Pelham, Volume 5.
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Pelham, Volume 5.
"Told you so, Mr. Pelham--silent sow, Sure I should have the pleasure of
seeing you, though you kept it so snug. Well, will you bet now? No!--Ah,
you're a sly one. Staying here at that nice-looking house--belongs to
Dawson, an old friend of mine--shall be happy to introduce you!"
"Sir," said I, abruptly, "you are too good. Permit me to request that you
will rejoin your friend Mr. Dawson."
"Oh," said the imperturbable Thornton, "it does not signify; he won't be
affronted at my lagging a little. However," (and here he caught my eye,
which was assuming a sternness that perhaps little pleased him,)
"however, as it gets late, and my mare is none of the best, I'll wish you
good morning." With these words Thornton put spurs to his horse and
trotted off.
"Who the devil have you got there, Pelham?" said Lord Chester.
"A person," said I, "who picked me up at Paris, and insists on the right
of treasure trove to claim me in England. But will you let me ask, in my
turn, whom that cheerful mansion we have just left, belongs to?"
"To a Mr. Dawson, whose father was a gentleman farmer who bred horses, a
very respectable person, for I made one or two excellent bargains with
him. The son was always on the turf, and contracted the worst of its
habits. He bears but a very indifferent character, and will probably
become a complete blackleg. He married, a short time since, a woman of
some fortune, and I suppose it is her taste which has so altered and
modernized his house. Come, gentlemen, we are on even ground, shall we
trot?"
We proceeded but a few yards before we were again stopped by a
precipitous ascent, and as Lord Chester was then earnestly engaged in
praising his horse to one of the cavalcade, I had time to remark the
spot. At the foot of the hill we were about slowly to ascend, was a
broad, uninclosed patch of waste land; a heron, flapping its enormous
wings as it rose, directed my attention to a pool overgrown with rushes,
and half-sheltered on one side by a decayed tree, which, if one might
judge from the breadth and hollowness of its trunk, had been a refuge to
the wild bird, and a shelter to the wild cattle, at a time when such were
the only intruders upon its hospitality; and when the country, for miles
and leagues round, was honoured by as little of man's care and
cultivation as was at present the rank waste which still nourished its
gnarled and venerable roots. There was something remarkably singular and
grotesque in the shape and sinuosity of its naked and spectral branches:
two of exceeding length stretched themselves forth, in the very semblance
of arms held out in the attitude of supplication; and the bend of the
trunk over the desolate pond, the form of the hoary and blasted summit,
and the hollow trunk, half riven asunder in the shape of limbs, seemed to
favour the gigantic deception. You might have imagined it an antediluvian
transformation, or a daughter of the Titan race, preserving in her
metamorphosis her attitude of entreaty to the merciless Olympian.
This was the only tree visible; for a turn of the road and the unevenness
of the ground, completely veiled the house we had passed, and the few low
firs and sycamores which made its only plantations. The sullen pool--its
ghost-like guardian--the dreary heath around, the rude features of the
country beyond, and the apparent absence of all human habitation,
conspired to make a scene of the most dispiriting and striking
desolation. I know not how to account for it, but as I gazed around in
silence, the whole place appeared to grow over my mind, as one which I
had seen, though dimly and drearily, before; and a nameless and
unaccountable presentiment of fear and evil sunk like ice into my heart.
We ascended the hill, and the rest of the road being of a kind better
adapted to expedition, we mended our pace and soon arrived at the goal of
our journey.
The race-ground had its customary compliment of knaves and fools--the
dupers and the duped. Poor Lady Chester, who had proceeded to the ground
by the high road (for the way we had chosen was inaccessible to those who
ride in chariots, and whose charioteers are set up in high places,) was
driving to and fro, the very picture of cold and discomfort; and the few
solitary carriages which honoured the course, looked as miserable as if
they were witnessing the funeral of their owner's persons, rather than
the peril of their characters and purses.
As we rode along to the betting-post, Sir John Tyrrell passed us: Lord
Chester accosted him familiarly, and the baronet joined us. He had been
an old votary of the turf in his younger days, and he still preserved all
his ancient predilection in its favour.
It seemed that Chester had not met him for many years, and after a short
and characteristic conversation of "God bless me, how long since I saw
you!--d--d good horse you're on--you look thin--admirable condition--what
have you been doing?--grand action--a'n't we behind hand?--famous fore-
hand--recollect old Queensberry?--hot in the mouth--gone to the devil--
what are the odds?" Lord Chester asked Tyrrell to go home with us. The
invitation was readily accepted.
"With impotence of will
We wheel, tho' ghastly shadows interpose
Round us, and round each other."--Shelley.
Now, then, arose the noise, the clatter, the swearing, the lying, the
perjury, the cheating, the crowd, the bustle, the hurry, the rush, the
heat, the ardour, the impatience, the hope, the terror, the rapture, the
agony of the race. Directly the first heat was over, one asked me one
thing, one bellowed another; I fled to Lord Chester, he did not heed me.
I took refuge with the marchioness; she was as sullen as an east wind
could make her. Lady Harriett would talk of nothing but the horses: Sir
Lionel would not talk at all. I was in the lowest pit of despondency, and
the devils that kept me there were as blue as Lady Chester's nose.
Silent, sad, sorrowful, and sulky, I rode away from the crowd, and
moralized on its vicious propensities. One grows marvellously honest when
the species of cheating before us is not suited to one's self.
Fortunately, my better angel reminded me, that about the distance of
three miles from the course lived an old college friend, blessed, since
we had met, with a parsonage and a wife. I knew his tastes too well to
imagine that any allurement of an equestrian nature could have seduced
him from the ease of his library and the dignity of his books; and
hoping, therefore, that I should find him at home, I turned my horse's
head in an opposite direction, and rejoiced at the idea of my escape,
bade adieu to the course.
As I cantered across the far end of the heath, my horse started from an
object upon the ground; it was a man wrapped from head to foot in a long
horseman's cloak, and so well guarded as to the face, from the raw
inclemency of the day, that I could not catch even a glimpse of the
features, through the hat and neck-shawl which concealed them. The head
was turned, with apparent anxiety, towards the distant throng; and
imagining the man belonging to the lower orders, with whom I am always
familiar, I addressed to him, en passant, some trifling remark on the
event of the race. He made no answer. There was something about him which
induced me to look back several moments after I had left him behind. He
had not moved an atom. There is such a certain uncomfortableness always
occasioned to the mind by stillness and mystery united, that even the
disguising garb, and motionless silence of the man, innocent as I thought
they must have been, impressed themselves disagreeably on my meditations
as I rode briskly on.
It is my maxim never to be unpleasantly employed, even in thought, if I
can help it; accordingly, I changed the course of my reflection, and
amused myself with wondering how matrimony and clerical dignity sat on
the indolent shoulders of my old acquaintance.
CHAPTER LXIII.
And as for me, tho' that I can but lite
On bookes for to read I me delight,
And to hem give I faith and full credence;
And in mine heart have hem in reverence,
So heartily that there is game none,
That fro' my bookes maketh me to gone.
--Chaucer.
Christopher Clutterbuck was a common individual of a common order, but
little known in this busy and toiling world. I cannot flatter myself that
I am about to present to your notice that rara avis, a new character--yet
there is something interesting, and even unhacknied, in the retired and
simple class to which he belongs: and before I proceed to a darker period
in my memoirs, I feel a calm and tranquillizing pleasure in the rest
which a brief and imperfect delineation of my college companion, affords
me. My friend came up to the University with the learning one about to
quit the world might, with credit, have boasted of possessing, and the
simplicity one about to enter it would have been ashamed to confess.
Quiet and shy in his habits and his manners, he was never seen out of the
precincts of his apartment, except in obedience to the stated calls of
dinner, lectures, and chapel. Then his small and stooping form might be
marked, crossing the quadrangle with a hurried step, and cautiously
avoiding the smallest blade of the barren grass-plots, which are
forbidden ground to the feet of all the lower orders of the collegiate
oligarchy. Many were the smiles and the jeers, from the worse natured and
better appointed students, who loitered idly along the court, at the rude
garb and saturnine appearance of the humble under-graduate; and the calm
countenance of the grave, but amiable man, who then bore the honour and
onus of mathematical lecturer at our college, would soften into a glance
of mingled approbation and pity, as he noted the eagerness which spoke
from the wan cheek and emaciated frame of the ablest of his pupils,
hurrying--after each legitimate interruption--to the enjoyment of the
crabbed characters and worm-worn volumes, which contained for him all the
seductions of pleasure, and all the temptations of youth.
It is a melancholy thing, which none but those educated at a college can
understand, to see the debilitated frames of the aspirants for academical
honours; to mark the prime--the verdure--the glory--the life--of life
wasted irrevocably away in a labor ineptiarum, which brings no harvest
either to others or themselves. For the poet, the philosopher, the man of
science, we can appreciate the recompence if we commiserate the
sacrifice; from the darkness of their retreat there goes a light--from
the silence of their studies there issues a voice, to illumine or
convince. We can imagine them looking from their privations to the far
visions of the future, and hugging to their hearts, in the strength of no
unnatural vanity, the reward which their labours are certain hereafter to
obtain. To those who can anticipate the vast dominions of immortality
among men, what boots the sterility of the cabined and petty present? But
the mere man of languages and learning--the machine of a memory heavily
but unprofitably employed--the Columbus wasting at the galley oar the
energies which should have discovered a world--for him there is no day-
dream of the future, no grasp at the immortality of fame. Beyond the
walls of his narrow room he knows no object; beyond the elucidation of a
dead tongue he indulges no ambition; his life is one long school-day of
lexicons and grammars--a fabric of ice, cautiously excluded from a single
sunbeam--elaborately useless, ingeniously unprofitable; and leaving at
the moment it melts away, not a single trace of the space it occupied, or
the labour it cost.
At the time I went to the University, my poor collegian had attained all
the honours his employment could ever procure him. He had been a Pitt
scholar; he was a senior wrangler, and a Fellow of his college. It often
happened that I found myself next to him at dinner, and I was struck by
his abstinence, and pleased with his modesty, despite of the gaucherie of
his manner, and the fashion of his garb. By degrees I insinuated myself
into his acquaintance; and, as I had still some love of scholastic lore,
I took frequent opportunities of conversing with him upon Horace, and
consulting him upon Lucian.
Many a dim twilight have we sat together, reviving each other's
recollection, and occasionally relaxing into the grave amusement of
capping verses. Then, if by any chance my ingenuity or memory enabled me
to puzzle my companion, his good temper would lose itself in a quaint
pettishness, or he would cite against me some line of Aristophanes, and
ask me, with a raised voice, and arched brow, to give him a fitting
answer to that. But if, as was much more frequently the case, he fairly
run me down into a pause and confession of inability, he would rub his
hands with a strange chuckle, and offer me, in the bounteousness of his
heart, to read aloud a Greek Ode of his own, while he treated me "to a
dish of tea." There was much in the good man's innocence, and
guilelessness of soul, which made me love him, and I did not rest till I
had procured him, before I left the University, the living which he now
held. Since then, he had married the daughter of a neighbouring
clergyman, an event of which he had duly informed me; but, though this
great step in the life of "a reading man," had not taken place many
months since, I had completely, after a hearty wish for his domestic
happiness, consigned it to a dormant place in my recollection.
The house which I now began to approach was small, but comfortable;
perhaps there was something triste in the old-fashioned hedges, cut and
trimmed with mathematical precision, which surrounded the glebe, as well
as in the heavy architecture and dingy bricks of the reverend recluse's
habitation. To make amends for this, there was also something peculiarly
still and placid about the appearance of the house, which must have
suited well the tastes and habits of the owner. A small, formal lawn was
adorned with a square fish-pond, bricked round, and covered with the
green weepings of four willows, which drooped over it, from their
station, at each corner. At the opposite side of this Pierian reservoir,
was a hermitage, or arbour of laurels, shaped in the stiff rusticity of
the Dutch school, in the prevalence of which it was probably planted;
behind this arbour, the ground, after a slight railing, terminated in an
orchard.
The sound I elicited from the gate bell seemed to ring through that
retired place with singular shrillness; and I observed at the opposite
window, all that bustle of drawing curtains, peeping faces, and hasty
retreats, which denote female anxiety and perplexity, at the unexpected
approach of a stranger.
After some time the parson's single servant, a middle-aged, slovenly man,
in a loose frock, and buff kerseymere nondescripts, opened the gate, and
informed me that his master was at home. With a few earnest admonitions
to my admittor--who was, like the domestics of many richer men, both
groom and valet--respecting the safety of my borrowed horse, I entered
the house: the servant did not think it necessary to inquire my name, but
threw open the door of the study, with the brief introduction of--"a
gentleman, Sir."
Clutterbuck was standing, with his back towards me, upon a pair of
library steps, turning over some dusky volumes; and below stood a pale,
cadaverous youth, with a set and serious countenance, that bore no small
likeness to Clutterbuck himself.
"Mon Dieu," thought I, "he cannot have made such good use of his
matrimonial state as to have raised this lanky impression of himself in
the space of seven months?" The good man turned round and almost fell off
the steps with the nervous shock of beholding me so near him: he
descended with precipitation, and shook me so warmly and tightly by the
hand, that he brought tears into my eyes, as well as his own.
"Gently, my good friend," said I--"parce precor, or you will force me to
say, 'ibimus una ambo, flentes valido connexi foedere.'"
Clutterbuck's eyes watered still more, when he heard the grateful sounds
of what to him was the mother tongue. He surveyed me from head to foot
with an air of benign and fatherly complacency, and dragging forth from
its sullen rest a large arm chair, on whose cushions of rusty horse-hair
sat an eternal cloud of classic dust, too sacred to be disturbed, he
plumped me down upon it, before I was aware of the cruel hospitality.
"Oh! my nether garments," thought I. "Quantus sudor incrit Bedoso, to
restore you to your pristine purity."
"But, whence come you?" said my host, who cherished rather a formal and
antiquated method of speech.
"From the Pythian games," said I. "The campus hight Newmarket. Do I see
right, or is not yon insignis juvenis marvellously like you? Of a surety
he rivals the Titans, if he is only a seven months' child!"
"Now, truly, my worthy friend," answered Clutterbuck, "you indulge in
jesting! The boy is my nephew, a goodly child, and a painstaking. I hope
he will thrive at our gentle mother. He goes to Trinity next October.
Benjamin Jeremiah, my lad, this is my worthy friend and benefactor, of
whom I have often spoken; go, and order him of our best--he will partake
of our repast!"
"No, really," I began; but Clutterbuck gently placed the hand, whose
strength of affection I had already so forcibly experienced, upon my
mouth. "Pardon me, my friend," said he. "No stranger should depart till
he had broken bread with us, how much more then a friend! Go, Benjamin
Jeremiah, and tell your aunt that Mr. Pelham will dine with us; and
order, furthermore, that the barrel of oysters sent unto us as a present,
by my worthy friend Dr. Swallow'em, be dressed in the fashion that
seemeth best; they are a classic dainty, and we shall think of our great
masters the ancients whilst we devour them. And--stop, Benjamin Jeremiah,
see that we have the wine with the black seal; and--now--go, Benjamin
Jeremiah!"
"Well, my old friend," said I, when the door closed upon the sallow and
smileless nephew, "how do you love the connubiale jugum? Do you give the
same advice as Socrates? I hope, at least, it is not from the same
experience."
"Hem!" answered the grave Christopher, in a tone that struck me as
somewhat nervous and uneasy, "you are become quite a humourist since we
parted. I suppose you have been warming your wit by the lambent fires of
Horace and Aristophanes!"
"No," said I, "the living allow those whose toilsome lot it is to mix
constantly with them, but little time to study the monuments of the dead.
But, in sober earnest, are you as happy as I wish you?"
Clutterbuck looked down for a moment, and then, turning towards the
table, laid one hand upon a MS., and pointed with the other to his books.
"With this society," said he, "how can I be otherwise?"
I gave him no reply, but put my hand upon his MS. He made a modest and
coy effort to detain it, but I knew that writers were like women, and
making use of no displeasing force, I possessed myself of the paper.
It was a treatise on the Greek participle. My heart sickened within me;
but, as I caught the eager glance of the poor author, I brightened up my
countenance into an expression of pleasure, and appeared to read and
comment upon the difficiles nugae with an interest commensurate to his
own. Meanwhile the youth returned. He had much of that delicacy of
sentiment which always accompanies mental cultivation, of whatever sort
it may be. He went, with a scarlet blush over his thin face, to his
uncle, and whispered something in his ear, which, from the angry
embarrassment it appeared to occasion, I was at no loss to divine.
"Come," said I, "we are too long acquainted for ceremony. Your placens
uxor, like all ladies in the same predicament, thinks your invitation a
little unadvised; and, in real earnest, I have so long a ride to perform,
that I would rather eat your oysters another day!"
"No, no," said Clutterbuck, with greater eagerness than his even
temperament was often hurried into betraying--"no, I will go and reason
with her myself. 'Wives, obey your husbands,' saith the preacher!" And
the quondam senior wrangler almost upset his chair in the perturbation
with which he arose from it.
I laid my hand upon him. "Let me go myself," said I, "since you will have
me dine with you. 'The sex is ever to a stranger kind,' and I shall
probably be more persuasive than you, in despite of your legitimate
authority."
So saying, I left the room, with a curiosity more painful than pleasing,
to see the collegian's wife. I arrested the man servant, and ordered him
to usher and announce me.
I was led instanter into the apartment where I had discovered all the
signs of female inquisitiveness, which I have before detailed. There I
discovered a small woman, in a robe equally slatternly and fine, with a
sharp pointed nose, small, cold, grey eyes, and a complexion high towards
the cheek bones, but waxing of a light green before it reached the wide
and querulous mouth, which, well I ween, seldom opened to smile upon the
unfortunate possessor of her charms. She, like the Rev. Christopher, was
not without her companions; a tall meagre woman, of advanced age, and a
girl, some years younger than herself, were introduced to me as her
mother and sister.
My entree occasioned no little confusion, but I knew well how to remedy
that. I held out my hand so cordially to the wife, that I enticed, though
with evident reluctance, two bony fingers into my own, which I did not
dismiss without a most mollifying and affectionate squeeze; and drawing
my chair close towards her, began conversing as familiarly as if I had
known the whole triad for years. I declared my joy at seeing my old
friend so happily settled--commented on the improvement of his looks--
ventured a sly joke at the good effects of matrimony--praised a cat
couchant, worked in worsted by the venerable hand of the eldest matron--
offered to procure her a real cat of the true Persian breed, black ears
four inches long, with a tail like a squirrel's; and then slid, all at
once, into the unauthorized invitation of the good man of the house.
"Clutterbuck," said I, "has asked me very warmly to stay dinner; but,
before I accepted his offer, I insisted upon coming to see how far it was
confirmed by you. Gentlemen, you are aware, my dear Madam, know nothing
of these matters, and I never accept a married man's invitation till it
has the sanction of his lady: I have an example of that at home. My
mother (Lady Frances) is the best-tempered woman in the world: but my
father could no more take the liberty (for I may truly call it such) to
ask even his oldest friend to dinner, without consulting the mistress of
the house, than he could think of flying. No one (says my mother, and she
says what is very true,) can tell about the household affairs, but those
who have the management of them; and in pursuance of this aphorism, I
dare not accept any invitation in this house, except from its mistress."
"Really," said Mrs. Clutterbuck, colouring, with mingled embarrassment
and gratification, "you are very considerate and polite, Mr. Pelham: I
only wish Mr. Clutterbuck had half your attention to these things; nobody
can tell the trouble and inconvenience he puts me to. If I had known, a
little time before, that you were coming--but now I fear we have nothing
in the house; but if you can partake of our fare, such as it is, Mr.
Pelham--"
"Your kindness enchants me," I exclaimed, "and I no longer scruple to
confess the pleasure I have in accepting my old friend's offer."
This affair being settled, I continued to converse for some minutes with
as much vivacity as I could summon to my aid, and when I went once more
to the library, it was with the comfortable impression of having left
those as friends, whom I had visited as foes.
The dinner hour was four, and till it came, Clutterbuck and I amused
ourselves "in commune wise and sage." There was something high in the
sentiments and generous in the feelings of this man, which made me the
more regret the bias of mind which rendered them so unavailing. At
college he had never (illis dissimilis in nostro tempore natis) cringed
to the possessors of clerical power. In the duties of his station, as
dean of the college, he was equally strict to the black cap and the
lordly hat. Nay, when one of his private pupils, whose father was
possessed of more church preferment than any nobleman in the peerage,
disobeyed his repeated summons, and constantly neglected to attend his
instructions, he sent for him, resigned his tuition, and refused any
longer to accept a salary which the negligence of his pupil would not
allow him to requite. In his clerical tenets he was high: in his judgment
of others he was mild. His knowledge of the liberty of Greece was not
drawn from the ignorant historian of her republics; [Note: It is really a
disgrace to the University, that any of its colleges should accept as a
reference, or even tolerate as an author, the presumptuous bigot who has
bequeathed to us, in his History of Greece, the masterpiece of a
declaimer without energy, and of a pedant without learning.] nor did he
find in the contemplative mildness and gentle philosophy of the ancients,
nothing but a sanction for modern bigotry and existing abuses.