father wrote to his
merchants, and his merchants to him, but no one
knew whether anything was going on, till one
morning he looked hard across the breakfast-
table at my mother and said,
‘I must go to the West Indies.’ - - -
I do not know, if he had said I must go to
the moon, that my mother would have been more
astonished. Certainly it would have been less
trouble; for if a man makes up his mind to go
to the moon to the moon he must go. It is not
far, only to the nearest lunatic asylum ; but the
West Indies are a long way off, the voyage costs
money and breaks up a family circle. Certainly
it is worse to go to the West Indies than to the
moon. I do not know if my mother was at first
aware of the full extent of my father's perversity,
22 Annals of
but she saw perplexities of all kinds ahead, and
speedily entrenching herself behind a whole array
of woman’s reasons, she resisted the enemy.
“Go to the West Indies, Halfacre Why
should you go to the West Indies P’
‘Why, you see, my dear, Claw, Tooth, and
Nail say it is usual for a new proprietor to show
himself among his tenants—I mean among his
slaves, they work more willingly when they see
the man to whom they belong; the managers and
overseers need the master's eye; there are num-
berless improvements to be made in the manufac-
ture of Sugar; by the new vacuum-pan molasses
will be annihilated, and the new centrifugal
boiler crystallizes the juice in half the time con-
sumed under the old process. I have just given
Messrs. Cake and Nail, who always made Colonel
Ratoon’s machinery, a large order for new
vacuum-pans, boilers, condensers, pumps, and
crystallizers. One of their patent cane-crushers,
too, I must have. A Scotch engineer must go
out, with two skilled mechanics, to fix all this
machinery, and this, again, will be best done
under the master’s eye. Added to this, they
tell me the voyage is safe and pleasant. I will
go out in the Enchantress, one of Claw, Tooth,
and Nail’s ships. She is a fast sailer, and I shall
be there in six weeks.’
an Eventful Life. 23
Here my father paused to take breath, as well
he might, for it was by far the longest private
speech he had ever been known to make. It
was a good deal longer, in fact, than the famous
speech which he made at Warwick, when pro-
posing the judge's health at the assizes. As for
my mother, she was utterly bewildered with his
vacuum-pans, and condensers, and crystallizers,
and cane-crushers, so she wisely disregarded
them, and clung to the fact of his voyage across
the sea, and as soon as he paused she struck in, -
“And, Halfacre, if it takes you six weeks
to get there, how long will you stay, and when
will you come back?’ .
My father had been so full of going that he
had not considered these points; his fancy had
landed him in the region of the molasses which
he was prepared to annihilate; but having, in his
mind’s eye, set his foot on the shore, seen his
slaves, and set up his machinery, he thought he
had gone far enough.
‘How long shall I stay? and when will I come
back? I declare I never thought of that. I sup-
pose I shall stay till my business is done; till I
have mastered the details requisite for my new
position; till the machinery is in thorough work-
ing order; till the vacuum-pans -
How much further he would have gone on
24 Annals of
no one can tell, but just at that moment in
glided my Aunt Mandeville, the only person
in the world of whom my father was afraid. *
‘Why, brother Halfacre, what’s all this?—
You are not High Sheriff, or Knight of the
Shire, and yet you are rehearsing a public speech
to your wife.’
Then seeing the tears in my mother's eyes,
she went on:—‘Sister-in-law, what is it all
about P’ -
‘Oh, sister Mandeville,’ sobbed my mother,
“here’s Halfacre going to the West Indies.
I know it’s all the doings of that odious Claw,
Tooth, and Nail.’
“More fool he l’ said my aunt. ‘All this
comes of a man leaving his family for a month,
and spending his time in guzzling and junket-
ing up in London. Claw, Tooth, and Nail,
indeed! I’d claw, tooth, and nail them, if I
could get hold of them.’
And so my aunt went on scolding my father
up hill and down dale, for ever so long.
Now I don’t know whether my readers will
agree with me when I say that women are
strange things. You walk along the streets
and see a man thrashing his wife; just take
the wife's part and see what will happen; ten
to one she will tell you it is all her own fault,
an Eventful Life. 25
and that she deserves all she gets. Something
of the same kind happened in our family circle
on that occasion. When my mother first heard
of my father's intention to go to the West
Indies she felt as if some one had beaten her
black and blue; nay, she felt as though my
father had beaten her; but when Aunt Man-
deville came to the rescue, and gave my father
this verbal thrashing, the wife triumphed over
the woman in my mother's heart; and when
Mrs. Mandeville ended her tirade by another
“To the West Indies, indeed more fool he,’
my mother resented the imputation on her
husband’s sense, and said:
‘Indeed, sister Mandeville, why shouldn’t
Halfacre go to the West Indies if he chooses?’
“Of course he may, if he is silly enough,’
retorted my aunt ; “and so may you too. Go
with him, by all means, if you are fool enough.”
And so she slipped through the garden door,
shutting it behind her with something like a
bang, ran down the walk, and drove back to
Mandeville Hall in her pony-chaise.
Next morning it was noised through the
village that Squire Halfacre and Mrs. Halfacre
and some of the children were going to the
West Indies to see old Colonel Ratoon’s estates.
Some of the children. Yes, that was just
26 Annals of
the difficulty; which of the children? From which
of her children could a mother bear to part P
And yet she had to bear it. Doctor Mindererus,
I believe, had a sly nudge from my father, and
he it was who decided the matter. Run down a
general practitioner | Live in the country and do
it, and die, or deserve to die. Not believe in the
apothecary, thou atheist May you be sleepless
and have no narcotic near you; break your leg in
a land where there is not wood enough to make
a splint ; may you be in Africa, at Timbuctoo,
where every man who crawls on his belly be-
fore the Emperor must be clean shaven; and
with a six years’ beard, may you have ten
minutes given you to shave without soap ! O
unbeliever in apothecaries, believe, lest worse
befall you; at least, for a little while, through
this chapter. Believe in Dr. Mindererus, our
surgeon and apothecary, who at my father's
wink or nudge altered his opinion, from which
there was no appeal, as to which children were
to be left behind. My eldest brother, John,
my father's son and heir, on whom Halfacre
Hall was strictly entailed, was a big boy, already
at a public School. There could be no question
as to the imprudence of interfering with his
studies, so he was left behind. Then there was
Tom ; he too would soon follow John’s footsteps.
an Eventful Life. 27
Meantime he had better be left where he was,
at a private school; and while Dr. Mindererus
was thinking of Tom he thought he might as
well think of William, only ten, no doubt, and
young to go to school. But then Tom was
doing so well with Dr. Cutbrush, why shouldn’t
William go with him after the holidays? So
those three were provided for. What would
have happened had not Walter died I cannot
tell. He would have been seven; too young to
leave, and too old to take. God had provided.
He had taken Walter to Himself. My brother
was far away from this land of lessons, on an
endless holiday. I came next, and over my
infantine bones there was a battle fiercer than
any fought in the dark ages for jaw-bone, or
thigh-bone, or back-bone of the greatest saint.
Did I not belong to Aunt Mandeville P Who
then should dare to take me from her ? .
‘Take the child to the West Indies; take him
to the very land where sugar is grown, and you
will bring him back with a sallow face and
swollen liver.’
But my mother would not hear of parting
with me yet; I had come to fill Walter’s place.
I was but five ; when I was older Aunt-Mande-
ville might have me; when I was eight Say, and
as my mother said this she laughed in her heart,
28 Annals of
for she made sure that long before I was eight,
or anything like it, she would be safe back with
all of us in Old England, and there would be no
separation. Poor mother My father, I really
believe, would have given in. He had gained his
point as to going to the West Indies, and he
would have thrown me in as a peace-offering to
his sister. But men propose and women dispose,
and it was now my mother's turn to give Dr.
Mindererus a nudge. I said I was always a
healthy child; but all at once the doctor dis-
covered the germs and seeds of countless diseases
in my constitution. My lungs had not been
so sound last winter as he could have wished;
I had never quite got over the croup. If I
could escape the ungenial English winter, it
would be well. A sea-voyage was just what I
wanted. Cane-juice was very fattening, and per-
haps a diet of yams, Convolvoſus Battata, and
bananas, Musa Sapientum, would make me a new
child. My aunt, against whom this battery was
erected and aimed, was proof against everything
till the doctor began to talk of Convolvolus Battata
and Musa Sapientum. The botanical name for yams
and bananas perplexed her as much as the vacuum-
pans had puzzled my mother. Again, as every
One fears something or somebody, as there is a
skeleton in every family, let me say that the one
an Eventful Life. 29
thing that Aunt Mandeville feared, except her
servants, was her medical attendant. She would
argue and beat out of the field any one save Dr.
Mindererus and Brooks her butler; but when
the doctor declared that it was as much as my
life was worth if I stayed behind, and backed up
his assertion by Convolvolus Battata and Oleum
Ricini, Aunt Mandeville was utterly routed, and
let me go on the condition that I was to return to
England and belong to her when I was eight
years old. So, thanks to Dr. Mindererus, I and
two younger children were to go with my father
and mother to the West Indies in the good ship
Enchantress.
30 Annals of
CEIAPTER IV.
How WE WENT TO THE WEST INDIES.
IT was a sad break up at Halfacre Hall, in the
year 182–; but at last we got away. It was
just then that I began to recollect, and I well .
remember how my Aunt Mandeville bade us good-
bye, and stood as upright as a dart, waving her
handkerchief, as our huge creaking carriage rolled
off. We were to post from Warwickshire to
town, and thence, after my father had had a fare-
well meeting with Claw, Tooth, and Nail in
Vulture Yard, we were to post on to Portsmouth,
where we were to find the Enchantress lying at
the Motherbank off Ryde. In one carriage
were my father, my mother, myself and a little
brother. On the rumble was my father's valet,
who had persuaded his master to let him go with
him. In a chariot behind were our nurse and
the baby, and my mother's maid. We posted by
day, and slept by night at inns. On this journey
I will not dwell. I only wish that any man,
woman, or child who abuses railways were con-
an Eventful Life. 31
demned to post, first from Warwickshire to
London, and thence across England in search of
the Enchantress. My father's visit in London to
the firm was ‘most satisfactory.’ The partners
were all Smiles, and assured him that, with the
new machinery with which the Enchantress was
half laden, “a new era of prosperity for the Two
Rivers Estate was about to be inaugurated.' I
have reason to believe that those were the very
words which Claw used. He was great at big
words, and if he had his way there would not
have been any names of places on the map shorter
than Mesopotamia or Constantinople, nor any
ordinary word shorter than “vicissitude.’ And so
we started from London and posted to Ports-
mouth, and at Portsmouth we stayed at the
George Hotel for a week, waiting for the Enchan-
tress, which never came, but instead of her a letter,
dated ‘ Plymouth,” from Captain Spark, regretting
that the Enchantress had been blown by a fierce
north-easterly gale through the Downs and past
Portsmouth ; having been only just able to get into
Plymouth Sound, where, under the shelter of the
Breakwater, she was then lying and only waiting
for us. The letter ended with a P.S., expressing
Captain Spark’s desire that we should post day
and night to Plymouth lest the wind should chop
round to S.W. or west and we should be wind-
32 Annals of
bound. So we posted to Plymouth, making long
days and short nights. Posting day and night
with babies was out of the question. It was
bitterly cold, and I was very often hungry in
spite of a box of Leman’s biscuits which we had
with us; but at last we reached Plymouth, with
no other accident than that in passing through
Southampton, just after we left Portsmouth on
the 5th of November, some wicked boys threw
a squib at my father's valet and set him on fire;
at least, so I thought at the time. The carriage
came to a dead stop; my father alighted, and so
did the flaming valet, and the offenders were
soundly thrashed. In those days there were no
police, only ‘Charlies,’ and travellers had some-
times to take the law into their own hands,
and very heavy their hands often were. Then
the valet being extinguished, and our honour
avenged, the carriage rolled on again, and I fell
asleep.
But here we were at Plymouth ; glad to get
there, to eat, to sleep, to rest ; but it was only
for a night. Very early next morning Captain
Spark came. He was a stout, thickset man, with
a copper-coloured face, a hare-lip, and a nose
very like the North Foreland. If any of my
readers have not seen that headland, I can’t help
it. They have, most of them, never seen Jeru-
an Eventful Life. 33
salem, yet they believe in it. Let them show
their faith, and believe that Captain Spark's
nose was like the North Foreland. His hare-lip
somewhat checked his flow of speech ; at least,
he spoke a good deal, and spluttered more, but
most of what he said was lost. Perhaps what
he said went out sideways by his ears, but at
any rate very little of it came out of his
mouth. He felt he was not an Orator, and hence
his sentences were few, sharp, and laconic.
‘Come on shore, sir,<-ship ready to sail,-
wind fair, when will you come on board P’
‘Oh, directly, Captain Spark,” said my
father; ‘we will get ready at once; but won’t
you take something after your row from the
JEnchantress 3’
‘Thank you, sir,’ spluttered out the captain ;
‘glass of sherry wine,—cold morning, spray,+
drenched to the skin.”
The sherry wine, as the captain called it,
came and vanished with great rapidity, and
then the captain went down to hire a large
shore-boat to take off the servants with our
trunks. As for ourselves, we were to go off
in his gig. Into the gig, then, we got, baby
and all. In these days there were no steam-
tugs ; no, nor any mackintoshes. There was
Some sea on, and a brisk wind, making the spray
WOL. I. D
34 Annals of
fly. We, too, were drenched by the time we
reached the Enchantress, as she lay pitching at
anchor just inside the Breakwater.
But ‘never mind,” I still seem to hear my
father say, ‘ here we are alongside.’ Down
came a chair without legs, let down by a pulley,
and into this first my mother, then nurse and
baby, and last my mother's maid and myself
were placed, our feet covered with bunting, and
so we were whipped up to the deck, pretty much
as coals are whipped up from a collier's hold. I
, remember seeing my father scramble up the
side just like an old tom-cat up a tree. I was
wet and cold enough as I stood on the deck;
but for all that I remember my father, while
the anchor was being weighed, pointing out to
me two old three-deckers, the Princess Charlotte
and the Britannia.
‘There, my boy yonder are Old England's
wooden walls ; and so long as these last she
need fear no Frenchman.’
Poor man he spoke with his heart full of
Trafalgar, and Nelson, and Waterloo, and the
Corsican Usurper, and St. Helena. Little did
he think that the time would come when we
should call the wooden walls of Old England
mere “match-boxes.” But so it is, mutat terra
vices—‘the earth changes her shifts’—and verv
an Eventful Life. 35
queer shifts she sometimes has to make up her
mind to wear.
But this is no time to talk of shifts or match-
boxes. The anchor is weighed, and we are off.
Now we are outside the Breakwater, and the
Bnchantress makes such a bow to the sea that
she fairly dips her nose into the green waves.
I was not at all sick, and rather enjoying the
strange sight, when nurse’s voice cried, ‘Come
to your mamma, Master Teddy l’ and in a trice
her strong arms were round my body, and I
was dragged down below and put into a berth,
whence I did not emerge for several days.
A voyage has its nasty points—sea-sickness
being the nastiest of them—but it is not all
nasty. I remember trying to get out of the
dark cabin, and to crawl on deck, and how
nurse handed me back. My father and nurse
were both very ill, and continued so till we had
crossed the Bay of Biscay. Nurse was the first
to get her sea-legs and appetite, and then she
took me on deck. I remember the green, rolling
waves, and how we ran before the breeze, under
easy sail, across the dreaded bay. Then we
passed close to Madeira, whence, in the good old
days before emancipation and oidium, West
Indians got their wine—Tinta, Palhetino, Buol,
Sercial, and Malmsey—peace to your lees, you
36 Annals of
are extinct before the grape disease, just as
emancipation has destroyed your best customers
Teneriffe, too, we sighted, with its Peak, in the
shadow of which we sailed for hours. We ought
not to have seen it at all, Captain Spark said ;
and then came something out of his hare-lip,
a string of strange words, not one of which I
could understand then, though I have heard some
of them since.
‘What’s that the captain's telling you?' asked
nurse of the second mate, to whom a string of
these strange words had been just addressed.
‘Well, marm, you see that’s the way the
captain has of saying his prayers, and pretty
regularly he says them too.”
‘Why,” said nurse, ‘I thought no one said
their prayers more than twice a-day, but the
captain uses those words, or something like them,
at all hours of the day.”
“Very true, marm,” said the mate; ‘but you
see our captain is very religious—leastways, he
is almost always praying.’ -
What made Captain Spark say his prayers
so hard just then was, that he knew, on coming
on deck in the morning, that we were out of
our course, and ought never to have seen the
Peak of Teneriffe at all, and so he gave vent
to his devotions in a special service, intended
an Eventful Life. 37
for the eternal welfare of the second mate's eyes
and limbs, ultimately including his whole body,
and even his soul. The second mate had the
watch, and had suffered the helmsman to steer
a wrong course.
The course was soon set straight, for in spite
of his prayers and hare-lip, Captain Spark was
a thorough seaman, and had crossed the Atlantic
so often that he knew every whale and grampus
in it. We got a good “slant,' I think he called
it, and soon got into the Trades, which bore
the good ship merrily on. Then it was really
a happy time on board ship ; the sun was
very hot over head, but we lay under the awn-
ing and listened to the stories of the sailors,
who were busy mending sails. I remember well
their great needles, which they kept in rams'-
horns filled with grease.
The captain now seldom or ever said his
prayers, or if he said them it was in his own
cabin. My father and mother had long since
got over their sickness, and appeared on deck.
The baby crawled about, and we were all very
hungry at dinner-time. I forgot to say that
we had the whole ship to ourselves, and al-
together, though our life was dull, it was not
unpleasant. Every now and then Something
happened to stir us up. A thunderstorm at
38 Annals of
night—that was before Snow’s patent lightning
conductors—and I was not natural philosopher
enough then to know the danger which a ship
runs of being struck by lightning in mid-Ocean.
But I could see how grand and beautiful a
thunderstorm at sea is. We saw a water-spout,
too, and Captain Spark fired a gun at it and
broke it, and then he spluttered out an explana-
tion of its danger. We caught a shark with
a great hook baited with a bit of salt pork.
He was a big fellow who had followed the ship
for days, feeding on our offal. I believe he
knew as well as any one when we were going
to kill a pig. His love for salt pork proved fatal
to him; and there he flapped his tail on deck,
and grinned with his ugly mouth, till the car-
penter came with an axe and chopped his back
in two; and even then he wriggled and grinned
for a while. I beg leave so say that this was
not the shark that was found with a whole sol-
dier, musket and all, in his belly, but we did
find in him some of our dead fowls, which had
come to an untimely end, and also one of baby's
pinafores which had blown overboard, and been
Snapped up and swallowed. The fowls had
died by the pip or homesickness, and had been
tossed overboard. The sailors ate the shark, and
we tasted him, and I remember being told that
an Eventful Life. 39
it was like bad beef. And last, though not least,
We killed a pig once a-week.
That was an excitement which surpassed
thunderstorms, water-spouts, and sharks. In
my juvenile arithmetic, one pig-sticking was
worth twenty water-spouts, ten thunderstorms,
and five sharks. It began so early in the morn-
ing, and it lasted so long, quite up to supper-
time, if we reckon the satisfaction arising from
eating the flesh of the slain. Then it was as
good as thirty alarums. What family would
not be early risers if they killed a pig every
morning P. They couldn’t help it. I am sure
if the shark knew that a pig was going to be
killed, the pigs themselves knew what was about
to befall them. All through the night a pre-
sentiment of coming evil hung over the long-
boat in which they lived. They grunted a De
profundis porcorum, a low mass of the stye, about
midnight. About dawn the minds of the pig-
gies were made up as to the member of the
family about to be slain. I suppose they knew
their fattest, and could pick him out as well
as the butcher. There they stood all round him,
grunting a bass while the victim whined a treble.
At last the butcher looked into the long-boat,
knife in mouth. He leant over, and with both
hands felt them all round, while the concert
40 Annals of
continued in louder and louder strain. All at
once he made a dash at the victim and caught
him by the leg, while piggy laid hold of the
thwarts of the long-boat with his teeth. Now
the grunting, howling, groaning, and whining
are incessant. Pull, butcher pull, piggy 1 and
in the first encounter piggy wins. The butcher
falls head first into the long-boat, adds oaths—
strangely like Captain Spark’s prayers—to the
tumult, and, retires for awhile, only to return
with two strong sailors. They all climb over
into the boat; they all three seize piggy, who
howls and squeals, and kicks and bites. The
other pigs crowd round, Squealing, and biting the
calves of the assassins, who repay them with
kicks and curses. They drag their victim out
of the boat, hold him down over the gunwale,
and the butcher does the dreadful deed, while
piggy protests in the name of all porkdom
against this tyrannical exercise of the right of
the strongest.
Just so did poor Robert Blum, Mitglied der
Frankfürter National Versammlung, protest to
Field-Marshal Nugent, who was leading him off
to be shot on the glacis at Vienna, that he was
being shot in violation of all right and good
feeling; and just so did Nugent, like our butcher,
reply ‘Das ist nicht die Frage, mein lieber Herr"
an Eventful Life. 41
—“My good sir, that is not the question ;’ and
so with much clamour on the part of Blum, and
great bonhomie on the part of the Field-Mar-
shal, who went on smoking his cigar, ‘the
member of the Frankfort National Assembly’
passed out of this wicked world and was buried.
But to return to our pig. We did not bury
him, we ate him. Hardly had his last cries been
hushed when we had his fry at breakfast. Many
people do not like what they call “inwards.’ I do.
Liver and bacon are my delight; fagoto di vitello,
as they call it in Italy, where it is especially re-
commended for invalids; goose giblets, whether
in soup or pie ; I can even sympathise with that
clergyman in the fems who had three small
livings in those marshes, and used to ride about
and hold a full service in each every Sunday,
eating a bullock’s heart and currant jelly be-
tween each. But what is liver and bacon or
bullock's-heart to pig's-fry P Go on board ship
every one of you that refuse to believe this; be
awake for hours listening to the fearful din which
sounds the knell of a pig; pace the deck in the
fresh breeze for three quarters of an hour, wait-
ing for your breakfast after the deed is done,
and then dare to say that you do not like pig's-
fry when the steward's head emerges from the
companion, and utters the welcome word ‘Break-
42 Annals of
fast,’ and you rush down to find a dish of that
dainty smoking on the board.
On board the Enchantress we all liked pig's-
fry, and I am sure even baby would have eaten it
if he had been weaned.
So we sped along, and as we neared the
Antilles the sun grew hotter and the sea bluer,
and we met great beds of sea-weed, and saw
whales spouting, and grampuses blowing, and
turtles basking on the surface. Think of that,
Claw, Tooth, and Nail! Turtles basking, green-
fat, calipash and calipee, sunning itself into
maturity and flavour, all to grace your civic
feasts | Flying-fish sprang on board with their
strange flitting, something between a fish's leap
and a bat's flight, from one rolling wave to an-
other. Dolphins played alongside, and we
rigged out the ‘grains,” or dolphin striker, and,
with unerring aim, the boatswain launched it at
the unwary stranger, and there he was fast held
by rope and iron. Him, too, we hauled on board,
and there he lay with all his brilliant hues flash-
ing and changing in the sun, till at last they
faded away as a bright sunset dies away, and he
grew one dull uniform grey blue. Him, too, we
ate, after duly admiring him.
And now we fairly wished the voyage were
over. We were all very well,—so far, all the better
an Eventful Life. 43.
for our travels, but we longed to be on land, and
to stretch our legs. How glad, then, were we to
see land and to pass island after island, green
cones of verdure springing out of the blue sea, so
refreshing by their contrast to what the poets
call ‘the azure main.” So we ran on for a day or
two, till one morning Captain Spark, having taken
an observation, said that if nothing happened
we should sight St. Saccharissa by that time
to-morrow.
Now, reader, don’t rush off to your map of the
Caribbean Sea, and try to find that island. You
had better come along with me and let me show
it you, for to that island we are bound, and no
other.
It was called St. Saccharissa in the days of
King Charles II. of fast and loose memory, and
it was so called, when settled, in honour of
Waller's Saccharissa. If you are a High Church-
man you will, perhaps, protest that there is no
such saint as Saccharissa in the Bollandist col-
lection or that of Surius, and that you cannot
find her name with a red letter in any calendar,
which protest I duly note and meet by another.
In no calendar that I know of is our Charles I.
a saint, and yet that Chapel at Tunbridge Wells,
which lies in three parishes and two counties,
and which was built when Charles II. was king,
44 Annals of
was dedicated to Saint Charles the Martyr.
Well! just in the same way was Saccharissa
sainted, and her worship still survives, while that
of Charles I. has faded. She is the patron saint
of sugar, white and brown, revered in all mur-
series, remembered on all twelfth-cakes, adored
in Scotch Sweeties, sugar-plums, barley-sugar,
Sugar-candy, lemon-rock, and all lozenges.
Rightly, then, was she canonized, and well
named was our sugar island after Saccharissa, for
its yield of Saccharine matter was most abundant.
The captain was as good as his word—may,
better. At daybreak we sighted St. Saccharissa,
and, running down from windward before a good
trade-wind, about noon we doubled one horn of a
deep horseshoe bay, and there, right before us,
lay Princetown, the capital of the island. We
stood in, and cast anchor about half a mile from
land; but even before we were fast to the land
we were surrounded by a small fleet of boats,
manned by negroes, and steered by whites and
mulattos.
“All as black as a coal, ma'am,” I heard nurse
say to my mother, who was busy below. “And
a-most naked.”
My father was on deck, and soon made the
acquaintance of his island merchants, who sold
him salt-fish and farine and ale-wives to feed his
Cl/? Eventful Life. 45
slaves, and lumber and hogsheads and puncheons
for his estate, and sugar and rum. A canny Scot,
who knew well, not only how to make both ends
meet, but to lap over ! His manager, too, was
there, who had been old Colonel Ratoon’s right
hand, and who now came to see his new master.
Two Rivers was on the westward side of the
island, and so he had sighted the Enchantress
almost as soon as we made the land; and, getting
into his gig, had driven into town post-haste.
So here we were at St. Saccharissa, and the
next thing was to land. There was leave-taking
of Captain Spark, who put us ashore again in his
gig ; and this time we were not drenched to the
skin. But my father had not nearly seen the last
of him, for the Enchantress was half-full of his
machinery. All this time—I beg the Scotch engi-
neer's pardon, and the skilled mechanics’ too — I
had forgotten to speak of them. But this is in
their favour; for had they made themselves very
disagreeable, they would have been on my mind.
The fact was, we saw little of them. They lived
in the fore-cabin by themselves. At first they
were very miserable; but afterwards they bright-
ened up, and on week-days sang songs, and on
Sundays psalms; but my mother used to say the
week-day tunes and the Sabbath tunes were all so
alike that she would not have known whether it
46 Annals of
was a profane or a spiritual song that was being
droned out, had it not been for the day of the
week. We left them behind in the ship to look
after the landing of the machinery in open
boats. The sailors gave way, the captain steered,
and in ten minutes he uttered the well-known
word, ‘Bow !” Up sprang the bowman, and
grasped his boat-hook. In another second, “Oars!’
followed; they were lifted aloft, and laid under
the gunwale ; the keel grated on the yellow
sand of that tideless bay. A gang of negroes
dashed into the serf and laid hold of the painter,
and hauled us up nearly high and dry. Some
of us jumped and some of us were lifted out,
and there at last stood the heads of the family
of Halfacre on the shore of St. Saccharissa.
an Eventful Life. 47
CHAPTER W.
HOW WIE LIVED IN THE WEST INDIES.
As this is a story written more of my manhood
than my childhood, I am not going to bore you
with any of my performances as an infant
prodigy. We must get on. There is much to
tell; and this whole book is more my life in
glimpses than a biography chapter and verse.
Where were we? Yes | landed in St. Saccharissa
on the beach. The town of Princetown | Such
a Princetown l Nature had made the bay lovely,
and man made it hideous. The town of Prince-
town was one long, straggling, circular street,
following the horseshoe of the bay. On the side
of this thoroughfare facing the sea, or rather
turning their backs on the sea, which Smiled
at the insult out of its blue dimples, were
stores and wharves, piles of lumber—that is,
Canadian timber, hogsheads of salt fish, pun-
cheons of rum, and puncheons of oats; jetties
that had not the courage to run far out into the
Sea, flagstaffs, cocoa-nut trees, mangoes. That side
48 Annals of
of the street was given up to the merchants—
to the Bourgeoisie, as the planters would have
called them—to shopkeepers, in short—to owners
of dry-goods’ stores, who sold everything. On
the other side of the street were the town-houses
of the planters—of the aristocracy of the island,
whose ancestors held town ‘lots,’ and had built
houses on them. And very good houses too ! To
the town lot of Colonel Ratoon we were now led.
Fancy Squire Halfacre, of Halfacre Hall, War-
wickshire, being led to a town-house at Prince-
town, in the island of St. Saccharissal But no one
could say it was not an excellent house. Even
nurse and the valet and Mrs. Earl, my mother's
maid, confessed it was big enough. True, nurse
said it would be a mercy if baby didn’t catch his
death of cold in a house which had no windows
on one side. This was nurse’s ignorance. She
did not know that at St. Saccharissa the wind
always blows one way, except in a hurricane;
and so a house needs no glass, but only shutters
or blinds—jealousies, we used to call them—on
the other. It was all of wood too; and there
were cockroaches and mosquitoes; but we did
not find these out till night—or rather it was
they that found us out. We all ought to have
let down our mosquito nets; but no one told us
to do so, and so the next morning my father and
an Eventful Life. 49
mother looked as if they had the Smallpox; the
baby’s eyes were bunged up ; my lips had been
gnawed by a cockroach ; and as for Mrs. Earl, she
declared her complexion would never recover the
attacks of the invaders. B–s and fleas she
had heard of; but ‘them nasty flying things,
she couldn’t abide them.”
But the house was a good one. There were
galleries, and verandahs, and splendid bath-
rooms, and round it was a garden planted with
choice trees. A little way behind it the ground
rose rapidly, and ran, if I may so speak, up hill,
as though it were afraid of the dancing surf, a
hundred yards off. I am afraid to say that I
think Colonel Ratoon's lot was unhealthy. We
were none of us well when we got up; and, warned
in time, my father called in the Dr. Mindererus of
Princetown, an old army surgeon, who was fire-
rum-and-fever-proof. He had a queer mode of
expressing himself, but he knew well what he
was about. After my mother had stated all our
ailments, the doctor said:
‘It’s my opeenion’—here he snuffed the air
audibly once or twice, as if challenging the fever
to do battle. ‘It’s my opeenion that there's just
no spot in the king's domeenions where a man
might catch Yellow Fever more easily than this.
Just look, there’s an open town-drain right in
WOL. I. E -
50 Annals of
front, and between the house and the hull there’s
a hollow that catches the water and makes a
swamp, and across that swamp the land breeze
blows at night right into the house, and makes
it a fever-trap. Many a night I’ve spent here with
Colonel Ratoon, and many a jorum of sangaree
we drank, and many a game of picquet we have
played here together; but we two were the only
whites who slept a week in the house without
catching fever. I do not say Yellow Fever at
first, but all marsh-fevers in Princetown turn
to Yellow. Now I am left, and the colonel is
gone, and I advise you to go too.”
‘Go!’ said my mother, who thought the
doctor wished to frighten her out of the house;
‘where should we go?”
‘To Two Rivers, to be sure. There has never
been Yellow Fever, or any other fever, on that
estate that I heard of. The house stands on a
cliff, a ridge between two streams which tho-
roughly drain the land, and close to the house
the ridge breaks off into a bluff over the sea,
sheer down three hundred feet or more. Go at
once to Two Rivers.”
“But why should we go so soon?’ urged my
mother, who wished to get settled a little before
she took another flight.
‘Why, because women are slow and fevers
an Eventful Life. 51
quick in this country. All women want spurring
here, but no rein will hold a fever. Cast your
eyes over the way to neighbour M'Culloch's store.
One of the articles he keeps constantly on hand,
and advertises weekly in the ‘Princetown Ga-
zette’ are English elm coffins. Coffins of all sizes,
for all ages. Baby-coffins and men-coffins. This
is a country, Mrs. Halfacre, where a child is
born at dawn, and both mother and babe are
buried at sunset. Nothing is lazy in this land
of the sun except new-comers, and they some-
times lay their bones in Princetown while they
are making their plans for going up the country.”
And with these words the doctor turned on
his heel, went down the gallery, mounted his
American pacer, and ambled off in the broiling
noonday Sun.
‘I don’t believe a word he says. He only
wants to frighten us,’ said my mother. But my
father knew better. That first morning, when
mosquito-stung he could take no rest, he had
risen at cockcrow, and gone to see Colonel
Ratoon's grave in Princetown Churchyard. He
found it, and read the slab in memory of ‘Colonel
Ratoon, late Commander of His Majesty’s 2nd
Regiment of Foot. One of the survivors of the
St. Domingo and Walcheren Expeditions, who,
after a glorious career in the Peninsular War,
52 Annals of -
retired to his estates in this island, where he
died at the good old age of seventy-seven, in
the year of our Lord 182–.’ ‘A good old age,’
, thought my father; ‘seventy-seven seven years
more than the Psalmist allowed. The colonel,
I have heard, was a free liver. With care a man
might live to ninety in this island.’
Then he turned to other graves, and read,
‘Sir Fretful Firebrand, late Governor of this
island, greatly distinguished as a naval com-
mander during the late war, in which he fought
the famous action of the Daredevil against the
Snapping Turtle, who was prematurely cut off
by fever in the second year of his governorship,
and the fifty-second year of his age.’
Then his eye fell on another; ‘Sir Anthony
Quibble, late Chief Justice of this island and
the islands of Manakoo and Agouti; whose
legal talents procured him this appointment, in
which, however, fate did not suffer him to develop
them. Cut off by fever within a year of his
landing, in the forty-third year of his age.’
On the same stone was carved, “And to
Lady Quibble, relict of the above, who died of
Fever, having survived her husband six months.”
A little further on was a stone in memory
of the ‘wife and six children of David McCrosky,
Esq., Merchant in Princetown, who died in one
an Eventful Life. 53.
week during the recent outbreak of Yellow Fever
in this island.”
Py this time my father's curiosity was satis-
fied. It was time for breakfast. The sun was
hot, so he put up his umbrella, and went home,
thinking how odd it was that Colonel Ratoon
should have lived till seventy-seven.
This graveyard visit was still in his mind
when the doctor came ; and when the doctor
went my father was quite ready to go to Two
Rivers. He had his way without frightening
my mother very much. The doctor’s opinion,
he assured her, was not to be despised. The
sooner we got up to Two Rivers the better. It
was but a drive. We would go that very after-
noon, when the Sun was not so hot.
So we started. My father drove my mother
in a gig, and the manager drove my mother’s
maid and nurse and the children in a sort o
American waggon, called a ‘Deerborne.” As for
the valet, he was mounted on the doctor's pacer,
who kindly lent him for the occasion. Alongside
of each carriage ran a stout negro lad to show
the way, whose language and gesticulations were
most amusing. -
* Oh, Massa Halfacre New Massa Halfacre
stop bit ! Massa’s buckra servant no sit right
in him stirrup. Him toe turn out like Jack
54 Annals of
Spaniard. Him nebber ride a race, and nebber
win one.’
All this was addressed to my father by the
sable pair of running footmen to induce him to
wait for the unhappy valet, whose knowledge of
horsemanship was derived from seeing the North
Warwickshire hounds throw off at Halfacre
Gorse. - -
At last the procession started at no great
pace. The road was not bad as a road; but
then it was never level. It was all ups and
downs, and very steep ones too, rising and falling
one in twenty, and taking all manner of curves
round bluffs overhanging the sea. To creep
round these bluffs, where the great rolling spurs
that ran down from the backbone of the
mountain which filled the centre of the island
broke short off at the sea-coast, was the great
object of the road-maker. The face of the bluff
had been cut off into a groove or notch; and
along this, with a cliff on one side sheer down
into the sea, and a steep wall of earth on
the other, our procession passed. My mother
shut her eyes, and so did nurse and her maid.
The manager was quite cool, and so was my
father, whose theory was that a road by which
every one went every day must be safe on any
given day for any given person. As for the
an Eventful Life. 55.
unhappy valet he had long before the first bluff
given over the guidance of his steed to one of
our Sable footmen, who was delighted to show
‘massa's serbant’ the way to ‘Two Ribber.’
Sometimes he led him quite close to the cliff,
and kept him with one leg dangling over the
precipice. As for the horse it was used to the
work—as Sure-footed as a goat and as quiet as a
lamb. There was no danger therefore, except in
the valet's imagination; but that was quite enough
to make him shiver and shake in his saddle.
‘Oh,' said his tormentor, “massa Serbant got
de feber. Him come on so wid a shake and a
shibber. Stop bit; next works I get massa's
serbant a glass of new rum. Noting stop feber
so soon as new rum.’ And, true to his word,
at the next estate round the bluff he begged a
bottle of rum in my father's name, out of which
he gave the valet a glass, which scorched his
throat like liquid fire. The rest the rogue put
away in his capacious pocket. -
. So we wound slowly on round bluff after
bluff; till at last, after some twelve miles or so,
which seemed at least twenty to the rest of the
party, and a whole eternity to the unhappy Valet,
the manager called out to my father, who was in
front, to stop ; and then, pointing across a wide
valley to the next ridge and bluff, said:
56 Annals of
‘There you see Two Rivers.’ . .
Of course, as the second river was on the other
side of the ridge, we could not see it; but the one
on this was a fine mountain stream, which came
rushing down the hill at the top of the valley,
which gradually widened as it neared the sea, and
at last spread out into a broad Savannah or pas-
ture. All up the hill, on each side of the valley,
the soil was scored and trenched for sugar-canes,
and the young crop looked green and lovely after
the rains. -
On the ridge, as I have already said, stood the
house,_the ‘Great House,’ as it was called,—of
Two Rivers, and towards it we slowly made our
way down the ridge on this side, across the river
at a ford full of stones, which afforded new fun to
Sambo and new terror to the valet, then up the
valley to the tail of the ridge, and then along the
crest of the ridge itself, through an avenue of
cocoa-nut trees, till we stood before the house in
which Colonel Ratoon had lived and died.
I am sure I cannot tell whether at that mo-
ment my father thought it worth his while to
have come so far. Whether it occurred to him
that he would have been just as much owner of
Two Rivers had he stayed quietly at home at
Halfacre Hall and been master of his West Indian
estate by deputy. But whatever his thoughts
an Eventful Life. 57
and feelings, like a wise man he kept them to
himself, and merely handed my mother out of
the gig, saying, ‘Welcome, my dear, to Two
Rivers.”
At the doorway swarmed a host of negroes—
house servants busy doing nothing, and taking
stock of their new owners. First and foremost
was an old grizzle-headed fellow named Endea-
vour, who belied his name, seeing that he endea-
voured to do nothing except to stand and snigger
at the new comers.
By this time the manager had come up in the
deerborne, and he broke the ice by calling out—
‘Here, you, Endeavour, Jackson, Peggy, and the
rest of you, why don’t you help your new mistress
out of the gig, and those children?” - -
This was the signal for Endeavour to speak.
‘Hi, Massa Manager,’ he retorted, ‘sure we wait
for Manager to help Massa out. What we see Massa
Manager do, we do too. We 'fraid to do anyting
widout Massa order. Den why hurry Massa
Halfacre P Massa Ratoon always say, “Nebber
hurry, Endeavour; try not to hurry; de day is
long enough for de work.” So we got into de
way of nebber hurrying in the ole Massa's time,
and we hab no time to learn to hurry yet in new
Massa’s time.” -
After delivering this splendid defence of idle
58 Annals of
ness ore rotundo, Endeavour went up to my father,
and said:
‘How you do, Sare? I hope you quite well
after de vºyage, and n’ung Missis and the picca-
ninnies.’
My father thanked him in all our names, and
bade him lead the way into the house.
So into the house the whole train went. The
whites or buckras first, and then the blacks.
Nurse holding up her hands at their number, and
wondering how much a-week it cost to keep all
them niggers on board wages. The vestibule was
a spacious hall of Bermuda cedar, paved with
marble which Colonel Ratoon had sent for from
the Levant. In the midst was a fountain which
threw up a jet of water, and in and out of the
‘jealousies' flitted humming-birds, while the
green lizards looked down in their sidelong,
curious way, as if they quite understood that
a new owner was coming into possession.
an Eventful Life. 59
CEIAPTER WI.
FIOW WB LIVED AT TWO RIVERS.
Two RIVERS was really a lovely spot, shaded by
trees of all kinds; for Colonel Ratoon had lived
in the good old times when brown sugar was
eighteenpence a-pound. He was without chick
or child, and was free to follow his fancy. As we
have seen, he imported marble from the Levant,
and so, too, he brought nutmegs from the Moluccas,
bread-fruit from Otaheite, betel-palms from
Madras—in fact, all kinds of rare shrubs and
trees grew thickly about that ridge. Then there
were the trees of the country : cocoanut, palm,
tamarind, mango, huge plum-trees, Indian figs,
hard woods, greenheart, locust, and mahogany.
Great creepers; all the passion-flowers, from the
huge grenadilla down to the tiniest passiflora.
Over head, by day, soared the man-of-war bird,
a kind of albatross, and lower down flew wild
pigeons and ring-doves. The eaves of the house
were lined with humming-birds’ nests, much in
the same way as our martin builds at home; and
60 Annals of
here, too, was the perpetual swallow. If the scene
was gay by day, it was more brilliant by night.
As soon as the sun fell—and in those islands
he literally falls; he does not set or sink; he rushes
to his rest in the ocean as though worn out with
his hot day’s work, and, as Coleridge says:
“At one step comes the night'—
then the landscape was lit by countless fire-flies,
chiefly of two kinds: the lesser winking and
twinkling in their light, starting in fitful radiance
from every branch; the larger flying straight
through the air with a fixed glare—insect me-
teors—till they rested amid the leaves and veiled
their light. To a child who had nothing to think
of except objects of sense, Two Rivers was an
earthly paradise, and I for one am much obliged
to Colonel Ratoon for making my father his heir,
and so bringing me to St. Saccharissa.
The people, too, the slaves, were good people.
Grown children, black Irishmen, call them
anything you please that expresses cleverness and
carelessness. How should it be otherwise? They
were well fed, well clothed, and not over-worked.
There was a hospital on the estate, and a doctor
who lived in it. A church, too, which Colonel
Ratoon had built, and in which the headmen of
the estate appeared every Sunday in far better
an Eventful Life. 61
garb than my father. Black “pants,’ as the
Americans call them, and blue coats, and brass
buttons, was the correct dress. Even at this
distance of time it makes me laugh and melt
away, to think how hot our headmen looked
sitting up prim in church, as stiff as pokers;
while we were all thinly clad in gingham and
nankeen. All this came of their pig and their
provision-grounds, out of their pork and their
yams, and tanias and cassava, which they grew
at extra hours, and then sent off by their wives
to town to sell. Did they never buy their free-
dom. P. Very seldom. Sometimes a Brutus would
arise who scorned broadcloth and brass buttons
on Sunday, and cherry brandy at Christmas.
He would save up his money and buy his freedom
at a valuation. What became of him P. First of
all, he was called a ‘Willyforce nigger’ by his old
friends. In my days there was no worse term of
reproach. It meant a drone among hired
workers; a good-for-nothing fellow who loafed
about the wharves, and only worked for the
shipping when hunger drove him. If he had
saved enough to do so, besides buying himself he
bought another slave. To set him free ? By no
means. To make him work, and get all he could
out of him. Such ‘Willyforce niggers’ were
always the worst masters.
62 Annals of
The Dissenters? Oh! I have forgotten them.
Well, in our time, they did no harm. It was
before emancipation had made them powerful
and revolutionary. A Jamaica estate was still
worth having. Many of our people were Dis-
senters, and there was a Baptist chapel down
near the works, which was well attended; but it
was considered by all the fashionable part of the
community the right thing to go to church with
I\la,SS&l. -
English ideas of slavery are unfortunately
taken from Cuba and the United States, where it
was the interest of owners to work their slaves to
death in order to save the expense of supporting
them in old age. But this is to confound the
slave-trade with slavery. After the exertions of
Clarkson and Wilberforce had been crowned with
success, it was the interest of no West Indian pro-
prietor to over-work his slaves; on the contrary,
he had everything to gain by taking the greatest
care of them. To me, who went constantly
among them, they seemed as happy as birds.
They were always singing, and their Crop Over
Festival was a far more heartfelt rejoicing than
so many of our mock Harvest Homes. On those
occasions every man, woman, and child that could
crawl, walk, or creep, came up to the ‘great
house,’ clad in their best—the men in broadcloth
an Eventful Life. 63
and brass buttons,—those who could afford it; the
rest in drill or pilot cloth. The women in the
gayest cotton prints, their heads tastefully tied
with Madras handkerchiefs. They marched to
an awful music, far exceeding anything that our
marrow-bones and cleavers could ever perform.
It was a mingling of tom-toms and conches, huge
shells which, when properly played by Tritons,
may be very melodious, but which, with a ne-
gro's breath in them, utter a most unearthly
sound. It beats, in fact, any of those German
bands which make the squares of the metropolis
hideous in the summer months. Those were the
male performers; the women had “shake-shakes,’
as they called them, gourds or calabashes, filled
with small round red seeds with black eyes.
Each of them, like a grain of powder, as Cole-
ridge says of Frenchmen, was contemptible, but
five hundred ‘shake-shakes all shaken at once,
let me tell you, produced a dry, hoarse sound,
something like the crash which Virgil describes
as issuing from the Italian hills when the dry
boughs and leaves were stirred by the coming
storm.
Strange to say that, with all this savage min-
strelsy, this confusion of Sea, and land, and air,
which they called music, they had excellent ears.
No one could sing better wild minor strains,
64 Annals of
snatches of joy from the heart of Africa; no one
than a negro could improvise a better Fescennine
ballad on the peculiarities of an owner, a
manager, an overseer, or a governor. Let any
one do the wrong thing, and his false step was
handed about the island in biting verses, which
were sung at their work in the fields by the
‘great gang,” the able-bodied part of the people,
or over the steaming cane-juice in the boilers, or
at night in the negro-houses around the Savoury
stew.
They had no great crimes. Murders and lesser
enormities were so rare as to be almost unknown.
They would pilfer from their master, steal his
fruit, or the contents of his larder at night, but
robbery with violence was never heard of. No 1
the great crimes in St. Saccharissa were com-
mitted by whites, and generally by soldiers. As
when the adjutant of His Majesty’s Regi-
ment was shot by a sentry, much in the same
way as soldiers shoot their officers in India now,
and the Sentry was sentenced to be hanged. The
execution created quite a sensation in the island.
It was ever so long since a man had been hanged,
and the negroes said, ‘Hang a white buckra P
Stop a bit; we shall see l’ By which they meant
that no white man would ever be hanged, what-
ever he might do. But the sentry was hanged,
an Eventful Life. 65
though not without difficulty. If there are no
executions in a community there can be no exe-
cutioner. The honourable profession of Jack
Retch becomes extinct, and dies like a fire for
want of fuel. In a word, the man was to be
hanged, and there was no one to hang him. Old
McCrosky was sheriff, and it seemed as though
he would have the task on his own hands. So he
set out on a tour of the island to find a negro
who would do the deed for a consideration. -
Now, at Two Rivers lived, I am sorry to
say, the worst character in the whole island.
I see him now, tall, and lithe, and strong as
a betel-palm. His name was Mercury, and he
was well named after the God of Thieves. He
had once set fire to a megass-house, that is, a
house full of dried canes, after they have passed
through the mill, and are then stored up for
fuel. Once, too, he had taken another man out
to fish with him, and upset the boat and swam
on shore. True, when he reached the land, he
swam back again and saved the life of his
enemy, who was clinging to the boat. When
asked why he did it, he only said:
‘Massa, dat only a bit fun; Sambo too plenty
' coward, so me upset de boat just to make him
tink de ground-shark bite him toe off!”
That, therefore, might have been merely a
WOL. I. F.
66 Annals of
‘freak of graceful folly;' but, somehow or other,
the general verdict of the estate was against
Mercury. If a fowl was lost, it was laid at
Mercury's door. If a heifer fell over the cliff
and broke her neck, the watchman, who ought
to have looked after her, simply said:
“Ah ! massa, dis all dat Mercury work.’
If a pig were choked when tethered by its
leg, it was Mercury. In vain he pleaded that
the Manakoo, or opossum, had run off with the
fowl; or that it was the watchman's fault ; or
that the pig had throttled himself. It would
not do. Public opinion was against Mercury,
and the blame was laid on him.
So as Mercury's fame had spread all through
the island as a dare-devil, old McCrosky’s gig
was seen climbing the ridge when the execu-
tion was about a week off; and in due time he
made his appearance in the marble portico,
wiping his face and head, for the sun was
hot.
‘Good-days’ having been exchanged, and sang-
aree ordered in, McCrosky’s errand came out.
“I suppose you know, Mr. Halfacre, that
your Mercury is the worst character in the
island. I have come to ask you to lend him
me for a day.”
‘Well!” said my father, ‘I hear every one
an Eventful Life. 67
say so ; but I have been here too short a time
to find out his wickedness.’
‘You may be sure there's never a bit of
roguery dome ten miles round that Mercury
has not his hand in it. Who but he, I should
like to know, stole your lumber last week in
the bay ?’
“I should very much like to know,” replied
my father, “but I can’t see any proof that
Mercury stole it. . He said most likely it was
swept out of the bay by the current, and that
it would be found somewhere to leeward.”
‘Yes, he has always an excuse; but will
you lend him me for a day ?’
‘Yes, if he is willing to go; and if you will
tell me what work you mean him to do.’
‘Well, the fact is, I am Sheriff; and Stook
the sentry, who shot the adjutant, must be
hanged, and I am afraid, unless you lend me
Mercury to be executioner, I shall have to hang
the fellow myself.”
‘I don’t like it at all,” said my father;
“but as I have said Mercury shall go if he is
willing. We will send for him and ask him.
Meanwhile, send your horse and gig to the
stable ; finish your Sangaree, and let's have a
game of billiards.’
So Mercury was sent for, and, strange to say,
68 Annals of
quickly found. Of course it was said that he
was only logking about the house to see what
he could lay hands on. In any one else such
readiness would have been praised as that of a
man attending to his work. So great a mis-
fortune is it to have a bad name, that one's very
virtues are made out to be vices.
Well, in stalked Mercury into the portico,
a perfect model. He might have been done in
ebony for a Pantheon where all the gods were
sable. One had only to glance at him to see
that he was born to be a poacher—to levy black
mail. In Africa he would have been a mighty
chief; here he was only a fisherman by pro-
fession, and a thief by repute.
So there he stood, confronting my father
and the Sheriff, nothing doubting that Massa
McCrosky was come to bring some charge
against him. -
‘Well, Mercury,” said my father, ‘the Sheriff
has come—’
‘Yes, massa,’ broke in Mercury.
* Hear me out, Mercury, the Sheriff has
nothing against you. He only wants me to
lend you to him to do a day’s work; and I
have said he shall have you if you are willing
to go. He will pay you well?’ added my father,
interrogatively to the Sheriff.
an Eventful Life. 69
‘Oh, certainly, certainly,” said Mr. McCrosky.
‘It shall be worth a guinea to him.’
In those days, I may say, hanging was so
cheap in the mother-country that a guinea was
thought extra-pay for a West Indian Calcraft.
‘Aguinea, massal ’said Mercury. “Dat berry
good pay; but what for Massa Crosky pay so
high for borrowing dis nigger to work, when
last time I see Massa Crosky he say: “Get out
o’ de way, you blackguard, who nebber do a
day’s work in him life l’’’
This blow rather staggered Mr. McCrosky,
and so my father went on :
‘Why, you see, Mercury, Mr. McCrosky is
Sheriff.”
‘I know dat too well, massa; he often put
me in de stocks,’ said Mercury.
‘You see he is Sheriff, and Private Stook
is to be hanged; and if the Sheriff can’t get
some one to hang him, he must hang him with his
own hands; and so he has come to ask me to lend
you for the execution, and I have said you may
go if you are willing, and if you go you will
get a guinea.’
I was but a small boy then, only between
six and seven, but crossing the sea had opened
my eyes wonderfully, and my mind had grown
a good deal on the food it had taken in at the
70 Annals of
eyes and ears; for the eyes and ears are the
mouths of the mind, and that is why the mind
grows so fast, because it has four mouths to feed
it. I was but a small boy, but if I lived to be
a small boy again, and had any memory left,
I should never forget how god-like Mercury grew
at this proposition. Not Jove and Juno to-
gether could have been more indignant. His
chest heaved ; he turned almost blue—lobster-
blue—with anger ; he glared fiercely at the
Sheriff, and said: • *
‘Massa Halfacre, you good massa; leastwise
you not here long enough for me to find out
you bad. Me know Massa Crosky; some tink
him good, some bad; Mercury tink him bad,
'cause he nebber kind to Mercury, and nebber
gib him one lilly stampee at Christmas. Me
teef, berry true, me teef sometime ; me take
tongue out of massa’ larder when me hungry.
When me catch, say dozen mullet, me sometime
say me only catch six. Me drink new rum when
I see it. Ebery nigger 'xposed to de Wedder
drink new rum. It good 'gainst de caugh.
Dey say me burn down megass house, steal fowl,
pig, eberyting. Dey lie; Mercury can’t steal
eberyting,-his hand not reach so far. If he steal
fowl, what he do wid de fedder; if he steal pig,
what for pig make no moise. But me teef; berry
an Eventful Life. 71
well, me teef; but me no hangman. Massa
Sheriff, hab your guinea you self. Hang buckra
soldier you self. One buckra hang anodder
buckra; berry fine sight. Massa Halfacre gib
us all half-holiday to go into Princetown to
see de sight.”
And so saying, he strode out of the portico,
sat down under a huge tamarind-tree, and be-
gan mending a net. -
‘You see, Sheriff,” said my father, ‘it’s no
use. I could never force one of my people to
do such a thing against his will.’
So the Sheriff rode round the island, and
could find no one bad enough to be hangman.
Nor would he have escaped the dirty work him-
self, had he not sent a schooner up to Barbadoes,
and brought down the greatest ruffian in His
Majesty’s Regiment, who for ten shillings
and a bottle of rum was willing to lend a hand in
hanging Private Stook.
72. Annals of
CEIAPTER WII.
How WE STAYED IN THE WEST INDIES.
I wonDER you have never asked how the vacuum-
pans, and cane-crushers, and crystallisers, and
engineer, and skilled mechanics succeeded. You
had better ask first what they cost. Of course
they cost something. Messrs. Nail and Screw
were not fond of doing their work for nothing,
and I think I may say that this expensive
machinery swallowed up, what with first cost,
freight, and fitting, more than one year's income
from the estate of Two Rivers. The skilled
mechanics departed to their own place, perhaps
hotter even than the island of Saccharissa, and
they went there very quickly under the influence of
rum and loose living. The Scotch engineer took
his money, and saved it, and went to the Spanish
Main, where, I have no doubt, he is still saving
money and setting up machinery, if he is alive.
But alas! after he and the skilled mechanics
had gone their ways, there was no one who
understood their handiwork. Of course the old
an Eventful Life. 73
manager and overseers were dead against the new
fangle. Vacuum-pans, and condensers, and crys-
tallisers succeed admirally now-a-days no doubt,
because every one understands them ; but it was
my father's fate to be the first in the field with
Nail and Screw's patents, and the result was a
dead failure. It is not always the early bird
that gets the worm, and still less the worm of
the still. So the vacuum-pans had soon holes
burnt in their bottoms, and were got out with
infinite trouble and expense, and thrown on one
side to rot and rust in the bay. The condensers
and steam centrifugal pumps blew up one fine
morning, and nearly killed the overseer, and
shattered the boiler-house to atoms. And last
of all,—ungrateful implement that it was l—the
cane-crusher stopped all at once one night, with
its maw full of canes, which it refused to mas-
ticate. It had got hopelessly jammed and
clogged, and would crush nothing but itself. Of
course we only wanted a Scotch engineer or a
skilled mechanic to set matters right, but, as I
have explained, we could not have them. So
bit by bit the whole of the new machinery was
condemned as worse than useless, and cast aside.
I have heard it said that the head boiler—a
man, and not a vessel—had climbed up and let
a screwdriver fall down among the cogs of the
74 Annals of
cane-crusher, and so jammed and clogged it;
and I believe it of this benighted boiler, because
I have heard of the same thing among our
intelligent skilled mechanics at home, who look
upon a new machine with just the same eye of
aversion as their uneducated black brother did
forty years ago in the island of St. Saccharissa.
But this waste of money was only the beginning
of trouble. One year's income was thrown away
On that machinery, as well as all Colonel Ratoon's
balance at Short, Ready, and Stump's bank. But
after it came what were called measures for the
“Amelioration of the Condition of the Slaves in
His Majesty’s West Indian Colonies.” Measures
which did little to ameliorate the condition of
the slave, but everything to deteriorate the
position of the planter. What with reduced
hours of labour, and the care of old, young, and
sick; what with churches, and doctors, and pro-
tectors of slaves—a sort of moral exciseman,
always poking his nose in where he was not
wanted, and expecting Sangaree at luncheon, and
to be asked to stay to dinner, and take a bed—
I say, what with all this, the margin of profit
on producing sugar grew less and less. But
worse remained. Other countries became Sugar-
growing and sugar-competing for the Sweet tooth
of the world; Mauritius, Java, and the East
an Eventful Life. 75
Indies. With unlimited labour in India, for
instance, West India sugar was undersold ; and
though the planters of St. Saccharissa and the
other islands swore that what came from the
East Indies as sugar was not sugar at all; just
as a late lamented Master of Trinity laid it down
that bitter beer was not beer; somehow or other,
the world thought it sugar, just as they are
stupid enough to think bitter beer beer. They
sweetened their tea with it, sugared Twelfth
Cakes with it, used the sham and the reality
with equal impartiality, according as one was
cheaper than the other, and the result was that
clayed Muscovados fell about one third in price.
|Put this fall had another result. You re-
member that notice of Claw, Tooth, and Nail,
that when they came ‘under advances’ their
commission rose to twenty per cent each way.
Few incomes or estates can stand forty per cent
deduction. Yet this was what happened to Two
Rivers. Claw, Tooth, and Nail did “come under
advances” in the second year of my father’s
ownership, and they charged forty per cent; for,
though they would have repudiated the notion of
being usurers, and Mr. Claw would have scouted
the notion, that was what their commission came
to at the end of the year. They received all my
father's sugar and rum and sold it at twenty per
76 Annals of
cent commission, and they sent him out all
manner of things which he wanted and did not
want for working the estate. They even gave
Nail and Screw another large order for ma-
chinery, which arrived in due course, and which
was sent up to Two Rivers in a coasting ves-
sel at infinite expense, and landed at the risk
of many lives through a tumbling surf, and was
never put up, but lay rotting and rusting because
it was before its age, and St. Saccharissa produced
no skilled mechanics. From advances they got
to a mortgage, the interest and compound interest
on which soon swallowed up the little profit that
remained after the Orders in Council and the
Equalisation of the Sugar Duties; and so there
was my poor father in the West Indies, with the
Two Rivers Estate like a millstone round his neck,
still trying to work it, for he was loth to aban-
don it, and each year getting deeper and deeper
into the spider web of Claw, Tooth, and Nail.
You will understand now how lucky it was
that my father did not tie himself to a day as
to his return, and that my mother went with
him. You will remember, too, how time slips
away, even to the owner of a mortgaged estate;
and how it was that one fine day Aunt Man-
deville wrote a letter, spitting fire and flame
even after being cooled on its way across the
an Eventful Life. 77
Atlantic, to remind my parents that I was now
nine years old, and asking why the promise given
that I should belong to her at eight had not been
fulfilled.
I do not mean you to think that was the only
letter she wrote. She often wrote, and we often
wrote to her. Tike a sensible woman she was
always urging my father to throw the whole
thing up, and return to Halfacre Hall, and end
his days under his Warwickshire oaks among the
green rolling fields. Sometimes she sent him
the Meets of Hounds to make him long for home,
and he sighed, when we were broiling, to think
that the meets were-Monday, Halfacre Gorse;
Wednesday, Brinklow Tumulus; Friday, Stone-
leigh Park. But, like many others, my father
did not know when to make a loss. Hard is it
to know when to take a gain, but harder still to
make up your mind not to continue any longer
throwing good money after bad.
As for me, it was felt that the fatal day had
arrived; if I was to belong to Aunt Mandeville
home I must go. In fact, we ought all to have
gone home : my mother was willing, but my
father would not. My mother's heart yearned
for her other children; but when she spoke of
them my father would talk of having my eldest
brother out, before he went to Cambridge, that he
78 Annals of
might see the world. How much of the world
he was likely to see on the Atlantic, or in St.
Saccharissa, I decline to say.
But as for me, home I must go; there was no
blinking the question. It seemed to be now or
never. Of course I was sorry to part with them;
how can you ask such an unfeeling question ?
Every well-behaved child is sorry to leave its
father and mother—most of all its mother. But
the mind of man is full of mixed motives; there
is dross in the purest gold of our nature. Every
child likes change ; and so, when the first shock
was over, I was soon reconciled to the sepa-
ration.
an Eventful Life. 79
CEIAPTER VIII.
How I WENT HOME IN THE ‘DELAFORD.’
I WBLL remember how my father drove me in
from his estate in a phaeton; how my mother
sobbed and sighed; how we got to the beautiful
horseshoe bay, and how I stood there, a sallow
urchin in nankeens, under the burning Sun, till
the ship's boat came for me; how the good old
captain took me by the hand; how I still clung
to my dear kind father by the other; how he
patted me on the head, and bade me behave like
a man; how I thought I would rather be a boy,
and stay there; how I was coaxed into the boat
by the bait of a banana; how they shoved
her off—the cheery, brawny Sailors; how her
keel grated on the yellow sand; how she shot
off into deep water; how the sailors rowed lustily;
how she lifted to the swell; how the sharks rose
round us, and their greedy eyes looked as if they
would so like a little boy; how we reached the
black-sided sugar-ship ; how I was handed and
hauled up the ladder; how I turned on deck and
80 Annals of
saw my father still standing on the beach, his
black groom, so full of jokes and jests, holding
the horses’ heads until he turned slowly, got into
the phaeton, and drove off. Then, for the first
time in my life, I really felt alone. Down the
companion I went, to look at the box called a
berth. Below it was stuffy and sweltering; the
air was full of bilge-water, sugar, steam, and rum.
Out of the cuddy grinned a mulatto steward.
There too was the first mate, and there too was
my luggage, boxes tenderly packed and filled by
a mother's hand. Alas ! it was Black Monday
for seven long weeks. We put to sea, we shot by
isle after isle, flat, like Barbadoes, and tall, like
Grenada, rising with her greem mountain-coronet
from the blue sea. What cared I then for such
things P I was a boy. I got sweetmeats at Bar-
badoes and oranges at Grenada. Then the wind
rose, and the sea grew rough, and so it lasted for
a week or more. I kept my berth. Cockroaches
crawled over me; by night they gnawed my lips;
the yellow steward came to me with his loathsome
dishes; he brought me his tea, which was no tea.
to me without milk. What had become of that
pet cow which my father had put on board to
give me milk? Had it gone mad, like Io, and
jumped into the Sea, or had it climbed into the
maintop 2 Wherever it was, it gave no milk. It
an Eventful Life. 81
was sea-sick like myself, and pined for its calf
as I did for my mother. Time after time the
good old captain came to me and bade me take
heart; I should soon be better and able to eat.
They were going to kill one of our pigs. Did I not
know it P Had I not from early dawn heard the
victim bewailing his hard fate, that he, a pig of
high degree—his father was a Spanish boar, and
his mother a Neapolitan sow, - should perish
ignobly on that stormy ocean, and find a tomb in
sailors' entrails | As he shrieked and squealed
all his fellow-pigs joined in the concert,
and the cocks crew, and the hens chuckled
from their coops, and the sheep baaed, and my
cow, the milkless one, lowed in harmony. At
last the martyr met his death amid awful squeals.
All this I heard as I lay restless in bed, and
wondered what a bad thing school must be to
make me so miserable. Like a youthful Heze-
kiah, I turned my face to the wall, and refused
comfort. At last I rose and went on deck, and
then my appetite returned; for about three weeks
I devoured greedily everything the cook, who I
hope is now safe in Hecklebirnie's House, served
up. He slew sheep, and geese, and turkeys, and
chickens, and pigs, and served them up raw.
Once, when it was very rough, he wanted us to
do without cooking altogether, and took to his
WOL. I. G
82 Annals of
bed. He was ill, and could not cook. This led
to an interview with the boatswain, a man of few
words and many blows, whose cane brought the
cook out of bed. Amongst other things I had a
turtle on board, quite a lively one. The captain
had one too, which was unlively. Here I may
remark that there are Fairies and Good People on
boardship as elsewhere, and this is a proof of it.
This lively turtle was meant as a present from my
father to Aunt Mandeville. I have always liked
turtles, they are so sympathising, and they open
their eyes so tenderly, and their lips Smile so
softly, as they rise in their tubs and gasp for more
fat. They have been my passion from infancy.
I love them in season and out of season, at all
hours, in soup, in upper and under shell; I love
calipash and calipee, turtle-steaks and turtle-
fins. In short, I adore the whole turtle, and
every part of him. Every morning, then, as soon
as I was up and washed, I walked off to see the
turtle, and the cook generally looked at him too.
Fancy my wonder one morning when I saw that
my turtle had grown much smaller and thinner in
the night. He looked as much like my turtle of
the day before as a changeling elf resembles the
comely child whose place he fills. He seemed too
as if he were near his last gasp, so close were his
puffs and pants. Over him stood the cook, knife
an Eventful Life. 83
in hand. What are you going to do to my tur-
tle P “Kill him to save his life ; he 'll die if I
don't.” So killed he was, and we ate him; and a
very nasty mess the cook made of him—all shell
and skin, no fat. After we had eaten him, I said
to the mate, ‘That looked very like the captain’s
turtle, only he was in my turtle's tub; do you
think they changed tubs in the night P’ ‘No
no l’ said the mate. “It was your turtle that was
going to die, and it was your turtle that we ate;
the captain’s turtle never dies.’
So the voyage went on, and as one voyage is
very much like another, I shall cut this short.
Our voyage home was very like our voyage out,
except that I was older, and had no companions.
I remember we met a whale, a true whale. Or
rather, I am wrong ; he overtook us. We were
going free, with a fine breeze, and yet the huge
monster passed us without the least apparent.
effort. He must have been going twenty knots
at least through the water, and yet he seemed to be
Swimming quite within himself. He passed close
alongside, baring only a part of his large body at
a time. I recollect thinking it was very lucky
for us that he did not take it into his head to run
his nose against us, and send us to the bottom.
The weather was pretty good until we got to
the chops of the Channel. There we had baffling
84 Annals of
winds for a week. As the sea is always rough in
the Gulf of Lyons, so I am convinced the wind is
always foul in the chops of the Channel. It has
been so whenever I have been there.
At last we got into soundings. We could
touch English earth by the lead. That they call
the deep sea or ‘dipsey’ lead. How many hun-
dred fathoms our “dipsey’ lead took down with it
before it reached the bottom, I am sure I forget;
but it was a grand sight to see the lead cast.
What a splash it made as it went down beneath
the waves, and what toil and trouble it was to get
it up !
When it came up I was standing at the
mate’s elbow. “Here, Teddy,” he cried, ‘taste a
bit of Old England;’ and as he said so he rubbed
the patch of tallow, with the sand and small
shells sticking to it at the end of the lead, against
my nose. What with the nasty tallow, the
filthiest of all smells in my opinion, and the rough
sand and shells, my first taste and smell of Old
England were not at all nice. But we were in
soundings somewhere between Scilly and the
Land’s End, and we should soon sight the land
and run up Channel.
Next day we sighted the land. I think it
was the ſizard we saw. How unlike the dear
greer, lizards at Two Rivers? Next we got
an Eventful Life. 85
a fair wind and ran rapidly past Cornwall,
Devon, and Dorset. Then we stood out, keeping
the lead going constantly, till we were off the Isle
of Wight. Next day we were off Dover, and the
pilot came on board.
Though it is so long ago, I remember the face
of that man as though I had only seen him yes-
terday. I remember his hale, ruddy face, his clear,
grey eyes, his huge mottled hands, his awkward
gait, as he crawled up the side from his pilot-boat,
which had rounded to under our lee, and lay
dancing up and down below our chains. He
seemed half man and half seal or walrus. His air
of command was astonishing. Our good old cap-
tain became as nothing before Mr. Smart, Trinity
Pilot, who now took charge of the ship. I believe
a captain can’t interfere until a pilot has delirium
tremens. If he sees him running his vessel on
shore he can’t stop him. He may mistake Dunge-
mess for the North Foreland; that’s only an error
of judgment. It is no concern of the captain.
Let the ship strike, and the underwriters suffer
That is the doctrine of pilotage carried out to its
extremest consequences; but our pilot was an old
friend of the captain's, and had been on the look-
out for him. Have I never told you the name of
our ship P It was the Delaford, and a very good
ship she was, and the captain was a most de-
86 Annals of
lightful specimen of the true British sailor.
There are few such captains now-a-days. He
might have stood to old Fuller for his model of
‘The Good Sea-Captain.’ Well, he is gone, and
so is the good ship gone, and, I dare say, most of
the brave hearts in her—all except myself.
Let us gulp down such thoughts, and get on.
The captain asked the pilot if there was any
news, if anything had happened lately.
“Nothing,” said the pilot, ‘except that Lord
Castlereagh has been and cut his throat.”
“Do you call that nothing?” said the captain.
‘I call it great news.’
‘He warn’t Master of the Trinity House, nor
he warn’t Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, nor
he warn’t Fust Lord of the Admiralty,’ said the
pilot. “If one of them had died I should have
called it news. They’re seafaring folk; but this
Lord was a landlubber for what I know. Luff,’
he called out in a voice like the north wind blow-
ing round the Pole, to the man at the wheel,
‘you’ll be aboard of that Frenchman if you don’t
look out.”
Iłesides the news of which he thought so little,
he brought us ‘fresh bread and butter.’ ‘You
don’t think that much? Ah! that’s because you’ve
never been in the West Indies, where they know
next to nothing of bread, and as for butter, fresh
an Eventful Life. 87
butter, it’s a thing unknown.” It was early morn-
ing, a morning in May—quite at the end of May
—but it was bitterly cold, and I remember that
butter was as hard as a stone, whereas all the
butter I remembered to have seen before was in a
liquid state, as near oil as butter can be without
ceasing to be butter and turning into oil. No 1
bread and butter, in our English sense of fresh
bread and butter, was unknown in St. Saccha-
rissa, and I made the most of it when I made its
acquaintance on board the Delaford.
I forgot to say that the pilot's cutter went
away a few minutes after he had boarded us, but
not before one of his “mates,’ as he called him,
had clambered on board and paid us a visit.
Never did I see—never shall I see pockets such
as that “mate” had in his coat. Into them he
stowed away three quart bottles of rum which
the captain gave him—I suppose to keep him in
spirits till the pilot rejoined him. As soon as he
had stowed them safely away, he said, ‘Good-bye,
Bill,’ to Mr. Smart, crawled back again, cast off
the cutter, in which there were still three hands
besides himself, and was gone.
|Under the guidance of the pilot we ran past
Dover and through the Downs. We passed quite
close to the Goodwins, and I saw them stretching
for miles of hard, yellow Sand. At night we
88 Annals of
were off the Nore, and as the tide failed and the
wind was now contrary, we cast anchor. Why
didn’t we have a steam-tug P Bless your innocent
hearts in those days there were no steam-tugs.
The homeward bound and the outward bound had
to make their way up and down the Thames by
tide and wind alone.
We anchored, therefore, that night; and next
morning the good old captain, whose authority
over his ship was, as we have seen, suspended,
left her, and hailing one of the small Ramsgate
steamers, which were then quite a novelty, we got
on board her, and so went merrily up to town.
There my father had begged the captain to hand
me over to the care of Claw, Tooth, and Nail,
until I could go down to Mandeville Hall.
an Eventful Life. 89
CHAPTER IX.
FIOW I WENT TO MY AUNT MANDEVILLE.
As soon as I landed, the good old captain an-
nounced the fact to Claw, Tooth, and Nail, and it
was settled that I should stay with old Tooth, who
still lived in Bryanston Square, till his firm had
notified the fact of my arrival to my Aunt, and
she had signified her pleasure to receive me. I
was just ten years old, and not more sallow than
little boys who come from the West Indies usually
are. " Old Tooth was always in the City; the older
he got, Mrs. Tooth said, the closer he stuck to
business. She believed, indeed, he would end by
going back to Vulture Court and living there
altogether. So I saw little of old Tooth, but
Mrs. Tooth was very kind to me. She bought
me a bow and arrow, and I shot the Square
gardener in the calf. Mrs. Tooth gave him half-
a-crown and begged him to be sure and Say
nothing about the arrow to her husband. She
took me to see the beasts in the Tower. It was
just after Chuny’s execution—if any one now
90 Annals of
remembers Old Exeter Change and Chuny, the
elephant—but he was then the talk of the town.
One night Nail took me to Vauxhall, and I had
supper, and saw the fireworks—at least, I Ought to
have done so, but I fell asleep before they were
let off; and much to his dismay, the exquisite Mr.
Nail had to drag me to a hackney-coach, one of
the old Jarveys, and carry me back to Bryanston
Square. Next morning came a letter, in due
course of post, from my Aunt to Claw, Tooth,
and Nail, begging them to send me down by the
Highflyer to Warwick, and there she would
meet me and take me over to Mandeville Hall.
Accordingly next morning, at seven o’clock, I
started from the Bath Hotel in Piccadilly on the
Highflyer. I was perched just behind the coach-
man, and for ten weary hours, as it seemed to me,
we went along the London and Holyhead road
towards Warwick. Not that I fancy that Tel-
ford’s Road went through Warwick, but the
Highflyer followed the road to Dunchurch, and
then turned off towards Warwick.
I remember, when I first arrived in England,
thinking that the Sun never shone, that the rain
seemed to fall in mere driblets, that the trees
were very short and stumpy, and that the crops
were very poor. I was not, therefore, much
struck with my drive to Warwick, though now I
an Eventful Life. 91
think Warwickshire one of the prettiest and
richest counties in England.
Perhaps I might have enjoyed the journey
more had it not been for the meeting with my
Aunt Mandeville, which was at the other end of
it. I cannot say that my spirits rose when about
5 P.M. on that June day, the coachman turned
round and said, in a quarter of an hour we should
be in Warwick. I felt very much as though I
wished the journey were just beginning instead
of coming to its end. But hopes or fears, wishes
or regrets, all were vain, here we were in War-
wick, and the Highflyer rattled over the stones,
the guard blowing his horn, the children flying
from the middle of the street, and the maid-
servants running to the windows, just to see what
they had seen every day of their lives about the
same hour. All at once we halted. The leaders
were pulled round and we drove under an arch-
way into the court of the ‘Dun Cow,’ at which
famous hostelry the coach stopped to tea, and I
was to alight.
A waiter, then as now, in black with a white
neckcloth—why are waiters and undertakers the
only specimens of humanity that never change?—
came out, looked up at the coach whence I was
crawling down in fear and trembling, and be-
fore I reached the ground, asked, was I the
92 Annals of
young gentleman for whom Mrs. Mandeville was
waiting.
‘Yes,’ I answered, ‘I am Master Halfacre,
and Mrs. Mandeville is my Aunt.”
‘This way, sir, yes sir. Mrs. Mandeville is
in the Blue Room.’
Into the Blue Room then I was ushered, and
there rising from the inevitable black horsehair,
sofa was a stately lady, whose remembrance,
strange to say, had not entirely faded from my
mind.
She had been very handsome, and still showed
it. The first and last thing that you saw about
Aunt Mandeville were her large bright brown
eyes. For the rest, she had regular features, a
slightly aquiline nose, chestnut hair, in which
there were no grey hairs, and a tall, slight figure.
Altogether she was graceful and dignified; but
when you had scanned her all over you had to
return to her eyes, and to feel, as they looked at
you and through you, that it would be hard to
keep a secret from her.
‘Well, Edward,” she said slowly, but gazing
hard at me; “they have sent you at last P I
have waited a long time for you, and thought
you were never coming.’
It was necessary to say something, but what
I scarce knew ; so I answered at haphazard:
an Eventful Life. 93
‘I came, Aunt, as soon as they sent me; and
along with me, papa sent you a turtle, but it
died.”
Whether Aunt Mandeville still remembered
the fatal turtle of which my father partook
when first snared by Claw, Tooth, and Nail, I
cannot say, but she gave a little start, and said
quietly:
“I hope I shall be fonder of you than of the
turtle, Edward. I hope to care a great deal for
you, and I care very little for the turtle.’
‘I hope you will, Aunt.”
“But will you be a good boy to me? Your
mother writes you are a very good boy.’
“I’ll try, Aunt.”
“Try, then ; and now give me a kiss, and let
us go away to Mandeville Hall.’
Saying this she rang the bell; the musty
waiter appeared ; the carriage was ordered; and in
a few minutes it stood in front of the ‘Dun Cow.’
We got into it, and slowly rolled behind two
sleek, grey horses over the uneven Warwick
stones. -
Mandeville Hall was five miles from War-
wick, and we took some time to reach it. Mean-
while, my Aunt said little, but leant back in the
open carriage, lost in thought, while I looked at
the green fields and haymakers as we rolled
94. Annals of
lazily along. In about half an hour, or more,
we turned off from the highroad at a lodge;
then through a park studded with clumps of tall
elms and free-standing Oaks; then up a slope,
and through an avenue of feathering limes, at the
end of which we swept round in front of an old
Elizabethan house. Out came a bald-headed
butler and two footmen. We alighted from the
carriage; my Aunt went first ; and as we passed
up some steps and reached the threshold of the
hall she turned round, looked me full in the face
with her large, piercing eyes, and said in a low,
soft voice :
“Welcome, Edward, to Mandeville Hall.”
Mandeville Hall was rather a Tudor than an
Elizabethan house. It had a moat half round it.
An Irishman would have said that it had a moat
all round it in front. I suppose it had once gone
round the house, but had been filled up at the
back and sides. There was a large hall in the
centre, with a staircase leading to each wing, and
these wings extended to more than the length of
the hall on each side, so that they enclosed a
court at the back. Now I remember more ex-
actly, the house was built on the site of an older
embattled house, which had left it the moat as a
legacy; and there was an inscription over the
portal which told how ‘This hovse was bvilded
an Eventful Life. 95
by Sir Geoffrey Mandeville, Werderer of the
Forest of Arden, in the time of King Henry
the 7th.’ Inside the hall was hung with
escutcheons and banners, and decorated with
family waifs and strays. Here hung the banner
which an older Sir Geoffrey had borne at Cressy;
here the helmet of Sir Giles, who fought at
Agincourt; here the sword of Sir Hugh, with
which he would have cloven the Roundheads at
Marston Moor, whither he had led a whole troop
of Woodmen of Arden, only, unfortunately, one
of Cromwell’s Ironsides split his head instead,
and his good sword was all that was saved to
the family out of the wreck of that day. In a
glass case was another great curiosity—a mere
antiquarian object now, but a perilous possession
a century before. It was one of those transparent
cups which in certain lights show the lively
likeness of the old Pretender, so that the Jacobite
owner, as he held it up and drained it to the
health of the king, might pledge him whom he
considered the lawful sovereign, though he
seemed to be drinking the health of George I.
Let me not forget to mention the prudence
of the Mandeville of that time. He was of a
Jacobite stock, and got together and Secretly
armed his retainers, meaning to join Charles
Edward on his march to London. This he did
96 Annals of
when he heard the Scots were coming south; and
when the news came that they were nearly at
Derby the Squire Mandeville set off with his
men. Fortunately for him the Scots turned tail
at Derby; but he was wise in his generation.
Did he turn tail too? In that case he might
have been hanged, drawn, and quartered as a
rebel. No 1 he marched on, and told the first
colonel of one of King George's regiments that
he met, how he had got together this force to
resist the rebels, and now placed it entirely at His
Majesty's disposal. So he saved his estates.
All these things I came to know after-
wards bit by bit from my Aunt, who was as
good as any showman or showwoman. But
whenever she told me anything of the Mande-
villes which raised my wonder at their antiquity,
she used to say:
‘Child ! they are mere upstarts compared with
the Halfacres, who were Danes, settled at Half-
acre long before Godiva rode through the streets
of Coventry; and your father has, or ought
to have, a charter by which Alfred granted
these lands in Mercia to one Harfager, a Norse-
man in Guthrum's following, free from every
due and tax except “the triple necessity.””
I very much doubt that my Aunt, like many
a showman, did not know what she was talking
an Eventful Life. 97
about ; I am sure I didn’t, but of course I now
know, and you know, too, that this triple ne-
cessity,+the trinoda necessitas of the charters, was,
first, the building of bridges and castles; second,
the repairing of roads; and third, the following
the king to war when an enemy invaded the
land.
If you care to know this, thank me; if not,
I care little for your thanks.
One staircase, at one end of the hall, on the
right as you entered it, led to the bed-rooms oc-
cupied by the family. There were rooms of
all colours and denominations, the Blue, Red,
Green, and Chintz Rooms, and their dressing-
rooms, as there are in every decent house.
Then there was the Long Room, and the Square
Room, and the Octagon Room in a turret ; and
the Halfacre Room, the bed-room of our family,
and I don’t know how many other rooms besides.
Underneath these bed-rooms were the offices on
the ground-floor, the whole length of that wing.
On the other side of the Hall, on the ground-
floor, were the Dining-room, and my Aunt's
room, and two Drawing-rooms, and a Library,
filled with rare old books. Beyond the Library,
at the very end of that wing, was the Chapel,
a late Perpendicular building. The staircase on
the left, at that end of the Hall, led to the
WOL. I. . e H
98 Annals of
State rooms, which, in furniture and fitting,
seemed very much as they had originally been.
There was King Henry the Seventh’s room, in
which he stayed one night, and the morning
after fined Sir Geoffrey a thousand marks for
sinning against the statute of retainers. From
Mandeville Hall, it is said, Cardinal Morton
dated his celebrated ‘Fork,” or Dilemma, addressed
to those who remonstrated against the forced
loans called ‘Benevolences.’ Those who lived
expensively, it was plain, could afford the
‘Benevolence,’ because they had money to spend,
and those who lived economically could also
afford to pay, because they must have saved
money; the end being that all had to pay. Then
there was King Harry’s room, with bed-furniture
all embroidered with double-seeded roses; and
there were presses, and chairs, and tables, carved
with true Tudor strap ornaments. Here Henry
VIII. had come with Catherine Howard, the
guiltiest and prettiest of his wives; and the
monograms H.R. and C.R. were perpetually in-
tertwined on the plaster ceiling.
Then there was Queen Elizabeth’s room, in
which she once slept a week when she had taken
it into her head to visit Mary Queen of Scots at
Fotheringay, and changed her mind hereabouts,
and stayed here trying to make it up, while the
an Eventful Life. 99
Mandeville of the day, Sir Hugh, I fancy, was
his name, was ruining himself in masks and
interludes and gatherings of the Woodmen; he,
too, was Werderer of the Forest. And there was
shooting at the Butts, it may be at Meriden, where
the ghosts of the old Woodmen meet once a-year;
and there was dancing on the green, and shafts
clapped in the clout at six hundred yards, which
few Woodmen can do in these degenerate days. In
return the Queen left behind her a sampler which
she had worked, with ‘Feare Godde and honour
ye Queene’ in the centre, and a wreath of gilly-
flowers round it ; all within a border of E. R. E. R.
There was a sort of commonplace book of hers,
too, very like a child’s copy-book, only the
writing was much better and stronger that that of
our children, crammed with choice sentences
culled from Colet’s grammar, as ‘Sero nunquam est
ad bonos mores via ; ’ ‘Scire tuum nihil est nisi te
scire hoc sciat alter ; ' ' Deterior est quotidie pos-
terior dies.’ Here was her sampler and common-
place book, but where was the Queen and the
Mandeville of that day, and the Woodmen of
Arden P Off this Elizabeth room was a dressing-
room, and a very strange room it was. There
was no door in it, except that which led from the
bed-room, and it had one long window in it half
walled up. There were also Prince Henry's
100 Annals of
room and Queen Anne's room, and I don’t know
how many more ; quite as many as there were
on the opposite side of the court and I remember
that, in wet weather, I used to run up and down
the gallery which led down one side of our wing,
and count the windows in the gallery across the
court.
The Hall, as I have said, was surrounded by
a fine park. There were beautiful flower-gar-
dens and trim yew-walks and bowers, a kitchen-
garden, and a plaisance with a terrace overhang-
ing a continuation of the moat, which was fed by
a spring under the house, and all along the old
wall grew wall-flowers, and stone-crops, and
rockets, and Snap-dragons, and all the old flowers
which gardeners now look upon as so many
weeds.
an Eventful Life. 101
CEIAPTER X.
aust waspswiu's at Hour.
THIS must suffice for a description of Mandeville
Hall, in which my Aunt lived all alone. If I
could have reflected, I might have thought that
she had been living all that time waiting for me.
I recollect when I went to bed that night in the
Octagon Room, two rooms off my Aunt's, that
I said to myself: -
‘Nurse was very wrong to call Auntie “a
rampaging cow,” for she seems kindness itself.”
And she really had been kind. She let me
dine with her, and talked every now and then
gently to me; not too fast or too often, for she
saw that I was tired; and yet, somehow, she had
got from me all she wished to know about my
father and mother, and St. Saccharissa, and the
voyage, and the Delaford, and old Tooth, and
‘young’ Mr. Nail, as he was still called.
After dessert she said: “Now, child, I think
you had better go to bed; if you have any tea,
it will keep you awake.’
102 Annals of
To hear my Aunt Mandeville was to obey
her, at least, for a child; so I got up, and was
going to shake hands with her, being still shy.
*No hand-shaking, Edward,” she said, “not
till I cease to love you. Till then give me a
kiss.”
So I kissed Auntie, and went off to bed.
If you are a woman who is reading this, you
will be dying to ask how old Aunt Mandeville
was. Well, I then thought her very old, like
the nursemaid who, when asked her age at the
census, said: ‘I’m fifteen, sir; but no one can tell
how old cook is l’ the said cook being described
by another fellow-servant as an ‘aged woman of
thirty-five. But what I thought, a child of ten,
was not much to the purpose. I never exactly
knew how old Aunt Mandeville was, but I fancy
she was still under forty when I came to her.
Under forty, but not far from it. ‘Small change
out of forty,’ as one of the unearnest rising gen-
eration would say.
Now, to very young ladies of eighteen, forty
seems a fabulous antiquity; but, perhaps, the
same young lady, when she has been married—
which is the surest of all female cosmetics, and
though it sometimes spoils the shape, often makes
a face beautiful for ever, the same young lady, I
Say, a widow of thirty-seven may find that she
an Eventful Life. 103
has a beauty of her own ; that all ages have
their beauty, and that she may even be forty and
still very attractive.
But enough of my Aunt ; she lived very much
alone, went out little, read a good deal, and
seemed very glad to have me with her. I have
already told you that she was afraid of Dr. Min-
dererus; but there was some one else who tyran-
nised over her, though she scarcely knew it.
Every one else saw it, and yet she shut her eyes.
This tyrant was that bald-headed butler, Brooks,
of whom I spoke before. I have often, as I grew
in wit, and of course in wisdom, lain awake
o'nights and wondered how it was that Brooks,
who, besides being bald-headed, was a pot-bellied,
scrubby-bearded dolt, had my Aunt so completely
in his power as to her movements. If any one
stayed in the house, and talked Tory politics,
this offensive fellow would not scruple to say,
leaning gently over their chair at dinner, and
seeming to help them to champagne,— ‘Mrs.
Mandeville's politics are Whig, sir; you had better
talk of the weather.” Or if the Church were
started, or there was a question of Irish Emanci-
pation—I mean the emancipation of the Romanists
in Ireland forty years ago; not the destruction of
the Irish Protestant Church—and any one praised
the measure, this wretch would whisper in the
104 Annals of
same way: ‘Mrs. Mandeville is a strict Orange-
woman,’ by which he did not mean that she was
a Nell Gwyn of the nineteenth century, but that
she was against the Church policy of the late Sir
Robert Peel. The end of it was that there was no
conversation, when any one dined at Mandeville
Hall, except about gardening, the weather, the
Dorcas Society, the village choir, and the cholera,
which was then rapidly approaching these shores .
for the first time. None of these were very lively
subjects, and the last was a most dismal one. I
recollect one dessert in particular, in the August
of 182—, when a most magnificent dish of peaches
smiled on the board. Before I made my appear-
ance at dessert, the scoundrel Brooks, the heart-
less hypocrite, had artfully led the conversation
to cholera by one of his whispers, and when I
came in I found a party of undertakers, so gloomy
did they all appear.
“They say it is very painful,” said my Aunt.
‘Dreadfully so,” said Dr. Mindererus. “Pa-
tients become quite blue and pulseless, and die in
six hours.”
“I read to-day in The Times, just before I
dressed for dinner,’ said Colonel Stock, then in
command of the 10th Queen’s, at Coventry, “that
it had reached Posen.’
‘Where’s Posen, Edward P’ said my Aunt.
an Eventful Life. 105
“In Poland, Aunt. But what’s in Poland P
Mayn’t I have a peach P’ -
“No 1 no l my little friend,” said the fiendish
Mindererus. “At these seasons of epidemic,
malaria, and universal contagion, peaches are ab-
solutely forbidden, except to the faculty, who
know and always carry about with them antidotes
against the malign influence.’
Having uttered which oracular words, he
bowed to my Aunt, and helped himself to the
finest peach in the dish.
‘Mayn’t I have some of Dr. Mindererus' anti-
dote, Auntie? Ask him to carry some for me
too, next time he comes, if he hasn’t got enough
for me now.’ -
At this there was a laugh, even under the
ribs of the undertakers, and the colonel bowed to
the doctor, and said: w"
“Had you there I think, doctor.”
As for me, I could not join in the laughter I
had caused, for Brooks seized the diversion to
take me by the collar and nearly choke me, saying
in a soft voice, as I turned sharply round :
‘Beg pardon, Master Edward, if I hurt you;
but your shirt-collar is all awry, and I tried to
put it straight.”
‘No, Edward, no peaches to-day. You hear
what the doctor says.” And so that magnificent
106 Annals of
dish went off minus one, and no doubt was duly
discussed and devoured by Brooks and the upper
servants.
So, too, about going out in the carriage. Here
Brooks and Ribbons the coachman ran in double
harness. If the day was cloudy, rain was sure
to fall. If it was fine, it might turn to rain. If
it was a rainy morning, it would certainly not
clear in the afternoon. Over the orders for the
coachman, in short, there was always a pitched
battle. “Any orders for the coachman P’ asked
Brooks; and then, in the same breath:
‘Mr. Ribbons do say, ma'am, that the grey
mare have strained her back-sinew.”
“Very well, Brooks; then I’ll have the pony-
chaise.”
Brooks would then retire, but only to return
in a moment.
‘Mr. Ribbons says, ma'am, that the bay pony
threw a shoe yesterday, and the blacksmith hasn’t
shod her yet.’ .
By these devices, added to the days when Mr.
Ribbons felt out of sorts, after a night with Mr.
Brooks, it rarely happened that my Aunt had
her carriage out more than once a-week. And
what proved that these deceivers were in league
against her, was the fact that the horses were
always well when my Aunt went out to dinner.
an Eventful Life. 107
Then the worthy couple knew that she must go,
as she had accepted an invitation, and so they
were foiled; but in anything that depended on
her own fancy or will alone, they invariably tried
to thwart her by some pretext.
Yes! great is the power of man, even a dolt,
over a woman in domestic trifles; greater still is
the power of men-servants over their mistresses
in servants’ matters. In all the real business of
life Aunt Mandeville was equal to any two men I
have ever known, but at home she was a slave to
her servants. Her maid would never allow her
to wear the clothes she liked. She used to say
that she never knew what dress she would bring
her in the morning, or how she meant to dress
her for dinner. So there she was, when I first
knew her, tyrannised over by butler, coachman,
and maid, a triple necessity, quite as severe and
inexorable as any which bound the old Half-
acres; and though the proverb which says that
all good things are three, has its converse in all
bad things are three, these three bad things
under which my Aunt laboured were made worse
by a fourth, in the shape of an old housekeeper,
who did next to nothing but feed the parrot in
her room on the basement.
However, all these things which I found out
afterwards, did not much concern a boy in his
108 Annals of
eleventh year. Of course I had to go to school, but
fortunately I arrived at the middle of June, and
towards the end of the half, at Dr. Cutbrush’s
school at Potterbridge, where one of my brothers
had been, and where it was settled I was to go.
So between June and the middle of September I
ran wild about Mandeville Park, and was as
happy as any boy could be. My Aunt was very
good to me, and we became great friends. I soon
found out that she was of a jealous nature, as
though her natural feelings had been repressed,
and were now finding vent. With my Aunt
Mandeville it was all or nothing, and that was
the reason why she had so few friends. She was
too exacting. But in the nineteenth century,
the age of jealous gods is past and gone. We
worship many divinities, and expect to find favour
with all. This is idolatry, you say; well, so it is ;
Pantheism, so it is; Atheism, so it is; that is to
say, if you think the adoration of many denies
the worship of one. But you are drawing me
into a trap, reader; I am telling you my Aunt
Mandeville’s character, and you are trying to
ferret out my beliefs. I throw myself back,
therefore, on the great principle, thought is free,
and carry it out by declining to let you prove
me Socratically a freethinker.
When I was older I learnt better to know
an Eventful Life. 109
what my Aunt's jealousy meant, but for a child it
is an easy and a reasonable service to worship a
woman who is kind to you. There are so many
tender things that a woman can do for a child
which no man would ever think of doing however
much he loved a child. It is part of the brutality
and stupidity of the stronger nature of the lords
of the creation—of that hard, rough will which
has trodden under foot so many flowers of feeling,
and, therefore, nipped even in the bud so much
moral fruit, to stand before a being which it loves,
a child or a wife, meaning to love it and be kind
to it, and yet to be utterly helpless to express its
feeling, and even to seem heartless and repulsive.
IBut it was not so with me and my Aunt.
She made herself all in all to me, she sang to me
and danced with me. If she ever became like that
rampaging animal to which nurse falsely likened
her, it was when she scampered across the grass
after my ball, or was fagging out for me at
cricket, while Brooks, the bald-headed tyrant,
stood longstop. Who bowled? Why, Ribbons, the
coachman, of course; and many a long run old
Brooks had after the byes. Indeed, I don’t think
he ever stopped a ball once, except by accident.
At that time I think there was nothing that
Auntie would not have done for me, even to
climbing a tree to take a wood-pigeon’s nest.
1 10 Annals of
No wonder then that my grief at parting from
my parents was soon assuaged. Oh! blessed,
glorious boyhood, that cries its eyes out, and then
wipes them in again brighter than ever.
Dut time will roll on, and so July passed, and
August came and stole away, though he seemed
scarce able to stir a step for heat, and then
September came, and we had partridges, and I
wanted my Aunt to let me go out shooting, and
to go with me herself; and I verily believe she
would have done it, had not Brooks again in-
terfered, by saying he did not know what the
country would think if they heard that Mrs.
Mandeville had gone out shooting with Master
Edward.
And September went away very fast. He
could stir his feet nimbly enough. The 10th,
the 12th, the 15th, the 20th, till it was only
two days to the 23rd, the awful day on which
the ‘young friends’ of Dr. Cutbrush were to
re-assemble.
an Eventful Life. 1 11
CELAPTER XI.
HOW I WENT TO DR. CUTBRUSH.
THE morning of the 22nd came. Now-a-days
I should have got into a train about mid-day
at Warwick, have reached Euston Square in two
or three hours, have taken a cab to King's Cross,
and gone by the Great Northern to Potterbridge,
which I can only tell you was somewhere down
the Great Northern line. I should thus have
arrived between four and five at the abode of
the doctor. But in 182— it was quite otherwise.
Up at six at Mandeville Hall, drive to Warwick,
catch the coach Highflyer or Tallyho at the
“Dun Cow’ at eight; ten hours to London, reach-
ing the Bath Hotel, Piccadilly, between six and
seven. It was therefore necessary that I should
sleep a night in town, as no one ever heard of
a new boy coming to his school at night. My
Aunt hated Claw, Tooth, and Nail from the
bottom of her heart. She loved her brother,
though she despised him because he was not
‘man enough,’ as she expressed it, for ‘the old
1 12 Annals of
Halfacre blood;’ and she hated the firm that
had inveigled him out to the West Indies, and
there kept him fast bound in misery and iron.
But she had to do the hardest thing on earth, L
ask a favour from those whom you detest and
despise. She had to sit down and write to Mrs.
Tooth, and beg her to give me a bed. In her
imperious way, if my father had been free from
entanglements, she would have written like
Elizabeth :— ‘Messrs. Claw, Tooth, and Nail.
Take notice, failing at your peril, that it is my
intention to send my nephew, Edward Halfacre,
to you, or one of you, for one night. For whose
safe keeping this shall be your warrant :
Teste meipsä
apud Mandevillam.
ELEANOR.’
All this time you have never known my
Aunt's name. It was Eleanor, a fine old family
name. She was such an Eleanor as would have
sucked poison out of her husband’s veins had he
been Edward I., but as he was only Thomas
Mandeville, of doubtful memory, why it is
lucky that no one stabbed the good easy man
with a poisoned dagger, and so put her devotion
to the proof. -
But instead of a queenly missive, she sat
an Eventful Life. 113
donw and wrote, ‘Dear Mrs. Tooth,’ &c. to the
effect that I was coming to town for one night
on my way to school; and as Mrs. Tooth had been
kind enough to take me before under her roof, per-
haps she would add to this obligation by once
more giving me a bed. To all which Mrs. Tooth, I
must say, with great good nature had responded,
‘that nothing would give her greater pleasure
than to see her young friend again.” How it
was that she said nothing of the arrow rankling
in the Square gardener's calf I know not. Per-
haps the wound was healed by the half-crown.
Perhaps old Tooth had never found it out. At
any rate she said nothing about it, and as I took
good care not to show my face in the Square,
I have heard nothing about it from that day
to this.
On hearing from Mrs. Tooth, my Aunt wrote
again to beg that I might be met at the Bath
Hotel; and this important point conceded, I
went up to town as I have described by the
Highflyer, and was in Bryanston Square at seven
o'clock. .
Mrs. Tooth was good and motherly, but I
can’t say that I thought old Tooth very amiable.
He said nothing when Mrs. Tooth announced
me as ‘Master Halfacre, just come for one night
on his way to school,' but mumbled something
I
114 Annals of
out about boys “making their way in the world
as they used to do formerly.’ Then he turned
to Mrs. ‘T,’ as he was wont to call her even to
her face, and said : &
‘Mrs. T, there’s been bad work in the City
to-day. Dreggs and Lees, the great sugar-re-
finers, have failed for 200,000l., and that has
pulled down Holdfast and Lively, our sugar-
brokers, in whose hands, I am sorry to say, were
the proceeds of two hundred hogsheads of sugar
just sold as part of the Two Rivers' crop.”
‘Deary me,’ said Mrs. Tooth. “No loss to
the firm, I hope.’
“I hope not, Mrs. T, I hope not;’ and then
he added, “But we are already under heavy
advances towards the estate, which would only
have been partly met by the sale of those two
hundred hogsheads. Then Rum, too, is a drug,
and we are large holders. Fact is, the West
Indies are going to the dogs, and to protect our-
selves we shall have to foreclose on several of
our estates.’ -
‘Deary me,’ said Mrs. Tooth again; “but we
had better go down to dinner, or it will get cold.’
Though I couldn't understand the full mean-
ing of what old Tooth said, I was old enough and
quick enough to see that something unpleasant
had happened to Claw, Tooth, and Nail in general,
an Eventful Life. 115
and to the Two Rivers Estate in particular. So
I ate my dinner in a rather crestfallen mood,
old Tooth saying little or nothing, but showing
that age had but little impaired his appetite.
Mrs. Tooth—good soul that she was l—throwing
every now and then a drop of oil on the waves
of his surliness, every drop of which no doubt
returned to her own bosom, as it had plainly no
effect in softening old Tooth.
The dessert, in September, consisted of dried
figs of fossil appearance — some of the same
figs, in fact, which Noah took with him into the
Ark, and which were afterwards returned to
the shippers as condemned stores. Then there
were Barcelona nuts and a sponge-cake, both of
immense antiquity; and there was a bottle of
ginger wine. All these dainties old Tooth de-
spatched at such a rate that Mrs. Tooth and I
were glad to beat a retreat. I really thought
if he went on as fast as he began he would eat
us up too.
‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Tooth on the stairs,
‘when Mr. Tooth is like that something dread-
ful has happened in the City, and then it is
always best to let him eat himself to sleep.”
And surely in ten minutes such a sound of
Snoring followed us upstairs, or up the chimney,
that it was amazing to hear.
116 Annals of
“Ah!’ said Mrs. Tooth, ‘now it’s all right.
Mr. Tooth will snore in that way till midnight,
and then he'll get up and come to bed like a
lamb. And now let us go to bed as soon as
we can.”
So to bed we went. Whether old Tooth
slept in the arm-chair all night, or not, I cannot
tell. All I know is that I saw nothing of him
in the morning. After breakfast Mrs. Tooth
took me and my trunk—I mean my box, and
not my carcass—in a hackney-coach to the ‘Blue
Posts,’ at the top of Tottenham Court Road.
From that famous inn, now, alas ! to be sought
for in vain, the Potterbridge go-cart—a nonde-
script vehicle, half fly, half omnibus, and whole
abomination — used to start, reaching Potter-
bridge in two hours by way of Finchley and
Barnet. To the care of the driver of this con-
veyance I was intrusted, Mrs. Tooth giving him
a shilling for himself beforehand, and bidding
him be sure to drop me at Dr. Cutbrush’s door,
which he passed on the route.
Away the melancholy vehicle crawled along
Tottenham Court Road, through the Highgate
Archway, past Finchley, by Barnet and Whet-
stone to Potterbridge. It was not a lively
journey to go to school for the first time in this
way. My only companions were a farmer who,
an Eventful Life. I 17
to judge by his boots and general appearance,
had been up to town with a successful venture of
dung, and a maid-servant going home for a holi-
day from her place in town.
Tuckily it was not a long journey, and in
about two hours, going at the rate of five miles
an hour, we entered Potterbridge, drove past
the church, with its fine old yew and its ponds,
dipped down a descent, rose a little again, and
then the driver got down, and pulled the bell
at Dr. Cutbrush’s door. The bell gave what I
thought a most mournful sound; but in a
minute a well-fed servant opened the door, took
down my trunk, and showed me the way into the
house. It was out of school hours, and I was
ushered at once into the awful presence of Dr.
Cutbrush. He was a fine, hale, florid-faced
man, between fifty and sixty. When he spoke
he had a trick of blowing and puffing out his
cheeks, but he was not at all a bad master;
and, except when he boxed my ears because I
would not open my mouth, and kicked both him
and the dentist most unmercifully on their shins,
he was always very kind to me. Having ex-
amined me he said he should place me at the
bottom of the school, and leave me to find my
level; and in a little while he took me to Mrs.
Cutbrush, who handed me over to the house-
118 Annals of
keeper in the China Pantry, to wait till it was
time for dinner. That meal was not long in
coming, and then I saw for the first time the
seventy boys who were to be my schoolfellows.
I may mention here that the school was a first-
rate private school, preparatory for the great
public schools, and specially so for Westminster
and Harrow.
There were two long tables in the hall. Dr.
Cutbrush sat at the head of one, with an usher at
the other end, and an usher at each end of the
second table. Grace was said, and we ate our
meals in silence. I remember our dinner—who
would not remember his first school dinner P-
was roast mutton and rice pudding. After
dinner the doctor called up a boy with curly
locks and a ruddy face.
‘McArthur,’ he said, ‘this is Halfacre. You
are to be his substance for a week, and he is to
be your shadow for the same time. Take care
that he gets into no scrapes, and that he pre-
pares his lessons. If he commits any faults in
the next week, they will be reckoned to you.’
“Very well,” said McArthur, who then
turned to me with a ‘Come along !’ after which
he pushed open a door, through which all the
rest had already vanished while the doctor was
talking to McArthur; and at one step we stood
an Eventful Life. 119
in the playground, a large gravelled yard, sur-
rounded on all sides by a high wall, and shaded
on one side by a row of horse-chestnuts.
Everybody knows what happens when a boy
first goes to school. The cry of ‘New boy!” is
raised—a knot gathers round him—‘What’s your
name P’—‘Where do you live?”—“Edward!’
‘Edward what? not King Edward?” says another
boy, who knows something of English history.
‘Edward Halfacre l’
‘What an odd name ! Has your father only
half-an-acre P’ -
‘In what country is your father's half-acre P’
“In Warwickshire and the West Indies.”
‘What a long half-acre to stretch so far !’
‘How many brothers have you got?”
* Six.”
* What a lot l’
“Any sisters ?”
“No 1 but I ought to have been one to please
Aunt Mandeville.’
“Who’s your Aunt Mandeville P’
‘I know her,’ says a Warwickshire boy, who
ran up just in time to hear the question. “She
lives at Mandeville Hall, and no one ever sees
her. They say it’s a ghost’s house.’
‘No, it ain’t,' I summoned up courage to
reply.
120 Annals of
‘Don’t be impudent, or you’ll get a smack
in the face.”
Now, I hadn't been baked so long in the
West Indies not to have warm Southern blood;
so I gave the Smack in the face to the War-
wickshire boy which he threatened to give me.
Eſe returned it; and we had a fight which lasted
just long enough to show that I could give
blows as well as take them; but just as victory
hung in the balance, Dr. Cutbrush appeared at
a window from a dormitory which overlooked the
playground, attended by a parent who thought
of sending a boy to the school, and had run
down to look at the place. -
‘There you see them,” said the doctor, as he
led his visitor to the window; ‘there you see
them employing the hours allotted to them for
bodily recreation and relaxation in rational amuse-
ments. We are a happy family at Potterbridge,
and it is very seldom that a quarrel occurs.”
The visitor put his neck out, the doctor just
having beaten him by a head, and saw the War-
wickshire boy, whose name was Deepdale, bleeding
profusely from the nose, while one of my eyes was
already quite bunged up. Yes, reader, “bung’
is the word; my left eye was quite bunged up.
What did the doctor do or say? As to what
he said no boy could tell; but what he did was to
an Eventful Life. 121
withdraw his visitor as rapidly as possible from
the window, to bow him out of the house, to go to
his study, and to a particular cupboard, where he
had a goodly stock of birch, to choose a fine
Swishing rod, to put on his gown, to stride across
the playground, puffing out his cheeks like a
grampus, to call the boys into School, though it
was a half-holiday, and there and then to flog the
unhappy Deepdale for fighting me, and the still
more unhappy McArthur for letting me fight.
Me he merely called the Game Chicken,
Cribb, Mendoza, and Scroggins, all names great
in the ‘fancy’ of those days, but now, alas !
buried in the gloom of night.
“Halfacre,’ the doctor added, “if it had been a
week off, I should have flogged you instead of
McArthur. You now see what it is to be sub-
stance, and what shadow.’
Every boy, except very stupid or very good
boys, has a nickname. Mine was ‘Mendoza,’
because I had fought a good stand-up fight the
first day. It was true the historical boy, who
knew about the Edwards, wanted to call me
‘Edward the Confessor,’ or “Teddy the Confessor,’
because I had told them so much about my family.
‘He would have told us more too if Deep-
dale hadn’t spoilt it all,” he said; but the other
boys, who did not care for history, wouldn't
122 Annals of
hear of Edward the Confessor; they said it
was like lessons; and so the historical boy,
of whom I may say it without breach of con-
fidence that he is now head of the Civil Service
Commission in Timbuctoo, where he sets most
head-splitting questions to the sable candidates
for place and power, had no followers. Edward
the Confessor, as bearing on me, was utterly for-
gotten at Potterbridge; Mendoza I became, and
Mendoza I remained to the end of the chapter of
my life at a private school. -
How about my lessons? And this reminds me
that I have never told you a word of what I had
been taught or knew. Now if any anxious mother
is reading these glimpses of my life, in hope of
finding a model on which to educate her darling
Augustus or Albert, she had better throw them
away, and return to Mrs. Trimmer. My mother
had taught me Latin in the West Indies; and when
I came to Potterbridge I knew Busby's Grammar,
the dear and old Westminster Grammar, by heart.
Since then I have learnt many Grammars, for
have I not lived in the days of transition from
verse to prose Grammars? Did I not have to learn
a new Grammar every year at least P Yes! I
have dealt with all Grammars, from Busby up to
Zumpt and Matthiae; but I never knew any Gram-
mar so well as those darling doggerel hexameters
an Eventful Life. 123
which I used to con by heart under the orange-
trees of Two Rivers. Then I knew a little French,
which my mother also taught me; a good deal of
geography, a little history, ancient and modern,
and a little music. But I shone in none of them
particularly. I always did my lessons, could con-
strue when I was put on, got tolerably well
through nonsense and into sense verses, could
write a theme on ‘Sero nunquam estad bonos mores
via,’ or ‘Deterior est quotidie posterior dies.' I
beg leave to say, reader, that maxim comes from
Publius Syrus, an author of whom you had better
not say you have never heard, or I will confute
you socratically. Thus. You have read the “Edin-
burgh Review’? Regularly, you answer. Well
then what is the motto of the periodical in blue
and buff?—that periodical which wears the uni-
form of the King of Sweden’s 2nd Regiment of
Guards. You don’t know P I’ll tell you. ‘Judex
damnatur cum nocens absolvitur.” That too
comes from Publius Syrus, and a very good rule
it is if it is carried out, and I wish it were carried
out more often. You say you never looked at the
outside of the “Edinburgh Review'? You are
always deep in the inside. Well! the outsides of
some things are better than the insides. The out-
side of a tomb, of a crowd, of a prison. Even
outsides go for something, especially when there
124 Annals of
is nothing inside. So now you will look at the
outside of the next number of the “Edinburgh
Review,’ and find what I tell you true.
But to return to my theme. I did my lessons
regularly; I was never black-strapped on a cold
morning, that is, beaten on the palm of the hand
with a cart-trace, a less disgraceful but far more
painful punishment than any flogging; nay, I
was never flogged at all for anything, though I
often deserved it for other things besides lessons,
as when I threw a stone over the wall and hit
the curate's wife on the head. Old Cutbrush
rushed in again, and was going to flog every
tenth boy, but I went up and confessed; and
when he said, “Fetch me a rod, monitor,” I ap-
pealed, and asked:
‘What's the good of confessing, if one’s to
be flogged all the same P’
And old Cutbrush was just, and forgave me
the flogging, but made me write a copy of verses,
in which I made all sorts of fun of Mrs. Blowsy,
the curate's wife; that was not her real name,
but we called her Blowsy and Blousibella because
she was so ‘baggy’ and such a slattern. I re-
member one line in which I said that she turned
up her eyes after receiving the blow of the stone.
* Qualiter in tonitru lumina tollit anas.”
\
an Eventful Life. 125
Old Cutbrush was a good fellow at heart and
a good scholar, and said the verses were rather
smart, but he said, ‘Halfacre, I don’t quite catch
the sense of this line. I wish you would construe
it.”
‘It’s quite a common simile,” I replied; “Mrs.
Blowsy—Mrs. Brownsmith, I beg her pardon—
turned up her eyes so queerly that I likened her
to a dying duck in a thunder-storm, at which
moment Buffon says dying ducks lift their eyes
in a very peculiar way !’ -
‘Indeed l’ said the doctor. “I daresay you
and Buffon are quite right, but I must say I
never heard of this fact in natural history
before.’
This, as you may suppose, was towards the
end of my career at Potterbridge, when I had
quite established my character with the doctor,
and was getting to the top of the school.
I remember the first winter at Potterbridge
was rather trying. They tell you, or used to tell
you, that West Indians brought a store of caloric
with them which enabled them to stand the first
winter better than born Britons, who have never
crossed the sea. I can’t say I believe it. I
think that warmth of the body in winter, strange
as some people may think the theory, depends
first on good food and lots of it. This we got
126 Annals of
at Potterbridge, which was in no sense a Do-
theboys Hall. Secondly, on warm clothing and
lots of it. With this my Aunt amply provided
me. Thirdly, on good fires and being near them.
The first part of this need was well met by the
doctor. There were two great fires in the school-
room, but then there were seventy boys, and
out of seventy boys some will necessarily be
bigger than the rest, and those in wet, cold
weather will gather round the fires and keep
the little ones off, just as they make the little
boys fag out at cricket and football, and so serve
an apprenticeship. I can safely say that for
two winters I never once saw the fire out of
School-time, and in school-time it was like what
the Promised Land was to the Israelites in the
Wilderness, a thing that they had heard talked
of so long for forty years without seeing it, that
they began to doubt whether the Promised Land
existed at all. So too with cricket, I declare
that I never once had an innings for two sum-
mers, which were spent on an agreeable variety
of fagging out ; extending all round the wicket
from Longstop to Point, but never once settling
at the wicket itself. They say it is bad for little
children to see the fire, but for my own part I
would sooner be baked than frozen to death.
The holidays, of course, I spent with Aunt
an Eventful Life. 127
Mandeville, and great fun they always were.
The doctor used to take me up to town, and put
me into the coach, and the Highflyer rattled
merrily along, the guard blowing his horn. That
was in the height of the coaching days, when
the Duke of Beaufort drove this coach and Sir
St. Vincent Cotton that, and when horses drew
coaches as no horses ever drew them before or
since ; when it was utterly effeminate to go
inside, and when in my particular case my legs
used to dangle over the side of the coach as I
sat just behind the coachman—I was too young
yet to aspire to the box seat—till by the time
we reached Warwick they were stiff and
numbed. --> -- *
But at the ‘Dun Cow’ there was always Aunt
Mandeville waiting to meet me, and away we
drove to Mandeville Hall as fast as the ponies
could scamper; and there stood old Brooks with
his bald head and tyrannical ways, year after
year just the same, never getting greyer or
thinner, but wearing quite as well as the por-
trait of Gevartius in the National Gallery, which
it provokes one to see never getting any older,
while we who look on it grow more and more
grizzled.
The winter holidays were best, I think.
There was shooting, and I already looked forward
128 Annals of
to having a gun. Did not young Wryneck, at
Potterbridge, Lord Scatterbrains' son, already
shoot so well that he could kill a dozen swallows
without missing one. Never frown, Mr. Sykes,
this was long before your Gull Bill, and still
longer before your Pigeon and Swallow Bill of next
Session, just as the Irish Church Bill is before
the English Church Bill, which the whole Eccle-
siastical body looks forward to with fear and
trembling. Yes! young Wryneck, whose tongue,
I remember, reached further out of his mouth
than any boy’s that I ever knew, and whose
nickname was venter, or glutton, because, when he
was recovering from the scarlet fever—of course
we had our scarlet fever periodically at Potter-
bridge, just as our forefathers had their ‘small-
pox,’—he wished for and got a basin of chicken-
broth. Young Wryneck, I tell you, could
shoot a dozen swallows without missing one, and
it was said that if two martens were clinging to
the eaves, as martens will do, he would shoot the
right-hand bird and leave the left, or the left-
hand bird and leave the right, which you chose.
Young Wryneck had long carried a gun, and
therefore why shouldn’t I carry one too? It is
very true that young Wryneck, who is now Lord
Scatterbrains, and my very good friend, never
did anything else than shoot; and, besides, if he
an Eventful Life. 129
had not spent his time in shooting he might
have been doing something worse. There are
worse things in the world for young and old
men to do than shooting. Take my word for it,
Mrs. Killjoy. -
Then there was hunting, and, though I longed
for a fire at Potterbridge when it was wet, and,
they shut us up in the schoolroom, I cared not for
cold or wet on my pony after the North War-
wickshire hounds. What brooks did I not
flounder into ? What bullfinches did I not creep
through P What ‘croppers’ did I not get P As
Aunt Mandeville, but for Brooks and the coach-
man, would have gone out shooting with me, so,
but for the coachman and Brooks, she would
certainly have gone out hunting. She could
ride well enough ; Mr. Ribbons said, he had
often seen her take a fence in Squire Mandeville's
time, when she was more lively-like; it wasn’t
that. But in Warwickshire it was not the thing
for widows to hunt, any more than for curates to
shoot. Rectors, of course, might shoot, and did
shoot, just as deans could, and bishops couldn’t ;
but with women, only wives—that is, women
whose husbands are alive, I say—might hunt.
If a widow hunted she would lose her character
at Once.
This was the coachman’s notion as to shooting
WOL. I. K
130 Annals of
and hunting. Whether my Aunt agreed with
him I cannot say, but certainly she never went
out with the hounds, though I am quite sure she
would have given her eyes, as the saying is, to
have done so, merely to be with me.
an Eventful Life. 131
CELAPTER, XII.
HOW I WENT TO WIESTMINSTER,
THREE years had now rolled by, and I was nearly
fourteen. ‘That boy,” old Mindererus used to
say, ‘has never anything the matter with him;’
and so it was. I defied the Doctor and all his
draughts. Aunt Mandeville was no coddle,
though she dreaded the Doctor, because the day
had been when he attended her husband, and
shook his head; and she knew the day would
come when Dr. Mindererus, or some other doctor,
would shake his head over her, and say:
“Poor lady, I am afraid she is not long for
this world.’
Was she afraid to die? No. But you may
not be afraid of a thing, and yet not like it; and
so it was with my Aunt.
‘Where were we ? Oh The Doctor said I
never had anything the matter with me; and he
was right. Thanks to the West Indies, I never
had a cough in my life; and thanks to Aunt
Mandeville, who still kept up her aversion to
sugar, and, in spite of the West Indies, my diges-
132 Annals of
tion was as that of the ostrich. I mention this
to show that I was fit to go to a public school,
where, in my days at least, the weakest went to
the wall. Without being a Hercules, a hero of
Muscular Christianity, I was quite able to hold
my own at any game, and I still did my lessons
fairly. My brothers were at Harrow; but I saw
little of them. We were very good friends, only
we scarcely ever met. I have told you that Aunt
Mandeville was jealous, and she always seemed
afraid that my father and mother or brothers
would come and take me away from her. Once
she had my brothers down to Mandeville Hall for
a week, but she did not ask them to prolong their
stay. Mr. Brooks said they were very rude, and
quite unfit to keep company with Master Edward.
The fact was that my brothers had persuaded old
Brooks to get into a punt on the lake, under pre-
tence of giving him a little fishing. They had
then pushed him off without pole or oar, when
the wind was strong off shore, and, I grieve to
say, pelted him with stones—an outrage at which,
I am ashamed to add, I greatly rejoiced. But it
was fatal to my brothers’ reputation. That was
the first and last visit they ever paid, in my time,
to Mandeville Hall.
My Aunt declared she would never send me
to a school where boys were so ill-mannered.
an Eventful Life. 133
Unlike most women, she was a Whig. Women
take to Toryism naturally as ducklings to the
water. But my Aunt was a Whig from family and
principle. As the Mandevilles had been Jacobites
and Tories, the Halfacres had been pure Whigs.
Pure Whigs—think of that 1–a thing which you
must be born, and cannot become. Parodying
the Articles, one might say, ‘Pure Whiggery
lieth not in the following of Charles Fox, as
the men at Brooks's do vainly fable, but is the
beauty and perfection of the nature of every man
and woman who is naturally engendered of pure
Whig parents; so that such children are, as it
were, predestinated to place and office by peculiar
fitness of their nature, and for no special merit of
their own.' Yes! Auntie was a born Halfacre
and a pure Whig. My father was a pure Whig,
and had been sent to Westminster, the great
Whig school. In a weak moment my mother,
who was a Tory, had persuaded him to send my
brothers to Harrow ; and see what came of it.
They learnt little, and when they were on a holi-
day they pelted old Brooks the butler in a punt.
So my Aunt resolved to send me to West-
minster, for which, as I have said, Dr. Cutbrush’s
was a special preparation; and two years before
I went there I remember going with Dr. Cut-
brush to Westminster, and seeing a play which
134 Annals of
turns on the history of a man who was similarly
situated to the high official at Queen Candace's
court, whom St. Philip met before he was found
at Azotus. Now, if that is not a delicate peri-
phrasis for the name of Terence's play, and for the
convert of St. Philip, may I be in the same posi-
tion at the Court of the Waag Shum Gobazie,
who was of such infinite use to our army in the
Abyssinian Campaign
So I went to Westminster. I remember the
very first day I went there being taken down to
the barges in Abingdon Street, and there seeing
an unhappy coalheaver, named ‘Wrynecked
George’—who is there who now recollects such a
coalheaver?—slip off one of the barges and perish.
‘Why doesn’t he come up P’ I asked of one
of his companions, who was vacantly gazing at
the river just after the accident.
“He has come up,” was the sad answer, ‘ and
has knocked his head against the bottom of the
barge, and been stunned, and gone down again.
The drags will find him ; but we shall never
See “Wrynecked George’’ alive again.”
I had paddled about a little on the lake at
Mandeville Hall, but besides knew little of row-
ing ; and I also remember being put on the
water by a sixth-form boy, with another new
boy no wiser in rowing than myself, and being
an Eventful Life. 135
told to row over to Roberts's, the boat-builder.
So we set to work, back to back, to the intense
delight of the boys on the stairs and barges, the
result being that we pulled the boat round and
round; and in that rotary fashion a strong ebb
tide carried us fast through one of the arches of
old Westminster Bridge, so that in due time we
should have made the acquaintance of old Lon-
don Bridge as well, but feeling that we were
all wrong, I got up, and hailed a waterman in
a wherry — there were wherries and watermen
on the Thames in those days—who, for a shilling,
took us in tow, and sculled us back to Lambeth
Walk.
Much to the doctor's dismay, I was placed
in the under school, and was therefore a fag for
a while. I soon got out of the under school,
but I am sure the fagging I underwent did me
a world of good, and were I to go to school
again, I would sooner begin as a fag. It is all
stuff to call it degrading. At Westminster, too,
the fags were protected by their masters, and
at night almost fed by them. Many a night and
oft I should have gone from one till nine P.M.
with nothing to eat, had it not been for my
master’s ‘Tuck,” as it was called, in the winter
time, at six o'clock.
Westminster boys have always been a manly,
136 Annals of
self-reliant race. It was of Fitzroy Somerset,
afterwards Lord Raglan, an old Westminster,
that the Duke of Wellington said that, when
he intrusted any order to an Old Westminster,
he was sure it would be carried out. The
story has been appropriated by Eton and other
schools, but it was said of Old Westminsters.
They are fond of their school, too; at least
they say they are. Let them prove their fond-
ness by sending their children to it, and not
listen to mothers who overcrowd Eton till it is so
unwieldy that no education is possible, or to the
doctors who say that a London school is un-
healthy. --
But this has little to do with my life. When
I went to Westminster the school was full, and
full of boys, of good family. There were Byngs,
Grosvenors, Pagets, Lennoxes, Pettys—all the old
Whig families. There was the grand old Abbey,
with its fighting-green, in which there were still
fights. Then, too, there was hockey round the
Cloisters—very bad for the monuments of the
dead, but very good for the bones of the living.
What recks, I should be glad to know, Sir Ed-
mundsberry Godfrey in his grave close by the
gate of the Chapter-house, of the doings of men or
boys now P Or ‘Jane Lister, dear child,’ in the
Cloisters, would racket-balls disturb her rest?
an Eventful Life. - 137
Or even Edward the Confessor—after whom I so
narrowly escaped being nicknamed, after the eight
hundred years which have passed since he died
on Childermass-day,+does he care whether balls
are tossed by children over his bones? or Win-
centius and Laurentius Abbas, those apocryphal
abbots, over the last of whom, if he lies under that
slippery blue slab, I got one of the worst falls I
ever had in my life, slipping up backwards on a
greasy November morning.
Then, too, the Green in Dean's Yard was open
to us summer as well as winter. Many a hot
summer day I have lain as happy as twenty
kings, in the shade of the great elm which stood
at the corner near the gateway, and fell, some
time after I left, nearly carrying away Queen
Anne's Bounty Office. I should not have cared if
it had carried it away altogether. I have heard
it said the grass of the Green is more valuable
to the Chapter than the pastimes of the boys. If
so, the sooner the boys are reinstated, and the
Chapter disendowed, the better. Then the pump
in Dean's Yard, sung in so many epigrams, the
spring at which so many thirsty souls slaked their
thirst — on Sunday especially, when the poor
held their great feast of pitchers. The pump,
alas! is dry—cut off by the Metropolitan District
Railway, they say, which has pumped all the
138 Annals of
moisture out of Westminster. Alas! poor pump!
St. David’s Day and Sir Watkin still survive,
but where is the ditch-leaping that followed P
where are those delightful three-quarter-holidays
called Early Plays, on one of which this ditch-
leaping took place P where are Big Ben, Spanking
Sam, and the Black Joke?–ditches that no leap
could clear, and into which we all fell, and floun- .
dered through P Gone, gone, filled up. Battersea
Park now covers their remains, though I think I
can still detect ‘Spanking Sam’ in one of the
drains left in that flourishing plantation.
Nor let me forget the Peregrines that built
on the Abbey Towers, the terror of the pigeons
which nestled among the buttresses lower down.
How we used to watch the noble birds, who, in
defiance of London Smoke and noise—far above it,
in fact—had chosen this favourite haunt of pigeons
for their eeriel There they lasted all through my
time. Often have I seen the feathers fly as they
struck a pigeon, and bore it aloft; and there they
or their descendants might still be, had not some
wretch lost to all feeling, some carrion crow or
buzzard in human shape, lain in wait upon the
leads with a gun and shot one of the birds for
fun. May hawks harry him in a future state, and
may his eyes be pecked out for fun!
There was Shrove-Tuesday, and its pancake,
an Eventful Life. 139
and its cook, who sometimes failed to toss it over
the bar, and, when he did fail, was ‘booked;’
that is to say, every boy threw a book at him,
much to Ginger the bookseller's benefit, and he
fled as fast as he could lay legs to the ground
down school, with all but the sixth form and
seniors at his heels. The sixth form were like the
10th Lancers: as the tenth never danced, the
sixth never ran; they were like the gods, they had
a motion of their own ; they walked down school.
Bvery one in any other form had to run up and
down School. The pancake-tossing still exists, but
Sometimes, when the cook fails, and is booked, he
gets in a rage, and throws his frying-pan at Some
boy's head with considerable effect. I think I
may say had the cook in our time attempted such
a thing, there would not have been left a bit of
him to boil or roast. He would have been torn to
pieces, and an inquest of Old Westminsters would
have sat on the bits, and brought in a unanimous
verdict of Justifiable Coquicide.
Then there was College — that mysterious
school within a school, against which we ‘Town-
boys,' who would have thought it beneath us to
go into College, had so many grudges and heart-
burnings; and there were the challenges for get-
ting into College—the most trying and exhaustive
mode of election known; and when boys got into
140 Annals of
College before entering it, they were tossed in a
blanket to the following Latin rhyme, which may
be as old as Laurentius Abbas, or the Confessor
himself. I am inclined to think, if there were any
blankets in the Confessor's time, that boys were
tossed in them. But this was the rhyme:—
“Ibis ab excusso
Missus ad astra sago.”
And as it is not every one that knows the right
way to toss boys in a blanket, I may pause to tell
you how it is done. Eight or ten strong fellows
take several blankets, one or two would be too
thin. They lay hold of them at the corners and
sides, and pull against each other at the pauses of
the rhyme. Thus, ‘Ibis ab,” one pull; ‘excussó,”
another, stronger; ‘missus àd,’ another; ‘astra
sagö, the strongest of all. By which time the
wight in the blanket who has been from the first
as lively as a parched pea on a drumhead, flies up
to the sky a wondrous height, and is caught and
tossed again in the same way, to the same
rhythm, as he descends. It is said to be very
great fun for all concerned, but most of all to
those who toss.
Then there was the water, and the funnies,
cutters, wherries, punchbowls, and half-deckers
that thronged the river daily. As I have said
an Eventful Life. 141
that in those times there were no envelopes, I may
add that in those days there were no penny
steamers to interfere with rowing. Sailing
barges were our great enemies, and often I have
been in fear of my life from them ; but how we
used to go on the water | What races and
sculling matches we used to have Very soon
after I went to Westminster I got a ‘stick-
licking,’ a very nasty thing let me tell you, that
made you black and blue all over, for leaving the
boat-hook of a four-oared, which I steered,
hanging on Putney Bridge, when we started
against four other four-oars to race to West-
minster. We got a good start by leaving the
boat-hook behind, but I smarted for it in a way
which makes me reñember it right well. And
the Eight, what pulls they used to leave on an
‘ early play,’ when tide served, rowing down
to Greenwich, shooting that headlong old Lon-
don Bridge by the way, and back again by
one o’clock; then to Richmond on the last of
the flood-tide, and back with the ebb in the
afternoon—a pretty good spell of rowing for
one day.
But now, where is the Westminster water P.
where are her Eights? and where is her annual
match with Eton P. It will soon be one of these
events which no fellow can remember.
142 Annals of
Well, one half got me out of fagging, and
I then took so well to my books that I got two
bye-removes running, that is to say, I got up
four forms in the year instead of two, and
this comforted good Dr. Cutbrush, because I had
not only recovered my lost ground, but had
beaten many of my contemporaries; but I warn
you from fancying that I was at all a prodigy
of learning. Now I think of it, I never got a
single prize at Westminster, except a few silver
pennies for epigrams. It was a custom of the
school that between Christmas and Easter sub-
jects were given out each week on which any
boy, who chose, might write an epigram, and if
he thought it good enough he might run up with
it to the headmaster’s desk, and read it out aloud.
If it were bad he was treated with derision ; if it
were good the headmaster dipped his hand in a
bag and gave him some silver pennies. I got
some more than once, and I have them still.
They were all the prizes I ever got at West-
minster.
an Eventful Life. 143.
CHAPTER, XIII.
FHOW THINGS WENT IN ST. SACCHARISSA.
WHILE I was flourishing in England what
became of my father and mother, who were left
behind in the West Indies six years ago? There
things went from bad to worse, the worst of all
being that my father had taken some of his
English money from the Warwickshire Estates
and thrown it into the Great Dismal Swamp of
St. Saccharissa. Now his own balance was gone
as well as Colonel Ratoon’s, Claw, Tooth, and
Nail had both come under advances, and held
mortgages on Two Rivers, which in the good old
time could have been rapidly cleared off by good
crops and high prices; but as evils never come
single, bad crops had run neck and neck with
low prices. One year there was a drought, and
the canes were good for walking-sticks, dry and
tough, but would yield no juice,—no, not even to
Nail and Screw's crusher. The next year was
too wet, and the canes gave plenty of juice,
only it had no saccharine matter. ‘Too plenty
144 Annals of
rain,” the negroes said, ‘jist de same for make
sugar, wid no rain at all.’
Then strange insects appeared, a great army
like the palmer-worm of the prophets, grass-
hoppers, and locusts, which ate up every green
thing, and mole-crickets, a sort of insect mole
which burrowed in the ground, and destroyed
the roots of the cane. Claw, Tooth, and Nail
were equal to the occasion. They consigned,—of
course, “under advances'—to my father, fifty
hogsheads of salt and one hundred puncheons of
lime at Heaven knows what price per puncheon and
hogshead, and one hundred carboys of sulphuric
acid; with a letter of instruction and advice, in
which they told my father that, having consulted
Dr. Smellfungus, the great analytical chemist,
whose days were chiefly spent in examining the
entrails of men and women, supposed to have
been poisoned, he had recommended that the
female locust should be sprinkled with salt, and
the male with lime, when he knew, I suppose,
out of his ‘inner consciousness,’ that they would
both shrivel up and vanish. The sulphuric acid
was a ‘prophylactic”—yes, that is the word in
old Claw's letter 1 — against the mole-cricket.
‘You must watch for the creature till it
emerges from its burrow, and pour a drop of
the acid on his occiput.’ Why he couldn’t say
an Eventful Life. 145
head I cannot tell. There it stands in the letter
now before me ‘occiput.” The only objection to
this ‘treatment of the ‘creature’ was that mole-
crickets never came out of their holes any more
than the talpa or common mole. -
That, at any rate, was how some of the money
went. These remedies were first cousin to the
nursery one of sprinkling salt on a bird’s tail:
they might have succeeded, only it was quite
impossible to apply them. Here was another
case in which my father was the martyr of
science. Claw, Tooth, and Nail were inde-
fatigable patrons of science with other men’s
money ; they paid Smellfungus high for his
opinion. If he lived now he would read a
Paper on the Extirpation of ‘Mole-Crickets’ at
the Entomological Society, and the penny-a-
liners would call him “the eminent chemist;’
but, alas ! he lived before the era of learned
societies, and great travellers, and the Brothers
Fressensheitz, who subsisted, as Umbra tells us,
for two whole years on camels’ dung in Central
Asia, and then coming home recited their feel-
ings before one of the most crowded meetings
ever held of the Stercological Society. The salt,
the lime, and the sulphuric acid, too, came to a
pretty penny; and as to get them—Claw, Tooth,
and Nail had “come under advances,’—they only
WOL. I. - L
146 Annals of
cost double what they need have done; and then
there was the forty per cent commission, and
freight and landing. The salt and sulphuric
acid were worse than thrown away; we had lots
of salt of our own; and the sulphuric acid was
stowed away in an outhouse till one of the
carboys was tapped by a night-walking nigger—
Mercury, perhaps.
‘Jest, massa, for ouwee see what inside him.
Suppose he rum. When jest me got bung out,
Sambo give me one push behind; me tink a
jackass kick me. Ober go de jar ; out come de
rum. Sambo jest toop down to taste him with
his lilly finger, when, phiz few something
'Xplode and catch fire, and we both run out to
sabe our life. Dat, massa, how de Outhouse catch
fire before massa say Jack Robinson; and dat
how de outhouse burn down.”
“But how did it catch light P’ asked my
father.
‘Why you see, massa,” said Mercury, “Sambo
berry bad nigger. He Smoke pipe. Ebery night
I say, Sambo Sambo! where you 'spect to go
to after dis world ober? I Churchman, massa.
I go wid massa whereber massa go. Massa safe
to go to Hebben ; such a good massal But
Sambo Baptist ; he beleeb what Metodist say.
They say ebery nigger bear his own load in dis
an Eventful Life. 147
world, and de same in de next ; dat why me
no like Metodist. Me bear load in dis world,
but massa bear de load for me in the next. Dat
why I stick to massa. But Sambo lazy nigger ;
smoke pipe; sleep in sun; nebber bear any load
in dis world; him hab to carry ten men load in
de next. So, just for frighten Sambo, I say,
“Sambo, Sambo! watchman come !” and he so
'fraid he gib me great push behind, and say, Get
out of de way, and jest den ober go the jar, and
out fall a spark from Sambo pipe ; and so, massa,
come de comphlagratium.’
As for the lime, it was used up in time; but
it was really no use, because the sea threw up
quantities of coral, which was gathered into
heaps and burnt at stated times into the best
of lime.
But these were trifles: only the last grain
that breaks the camel's back. Real ruin came
with Emancipation. I know it is the fashion to
talk of the generosity of England to the West
Indian proprietors. Generosity | A highwayman
is generous when, after robbing a traveller of a
hundred sovereigns, he throws him two or three
pieces to take him on to the next town. Very
generous, no doubt, to put your hands into the
pocket of a man and take out a pound, and then
to put half-a-crown into it ! That was about
148 Annals of
what the twenty millions came to. Slavery was,
no doubt, a great evil—greater to the proprietors
than to any one else; but the way in which it
was done away was the first step to that great
march of sentimental humbug which has been
going on in England ever since. Solid and old-
established interests are sacrificed to the senti-
ment and clamour of a clique, who gratify their
sentiment very often at the expense of the class
against which the outcry is raised, and fill their
own pockets into the bargain. -
Dut, fair or unfair, there could be no doubt
of the consequences to the proprietors. Claw,
Tooth, and Nail first got all the compensation—
some thirty thousand pounds in our case; and
that having stopped their maw for a while, my
father, if he had taken my Aunt’s advice, would
have thrown up Two Rivers and returned to
England; but, by a strange infatuation, both he
and my mother had grown quite fond of the
spot which had caused them so much misery. It
was a lovely island; they liked the house, the
sea, the sky, the slaves—or, as they were now
to be called, “apprentices.’ Blind as the mole-
cricket, they resolved to stay on, and they even
had my eldest brother out from Cambridge to
stay with them for a year.
‘My dear child,’ said my Aunt in her soft
an Eventful Life. 149
way, “they will be giving Claw, Tooth, and Nail
a mortgage on Halfacre Hall next ; see if the
firm don’t try to persuade your father and our
John to cut off the entail.’
My mother wrote constantly to me, and my
father sometimes. He was always a magnificent
background to me—something to look forward
to—and let me tell you that in painting this is no
bull, you must look forward to the background
and distance of a picture; but mothers are a
sunny, Smiling foreground on which all one’s best
feelings come out and warm themselves in the
genial light. The father's day is to-morrow,
that day that never comes. The mother's is to-
day, the day that is here next to you, which takes
up all your time; it will be time enough to think
of your father when to-morrow comes. And yet
I did often think of my father. I was far enough
off to feel for him, and to grieve to have to agree
with Aunt Mandeville that he was wasting his
life on a dream, and the most unreal of dreams,
that of making both ends meet round a West
India estate after emancipation day, when in-
stead of bringing the ends closer together, every
day drew them farther apart.
I have told you my Aunt was jealous, and how
she treated my brothers at the instigation of
Brooks. She showed it in everything. I be-
150 Annals of
longed to her, and I should belong to no one
else. If I was ill, she nursed me. No maid
should give me Dr. Mindererus' medicines. No
woman bent on poisoning her husband could have
watched over him more tenderly to see that he
took his death-bane properly. That was when I
had the measles; and old Brooks—idiot that he
was l—had allowed me to get up with the rash on
me, while my Aunt went down for half-an-hour
to see her agent. When Dr. Mindererus came he
said I was much worse, and mumbled something
of a chill and water on the brain, and that dolt
Brooks. I can’t remember much about it, for I
had a strange sort of humming in the head, and
I recollect I thought a queen bee had flown in at
my ear and been followed by a whole hive. But,
instead of a rush of bees, I had a rush of blood
to the head, all owing to that Brooks. But it
was worth being ill to see how my Aunt watched
over me when I was getting better.
Then it was that she gave a fresh proof of
her jealousy. A letter came from my mother in
which she very innocently said how glad she was
to have John with her, and how some day she
hoped I would follow his example and come to
see them at St. Saccharissa ‘if your Aunt Man-
deville will let you. We shall never come
home,” she went on in a melancholy strain, “we
an Eventful Life. 151
shall lay our bones here, and I should like you to
see us, and the old place, before we die.’
I was very weak, and I threw the half-read
letter over to my Aunt to see what it contained.
As she read, I watched her. After she had read
it through, she flushed red, she grew ashy pale—
grey, almost like a dead leaf, the hue of a fallow
field, when nature is dead in winter time.
‘Child,’ she said, ‘I see it all. They want
to take you away from me. If they once
get you out there in that horrible new place.
How dare they call it “old,” when here in Eng-
land, at Halfacre Hall, is the old place, which
has come down from Halfacre to Halfacre, from
father to son, since the battle of Ashdown, where
Alfred smote the Danes. How dare she call that
“Two Rivers,” that upstart estate, that beggar on
horseback, that Sugar-loaf, that Twelfth Cake
Ornament, “old?” It will melt away from them
some morning. No 1 you shall never go to them.
If your mother wants to see you she must come
home, as my brother ought to have done long ago.
Remember you belong to me, you are mine !’ And
then, remembering how ill I had been, and her
passion fading from her as quickly as heat from
iron, she added in her usual soft winning way, as
she leant over and kissed my wan face: -
‘You are mine ! dear to me as my own child;
152 Annals of
are you not, Edward? But I am a wilful woman,
and from first to last I must have my own way.”
Soft as a silken string when things went
smooth, but savage as a fury when thwarted, was
my Aunt Mandeville.
Yet there was no doubt that she loved me
now more than anything on earth.
an Eventful Life. 153
CELAPTER, XIV.
HOW I WENT TO OXFORD.
THAT illness, and the scene I have related, hap-
pened when I was about eighteen, just before I left
Westminster, and when it was not settled whether
I should go to Oxford or Cambridge. My brother
John was at Trinity—Trinity, Cambridge, I
mean ; for though I am an Oxford man, I believe
that there is only one Trinity. I rather think
this was the real reason why my Aunt sent
me to Christ Church. Let Cambridge men be
just and acknowledge that, as there is only one
Trinity, so there is only one Christ Church. Let
both Cambridge and Oxford confess that there
is but one Trinity and but one Christ Church,
and our articles of faith will be full. We have no
need of thirty-nine. Those were for the sixteenth
century, when the clergy read homilies and never
wrote their own sermons. How I wish they
never wrote them now ! This is the only article
that Oxford and Cambridge of the nineteenth
century need. What the undergraduates of the
154 Annals of
other Colleges and Halls will say to this Confes-
sion of Faith I cannot say, and do not much care.
I look upon them as the Angel Michael did when
he was disputing with a certain dark person for
the body of Moses. I do not abuse them, or bring
against them any ‘railing accusation.” I look
upon them, in short, with Supreme contempt.
Let them follow the example of the devils, and
believe and tremble at my angelic faith.
I need hardly say, then, that my Aunt settled
that I should go to Christ Church. Squire Man-
deville had been there; and though he was a
staid, sober man after he married my Aunt, and
for the short time they lived together there were
stories about him current with the ‘scouts,” when
I went up to ‘The House,” that showed him to
have been playful as a kitten.
‘Bless you, Mr. Halfacre,’ old Filch would
say, ‘the gentlemen as come up now ain’t half as
light-hearted and gay as they used to be in my
time. Talk of pinks; why, when I was first in
the House, you couldn’t count them. And your
uncle Mandeville,_many’s the supper-party I’ve
served for him ; and the flip, and the bishop, and
the cardinal, and the songs; all manner of larks.
Why, he it was that first painted the Dean's door
red. The same thing’s done now, but there was
some fun in being the first to do it. All that
an Eventful Life. 155
comes after is mere imitation like. Then, too,
who first bribed the porter to toll Tom one hun-
dred and two instead of one hundred and one P-
why, Mr. Mandeville. Who locked Dean Jack-
son and young Mr. Barnes into the library, and
kept them there the whole afternoon P−Mr. Man-
deville. I think I see him with his smiling face,
as cool as a cucumber, going in to see the Dean,
who had inquired particularly for him ; for Mr.
Mandeville, when he heard there was to be a row,
went to his tutor and gave himself up. He were
not a sneak, weren’t Mr. Mandeville. And what
do you think he told the Dean P Why, when the
Dean, with his wig on, the reason why the deans
are not respected now is that they don’t wear
wigs. Bless you, you would have as soon seen Dean
Jackson out without his kneebreeches as without
his wig, what do you think Mr. Mandeville said,
when the Dean asked him how he dared lock him
up P Why, he made him a low bow, and said,
nothing could be further from his intention than
to lock him or young Mr. Barnes up; but he
knew there were some valuable things in the
library, and he was afraid some dishonest persons
might get in, and as he was coming across Peck-
water, going down to the boats, he saw the key
in the door, and locked it, and put the key in his
pocket, and went on the water and forgot it till
156 Annals of
he came back, and here it was; and with that he
pulled out the key, and handed it to the Dean
with another low bow.’
‘And what did the Dean do?’
“Do why, what could he do but make him
another low bow back, and thank him for the care
he had taken of the key? Next day Mr. Mande-
ville dined with the Dean.”
But that was nearly the end of my uncle’s
tether. The Dons were too much for him at
last, old Filch said, just for all the world like a
fox that often hunted, and often escaping, still
comes to the hounds at last. One fine night,
Uncle Mandeville with others met the junior
Proctor in the walks, and tied him to a tree,
where he passed a good part of the night while
they went down to Sandford Feast, and only
knocked injust before twelve. Unfortunately for
them the junior Proctor, Jerry Sneak—that was
not his name, but that was his nickname in the
University—had got loose and stood at the gate,
hiding in the porter's lodge at ‘Tom’ to see
who knocked in. After that he put on beaver and
crept up the staircase in Peckwater where my
uncle's rooms were, and listened at the door,
while he had a supper-party, to overhear what
was said. Then it was, alas ! that my uncle com-
mitted that atrocity which the Dean said was
an Eventful Life. 157
enough to restore the hair of a bald man. Going
out of his rooms for something, he found the
unhappy Jerry lurking on the staircase, and,
pretending not to know him, incontinently kicked
him down stairs; Jerry, all the while, exclaiming,
‘Don’t you know me, Mr. Mandeville P I am the
junior Proctor.”
‘I don’t believe a word you say,” said my
uncle, who probably thought that his cup was
full, and that he might make it overflow a little.
‘I don’t believe a word you say. Where are
your academicals P A junior Proctor in beaver at
this hour of night. Get away with you, you
rank impostor l’ So he chased him into the
quad with blows and jeers, and then returned to
tell his friends what he had done.
Next morning the Dean held a Chapter, at
which Mr. Mandeville and the junior Proctor
appeared. My uncle was condemned, almost
unheard; a black eye which Mr. Sneak had un-
fortunately contracted in his headlong descent
speaking eloquently on his side, when my uncle
coolly told the Dean that they were going to con-
demn him on evidence which would be quite
insufficient in a court of justice.
‘This is a Chapter of Christ Church, and not
a court of justice,” said the Dean.
‘I am quite aware of it. There is no justice
158 Annals of
here,’ said my uncle, and was about to retire
with a bow, but they would not let him go, in
fact, they expelled him on the spot, and his place
in Christ Church knew him no more. ‘A very
wild young man,’ as the Dons said. Yet there
was his memory as fresh as ever, in old Filch's
mind, when I went up to Christ Church forty
years after. Such is undergraduate fame.
It was fortunate for me that the Dons' memory
was shorter. Some of the young Dons of my
uncle's time were very old Dons when I went up,
port-logged souls, but the management of ‘the
Horse’ was in younger and abler hands. Some-
times, however, the old lotus-eaters used to
appear at collections, and ask us silly questions,
and correct our Latin. I remember getting into
a sad Scrape with one of them, because I began a
theme, ‘Quis negaverit.” “Quis negaverit,” Mr.
Halfacre,’ chirped out the Canon, ‘what does
this mean P’ When I explained, he said, ‘Oh! I
See, but it would be far easier to say, Quis non
dicit. Dicit, Mr. Halfacre, an honest straight-
forward indicative, none of your subjunctives.”
I thought of reminding him of one of Paul de
Rock's novels, where a lover is detected in dis-
guise, by saying, ‘Eh bien / que woulez-vous queſ’en
fasse.’ ‘Voilà du Suljonctif,’ said his mistress,
and turned him out-of-doors neck and crop. But,
an Eventful Life. 159
on second thoughts, I knew that this story would
be thrown away on him. I have kept it till
now, and tell it to you, gentle reader, instead. I
shan’t tell you in which of Paul de Kock’s novels
it occurs, and so you will have to read them all
through ; much good may they do you ! but one
thing I can tell you, whether you are man or
woman, they won't do you half as much harm—I
admit their coarseness—as ‘Gerfaut,” or “L’Affaire
Clemenceau,” and yet, I daresay, you have read
both. -
However, I went up to Oxford, and I always
look back upon those three years as the happiest
of my life. I left Westminster scholar enough
to pass Littlego and Greats with little trouble.
The Bible, that great stumbling-block in the way
of ‘Greats,’ that book utterly impossible to be
crammed up in six weeks,—that had been made
safe by my mother and my aunt. Don’t laugh,
you enlightened people, who know how to do
without the Bible. Don't think me a fool for
being taught the Bible almost by heart by two
weak women. I say the Bible so learnt is a pearl
beyond price, a book full of touching memories, of
recollections which sweep across the soul, soothing
all the tempests of passion—oil, balm, manna,
spices, call it what you will. Let no one mock
me for knowing the Bible.
160 Annals of
In those days there were but two examina-
tions. Let those who were undergraduates thank
their stars for that. Now, I do not even know
how many there are. In those days, if a man
was a double first, you knew what he was ; now
he may be double first in insects and stuffed
birds, big at beetles, and able to set up a sea-
gull. That they call natural science. Very
natural, I call it, that is, very idiotic. If a son
of mine has the love of insects or seagulls im-
planted in him,-nay, even if he should aspire
to the place held at court by Mr. Ribbins, who
is or was bug-destroyer to Her Majesty,+it will
come out quite soon enough in after life. But
while he is an undergraduate, let him study the
classics and philosophers; and if he is greedy
for more, let him take up mathematics, and if
they don’t satisfy him, I can’t tell what is to
be done with him.
I was not sent up to read. Of course my
Aunt did not expect that I would be plucked
in any examination. She wished me to read if
I chose ; but one of her favourite maxims was
that life wouldn’t be worth having if everybody
were as wise as Solon. Once in a way a wise
man may be welcome, but a nation of wise men—
‘Child, it would be hell upon earth !’
‘Besides,” she went on, “some people are born
an Eventful Life. 161
to be fools; why teach them what they can never
master P Just like teaching girls without ear, or
touch, or taste, or feeling, to play, making music
a terror to the world.”
She often said that what she sent me to
university for was to learn men and manners;
to associate with what she called my ‘equals.’
She gave me a good allowance; but if Auntie
hated one thing with a deeper hatred than that
which she bestowed on Claw, Tooth, and Nail,
it was debt. “Never run in debt, Edward. Pay
your way like a gentleman. Don’t stint your-
self, but remember that it is possible—nay, easy,
by play and betting, and running to the Jews
for a hundred pounds now, and another hundred
then, to empty the deepest purse and ruin the
finest estate.’
I often think how unhappy I should now be
if I had not kept faith with Aunt Mandeville.
She never had to pay a sixpence of debt for
me. Perhaps it was owing to her liberal allow-
ance. I knew an unhappy wretch whose father
sent him up to Oxford, and expected him to live
like a gentleman on fifty pounds a-year. He
did live like a gentleman for one year, and then
went down for ever, owing three hundred pounds.
Poor fellow ! he was sent to India, and his
bones now lie either on or under the surface
WOL. I. M
162 Annals of
of the Khord Kabul Pass. Parents should re-
member that there is nothing that goes such
a little way as nothing, especially at the uni-
versity.
Well, then, in October I went up. I re-
member I came from Leamington to Rugby, and
so to Oxford by the famous coach called the Pig.
Why it was so called I never could find out;
perhaps from the obstinacy and porcine propen-
sities of the first driver. But that it was called
Pig there can be no doubt. Ask any old Rugby
man why it was so called, if you know one.
I think we went by Southam and Banbury, and
so along the valley of the Cherwell to Oxford.
How glad I was to quit the Pig and hasten
to Christ Church My rooms were at first in
Fell’s Buildings, the old Fell's Buildings, I
mean, not those new Fell’s Buildings which are
enough to make William of Wykeham turn in his
grave. How proud I was of my rooms, and yet
how miserable those garrets were ! I could sit
by my fire and open the door, shut the window
and poke the fire without rising from my seat.
Then, too, the prospect was so lively; the floods
were out almost all that term, and Christ Church
meadow was one huge lake. However, Imanaged
to get through that term, and the next my
* tutor made interest with the Dean, and I changed
an Eventful Life. 163
into excellent rooms in Canterbury. Dear me,
when I was last in Oxford I looked up at the
windows, and thought of all that had rolled over
my head since, and of my first breakfast party
in them, and how “jolly' it was — we only said
“jolly' in those days; not “awfully jolly’ as
girls and boys now use the expression every other
minute ;-and of the old faces, some of them new
then, and where the old faces are now ; how
many of them haggard and wizened; how many
of them grinning skulls in India, in the Crimea,
beneath the sea deep down hundreds of fathoms
in mid-ocean ooze, it may be with electric cables
lying close to them, flashing the secrets of one
hemisphere to another, and yet those poor emptv
brain-pans never so much as knew that there
were or would be such things as telegraphs.
Some lying in fat English churchyards in tombs
at which the village urchins throw stones, de-
facing the legend of their many virtues. Some
with no tombs at all. Many dead, some worse
than dead. Well, well! Time will have his
own, and death and the tax-gatherer no man
can cheat, though next January the tax-gatherer
will be worse than death, for death till he comes
is all prospective, but between this and next
January the tax-gatherer will exhibit a pleas-
ing mixture of prospect and retrospect, and we
164 Annals of
shall have at once to pay eighteen months'
taxes. - -
But, to come back to my rooms in Canterbury,
which I am trying as hard as I can to people
with ghosts. Then it was really flesh and blood!
though young flesh and blood would do well to
reflect sometimes that, after all, its flesh and
blood are but a mantle and mask for so much
phosphate of lime—I beg pardon of the Osteo-
logists if that is not what bones are made of.
I have often thought how oddly we pick up our
friends; how sympathy lies in one's cold, stony
heart, as fire in a flint, till something strikes us,
and brings out the spark which burns speedily
into friendship. One of my best friends I made
by fighting with him. Not that Deepdale of the
private school, but one with whom I fought at
Westminster. Strange that blows should lead
to love but they did in that case. His name
was Mainwaring—no relation, I beg leave to say,
of the Cheshire Mainwarings; but of quite
another stock. While it lasted—and it lasted
long—I don’t think I ever loved any man so
much. He grew up a bigger, stouter fellow
than I was ; and when we went up to Christ
Church he could have thrashed me easily. Very
handsome, too, he was : fair of face, with rich
brown hair;-so handsome that women used to
an Eventful Life. - 166
turn round in the streets and bless his “sweet,
pretty face.’ At first, “as freshmen,’ we used to be
for ever on the water in skiffs. This, again, was
before the days of outriggers and canoes. In our
second year they coaxed Mainwaring away from
me into the eight. He went into training, and
used to eat raw beefsteaks, never touch pastry,
and run six miles round the Walks before break-
fast. Mainwaring was an enthusiast, and threw
himself heartily into everything that he did. He
said it was “jolly work—training.” But I think
the athletic spirit was not so strong in our gene-
ration at Oxford as it is now ; for then it was
that Cambridge used to beat us so fearfully on
the water, while we stood by, wondering how it
was that they could ever beat us; but, for all
that, they did. The fact was, our eights were
too exclusive. I remember a University eight,
which had six Christ Church men in it, just as I
remember a Christ Church eight, in which every
oar was a Westminster man, pulling that fine
London stroke which still characterises Oxford
from Cambridge pulling. If we had all been
Mainwarings we should have beaten Cambridge
then as we beat her now ; but we were not Main-
warings; we would not take the trouble to train ;
we would eat pastry after our raw beefsteaks, and
^ream ices at Jubber's Temple after we came
166 * Annals of
off the water at night, to say nothing of egg-
flip and other nightcaps well known in Oxford
butteries, right pleasant to the palate, but very
noxious to the stomach and lungs.
Then there was Scatterbrains; but as I shall
have something to tell of him afterwards, I shan’t
say anything about him now, except that he was
one of my greatest friends.
Then there was Martingale. He was not an
old friend. He was the younger son of an Irish
peer; but he has since succeeded to the family
estates and honours, his elder brother having
broken his neck in ‘lepping a dyke,’ as the local
journal put it. He was mounted on ‘a grate
horse entirely, and an excellent lepper;' but the
brute tripped in clearing the dyke, and the un-
happy horseman broke his neck. I made his
brother’s acquaintance coming home from hunt-
ing one raw November afternoon; and we should
have been good friends if hunting had lasted all
the year round, as an Oxford tutor thought in
my time when he said, enraged at what he called
my sinful idleness, when in a Chorus of the
Agamemnon I could only translate the inter-
jections ‘Alas! alas !’ and ‘Ah me ! ah me !’
After which he broke out with :
‘It is well known, Mr. Halfacre, that you are
for ever hunting that disgoosting animal, the
an Eventful Life. 167
fox—the fox, which animal was sown up in a
sack with parricides, when they were drowned
along with an ape and a cock. God knows why
they put the cock there ; but the ape, it is well
known, is another most disgoosting animal. You
mount your horse, and put on your Scarlet coat,
in this month of June, and hunt the fox over
the fields: that is why you make yourself so
ridiculous in lecture.”
I forbore to make him ridiculous by exposing
his ignorance of hunting before the lecture-room ;
but the titter that went round, even from the
pale-faced reading men, showed that every one in
the room saw that, however much our worthy
tutor might know of the punishment of parricides
among the ancients, he was profoundly ignorant
of the times and seasons for following the fox in
modern England.
I68. Annals of
CHAPTER XV.
HOW SOMETHING HAPPENIED AT MANDEVILLE HALL.
Now, what I am going to tell you is true, though
you may think it a lie. So if you don’t like
strange truths you had better skip it.
There was a Muniment room at Mandeville
Ball, filled with what, to you, would seem musty
old papers, but which would make the mouth of the
Master of the Rolls water. There were no Anglo-
Saxon charters as we had at Halfacre Hall, but
there were numberless old Norman deeds which had
belonged to Mandeville Abbey, of which you may
still see the ruins about a mile and a half from
Mandeville Hall. So when you find Mandeville
Hall, in Warwickshire, you will not be long in
stumbling on the Abbey. I regret to say that
the Mandeville who built the hall was a time-
server. He was Catholic and Protestant by turns,
just as bluff Harry willed it. The wits of those
days called him “the Warwickshire weather-
cock.” The result was that he got a grant of the
Abbey lands, and pulled the Abbey itself down
an Eventful Life. 169
for the sake of the lead. He was very nearly
coming to a bad end in Bloody Mary’s time, for
he was silly enough to turn out his men for the
Lady Jane, and had to pay a heavy fine to the
Queen before he could get his pardon, which is
still to be seen among the Mandeville manu-
scripts, under the Queen's great seal. There
were deeds signed by Sir Thomas Lucy, and who
knows if the deeds were properly searched,
whether the very inquisition before that shallow
knight who drove Shakespeare to London may
not still be found. Besides papers and parch-
ments there were old pictures of ancestors, which
after the usual course of promotion and degrada-
dation which befalls family portraits, after being
hung in hall, library, gallery, and bedroom,
at last find their way into lumber rooms, their
frames, alas! being wanted for a new generation.
One day when I was a freshman at Oxford, I
went with my Aunt into the Muniment room to
hunt for some lease, and while she was busy
looking for it, I amused myself with the pictures.
They were all rolled up, and docketed at the back
with the names of those whom they represented.
This was Sir Giles, Sir Hugh, Sir John. Then
as knights’ banneret dropped out, and the family
fortunately escaped the disgrace of a baronetcy,
it was Squire this and Squire that, or Mistress
170 Annals of
Ursula, Eleanor, or Mary. After I had turned
over a good many, and raised dust enough to
make us almost Swallow at One dose that peck
of dirt which we are told we must all eat before
we die, I was just going to leave off, as my Aunt’s
search was nearly over, when I saw a roll which
had a larger docket than the rest, and so I
thought I would just look at that too. The
docket read rather strangely, ‘This is the
portrait of the “White Lady,” cut from the
frame by me, John Mandeville, January 3rd,
1716.” -
‘What White Lady ?? I asked of my Aunt.
‘Who was the “White Lady ?”
“Never mind, child,’ said my Aunt rather
sharply for her, ‘unroll her and let us look at
her.’ -
I did as she bade me, and unrolled the picture.
It was a portrait by Vandyck or one of his pupils,
excellently painted not merely in hands, but in
head and face. A three-quarters length, with a
child clinging to her in the right-hand corner
of the picture and seemingly cut in half.
‘What an awkward picture, Aunt Mande-
ville ! The figures look as if they were cut in
half.”
‘Yes!’ said my Aunt, now in her quiet way;
‘Yes! but see how beautiful she was ; what hair,
an Eventful Life. 171
what eyes, what a skin, and what a sad, mournful,
wild look she has Roll her up at once. I do
not wish to see her again.”
Then I prayed for the picture. ‘If it is
such a good picture, Auntie, what a shame to cut
it from the frame ! Why did John Mandeville
cut it from the frame, I wonder P’
“Ah!’ almost sighed my Aunt, ‘why did he cut
her from her frame? but as you seem taken with
the picture we will have her lined and re-framed,
and she shall be hung up in the hall.’
So we had her lined and framed, and hung
her up in the hall, opposite to the entrance.
I used to spend all my vacations with my
Aunt, and very happy we were together. I
think there was scarce a watering-place in Eng-
land—she did not much care for foreign travel—
that I have not visited with her, either as boy or
man. She longed for the sea, and would even go
to Cornwall in the winter, and to Wales in the
spring, taking a regiment of servants with her,
much to the indignation of Brooks, who com-
plained that “at them sea-side places’ he could
never get his meals ‘comfortable or regular.”
But these sea-side rushes were one of the
things that my Aunt insisted on. Once out of
her park she had a will of her own in domestic
matters. She ceased to be a Mandeville, and was
172 - Annals of
again a Halfacre; and well for her it was so, or
else she would have been worried to death by
old Brooks. - -
Well, the long vacation after we found the
White Lady, my Aunt, did what she never had
done before, and what she never did again.
When she went away to the sea she lent Mande-
ville Hall to Sir Benjamin Bullion, her London
banker. The Mandevilles had banked with the
Bullions ever since there was banking in Eng-
land. The first Bullion was a rival of that
Duncombe of whom Pope sung contemptuously;
but in spite of Pope's satire I would sooner be a
live lord at Helmsly and Rievaux than a dead
poet. The Bullions had not done so well as the
Duncombes. They rather messed matters in the
South Sea Bubble, but still they had done pretty
well. When their wills were proved they made
half the millionaires in London die of envy, and
had they lived in the days of succession duty
they would have contributed thousands upon
thousands to the revenue. They were stupid,
short-necked, and prosy, as befitted bankers.
They never speculated and never allowed
interest on deposits, and that was why the
Mandevilles banked on them. One of the few
things remembered as having been said by the
late Mr. Mandeville was, ‘Never bank with a
an Eventful Life. 173
banker who allows you interest on your balance;
it always means speculation, and bad security.’
I don’t quite know how it happened, but the
chief cashier of the bank, in corresponding on
business with my Aunt about some investment of
her savings said, “Our Sir Benjamin is not so
well as we could wish. The constant efflux of
gold to the continent worries him, and he is
getting thin. I wish he would take a holiday.”
Strange to say, for a woman so cold to all the
world, except to me, Aunt Mandeville sympa-
thised with the banker; and when the invest-
ment was made on the unerring advice, of Sir
Benjamin, she wrote him a kind letter, and said
that if he chose to come down to Mandeville Hall
with his establishment it was quite at his service.
A PostScript added, “We shall be away all Sep-
tember and part of October at Scarborough, and
you will find excellent partridge-shooting at Man-
deville Hall.”
I believe that P.S. decided Sir Benjamin.
He accepted the invitation, and as soon as my
Aunt was gone with her establishment he suc-
ceeded her with his. I think I am right when I
say that there was not one servant left in the
house.
‘Well! we went to Scarborough; and very
happy we were for those two months. My Aunt
174 Annals of
was not only fond of the sea, but she loved to
be on it. We hired a yacht, the only drawback
to which was that we could never get the master
—whom we hired, too, with his crew—to set
the gaff topsail. That he was quite right was
proved by what we heard afterwards, but what
no one told us, though every one in Scarborough
knew it, that whenever that yacht set her gaff-
topsail she capsized. However, we knew nothing
of that; our grievance was that we could never
get the gaff-topsail up, and we were a living
proof that it is better to have a grievance than
to surmount it and perish in consequence. Then,
too, we went to Whitby, and to Holy Island;
passed Flamborough Head, then noisy with the
gulls, which the cockney sportsman had not yet
shot off, and which I sincerely hope Mr. Sykes'
Bill may restore. Standing too close in we ran
on Filey Brigg, and very nearly went to the
bottom, but the master managed to get the Petrel
—that was her name—off, after bumping a little
upon the rocks.
Just before we left Scarborough, my Aunt,
who had been wondering why she had not heard
from Sir Benjamin, received a very mysterious
letter from him, informing her that he had re-
turned to town, and that when she came back to
Mandeville Hall he would be glad if she would
an Eventful Life. 175
allow him to come down and see her for a
day.
‘I can’t make out what he means,’ said my
Aunt, as she threw the letter over to me; * but I
shall write and tell him to come and stay as long
as he likes.’
We returned to Mandeville Hall, and as
Claw, Tooth, and Nail would have said, ‘ duly
notified’ to Sir Benjamin that my Aunt was at
home again, and would be happy to see him.
He fixed the day, and came.
I recollect him well. He was a most prosaic
man, quite above telling a story, and quite in-
capable of a joke. I remember he told us that
he had never dreamt in his life. Fancy a man
who has never dreamt why, even dogs dream.
Look at a sleeping dog. Let him lie; let him
sleep his sleep out, and then say that he doesn’t
dream |
Well, this truthful, dreamless man sat down
to dinner with us, clothed and in his right mind.
I remember we dined in the Hall, with the ban-
ners fluttering, and the family portraits looking
down on our meal. After dinner, when even
Brooks had betaken himself to his pantry, or
wherever else he abided, Sir Benjamin, clearing
his throat, said to my Aunt :
“Something happened during my visit here,
176 Annals of
Mrs. Mandeville, with which I think it my duty
to make you acquainted.’ -
Here he paused, and my Aunt, rather flut-
tered, said:
‘Indeed, Sir Benjamin! what was it? Nothing
about the game, I hope. We always follow our
own birds on Lord Lurdane's land, and his lord-
ship does the same on ours. But I daresay it
was something about bushing the fields, which
the tenants are bound to do ; or was it the foxes,
or the rabbits P’
She would have run over the whole litany of
landlord and tenant, and pursued the irrepressible
rabbit even into his burrow, had not Sir Benja-
min, in his slow, heavy way, checked her by
saying :
‘I can assure you, Mrs. Mandeville, it was
nothing that arose out of game. The shooting,
both partridge, pheasant, and rabbit, was most
excellent; and as for hares, I never saw so many
anywhere.”
‘What was it then?” said my Aunt, who
began to grow impatient.
‘You shall hear,’ said Sir Benjamin, and then
he went on : ‘You are aware, Mrs. Mandeville, that
you were good enough to leave us the house en-
tirely empty. I do not mean, of course, empty
of furniture, but of servants. It was an act of
an Eventful Life. 177
great consideration, for the servants of two estab-
lishments seldom agree, and ours were, so to
speak, left carte blanche.’
What he understood by carte blanche I am sure
I can’t tell, but those were the very words he
used. ‘There could therefore be no collusion or
deception played by one set of servants on the
other, and, as utter strangers, of course our ser-
vants were ignorant of the story of this house.’
‘Proceed,” said my Aunt, who seemed quite at
a loss to understand the drift of Sir Benjamin’s
observations.
‘As we are few in family,” continued Sir
Benjamin, ‘and you had not fettered me by any
prohibition, I thought I would ask my friend
Blogg, a Russian merchant of great standing
and integrity, the best judge of bristles and
tallow on change, and a man whose word would
pass for thousands even without a crossed cheque
5
drawn to order
My Aunt was so bewildered with tallow,
bristles, and crossed cheques, that she could
only bow acquiescence—an act which she me-
chanically performed.
‘Mr. Blogg accepted my invitation;–he is a
first-rate shot, besides his knowledge of his
business, put himself into the Highflyer, and
arrived here in time for dinner. As our side of
WOL. I. N
178 Annals of
the house, up those stairs yonder, was full, we put
Mr. Blogg into one of the State rooms, into
Queen Elizabeth's room, in fact, Land after a
pleasant evening, Mr. Blogg confessed that he
was very tired, and went to bed. I went myself
with him to his room to see that it was comfort-
able; and as it seemed not to have been tenanted
for some time, we had a fire lighted in the large
grate, and when it burned up, we left my friend.
I may mention here that Mr. Blogg is a man of
undaunted courage; witness his buying ten
thousand casks of yellow candle at fifty-six and
sixpence for delivery in the very height of the
tallow panic at the end of the Crimean War.
That bold step checked the disastrous fall in
Russian tallow, and saved hundreds of families
from ruin. I have heard him also say that he
has seen ten men flogged to death with the
knout in Russia without feeling faint.
‘Well! I left my friend and retired to rest
with Lady Bullion. Let me say it was at the full
of the moon. When I was shaving in the morn-
ing,’—here Sir Benjamin felt his massive chin,
which was firmly seated on a dewlap of which
any cow might have been proud, ‘I was sur-
prised, I may say amazed, to see my friend Blogg
walking in the garden in front of the Hall. $
‘As I felt sure that he could not have rested
an Eventful Life. 179
well, I sent down my valet with an inquiry after
my friend’s health, and to my surprise he came
back and said that Mr. Blogg had sent for a fly,
saying that he would not re-enter the house.
“I reflected whether Mr. Blogg had been
seized with sudden mania, but there was nothing
in the condition either of the bristle or of the oil
and tallow markets to warrant that conclusion; I
therefore sent back the valet with a request that
Mr. Blogg would at least enter the house to take
his morning meal, and that I would be down in a
few minutes. To my great satisfaction I saw
that he had entered the house, and hastily finish-
ing my toilet I went downstairs; but on my way
down, on looking through the window, I saw that
he was again walking in the garden, though his
breakfast was smoking on the table.
‘I ran—with some sacrifice of self-respect I
own—but I ran into the garden, and seizing him
by the arm, I said, “Good God, Blogg, are you
mad? Why will you not eat your breakfast as a
Christian and a merchant ought P Be a man,
Blogg,” for I felt something dreadful had befallen
him. To tell you the truth, I thought that the
Czar of all the Russias had issued a Ukase for-
bidding for fourteen years the export of tallow,
hemp, hides, and bristles, a tyrannical exercise
of authority which I knew by the state of his
180 Annals of
balance, and the bills “maturing,” as we term
it, could have caused my friend to suspend.”
“Do you mean he would have hanged himself
here at Mandeville Hall?' asked my Aunt with an
anxious jealousy for the reputation of the Hall.
“No 1 no !” said Sir Benjamin, ‘not so bad as
that. . By suspend, I mean stop payment; in
other words, become a bankrupt. But to pro-
ceed: Mr. Blogg turned sharply round on me
and said, “Nothing will induce me to enter that
house again. I had hardly set my foot in the
Hall, when I saw her again.”
* Her,’ said my Aunt, whose interest increased
now that the story had passed from the domain of
Ukases on tallow and bristles—" Her / whom do
you mean, Sir Benjamin P’
‘That lady yonder,’ said the baronet, point-
ing to ‘the Lady in White,’ with the rueful
countenance, whom we had only a little while
before restored to the light of day.
‘That lady yonder, and if you will let me go
on, I will tell you all about it, for I would not
leave Mr. Blogg, or suffer him to go, till he had
told me all that had happened.
‘Mr. Blogg said that when we had left him in
Queen Elizabeth’s room, he had undressed him-
self as quickly as he could and gone to bed.
Though the fire was burning bright he was soon
an Eventful Life. 181
asleep. How long he had been asleep he could
not tell, but he suddenly awoke, and saw by the
low light of the embers a female figure in white
crossing the room, past the fireplace and bedside.
She moved slowly, and as she went she wrung
her hands, and he saw that the expression of her
face was full of grief and sorrow. She passed
slowly on towards the dressing-room, and opened
the door into it. It closed after her, and she was lost
to view. I have said that Mr. Blogg is a man
of great nerve. He said that he was not at all
alarmed at what he saw, thinking it was some
maid-servant walking in her sleep, or some one
trying to frighten him. But as he lay there, the
father of a family, he thought of Mrs. Blogg in
Barnsbury Park, and the seven little Bloggs, and
he felt it behoved him not to permit a strange
female to stay any longer in his dressing-room.
You are aware, I conclude,” continued Sir Benja-
min, ‘that there is no exit from that dressing-
room, except the door at which the figure entered.
The window, too, is bricked up to more than the
stature of the human figure, so that it was plain
that the female must still be in the dressing-
room. Mr. Blogg waited a minute or two longer-
He then rose, lighted a candle, and proceeded
to the dressing-room. He entered it and saw—
nothing. He hunted and searched everywhere,
182 Annals of
and still found—nothing. There were no cup-
boards, no hiding-places, no exit. Mr. Blogg
was more than ever amazed. Having satisfied
himself on all these points, he retired again to
his bed, but not to sleep. He had not been five
minutes in bed ere’—here Sir Benjamin grew
slightly poetic—‘ere the same female figure re-
appeared through the dressing-room door, and
passed slowly out of the bedroom, wringing her
hands and seeming to weep as she went. As she
passed the bedside, she stood still for a moment
and looked hard at Mr. Blogg with such a woe-
begone face that he said it would melt a heart of
stone into a heart of tallow.
“When this apparition—for such Mr. Blogg
firmly believed it to have been—departed, Mr.
Blogg lay tossing about for two or three
hours; he then fell into a fitful slumber, waking
every now and then with a start. As soon as
day dawned—it was about the equinox—he
rose and dressed himself. He then descended
into the garden and ordered the fly to take him
to Warwick that he might catch the Highflyer.
The strangest thing of all, though, was what
happened when he re-entered the Hall to partake
of his breakfast. The very first object that his
eyes fell on was that portrait yonder, which he is
ready to swear is the portrait of the woeful lady
an Eventful Life. 183
in white whom he saw in Queen Elizabeth’s
room.
‘This, Mrs. Mandeville, is my story. I have
thought it right, in justice to Mr. Blogg and
myself, to put you in possession of these facts, to
the truth of which Mr. Blogg is ready to depose
on oath before the Lord Mayor or any two
Justices of the Peace; and, having said so much,
I leave the matter in your hands.’
‘Very strange, Sir Benjamin, very strange l’
said my Aunt, as though musing and recalling in
a dream something that had happened long ago.
Then awaking as it were, she said in a louder tone,
and in her best company manner:
‘Thank you, Sir Benjamin. This story must
be inquired into, and when you go back to town
pray tell Mr. Blogg that no exertion shall be
spared on my part to punish those who have been
guilty of playing such a hoax upon him.’
“But,’ rejoined the banker, ‘Mr. Blogg is ready
to affirm the truth of what he saw. He altogether
denies that there was any deception.’
* Well !” said my Aunt, ‘I can do no more than
say what I have said. Every exertion shall be
made, and if anything is discovered, it shall be
communicated to Mr. Blogg; and now, Sir Ben-
jamin, I think we had better go to bed. You will
be on our side of the house. You need not fear
184 Annals of
that we shall put you into Queen Elizabeth’s
room. Good-night;" and with these words she
retired to rest, and we soon followed her example.
Now whether Sir Benjamin slept soundly that
night, all I know is, I did not. I lay tossing
about à la Blogg, thinking about the ghost, which,
begging its pardon, seemed to go so thoroughly
on all fours. Nor was I altogether easy about
my Aunt’s manner. I remember that her be-
haviour was rather odd when we first found ‘the
White Lady,’ and what she said, when Sir Ben-
jamin had ended his long-winded story, seemed to
show a determination on her part not to allow the
question of a ghost at Mandeville Hall to be so
much as raised, and a foregone conclusion against
all the evidence adduced, or offered to be adduced,
by the unhappy Blogg.
Next day Sir Benjamin took his leave. He
had come down at great inconvenience to tell us
the story, which, as he justly said, was far too
long to write, and my Aunt ought to have been
much obliged to him. Still, though she was
civility itself, I could see she was heartily glad
when we heard his carriage-wheels rolling off.
When he was gone I thought Aunt Mandeville
would have returned to the ghost in Queen Eliza-
beth's room, but she made no mention of the
subject. She went, indeed, all alone into the
an Eventful Life. 185
Muniment room where we had found the picture,
one day when I was out shooting, and had, as
Brooks called it, ‘a great rummage among them
parchments,’ but still never a word of Mr. Blogg's
story. At last, after a week had passed, and it
was within a day of my return to Oxford I sum-
moned up courage after dinner, and said:
‘I wish so much, Auntie, you would tell me
what you think of Mr. Blogg’s ghost.’
‘It will be quite time enough to talk of Mr.
Blogg’s ghost,’ replied my Aunt, still fencing with
me, “when Mr. Blogg is dead and buried. At pre-
sent any discussion as to his ghost is premature.”
* No 1 but, Auntie, you know very well I
mean the ghost that Mr. Blogg said he saw—“the
White Lady.” The picture too, and the likeness
which he saw in it to the ghost, how do you ex-
plain that away; and John Mandeville's docket too,
why did he cut the White Lady’s picture out of
its frame, in 1716 P and why did he roll her up,
and stow her away in the Muniment room P'
‘Child,’ said my Aunt, very slowly and dis-
tinctly, “there is a ghost that is said to haunt
Queen Elizabeth's room, but it is so long since
any one saw it that no one in the house except me
knows of it—not even Brooks, who thinks he
knows everything about Mandeville Hall. When I
was first married I remember I wanted to change
186 Annals of
our sleeping-rooms from the side on which they
now are, and which, as you know, looks north to
the Still rooms, which look south. I thought them
lighter and warmer, though the furniture and
fittings are gloomy enough. My husband refused,
and would give no reason for a long time. When
I pressed him, he said he wasn’t going to sleep
in a ghost’s room, and to have the White Lady
looking in upon him at night. He would tell
me no more, but said if I chose to look into
a drawer in a cabinet in the Muniment room, I
would find John Mandeville's diary—the same
Mandeville, no doubt, who cut the picture out
which now hangs up there in the Hall. You may
think it odd, but from that day till the other day.
I never cared to look for John Mandeville's diary.
I do not think I even remembered where it was
when we found the picture, though one would
have thought that fact would have recalled it to
my memory. I had always a vague apprehension
of putting any visitor into that room, and I do not
think it has been occupied ten times in the last
forty years. I never put any one into it during
my widowhood, till this London banker comes
and puts the best judge of bristles on Change
into the room, and lo! this prosaic man sees the
ghost, and recognises her picture. It is certainly
very odd.’ -
an Eventful Life. 187
“But have you seen John Mandeville's diary
now, Auntie P’ I asked, for I felt sure that was
what she had been ‘rummaging for,’ to use Brooks's
elegant phrase, while I was out pheasant-
shooting. -
‘Yes, I have, child,’ said my Aunt. ‘Here it
is.” As she said this she took a few sheets of yel-
low-looking paper out of her Davenport table,
and began : c
‘‘‘ Sept. 20, 1715,-the full of the Moone.
On this night ye White Lady, my great great
grandmother, Lucy Mandeville, was seen by
General Tryon in ye Queen's room. She came
weeping and wailing to his bed, and Soe
passed into the side-roome and disappeared.
N.B. There is no exit from the side-roome, and
it is wall’d up at ye windowe.’
‘“The General was exceeding scared, and was
for flying ye hall. Hee was persuaded to remaine
by ye promise of another sleeping roome.’
‘“This Lucy Mandeville was an Ogle, and lived
very unhappie with my great great grandfather
temp. Jacobi 1". She killed her childe in the
side-roome, and threw itt oute of the windowe,
which was since wall’d up. She then drown'd
herselfe inn ye moate.””
‘That is one entry. Here is another which
answers to the docket on the portrait.
188 Annals of
* “Jan. 3, 1715/16, N.S. – On this daye, I
John Mandeville did, with mine own hand, cut out
off its frame, the portrait of Lucy Mandeville, my
great great grandmother, and did put itt away
oute of sighte in ye Muniment chamber, that itt
might not hange in ye halle with ye other
portraits.” -
“There you have it all chapter and verse in
John Mandeville's writing, and I must say,’ said
my Aunt, ‘that I have now a firmer belief in the
reality of the White Lady, and in Mr. Blogg's
story than I ever had before.’
‘It was odd, too, Auntie, that old Blogg saw her
at the full of the moon in September, 183—, and
that John Mandeville puts an entry into this
diary that she appeared in September, 1715, at
the full of the moon.’
“Very odd,” said my Aunt. ‘It all puts me in
mind of what Chief Justice Earwig said when
he was past eighty—when was it P. The last
time I dined at Whitley when he was down
for the Warwick Assizes, that the evidence in
Some ghost stories—the Airlie Drummer for
instance, the Sherbrooke Ghost, and the Brown
Lady of Rainham, the Townshend Ghost,--was in
every case such as would be received in a Court of
Law. I think our Mandeville Ghost would
match any of them; and, as you say, Lucy Mande-
an Eventful Life. 189
ville's apparitions go on all-fours. Strange times
these when an old family ghost takes it into her
head to appear to a stolid tallow and bristle
merchant, and not to one of her old stock.’
‘Yes! but then, Auntie, you must remember
that none of the old stock sleep in Queen Eliza-
beth’s room, but if I had been sharp I might
have known the hall was haunted, for when I first
went to school, Deepdale, one of the boys, taunted
me with your living alone with the Ghost in
Mandeville Hall.”
‘The Deepdales were always unmannerly, and
worse,” said my Aunt dryly. There is an entry in
John Mandeville's Diary very much to the point.
FIere it is :
“July 30, A* 1720.-Mr. Deepdale, the anti-
quary, did come over to look at ye manuscripts in
ye Muniment roome. On taking leave he did
beg ye loane of ye Foundation Charter of Man-
deville Abbey, by ye Empresse Maude, which I
willingly granted. I trust hee will soone restore
it.”
‘Then, “1722, April 2. —I did see Mr. Deep-
dale at ye Warwick Sessions, and did presse him
to restore ye Foundation Deede of ye Empresse
Maude, and hee made answer that he had taken
itt to London as a greate rarity to showe to his
friende Sir Robert Cotton.” That deed, Edward,
190 Annals of
was never restored. It is not among our muni-
ments, and is no doubt still among the MSS. in
the Cottonian Collection at the British Museum.’
So there were Auntie and I at Mandeville Hall,
and Blogg and Bullion in London, in possession
of a ghost story; what Blogg and Bullion would
do with it, remained to be seen ; but my Aunt Man-
deville's course was clear. She resolved to keep
Blogg’s story a strict secret from Brooks and
the other servants, and trusted that the unhappy
Russian merchant would keep his story to
himself for fear of being thought ridiculous on
Change.
an Eventful Life. 191
CELAPTER XVI.
HOW THINGS WENT AT MANDEVILLE HALL.
TIME rolled on, and I was now twenty. I
scarcely remember what happened to me between
eighteen and twenty. Happy the boyhood the
annals of which are dull. In mine were few
events. Every now and then would come letters
from my mother, showing that my father was
sinking deeper and deeper into the Great Dismal
Swamp. The slaves had passed from appren-
ticeship to complete freedom, for which they were
about as fit as children to keep house. In any
temperate clime they would have been forced to
work for existence, but in the West Indies a man
can sit down for a month and supply himself with
food by mere tickling the soil with a hoe for
half-a-day. Then, too, wife-working is a great
institution, especially for a negro, and very often
the men did no work at all, but made their wives
put in their provisions. As for the children,
negroes were never very good fathers or mothers.
192 Annals of
They were as the hen pheasants who are above
hatching their own eggs, and must have Dorking
hens to take the labour off their hands. The
fine ladies of Ornithology, they bring up their
children by the help of others. In the case of
the negroes this was an evil inherited from the old
system. The slaves were so accustomed to see
their children taken care of from their birth at
the pains and expense of the proprietor, that they
altogether neglected the duties of parents.
Of course, this dry-nursing by the owner ceased
with slavery ; but the habits of a century cannot
be made to cease by Act of Parliament. The
owners were unable to take care of the children,
and the parents would not. The consequence
was the children died fast; and mere pity, on our
estate, fed children who, like the pheasants to
which I have compared them, flew away to other
woods when full fledged, and never did a day's
work When my father called a meeting of his
people, and explained to them that the proprietors,
for a variety of reasons, could not now undertake
the expense of a doctor, and hospital, and nursery
for the children, the negroes were reasonable
enough in speech, and said:
‘No, Massa, dat nebber do. Massa Halfacre
can nebber nurse all dese piccaninny.”
‘Who, then, is to do it P’
an Eventful Life. 193
‘Oh! Massa, dey born gentlemen, dey support
demselves.”
As for John, my eldest brother, he was in
London, eating his terms, and the younger
children had been sent home to a private school.
Not to Dr. Cutbrush ; he had been prematurely
cut off at seventy, as his tombstone said, ‘by the
bursting of a blood-vessel in the midst of a career
of usefulness, thus affording a melancholy ex-
ample of the incertitude of existence, even when
its prolongation seems most desirable.”
The fact was that across one of Dr. Cut-
brush’s fields ran a footpath. Many a time have
I seen the worthy Doctor in chase of little boys.
who strayed from the footpath in spite of an
elaborate notice which said that trespassers
would be prosecuted with the utmost rigour
of the law.” If he caught them, he added the
vigour of his birch-hardened arm to the rigour
of the law. He either camed or boxed the ears
of the offenders; and if they pleaded that they
could not read the notice, he boxed their ears
still more to encourage them to learn to read.
In these days he would have been summoned for
an assault by the village attorney. But those
were the days of universal ear-boxing, and hair
and ear-pulling, and what would be an aggra-
wated assault now would then have seemed to
WOL. I. O
194 Annals of
a passer-by the most natural thing in the world.
Boxing on the ears and caning little boys were
like hanging for sheep-stealing, bleeding, and
calomel, and flogging in the army, and bull-
baiting, and cock-shying, and a host of other
brutal, drastic things, which were then done every
day, and at which no one was shocked, because
they were done every day, had been done every
day, and, it was supposed, would be done every
day for all time. We now look back at them
in their true light, and see how shocking some
of them at least were.
But to return to Dr. Cutbrush, and the manner
of his end. On that fatal day he was eagerly
chasing two little boys across the field, they
having trespassed in search of wild-flowers.
Cane in hand, he had all but reached them,
and they were shrinking away in fear of the
dreaded stroke. The stroke came, but it alighted
on Dr. Cutbrush. He was smitten by apoplexy,
and fell forward, his outstretched cane just
grazing the back of the hindmost boy. They
turned round as they heard the dull thud of the
fall, and saw the Doctor with distorted features
stretched before them. They cried for help,
and help came. They carried him home. The
Doctor Mindererus of the village was in attend-
ance. They tried to breathe a vein, but it was
an Eventful Life. 195
no use. The Doctor had passed to other fields,
across which, let us hope, there are no footpaths,
but rights of way everywhere.
My Aunt and I were the best friends in the
world. She was as jealous as ever, and as devoted
as ever. I had no will but hers, nor did I wish
for any other. What did we do? Oh we
restored the chapel, and made it more ecclesi-
astical. In doing so we had to take up the pave-
ment, and the workmen broke into the Mandeville
vault, and Auntie and I went down one bright
afternoon, and saw all the old Mandevilles since
the Mandeville who was fined one thousand
marks by King Henry VII. The earlier Mande-
ville miſſińents were in a sad state of desecration
amongst the Abbey ruins. But here was John
Mandeville, the Trimmer and Turncoat, lying in a
sadly crushed coffin between his two wives, and a
whole row of little coffins containing the Mandeville
windfalls of two or three generations, the un-
timely fruit of the family, packed up upon him.
Do you fancy the dead lie still and quiet in their
coffins—that it is all one dead level in the grave?
Alas! you had only to step down into that Man-
deville vault, to see that there are ups and downs
beyond the grave, just as there are in daily life.
Here was a father crushed by the weight of his
children and grandchildren. The stoutest elm and
196 Annals of
the toughest lead could not stand the burden of
three generations of babies. That Mandeville was
crushed as flat as a pancake, his poor old bones
protruding from the riven lead and rotten wood,
one arm thrust out, as though warning his descend-
ants against early marriages and hosts of child-
ren. Too truly was typified in that coffin the
fate of a family estate ruined by the charges
entailed on it by three wives and twenty children,
Another coffin stood on end, as though, impatient
of death, it had edged its way toward the gate of
the vault, and sidled itself off the coffin on which it
had been reverently laid, till it slipped down with
a crash of grave dust, and remained with its heels
in the air. Idle ambition, that of a corpse craving
for the light of day !—restless body that longed
to follow the spirit whithersoever the spirit had
flown | * -
Some were stripped of their velvet and brass
mouldings and handles, shorn of honour and dis-
tinction, even among their dead fellows. Horny-
fisted undertakers and rude labourers had so
treated them to make a nice resting-place for the
last new comer. Others lay as it were quiet and
comfortable, side by side. Well-behaved coffins,
keeping up appearances even in that Sad vault,
where the spade and mattock were the sole
authority.
an Eventful Life. 197
We read some of the plates—the earliest
being, strange to say, more legible than the later
inscriptions. That Trimmer's plate, which recited
all his honours, was as plain as the first day it
had been nailed on. Among others that we
read was this, in which we both took a strange
interest: -
‘Lucy Mandeville, deceased at the full of ye
moone, Sept. 16th, Anno Dom. 1620, buryed at
midnight Sept. 20th.”
And above her lay a little coffin with this
inscription :
‘Arthur Mandeville, sonne of Lucy Mande-
ville, born 1616, buryed at midnight Sept. 20th,
1620.” * *
We felt a flutter at this fresh proof of the truth
of John Mandeville's diary. Here before us lay
all that was left of Lucy Mandeville, ‘the White
Lady,’ and of her child, both buried at midnight,
four days after their death.
We had seen enough. My Aunt had the vault
carefully repaired, and she never entered it again
till she joined the rest of the family in their last
long sleep.
What else did we do P. We cut down some of
the old trees where they were toothick, and planted
thousands of new ones. We were, in truth, rather
over-treed, but my Aunt used to boast that time
198 Annals of
out of mind there had never been an oak felled to
pay a debt on the Mandeville estate. I am afraid
our hedgerows showed very bad farming, our
fields were too small, and we had no leases—only
yearly tenants; but then the same tenants went
on from father to son, and hardly one of those was
ever ejected, except by death. The result was
that we had a set of tenants with very little
capital, who could afford to lay very little out on
the land, and several of them were childless
widows, who had persuaded my Uncle, and after
him my Aunt, to let them stay on at the old
farm where their husbands had lived and died.
Some of them were very good farmers—equal to
any man, but some of them were very bad. Then
the farms were too small. Modern farming would
have levelled their fences, cut down the oaks and
elms—whether free-standing or in the hedge-
rows—thrown several farms into one, and given
twenty-one years’ leases. We should thus have
raised our rents, and our tenants would have been
men of capital, not afraid to lay out their money
on the land.
But our farming was not modern farming. If
there was anything that Aunt Mandeville hated
more than another, it was an improved agricul-
tural implement. Reaping and thrashing ma-
chines were to her as shepherds to the old Egyp-
an Eventful Life. 199
tians. She could not away with them. I think
the chief reason why she so detested Claw, Tooth,
and Nail, was because of their improved sugar
machinery. What she would have done had she
lived till now, and been forced to go to the Agri-
cultural Show at Birmingham, and seen steam-
ploughs, scarifiers, clod-crushers, and all their
kind, I cannot tell. She always said when ad-
vised to pursue a different system with her
tenants: ‘I prefer to keep them as they are. I
think it the duty of a landlord to grow men as
well as corn.” She paid her labourers well, and
built them good but not architectural cottages;
but I am not at all sure that with all her liberal
ideas she would not have much preferred them if
they could not read and write. She often said,
Book-learning was like letting out water, you
could never tell where it would stop. Reading
was not bad, a little of it, and writing and
arithmetic the same; but when she heard some
philosopher say he hoped the day would come
that the man who broke stones by the road-
side would be a good mathematician, she dryly
said: ‘But not a good stone-breaker, and in this
stiff soil we need stones on our roads more than
Euclid in our cottages.”
Perhaps there are some still left who may think
Aunt Mandeville was right. But, right or wrong,
200 Annals of
she would have her way, and she liked far more
to see the boys and girls playing on the village
green, than to go to the school and hear them
droming out their lessons on Bell’s system.
Then we restored the church. We thought
we had done it very nicely, and it was one of the
first “restorations’ in the district; but I lately
heard that ‘the Ecclesiological Society of Mercia’
had made an excursion to Mandeville Church,
and drawn up a report in which they expressed
their dissatisfaction of the utterly unecclesiastical
way in which the restoration of twenty-five years.
before had been carried out. Amongst other
things, they said that ‘ the remains of the rood
screen bearing traces of a crucifix, had been re-
moved, and that a double piscina, mentioned by
Dugdale in his Monasticon, had disappeared.’
But what they ‘felt bound to protest against
more than anything else was that the hideous and
post-Reformation practice of “pues”’—that was
the way they spelt pews’—‘had been retained;’
and they especially criticised ‘the green baize
“pue” of the Mandevilles,’ in which the family
had been wont to show themselves at church for
generations.
‘What made this puing more deplorable,” they
went on to say, was ‘that under the pues several
brasses were concealed. Three of them of ecclesi.
an Eventful Life. 201
astics in cope, stole, chasuble, and amice,—in-
valuable examples of ecclesiastical vestments,
which were thus lost to the religious world by
the selfishness of the family.’
These were very hard words for my poor Aunt,
who did her very best for the rickety old edifice,
which, till then, was as cold and comfortless as
a barn. I have often observed that good old
churches, like very good people, have a way of
being very cold to their visitors. My Aunt had
made this church as warm and Snug as possible.
Old Betty Briggs said, ‘There bean’t no more
rheumatics, Master Edward, in church since Lady
Mandeville done up the church.”
My Aunt also had it drained and white-
washed; and I am sorry to say that a very lanky
figure of a giant, which was faintly visible among
the damp, green plaster near the door, and which
the village boys called “Long Tom of Coventry’—
a relation, I suppose, of Peeping Tom—alto-
gether disappeared in the operation. I little
expected to see my friend ‘Long Tom' reappear
after so many years. .
‘We are informed,’ says an appendix to the
report, headed Frescoes in Mandeville Church,
‘by the Rev. Dr. Thurifer, Priest of the Church
of the Immaculate Conception at Dumbleton,
that, before the late so-called “restoration,”
202 Annals of
there was a splendid fresco of Saint Christo-
pher bearing the infant Jesus, and above them
the figure of the ever blessed Virgin stand-
ing on a crescent. Out of the mouth of the
Saviour proceeded the legend, “Ave Maria, mater
purissima, stella maris.” . . . The rest of the
inscription was unfortunately covered by a Pro-
testant slab, bearing the following inscription :-
§acrºſſ to tijc ſūcmorp.
OF
E B E N E Z E R B G G s,
FORTY YEARS STEWARD
AT
MAN DEVILLE HALL.
THIS STONE WAS ERECTED TO A FAITH FUL SERVANT
BY - -
JOHN MANDEVILLE, ESQ.,
OF MAN DEVILLE HALL.
BORN MARCH 1, 1670. DIED JULY 22, 1750.
“We grieve to state that the whole of this
most interesting mural painting, which no doubt
dates from the early part of thirteenth century,
judging by the character of the writing, perished
in the so-called restoration in the year 183–.’
I am inclined to think it better that St.
Christopher, or Long Tom of Coventry, should
perish together with the parish rheumatism at
Once and for ever, so far as its being caught at
an Eventful Life. 203
church was concerned, than that he should con-
tinue to sprawl over the wall, green with the
accumulated damp of centuries.
No doubt, if Aunt Mandeville had lived a
quarter of a century later, she would have done
her restoration better, and perhaps the report
would have been less severe; but one thing I am
sure she would have clung to had she been alive,
and that was her pew. A church without a pew
Free seats | Every beggar sitting next to you,
and elbowing you out of your own seat ' That was
an equality and fraternity which her liberalism
never contemplated. I think I see her now in
her bonnet, which was neither large nor small,
a real bonnet, not one of these strings and roses
which are now called bonnets; still less a hat—
how she would have hated hats!—with her glossy
hair braided over her white marble brow, and her
brown eyes sparkling when the choir sang well,
sitting up as straight as an arrow, with her Bible
on the desk before her, in her great green baize
pew, nearly in front of the pulpit, and listening to
the sermon, which she never failed to criticise if it
was dull or over long. Once when a clergyman
came to the Hall on a visit and offered to preach
for the rector, old Brooks leant over him at
dinner, as soon as he heard the offer made to the
rector, and whispered:
204 Annals of
‘Above all things, Mr. Mazzard, Mrs. Mande-
ville dislikes a long sermon.’ *
What the said Mazzard thought of this confi-
dential communication I don’t know. Perhaps he
thought Brooks was a Jesuit in the family, the
keeper of my Aunt’s conscience, and quite entitled
to address him on the subject; but, whatever he
thought, I am sure, if his discourse sinned either
in prosiness or length, he would be sure to hear
of it from Aunt Mandeville,
an Eventful Life.
2
0
5
CELAPTER, XVII.
HOW WIE WENT TO II, FRACOMBIE,
My last Long Vacation at Oxford had now come.
Next term I was to pass my examination for my
last go, and to put on my bachelor's gown, and
after residing one more term to leave the univer-
sity. I was quite ready for the examination, and
troubled my head little about it. I had not been
altogether idle, in spite of the scene I have
related about AEschylus and ‘alas! alas!’ ‘ah me!
ah me!’ As usual, I was to be with my Aunt at
the sea. It was two years I think after she lent
Mandeville Hall to Sir Benjamin Bullion, and—
excuse the expression,-brought the ghost to life
again. Perhaps you will wonder, undergraduates.
of ‘the House,’ and fathers whose sons those
undergraduates are, why I did not go to Nova
Zembla, or the Faroe Islands, or Sicily, or some
such quiet out-of-the-way place on a reading
party. For two reasons; one because I had no
faith in reading parties, which as often as not
end in dead plucks; and, secondly, because I was
206 Annals of
not silly or stupid enough to read with a tutor
through the Long Vacation for a common pass.
Perhaps it would have been better for me if I had
gone anywhere else but where I did go, and that
was to Ilfracombe with my Aunt. Those reasons
apart, I am sure she would never have suffered
me to be away three months from her ; she would
have been afraid that I might become fonder of
Some one else than of her. Not that she even
allowed herself to imagine that I could be in
love. She wished me to marry some one, but she
did not wish me to be in love. No 1 whether it
was man or whether it was woman, she was
afraid of all of them, and kept me with her lest
I should love her less, and not do as she wished.
Next to me, and perhaps before me, she loved the
estate.
You will say, Aunt Mandeville was a most
unreasonable woman; but, reader, have you never
met an unreasonable woman in your life? And are
you not an unreasonable man, if you are a man,
to say such a thing of my Aunt P Of course she
was unreasonable; most people are when they are
very fond of another human being, and very
jealous besides. If she had not loved me so much,
she would not have been what you call so “un-
reasonable.’ It would have mattered little to her
with whom Iwent to this place or that. She would
an Eventful Life. 207
have said, ‘It is quite natural that the boy should
amuse himself in the company of young people of
his own age;' but that was not the way in which
Aunt Mandeville looked at the matter. I be-
longed to her. She never conquered the feeling
that I was her property. I was all in all to her,
and she wished me to be the same to her. “We
have one life, Edward,” she used to say: ‘let us
never part.” This was why I had so few friends,
and why so few people came to see us at Mande-
ville Hall; there was no question, and could be
no question, of my ever liking better to be with
any one else than my Aunt Mandeville.
Among all the places which we had visited
from year to year, it so happened we had never
been to Ilfracombe. Then it was a place not so
easy to get at by land, and to go by sea you had
to sleep a night in Bristol or Clifton. Things
may be better now. I have no doubt they are ;
but all I say is, then you had to sleep a night at
either of those places. I say nothing more, out
of respect to the feelings of the families of the
former hotel-keepers, who, I hope, sleep as
soundly, whether in their beds or in their graves,
as we did not in the year 183—.
Well ! We set off from Mandeville Hall. We
posted along in a procession not unlike that
famous one of my father in quest of the Enchan-
208 Annals of
tress. My Aunt and I in a chariot, with Brooks,
—the ever-inquisitive Brooks,—on the rumble.
Then, in a sort of landau or berline, came my
Aunt's maid, and the housekeeper, and the cook,
and I believe an upper-housemaid. On the box
were two footmen. Ever so many other servants,
and a carriage and horses, had been sent round
by land I don’t know how far. The carriages in
which we travelled were to be housed somewhere
in Bristol, whence we were to go to Ilfracombe
in a steamer, the first I think on which my Aunt
had ever set her foot. After two days’ posting
we reached the town of Bath, and in due time
Bristol. I purposely, for the reasons given above,
refrain from saying where we put up in that
ancient city; but I must add that when we woke
up in the morning we might with justice have
applied to Bristol what the traveller said of Stony
Stratford. If you have forgotten the story, or
never heard it, I pity you; I am not going to
repeat it. I am also bound to say that the in-
mates of our beds had proved most impartial.
My Aunt was a slight, tall woman, and her maid
a short, Squat figure; but both their faces looked
as though they were recovering from the small-
pox. So, too, I was slim and spare, Brooks stout
and fat; but in each case our assailants had
shown great impartiality of attack. Their plan
an Eventful Life. 209
of operations was simple: it consisted in stinging
us all over, so that, as Brooks said, with a face
of scarlet:
‘Master Edward, you couldn’t so much as lay
a pin between the bites.”
Dreakfast over, we hurried to the Quay under
the Hot Wells, and there found the steamer Diana
ready to start, blowing off her steam every now
and then like a sea-horse. I am sure I don’t
know if sea-horses do Snort, except in poetry; so,
as this is a true story all in prose, you had better
read grampus or porpoise for sea-horse, both of
which mammals, as I well know, do snort and
blow off their steam through their noses or spout-
holes.
I handed my Aunt on board, and got her a
good seat aft, not far from the companion.
Brooks did the same for the upper servants, and
the footman did the same for the maids. The
luggage—what a pile of it !—was hardly on
board, and covered with a tarpaulin, when a bell
rang. ‘Any more for the shore ?' shouted the
captain. A few friends of intending passengers
hastened along the gangway, the hawser was
loosed, and away went the Diana, on the top of
the ebb tide, down the Avon under St. Vincent’s
Rocks. I remember it was just about the time
when the first bar of the present Suspension
WOL. I. P
210 Annals of ,
Bridge had been laid across the Avon. 'I believe
it was thought a wonderful thing then, just as the
Great Western's feat in running across to New
York under steam was thought a feat so bold as
to be well-nigh impious! Well! we have done
many more such ‘impious ' things since; and it
will be well for us, here and hereafter, if we never
do any more ‘impious’ things than steaming
across the Atlantic. .
As we ran down to Pyll, at the mouth of the
Avon, we had time—those of us who had any
eyes in their head—to see that it was blowing
very hard, and that we were likely to have a
rough passage. One is so landlocked going down
the Avon that one can scarce feel how hard the
wind blows; but still one may look out for squalls
when one sees, as I saw, haycocks flying, and
large limbs of trees cracking and splitting before
the gale.
Even Brooks began to suspect something.
‘See them haycocks yonder, and them boughs
flying, Master Edward. Do you think we are
going to have a storm P’
I have said that Aunt Mandeville was an excel-
lent sailor, and as for me the entrails of Virgil's
reapers on land were not more ‘dour' than mine
OIO Sé8. -
‘Storm, Brooks; I should think so. Have
an Eventful Life. 211
you got your life-belt ready ? You’ll have to
Swim for it before the day is over —
“Half o'er, half o'er, to Aberdour
Is forty fathoms deep,
And there lies Mr. Butler Brooks,
And all the housemaids at his feet.’
‘Oh! Mr. Edward, don’t be so unfeeling. I’m
sure Mrs. Mandeville would be the last lady in
the world to take her servants to sea in a storm.
Think of Mrs. Brooks in Warwickshire, and the
friends and sweethearts of them poor maids. Why
not persuade the captain to turn back P’
‘You had better try, Brooks. Here he comes.’
As I said this the captain, a fine specimen of the
British sailor, came up from his cabin, where he
had gone for a minute to put on a souwester.
‘Oh, captain l’ said Mr. Brooks, ‘what do you
think of the weather P Hadn’t we better turn
back P’
‘Turn back l’ said the captain, with an ex-
pression which I had rather not repeat, but if it
had been literally carried out would have placed
Mr. Brooks in the position of Tobit. ‘Turn back!
Why out of what Loo-mattic Assylum did you
escape this morning, and where’s your keeper ?
‘Sir,’ said Mr. Brooks, his dignity getting the
better of his fear, ‘you are quite mistaken. I have
212 - Annals of
escaped from no “Assylum,” nor have I any
keeper on board. I am as Sane as you, and I
only wished to know if it was quite safe to
venture out to sea when the wind is so high.
Mrs. Mandeville has a great objection to go to
sea in a storm.’ .
‘Then,’ said the captain, “if you are Mrs.
Mandeville's keeper, may I ask why you let
her come on board in a strong wind P Foul or
fair, the Diana goes to sea, if you call a run down
the North Devon coast “sea,” which I don’t.”
* Brooks
‘Mrs. Mandeville is my missus
was beginning.
‘May I axe your name P But I suppose it’s
Mandeville, as you say Mrs. Mandeville is your
missus P’ t
“My name, captain l’ said Brooks, with awful
solemnity, speaking with minute guns, for all the
world like the late Sir Robert Peel in a great
debate; ‘my name it is Brooks, which is not
Mandeville; leastways, as I said before, Mrs.
Mandeville is my missus.’ -
“If she’s your missus, she ought to take better
care on you, nor to let you make a fool of yourself,
axing silly questions and stopping the working of
the ship. But I’ve no time to listen to you.’
Then to the man at the helm : i
‘Hard a starboard | Can’t you see tha
an Eventful Life. 213
schooner?” Then, having dodged the coaster,
close hauled on the starboard tack, and who, by
rights, ought to have ported her helm, the cap-
tain bellowed out “steady,’ and the word being
caught up and repeated by the man at the
wheel, he dived down below again for a minute,
leaving Mr. Brooks, vey much discomfited, on
deck.
* Steady, indeed,” said Brooks; ‘ call this
steady,’ as the Diana, who was a lively craft,
began to lift and dip her nose in the sea. “Call
this “steady.” Master Edward, do you call this
“steady ?” Cook, do you call this “steady?””
appealing to a heap of collapsed humanity which
lay huddled up on a seat where the cook had
sat in full-blown dignity ten minutes before.
* Steady l’ he reiterated ruefully, as he leant his
head over the side and made no vain oblation to
the marine divinities.
Up to this time there had been really no sea
at all. Brooks and the cook belonged to that
class of persons who are sick before they put
their foot in a boat. These are they who, in the
upper classes, try all sorts of specifics against
sea-sickness. Creosote, chloroform, chlorodyne,
nux vomica, and arsenic, among the active
remedies; and as mechanical means, bags of ice
all down their spine and hot-water bottles on the
214 Annals of
pit of the stomach. But, in truth, for such per-
sons there is no cure for their enemy. Fear has
turned their flank even before embarking. Let
them lie down beneath boats and booms, on
benches, sofas, hatchways, and there spend their
time, if the voyage is short, in ejaculations and
brandy-and-water, till the wished-for haven is
made. If the voyage is long, and they must
pass a triste noche on board, they had better creep
into a berth, lie flat on their backs, gnaw a
hard biscuit, and try to doze away the weary
hours.
There sat Aunt Mandeville on the deck,
looking as firm as though she were in her pew
in Mandeville church, and when the captain
asked, “How do you feel, marm P’ surprising
him with a ‘I enjoy it very much indeed,
captain l’ -
There were other passengers. A girls’ school
going down to Ilfracombe for an excursion; a
party which ought to have held good, ‘wind and
weather permitting,” but which occurred, never-
theless, the tickets having been taken the day
before. Some of the young ladies were already
in the state of Brooks. The principal, or lady-
Superior as she would be called now, was too
frightened to be ill, and irritated the mate, a
Q7? Eventful Life. 215
huge Cornish man, by asking him, when she saw
the pumps going to get rid of some bilge-water,
‘whether we were in great danger ?’
“Danger, marm they ain’t no danger; only
we shall have a dollop of a sea when we gets into
Bridgewater Bay — you won’t find it there as
calm as this.’
‘Then why do you use the pumps ? I
thought they never took to the pumps till the
ship was in danger.’ *
‘We takes to the pumps because the vessel’s
not so tight as she should be, and we can’t get
shot of the bilge-water in no other way. It’s
nasty smelling stuff. Take care; if you lean
over So, you’ll get splashed.” +.
It was too late to warn the principal; she, too,
looked hard over the side and followed T3rooks.
Then there was an old colonel, a Devonshire
squire; he was a good sailor, and as cheery as a
bird. He began to talk to my Aunt, and pointed
out the places as we passed them. Weston-super-
Mare, Clevedon, the flat and steep Holms;
Cardiff Bay, where we saw one or two vessels
stranded, Bridgewater Bay, Minehead.
Whoever christened the Diana ought to be
ashamed of herself. A Diana ought to be light
and lively, able, if a ship, to do her ten knots or
216 - Annals of
more, to overtake other vessels in the chase, and
to outsail all rivals. Not so was our Diana. We
had the wind aft, and yet she crawled along,
doing scarcely her six knots. She ought to have
been renamed the Tortoise, for such a sea-slug
never had boiler in her.
In Bridgewater Bay, just in that ‘ dollop’ of
a sea which the mate had promised us, dinner
was served. It consisted, I need hardly say, of
a boiled leg of mutton and turnips, under-done
in the usual way, with the red gravy spurting
out of it as soon as cut. My Aunt had sand-
wiches on deck; but I obeyed the captain's call,
and sat down with him and the colonel. We
proposed a broil, but the captain couldn't think
of it. -
‘Biled” mutton, he maintained, was the
sweetest and wholesomest thing on earth or sea.
‘Not that I don’t like “biled” beef, too, if
it’s “rare,” like this.”
And, with that, he fell to swallowing large
gobbets of meat, like Polyphemus or Gargantua.
The colonel and I satisfied our hunger, which
was intense, with a few morsels of the best-done
parts of the leg, and ran up on deck to take a
look at the weather. The sea had got even be-
yond the mate's dollop; and, as soon as the
an Eventful Life. 217
captain came on deck, he ordered the sails to be
close-reefed.
‘Can't afford to throw away the wind,” he
said; “but it blows strong, and we shall feel it
worse off Porlock.’
218 Annals of
CEIAPTER XVIII.
HOW I SAW SOMEBODY ON BOARD THE STEAMER.
AND now, for the first time, I was aware of
a couple stowed away under one of the boats,
which sheltered them from the spray, which now
began to fly about as the sea grew whiter and
‘gurlier,'—to use the old Scotch word—and the
tops of each ‘white horse’ were cut straight off
by the keen wind.
One of them was a tall, elderly man, evi-
dently a gentleman; and the other was as plainly
a lady, and a young one; but they were so
muffled up that it was hard to tell what they
were besides.
I wondered then, I wonder still, and I shall .
wonder on till I die, whether women feel the
same curiosity to know what a muffled-up man
is like that men do to know what a veiled woman
is like. I know it is sometimes supposed that
women have more curiosity than men; but it is
a mistake—just as it is a mistake to think that
women are greater gossips than men; and that
an Eventful Life. 219
they can’t keep a secret better. Why, the
greatest blabs and gossips, and the most
ridiculously inquisitive mortals I have ever
met, have been men. Look at old Fetch-and-
carry at the Club l—can any woman be a
greater gossip than he P And, as for curiosity,
why, he’d watch a whole night, with his feet
up to the ankles in Snow, to know how late
you came home in the morning ; and, ten to
one, just as you were drawing your latch-key
out of the door, he’d come across the street, in
still deeper Snow, to ask you where you had
been, and what you had been about—‘coming
home at that late hour.”
Whenever I dine at the Club, which isn’t
often, I know he asks the steward what I have
for dinner—what wine I drink—if I had oysters
before and coffee after — what oysters I had,
natives at half-a-crown, or Medinas at eighteen-
pence — and so on ad infinitum. Poor old
fellow ! he hasn’t much to do; and I take it
out in laughing at him, and hoaxing him with
stories that never happened. I don't grudge
him the pleasure of knowing what I eat and
what my dinner costs; but don’t any of you
dare to tell me he isn’t curious, and that
he doesn’t enjoy going about gossiping from
house to house, and blabbing, as much as any
220 Annals of
old woman. They say that the imbibing of
brandy can be instantly detected by its appear-
ance in the brain; but I’ll back a story to run
from old Fetch-and-carry's ear to his tongue far
faster than any spirit from the stomach to the
cerebellum. -
I wonder, then, I say, whether women are as
inquisitive about men, when muffled up, as men
are about women in the same case. I am in-
clined to think they are not. Why have men
in the East risked their lives, in the good old
times of the sack and the bowstring, in breaking
into harems, and in the West braving the terrors
of the Inquisition—its racks, and fires, and
stakes—in scaling convents? Why, even in
England when men did such wicked things,
was there such pleasure in getting over a board-
ing-school wall, and running off in the night
with one of the young ladies P. The inhabitants
of the harem, the convent, and the boarding-
School, were in each case, be it observed, mere
pigs in pokes, who might have charms, and
might have none ! Why? Because whatever
is hid away, and muffled up, and guarded by
blacks, and duennas, and teachers, is supposed
to be infinitely more lovely than what is exposed
to the light of day. Fruit in a garden is far
more fruit than that which grows by the road-
an Eventful Life. 221
side, hanging in every one’s reach ; and so it is
with women. If you want your daughter to run
away, shut her up. This will give her beauty,
if she has none, and increase any charms that
she may have tenfold; and if you want any
one to run away with her, this receipt will be
more infallible still. There will be a mystery
hanging over her which will draw lovers to her
from all quarters. Nay, even the pig-faced lady
would have had many admirers if she had never
shown her face, been married in a Honiton-lace
veil, and persuaded her husband that she was
under a vow never to raise it. More than this.
I am sure that man would have lived happily all
his life with that famous lady, and never found
out her pigfacedness till she had died in her
tenth confinement, all because her beauty was
hidden and concealed.
So there was I pacing the deck and holding
on hard every now and then, as the Diana rolled
and pitched most ungracefully, with the muffled
couple before me. They bore the weather very
fairly, and for a long while held out no signal
of distress. That was in their favour. They
were not of that class of travellers by sea whose
hearts are ever in their mouth. They might
suffer inwardly, but not evidently as those baser
natures which I have already described. Thus
222 . . . Annals of
We played at pitch-and-toss, the great waves
rolling in upon us from the west sou-west; and
the Sea-slug, or the Tortoise miscalled Diana,
floundered about by them in a most ungainly
way. As the wind was on shore we had to stand
well out in respectful distance from the bold
coast of North Devon, now opening on our lee.
Still the muffled couple, their heads bowed on
their bosoms, made no sign. I felt like that
student at Sais who stood and read on the veil
of the granite statue : ‘I am what I am, and you
are what you are ; and between us is no fellow-
ship of feeling.” Then I revenged myself in
thinking what the couple could be—a Jew and
his wife on a wedding tour; an attorney and his
daughter; a solicitor and his niece. How long
I should have gone on thinking no one can tell,
had not the sea, sympathising with my curi-
osity, given the Diana such a buffet that she
pitched, rolled and tossed, and lurched all at
once. In a moment both the muffled sphynxes
—no I will not call them sphynxes—were
thrown on their knees on the deck. There is
Something ridiculous in seeing even your friend
suddenly ‘decanted” in the hunting field; what,
then, was it to me to behold two utter strangers
on their knees before me, as though in the act
of imploring my forgiveness for having puzzled
an Eventful Life. 223
me so long P. If I had been a bold, bad young
man, I should have flown to the assistance of the
muffled lady, and lifted her tenderly to the seat.
Instead of this, I was a very shy young man
with ladies, though when the ice was broken I
could talk to them fast enough. Just for all
the world like those silly young men now-a-days,
who have made mésalliances because they daren’t
open their mouths to a lady in society.
Instead, then, of flying to help the lady, I
turned my attention to her male companion. I
swear I did this from no base desire to curry
favour with what was evidently the lady’s pro-
tector, were she young or old. It was all shyness
and the love of my species that made me behave
as I did. My virtue was instantly rewarded.
In a voice weak with struggling so long against
his internal foe, the gentleman said:
‘Pray attend to my daughter, whom I am
quite unable to help. I can crawl up myself.”
However, before he ended these few words
I had re-seated him. It was the work of a
second, half done before he began to speak; and
then I turned to the daughter, whom, half on
her feet, another lurch had thrown floundering
again.
Very gently and very shyly I lifted her up.
She was more frightened than hurt at the fall,
224 Annals of
but I had to lift her before I could replace her
at her father’s side.
What is there in the touch of young female
flesh and blood which sends such a thrill through
a young man’s veins P I should like to ask this
question of a jury of matrons. Here was I in
the most unpoetical of positions hauling up a
half-seasick young lady, muffled up to the roots
of her hair, and yet I felt a thrill.
The Diana now began to behave in such an
outrageous way, and made up for her sea-
sluggishness by a series of starts and jumps, as
though she were the hunted deer itself, and not
the goddess of the chase. I could no longer
pace the deck without risk of being lurched
overboard. No orang-outang could have done
it. Aunt Mandeville called to me to sit down,
as it gave her the fidgets to see me passing and
repassing and staggering to and fro. I had to
sit down somewhere; so I sat down by the
muffled young lady. Can any one say that I
was at all pushing or bold? Besides, had not
her own father handed her over to my care?
I sat down, therefore, with a good conscience;
and, just as I did so, the father, on whom the
lurches and liveliness of the Diana were by no
means lost, slid off the seat on to the deck, drew
a sort of roquelaure or cloak closer about him, and
an Eventful Life. 225
saying, “My morale is still strong, but my phy-
sique is vanquished; pray, sir, continue your
kindness and attend to my daughter,’—resigned
himself to the inevitable with the grand air of an
early martyr.
Twice enjoined to attend to his daughter, what
was I to do? He could not think it rude if I
spoke to her, and asked her how she felt. No !
I don’t think that was what I said first. I am
sure it wasn’t. I said, ‘The weather is very bad;’
and, then, when no answer was returned to this
evident truism, I asked,
‘I hope you feel better?”
‘A little. Shall we be much longer on our
voyage P.
The ice was broken. No person can be really
sca-sick and utter so long a sentence. I forget
what I said next. Something stupid, no doubt.
Most young men are very stupid in these mat-
ters at twenty,+and I am sure I was. I re-
member, though, that she said she was afraid
her father was much worse than she was.
‘Papa is not at all strong. Do you know
anything that would do him any good?”
Was I a doctor to be able to cure sea-sick-
ness P Luckily, I remembered the last words of
old Mindererus to my Aunt.
‘My dear Mrs. Mandeville, should you feel at
WOL. I. Q
226 Annals of
all ill, don’t forget that a glass of weak brandy-
and-water is the best thing you can take.’
My Aunt, as a perfect sailor, laughed at the
doctor's prescription. As for brandy-and-water,
I don’t suppose all the Roman Emperors and
all the Popes of Rome put together, would ever
have got her to drink a drop of it. But I now
remembered it. So I went down the companion
—that is to say, I made a dash at the stairs—and
succeeded in hitting them. Down below I found
the steward, with his assistant, a greasy, unwashed
cub, eating the remains of the leg of mutton. I
think I still see, as I write, the great lumps of
cold fat which they were swallowing like Esqui-
maux when I appeared. I carefully turned my
head away while the mixture was being made,
that I might not see that it had mutton fat in
it. Then I clutched it and a hard biscuit. If
captains' biscuits are so called beeause of their
hardness, this was an admiral’s biscuit, so ada-
mantine did it seem. If it was hard work to
get down the companion, the return passage was
harder. But I made it tolerably well, only
* half the brandy-and-water on the way.
he other half was more than enough for the
prostrate father, who lay yellow as a guinea, when
one could see his face. By fits and starts, I got
about a wine-glassful of my tumbler down his
an Eventful Life. 227
throat. He declared himself much better in a
husky voice, and I returned to my young lady.
To my surprise I found her too much better.
So far from hurting her, she thought her fall
had done her good. It was so kind of me to
take care of papa. Whereabouts were we? would
we soon be there P All these questions to come
out of a hood, and never to see her face | Yes!
once I saw the tip of her nose. It was not red.
Now, had I been as the young men of this
time, I should have been as cool as the South
Pole; I say the South Pole, because that is said
to be cooler than the North. I should have plied
her with questions, asked her if she read. The Owl,
what pastimes she liked P did she like croquet 2
had she been abroad P. When she was in London
had she seen Schneider P been to Wimbledon and
Hurlingham P wasn’t the ‘Zoo’ low now on Sun-
days? how she liked the shady side of Rotten
Row, between one and two P.M., and such like.
But I was a shy young man of that time, and
mainly confined myself to answering the young
lady's questions. As for our voyage, I explained
our whereabouts as well as I could. We had
passed Porlock, and were off Linton—that was
twenty miles from Ilfracombe. Here Exmoor
made a bow to the sea, and here they hunted the
red deer; and somewhere hereabouts—though
228 Annals of
where I scarcely know, though it really stares
one in the face as you pass by it on the sea—was
the famous Valley of Rocks. In about three
hours at our present rate perhaps, or two and a
half, we should be at Ilfracombe, and then we
should have to land in long ‘gigs.” Did she
know what I meant by “gigs P’ Yes, she knew ;
a gig was a sort of boat; her uncle the Admiral
often talked of going on shore in his gig.
Now I for once grew crafty, and tried to find
out her Christian name. What was the name of
her uncle's ship P-the Victoria. ‘How oddly
names were given l’ I remarked.
“Very oddly,” she said. “Hers was an odd
name.’
‘Indeed P’
‘You could never guess it.’
‘May I try P’
‘Certainly.’
So I guessed ever so long, trying all sorts of
names. Then she gave me what she called
‘Lights.”
‘It is the name of a nymph, and a fountain,
and a ship, and the ancient poets and the modern
poets have sung of it, and it is the refrain of a
famous sea-song; and now can’t you guess P’
‘Perhaps I may,' I said, ‘for I begin to see
daylight through your lights; and, in return, I
an Eventful Life. 229
will give you some. Shelley says that some one
of your name came down from the “Acrocerau-
nian Mountains,” and a great sea-song writer
has called the ship after which you were called
“Saucy.” Have I guessed it now P’
‘Yes; but pray see after papa, he lies so still.’
‘Willingly; but will you tell me one thing P’
‘Yes, if you will go to papa.”
‘Where's your sea-sickness?’
“Gone—fled, perhaps, to the “Acroceraunian
Mountains.””
‘Who cured it, P’
‘The fall, to be sure.”
“Nothing else?’
‘No, nothing.’
Here my Aunt Mandeville called out “Ed-
ward.”
As I rose to go, Miss Arethusa said, ‘Now
we are equal. I know your name, and you have
guessed mine, but not before I had given you
so many “lights” that you could not help it.’
Between my seat and that on which my
Aunt sat, I said to myself, ‘I have never been
so warmed up in my life. Nursing young ladies
who are sea-sick is not so unpleasant.”
My Aunt only wanted me to ask the captain
how far we were off Ilfracombe,
I sought that rough diamond, and found him
230 Annals of
at tea. No degenerate five o’clock tea was that.
Ham and eggs, and tea and jam. Down they
all went, as he himself said, ‘like winkin’.”
‘If I didn’t eat my meals like winkin', I
should never have them regular. They would
come all together one atop of t'other ? Would
I take any tea P’
“No I Thanks. I only came to find out
how soon we were likely to be at Ilfracombe.’
“Very soon ; we had got the tide with us
now, and were off Watermouth. Tell the lady
in half-an-hour.”
After reporting progress to my Aunt, I
stirred up Brooks, the footmen, and the maids,
who had all succumbed, and looked very like
Jonah after he had spent those three days inside
the whale. I say this advisedly. They had all
such a half-masticated look.
Then I returned to Arethusa. Arethusa
what P That still remained a blank. But alas !
I found the pond frozen over again. Now it
was all ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’ There were no long
sentences. Yes, there was one longer—“She
did not know; that was an answer to a question
how long she was going to stay at Ilfracombe.
“After all,” I said to myself, ‘it doesn’t
matter. I don’t suppose we shall see anything
more of them.’
an Eventful Life. 231
Observe here how I still said ‘we.’ My
Aunt Mandeville and I were still one in my
mind’s eye. I did not yet dare to say, ‘I shall
not see more of them.’
About this time the approach of the end
of the voyage worked its usual miracle on the
prostrate passengers, who ten minutes before
were on the eve of giving up the ghost. First.
Arethusa’s father, the man of unvanquished
morale, rose from the deck, and in a faint voice
thanked me for my kindness to him and his
daughter. He did not, however, tell me his
name, but merely said, ‘I hope we shall meet
again.” A very vague hope; very much like a
general invitation to dinner, or to shoot. It
sinned, as the lawyers say, ‘for want of par-
ticularity.’ -
Rather disgusted to find, as I thought, my
brandy-and-water returning so soon to my own
bosom, I again looked up Brooks, and found
him haranguing the maids and footmen on the
‘hinfamous be-aviour of one of them sailors,’
who had called him, it seems, ‘the son of a sea-
cook,” because he would not get out of the
way.
‘Look at me, John, and you, too, Thomas.
Look at me, butler at Mandeville Hall for
better nor thirty years, me, who '.ave had the
232 Annals of
key of the cellar all those years, me “the son of
a sea-cook l’” I knows a land-cook when I sees
one, which it is you Mrs. Jellybag, but whoever
seed or heerd of a sea-cook before. Master
Edward, now, did you ever see a sea-cook?’
‘No, Brooks; but if you go on making that
row they 'll call you a sea-ass instead of a land
one.” . •
This silenced Brooks, and it was high time,
for we were just off the little harbour of Ilfra-
combe, and there were the long gigs coming off
to take us out of the Diana.
Now it is with sea-gigs as with land-gigs,
ever since Mr. W. Weare's murder. The sole
possession of a gig makes a man “respectable,”
whether on sea or land. The captain’s gig is the
noblest boat that swims, and the bagman’s gig is
the most respectable vehicle that runs on wheels.
We Mandevilles had one whole gig for ourselves
and servants, and another for our baggage. In
the third gig went the now distant Arethusa and
her thankless father, as I thought him.
‘Drank my brandy-and-water, and gave me
over his daughter to nurse, and then only hope to
see me again.” Such were the thoughts that
filled my mind as we pulled rapidly in our
splendid eight-oared gig over the rolling waves.
Let me not forget to say that Brooks, by a
an Eventful Life. 233
sad mishap on being handed down into the boat,
slipped into the sea, was pulled out by a boathook
which caught him by the waist-band, and after
all called a “lubber’ by the mate for his clumsi-
Il62SS.
‘A sea-cook and a lubber, Master Edward
Pretty names to call a confidential servant.”
234 Annals of
CHAPTER, XIX.
HOW WIE LANDED AT II, FRACOMBE.
WE landed at the pier between the harbours, and
paced up against a strong wind to the hotel. I
think it rejoiced in the name Britannia, and
very glad we were to be there, after a voyage of
ten hours. I think it was about eight o’clock,
but I am sure that no one in the hotel slept
more soundly on that night than I, Edward
Halfacre.
My Aunt was tired, as well she might be,
between the posting from Mandeville Hall, the
bad beds at Bristol, and the rough passage to
Ilfracombe. She was usually an early riser, but
she did not rise very early that July morning P I
went downstairs, threw open the window of our
sitting-room, which had a balcony overlooking
the sea, and as I stepped out I said to myself, but
out loud, ‘I wonder where Arethusa is P’
Observe, I could only call her Arethusa,
because I did not know her surname.
an Eventful Life. 235
N.B.—Warning to elderly fathers always to
give their cards to those to whom they confide
their daughters on steamboats, unless they wish
them to call their daughters by their Christian
Ila,DO €S.
With the words in my mouth, ‘I wonder where
Arethusa is P’ I stepped out, and there, on a con-
tinuation of our balcony, which belonged to the
sitting-room next to us, stood a young lady who
nodded to me at once, for though I had never seen
her face, that is to say, no more of it than the
tip of her nose, she had many opportunities of
Seeing mine.
What, then, was Arethusa like P. She was of
middle height; that is to say, she was what I call
every man’s money. Very tall women ought to
have lived before the Flood. It is a very long
time back, and would make them very old, but
I have a very good reason for putting them thus.
“There were giants in those days,’ and they
would all have got husbands at once. Now-a-
days, a very tall woman is a drug in the wife
market. Short men, no doubt, are very bold and
courageous, as is the manner of dwarfs and boys
standing on their inches, and frequently getting
into a quarrel merely because they are short, and
feel sure some one is going to insult them ; but
every short man, or every middle-sized man, is
236 Annals of
not bold enough to marry a woman to kiss whom
he must have a ladder.
But Arethusa was just the height that every
man might marry, whether tall or short—not so
short as to look insignificant by the side of a
tall man, and not tall enough to overshadow a
short husband. She looked, too, taller than she
was—an undoubted gift of some women, but how
gotten no one knows. Her figure was round and
slim ; she had small hands and feet, the feet
being the smallest in proportion; she had violet-
blue eyes—a very deep blue—but very bright and
large besides. Her complexion was milk-white,
with a slight flush when animated on her cheeks,
and under the soft, white skin you could see the
blue veins. Her hair was very dark-brown, one
shade off black, I should say, but there was a
dash of golden hair among it, which gave it in
Some lights a sunny glory. Her lips were full–
not too full, but not thin ; her chin was like a
Greek coin of one of Alexander's successors, but
which I cannot call to mind now. She had a
delicate nose, with just a tiny rise in it, as if it
had once half a mind to be Roman, but changed
its half mind before the intention could take
effect. She had strong, regular, white teeth, and
very small ears. And now I think I have given
you a perfect photograph of her, though when I
an Eventful Life. 237
first saw her there were no such things as photo-
graphs. *
After all, I have left out her expression. She
might have had all the charms that I have said,
and yet been hideous. Expression in the face is
like charity among the Virtues. Without that
perfect gift all our virtues are worth nothing.
Arethusa had a most sweet and winning Smile,
and an earnest way of looking at you out of her
great blue eyes that sank deep into your soul.
This is very poetical language, but it ex-
presses what I felt after I had known her a little
time.
Of course I did not discern all these beauties
there and then on that balcony. Perfect beauty,
as hers was, comes on one by little and little.
Like a great mountain, you cannot grasp it all at
once. Besides, I was too much scared. Have I
not told you that I was very shy P I had only
mechanically wondered where Arethusa was, and,
by turning the catch of a window, there she stood
before me. Such a trick of natural magic was
enough to frighten one out of one’s senses. I
was like the Necromancer's pupil, who had called
the devil, and, much to his astonishment, the
devil came.
Fright, I suppose, gave me boldness. I went
to Arethusa along the balcony, and said, ‘Good
238 Annals of
morning, Miss
’ and here I stopped short
and marked the Miss emphatically.
‘And good morning, Mr. ’ said Arethusa,
making my blank still blanker than her own.
“Halfacre.” - *
“Halfacre What an odd name ! Why not
Wholeacre while you were about it?’
‘It is a very old name,” I babbled apolo-
getically.
‘Then the sooner you change it the better.
I hate old things, especially if they are ugly. If
it were my name, I would change it at once.’
“Very likely. Young ladies change their
names, but men don’t ; and now may I ask what
the name is which you like so much better than
mine P’
‘Chichester.”
‘Chichester of Arlington Court P. If so, my
Aunt knows them.’
‘Not the Chichesters of Arlington Court. We
are distant cousins of those Chichesters; but is
your Aunt’s name Halfacre too P’
‘My Aunt's name is Mandeville. Perhaps
you like that better than Halfacre P’ I said, dryly,
because I felt nettled at hearing my fine old
name ridiculed. -
“I say at once I like it much better. It came
in with the Conquest, of course.’
an Eventful Life. 239
‘And the Halfacres were here long before the
Conquest ?’ -
“No doubt; and that’s why they're called
Halfacres, of course; the Normans took away all
their land except half-an-acre, and kept all the
rest for themselves. I’ve read it all in Magnall's
Questions and Mrs. Markham. If you don't take
care, I’ll talk to you about Doomsday.” -
Of course had I been equal to the occasion,
I should have told Arethusa to talk on till Dooms-
day, but I said nothing of the kind. I felt rather
hurt at being laughed at, as I thought, and I
began to consider how old Arethusa was. Looking
at her again, and running over her face and figure
at a glance, I set her down at my own age,
perhaps a year younger; but then the indicia,
astatis are not strongly marked in young people,
and Imight well be over the mark in my estimate
of her age.
But I felt that whatever her age, she was
more than a match for me in wit, and as I thought
myself a perfect man—had I not been called
“man” at Oxford ever since I was seventeen and
a half?—I felt vexed, not reflecting that in all
times, even in those good old times when girls,
like plums, still had the bloom on them till they
were twenty—a girl eighteen or twenty has been
quite equal to a man five years older.
240 Annals of
While this was passing through my mind,-it
takes long to tell; but it was in action the work
of an instant, I heard my Aunt's voice calling
me from the sitting-room, and at the same moment
the head of Arethusa’s father appeared at the
open window, and said:
‘Arethusa,’—I am not sure that he did not
call her ‘Toosy’—‘Breakfast's ready.”
I saw that he saw me, but no recognition
passed, and he still remained in my mind as an
impersonal somebody, a mythic giver of general
invitations to meet him somewhere—that is,
nowhere in particular, at no given time. Are-
thusa I knew something of. I felt she could
laugh at me, but her father was as much a reality
to me as Castor and Pollux.
I found Aunt Mandeville making tea. She
felt all the better for her sleep, and said she had
enjoyed the ‘sail,” as she called it, wonderfully.
‘Far better than Brooks, Edward; they tell
me he has got a fit of lumbago after his cold bath;
and besides, they say he takes on so, and is so
worritted at being called names by the vulgar
sailors.”
‘How long are we to stay in this hotel,
Auntie P’
‘Only until I can get a house large enough
to hold us. They say there is one up the valley,
an Eventful Life. 241.
at Wildersmouth. After breakfast we will go to
look at it, and explore the place. But what were
the names of our fellow-passengers of whom you
took such care P I was glad to see you helped the
father first, and that you went and got him some-
thing from below. That was just as young men
ought to behave, and not to be too forward in
thrusting their attentions on young ladies, who
are generally too much abashed by the act of
boldness to avail themselves of the mistaken
kindness.’ &
Poor Aunt Mandeville ! she had evidently
Hannah More's ideal young ladies in her eye, all
bashfulness and bread and butter, cream-ices that
will melt if one looks warmly at them. I am
inclined to think that such young ladies were
nearly extinct in her time, and Arethusa was
evidently not one of the class. What Aunt Man-
deville would have done had she lived in these
degenerate days I am sure I really cannot tell.
One turn in Rotten Row in the season, or at the
Botanic Gardens, or one visit to the Eton and
Harrow Match, one service at St. Andrew’s, Wells
Street, or one croquet-party at Lady Snapdra-
gon’s, would have driven her to desperation, as
she saw how young ladies now dress, and how
they talk to young men, even when they smoke
out-of-doors, and answer them in their own slang.
VOL. I. R
242 Annals of
‘Their name is Chichester, very distant rela-
tions of Arthur Chichester, who is up at Christ
Church, and lives at Arlington Court, somewhere
hereabouts.”
‘I have heard your Uncle Mandeville talk of
Jack Chichester, who was a gay man about town
when your Uncle left Oxford. He was in the
Guards, and distinguished himself at Waterloo;
afterwards I think he exchanged into a line re-
giment in India. Your Uncle seemed very fond
of him, for he often wondered—and he was not
much given to wonder—where old Jack Chi-
chester was.” -
These recollections were cut short by the rue-
ful visage of Brooks, who came limping in on a
stick, and to tell us the pleasant information
that “most of Master Edward’s things were as
wet as dung, and all along of them careless
sailors in their gig, who never put their “tar-
polly,” as they calls it, over the portmanteau,
which it has got soaked with sea-water.’
‘Then,’ said I, ‘you must soak them again in
fresh water,-the woollen things, I mean,—and
have them dried and ironed. As for the linen
things, they need only be washed, and they’ll be
all right.” -
‘’Orrid hout-of-the-way place l’ muttered
Brooks; “wish we had never set foot in it ; never
an Eventful Life. 243
a clear starcher, nor a soul as knows how to wash
a shirt in it. I’ll be bound !’
So saying he limped off, declaring that if he
once sat down with this lumbago on him, he would
never be able to get up again.
Now-a-days, we should have punctured him
with a pierced needle, like the fang of a rattle-
snake, and injected morphia on the sciatic nerve;
and he would have had rest; but then he had to
try his old remedies of opodeldock and harts-
horn and oil; and if they didn’t do him any
good, to grin and bear it.
Leaving Brooks to himself, Aunt Mandeville
and I sallied out. First, we started up the long,
rambling street, that makes a bend from the
bight of the inner harbour, and then spreads
and straggles up the hill. Just where the Barn-
staple road turns off, it has half a mind, as we
had, to go up there ; but it was out of breath, I
suppose, as we were, and thought better of it,
and so took the lower line. After a while we
found the street began to descend again, and
to grow less and less respectable. So we re-
traced our steps a little way, and turned down
a side road; there were houses on one side of it,
but not enough to make a street. This road
led us by a steep descent down into the valley
or combe, under the Torrs or cliffs. Here we
244 Annals of
came upon the Wilder, a brook which runs
through the valley; and perched up in a field
on the other side of the stream was the house
of which we were in search. Outside it was
prettily planted, and the myrtles and fuchsias,
and all flowering shrubs, grew luxuriantly
in the deep red soil. There were a few trees
about it, and a paddock. Inside it was not
more scantily furnished or more uncomfortable
than sea-side houses usually are. There were
the regulation arm-chairs, which would have
given Brooks a fit of lumbago even to look
at. There was a crick in the back, and a
cramp in each arm of them. Then there was
a horsehair sofa, constructed with a view to
drainage, I suppose, in that damp climate, on
an incline, so that any one who lay down on it
instantly glided off the slippery surface. And
there was another sofa, a kind of monster be-
tween an arm-chair and a sofa — an arm-chair
with a long tail to it, running off at an angle,
just such a couch as that bed of misery on which
the victims of the Inquisition used to be stretched
before they underwent the peine forte et dure, or
on which our criminals, who refused to plead,
were ‘pressed of yore—a sofa on which it was
impossible to sit or lie, turn or twist yourself
whichever way you might. O cabinet makers'
an Eventful Life. 245
—not Messrs. Gladstone and Disraeli, but ye
Messrs. Hollands, Gillows, and Trollopes of our
watering-places—pity the sorrows of a poor old
cripple, and never make one of these arm-chair
sofas
Those were not the days when the Scarlet
Fever—like the Chisholm, or the O’Donohoe, or the
McGillicuddy of the Reeks—regularly went out of
town to the sea-side every summer. No one then
expected to find him ubiquitous at every watering-
place at once. So we asked no questions as to whe-
ther he had lately lived in Wildersmouth House,
—that was the name of our new abode. Perhaps
had we asked, and he had been there, we should
have been assured he had not. He is a person-
age whom no lodging-house keeper likes to con-
fess that she has taken in, so she keeps the
secret, until you wake, or your wife wakes, or
your children wake one fine morning—just as
you have declared only the evening before, that
you think the place most delightful—with the
worst cold you or they ever had in their lives,
followed by a flush, a glow, a fever, head
symptoms and throat symptoms. The doctor
comes; your house is immediately divided into
the clean and the unclean—the sheep and the
goats. You drench the children with belladonna
as a prophylactic, and send them back to town.
246 Annals of
If you have it, your wife stays to nurse you.
If she has it, you stay to nurse her. If one of
the children, you both stay. The result
is a very jolly holiday. The owner of the
house turns you out as soon as she can, making
you pay a month’s rent to purify the house of
a disease which she is ready to take her Bible
oath you must have brought with you. When
you pay Dr. Bryony his bill, he tells you he
thinks you escaped very well; for the last fatal
case of Scarlet fever he had was buried from that
house two days before you came. If you ever
came again, and would write to him before-
hand, he would take care that you were put
into an uninfected house. But, of course, you
never go to that place again. You have had
enough of it. So you shake the dust off your
feet, and the golden dust out of your purse, and
depart, feeling quite sure that twenty-four hours
will not pass before a fresh family succeeds you
in your scarlet fever lodgings.
But things were not so bad as that at Ilfra-
combe in 183–. We asked no questions, and so
we were told no lies. My Aunt liked the situa-
tion, before which lay the sea, seen through the
cove at Wildersmouth, with the capstan hill,
then innocent of a walk round it, and the old
light-house chapel perched over the entrance to
an Eventful Life. 247
the harbour beyond it. Half way up the path
from Wildersmouth to the Bathing cove was a
gate. I remember that gate well; it was five-
barred, and I used to jump over it half-a-dozen
times a-day on my way up or down. As the
old Marquis of Millionford said to the great Duke
of Wellington, when they saw a shepherd-boy
munching a turnip on Salisbury Plain, with a
splendid appetite, aided by a set of bright white
teeth: ‘I would give all my wealth, which I
have got, and all your glory, which I have not
got, to be able to eat a turnip like that boy;’
so would I give all the wealth which I have not
got, and all the glory which I have still less
got, to be as I then was, able to jump over that
five-barred gate half-a-dozen times a-day.
I have always been fond of Ilfracombe-when
it doesn’t rain. I remember when we first went
there we stayed in for some days because it
rained every day, and we thought we would not
go out till it cleared. But the inhabitants, who
showed us no small kindness, came to us in
waterproofs—I think they were about the first
macintoshes made—and besought us to come
out, for as to calling that drizzle rain, they
assured us it was to them real summer weather.
But Ilfracombe, with the sun on it and the
lights over the bounding green waves, and the
48 Annals of
surf dashing in its many coves, and the spray
and foam flying, and rainbows gleaming on the
broken clouds, is a sight seldom to be seen in
IEngland. Lovely, too, is it at night, when the
moon is at the full. I remember the harvest
moon in August the year we were there, how
it rose over Wildersmouth, full and yellow, with
a warmth which seemed its own, just as the
sun set; and how Aunt Mandeville, and Colonel
Chichester, and I, and Arethusa sat and looked
at it, till the dew fell fast and thick.
But I am getting on too fast. Where were
we ? Oh! we had just taken Wildersmouth
House, and were on our way back to the hotel
to despatch Brooks and the servants to their
new abode.
an Eventful Life. 249
CELAPTER, XX.
HOW I SAW NOTHING OF ARETHIUSA.
JUST as we passed through the gate of which I
have spoken, two persons met us. I saw at once
they were Arethusa and her father. They
both recognised me this time, and I bowed in
return and held open the gate for them till
they had passed on.
‘Who were those, Edward?” said my Aunt,
surprised at my having found persons to bow to
in a new place. “You are like a sailor; you
find friends everywhere.”
“Those are the Chichesters—our fellow-pas-
sengers. They were so muffled up on board that
you could not recognise them.’
‘And how then did you recognise them P’
said my Aunt, beginning to be jealous.
“I saw them in the hotel this morning, and
then they recognised me. They were unmuffled,
you know, and so I knew them. They of course
knew me.’
250 Annals of
I did not tell Auntie that I had had a long
conversation with Arethusa on the balcony before
breakfast. Why I did not I am sure I don’t
know. Perhaps you will say with the Psalmist,
‘The heart of man is deceitful above the weights.”
You are quite welcome, spiteful old moralist
reader, to say what you please of me, who am
as much a nonentity to you as Arethusa’s
father then was to me—one of whom you know
nothing, and shall know nothing, except what
I choose to tell you; but to any fair and candid
reader, not over-biblical, not too cut-and-dried,
who is not for ever bringing her ‘precious
balms’ out of her medicine-chest—drugs and
balms hard and heavy enough to break my
head—I will declare, on the honour of a gentle-
man, that I really do not know, and did not
know, why I said nothing to my Aunt Mande-
ville about my interview with Arethusa.
The servants were soon despatched, all except
Brooks, whose lumbago had come “worser nor
ever,’ according to his own account, and who
wanted us to stay where we ‘was for another
night. In fact, he tried to play the tyrant
over my Aunt at Ilfracombe just as he was wont
at Mandeville Hall; but once off her own dung-
hill, on which she was weak where others are
strong, she was strong where others are weak.
an Eventful Life. 251
She threw off her slavery with the sod, and
was mistress over Brooks.
But we had a little scene—a tableau vivant
of petty domestic troubles, in which Brooks
unassisted played all the parts. He was sure
that we should all get our deaths of cold; he’d
be bound there hadn’t been a fire in Wilders-
mouth House since this time last year; bitten
to death we were certain to be; full of ear-
wigs and blackbeetles, he’d be cock-sure—‘Odd
rabbet ’em l’ This last mysterious expression,
and ‘Drat it !” were two favourite expletives of
Brooks, when he had reached such a fever-pitch
of indignation that he had to let off the steam,
lest what answered to a boiler inside him should
burst. They were safety-valves, in fact. What
the meaning of them is I know, and so do you,
O philological brother ; but I am not going
to analyse their construction or meaning more
fully, for this is a book in which there is no
Swearing.
Then ‘the beer wasn’t in the house, and if it
wasn’t in the house who was to fetch it P Nor
was there any wine for missus. Nothing for
dinner P No, not so much as a chop ; and how
could he stir to see about all these things with
this here lumbago biting his back P’
But as some one had to do it, and my Aunt
252 Annals of
Mandeville couldn’t, and I was supposed to have
no experience, Brooks had to do it. He and
the cook got what was needful. The servants
had their dinner at the hotel before we left.
Then they laid in tea and supper for themselves,
and dinner for us; and, in spite of Brooks’s
forebodings, we were very comfortable that first
night at Wildersmouth House; and so we con-
tinued till our time was up.
Of course the reader expects that I was dying
to get on more intimate terms with Arethusa,
and he is prepared to see me taking every sen-
sational way to effect my object. For instance,
she might be described as climbing a crag — one
of those treacherous slate rocks not far from
Wildersmouth—and as having got half way up
on to a ledge, from which she could neither ascend
nor descend. There, though naturally brave as
a lion, she would be compelled by hunger, or
Some other motive from which not even lions are
free, to wring her hands or wave her handker-
chief for help. Her aged, grizzle-haired sire
would be flourishing the telescope, by means of
which he has just detected his daughter’s dan-
gerous position, on the beach. Just as the young
lioness—lady, I mean—had resolved that the
only means of escape would be to throw herself
down into the arms of her parent—a step by
an Eventful Life. 253
which her neck and his spine would be in-
fallibly broken—I should be descried jumping
across the Wilder, just where I afterwards
sprained my ankle, in the highest physical de-
velopment of which a muscular Christian is ca-
pable. No | I should not be crossing the beach ;
it is highly improper in a muscular Christian to
Save a young lady from below. English ladies are
not yet Bloomers. I should be descried coming
down from the Torrs, my stately figure rendered
still more herculean by the sun shining behind me
as I strode along the ridge. To see the young
lady perched up there like a guillemot or a puf-
fin, and to understand her difficulty, would be
the work of a second. I would let myself down
by a rope. Where did I get the rope from ? -
O silly question 1 Most muscular Christians,
especially if they are High-churchmen, always
carry rope enough with them to hang themselves
coiled round their waists. However, in this case
I need not have had it round my waist; a pet
lamb would have been tethered to a stake by a
cord long enough and strong enough to bear my
weight and Arethusa’s—say twenty stone. No
muscular Christian now-a-days weighs less than
thirteen stone; and Arethusa, slim and slight, not
more than seven—say eight, and make the total
twenty-one. Or, smugglers should have been
254 Annals of
there, plying their traffic by night, and should have
forgotten the rope by which they dragged their
tubs and kegs up the face of the rock. By one of
these three ropes, or all of them twisted together
in a true lover's knot—if one of them, like the
cow’s tail that reached to the moon, had not
been long enough—I should have swung myself
over the edge, first tying the other end fast
to the bole of a gigantic oak that grew close
to the cliff. I should have reached Arethusa
just as she had repeated the Nicene Creed, or,
better still, chanted it to Gregorian tones before
throwing herself over. I should have caught her
in my arms, and Swarmed up the rope again, dis-
daining to await for her father's arrival with men
to haul us up. To his surprise he would have
found us idly stretched on the turf, and talking
of the odds on the International University Boat-
race, as cool as cucumbers and as harmless as
doves. I should then have declared my passion,
and implored his forgiveness for daring to take
the lovely Arethusa in my arms; on which he
would have made answer, ‘Having taken so much,
you had better take her altogether.” We should
have rushed at him both at once and embraced
his venerable form : Arethusa in front and I
behind. What more can I add, except that we
should have been married that day week, as we
an Eventful Life. 255
both hated long engagements, at St. George's,
Hanover Square, with full choral service? I
know Dr. Howarth won’t hear of it in ordinary
cases, but ours would have been an extraordinary
one, and even that reverend Minos would have
relaxed his rules. The Bishop of Bullocksmithy,
assisted by the disestablished but not disendowed
Archbishop of Armagh and Father Ignatius,
would have performed the ceremony. We should
then have lived happily all our days, had half
as many children as Hecuba, and died universally
respected; if I had not, as I grieve to say is
sometimes the case with muscular Christians,
grown morose and melancholy, and left my wife
and family, because I felt that I had work to
do in the Fijee Islands.
In the same way, and with as much proba-
bility, I might have saved Arethusa and her
father, if they had been cut off by the waves, just
as the sea had reached their necks; but as I
have seen this patent-safety escape tried with
success already, in one or two novels, I should
have scorned imitation, and preferred the course
already described.
Again, they might have been crossing a field
by a footpath ; or perhaps it would have been
better to make them trespass, and have been
attacked by a ferocious Devon bull. I should
256 Annals of
have been crossing also, and attacked the bull
as he is tackled in that long-forgotten book,
‘Sandford and Merton,’ which little boys now
read homoeopathically to make them sleep. They
would escape, but I having being tossed twice,
the second time on to a haystack, so that I could
not be tossed thrice, should have lain there
in a fainting state till the neighbours came with
a ladder and got me down. Ishould have lingered
a long time with several ribs broken, nursed by
Aunt Mandeville, Arethusa, and her father, till
a treaty of alliance had been agreed on between
the colonel and my Aunt, and we should have
been married in the way already described.
But, alas ! this is no sensational story reared
in the forcing-house of fiction, it is sober, bitter
truth; and let me tell you bitter truth is whole-
some enough, if you will listen to and be warned
by me. How do the feelings and affections of
the human heart grow P You might as well ask
the grass how and why it grows : the seed-corn
why it springs; why it grows faster at one time
than another : cut by cold winds, nipped by frost,
rained on, Snowed on, hailed on, but it still
grows on till it is either ripe or rotten, a full
crop : a mere average or a failure. Time and
place and season, opportunity and chance, have
more to do with our affections than we fancy.
an Eventful Life. 257
There lies the seed ready to grow if it has the
chance; but it will not grow without external
influences; and when it does grow, it is liable
to just as many mishaps as any grain of wheat
that is sown in the richest field. -
If I could have saved Arethusa’s life in any
way, or done her any service, I should only have
been too happy; but then I never had any op-
portunity. For a long time we went on bowing
when we met, but that was all. I am sure
I don’t know that we should ever have known
more of them had it not been for the merest
accident ; and not at all a sensational one
either. We were caught in the rain down at
Wildersmouth, without our waterproofs, and with
no umbrellas; we had forgotten we were in
Devonshire. The sun shone so brightly when
we set out, it seemed as though we were in Italy.
We had scarce sat down on the beach, when it
rained in torrents, so we stood up under a rock,
with a great overhanging shelf of slaty Schist
over us. It so happened that under the very
same rock was cowering Arethusa’s father, with-
out his daughter, but with an umbrella. Now
I should say that an umbrella was about the most
useless thing that a man can carry—of course
as I abuse them I never carry one. In fact, I
left off carrying them after losing three running,
WOL. I. S
258 Annals of
one wet summer, at the club. I remember of
course the celebrated Popish umbrella which
converted young Soaphead, who was at Oxford.
with me, to the Church of Rome. He was at
Rome doing the churches in wet weather, and
either lent his umbrella to a cardinal, or a car-
dinal lent him his. Whichever way it was he
was converted, and I believe he now bears as
his crest a green silk umbrella, displayed proper,
in memory of the proud event, with the motto,
‘Spectemur in imbre,’ instead of his old family
crest, a hare courant, with the motto, “Peur gagne
petſ.” But as I consider going over to the Church
of Rome to be a very doubtful good, I should not
be inclined to quote Soaphead’s case as proving
the good of umbrellas.
But to show that there is good in everything
I must quote the colonel’s umbrella. There he
was with his umbrella, next to a lady without
one. As for me, I was made neither of salt
nor of sugar, and there was no fear of my melting
in the rain. Nor am I one of those interesting,
consumptive heroes who take orders, go into
the church, marry, have ten children, and then
go to Madeira to die, leaving their family a
burden to Society. No ! I am not consumptive,
except at my meals, and then I am very much
so. Let no eating-house keeper undertake to
an Eventful Life. 259
feed me for a fixed sum, if he does, he will
have the worst of it. There was then no fear
for me; nor was there for my Aunt. She could
bear a wetting as well as any one, if she had
made up her mind to it and was clad accord-
ingly. It was a sight to do your heart good
to see her trudging across the park to Mandeville
village in her grey cloak and clogs, in pouring
rain, to visit some sick person. But there was
one thing my Aunt had no mind to, and that
was what she called “spoiling her things.” She
was old-fashioned enough to care for ‘her
things;’ and though she had many dresses, and
on the whole dressed in very good taste, she
could not bear to come home with a good ‘gown,”
as she called it, “all of a draggle.’
So there she was without an umbrella, next
to an old gentleman who had one. I remember
it was a green silk umbrella, with a came handle
and ivory ball top. It was a memorable um-
brella to me. Now, I have told you that I am
of a very shy mature. All these years I have
been making up my mind to tell you this story,
and haven’t finished it yet. Had I been next
to a lady to whom I had no introduction, I
should never have been bold enough to speak to
her, and offer my umbrella. I might have thrown
it down on the sand in a Savage way and fled,
260 Annals of
leaving it to her to make use of it, and trusting
to her honesty to restore it, or I might have
sent some one else to her to offer her the um-
brella ; but I, Edward Halfacre, would never
have plucked up courage to speak to her first,
even to do her a service. It is a feeling which
has lost me many friends, and perhaps saved me
from many enemies through life.
But old Colonel Chichester—I call him old,
though he was about fifty-eight. You call him
old too? Well, then, we shan’t quarrel; but per-
haps, when you are fifty-eight, you mayn’t like
to be called old. Old Colonel Chichester was a
very different man. He was a man of the world,
had been a soldier, seen much of men and women
in all countries, and, besides, was naturally
polite. He was quite the man who might do
anything he pleased because he had “such good
manners.’ Have you ever met such a man,
reader P If you have not, and are just visiting
one of these gentlemen for the first time, all I
say is, Beware of men whose manners are so good
that they may do anything they like. They are
the sort of men who may steal a horse out of a
field when others mayn't look at him over the
fence. Very pleasant fellows, if horse-stealing
were not a crime, however politely it is done.
I Ought to beg old Colonel Chichester's par-
an Eventful Life. 261
don for taking away his character because he
had good manners. He was equal to the occasion,
and soon turned to my Aunt Mandeville, and
said, -
“I see you have no umbrella, madam, allow
me to place mine at your disposal.”
I particularly remarked that he said ‘madam’
and not ‘ma'am.’
My aunt turned round and looked at the
Colonel with something like a toss of her head,
as much as to say, ‘It is not every one's umbrella
that I would accept, even though I don’t like
to get wet.’
However her pride lasted but a second. It
was stifled as soon as it was born. Love for
her clothes got the better of the old Halfacre
hauteur, and she said, with one of her most gra-
cious Smiles, and there was no one who smiled
more winningly than my Aunt Mandeville :
“I shall be very glad to accept it, if you
will stay here under shelter until I send it
back to you.’ -
The Colonel assented with a low bow, the
umbrella was handed over, and I bore it aloft
over my Aunt up to Wildersmouth House. I
remember thinking as I felt the round ivory top
that I had got the ball in my own hands
now. The first move in the game had been
262 Annals of
made, and though I was not yet in love with
Arethusa I felt that soon I should be again on
speaking terms with her. Feelings are so masked
and veiled, even from oneself, that I firmly be-
lieve I only then fancied I wished to renew
our acquaintance that I might pay her off for
having laughed at my family name.
As soon as Aunt Mandeville was safely
housed, she sent me back with the umbrella.
“Run back quickly, Edward, and don’t be
awkward; say something civil to the old gen-
tleman for me. I am so much obliged to him.
See, there are but a few spots on my black silk.
Curl must come and wipe them off at once.”
Down I ran to Wildersmouth as fast as I
could, taking little heed of sheltering myself
under the umbrella, which played such am im-
portant part in the drama of my destiny. Is not
that a fine sentence—the ‘drama of my destiny?’
If a drama is only another name for a play, I
have found the drama of my destiny anything
but play.
I found the Colonel sticking like a limpet to
the rock, and I found another limpet with him
whom I had not expected to see. Arethusa was
by his side; and there I stood before them, bound
to deliver the umbrella to its owner, and to say
something civil, and not to be awkward.
an Eventful Life. 263
I don’t know if any of you share my feeling,
that it is far easier to speak to one person than to
two. Whether it be that if you say anything
silly there is a witness to your silliness, or
whether you feel that two to one is hardly fair,
I don’t know ; but though, as I ran down, I said
to myself, ‘Now, perhaps, I shall speak to Are-
thusa :’ when I found her standing before me I
wished her a thousand miles off, and that I had
only the old Colonel to whom to deliver my
message.
However there they were, and I had to make
the best of it.
‘My Aunt is very much obliged to you for
your umbrella, sir,' I said; “and she bade me say
how sorry she was to keep you standing in the
rain while she took it away.” -
As I said these words I felt I was blushing
like a peony, but I dextrously held the umbrella,
which might be called our master of the cere-
monies, over my head.
‘I am very glad that your Aunt has been able
to make use of it,” said the Colonel, reaching out
his hand for the umbrella.
I gave it up very slowly because it hid my
scarlet face, and because I felt as though in
parting with its ball handle the whole globe was
slipping out of my hand. -
264 Annals of
But the Colonel clutched it as though it were
only an ivory handle, and not a master of the
ceremonies, an introducer, or anything you like
that brings two people together.
After he had hold of it, he turned to Are-
thusa, who stood beside him, dripping like her
own fountain, and said,
‘Toosey, you must be nearly wet through, we
had better make the best of our way home;’ and
accordingly away they went ; Arethusa not so
much as giving me one glance, and her father
not even saying, “I hope we shall see you again.”
I looked after them, rooted to the ground,
and felt that I had made very little out of
the opportunity which the umbrella had given
me of speaking to Arethusa. Slowly did I re-
trace my steps to Wildersmouth House, and I
must have been long about it, though it was only
two or three hundred yards from the rock of
refuge; for I found luncheon waiting, and Brooks
in a fever. He always was in a fever if any one
kept luncheon waiting, for then he could not
get what he called ‘ his meals regular,’ for his
dinner followed our luncheon.
‘Well, Edward,” said my Aunt, ‘you have
been rather long in delivering my message to
Colonel Chichester. Did you walk home with
him P I wonder where he lives?” -
an Eventful Life. 265
‘No, auntie, they walked off alone.’
‘They P” said my Aunt, ‘how did Colonel Chi-
chester become plural; when I left him he was
alone under the rock.’
‘Yes, auntie, and when I found him, Miss
Chichester was standing by him. How she came
there I cannot tell. She was on the other side
of the rock, I suppose. I gave the Colonel the
umbrella, with a few civil words. He said he was
glad to have lent it to you; and they, that is to
say, he and Miss Chichester, walked off together.
If I have been a long time coming I can’t under-
stand it, for I only went there and back, and I
am sure I was not with them two minutes.’
Here Brooks cut in. It was at luncheon, and
he considered himself free to speak.
“I see Master Edward a-coming up the lane,
and he stop five minutes, at least, at the gate
halfway up. He looked up the lane, and down
the lane, and threw stones into the brook, and
walked backwards and forwards four or five
times. I says to myself, Brooks, Master Ed-
ward can never know how near lunch it be ;
and I made signs to him, but he took no heed,
and when he did come he walked slowly like,
as if it were a hot day in June, instead of
raining cats and dogs.”
So the wretch had been watching me from
266 Annals of
the drawing-room window, and now paid me off
for delaying his dinner.
‘Perhaps Master Edward was thinking, Brooks.
He has a great deal to think of just now. He
is going to take his degree in November.’
I did not dare to look at Aunt Mandeville
to see if she was laughing at me. Perhaps it
was only my guilty conscience which made me
take such a deep interest in the willow pattern
of the plate before me. We all know now that
it represents a heart-rending Chinese love-story;
but perhaps if the luncheon had lasted long
enough, I might have gazed down into my plate
until I had discovered the meaning of the pat-
tern, but my tormentor Brooks would not let me
look long enough. -
‘Will you have any more mutton, Master
Edward P’ he asked; and before I could answer
‘yes’ or ‘no’ he had snatched off my plate.
His real wish was to carry off the leg of mutton
for himself, but the result of his greediness was
to make me look my Aunt Mandeville full in the
face.
Oh I that I had been in a land where butler-
killing was no murder! I would have put that
‘Sneak' Brooks to death by slow torture.
After all, when I did look straight at Aunt
Mandeville there was nothing so dreadful to see.
an Eventful Life. 267
There she sat looking as happy as usual. So
far from saying anything which could hurt my
morbid feelings, she repeated her question as to
where the Chichesters lived, and even asked me
to try and find out their house.
I remember in my ignorance thinking, ‘Well,
she can’t see into my heart; she can’t know
how much I wish to speak to Arethusa, or she
would never ask me to find out where they
live.” -
I remember, too, thinking myself very pru-
dent in answering, -
‘Oh, I’m sure I don’t know where they live,’
which was quite true. ‘Of course they live
somewhere in the town, and "it won’t be hard
to find out.’ -
There I ought to have let the matter rest,
but I could not be quiet, and at breakfast next
morning I asked Aunt Mandeville if she still
wished to know where the Chichesters lived.
‘Oh,' said my Aunt, answering me in my own
words, “ of course they live somewhere in the
town, and we can easily find out if we want.”
That day, which was finer than usual, that is
to say, it did not rain more than six hours, I
spent in my bedroom reading, only coming down,
d la Brooks, to get ‘my meals regular.”
IHowever it was fated that I and Arethusa
268 Annals of
were to know each other, and no shyness or
awkwardness on my part, no suspicion or jealousy
on that of my Aunt, no coolness of the Colonel,
and no malignity of Brooks, could avert it. What
was to be, was.
First when the Colonel met my Aunt, which
he did twenty times a-day, he took off his
hat; that is, he took it off the first two or
three times. After that such frequent bowing,
threatening the utter wear and tear of his beaver,
became ridiculous, and instead of bowing, he
used to Smile. Then he held the gate open for
my Aunt at least once a-day; and last, though
not least, he and Arethusa were put into the
Same pew with us at church, and Auntie lent him
half her hymn-book, and I lent Arethusa half of
mine. How I blessed pews, and pew-openers,
and hymn-books
Why is it, let me ask, that every one feels
entitled to offer another his or her hymn-book,
not only when they are in the pew together, but
often when they are each in separate pews, and
often two pews off? It is all the same whether
you are short or long-sighted, whether you can
sing or not ; let the psalm be given out, and the
organ or harmonium growl, and any one who has
a hymn-book is not easy till he has got a
partner who is hymn-bookless. Still more cha-
an Eventful Life. 269
ritable are they who, sitting in a pew behind
you, tap you on the back, or scratch your neck, to
hand you a hymn-book. If there were arrest for
debt on Sunday the first process would add a new
terror to church, as surely as the second suggests
a wasp or hornet getting down your collar be-
hind. You turn round in dismay, and find it is
only an old lady or a young lady, a marchioness
or a maid-of-all-work, with a hymn-book which
she wishes to lend you. Take it you must, and
you must hold it open, and try to sing; and
when the singing is over you must return it
gracefully, with a bow, to its owner. If you
don’t, you are set down for a heathen brute. I
ask again, Why is it P. If you meet a lady in the
street, or in a railway carriage, and you sneeze,
she does not at once insist on your sharing her
handkerchief. If you have no cold, and she
has a novel, and you none, she does not instantly
ask you to read it with her. I ask for the third
time, Why is this exception made in the case of
prayer and specially of hymn-books P
However, there they were in our pew. Fate
had thrown us under their umbrella, and we were
obliged to them; and now Fate had made them.
borrow our hymn-books, and they were obliged
to us. There I was, standing side by side with
Arethusa, she singing, and very well too, out of
270 Annals of
my hymn-book. It was ‘Jerusalem the Golden,’
I remember. Had I the power I would have
changed it into ‘O Ilfracombe the Golden,” the
‘O’ being added to fill up the odd syllable; and
there was Colonel Chichester standing close up
to my Aunt—a perfect happy family; the only
drawback being that Brooks and the rest of
the servants were all in the front row of the
gallery, taking note of what we did.
If I blessed the umbrella before, I blessed the
hymn-books tenfold now. I am afraid that I
neglected the one for the other, though I ought
to have remembered that you need a hymn-book
only once a-week at Ilfracombe, while you want
an umbrella ten times a-day.
But the hymn-books had it all their own way
that Sunday. We walked home together as far
as Wildersmouth House, and when we parted my
Aunt said she should be very happy to call on
Miss Chichester, if Colonel Chichester would
allow it.
“Nothing would give him greater pleasure,’
Said the Colonel; and I could not help remarking
that as he said those few words he did not turn
as red as a turkey-cock, like a certain young
gentleman whom I could have named.
With that we parted, and Auntie and I
went home to luncheon.
an Eventful Life. 271.
She said little or nothing, certainly nothing
about the Chichesters. She did not even wonder
this time where they lived.
All that afternoon I spent in my own room,
nominally reading divinity, but really humming
‘Jerusalem the Golden,” and thinking of Are-
thusa Chichester; but I beg you all to take
notice that I was not the least in love with
her—I only wanted to pay her off for laughing
at me.
272 Annals of
CHAPTER, XXI.
FIOW I SAW SOMETHING OF ARETHUSA.
WHEN these visits passed between my Aunt and
Miss Chichester I was artful enough not to go
with my Aunt, though she asked me to do so. I
had to read a play of Sophocles, or the First
Georgic, or something; I hardly know what. I
made a classical excuse, and it passed muster. I
think I spent all the time my Aunt was away in
holding the hymn-book just as I had held it when
Arethusa held the other half. I knew the very
spot where her tiny thumb had rested, and I
am ashamed to say I kissed it. Very silly and
very natural Boys were boys then, and girls
girls. We were not so wise as young people
are now-a-days. We felt more and thought
less; and I rather think we had the best of it.
There was false feeling and sham affection then
as now ; but the genuine article was, at any rate,
sometimes to be found. It was with love then as
with antiques and objects of art. There were
Shams and forgeries then, and many bought
an Eventful Life. 273
them and were taken in; but it was possible to
go into a dealer’s shop and to find a genuine bit
of china, a majolica plate, a piece of silver, a
cabinet, untouched and unrestored. Now, you
may search London, and find nothing but sham
antiques, and so it was with love then, and so it
is with love now. We were great fools. We
squandered our affections recklessly, and often
on worthless objects; but, at any rate, we some-
times got something genuine and natural.
But to come back to Ilfracombe. When my
Aunt returned, she said that Miss Chichester
seemed a nice girl. ‘Very pretty, too,” she
thought her. As for Colonel Chichester, who
should he turn out to be but the very ‘Jack
Chichester of the Guards,” the friend of my Uncle
Mandeville before he married?
‘He was wild enough then,’ said my Aunt ;
‘ but he seems a very courteous old gentleman
now, and time, no doubt, has brought with it
repentance for his former follies.’
‘Did he ask after me, Aunt P’
This was all I dared to say of the Chichesters.
“Oh yes. He spoke of you as his “young
friend,” who had given him the brandy-and-water
on board the steamer, which did him so much
good. I thought it had been tea you brought on
deck, Edward P’
WOL. I. T
274 Annals of
* Dr. Mindererus said brandy-and-water was
what we were to take if we were sea-sick, and
I thought what was good for us must be good
for the Colonel. That was why I brought it.
It seemed to do him great good.’ -
“Exactly what he said to-day,” said my Aunt.
“If it had not been for that glass of brandy-and-
water he did not think he should have reached
Ilfracombe alive.” .
In a day or so Miss Chichester came to call on
my Aunt, and her father came with her. When
he saw me he said he was glad to see me; and
Arethusa, for the first time, looked as though she
were glad to see me, and we all talked and
laughed, and so the visit ended very happily.
That evening we all met at Wildersmouth,
for a wonder not in the rain. The green um-
brella was not unfolded. It remained unnoticed
in the Colonel's hand. Then we sat down upon
the rocks, and the Colonel told us some stories of
the Burmese War; rather in the tom-tom and
gum-gum style, but such stories were not then so
well known as they are now. India was an un-
known land. Faith in the pagoda tree was still
firm. In fact, we were less accustomed to a diet
of curry and rice then than we are now, and
nothing pleased us more than an occasional dish
of it. My Aunt was infinitely amused at the
an Eventful Life. 275
stories, and I would have been delighted had the
Colonel told her the first joke in Joe Miller as
his own, or tried to palm off upon us—as we
have known some bold bad story-tellers in these
latter days, Mr. Canning's stale story of the
elephants coming last into the ark, because they
stayed to pack up their trunks. *.
When the story-telling was over we saw them
home to their cottage, Combe Martin Cottage, I
remember it was called,—and we turned back and
walked home and went to bed; and the morning
and the evening were the first day.
When I came to reflect, which act of the in-
tellect did not begin till I crept into bed,—how I
Thad behaved to Arethusa and she to me, I could
not call to mind anything which showed her
that I had any leaning towards her, and still
less anything on her part which could at all
prove that she cared in the least for me. Young
people are carried along by their natural guar-
dians and protectors like logs on a current, or
bathers in a strong tideway. The bathers think,
and the logs would think if they could, that they
are getting on swimmingly, and that they are
having their way; but it is the irresistible cur-
rent that carries them both on, until it lands
them somewhere far from what they hoped. In
this case, both Arethusa and I were playthings of
276 Annals of
the Colonel and my Aunt Mandeville; we had as
yet no wishes of our own, and the elders did with
us pretty much as they liked. When young
people get so far as to have a will of their own,
they soon find they have a current of their own,
or a mind of their own, which sets right against
the current of their temporal pastors and masters,
and causes great storms and high seas of passion
in which many gallant hopes go down, as richly-
laden vessels founder in a gale.
For the present we all swam together in har-
mony. The elders not only proposed but dis-
posed, and we were only too happy to follow.
Neither my Aunt nor Colonel Chichester dreamt
that either I or Arethusa could think of falling
in love with one another. My Aunt considered
me still a boy; and as for the Colonel, the last
thing which breaks on a father’s mind is the
bitter fact, of which every one around him has
been long aware, that his darling daughter has
made up her mind to exchange his society for
that of a husband. The very jealousy of my
Aunt had blinded her eyes. She saw nothing but
me, and it never crossed her mind that I could
think of any woman as my wife till she had first
thought of her for me.
These worthy protectors of such inflammable
elements as two human hearts, than which at
an Eventful Life. 277
twenty not even nitro-glycerine or dynamite is
more explosive, did everything that in them lay
to bring Arethusa and me together when once
the ice was broken. We went off on ponies to
Linton, along the cliff, enjoying the finest sea-
scenery in England; we lingered at Heddon-
mouth, and had a picnic partie carrée on the
shore; we stayed two days at the delightful
Valley of Rocks Hotel; we rode up the valley;
we walked down to Linmouth, and very hot we
were walking back; we rode back to Ilfracombe
by moonlight, losing the way and not arriving
till one A.M.
Well might Brooks hold up his hands and
exclaim :
“Missus out till one in the morning in this
damp part | Whatever would Dr. Mindererus
say ?’
Then we rode to Morte Bay and Woollacomb
Sands, and saw Mortehoe Church, where one of
Becket's assassins lies; and coming back, Arethusa
dropped her brooch, and we both turned back to
look for it, and I found it and pinned it on and
pricked my finger. Ah me! what a sweet wound
was that l’
Then, growing bolder, we set off in my Aunt's
carriage, which, after lengthened travels, had
reached Ilfracombe, and drove to Barnstaple and
278 Annals of
Bideford, and Clovelly and Clovelly Court, and
Hartland Point. We were away nearly a week,
for, though the distances were not great, the
horses were as great slugs as the coachman; and
as for Brooks, who undertook to be beforehand
for us with our light portmanteaus, somehow or
other he was always in the wrong place, and we
lost hours upon hours waiting for him.
All this was delightful, only the time went so
very fast. Sunday was no sooner gone than it
was back again. They had got their own hymn-
books by that time, but they still sat in our pew,
the Colonel next to my Aunt, of course I made
way for my elders, then Arethusa, and last I,
keeping the fifth seat against all comers. It is in
a crowded church, with pushing pew-openers,
almost as anxious an office as guarding the ‘siege
perilous’ in a tournament against all comers.
Sometimes though, however wide we spread
ourselves out, we were invaded. There were no
crinolines in those days—that utterly extinct, or
half-extinct, or curtailed article of female attire
had not come in, it was before it was even born
or thought of, as the nurses say. Still less were
our looped-up, brooched-up behind dresses known.
Ladies’ ‘coats,’ as my Aunt used to call them,
were short and rather scanty; when the wind
blew they showed the shape a good deal more
an Eventful Life. 279
than Some of our modern umbrella cases. It was
hard for a lady then to spread herself out, but
Arethusa and my Aunt did it as well as they
could. The old Colonel puffed himself up till he
grew as red as a turkey-cock, and looked twice as
Savage. I did my best to scare away all comers,
Sometimes, though, we did not succeed. I re-
member once, a man came and remained through
the service, but disappeared just at the end of the
last psalm. He vanished as suddenly as a ghost;
though next to him, I never missed him. You
will Say I was looking at Arethusa. I scorn the
imputation. He was gone, however, and returned
no more that day. Next Sunday the same man
came again. I watched him all through the last
verse of the last psalm. It was a Hallelujah
psalm, and lo! at the end of the singing, just at
the ‘jah,’ the fifth sitter vanished; withered away
and glided out more like a ghost than anything
else. His face worked as though he had some-
thing to say, but he made no mockery of holding
a handkerchief up to his nose, nor did he cough
or sneeze violently. No ; he quietly glided out
—I believe that preterite is ‘glode"—and was gone.
“Very odd man, that,’ said the Colonel.
“I suppose,’ said my Aunt, ‘the poor man was
ill.or something. Perhaps he felt faint.’
“Very odd man,’ repeated the Colonel. ‘ Odder
280 Annals of
still he should feel faint two Sundays running,
just at the very same part of the service. Re-
minds of a man in the 200th Bengal Fusileers,
who ran away regularly from two affairs in the
Durmese war. His time was the very first shot
on the enemy’s side.”
Nothing more was said, and the third Sunday
came. At the end of the last psalm, at the very
last versicle, away faded the fifth sitter in the
same spectral way. We all wondered a good
deal at his strange manners, and could not at all
explain it; but I have lived a little longer now,
and feel sure that our fifth sitter, who was a most
respectable-looking man, and, for aught I know,
may have come to church in his own gig, must
have been the founder and apostle of that great
heretical sect who cannot bear bad sermons,
and went about the country protesting against
them in this quiet way, and now his silent leaven
has leavened a great mass of followers.
The Colonel was of a different way of thinking.
Eſe had not the eye to discern a true prophet.
He would have served him after his own fashion—
that is, if he had found him in cantonments in
Bundelcund, he would have made him sit out
three sermons and given him three hundred
lashes afterwards.
Yes! the time went very fast, week by week
0.72. Eventful Life. 281
month by month, till July, August, and most of
September were over. On the 23rd of October
‘the House’ met again, so that I had not long to
stay at Ilfracombe. Perhaps you think I had
been making the best of my opportunities by
making love to Arethusa P. Have I not told you
that I was very shy? and what is life, the moral-
ists tell us, but a waste of opportunities. I beg
you to believe that I never said one word about
love to Arethusa for three months. Why should
I? We were always together; she saw no one
else. There was a literate of St. Bees, a very in-
dustrious worker, as you may imagine, by the
hive he had flown from, who used to come down
to the beach, stretching his gaunt limbs, as you
may have seen a fly, and for that matter a bee,
come out and stretch its legs and wings in a warm
October day. He was slovenly in his dress, wore
highlows, and dirty white cotton socks, which
used to hang down over his highlows. A modest,
unassuming man, a great gatherer of sea-anemones
and searcher for pebbles. We never took any
notice of him, nor he of us, except to get out of
one another's way. He is now a bishop. Don’t
tell me that a literate of St. Bees has never been
a bishop. I tell you he is a bishop, and what is
more, richly deserves to be one.
What am I? Listen a little longer, and you
282 Annals of
shall hear as much of my life as I choose to tell
you.
So I had no rivals; no fear. It never oc-
curred to me that Arethusa could care for any
one else. All I knew was, that I saw her every
day, and was happy. It was not till a week be-
fore we were to part, that I began to see that all
this sitting ‘on, rocks,’ all this “musing o'er flood
and field,” must have an end. We used to sit
side by side looking over the Bristol Channel, by
day, or till late at night watching the furnaces
near Swansea, very often without saying a word.
It was not a week before all this was to end. I
say, that a light seemed to break upon me, and I
felt, ‘in ten days you two will have to part.”
The light had been there all the while, as
though the dawn should say, while it is not mid-
night, ‘in four hours I shall be with you.’ Who
cares at midnight how soon the day will dawn,
and what cared I a month off that, or four weeks?
I should lose Arethusa. But a week off, the light
shone and the dawn broke, just as hell blazes
before the deathbed sinner; and the parting took
a terrible reality to me, just as the Day of
Judgment looms at the very door of the un-
repentant on his death-bed.
What did Arethusa think? What a silly
question | What should a well-brought-up young
an Eventful Life. 283
lady think of a man who has never dared to ask
her what she thinks? No doubt she thought a
great deal more than she said, a very easy task,
involving no great waste of thought, for she
had said nothing. Of course it is well under-
stood that a young lady, though she says nothing,
can very well show her dislike for a young man.
If, therefore, she makes no outward and visible
sign of inward aversion,--if she allows him to sit.
by her ever so long without changing her seat,
if she is up before breakfast and meets him quite
by accident, now-a-days if she gives him her
photograph, though this may mean very little, as
when Prince Arthur presented his photograph to
the Council of Military Education for passing
him into Woolwich Academy, nay, even in the
old prosaic fashion of working him slippers.
In these, and many ways, does a girl show that
she has no aversion to a man; only men are
so silly, they will not understand that not being
averse is a very long way from love. They will
jump to conclusions, and many a man has had
his affections blighted because the girl who
worked him a pair of slippers, or knitted him a
comforter, afterwards refused an offer of his
hand,-the hand, be it observed, in nine cases
out of ten, being empty.
So there I was, knowing absolutely nothing of
284 Annals of
Arethusa’s feelings, except that we had been
together three months. Some of you young
ladies may call me a ‘muff,’ and so I was, no
doubt, a muff, a kind of man which has been
defined as ‘a thing that holds a pretty girl’s hand
without squeezing it.” Nay, I swear that I had
Inever even got so far in these three months as to
be in the position of a muff. I had never even
held Arethusa’s hand. I don’t call shaking
hands, ‘holding hands.’ You all know it is quite
another thing.
One day of the week had passed. It was a
bitter day. My Aunt despatched the coachman
and the horses, and wrote home to the servants
to have the beds aired and the Hall ready for us.
Brooks was already in a flurry, partly with
packing, and more at the thought of getting to
what he called ‘civilised parts,’ by which he
understood a house where he could have more of
his own way, lord it over the under-servants at
dinner in the servants’ hall, and meet his equals
after dinner in the housekeeper's room over a glass
of my Aunt’s old port. I have no doubt that
the thought ever uppermost in his mind was that
he should soon again have his ‘meals regular.”
‘Master Edward, Master Edward ' ' he cried
as I came back from bathing, ‘missis is going
back by the steamer this day week, and in ten
an Eventful Life. 285
days we shall be all back at Mandeville Hall.
Won’t that be nice, Master Edward P’
Very nice. I wonder if the lout ever had
an Arethusa to get him his meals regular P
I rather think that I stayed in to read,-that
is to say, to sulk,-all that morning.
At luncheon my Aunt added fresh fuel to
my fire by saying, as though it were the most
natural thing in the world: -
“Next week, in fact, this very day week,
Edward, we will go back by the Diana to Bristol,
on our way to home. I shall be very sorry to
part with Colonel Chichester and his daughter.’
“So shall I, Aunt.”
I was not hypocrite enough to say that I was
glad to go back to Mandeville Hall. I felt
shocked—yes, shocked!—at the cruel way in which
my Aunt spoke of parting from Arethusa, and I
felt outraged at the calm proposal to go back to
our own home.
Then my Aunt went on to say, in the most
provoking way: “One would almost wish never
to have met people at all; it is so painful to part
with them.” But she said it in a passionless,
business-like manner, that showed how little she
felt the force of what she was saying.
After luncheon I walked down to Wilders-
mouth, and there I found Arethusa picking up
286 Annals of
seaweed, as she used to pick it up every day. What
she did with the weeds she gathered no one knew,
but there she always was every day, gathering
seaweeds for an hour or so. Her father was
reading ‘The Times,' which it was then thought
a wonder to get two days old. Dear me ! what
pre-Adamite days those were, if we reflect on
our express mail trains and telegrams |
Arethusa had already been told of our in-
tended departure. My Aunt had met her in the
morning, when I was sulking, or my Aunt's maid
had met her maid, open-mouthed, to tell a bit of
news, and glad to get away from the land of
clouted cream and squab-pie and cider.
“So you are going away next week, Mr.
Tſalfacre P’ said Arethusa, plucking the Lopho-
Spermum Erubescens—I know that is not the name
of a seaweed, but I have not the Nature Printed
Seaweeds by me to refer to—to pieces which she
held in her hand.
‘Yes; we are.’ That was all I said.
‘Well, everything must come to an end, and
So, I suppose, must our visit to Ilfracombe; I am
Sure, though, I don’t know when we shall go
away from this dull place. If we do this year
as we have done before, we shall go and pay some
shooting visits in South Devon, and return to
town about Christmas.”
an Eventful Life. 287
So she called it a dull place; but whether it
was dull from what it had been, or from what it
was to be, I could not tell; but I ventured to say,
‘Wherever I go I shall feel very dull, too.”
Arethusa caught me up in an instant.
‘I did not say that I should be dull. I only
said it was a dull place, a fact which you cannot
deny.’
I was not going to argue the point with her,
so I replied, in a fatuous sort of way:
‘Yes, I daresay it is a dull place; but—’
Here I verily believe I was about to say, ‘But
with you, Miss Chichester, what place could be
dull P’ But at that most critical moment the
Colonel’s head appeared round the rock, and pro-
posed a walk to Watermouth. I do not know that
I ever felt my respect for Arethusa's father so
Sorely tried as it was by this most cruel proposi-
tion. Why could he not have gone on reading
about the Bombardment of Acre at a time when
we were within an ace of going to war with
France; were it only for five minutes longer,
until I had settled matters with Arethusa, and,
at least, found out whether she cared for me.
But there was no help for it. To Watermouth
we all three walked, and from Watermouth we
came back, my heart bleeding—I suppose you
will not allow me to say my mouth was watering
288 Annals of
—all the while with a desire to be alone once
more with Arethusa. When we got home it was
late; there was only just time to dress for dinner,
but it was full moon that night, and we had
agreed that we would all meet about nine o'clock
at Wildersmouth.
an Eventful Life. 289
CEIAPTER, XXII.
PHOW I SAID SOMETHING TO ARETHUSA.
I wonDER if my Aunt Mandeville thought me
dull at dinner; I had scarce a word to say.
“Poor fellow ! you are fagged with reading
all the morning, and then by being dragged
off to Watermouth by that Colonel, whose con-
stitution seems quite iron-bound. To see him
row in a dingy is something marvellous. Eat
your dinner, and don’t talk. You will soon be
better. When you get away from this dull
place you will soon recover your spirits, and feel
the benefit of change of air. In fact, I wonder
how we have been all so well in this damp
nook. It certainly has rained every other day.
It must be a dreadful place for rheumatism in
the winter.’
So my Aunt ran on, I all the while saying
nothing, while Brooks had the insolence to make
a face at me behind my Aunt’s chair when she
spoke of the dampness and rheumatic character
of Ilfracombe.
WOL. I. U
290 Annals of
‘Drink your wine, Master Edward, it will
do you good,” said Brooks, in a husky whisper,
as he saw that I had left my glass of port
untasted. This, my young readers will remem-
ber, was before the days of Gladstone claret.
We had figs at dessert, and I will tell you
how I remember that very trivial event. All
that part of Devonshire is famous for figs. Go
to Clovelly, and buy some off the old Abbey
wall, if you doubt my word; and my Aunt,
as she took one, said something of Devonshire
being the Garden of Eden. I said mechan-
ically ‘yes; ” but it was some time, in the sad
state of heart and brain-softening in which I
then was, before I put the figs and the Garden
of Eden together, and reflected that our first
parents must have had figs if they had fig-leaves;
for I will not pay the fig-trees of Eden the bad
compliment of supposing that they were all as
barren as their descendant in the Gospels.
That was why I remember that we had figs
at dessert that day. North Devon had been to
me the Garden of Eden. My Aunt sewed the
figs fast on to that blissful recollection, and there
the figs have been dangling in my memory ever
since. Whenever I think of figs I think of the
Garden of Eden, and the fall of our first parents,
in whose footsteps we have all so faithfully
an Eventful Life. 291
followed; and when I think of the Garden of
Eden I think of Ilfracombe.
Just about nine my Aunt and I set out,
Brooks standing at the door and hoping we
should not catch the ‘ rheumatiz.” We saw
Arethusa and her father seated on the rocks;
On one particular rock on the other side of the
little stream which there spreads itself out over
the sand and pebbles before it loses itself in
the Sea.
There on the other side of the stream of that
Jordan that divided me from the promised land, I
saw her who made the promised land alone worth
having. I ran from my Aunt's side and thought
I would leap over the stream as I had leapt it
a hundred times before; when, just as I took off in
my leap, my right foot rested on a round stone,
I twisted and sprained my ankle as I leapt, and,
what was worse, on alighting on the other side
I fell on the sprained ankle, and crushed it up
completely. Down I fell just at the foot of
Arethusa’s rock, and there, what with pain, and
rage, and shame, I fainted. When I came to
myself, the old Colonel was sprinkling my fore-
head with sea-water, and my Aunt and Arethusa
stood by me looking as pale as ghosts" in the
moonlight, but then it might only have been
the moonlight.
292 Annals of
‘Gad!” said the Colonel. He never swore
more than ‘Gad,” and then only on great occa-
sions, like Brooks with his ‘Drat it ’ and ‘Odd-
rabbetem l’ ‘We did not expect at our next
meeting to pick you up a fainting man. Toosy
saw you first floundering and falling in the
moonlight, and she was first down from the rock
to help you. Young feet are nimbler than old
bones.’
He did not know how he was healing my
heart by his words. It seemed that the agony
of the sprain was not worth thinking of. So she
had been the first to see me, and the first to fly
to help me from the rock.
‘How are you, Edward P’ said my Aunt.
“Does your ankle pain you very much P’
“A good deal, Aunt. But never mind, I
shall soon be all right again. What is a
sprained ankle, after all?’
‘Let me tell you,” said the Colonel, ‘a sprained
ankle is often much worse than a broken leg.
There was a fellow in my regiment who sprained
his ankle out tiger-hunting, and he was never
able to march afterwards—had to sell out and
leave the service. Saw him last year at Buxton,
hobbling about.’
I couldn’t stand, so Brooks came dowm, ‘fit
to catch his death of cold in the dark,’ with the
an Eventful Life. 293
two footmen, and they made a sort of litter out of
a plank and shawls, and I was stretched on it, and
so carried up to Wildersmouth.
Brooks, when they got me up to bed, and
while he was superintending my undressing, said
he “never see such a limb in his life, all mashed
and jammed like; more like jelly than flesh.’
That was the report with which the wretch
rushed downstairs and sickened my Aunt. When
I myself looked at my leg, I never saw anything
so swollen and misshapen. The Colonel offered to
go for a doctor, and in a little while the head
AEsculapius of Ilfracombe appeared. He was a
nice, pleasant man. Poor fellow, he was dead
when I was last there.
He merely said it was a bad sprain. He was
no alarmist, but just what a doctor should be—
frightening no one, and not frightened himself;
putting a good face on the ugliest case, till its
features got too bad to be concealed from the
patient or the patient's friends. In a few days
he said he hoped I should be in a fair way to
recovery ; at present I must be quiet, and on
no account put my leg to the ground,-a most
unnecessary caution, for I could no more have
walked than flown upon that leg.
After the doctor had made his report, and de-
parted to get some leeches, the Colonel also took
294 Annals of
his leave, and I knew that Arethusa had been in
the house all the while. I heard him call to her
to come, and as I lay with the window open, I
heard her dainty feet trip along the gravel-walk.
The gate slammed after them, and they were gone
into the bright moonlight night.
My Aunt was with me as soon as I was
undressed. She was with me when the doctor
came, and though she went downstairs with him,
she returned almost immediately, and insisted on
sitting up with me the greater part of the night.
It was a great fuss to make about a sprain, but
then I had scarcely ever been ill, and I was all in
all to my Aunt.
Next morning the limb was not quite so big,
but it was very red; and when the doctor came,
he said he was sorry he hadn’t sent more leeches,
but it was too late now, so he deluged the limb
with evaporating lotions with such effect, that in
a day or two the swelling went down, and the
whole limb, nearly up to the knee, grew black, and
blue, and green.
As I lay in bed. I remember doing a sum of
Profit and Loss, and trying to find out whether I
was better off with regard to Arethusa for having
sprained my ankle. The conclusion I came to
was that I was much better off. First, and fore-
most, Arethusa had shown that she cared for me
an Eventful Life. 295
by rushing down the rock to help me. I had in
fact got my question answered without putting it
to her. Next, the accident had thrown my Aunt
and the Chichesters closer together. Every day
the Colonel and Arethusa came to inquire for me.
I knew their footsteps long before they rang the
bell. The Colonel strode along, grinding the
gravel as though he were a bison or a rhinoceros
trampling the ground. Arethusa’s feet pattered
over it like a gazelle; and though last, not least,
the sprain would surely delay our departure. It
was like a reprieve to a condemned criminal: he
not only feels respited for the time, but also that
no one will have the cruelty to hang him after he
has been once reprieved. A week is everything
in love, and a week more with Arethusa seemed
an eternity of enjoyment.
I knew we should not go home so soon, by
the sour face of Brooks, the morning after the
accident. It needed not his words to tell me the
state of the case.
‘This here sad accident, Master Edward, have
had the effect of countermanding our departure,
which it was to have been next Wednesday.
Missis have sent to the steamboat, and ordered
it for the week after next. A sad trial to us
poor servants, Master Edward, to have to stay
here all along of your leg. They have no proper
296 Annals of
beer in these parts, and the cider as they drink
instead is like swallowing a carving-knife —
it do lie so sharp and cold on the pit of the
stomach.”
I got up, you may be sure, as soon as ever
I could. I was not going to waste those precious
ten days in bed. I gave my Aunt no rest. I
must go out. I was pining for the fresh air down
at Wildersmouth. It wasn’t the same air at all at
Wildersmouth House. It lost all its saltness and
savour in blowing up the valley. Could I not
ride on a pony, on a side-saddle P This was a
bright idea. My Aunt was only too glad to
humour me in every way. A pony, as quiet as a
lamb, and a side-saddle were got, and so, with
the Sound leg in the stirrup, and the lame one
hanging over the pummel, I made a triumphal
procession from the house to the cove; and there,
to my great joy, I met Arethusa and her father.
Aunt Mandeville, I need not say, walked by the
pony’s side.
To see Arethusa was something, and to thank
her even publicly for coming to help me was
another something. I hope I thanked her grace-
fully,–my Aunt called it “a very pretty speech.”
Arethusa bowed, and blushed, and muttered
something about its being ‘a pleasure as well
as a duty,’ and her father only thought of her
an Eventful Life. 297
keen eyes. He believed she could ‘see to pick
up a pin in the dark,’ and as for running
down a rock, “she was as fleet and sure-footed
as a chamois.’
So far, so well; but let any one try to make
love off a pony with a lame leg, LI mean with a
lame leg off a pony, of course; and let him try to
do it in the presence of the natural guardians and
protectors of both the lovers, and he will find it
no easy work. Besides, the pony, that innocent,
as quiet as a lamb, was as obstinate as a mule.
He was a silly, unpoetical pony. No Bucephalus
or Pegasus would ever have sprung from him.
He cared not a bit for Wildersmouth and its
surf, throwing sea-weeds, red and green, at your
feet at every wave. What he wanted was grass.
Several times he tried to bolt across the Wilder
into the meadow beyond. If I could only have
persuaded Arethusa to bolt with us, it would have
been well; but who ever heard of a young lady
not only running—that one has heard of—but
actually leaping after her lover. Arethusa neither
ran nor leapt. She called the pony ‘stupid,” and
offered to lead him. Her offer was accepted,
but she only led the brute round and round
the cove, my aunt and her father being in
close attendance, and so the time soon came
that, what with the pony’s fits and starts, I
298 Annals of
had had quite enough of riding on a side-saddle
for that day at least, and I was very glad to get
back to Wildersmouth House, and be carried up
to bed.
Next day was a great improvement, I Only
used the pony to ride down to Wildersmouth,
and then I was lifted off and laid on shawls just
above high-water mark. There I lay all the
afternoon, and Arethusa sat beside me. The
Colonel and my Aunt sat close by, but they
were engaged in playing piquette, a game very
conducive to disputes, and therefore very en-
grossing. While they were hard at some dis-
cussion as to the score,' I was thinking how I
might best score my name on the heart of Are-
thusa, or so get it into her head that she should
never be able to throw it out. I was thinking, I
say, for in this as in all matters through life, my
ingrained shyness has been a great drawback
t;0 Ime.
‘I hope you feel much better, Mr. Halfacre P’
‘Yes, thank you, much better.” Then, after
a pause—taking advantage of the dispute in
the game, which just then waxed warm, “How
good it was of you, Miss Chichester, to show so
much sympathy for one so undeserving of it as
myself.”
‘You forget the Christian precept, to do as
an Eventful Life. 299
you would be done by. I only did for you what
I should expect you to do for me.’
‘For you, and for no one else?’ *
‘That I call a Heathen, and not a Christian
precept. You ought to do it not only for me,
but for the least and poorest Christian in the
world.’
“But suppose I would rather be a Heathen,
and do something for you, than a Christian and
let all the rest of the world share it.’
“I shan’t allow you to suppose any such
wicked thing,” said Arethusa. “Besides, how do
you know that I showed any more sympathy for
you than I should for any one else under like
circumstances P’
‘I inferred it from what your father said;
from the very first words that I heard when I
recovered my senses.’
“Ah ! but one ought not to be too quick in
drawing inferences. That is behaving like a
horse that will start as soon as the carriage-door
is opened, and will not wait for any one to get in.
Inferences sometimes run away with one.’
‘I am sure I wish you were an inference,’ said
I, with an excess of impudence of which none
but very shy people are ever guilty; and then,
seeing that I was putting the case as though she
were going to run away with me, I blushed
300 Annals of
deeply, and said, ‘No ; that is not what I
mean. I meant to say that I wished I were an
inference.’
‘It doesn’t much matter what you mean,’ said
Arethusa. “I should say though that you are
hasty in drawing inferences. As for running
away, it is clear that it is high time that I should
run away from you. You know you can’t follow
me.’
With these words she tripped away as light as
Ariel over the yellow sands, and as elfish and un-
canny. In another minute she was perched on the
top of the very rock whence she had flown to my
rescue, and there she remained for some time
surveying the scene of her victory and my defeat,
and, as it seemed to me, glorying in her dexterity
in evading an awkward question. I remember,
too, that as she stood there the western sun fell
on her, and her rich brown hair shone with a
glory of its own, as she stood transfigured, to my
longing eyes. Then she slowly turned away,
gliding down on the other side of the rock to
reappear at the furthest end of the cove, under
the Capstan Hill, seemingly deep in her favourite
pursuit—Seaweed-gathering.
‘Where's Toosy P What, left you alone to go
and pick up that rubbish P. She was here but a
minute ago.” Thus spoke the Colonel, quite for-
an Eventful Life. 30]
getting that time flies quite as fast in disputes
at cards as in lovers’ quarrels.
‘Come back, Toosyl come back l’ cried out
her father. Amd she came back; but she never
came close to me, and there I lay, feeling that I
had lost another chance; nay, that I had lost the
assurance that her father had given me. Had she
not resolved all her sympathy for me into mere
Christian love—diluted and watered her feeling
for me by making me share it with all the beggars
in the universe. Out upon such sympathy | And
then, how cruelly she turned on me when I put
my foot into it ! Lame as I was that was a most
unkind cut to compare me to a restless runaway
horse. -
Added to all this, I had evidently scared and
frightened her. She did not choose to sit by a
man so shy and awkward as to be capable of
putting her to the blush by such bold suggestions.
Nor was this all. I had to confess that she had
maintained her self-possession throughout, con-
tinuing calm, while I was warm, and fairly
defeating me on ground which I myself had chosen
for the attack.
No | I was as little pleased with myself as
she was plainly displeased with me. I turned
over and groaned. My Aunt thought it came
from my ankle, but it came straight from the
302 Annals of
heart. ‘Did I feel cold P’ Yes, I did. I had
lain there too long. I should like to go home.
So they laid what was left of my proud hopes on
the pony, and I went home in no very amiable
frame of mind.
an Eventful Life. 303
CEIAPTER, XXIII.
IHOW I PARTED FROM ARETHUSA.
ALL that night I lay awake resolving, and the
sum of my resolution was that I would have it
‘out' with Arethusa the very next time we were
alone.
My Aunt saw that I was wan and haggard
next morning. It was more air that I needed. I
must go down to Wildersmouth as soon as might
be after breakfast. I could have hobbled down
with a stick; but for another day I was con-
demned to the pony and the side-saddle, punished
with my own invention, ‘hoised with my own
petard.’ The bed on the shore was made, and
strewn with wraps as before. My Aunt was
writing letters, and I devoutly hoped that the
Colonel was in his counting-house counting out his
money, or even usurping the Queen’s rights, and
eating bread and honey—doing anything, in
short, except escorting his daughter down to the
beach.
Guess my surprise when he came, and came
304 Annals of
alone. I gazed to see Arethusa sailing after him
like the gallant ship, from which she took her
name, in chase of the Belle Poule. In vain. No
‘undraped eye,’ as the modest Bermudians say
for naked eye; no binocular, night, or fog-glass
could discern her. She was nowhere to be seen
—neither on the rock of last night, nor up on
the Capstan Hill. Where was she P. She
would soon come. She, too, was writing letters—
perhaps writing to me. Vain suppositions and
questions, soon scattered to the winds by the
Colonel, who came up, and asked, in the politest
manner possible, after my Aunt's health, and how
my ankle felt. They were both very well—that
is, my Aunt was very well, and my ankle better.
Then, in turn, I inquired how Miss Chichester
was, and whether she had stayed out too long last
night in the moonlight.
‘You’re quite right to say in the moonlight,’
said the Colonel. “Nothing is so bad as the
moonlight. Talk of the Sun, the sum is nothing
to the moon. Meat and milk turn sooner in
moonlight than sunlight; and as for sleeping in
the moonlight, it’s the worst thing you can do.
There was a fellow of ours who fell asleep out
in the moonlight in India after dinner. He was
stone-blind ever afterwards, and quite dazed in
wits. But we didn’t sleep in it last night.”
an Eventful Life. 305
So he ran on thinking of the moonlight,
while I was thinking of Arethusa.
After his lecture on the moon came to an
end, I said: -
‘I am glad Miss Chichester took no harm
from the night air. Will she come down to th
beach this morning P’ -
‘What, don’t you know P’ said the Colonel.
‘Toosy went off this morning with her maid.
I forget. It was all settled the day after you
sprained your ankle. She’s gone to spend a
month with her Aunt Buller in South Devon.
You won’t see her again in Ilfracombe. Didn’t
she say good-bye? Just like her. She hates
leave-taking.’
I am sure that when I heard this I must
have looked like an idiot. Here was another
effect of my shyness. I had scared her away,
and so lost the very opportunity of saying
Something tender, and getting a response.
Of course she would have bid me good-bye
if I hadn’t been fool enough to frighten her
away. As for her Aunt Buller, I wished her
Seven thousand fathoms down in the sea, if it
is so deep, and deeper, ten times deeper, if it is
deeper still.
I don’t know what I said to the Colonel or
what he said to me. I know when my Aunt
WOL. I. . X -
306 Annals of
joined us a few minutes afterwards, that he said
he feared ‘ his young friend had been working
too hard.’ I did not look so well as I did a
week or two before. My Aunt quite agreed
with the Colonel, and then they both went on
to agree that we had all had enough of Ilfra-
combe. “Even Toosy,” said the Colonel, “ hadn’t
been well of late. A visit to her Aunt Buller
would do her good.’
‘No doubt of it,” said my Aunt. ‘There is
nothing so good for young people as change
when they feel dull and hipped. Edward will
feel all the better for a week or so at Mandeville
Hall before he goes back to Oxford.”
My Aunt never would understand the ‘ups'
and ‘downs' of undergraduate life. She always
talked of my going ‘down' from Oxford as
‘coming home,” and of my going ‘up as ‘going
back.” -
* Just the same with Toosy,” said the Colonel.
“She’ll be all the better with her Aunt Buller.
The 10th Lancers are quartered at Exeter, and
as Aunt Buller is very hospitable, she will soon
have amusement enough.”
“Do the 10th dance yet?’ asked my Aunt.
‘It used to be a joke against the regiment, when
I was a girl, that they were too fine to dance.”
‘Dance l’ said the Colonel. ‘Gad I should
an Eventful Life. 307
think they did. They have always danced since
I knew them. I know they dance now, for
“Toosy” danced with several of them at the
Hampshire Ball last winter. They were quar-
tered at Winchester then, and only had
the route given them for Exeter in the spring.
There are some fine young fellows among them;
just what Light Cavalry ought to be.’
‘I daresay,” said my Aunt. ‘They always
were a dashing, Smart regiment. How nice it
will be for Miss Chichester | * -
Thus did the estimable pair, in the innocence
of their hearts, go on by the hour, and torture
me, Edward Halfacre, with the pangs of jealousy.
As for Aunt Buller, drowning was too good for
her. I could now have impaled her, or burnt
her to death, or minced her, or brushed her to
death, as they do in China; or thrown her, as
Ella of Northumbria did Ragnar Lodbrog, into a
pit full of Snakes; or stripped her, and buttered
her, and left her to be stung to death by gnats on
an island off the Musquito shore. It was bad
enough to take Arethusa from me, but worse to
expose her to the fascinations of a whole cavalry
regiment. How cruel, too, to let me know, in
that accidental way, that she could find old
partners, and nice ones too, ‘fine young fellows
in the 10th !
308 Annals of
There was no denying it. I groaned aloud,
much in the same way as one of the major pro-
phets might have done; a good loud groan, no
sob or sigh; no woman's work, but a most mas-
culine groan. &
‘Gad!” said the Colonel, ‘I scarcely ever
heard such a groan as that, except when one
picks up the wounded after an affair.’
He never used the word battle.
‘Are you ill, Edward P’ asked my Aunt.
‘No, Aunt ; only my ankle.’
What a convenient thing that sprain was
Here I held up my crushed ankle before their
eyes, and they could not see through it into my
heart. -
Well, there was no denying it. Arethusa
was gone, and gone without a word. I was ready
enough to go now, and only too sorry that we had
to stay another week. I discarded the pony,
tried to stand on the lame foot, and found it
much stronger than I could have thought. Then
I began to hobble about on crutches, and, let me
tell you, no cripple of the dark ages ever limped
so devoutly to St. James of Compostella, to St.
Thomas of Canterbury, or to our Lady Walsing-
ham or Loretto, as I did to every place where I
had sat with Arethusa ; but as each pilgrim has
his own pet shrine at which he offers up his
an Eventful Life. 309
most particular prayers, and trusts to get abso-
lution for his bosom sins, so the centre of my
devotions, round which all lesser acts of wor-
ship revolved, was that rock at Wildersmouth
under which we crouched when the umbrella
became our master of the ceremonies; on which
Arethusa sat and flew to my help as I fell;
and on which I last saw her in the sunlight
on the afternoon when I scared her away from
my side. In the middle ages I should have
retired from the world, scooped me out a cell
from the rock, or builded me a hermitage of
boulders from the beach, and so, subsisting on
seaweed and my own nails, I should have spent
a life of penitence in the odour of Sanctity;
in the nineteenth century, this hard-hearted ge-
neration of reality, I had to go back to Oxford
and take my degree. º &
And now we are leaving Ilfracombe. The
same steamer, the sea-slug Diana, the same cap-
tain, the same mate, steward, and cabin-boy, the
same gig, the same rude seamen, the same
‘lubbers,’ and ‘sea-cooks,’ applied to Brooks and
hurting his feelings. The same sea-sickness on
the part of the servants, and the same good be-
haviour on that of me and my Aunt. There was
even another leg of boiled mutton, exactly like
the one we had going down, the same raw cook-
310 Annals of
ing, the same red gravy. Everything was the
same except that there was no Colonel Chichester,
and no Arethusa, and that the weather was per-
fectly fine.
My Aunt was in unusual spirits. Colonel
Chichester, with his wonted politeness, had gone
off with us in the gig to see the last of us. He
even repeated what he had said as we landed,
‘ he hoped he should see me again somewhere.”
To which my Aunt, as I thought most properly
and gracefully said, she ‘hoped she should soon
see him and Miss Chichester at Mandeville
Hall.”
‘We are birds of passage,’ he said, ‘without
any fixed home of our own, except in London.
Here to-day and gone to-morrow,
“To-day red
To-morrow dead,”
as the German proverb says. I did think of
going to Leamington this winter to hunt; if so,
we shall be sure to pay our respects at Mande-
ville Hall.”
That was all the comfort I got. A very
general invitation from a man who, by his own
showing, was as hard to find as a swallow, a
Snipe, or a woodcock. What was the good of
his house in London to me? Did I ever go to
an Eventful Life. 3.11
London P I was as likely to go with the snipes
and woodcocks in the spring to those Northern
regions, the edge of Lapland, or the wilds of
Nova Zembla and Spitzbergen where, as natural-
ists tell us, the mass of that dainty class of birds
are in the habit of laying their eggs. And see
what he said, when my Aunt Mandeville de-
parted from her invariable rule and went out of
her way to ask him to Mandeville Hall. He
might come if he came to Leamington to hunt.
Suppose he did not come to hunt. Suppose he
fell into a ditch out shooting, and sprained his
ankle as I had done, and couldn’t come to Leam-
ington to hunt. What was the good of a special
invitation to such a selfish old man of the world
as Arethusa’s father ?
I was so out of patience with him that I did
not even beg him to remember me to Miss Chi-
chester. So we climbed the steamer's side, and
left Colonel Chichester waving his handkerchief
in the air, and bobbing up and down on the
waves. ‘A hard-hearted old wretch,' I re-
member calling him to myself. “Quite fit to run
in double harness with Arethusa's Aunt Buller—
O Aunt Buller O Arethusa O ye 10th !
ye wasp-waisted regiment of dandies woe be-
tide you, if you, or any of you, take my Arethusa
from me !
312 Annals of
And here observe the unreasonable impetu-
osity of youth. “My Arethusa!' I did not scruple
to call ‘mine' a young lady who, perhaps,
looked on me as a boy, though she was two years
younger than myself, and who, so far from re-
turning my affection, had evaded home questions
and suggestions, and then ran off and left me to
myself. -
No! I would have no “boiled mutton,’ charm
the captain and steward ever so wisely. Let
1 Hem eat it all. I wasn’t at all hungry. I
ould have one of Aunt Mandeville's sandwiches.
No suffering father of an interesting daughter
would, on this return voyage, have had, I will
not say a glass of brandy-and-water, but a cup of
cold water from my hand. Had I not brandy-
and-watered a father in extremis going down,
and probably saved his life P All for what? To
hear him say, after an intimacy of more than
three months, that he hoped he should ‘see his
young friend somewhere.”
Was not such behaviour enough to freeze the
genial flow of charity in my soul, to say nothing
of the fact that, though there were some sea-sick
parents, there were none that had daughters like
Arethusa P. But I declare, had Venus herself
been on board, or had she risen from the sea-
spray in all her beauty, and hailed the Diana,
an Eventful Life. 3.13
and come on board, I would have been faithful to
my Arethusa, with whom, ye young men and
maidens, I will confess that I was now despe-
rately in love. -
We reached Bristol safely, and went to another
hotel, where the inhabitants treated us just as we
had been treated before. I didn’t know whether
our sins were as scarlet next morning, but I
know our faces were. The travelling-carriages
were unhoused and post-horsed. We rumbled off
in our old family procession. Jogged and jolted
out of sorts and temper, we got safe, in three
days, back to Mandeville Hall, and, no doubt, all
enjoyed what, in a small way, is the greatest
blessing in life, the comfort of sleeping in one's
own bed.
I limped about for a few days in a very dis-
consolate way. I was too lame to go out shoot-
ing, and if I had not been lame I should not have
cared to shoot.
“Never knew such a thing as this afore, Mr.
Brooks,’ said the head-keeper. ‘Here's Master
Edward says he doesn’t care how many coveys
there are, and I been a-nursing them better nor
my own infants all summer.’
“Something a come over him besides that
sprain,’ replied Brooks. “My opinion it’s all along
of that sour cider, which it is enough to cut you
3.14 Annals of
in two, if you’re forced to drink it, which we poor
servants was obliged to do in that vinegar cruet,
Ilfracombe. Talk of rocks and scenery, it’s all
very well if you have the comfort of your meals
“regular;” but scenery, without your meals at
proper times, 'specially when it’s washed down
with sour cider, lies very heavy on the pit of the
stomach. Master Edward did drink some of it,
contrary to my advice, and that’s what’s having
an effect on him now. He’s pining away like.
But once he gets his meals regular he’ll be all
right.”
That was the diagnosis of Brooks on my case.
As for me, I felt that, if I could only have
one little line from Arethusa telling me that she
was not indifferent to me, I should be quite
cured, and would shoot again against the best of
them.
My Aunt put it all down to the sprain and to
reading. I really believe she thought I could
have taken my degree without once opening a
book, though no one would have been more dis-
appointed than she had I been plucked.
an Eventful Life. 315
CHAPTER XXIV.
HOW I TOOK MY DEGREE.
I WENT up to Oxford, where I had been a “man’
any time these three years. I was nearly twenty-
one—twenty-one that Christmas, and so I was to
all intents and purposes a man. I went up to
Oxford, I say, and all my friends in ‘the house’
at once said, “Halfacre has been reading too hard
for his “greats.” He looks very seedy.’
How little they knew of the human heart, and
its power to turn any one into paste, to knead up
the flour of our existence into dough, and then
leave it. Here I was, an unleavened cake that
wouldn’t rise, because Arethusa had left me with-
out saying good-bye. My friends in ‘the House’
did all they could for me, that is, they did every-
thing to hinder me in taking my degree. They
took me down the river in skiffs; they made me
go and see pigeon-matches shot at the weirs; they
gave me breakfast-parties and Supper-parties. It
was all no good. Nothing could dispel my mel-
316 Annals of
ancholy. It was the Sorrows of Werther over
again, and a repetition of his Charlotte and her
bread and butter.
Day by day went on, and at last the fatal day
for going into the schools came. The clerk of the
schools—I remember his name was Purdue; what
an enfant perdu, I felt l—came to summon me
before the examiners. One or two had been
frightened by their severity to take their names
off the list, and so my name came on a day before
its time.
* Sorry to say, sir,’ said the ever bland Purdue,
who had acted as Jack Ketch to so many under-
graduates, ‘sorry to say, sir, that the examiners
would be glad of your presence in the schools
to-day. To be sure they have plucked a good
'many gentlemen this time; what they call “raising
the standard.” Of course you are safe to pass.’
Then I put on my white tie and bands, and
in full academicals presented myself before the
examiners.
I have already told you that I was well up in
divinity. I was not like the man who declined to
say anything about Saul, because that was ‘a way
the examiners had of getting into Kings.’ I need
not say he was plucked; but he had reasons for
stopping the entry into Kings at once, for of all
the boggy places in a divinity examination com-
an Eventful Life. 317
mend me to Kings. Suppose an examiner chose
to examine you about the battles in Gob, and as to
Ishbibenob and his fingers and toes; suppose he
was curious about Athaliah, and you thought
Athaliah was a man ; suppose he plucked you
because you could not tell him anything about
Mahalal Shashbash P All this, and far worse, he
might ask you out of Kings. Then he might
teaze you on the differences between Kings and
Chronicles. For instance, he might ask you why
the ‘almug' trees of one are the ‘ algum” trees of
the other. It was no answer to say that it didn't
matter, that it was all the same; such an answer
to a don on the other side of the table was ‘im-
pudence,’ and punished accordingly. Then there
was Jehu, that very Christian character; of him
of
Balliol knew in my time. All he knew of Jehu
you were expected to know more than
was that he was ‘a furious driver,’ and that
was not such a bad answer, because the only
thing that of Balliol could do was to drive
a tandem. *
But, as I have said, for me divinity had no
terrors. I remember they put me on in the Gospel
of St. John and the visit of Nicodemus. When
I came to the part, ‘the wind bloweth where it
listeth,' I thought, ‘Oh, for a wind that would
waft me to Arethusa l’ but I boggled through the
3.18 Annals of
passage, and was complimented by the examiner
for my divinity. Then they put me on in Virgil,
and in that passage of the Georgics—
‘Juvat ire jugis,” etcetera.
The passage I mean about the Castalian spring.
After I had construed it, the examiner asked me
if I remembered the names of any other famous
springs. There were many, I said, the fountain
of Bandusia, mentioned by Horace, Aganippe, and
the fountain of Arethusa. “What did I know of
the fountain of Arethusa 2–who was Arethusa P’
Now you don't suppose, though those were only
the days of Lemprière, that I had not read up
every notice of Arethusa in that famous dictionary.
At the present time, with the help of Smith’s
famous dictionaries, I should have done better;
but what I wish to point out is, that I did then as
well as I could. I told the examiners everything
about Arethusa; and after I had exhausted Lem-
prière, and quoted passage after passage in which
she is named out of the classics, I gave them
Shelley's poem at full length.
The examiners were in ecstasy. I fancy they
had never examined a man in love before, who
had happened in the examination to be able to
bring in the object of his affections. So far from
being plucked, the examiners thanked me when
an Eventful Life. 319
my examination was over, and formally asked me
to go in for honours. A man who had shown
such an acquaintance with the history and adven-
tures of a rather obscure nymph must have great
knowledge of the classics as a whole. This polite
invitation I was wise enough to decline, remem-
bering the ‘alas! alas !’ and ‘ah me! ah me!’ of
... my tutor. But there I was, with my certificate of
passing, my testamur in my hand, and this, too,
was all owing to Arethusa.
I went down in triumph, and my Aunt was
delighted at my success and the compliment paid
me by the examiners; but I did not tell her that
it was all owing to Arethusa. She would have
laughed at me if I had mentioned the matter. As
for me, I only longed to meet Arethusa once more,
for I felt myself twice as much a man as I had
been before. Had I not now a bachelor’s gown on
my back?
All that winter I spent at home at Mandeville
Hall. I had now left Oxford, and was no more
an undergraduate and a boy. I am afraid I gave
myself great airs. I would not allow Brooks to say
* Master Edward.’ ‘No, no, Brooks l I am now
Mister Edward, if you please.”
“But it sounds more familiar like. Many a
time and oft have I been out birdsnesting with you,
and how many times have I been longstop to you
320 Annals of
at cricket, Master Edward—I beg your pardon—
Mister Edward P’ - *
‘Familiar or not, I am no longer Master but
Mister Edward, Brooks.” For I thought how
dreadful it would be if Arethusa came to the Hall
and heard the servants still calling me “Master
Edward,” like a child.
But Arethusa never came. All that winter I .
waited, and she never came. The worst was that
no one knew their address. A letter written by
my Aunt just before Christmas never reached
Colonel Chichester, at least, that most polite of
men did not answer it—a piece of rudeness he
would never commit. Where were they? Still at
Aunt Buller's? Still dancing with the 10th 2 The
10th were as odious to me as the ever-victorious
Tenth Roman Legion, so long quartered in Britain,
were to the naked Picts, on whose bodies their
javelins and short swords made much havoc.
What did I do all that winter? I hunted and
shot, and shot and hunted; I never went away
from home lest some day cards should be left,
‘Colonel Chichester, Miss Chichester, 6, Curry
Crescent, Leamington.” On Sundays I would
have taught like my Aunt Mandeville in the
School, only, in spite of my degree, I dreaded the
bogginess of Scripture, and thought how easy it
might be for such a Sunday school teacher as I
an Eventful Life. 321
should be to be “overthrown in stony places.’
But though I refrained from such a rash step, I
was held up as a model young man; ‘so quiet,’
‘so domestic,” “making himself everything to dear
Mrs. Mandeville.” They little knew that the reason
why I never left Mandeville Hall for a day, was
fear lest I should miss Arethusa.
But Arethusa never came. Spring came,
and no Arethusa; I grew restless, and could not
sleep.
* I did think,’ said Mr. Brooks, “as how it was
along of his meals. Loss of meals can't never be
made up in this life, whatever they may be in the
next, which it isn't at all likely. But seeing he's
now had his meals regular at Oxford and here for
a better nor three months, I can’t make out what
it is.” e
My Aunt still thought it was all that reading.
“Those examiners,” she said, ‘ do set such hard
questions to young men; I wonder how their
brains ever stand it. I am sure I wish there were
no examinations.”
Dear Aunt Mandeville, what would she have
said had she lived in these days of competitive
examinations, when the time is coming when every
man under fifty will be examined every day before
he goes out, to see if he is fit for his place? In
those days I can safely say that our brains were
WOL. I. Y
322 Annals of
not overworked with reading. To amuse me,
my Aunt was unusually hospitable. My coming
of age at Christmas was celebrated in true old
English style. The Hall was full of guests—
which it had not been for many a day. All the
spare rooms were occupied, and we even put a
married couple into Queen Elizabeth's room,
where no one had slept since Blogg of bristle and
tallow judgment had seen ‘ the White Lady.”
The reason why we did this was plain; we had
no wish to have another scene, and it is well known
that no ghost ever appears—no ghost of decent
character, I mean—to a man and his wife. Even
ghosts have manners, and no ghost would ever
show himself, would ever walk suddenly into the
presence of two persons, especially of different
sexes. We had no apparition, therefore, and every
one but myself had a very merry time of it. I
alone, though I seemed to be very happy, was as
dull as ditchwater, and went through all the
festivities in a mechanical manner. Some persons
thought it pride; some, bad manners; some, weak
digestion: others, Puseyism just beginning to show
the tip of its nose; but no one put it down to its
true cause—want of Arethusa.
I grew so pale and wan that old Mindererus
put on his glasses and said, after a long look at
IY162 :
an Eventful Life. 323
“Bless the boy, I can’t tell what’s the matter
with him; he looks so woebegone.’
So things went on till Easter, which fell early
that year; and then, when Lent was over, my Aunt
Mandeville had more than one serious conversation
all alone with the doctor. What they talked of
nobody knew; but I had no doubt it related to me,
for after his last and longest visit, my Aunt said
very gently after dinner, ‘ I am thinking of going
to town, Edward.”
‘Oh, indeed, Aunt; how soon will you be
back P’
‘I do not mean for a short visit; I mean for
the season. It is a long time since I have been in
town, and I feel as though I should like to see it
again.”
To any one who really knew my Aunt Man-
deville, this was a most astounding proposal.
Never was a woman less town and more country-
made. She hated London, and loved the country,
and yet she quietly said she was going to town for
the season. I should have been less surprised if
she had announced her intention of becoming a
Bible-woman in Madagascar, or of visiting my
parents, who were so deeply mortgaged to the
West Indies. I even tried to remonstrate with
her, but it was no good. She must and would go.
Quite apart from herself, she was sure it would do
324 Annals of
me good. I had not looked well for months, and
a little gaiety in town would be good for me; be-
sides, I ought to make new friends. Why was I
to be shut up with her all my life? it was moping
work living with an old woman. In short, what-
ever I said, she had some good answer.
The result was that at the end of Easter week,
Brooks, groaning both in body and spirit, was
sent off to London to look for a house, and in two
days he wrote word to my Aunt that he had taken
her what he called ‘ a mansion' in Brook Street.
* A very nice street it used to be when I was
young,” said my Aunt. ‘Close to the Park, and
very airy.’
“When will you go, Aunt”
‘As soon as we can get ready, the end of this
week. We have lost some of the season already.”
That was Tuesday, and on Thursday we set off
to post up from Mandeville Hall, and on Saturday
evening we reached Brook Street, just in time to
have some tea and go to bed.
All this time I was like a machine. It never
occurred to me that I might meet Arethusa in
town. She had almost become as mythic as her
classical namesake. Who could find her ? She
might be running underground in any part of
England, disappearing wilfully, and reappearing
as capriciously in some other part. Were she in
an Eventful Life. 325
town, ten to one she would be gone next day.
No, it was not worth taking the trouble to look for
such an Arethusa of the wisp. She might show
herself if she pleased—I would take no pains to
find her. And yet while all this was passing
through my head, I would willingly have given
ten years of my life to have seen her for one in-
stant.
Next morning we got up, had breakfast, and
went to Boanerges Chapel, not a stone's throw off.
The very first person I saw, not five pews off, was
Arethusa, demurely seated by her father's side.
Do you think it would have been idolatry had
I there and then gone over to the Mandeville
faith, and fallen down and worshipped my Aunt
on the spot, for bringing me to town against my
will?
326 Annals of
CHAPTER XXV.
HOW I WENT TO EVENING CHURCH, AND GOT UP NEXT
MORNING WITH THE SWEEPS.
As soon as the sermon was over, how I wished
there had been none at all!—and as we were going
out of the chapel, I whispered to my Aunt:
* There are the Chichesters.”
‘Where, Edward?”
* Just before us.” -
The Colonel was never long in getting out of
church, and besides, on this occasion, he had five
pews start of us. I don’t know whether Are-
thusa’s eyes had been as sharp as mine; perhaps
not, for we were behind, and she was not like a
fly with eyes in her head. Her father had cer-
tainly not seen us. As we passed them,--to do
which I had to hurry my Aunt a little, I turned,
and then the Colonel saw me.
* Glad to see you in London, Mrs. Mandeville;
This is an unexpected pleasure.” -
My Aunt particularly disliked greetings in
church. ‘Churches were made for prayers and
an Eventful Life. 327
sermons,’ she said: ‘not for bowing and hand-
shaking.” She, therefore, answered the Colonel’s
salutation with a very slight and very dignified
bow, and we passed on. She was not very fond of
talking to people on Sundays even out of church;
but at the door the Chichesters overtook us in their
turn, and then Auntie was fairly at bay, and had
to open her mouth.
‘I am glad to see you, Colonel Chichester, and
Miss Chichester too.”
Meantime I held out my hand to Arethusa,
and Arethusa shook it. -
*— ‘Who would have thought of seeing you in
town?” said the Colonel; ‘where are you staying?”
* In Brook Street, No. —,” said my Aunt; ‘ and
where are you?” -
‘Our house is not far off,' said the Colonel,
* No. — South Street.
‘Now that we know where we live,’ said my
Aunt, ‘ I hope we shall see something of one
another;’ and then having, as she thought, quite
broken her Sunday rule of never speaking to any
one going to or returning from church, she bade
the Chichesters good-bye, and we went home.
What had Arethusa said? Only one little
sentence, but that was enough to make me very
happy; it was this :
‘I am so glad to see you.’ ‘You,” without
328 Annals of
touching on that odious ‘Mr. Halfacre, which
would have come dragging along at the end of
such a sweet sentence like a coach and six,
or the German Passive; two of the most cum-
brous inventions that the mind of man has ever
conceived. -
I went home, therefore, in better spirits than
I had been for months; but as a morbid mind
must have something to fret about, I must say I
did not quite like my Aunt's Sunday stiffness to
the Chichesters; and as for her expressed wish to
see something of them, it looked as though she had
stolen a leaf out of Colonel Chichester’s book, and -
betaken herself to indefinite invitations.
However, I was much happier; ate my luncheon
“regular” in a way to please even Brooks, and
altogether was in such good humour that I went
to evening service with my Aunt, thereby losing
my dinner. You must recollect, all ye miserable
sinners who are wicked enough to require to go
to church twice and thrice a-Sunday, and yet can
manage to get back just in time for a dinner of
three courses at a quarter past eight, that in those
days we dined at seven, or at latest half past, and
therefore evening service was attended with the
consequence I have mentioned.
And here let me ask you, --Do you not hate an
early dinner in London on Sunday ? Is it not
an Eventful Life. 329
notorious that going to church makes one more
hungry than a ten-mile walk? and what I ask, if
you have an early dinner, and go to evening service,
is one to do with one’s appetite about eight o'clock.
You have ‘tea,' you say. “Tea!' I say, with a
note of admiration. ‘Tea with bread and butter,’
you answer again. I again repeat, ‘Tea with
bread and butter!’ with another note of admiration.
You get angry at my greediness, and say, ‘Well!
tea with bread and butter, and cold beef, and
chicken, and ham and eggs, and a lobster and
salad, and fried plum-pudding: will that satisfy
you?” To all which I answer, ‘Yes;’ if you are
as good as your word, and keep faith in having all
those things ready for me, I will come next Sunday
evening and take ‘tea’ with you, and I will come
all the more readily if you will substitute a bottle
of Bordeaux for the teapot, and let us have two
dozen oysters before we begin.
You will say, ‘Why, that is a regular dinner.”
And so I assure you I mean it to be if I go with
you first to Boanerges Chapel next Sunday even-
ing, and then home to tea with you. Two or three
times in my life I have been near dying of early
dinner and tea. Once I went to a house in the
country, and missed the early dinner altogether,
the train being late, and had nothing but ‘ the tea
from nine A.M. one day to the same hour next day,
330 Annals of
the “tea being not at all “strong’ either in itself
or its accessories. Oh, the agonies of hunger that
I suffered after that tea, lying awake all night and
wishing for the morn! resolving never to go to
that house without a loaf of bread and a tongue in
my portmanteau.
But the atrocities of those early dinners and
weak teas have made me forget my story. Yes,
I was very good; that Sunday evening I went
again to Boanerges Chapel with Auntie. You will
say it was all because I thought Arethusa would
be there. I knew better; she was not likely to
come without her father, and Colonel Chichester
was not the man to go without his dinner. He
was very well bred and very selfish. He was
kind enough when an act of kindness stood before
him, staring him in the face; but as to going out of
his way to do a good deed, it was a thing he never
thought of. He would have called it knight-
errantry to have gone out of his usual course for
anything.
I believe, though, that I did manage to get Auntie
into the very pew in which Arethusa had sat in the
morning. It was a far nicer pew to sit in than the
one which belonged to our ‘mansion.”
After that ‘ function, as it would now be called,
was over, we went home, and had what my Aunt
boldly called ‘supper.” Did not Brooks preside over
an Eventful Life. 331
it? and with all his faults, which from long-suffer-
ing we had got almost to regard as virtues—there was
one thing which you were sure to get when Brooks
watched over the board, and that was, more than
enough. There was no starvation in any of his
arrangements. He thought the honour of the
family was concerned in the abundance of its food,
quite as much as in the morals of its members; and
if he had been a great reformer, he would have
laid down a code of morality in which what he
called ‘skimping’ and ‘flint-skinning’—stint and
meanness, in short—would be proscribed as the
eighth and greatest deadly sin.
Once when we went into Cheshire, — that
most hospitable and cheese-toasting of counties—
a county, I should say, in which as a general rule,
‘cheese-paring ' is unknown—it was our misfor-
tune to stay with a miser. You all know the sort
of man,—or if you don’t know him, be warned by
me, and decline his acquaintance. Though rolling
in wealth, he never had anything but bread-and-
butter for breakfast. There was a hen, and when
it laid an egg, he and his wife drew lots for it for
breakfast. It was a little better when we were
there, he had dried haddocks. You don’t like
dried haddocks. They are dry enough when
they first come out of the sea, and they
don’t get any softer or better tasted by drying.
332 Annals of
Well! there we agree. I don’t like them either;
but we had them every morning with this miser;
the worst thing of all being that he thought all
the time that he was going to great expense for
our sakes. He was the man who, having ordered
one rabbit for dinner, when his agent was coming
for the day, countermanded it when he heard that
the agent, like a wise man, would not stay to dinner.
And this on an estate where the rabbits bred by
thousands, as the tenants said, when they walked
through their fields just before harvest with tears
in their eyes.
Brooks was grand on that occasion. He shook
the dust off his feet as he left Hungry Hall,” as
he called it.
* A nasty, beggarly lot All the coachmen as
come here during our visit never had one drop of
beer, or a crust and a bit of cheese. Twenty
miles here, some on ’em; and twenty back. As
for meals “regular,” the bell rang every day like
clockwork; but when we was all gathered in the
servants’ hall, there was nothing but cold boiled
beef, and a scrap or two of cold mutton. Small
beer, worser nor that Devonshire cider; and cheese
so poor, a mouse wouldn't have ran away with it,
no! not if she had been starving. I tell you,
Master Edward, we drinks more beer at Mande-
ville Hall in one week—aye, and ten times as
an Eventful Life. 333
strong, every drop on it——as they do at “ Hungry
Hall” in the whole year.”
But, I am bound to say that in every other
house at which we stayed, in a lengthened Cheshire
progress, the food, and drink, and entertainment
generally, were such as to call down the enthusiastic
praise of such a fastidious critic of creature comforts
as Mr. Brooks.
This chapter is all on eating and drinking.
See the bad effects of supper on Sunday on the
juvenile mind. It has quite diverted me from my
story.
Next day I was up with the sweeps. In the
country it would have been with the lark; but the
sweeps, so far as I know, are the only early birds in
London, and I do not know whether any one will
agree with me in thinking John Milton would
have written
‘Sweet is the breath of morn, his rising sweet
With charm of earliest sweeps,’
had he lived in this century. But is there not a
charm about “earliest sweeps;’ especially when
they mistake their orders and knock up the
wrong house? Yes! to me there was on that
April morning. That was before the days of
Ramoneurs and sweeping-machines. The climb-
ing boys were still climbing, and still boys.
334 Annals of
Children of tender years were still forced to climb
chimneys. It was, in fact, just before their eman-
cipation. Those grimy, stunted fellows, whom old
ladies now pity and relieve, are not boys, but
grown men, invaluable to master sweeps for their
undersize, but free to go up a ‘chimbley’ or not
as they choose. There is no law in England to
prevent a man of forty from going up a chimney
if he chooses. And these men choose it. It is
their profession. Praise them, therefore, but you
need not pity them. If there is anything they
detest it is a Ramoneur company which has taken
the soot out of their bags.
But I say it was sweet to me on that April
morning, in the twilight, to hear a most melodious
sweep calling out, ‘Sweeep,” “sweeeep,” “sweeeep;’
to see the little fellow first ring up our cook, and then
the cook opposite, who, by the sloth with which
she or the kitchenmaid appeared, did not seem to
think the sweep-song so beautiful. Brooks, too,
I daresay, as he turned on his lowly couch and
heard the ringing, and the constant cry of
‘Sweeep,” “sweeep,” “sweeeep,” exclaimed, ‘Drat
them sweeps od rabbit them l’ By which, per-
haps, he meant to say that he wished anything he
detested were providentially turned into a Welsh
rabbit. I do not spell it “rarebit, but phoneti-
cally—a dainty which he particularly affected.
an Eventful Life. 335
In due time my little songster, my blackbird,
my sweep, appeared at the top of a chimney-pot.
It was a very tall red one, I remember. How he
got up so high, and out of such a narrow tube,
was wonderful. He was but a little fellow, not
ten years old, I should say, and there, with brush
and shovel out of the top, he repeated his song
several times; singing as the wild birds sing at
dawn in May, to themselves alone, and merely for
the sake of the sweet melody. But not for him-
self alone, for me who was dressing myself in a
wild kind of way, as though Arethusa were wait-
ing for me in Grosvenor Square—and for two
great master-sweeps who were looking up at him
from the street to see that he sang prettily and did
his dirty work well. Then he came down, it
seemed to me in no time, in less time than it took
me to brush my curly hair, and went off with the
master-sweeps, one of whom gave him a curse and
the other a kick for keeping them so long waiting.
Poor little fellow ! I wonder where he is now.
Has he, too, lived through all his soot and grime
and got to be a master-sweep? And does he keep a
man as old, but far smaller than himself, to go up
‘them crooked chimbleys as no machine vill sweep?'
—a grown man whom he cannot kick,-and does
he ease his feelings by cursing the Ramoneur?
All this chimney-sweeping and dressing took
336 Annals of
less time to do than to tell about. I was up long
before all the servants. What was I to do? It
was not six o'clock. If I stayed indoors, the
housemaids would be astir about seven, flitting
about the house as restless as bats, and about
as useful, sweeping dust from one stair to
another, and finally into a cupboard. Opening the
shutters, that, I own, is useful; but tidying the
room; what a wrong use of words is that. What
housemaid has eye enough to set a chair, a sofa,
or a table straight; or if they have them, they far
prefer setting them straight at those companies
of the Guards, who passed our house in the early
morning, their band playing, and all the maids as
surely running to the windows to see “the pretty
soldiers.’ Then the dust that they raise, where
does it go to? Out of the windows it is to be
hoped, if the windows are open; but if they are
not, on to the sofas, behind the chairs, under the
cabinets, and up on their tops. You can lay a ghost,
I have heard, once for all,—at least, bell, book, and
candle used to do so,-but the ghost of the dust in
a London house is only laid every day to rise
again the next morning. -
The same thing goes on in every room; but the
worst of all rooms for a servant to tidy is a
library. How often have all “master's nasty books
all lying open so untidy on the table,’ been tidied
an Eventful Life. 337
and shut up and restored to their places on the
shelves by the zealous housemaid. The unhappy
master who with great care and trouble has laid
those books open overnight, and flatters himself
that next day, having at last got all his references
to the learned authors ready, he will really set
to work on his opus magnum, the treatise which
shall render him famous for ever; it may be on
The Sneezes of the Patriarchs, ‘De Patriarcharum
Sternutandi Ratione, or ‘On the use of Handker-
chiefs among the Rich, or ‘On the name of the
mother of Moses, as derived from the evidence of
Hieroglyphics,'—this unhappy master, I say, comes
down to breakfast, and having discussed that
repast in charity with all men and housemaids,
retires to work in his library, only to find that
all his week’s labour has been thrown away.
Beware of over zeal, ye housemaids, ye genera-
tion of “wipers,’ as Brooks would call them; or at
least flee from the wrath of the master whom ye
have so wilfully provoked.
As soon as I got down, then, I put on my hat
and went out. I went to South Street, and looked
up at what I felt quite sure was Arethusa’s window.
I might as well have tried to look through a brick
wall. It was a small but comfortable-looking house,
of old red brick; but, of course, every blind in the
house was close drawn, and where there weren’t
WOL. I. Z
338 Annals of
blinds the shutters were shut. No. — South
Street was still deep in death's brother, sleep.
But, sleeping or waking, there was the casket which
contained the jewel—there the shrine in which
reposed the body of my saint. I felt like the
pilgrim who approached the shrine of his patron,
his Becket, on a day when it was not open; he had
to content himself with knowing that inside that
mock house of shining silver gilt and blazing with
gems, reposed the object of his adoration; and so I
felt. Except that he worshipped merely a few dry
bones, to which his fancy gave life and power,
while my shrine contained a living body, instead of
a skeleton; eyes as bright as any diamond, instead
of empty sockets; pearly teeth half-seen through
parting lips, instead of one or two yellow stumps on
grinning jawbones; a slender waist, instead of mere
ribs and backbone:—in short, one glowing rounded
whole, instead of a dry framework of bones.
Yes! I am not at all sure, as we are all sinners,
that I do not much prefer a live sinner of eighteen
to the most venerable defunct saint of eighty!
But I am quite sure that on that April morning,
all the sinners and Saints that ever did wrong or
good would have been found wanting if weighed
in the scales of my eyes against my Arethusa.
I walked up and down the street once or twice.
I went down South Street the other day, and
an Eventful Life. 339
looked at No. —. It looked as red as ever; like
an old beauty, its complexion had been restored by
rouge. There was the shrine, but where was the
saint? Fled, gone, passed away from me for ever.
The street, up and down which it once seemed
happiness to pace, seemed gloomy and confined.
There was no air in it. It is fashionable enough
still, as the old beauties, to whom I have compared
No. —, are still fashionable; but to me it has lost
its charms, as they have. I walked away into
Hyde Park to try to breathe.
On that morning, too, I had to fly to Hyde
Park. I had no excuse for walking up and down
the street. A policeman—they had then not very
long displaced the ‘old Charlies,’ and were as
clean-sweeping as new brooms—came along the
street. I don’t believe he even looked at me, but
I felt sure that he knew I had come there to
look at Arethusa’s house, and I felt thankful that
he did not take me up. Then, up from the steps
of an area, crawled a hideous, slatternly thing,
which called itself a woman—a thing with frizzy
hair all down her neck, with dirty dress, umlaced
boots, and a mop and pail. It was a kitchenmaid,
about to clean the steps. Then another came a
little lower down; last of all, came a milkman with
his cry. It did not sound half so melodious as
that of the little sweep. I now thought it was time.
340 Annals of .
to beat a retreat. It was a warm morning for
April, so I thought I would go down to the Ser-
pentine, and see the people bathe. There were
not so many bathers, and those not so rough as
some are now, and I felt tempted to bathe too, had
I not been alone. I would have bathed had not
the horrid thought seized me, ‘If I bathe and
somebody runs off with my clothes, what shall I
do? If he is a beggar and leaves me his clothes,
shall I put them on, and so present myself before
my Aunt at breakfast? or shall I disdain them
and climb up into a tree, and there remain, like
Adam, in a state of innocence, but in sore fear of
the police, till I am discovered at mid-day and
dragged off to Marlborough Street as a fiend in
human shape?’ -
On second thoughts, therefore, I determined not
to bathe, but to watch the bathers. They were
well behaved and amusing; but even a lover gets
hungry on an April morning. I began to feel I
wanted my breakfast, and retraced my steps to
Brook Street. I took care to pass through South
Street again, and then all the shutters were open,
the blinds in some of the bed-rooms drawn up, and
so I went home wondering whether Arethusa's
room was one of those with its blinds drawn up, or
with them still down. Dear me ! to think of the
idleness of love, and how it makes a man waste his
an Eventful Life. 341
time on the most trivial things, as though they
were matters of momentous importance. They
tell you the style is the man; and so I think it is,
for we know that love changes a man, and if it
does that it can also change his style, and make
him write platitudes for sense and use all sorts of
long words, first cousins to ‘platitude,’ instead of
short ones. -
END OF WOL. I.
L ON DO N : ſº
Sºl RANGE WAY S AND WALDEN, PRINTERS
Castle St. Leicester Sq.
IIIſ
3 9015 05633 209
J.I.B.I.A.RY N º THI E
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