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Memorials and Other Papers

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> Memorials and Other Papers




From these wild, Tartar-like stables of Connaught, how vast was the
transition to that perfection of elegance, and of adaptation between
means and ends, that reigned from centre to circumference through the
stables at Laxton! _I_, as it happened, could report to Lord Massey
their earlier condition; he to me could report their immediate
changes. I won him easily to an interest in my own Irish experiences,
so fresh, and in parts so grotesque, wilder also by much in Connaught
than in Lord Massey's county of Limerick; whilst he (without affecting
any delight in the hunting systems of Northamptonshire and
Leicestershire) yet took pleasure in explaining to me those
characteristic features of the English midland hunting as centralized
at Melton, which even then gave to it the supreme rank for brilliancy
and unity of effect amongst all varieties of the chase. [Footnote: If
mere names were allowed to dazzle the judgment, how magnificent to a
gallant young Englishman of twenty seems at first the _tiger-
hunting_ of India, which yet (when examined searchingly) turns out
the meanest and most _cowardly_ mode of hunting known to human
experience. _Buffalo-hunting_ is much more dignified as regards
the courageous exposure of the hunter; but, from all accounts, its
excitement is too momentary and evanescent; one rifle-shot, and the
crisis is past. Besides that, the generous and honest character of the
buffalo disturbs the cordiality of the sport. The very opposite reason
disturbs the interest of _lion-hunting, especially at the Cape. The
lion is everywhere a cowardly wretch, unless when sublimed into courage
by famine; but, in southern Africa, he is the most currish of enemies.
Those who fancied so much adventurousness in the lion conflicts of Mr.
Gordon Cumming appear never to have read the missionary travels of Mr.
Moffat. The poor missionary, without any arms whatever, came to think
lightly of half a dozen lions seen drinking through the twilight at the
very same pond or river as himself. Nobody can have any wish to
undervalue the adventurous gallantry of Mr. G. Cumming. But, in the
single case of the Cape lion, there is an unintentional advantage taken
from the traditional name of lion, as though the Cape lion were such as
that which ranges the torrid zone.]

Horses had formed the natural and introductory topic of conversation
between us. What we severally knew of Ireland, though in different
quarters,--what we both knew of Laxton, the barbaric splendor, and the
civilized splendor,--had naturally an interest for us both in their
contrasts (at one time so picturesque, at another so grotesque), which
illuminated our separate recollections. But my quick instinct soon made
me aware that a jealousy was gathering in Lord Massey's mind around
such a topic, as though too ostentatiously levelled to his particular
knowledge, or to his _animal_ condition of taste. But easily I
slipped off into another key. At Laxton, it happened that the library
was excellent. Founded by whom, I never heard; but certainly, when used
by a systematic reader, it showed itself to have been systematically
collected; it stretched pretty equably through two centuries,--namely,
from about 1600 to 1800,--and might, perhaps, amount to seventeen
thousand volumes. Lord Massey was far from illiterate; and his interest
in books was unaffected, if limited, and too often interrupted, by
defective knowledge. The library was dispersed through six or seven
small rooms, lying between the drawing-room in one wing, and the
dining-room in the opposite wing. This dispersion, however, already
furnished the ground of a rude classification. In some one of these
rooms was Lord Massey always to be found, from the forenoon to the
evening. And was it any fault of _his_ that his daughter, little
Grace, about two years old, pursued him down from her nursery every
morning, and insisted upon seeing innumerable pictures, lurking (as she
had discovered) in many different recesses of the library? More and
more from this quarter it was that we drew the materials of our daily
after-dinner conversation. One great discouragement arises commonly to
the student, where the particular library in which he reads has been so
disordinately collected that he cannot _pursue_ a subject once
started. Now, at Laxton, the books had been so judiciously brought
together, so many hooks and eyes connected them, that the whole library
formed what one might call a series of _strata_, naturally allied,
through which you might quarry your way consecutively for many months.
On rainy days, and often enough one had occasion to say through rainy
weeks, what a delightful resource did this library prove to both of us!
And one day it occurred to us, that, whereas the stables and the
library were both jewels of attraction, the latter had been by much the
least costly. Pretty often I have found, when any opening has existed
for making the computation, that, in a library containing a fair
proportion of books illustrated with plates, about ten shillings a
volume might be taken as expressing, upon a sufficiently large number
of volumes, small and great, the fair average cost of the whole. On
this basis, the library at Laxton would have cost less than nine
thousand pounds. On the other hand, thirty-live horses (hunters,
racers, roadsters, carriage-horses, etc.) might have cost about eight
thousand pounds, or a little more. But the library entailed no
permanent cost beyond the annual loss of interest; the books did not
eat, and required no aid from veterinary [Footnote: "_Veterinary_."--By
the way, whence comes this odd-looking word? The word _veterana_ I
have met with in monkish writers, to express _domesticated quadrupeds_;
and evidently from that word must have originated the word _veterinary_.
But the question is still but one step removed; for, how came _veterana_
by that acceptation in rural economy?] surgeons; whereas, for the
horses, not only such ministrations were intermittingly required,
but a costly permanent establishment of grooms and helpers. Lord
Carbery, who had received an elaborate Etonian education, was even
more earnestly a student than his friend Lord Massey, who had probably
been educated at home under a private tutor. He read everything
connected with general politics (meaning by _general_ not personal
politics) and with social philosophy. At Laxton, indeed; it was that
I first saw Godwin's "Political Justice;" not the second and emasculated
edition in _octavo_, but the original _quarto_ edition, with all its virus
as yet undiluted of raw anti-social Jacobinism.

At Laxton it was that I first saw the entire aggregate labors,
brigaded, as it were, and paraded as if for martial review, of that
most industrious benefactor to the early stages of our English
historical literature, Thomas Hearne. Three hundred guineas, I believe,
had been the price paid cheerfully at one time for a complete set of
Hearne. At Laxton, also, it was that first I saw the total array of
works edited by Dr. Birch. It was a complete _armilustrium_, a
_recognitio_, or mustering, as it were, not of pompous Praetorian
cohorts, or unique guardsmen, but of the yeomanry, the militia, or
what, under the old form of expression, you might regard as the
_trained bands_ of our literature--the fund from which ultimately,
or in the last resort, students look for the materials of our vast and
myriad-faced literature. A French author of eminence, fifty years back,
having occasion to speak of our English literature collectively, in
reference to the one point of its _variety_, being also a man of
honor, and disdaining that sort of patriotism which sacrifices the
truth to nationality, speaks of our pretensions in these words: _Les
Anglois qui ont une littérature infiniment plus variée que la
nôtre_. This fact is a feature in our national pretensions that
could ever have been regarded doubtfully merely through insufficient
knowledge. Dr. Johnson, indeed, made it the distinguishing merit of the
French, that they "have a book upon every subject." But Dr. Johnson was
not only capricious as regards temper and variable humors, but as
regards the inequality of his knowledge. Incoherent and unsystematic
was Dr. Johnson's information in most cases. Hence his extravagant
misappraisement of Knolles, the Turkish historian, which is exposed so
severely by Spittler, the German, who, again, is himself miserably
superficial in his analysis of English history. Hence the feeble
credulity which Dr. Johnson showed with respect to the forgery of De
Foe (under the masque of Captain Carleton) upon the Catalonian campaign
of Lord Peterborough. But it is singular that a literature, so
unrivalled as ours in its compass and variety, should not have produced
any, even the shallowest, manual of itself. And thus it happens, for
example, that writers so laborious and serviceable as Birch are in any
popular sense scarcely known. I showed to Lord Massey, among others of
his works, that which relates to Lord Worcester's (that is, Lord
Glamorgan's) negotiations with the Papal nuncio in Ireland, about the
year 1644, &c. Connected with these negotiations were many names
amongst Lord Massey's own ancestors; so that here he suddenly alighted
upon a fund of archæologic memorabilia, connecting what interested him
as an Irishman in general with what most interested him as the head of
a particular family. It is remarkable, also, as an indication of the
_general_ nobility and elevation which had accompanied the revolution
in his life, that concurrently with the constitutional torpor
previously besetting him, had melted away the intellectual torpor
under which he had found books until recently of little practical
value. Lady Carbery had herself told me that the two revolutions
went on simultaneously. He began to take an interest in literature
when life itself unfolded a new interest, under the companionship
of his youthful wife. And here, by the way, as subsequently
in scores of other instances, I saw broad evidences of the credulity
with which we have adopted into our grave political faith the
rash and malicious sketches of our novelists. With Fielding commenced
the practice of systematically traducing our order of country
gentlemen. His picture of Squire Western is not only a malicious, but
also an incongruous libel. The squire's ordinary language is
impossible, being alternately bookish and absurdly rustic. In reality,
the conventional dialect ascribed to the rustic order in general--to
peasants even more than to gentlemen--in our English plays and novels,
is a childish and fantastic babble, belonging to no form of real
breathing life; nowhere intelligible; not in _any_ province;
whilst, at the same time, all provinces--Somersetshire, Devonshire,
Hampshire--are confounded with our midland counties; and positively the
diction of Parricombe and Charricombe from Exmoor Forest is mixed up
with the pure Icelandic forms of the English lakes, of North Yorkshire,
and of Northumberland. In Scotland, it needs but a slight intercourse
with the peasantry to distinguish various dialects--the Aberdonian and
Fifeshire, for instance, how easily distinguished, even by an English
alien, from the western dialects of Ayrshire, &c.! And I have heard it
said, by Scottish purists in this matter, that even Sir Walter Scott is
chargeable with considerable licentiousness in the management of his
colloquial Scotch. Yet, generally speaking, it bears the strongest
impress of truthfulness. But, on the other hand, how false and
powerless does this same Sir Walter become, when the necessities of his
tale oblige him at any time to come amongst the English peasantry! His
magic wand is instantaneously broken; and he moves along by a babble of
impossible forms, as fantastic as any that our London theatres have
traditionally ascribed to English rustics, to English sailors, and to
Irishmen universally. Fielding is open to the same stern criticism, as
a deliberate falsehood-monger; and from the same cause--want of energy
to face the difficulty of mastering a real living idiom. This defect in
language, however, I cite only as one feature in the complex falsehood
which disfigures Fielding's portrait of the English country gentleman.
Meantime the question arises, Did he mean his Squire Western for a
_representative_ portrait? Possibly not. He might design it expressly
as a sketch of an individual, and by no means of a class. And
the fault may be, after all, not in _him_, the writer, but in
_us_, the falsely interpreting readers. But, be that as it may,
and figure to ourselves as we may the rustic squire of a hundred to a
hundred and fifty years back (though manifestly at utter war, in the
portraitures of our novelists, with the realities handed down to us by
our Parliamentary annals), on that _arena_ we are dealing with
objects of pure speculative curiosity. Far different is the same
question, when practically treated for purposes of present legislation
or philosophic inference. One hundred years ago, such was the
difficulty of social intercourse, simply from the difficulty of
locomotion (though even then this difficulty was much lowered to the
English, as beyond comparison the most equestrian of nations), that it
is possible to imagine a shade of difference as still distinguishing
the town-bred man from the rustic; though, considering the multiplied
distribution of our assize towns, our cathedral towns, our sea-ports,
and our universities, all so many recurring centres of civility, it is
not very easy to imagine such a thing in an island no larger than ours.
But can any human indulgence be extended to the credulity which assumes
the same possibility as existing for us in the very middle of the
nineteenth century? At a time when every week sees the town banker
drawn from our rural gentry; railway directors in every quarter
transferring themselves indifferently from town to country, from
country to town; lawyers, clergymen, medical men, magistrates, local
judges, &c., all shifting in and out between town and country; rural
families all intermarrying on terms of the widest freedom with town
families; all again, in the persons of their children, meeting for
study at the same schools, colleges, military academies, &c.; by what
furious forgetfulness of the realities belonging to the case, has it
been possible for writers in public journals to persist in arguing
national questions upon the assumption of a bisection in our
population--a double current, on the one side steeped to the lips in
town prejudices, on the other side traditionally sold to rustic views
and doctrines? Such double currents, like the Rhone flowing through the
Lake of Geneva, and yet refusing to intermingle, probably _did_
exist, and had an important significance in the Low Countries of the
fifteenth century, or between the privileged cities and the
unprivileged country of Germany down to the Thirty Years' War; but, for
us, they are in the last degree fabulous distinctions, pure fairy
tales; and the social economist or the historian who builds on such
phantoms as that of a rustic aristocracy still retaining any
substantial grounds of distinction from the town aristocracies,
proclaims the hollowness of any and all his doctrines that depend upon
such assumptions. Lord Carbery was a thorough fox-hunter. The fox-
hunting of the adjacent county of Leicestershire was not then what it
is now. The state of the land was radically different for the foot of
the horse, the nature and distribution of the fences was different; so
that a class of horses thoroughly different was then required. But
then, as now, it offered the finest exhibition of the fox-chase that is
known in Europe; and then, as now, this is the best adapted among all
known varieties of hunting to the exhibition of adventurous and skilful
riding, and generally, perhaps, to the development of manly and
athletic qualities. Lord Carbery, during the season, might be
immoderately addicted to this mode of sporting, having naturally a
pleasurable feeling connected with his own reputation as a skilful and
fearless horseman. But, though the chases were in those days longer
than they are at present, small was the amount of time really
abstracted from that which he had disposable for general purposes;
amongst which purposes ranked foremost his literary pursuits. And,
however much he transcended the prevailing conception of his order, as
sketched by satiric and often ignorant novelists, he might be regarded,
in all that concerned the liberalization of his views, as pretty fairly
representing that order. Thus, through every _real_ experience,
the crazy notion of a rural aristocracy flowing apart from the urban
aristocracy, and standing on a different level of culture as to
intellect, of polish as to manners, and of interests as to social
objects, a notion at all times false as a fact, now at length became
with all thoughtful men monstrous as a possibility.

Meantime Lord Massey was reached by reports, both through Lady Carbery
and myself, of something which interested him more profoundly than all
earthly records of horsemanship, or any conceivable questions connected
with books. Lady Carbery, with a view to the amusement of Lady Massey
and my sister, for both of whom youth and previous seclusion had
created a natural interest in all such scenes, accepted two or three
times in every week dinner invitations to all the families on her
visiting list, and lying within her winter circle, which was measured,
by a radius of about seventeen miles. For, dreadful as were the roads
in those days, when the Bath, the Bristol, or the Dover mail was
equally perplexed oftentimes to accomplish Mr. Palmer's rate of seven
miles an hour, a distance of seventeen was yet easily accomplished in
one hundred minutes by the powerful Laxton horses. Magnificent was the
Laxton turn-out; and in the roomy travelling coach of Lady Carbery,
made large enough to receive upon occasion even a bed, it would have
been an idle scruple to fear the crowding a party which mustered only
three besides myself. For Lord Massey uniformly declined joining us; in
which I believe that he was right. A schoolboy like myself had
fortunately no dignity to lose. But Lord Massey, a needy Irish peer
(or, strictly speaking, since the Union no peer at all, though still an
hereditary lord), was bound to be trebly vigilant over his surviving
honors. This he owed to his country as well as to his family. He
recoiled from what he figured to himself (but too often falsely
figured) as the haughty and disdainful English nobility---all so rich,
all so polished in manner, all so punctiliously correct in the ritual
of _bienséance_. Lord Carbery might face them gayly and boldly:
for _he_ was rich, and, although possessing Irish estates and an
Irish mansion, was a thorough Englishman by education and early
association. "But I," said Lord Massey, "had a careless Irish
education, and am never quite sure that I may not be trespassing on
some mysterious law of English good-breeding." In vain I suggested to
him that most of what passed amongst foreigners and amongst Irishmen
for English _hauteur_ was pure reserve, which, among all people
that were bound over by the inevitable restraints of their rank
(imposing, it must be remembered, jealous duties as well as
privileges), was sure to become the operative feeling. I contended that
in the English situation there was no escaping this English reserve,
except by great impudence and defective sensibility; and that, if
examined, reserve was the truest expression of respect towards those
who were its objects. In vain did Lady Carbery back me in this
representation. He stood firm, and never once accompanied us to any
dinner-party. Northamptonshire, I know not why, is (or then was) more
thickly sown with aristocratic families than any in the kingdom. Many
elegant and pretty women there naturally were in these parties; but
undoubtedly our two Laxton baronesses shone advantageously amongst
them. A boy like myself could lay no restraint upon the after-dinner
feelings of the gentlemen; and almost uniformly I heard such verdicts
passed upon the personal attractions of both, but especially Lady
Massey, as tended greatly to soothe the feelings of Lord Massey. It is
singular that Lady Massey universally carried off the palm of unlimited
homage. Lady Carbery was a regular beauty, and publicly known for such;
both were fine figures, and apparently not older than twenty-six; but
in her Irish friend people felt something more thoroughly artless and
feminine--for the masculine understanding of Lady Carbery in some way
communicated its commanding expression to her deportment. I reported to
Lord Massey, in terms of unexceptionable decorum, those flattering
expressions of homage, which sometimes from the lips of young men,
partially under the influence of wine, had taken a form somewhat too
enthusiastic for a literal repetition to a chivalrous and adoring
husband.

Meantime, the reader has been kept long enough at Laxton to warrant me
in presuming some curiosity or interest to have gathered within his
mind about the mistress of the mansion. Who was Lady Carbery? what was
her present position, and what had been her original position, in
society? All readers of Bishop Jeremy Taylor [Footnote: The Life of
Jeremy Taylor, by Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta, is most
elaborately incorrect. From want of research, and a chronology in some
places thoroughly erroneous, various important facts are utterly
misstated; and what is most to be regretted, in a matter deeply
affecting the bishop's candor and Christian charity, namely, a
controversial correspondence with a Somersetshire Dissenting clergyman,
the wildest misconception has vitiated the entire result. That
fractional and splintered condition, into which some person had cut up
the controversy with a view to his own more convenient study of its
chief elements, Heber had misconceived as the actual form in which
these parts had been originally exchanged between the disputants--a
blunder of the worst consequence, and having the effect of translating
general expressions (such as recorded a moral indignation against
ancient fallacies or evasions connected with the dispute) into direct
ebullitions of scorn or displeasure personally against his immediate
antagonist. And the charge of intolerance and defective charity becomes
thus very much stronger against the poor bishop, because it takes the
shape of a confession extorted by mere force of truth from an else
reluctant apologist, that would most gladly have denied everything that
he _could_ deny. The Life needs more than ever to be accurately
written, since it has been thus chaotically mis-narrated by a prelate
of so much undeniable talent. I once began a very elaborate life
myself, and in these words: "Jeremy Taylor, the most eloquent and the
subtlest of Christian philosophers, was the son of a barber, and the
son-in-law of a king,"--alluding to the tradition (imperfectly
verified, I believe) that he married an illegitimate daughter of
Charles I. But this sketch was begun more than thirty years ago; and I
retired from the labor as too overwhelmingly exacting in all that
related to the philosophy and theology of that man 80 "myriad-minded,"
and of that century so anarchical.] must be aware of that religious
Lady Carbery, who was the munificent (and, for her kindness, one might
say the filial) patroness of the all-eloquent and subtle divine. She
died before the Restoration, and, consequently, before her spiritual
director could have ascended the Episcopal throne. The title of Carbery
was at that time an earldom; the earl married again, arid his second
countess was also a devout patroness of Taylor. Having no peerage at
hand, I do not know by what mode of derivation the modern title of the
nineteenth century had descended from the old one of the seventeenth. I
presume that some collateral branch of the original family had
succeeded to the barony when the limitations of the original settlement
had extinguished the earldom. But to me, who saw revived another
religious Lady Carbery, distinguished for her beauty and
accomplishments, it was interesting to read of the two successive
ladies who had borne that title one hundred and sixty years before, and
whom no reader of Jeremy Taylor is ever allowed to forget, since almost
all his books are dedicated to one or other of the pious family that
had protected him. Once more there was a religious Lady Carbery,
supporting locally the Church of England, patronizing schools,
diffusing the most extensive relief to every mode of indigence or
distress. A century and a half ago such a Lady Carbery was in South
Wales, at the "Golden Grove;" now such another Lady Carbery was in
central England, at Laxton. The two cases, divided by six generations,
interchanged a reciprocal interest, since in both cases it was young
ladies, under the age of thirty, that originated the movement, and in
both cases these ladies bore the same title; and I will therefore
retrace rapidly the outline of that contemporary case so familiarly
known to myself.

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