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The Adventures of Hugh Trevor

T >> Thomas Holcroft >> The Adventures of Hugh Trevor




'And is the poet, after having spent a life in that deep investigation
of the human heart which alone can enable him to write a play, whose
efforts must be prodigious, and, if he succeed, his pathos, wit, and
genius, rare, is he, after all his struggles, to be at the mercy of an
ignorant actor or actress? who, so far from deeply studying the sense,
frequently do not remember the words they ought to repeat!

'Every _mister_ is discontented with the character allotted him, each
envies the other, and mutters accusations against both author and
manager. Sir won't speak the prologue, it is not in his way; and Madam
will have the epilogue, or she will positively throw up her part.
One gentleman thinks his dialogue too long and heavy, and t'other
too short and trifling. This fine lady refuses to attend rehearsals:
another comes, but has less of the spirit of the author at the fifth
repetition than she had at the first. Of their parts individually
they know but very little; of the play as a whole they are absolutely
ignorant. On the first representation, by which the reputation of a
play is decided, they are so confused and imperfect, owing partly to
their imbecility but more still to their indolence, that the sense
of the author is mutilated, his characters travestied, and his piece
rather burlesqued than performed. The reality of the scene depends
on the passions excited in the actor listening almost as essentially
as in the actor speaking; but at the end of each speech the player
supposes his part is over: the arms, attitude, and features, all sink
into insignificance, and have no more meaning than the face of Punch
when beating Joan.

'Of the reality of this picture I soon had full proof. My tragedy,
after a number of rehearsals, during which all these vexatious
incidents and many more were experienced by me, was at length
performed. To say that the applause it received equalled my
expectations would be false: but it greatly exceeded the expectations
of others. It was materially injured by the want of the actor who
had refused his part. The reigning vice of recitation, which since
the death of Garrick has again prevailed, injured it more. The tide
of passion, which should have rushed in torrents and burst upon the
astonished ear, was sung out in slow and measured syllables, with a
monotonous and funeral cadence, painful in its motion, and such as
reminded me of the Sloth and his horrid cry: plaintive indeed, but
exciting strange disgust!

'My success however was thought extraordinary. The actors when the
play was over swarmed into the green-room, to congratulate me. The
actresses were ready to kiss me; good natured souls! The green-room
loungers, newspaper critics, authors, and pretended friends of the
house flocked round me, to wish me joy and stare at that enviable
animal a successful poet. One of them, himself an approved writer of
comedy, offered me five hundred pounds for the profits of my piece,
and as far as money was concerned I thought my fortune was made:
doubts and difficulties were fairly over, and the reward of all my
toils was at last secure. Sanguine blockhead, thus everlastingly to
embitter my own cup of sorrow! Secure? Oh no! The nectar of hope was
soon dashed from my lips.

'I must detail the causes of this reverse; they were various and
decisive.

'It had been the custom on the appearance of every new play to give
it what is called a run, that is to perform it without intermission
as many nights as the house should continue to be tolerably filled.
The managers of both theatres had at this time deemed the practice
prejudicial, and determined to reform it. Of this reform I was the
victim. My play was the first that appeared after the resolution
had been taken; and, in the bills of the day which announced the
performance of my tragedy for the Saturday evening, the public were
advertised that another piece would be acted on Monday. Ignorant of
the true reason, the town misinterpreted this notice into an avowal
that no favourable expectations were formed of my tragedy; and, as
the author was an obscure person whose name was totally unknown to
the world, none of that public curiosity on which popularity depends
was excited.

'This was but one of the damning causes. My play appeared about the
middle of October, when the season continued to be fine: the citizens
were all at the watering places, the court was at Windsor, the
parliament had not met, and the town was empty.

'To add to all this, one of the performers was taken ill on the second
night. Another of them thought proper to ride over to Egham races, on
the third; where he got drunk and absented himself from the theatre;
so that substitutes were obliged to be found for both the parts. In
fine though some few, struck as they affirmed with the merits of the
play, were just enough to attempt to bring it into public esteem, it
gradually sunk into neglect. My third night, after paying the expences
of the house, produced me only twenty pounds. On the sixth night, the
receipts were less than the charges, and it was played no more. The
overplus of the third night was little more than sufficient to defray
the deficiences of the sixth; and thus vanished my golden dreams of
profit, prosperity, and fame!

'The evil did not rest here. I was in danger of all the misfortunes I
had foreseen from the Jew, and the bond. There was not only hardship
and severity but injustice in my case, and I determined to remonstrate
to the manager. My mind was sore and my appeal was spirited, but
proper: it was an appeal to his equity.

'He listened to me, acknowledged I had been unfortunate, and said
that, though the theatre could not and ought not to be accountable
for my loss, yet some compensation he thought was justly my due. He
therefore gave me a draft on his treasurer for one hundred pounds, and
wished me better success in future.

'This it is true was of the most essential service to me; it relieved
me, not only from imprisonment, but from the degradation of having my
honesty questioned. It did not however restore me to the hope that
should have rouzed me to greater exertions.

'Some new efforts indeed I was obliged to make; for the time consumed
in revising my tragedy, and attending rehearsals, had occasioned me
to neglect other pursuits, and I was again some few pounds in debt.
No dread of labour, no degree of misery could induce me to leave
these debts unpaid. I therefore worked and starved till they were all
discharged: after which I returned to the country, and became usher at
the school where I first knew you, Mr. Trevor.

'To paint the family distresses that succeeded, the disgrace, the
infamy that attended them, the wretchedness that afterward preyed upon
me, till I could endure no more, were needless. I was satisfied that I
had a right to end a state of suffering, and to be rid of a world that
considers itself as burthened not benefited by such creatures as I am.
At torments after death, concerning which bigotry and cunning have
invented such horrid fables, accusing and blaspheming a God whom they
pretend to adore of tyranny the most monstrous, and injustice the most
abhorred, at tales like these I laughed.

'You, Mr. Turl, say you can shew me better arguments, moral motives
that are indispensable, why I ought to live. These are assertions, of
which I must consider. You have restored me to life: prove that you
have done me a favour! Of that I doubt! My first sensation, after
recovering my faculties, was anger at your officious pity: shew me
that it was ill timed and unjust. If you have reduced me to the
necessity of again debating the same painful and gloomy question, if
you cannot give that elasticity to my mind which will animate it to
despise difficulty and steel it against injustice, however good your
intentions may have been, I fear you have but imposed misery upon me.'




CHAPTER X


_Remarks on the mistakes of Mr. Wilmot, by Turl: Law, or important
truths discussed; to which few will attend, fewer will understand, and
very few indeed will believe_


The state of mind into which his mistakes had brought him rendered
Wilmot an object of compassion. The tone in which he concluded
testified the alarming errors into which he was still liable to fall.
For this reason, though Turl treated him with all possible humanity
and tenderness, he considered it as dangerous to him, and scarcely
less so to me, on whom he perceived the strong impression the
narrative had made, to be silent. With a voice and countenance
therefore of perfect urbanity, he thus replied.

'Do not imagine, Mr. Wilmot, that I have not been deeply penetrated
by your sufferings; that I am insensible of your uncommon worth, or
that I approve the vices of society, and the injustice and unfeeling
neglect with which you have been treated. Thousands are at this moment
subject to the same oppression.

'But the province of wisdom is not to lament over our wrongs: it is
to find their remedy. Querulous complaint (Pardon me, if my words
or expressions have any ill-timed severity: indeed that is far from
my intention.) Querulous complaint is worthy only of the infancy of
understanding. The world is unjust: and why? Because it is ignorant.
Ought that to excite either complaint or anger? Would not the energies
of intellect be more worthily employed in removing the cause, by the
communication of knowledge?

'You bid me restore the elasticity of your mind. Can you look round on
the follies and mistakes of men, which you have the power to detect,
expose, and in part reform, and be in want of motive? You demand
that I should communicate to you the desire of life. Can you have a
perception of the essential duties that you are fitted to perform, and
dare you think of dying?

'You have been brooding over your own wrongs, which your distorted
fancy has painted as perhaps the most insufferable in the whole circle
of existence! How could you be so blind? Look at the mass of evil, by
which you are surrounded! What is its origin? Ignorance. Ignorance is
the source of all evil; and there is one species of ignorance to which
you and men like you have been egregiously subject: ignorance of
the true mode of exercising your rare faculties; ignorance of their
unbounded power of enjoyment.

'You have been persuaded that this power was destroyed, by the
ridiculous distinctions of rich and poor. Oh, mad world! Monstrous
absurdity! Incomprehensible blindness! Look at the rich! In what are
they happy? In what do they excel the poor? Not in their greater
stores of wealth: which is but a source of vice, disease, and death;
but in a little superiority of knowledge; a trifling advance toward
truth. How may this advantage be made general? Not by the indulgence
of the desires you have fostered; the tendency of which was vicious;
but by retrenching those false wants, that you panted to gratify; and
thus by giving leisure to the poor or rather to all mankind, to make
the acquirement of knowledge the grand business of life.

'This is the object on which the attention of every wise man should
be turned. He that by precept or example shall prevail on community
to relinquish one superfluous dish, one useless and contemptible
trapping, will be the general friend of man. He who labours for
riches, to countenance by his practice their abuse, is labouring to
secure misery to himself, and perpetuate it in society. Who ought to
be esteemed the most rich? He whose faculties are the most enlarged.
How wealthy were you, had you but known it, at the moment your mind
was distracting itself by these dirges of distress.

'He that would riot in luxury, let him wait the hour of appetite; and
carry his morsel into the harvest field. There let him seat himself on
a bank, eat, and cast his eyes around. Then, while he shall appease
the cravings of hunger (not pamper the detestable caprice of gluttony)
let him remember how many thousands shall in like manner be fed, by
the plenty he every where beholds. How poor and pitiable a creature
would he be, were his pleasure destroyed, or narrowed, because the
earth on which it was produced was not what he had absurdly been
taught to call his own!

'You complain that the titled and the dignified rejected your
intercourse. How could you thus mistake your true rank? How exalted
was it, compared to the ridiculous arrogance you envied! Were you now
visiting Bedlam, would you think yourself miserable because its mad
inhabitants despised you, for not being as mighty a monarch as each of
themselves? But little depth of penetration is necessary, to perceive
that the lunatics around us are no less worthy of our laughter and our
pity.

'If I do not mistake, you, Mr. Trevor, are hurrying into the very
errors that have misled your noble minded friend and instructor.
Your active genius is busying itself how to obtain those riches and
distinctions on which you have falsely supposed happiness depends. You
are in search of a profession, by which your fortune is to be made.
Beware! Notwithstanding that I am frequently assaulted by the same
kind of folly myself, I yet never recollect it without astonishment!'

While Turl confined the application of his precepts to Wilmot, I
listened and assented with scarcely a doubt: but, the moment he
directed them against me, I turned upon him with all the force to
which by my passions and fears I was rouzed.

'What,' said I, 'would you persuade me to renounce those pursuits by
which alone I can gain distinction and respect in society? Would you
have me remain in poverty, and thus relinquish the dearest portion of
existence?'

Olivia was full in my thoughts, as I spoke.

'Of what worth would life be, were I so doomed? Rather than accept it
on such terms, were there ten thousand Serpentine rivers I would drown
in them all!'

Turl glanced significantly first at me and then at Wilmot. 'Do you
consider the danger, the possible consequences, of the doctrine you
are now inculcating, Mr. Trevor?'

Too much devoured by passion to attend to his reproof, in the sense
he meant it, I retorted in a still louder key. 'I can discover no ill
consequences in being sincere. I repeat, were there millions of seas,
I would sooner drown in them all! You are continually pushing your
philosophy to extremes, Mr. Turl.'

'You should rather say, Mr. Trevor, you are pushing your want of
philosophy to an extreme.'

'The self denial you require is not in the nature of man.'

'The nature of man is a senseless jargon. Man is that which he is made
by the various occurrences to which he is subjected. Those occurrences
continually differ; no two men, therefore, were ever alike. But how
are you to obtain the wealth and dignity you seek? By honest means?'

'Can you suppose me capable of any other?'

'Alas! How universal, how dangerous, are the mistakes of mankind! Your
hopes are childish. The law, I understand, is your present pursuit.
Do you suppose it possible to practise the law, in any form, and be
honest?'

'Sir!--Mr. Turl?--You amaze me! Where is the dishonesty of pleading
for the oppressed?'

'How little have you considered the subject! How ignorant are you of
the practice of the law! Oppressed? Do counsel ever ask who is the
oppressed? Do they refuse a brief because the justice of the case is
doubtful? Do they not always inquire, not what is justice, but, what
is law? Do they not triumph most, and acquire most fame, when they can
gain a cause in the very teeth of the law they profess to support and
revere? Who is the greatest lawyer? Not he who can most enlighten, but
he who can most perplex and confound the understanding of his hearers!
He who can best brow-beat and confuse witnesses; and embroil and
mislead the intellect of judge and jury. Yet the mischiefs I have
mentioned are but the sprouts and branches of this tree of evil; its
root is much deeper: it is in the law itself; and in the system of
property, of which law is the support.'

'Pshaw! These are the distempered dreams of reform run mad.'

'Are they? Consider! Beware of the mischief of deciding rashly! Beware
of your passions, that are alarmed lest they should be disappointed.'

'It is you that decide. Prove this rooted evil of law.'

'Suppose me unable to prove it: are its consequences the less real?
But I will endeavour.

'He, who is told that, "to do justice is to conduce with all his power
to the well being of the whole," has a simple intelligible rule for
his conduct.

'He, on the contrary, who is told that, "to do justice is to obey the
law," has to inquire, not what is justice! but, what is the law? Now
to know the law, (were it practicable!) would be not only to know
the statutes at large by rote, but all the precedents, and all the
legal discussions and litigations, to which the practitioners of law
appeal! Innumerable volumes, filled with innumerable subtleties and
incoherencies, and written in a barbarous and unintelligible jargon,
must be studied! Memory is utterly inadequate to the task; and reason
revolts, spurns at and turns from it with loathing.

'A short statement of facts will, in my opinion, demonstrate that law,
in its origin and essence, is absolutely unjust.

'To make a law is to make a rule, by which a certain class of future
events shall be judged.

'Future events can only be partially and imperfectly foreseen.

'Consequently, the law must be partial and imperfect.

'Let us take the facts in another point of view--The law never varies.

'The cases never agree.

'The law is general.

'The case is individual.

'The penalty of the law is uniform.

'The justice or injustice of the case is continually different.

'To prejudge any case, that is, to give a decided opinion on it while
any of the circumstances remain unknown, is unjust even to a proverb.
Yet this is precisely what is done, by making a law.'

'This is strange doctrine, Mr. Turl!'

'Disprove the facts, Mr. Trevor. They are indisputable; and on them
the following syllogism may indisputably be formed.

'To make a law is publicly to countenance and promote injustice.

'Publicly to countenance and promote injustice is a most odious and
pernicious action.

'Consequently, to make a law is a most odious and pernicious action.

'How unlimited are the moral mischiefs that result! To make positive
laws is to turn the mind from the inquiry into what is just, and
compel it to inquire what is law!

'To make positive laws is to habituate and reconcile the mind to
injustice, by stamping injustice with public approbation!

'To make positive laws is to deaden the mind to that constant and
lively sense of what is just and unjust, to which it must otherwise be
invariably awake, by not only encouraging but by obliging it to have
recourse to rules founded in falsehood!

'Each case is law to itself: that is, each case ought to be decided by
the justice, or the injustice arising out of the circumstances of that
individual case; and by no other case or law whatever; for the reason
I have already given, that there never were nor ever can be two cases
that were not different from each other.

'I therefore once more warn you, Mr. Trevor, that law is a pernicious
mass of errors; and that the practitioners of it can only thrive by
the mischiefs which they themselves produce, the falsehoods they
propagate, and the miseries they inflict!'

'This would be dangerous doctrine to the preacher, were it heard in
Westminster hall.'

'I am sorry for it! I am sorry that man can be in danger from his
fellow men, because he endeavours to do them good!'




CHAPTER XI


_Painful meditations: A new project for acquiring wealth: A journey to
Bath_


That the reader may judge of the arguments of Turl, I have been
anxious to state them simply; and not perplexed with the digressions,
commentaries, cavils, and violent opposition they met with from me.
Striking as they did at the very root of all my promised pleasures,
how could I listen and not oppose? Destroying as they did all my
towering hopes at a breath, what could I do but rave? When my
arguments and my anger were exhausted, I sat silent for a while,
sunk in melancholy revery. At length I recovered myself so far as to
endeavour to console Mr. Wilmot, offer him every assistance in my
power, and persuade him to an interview with his sister. Aided by
the benevolent arguments of Turl, this purpose was with some little
difficulty effected, and I returned home to relate to Miss Wilmot what
had happened.

In very bitterness of soul I then began to meditate on the prospect
before me. The sensations I experienced were at some moments
agonizing! Could I even have renounced fame and fortune, and patiently
have resigned myself to live in obscure poverty, yet to live, as in
such a case I must do, without Olivia would be misery to which no
arguments could induce me to submit. But how obtain her? Where were
all my bright visions fled? Poor Wilmot! What an example did he afford
of ineffectual struggles, talents neglected, and genius trampled in
the dust! Was there more security for me? Turl indeed seemed to resign
himself without a murmur, and to be happy in despite of fate. But he
had no Olivia to regret! If he had, happiness without her would be
impossible!

To attempt to repeat all the tormenting fears that hurried and
agitated my mind, on this occasion, were fruitless. Suffice it to
say, this was one of those severe conflicts to which by education and
accident I was subject; and it was not the least painful part of the
present one that I could come to no decision.

I persuaded myself indeed that, with respect to law, Turl's reasoning
was much too severe and absolute. It was true I could not but own
that law was inclined to debase and corrupt the morals of its
practitioners; but surely there were exceptions, and if I pursued the
law why should not I be one of them. If therefore the happiness at
which I aimed were attainable by this means, I asserted to myself that
I had heard no reasons which ought to deter me from practising the
law.

In the mean time, I had conceived a project that related to the
immediate state of my feelings; the acuteness of which I was obliged
to seek some method to appease. Olivia was gone to Bath, with her
aunt; and thither I was determined to follow her.

Full of this design, I dispatched Philip with orders that a post
chaise should be ready at the door by nine o'clock the next morning;
after which, to rid myself as much as possible of the thoughts that
haunted me, I once more went in search of the false Belmont.

I found him at the usual place engaged at play. The betting was high,
he appeared to be overmatched, and for a few games his antagonist,
who like himself was a first rate player, triumphed. My passions
were always of the touch-wood kind. Rouzed and tempted by the bets
that were so plentifully offered, the thought suddenly occurred how
possible it was for a man of penetration, who could keep himself
perfectly cool, as I was persuaded I could (What was there indeed
that I persuaded myself I could not do?) to make a fortune by
gambling! I did not indeed call it by the odious term gambling: it
was calculation, foresight, acuteness of discernment. My morality was
fast asleep; so intent was I on profiting by this new and surprisingly
certain source of wealth! and so avaricious of the means that at a
glance seemed to promise the gratification of all my desires!

I had not frequented a billiard table without have exercised my own
skill, learned the odds, and obtained a tolerable knowledge of the
game itself. So fixed was my cupidity on its object that I began with
the caution of a black-leg; made a bet, and the moment the odds turned
in my favour secured myself by taking them; hedged again, as the
advantage changed; and thus made myself a certain winner. I exulted in
my own clearness of perception! and wondered that so palpable a method
of winning should escape even an idiot!

The experience however of a few games taught me that my discovery was
not quite of so lucrative a nature as I had supposed. The odds did not
every game vary, from side to side; people were not always inclined
to bet the odds; and, if I would run no great risk, I even found it
necessary to bet them sometimes myself. Every man who has made the
experiment knows that the thirst of lucre, when thus awakened in a
young mind, is insatiable, impetuous, and rash. I was weary of petty
gains, and riches by retail. The ardour with which I examined the
players, and each circumstance as it occurred, persuaded me that there
were tokens by which an acute observer might discover the winning
party. I had on former occasions remarked that players but rarely win
game and game alternately, even when they leave off equal; but that
success has a tide, with a kind of periodical ebb and flow. This said
I may be attributed to the temper of the players; the loser is too
angry to attend with sufficient caution to his game; he persuades
himself that luck is against him, strikes at random, and does mischief
every stroke. After a while the winner grows careless, loses a game,
and becomes angry and conquered in turn.

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