Autobiographic Sketches Part 6

"No craving void left aching in the breast")

_an aching void_; and the nephew, Dr. Arthur Aikin, by way of variety, _a void aching_; whilst Mrs. Barbault he designated as _that pleonasm of nakedness_; since, as if it were not enough to be _bare_, she was also _bald_.

[5] "_Murderous_;" for it was his intention to leave Aladdin immurred in the subterraneous chambers.

[6] The reader will not understand me as attributing to the Arabian originator of Aladdin all the sentiment of the case as I have endeavored to disentangle it. He spoke what he did not understand; for, as to sentiment of any kind, all Orientals are obtuse and impa.s.sive. There are other sublimities (some, at least) in the "Arabian Nights," which first become such--a gas that first kindles--when entering into combination with new elements in a Christian atmosphere.

CHAPTER IV.

THE FEMALE INFIDEL.

At the time of my father's death, I was nearly seven years old. In the next four years, during which we continued to live at Greenhay, nothing memorable occurred, except, indeed, that troubled parenthesis in my life which connected me with my brother William,--this certainly was memorable to myself,--and, secondly, the visit of a most eccentric young woman, who, about nine years later, drew the eyes of all England upon herself by her unprincipled conduct in an affair affecting the life of two Oxonian undergraduates. She was the daughter of Lord Le Despencer, (known previously as Sir Francis Dashwood;) and at this time (meaning the time of her visit to Greenhay) she was about twenty-two years old, with a face and a figure cla.s.sically beautiful, and with the reputation of extraordinary accomplishments; these accomplishments being not only eminent in their degree, but rare and interesting in their kind. In particular, she astonished every person by her _impromptu_ performances on the organ, and by her powers of disputation. These last she applied entirely to attacks upon Christianity; for she openly professed infidelity in the most audacious form; and at my mother's table she certainly proved more than a match for all the clergymen of the neighboring towns, some of whom (as the most intellectual persons of that neighborhood) were daily invited to meet her. It was a mere accident which had introduced her to my mother's house. Happening to hear from my sister Mary's governess [1] that she and her pupil were going on a visit to an old Catholic family in the county of Durham, (the family of Mr. Swinburne, who was known advantageously to the public by his "Travels in Spain and Sicily," &c.,) Mrs. Lee, whose education in a French convent, aided by her father's influence, had introduced her extensively to the knowledge of Catholic families in England land, and who had herself an invitation to the same house at the same time, wrote to offer the use of her carriage to convey all three--_i.e._, herself, my sister, and her governess--to Mr. Swinburne's.

This naturally drew forth from my mother an invitation to Greenhay; and to Greenhay she came. On the imperial of her carriage, and else-where, she described herself as the _Hon._ Antonina Dashwood Lee. But, in fact, being only the illegitimate daughter of Lord Le Despencer, she was not ent.i.tled to that designation. She had, however, received a bequest even more enviable from her father, viz., not less than forty-five thousand pounds. At a very early age, she had married a young Oxonian, distinguished for nothing but a very splendid person, which had procured him the distinguishing t.i.tle of _Handsome Lee;_ and from him she had speedily separated, on the agreement of dividing the fortune.

My mother little guessed what sort of person it was whom she had asked into her family. So much, however, she had understood from Miss Wesley--that Mrs. Lee was a bold thinker; and that, for a woman, she had an astonishing command of theological learning. This it was that suggested the clerical invitations, as in such a case likely to furnish the most appropriate society. But this led to a painful result. It might easily have happened that a very learned clergyman should not specially have qualified himself for the service of a theological tournament; and my mother's range of acquaintance was not very extensive amongst the clerical body. But of these the two leaders, as regarded public consideration, were Mr. H----, my guardian, and Mr. Clowes, who for more than fifty years officiated as rector of St. John's Church in Manchester. In fact, the _golden_ [2] jubilee of his pastoral connection with St. John's was celebrated many years after with much demonstrative expression of public sympathy on the part of universal Manchester--the most important city in the island next after London. No men could have been found who were less fitted to act as champions in a duel on behalf of Christianity. Mr. H---- was dreadfully commonplace; dull, dreadfully dull; and, by the necessity of his nature, incapable of being in deadly earnest, which his splendid antagonist at all times was.

His encounter, therefore, with Mrs. Lee presented the distressing spectacle of an old, toothless, mumbling mastiff, fighting for the household to which he owed allegiance against a young leopardess fresh from the forests. Every touch from _her_, every velvety pat, drew blood.

And something comic mingled with what my mother felt to be paramount tragedy. Far different was Mr. Clowes: holy, visionary, apostolic, he could not be treated disrespectfully. No man could deny him a qualified homage. But for any polemic service he wanted the taste, the training, and the particular sort of erudition required. Neither would such advantages, if he had happened to possess them, have at all availed him in a case like this. Horror, blank horror, seized him upon seeing a woman, a young woman, a woman of captivating beauty, whom G.o.d had adorned so eminently with gifts of person and of mind, breathing sentiments that to him seemed fresh from the mintage of h.e.l.l. He could have apostrophized her (as long afterwards he himself told me) in the words of Shakspeare's Juliet--

"Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!"

for he was one of those who never think of Christianity as the subject of defence. Could sunshine, could light, could the glories of the dawn call for defence? Not as a thing to be defended, but as a thing to be interpreted, as a thing to be illuminated, did Christianity exist for _him_. He, therefore, was even more unserviceable as a champion against the deliberate impeacher of Christian evidences than my reverend guardian.

Thus it was that he himself explained his own position in after days, when I had reached my sixteenth year, and visited him upon terms of friendship as close as can ever have existed between a boy and a man already gray headed. Him and his noiseless parsonage, the pensive abode for sixty years of religious revery and anchoritish self-denial, I have described farther on. In some limited sense he belongs to our literature, for he was, in fact, the introducer of Swedenborg to this country; as being himself partially the translator of Swedenborg; and still more as organizing a patronage to other people's translations; and also, I believe, as republishing the original Latin works of Swedenborg. To say _that_ of Mr. Clowes, was, until lately, but another way of describing him as a delirious dreamer. At present, (1853,) I presume the reader to be aware that Cambridge has, within the last few years, unsettled and even revolutionized our estimates of Swedenborg as a philosopher. That man, indeed, whom Emerson ranks as one amongst his inner consistory of intellectual potentates cannot be the absolute trifler that Kant, (who knew him only by the most trivial of his pretensions,) eighty years ago, supposed him. a.s.suredly, Mr. Clowes was no trifler, but lived habitually a life of power, though in a world of religious mysticism and of apocalyptic visions. To him, being such a man by nature and by habit, it was in effect the lofty Lady Geraldine from Coleridge's "Christabel" that stood before him in this infidel lady. A magnificent witch she was, like the Lady Geraldine; having the same superb beauty; the same power of throwing spells over the ordinary gazer; and yet at intervals unmasking to some solitary, unfascinated spectator the same dull blink of a snaky eye; and revealing, through the most fugitive of gleams, a traitress couchant beneath what else to all others seemed the form of a lady, armed with incomparable pretensions--one that was

"Beautiful exceedingly, Like a lady from a far countrie."

The scene, as I heard it sketched long years afterwards by more than one of those who had witnessed it, was painful in excess. And the shock given to my mother was memorable. For the first and the last time in her long and healthy life, she suffered an alarming nervous attack.

Partly this arose from the conflict between herself in the character of hostess, and herself as a loyal daughter of Christian faith; she shuddered, in a degree almost incontrollable and beyond her power to dissemble, at the unfeminine intrepidity with which "the leopardess"

conducted her a.s.saults upon the sheepfolds of orthodoxy; and partly, also, this internal conflict arose from concern on behalf of her own servants, who waited at dinner, and were inevitably liable to impressions from what they heard. My mother, by original choice, and by early training under a very aristocratic father, recoiled as austerely from all direct communication with her servants as the Pythia at Delphi from the attendants that swept out the temple. But not the less her conscience, in all stages of her life, having or _not_ having any special knowledge of religion, acknowledged a pathetic weight of obligation to remove from her household all confessedly corrupting influences. And here was one which she could not remove. What chiefly she feared, on behalf of her servants, was either, 1st, the danger from the simple _fact_, now suddenly made known to them, that it was possible for a person unusually gifted to deny Christianity; such a denial and haughty abjuration could not but carry itself more profoundly into the reflective mind, even of servants, when the arrow came winged and made buoyant by the gay feathering of so many splendid accomplishments. This general fact was appreciable by those who would forget, and never could have understood, the particular arguments of the infidel. Yet, even as regarded these particular arguments, 2dly, my mother feared that some one--brief, telling, and rememberable--might be singled out from the rest, might transplant itself to the servants'

hall, and take root for life in some mind sufficiently thoughtful to invest it with interest, and yet far removed from any opportunities, through books or society, for disarming the argument of its sting.

Such a danger was quickened by the character and pretensions of Mrs.

Lee's footman, who was a daily witness, whilst standing behind his mistress's chair at dinner, to the confusion which she carried into the hostile camp, and might be supposed to renew such discussions in the servants' hall with singular advantages for a favorable attention.

For he was a showy and most audacious Londoner, and what is _technically_ known in the language of servants' hiring offices as "a man of figure."

He might, therefore, be considered as one dangerously armed for shaking religious principles, especially amongst the female servants. Here, however, I believe that my mother was mistaken. Women of humble station, less than any other cla.s.s, have any tendency to sympathize with boldness that manifests itself in throwing off the yoke of religion. Perhaps a natural instinct tells them that levity of that nature will pretty surely extend itself contagiously to other modes of conscientious obligation; at any rate, my own experience would warrant me in doubting whether any instance were ever known of a woman, in the rank of servant, regarding infidelity or irreligion as something brilliant, or interesting, or in any way as favorably distinguishing a man. Meantime, this conscientious apprehension on account of the servants applied to contingencies that were remote. But the pity on account of the poor lady herself applied to a danger that seemed imminent and deadly. This beautiful and splendid young creature, as my mother knew, was floating, without anchor or knowledge of any anchoring grounds, upon the unfathomable ocean of a London world, which, for _her_, was wrapped in darkness as regarded its dangers, and thus for _her_ the chances of shipwreck were seven times multiplied. It was notorious that Mrs. Lee had no protector or guide, natural or legal. Her marriage had, in fact, instead of imposing new restraints, released her from old ones. For the legal separation of Doctors' Commons--technically called a divorce simply _a mensa et thoro_, (from bed and board,) and not _a vinculo matrimonii_ (from the very tie and obligation of marriage)--had removed her by law from the control of her husband; whilst, at the same time, the matrimonial condition, of course, enlarged that liberty of action which else is unavoidably narrowed by the reserve and delicacy natural to a young woman, whilst yet unmarried. Here arose one peril more; and, 2dly, arose this most unusual aggravation of that peril--that Mrs Lee was deplorably ignorant of English life; indeed, of life universally. Strictly speaking, she was even yet a raw, untutored novice, turned suddenly loose from the twilight of a monastic seclusion. Under any circ.u.mstances, such a situation lay open to an amount of danger that was afflicting to contemplate. But one dreadful exasperation of these fatal auguries lay in the peculiar _temper_ of Mrs. Lee, as connected with her infidel thinking. Her nature was too frank and bold to tolerate any disguise; and my mother's own experience had now taught her that Mrs. Lee would not be content, to leave to the random call of accident the avowal of her principles. No pa.s.sive or latent spirit of freethinking was hers--headlong it was, uncompromising, almost fierce, and regarding no restraints of place or season. Like Sh.e.l.ley, some few years later, whose day she would have gloried to welcome, she looked upon her principles not only as conferring rights, but also as imposing duties of active proselytism. From this feature in her character it was that my mother foresaw an _instant_ evil, which she urged Miss Wesley to press earnestly on her attention, viz., the inevitable alienation of all her female friends. In many parts of the continent (but too much we are all in the habit of calling by the wide name of "the continent,"

France, Germany, Switzerland, and Belgium) my mother was aware that the most flagrant proclamation of infidelity would not stand in the way of a woman's favorable reception into society. But in England, at that time, this was far otherwise. A display such as Mrs. Lee habitually forced upon people's attention would at once have the effect of banishing from her house all women of respectability. She would be thrown upon the society of _men_--bold and reckless, such as either agreed with herself, or, being careless on the whole subject of religion, pretended to do so. Her income, though diminished now by the part.i.tion with Mr. Lee, was still above a thousand per annum; which, though trivial for any purpose of display in a place so costly as London, was still important enough to gather round her unprincipled adventurers, some of whom might be n.o.ble enough to obey no attraction but that which lay in her marble beauty, in her Athenian grace and eloquence, and the wild, impa.s.sioned nature of her accomplishments.

By her acting, her dancing, her conversation, her musical improvisations, she was qualified to attract the most intellectual men; but baser attractions would exist for baser men; and my mother urged Miss Wesley, as one whom Mrs. Lee admitted to her confidence, above all things to act upon her pride by forewarning her that such men, in the midst of lip homage to her charms, would be sure to betray its hollowness by declining to let their wives and daughters visit her. Plead what excuses they would, Mrs. Lee might rely upon it, that the true ground for this insulting absence of female visitors would be found to lie in her profession of infidelity. This alienation of female society would, it was clear, be precipitated enormously by Mrs.

Lee's frankness. A result that might by a dissembling policy have been delayed indefinitely, would now be hurried forward to an immediate crisis. And in this result went to wreck the very best part of Mrs.

Lee's securities against ruin.

It is scarcely necessary to say, that all the evil followed which had been predicted, and through the channels which had been predicted.

Some time was required on so vast a stage as London to publish the facts of Mrs. Lee's free-thinking--that is, to publish it as a matter of systematic purpose. Many persons had at first made a liberal allowance for her, as tempted by some momentary impulse into opinions that she had not sufficiently considered, and might forget as hastily as she had adopted them. But no sooner was it made known as a settled fact, that she had deliberately dedicated her energies to the interests of an anti-Christian system, and that she hated Christianity, than the whole body of her friends within the pale of social respectability fell away from her, and forsook her house. To _them_ succeeded a clique of male visitors, some of whom were doubtfully respectable, and others (like Mr. Frend, memorable for his expulsion from Cambridge on account of his public hostility to Trinitarianism) were distinguished by a tone of intemperate defiance to the spirit of English society. Thrown upon such a circle, and emanc.i.p.ated from all that temper of reserve which would have been impressed upon her by habitual anxiety for the good opinion of virtuous and high-principled women, the poor lady was tempted into an elopement with two dissolute brothers; for what ultimate purpose on either side, was never made clear to the public. Why a lady should elope from her own house, and the protection of her own servants, under whatever impulse, seemed generally unintelligible. But apparently it was precisely this protection from her own servants which presented itself to the brothers in the light of an obstacle to their objects.

What these objects might ultimately be, I do not _entirely_ know; and I do not feel myself authorized, by any thing which of my own knowledge I know, to load either of them with mercenary imputations. One of them (the younger) was, or fancied himself, in love with Mrs. Lee. It was impossible for him to marry her; and possibly he may have fancied that in some rustic retirement, where the parties were unknown, it would be easier than in London to appease the lady's scruples in respect to the sole mode of connection which the law left open to them. The frailty of the will in Mrs. Lee was as manifest in this stage of the case as subsequently, when she allowed herself to be over-clamored by Mr. Lee and his friends into a capital prosecution of the brothers.

After she had once allowed herself to be put into a post chaise, she was persuaded to believe (and such was her ignorance of English society, that possibly she _did_ believe) herself through the rest of the journey liable at any moment to summary coercion in the case of attempting any resistance. The brothers and herself left London in the evening.

Consequently, it was long after midnight when the party halted at a town in Gloucestershire, two stages beyond Oxford. The younger gentleman then persuaded her, but (as she alleged) under the impression on her part that resistance was unavailing, and that the injury to her reputation was by this time irreparable, to allow of his coming to her bed room. This was perhaps not entirely a fraudulent representation in Mrs. Lee. The whole circ.u.mstances of the case made it clear, that, with any decided opening for deliverance, she would have caught at it; and probably would again, from wavering of mind, have dallied with the danger.

Perhaps at this point, having already in this last paragraph shot ahead by some nine years of the period when she visited Greenhay, allowing myself this license in order to connect my mother's warning through Miss Wesley with the practical sequel of the case, it may be as well for me to pursue the arrears of the story down to its final incident.

In 1804, at the Lent a.s.sizes for the county of Oxford, she appeared as princ.i.p.al witness against two brothers, L--t G--n, and L--n G--n, on a capital charge of having forcibly carried her off from her own house in London, and afterwards of having, at some place in Gloucestershire, by collusion with each other and by terror, enabled one of the brothers to offer the last violence to her person. The circ.u.mstantial accounts published at the time by the newspapers were of a nature to conciliate the public sympathy altogether to the prisoners; and the general belief accorded with what was, no doubt, the truth--that the lady had been driven into a false accusation by the overpowering remonstrances of her friends, joined, in this instance, by her husband, all of whom were willing to believe, or willing to have it believed by the public, that advantage had been taken of her little acquaintance with English usages. I was present at the trial.

The court opened at eight o'clock in the morning; and such was the interest in the case, that a mob, composed chiefly of gownsmen, besieged the doors for some time before the moment of admission. On this occasion, by the way, I witnessed a remarkable ill.u.s.tration of the profound obedience which Englishmen under all circ.u.mstances pay to the law. The constables, for what reason I do not know, were very numerous and very violent. Such of us as happened to have gone in our academic dress had our caps smashed in two by the constables' staves; _why_, it might be difficult for the officers to say, as none of us were making any tumult, nor had any motive for doing so, unless by way of retaliation. Many of these constables were bargemen or petty tradesmen, who in their ex-official character had often been engaged in rows with undergraduates, and usually had had the worst of it. At present, in the service of the blindfold G.o.ddess, these equitable men were no doubt taking out their vengeance for past favors. But under all this wanton display of violence, the gownsmen practised the severest forbearance.

The pressure from behind made it impossible to forbear pressing ahead; crushed, you were obliged to crush; but, beyond that, there was no movement or gesture on our part to give any colorable warrant to the brutality of the officers. For nearly a whole hour, I saw this expression of reverence to the law triumphant over all provocations.

It may be presumed, that, to prompt so much crowding, there must have been some commensurate interest. There was so, but that interest was not at all in Mrs. Lee. She was entirely unknown; and even by reputation or rumor, from so vast a wilderness as London, neither her beauty nor her intellectual pretensions had travelled down to Oxford. Possibly, in each section of 300 men, there might be one individual whom accident had brought acquainted, as it had myself, with her extraordinary endowments. But the general and academic interest belonged exclusively to the accused. They were both Oxonians--one belonging to University College, and the other, perhaps, to Baliol; and, as they had severally taken the degree of A. B., which implies a residence of _at least_ three years, they were pretty extensively known. But, known or not known personally, in virtue of the _esprit de corps_, the accused parties would have benefited in any case by a general brotherly interest. Over and above which, there was in this case the interest attached to an almost unintelligible accusation. A charge of personal violence, under the roof of a respectable English posting house, occupied always by a responsible master and mistress, and within call at every moment of numerous servants,--what could that mean? And, again, when it became understood that this violence was alleged to have realized itself under a delusion, under a preoccupation of the victim's mind, that resistance to it was hopeless, how, and under what profound ignorance of English society, had such a preoccupation been possible? To the accused, and to the incomprehensible accusation, therefore, belonged the whole weight of the interest; and it was a very secondary interest indeed, and purely as a reflex interest from the main one, which awaited the prosecutress. And yet, though so little curiosity "awaited" her, it happened of necessity that, within a few moments after her first coming forward in the witness box, she had created a separate one for herself--first, through her impressive appearance; secondly, through the appalling coolness of her answers.

The trial began, I think, about nine o'clock in the morning; and, as some time was spent on the examination of Mrs. Lee's servants, of postilions, hostlers, &c., in pursuing the traces of the affair from London to a place seventy miles north of London, it was probably about eleven in the forenoon before the prosecutress was summoned. My heart throbbed a little as the court lulled suddenly into the deep stillness of expectation, when that summons was heard: "Rachael Frances Antonina Dashwood Lee" resounded through all the pa.s.sages; and immediately in an adjoining anteroom, through which she was led by her attorney, for the purpose of evading the mob that surrounded the public approaches, we heard her advancing steps. Pitiable was the humiliation expressed by her carriage, as she entered the witness box. Pitiable was the change, the world of distance, between this faltering and dejected accuser, and that wild leopardess that had once worked her pleasure amongst the sheepfolds of Christianity, and had cuffed my poor guardian so unrelentingly, right and left, front and rear, when he attempted the feeblest of defences. However, she was not long exposed to the searching gaze of the court and the trying embarra.s.sments of her situation. A single question brought the whole investigation to a close. Mrs. Lee had been sworn. After a few questions, she was suddenly asked by the counsel for the defence whether she believed in the Christian religion? Her answer was brief and peremptory, without distinction or circ.u.mlocution--_No_. Or, perhaps, not in G.o.d? Again she replied, _No_; and again her answer was prompt and _sans phrase_.

Upon this the judge declared that he could not permit the trial to proceed. The jury had heard what the witness said: she only could give evidence upon the capital part of the charge; and she had openly incapacitated herself before the whole court. The jury instantly acquitted the prisoners. In the course of the day I left my name at Mrs. Lee's lodgings; but her servant a.s.sured me that she was too much agitated to see any body till the evening. At the hour a.s.signed I called again. It was dusk, and a mob had a.s.sembled. At the moment I came up to the door, a lady was issuing, m.u.f.fled up, and in some measure disguised. It was Mrs. Lee. At the corner of an adjacent street a post chaise was drawn up. Towards this, under the protection of the attorney who had managed her case, she made her way as eagerly as possible.

Before she could reach it, however, she was detected; a savage howl was raised, and a rush made to seize her. Fortunately, a body of gownsmen formed round her, so as to secure her from personal a.s.sault: they put her rapidly into the carriage; and then, joining the mob in their hootings, sent off the horses at a gallop. Such was the mode of her exit from Oxford.

Subsequently to this painful collision with Mrs. Lee at the Oxford a.s.sizes, I heard nothing of her for many years, excepting only this--that she was residing in the family of an English clergyman distinguished for his learning and piety. This account gave great pleasure to my mother--not only as implying some chance that Mrs. Lee might be finally reclaimed from her unhappy opinions, but also as a proof that, in submitting to a rustication so mortifying to a woman of her brilliant qualifications, she must have fallen under some influences more promising for her respectability and happiness than those which had surrounded her in London. Finally, we saw by the public journals that she had written and published a book. The t.i.tle I forget; but by its subject it was connected with political or social philosophy.

And one eminent testimony to its merit I myself am able to allege, viz., Wordsworth's. Singular enough it seems, that he who read so very little of modern literature, in fact, next to nothing, should be the sole critic and reporter whom I have happened to meet upon Mrs. Lee's work. But so it was: accident had thrown the book in his way during one of his annual visits to London, and a second time at Lowther Castle.

He paid to Mrs. Lee a compliment which certainly he paid to no other of her contemporaries, viz., that of reading her book very nearly to the end; and he spoke of it repeatedly as distinguished for vigor and originality of thought.

FOOTNOTES

[1] "_My sister Mary's governess_."--This governess was a Miss Wesley, niece to John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. And the mention of _her_ recalls to me a fact, which was recently revived and misstated by the whole newspaper press of the island. It had been always known that some relationship existed between the Wellesleys and John Wesley. Their names had, in fact, been originally the same; and the Duke of Wellington himself, in the earlier part of his career, when sitting in the Irish House of Commons, was always known to the Irish journals as Captain Wesley. Upon this arose a natural belief that the aristocratic branch of the house had improved the name into Wellesley. But the true process of change had been precisely the other way. Not Wesley had been expanded into Wellesley, but, inversely, Wellesley had been contracted by household usage into Wesley. The name must have been _Wellesley_ in its earliest stage, since it was founded upon a connection with Wells Cathedral, It had obeyed the same process as prevails in many hundreds of other names: St. Leger, for instance, is always p.r.o.nounced as if written Sillinger; Cholmondeley as Chumleigh; Marjoribanks as Marchbanks; and the ill.u.s.trious name of Cavendish was for centuries familiarly p.r.o.nounced Candish; and Wordsworth has even introduced this name into verse so as to compel the reader, by a metrical coercion, into calling it Candish. Miss Wesley's family had great musical sensibility and skill. This led the family into giving musical parties, at which was constantly to be found Lord Mornington, the father of the Duke of Wellington. For these parties it was, as Miss Wesley informed me, that the earl composed his most celebrated glee.

Here also it was, or in similar musical circles gathered about himself by the first Lord Mornington, that the Duke of Wellington had formed and cultivated his unaffected love for music of the highest cla.s.s, _i.e._, for the impa.s.sioned music of the serious opera. And it occurs to me as highly probable, that Mrs. Lee's connection with the Wesleys, through which it was that she became acquainted with my mother, must have rested upon the common interest which she and the Wesleys had in the organ and in the cla.s.s of music suited to that instrument. Mrs. Lee herself was an improvisatrice of the first cla.s.s upon the organ; and the two brothers of Miss Wesley, Samuel and Charles, ranked for very many years as the first organists in Europe.

[2] "_The golden jubilee_."--This, in Germany, is used popularly as a technical expression: a married couple, when celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of their marriage day, are said to keep their _golden_ jubilee; but on the twenty-fifth anniversary they have credit only for a _silver_ jubilee.

CHAPTER V.

I AM INTRODUCED TO THE WARFARE OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL.

Four years after my father's death, it began to be perceived that there was no purpose to be answered in any longer keeping up the costly establishment of Greenhay. A head gardener, besides laborers equal to at least two more, were required for the grounds and gardens. And no motive existed any longer for being near to a great trading town, so long after the commercial connection with it had ceased. Bath seemed, on all accounts, the natural station for a person in my mother's situation; and thither, accordingly, she went. I, who had been placed under the tuition of one of my guardians, remained some time longer under his care. I was then transferred to Bath. During this interval the sale of the house and grounds took place. It may ill.u.s.trate the subject of _guardianship_, and the ordinary execution of its duties, to mention the result. The year was in itself a year of great depression, and every way unfavorable to such a transaction; and the particular night for which the sale had been fixed turned out remarkably wet; yet no attempt was made to postpone it, and it proceeded.

Originally the house and grounds had cost about 6000. I have heard that only one offer was made, viz., of 2500. Be that as it may, for the sum of 2500 it was sold; and I have been often a.s.sured that, by waiting a few years, four to six times that sum might have been obtained with ease. This is not improbable, as the house was then out in the country; but since then the town of Manchester has gathered round it and enveloped it. Meantime, my guardians were all men of honor and integrity; but their hands were filled with their own affairs. One (my tutor) was a clergyman, rector of a church, and having his parish, his large family, and three pupils to attend. He was, besides, a very sedentary and indolent man--loving books, hating business. Another was a merchant. A third was a country magistrate, overladen with official business: him we rarely saw. Finally, the fourth was a banker in a distant county, having more knowledge of the world, more energy, and more practical wisdom than all the rest united, but too remote for interfering effectually.

Reflecting upon the evils which befell me, and the gross mismanagement, under my guardians, of my small fortune, and that of my brothers and sisters, it has often occurred to me that so important an office, which, from the time of Demosthenes, has been proverbially maladministered, ought to be put upon a new footing, plainly guarded by a few obvious provisions. As under the Roman laws, for a long period, the guardian should be made responsible in law, and should give security from the first for the due performance of his duties. But, to give him a motive for doing this, of course he must be paid. With the new obligations and liabilities will commence commensurate emoluments. If a child is made a ward in Chancery, its property is managed expensively, but always advantageously. Some great change is imperatively called for--no duty in the whole compa.s.s of human life being so scandalously treated as this.

In my twelfth year it was that first of all I entered upon the arena of a great public school, viz., the Grammar School [1] of Bath, over which at that time presided a most accomplished Etonian--Mr. (or was he as yet Doctor?) Morgan. If he was not, I am sure he ought to have been; and, with the reader's concurrence, will therefore create him a doctor on the spot. Every man has reason to rejoice who enjoys the advantage of a public training. I condemned, and _do_ condemn, the practice of sending out into such stormy exposures those who are as yet too young, too dependent on female gentleness, and endowed with sensibilities originally too exquisite for such a warfare. But at nine or ten the masculine energies of the character are beginning to develop themselves; or, if not, no discipline will better aid in their development than the bracing intercourse of a great English cla.s.sical school. Even the selfish are _there_ forced into accommodating themselves to a public standard of generosity, and the effeminate in conforming to a rule of manliness.

I was myself at two public schools, and I think with grat.i.tude of the benefits which I reaped from both; as also I think with grat.i.tude of that guardian in whose quiet household I learned Latin so effectually.

But the small private schools, of which I had opportunities for gathering some brief experience,--schools containing thirty to forty boys,--were models of ign.o.ble manners as regarded part of the juniors, and of favoritism as regarded the masters. Nowhere is the sublimity of public justice so broadly exemplified as in an English public school on the old Edward the Sixth or Elizabeth foundation. There is not in the universe such an Areopagus for fair play, and abhorrence of all crooked ways, as an English mob, or one of the time-honored English "foundation" schools. But my own first introduction to such an establishment was under peculiar and contradictory circ.u.mstances. When my "rating," or graduation in the school, was to be settled, naturally my alt.i.tude (to speak astronomically) was taken by my proficiency in Greek. But here I had no advantage over others of my age. My guardian was a feeble Grecian, and had not excited my ambition; so that I could barely construe books as easy as the Greek Testament and the Iliad.

This was considered quite well enough for my age; but still it caused me to be placed under the care of Mr. Wilkins, the second master out of four, and not under Dr. Morgan himself. Within one month, however, my talent for Latin verses, which had by this time gathered strength and expansion, became known. Suddenly I was honored as never was man or boy since Mordecai the Jew. Without any colorable relation to the doctor's jurisdiction, I was now weekly paraded for distinction at the supreme tribunal of the school; out of which, at first, grew nothing but a sunshine of approbation delightful to my heart. Within six weeks all this had changed. The approbation indeed continued, and the public expression of it. Neither would there, in the ordinary course, have been any painful reaction from jealousy, or fretful resistance, to the soundness of my pretensions; since it was sufficiently known to such of my school-fellows as stood on my own level in the school, that I, who had no male relatives but military men, and those in India, could not have benefited by any clandestine aid. But, unhappily, Dr. Morgan was at that time dissatisfied with some points in the progress of his head cla.s.s; [2] and, as it soon appeared, was continually throwing in their teeth the brilliancy of my verses at eleven or twelve, by comparison with theirs at seventeen, eighteen, and even nineteen. I had observed him sometimes pointing to myself, and was perplexed at seeing this gesture followed by gloomy looks, and what French reporters call "sensation," in these young men, whom naturally I viewed with awe as my leaders--boys that were called young men, men that were reading Sophocles, (a name that carried with it the sound of something seraphic to my ears,) and who had never vouchsafed to waste a word on such a child as myself. The day was come, however, when all that would be changed. One of these leaders strode up to me in the public playground, and, delivering a blow on my shoulder, which was not intended to hurt me, but as a mere formula of introduction, asked me "what the devil I meant by bolting out of the course, and annoying other people in that manner. Were 'other people' to have no rest for me and my verses, which, after all, were horribly bad?" There might have been some difficulty in returning an answer to this address, but none was required. I was briefly admonished to see that I wrote worse for the future, or else----. At this _aposiopesis_ I looked inquiringly at the speaker, and he filled up the chasm by saying that he would "annihilate" me. Could any person fail to be aghast at such a demand? I was to write worse than my own standard, which, by his account of my verses, must be difficult; and I was to write worse than himself, which might be impossible. My feelings revolted against so arrogant a demand, unless it had been far otherwise expressed; if death on the spot had awaited me, I could not have controlled myself; and on the next occasion for sending up verses to the head master, so far from attending to the orders issued, I double-shotted my guns; double applause descended on myself; but I remarked with some awe, though not repenting of what I had done, that double confusion seemed to agitate the ranks of my enemies. Amongst them loomed out in the distance my "annihilating" friend, who shook his huge fist at me, but with something like a grim smile about his eyes. He took an early opportunity of paying his respects to me again, saying, "You little devil, do you call this writing your worst?" "No,"

I replied; "I call it writing my best." The annihilator, as it turned out, was really a good-natured young man; but he was on the wing for Cambridge; and with the rest, or some of them, I continued to wage war for more than a year. And yet, for a word spoken with kindness, how readily I would have resigned (had it been altogether at my own choice to do so) the peac.o.c.k's feather in my cap as the merest of bawbles. Undoubtedly, praise sounded sweet in _my_ ears also; but that was nothing by comparison with what stood on the other side. I detested distinctions that were connected with mortification to others; and, even if I could have got over _that_, the eternal feud fretted and tormented my nature. Love, that once in childhood had been so mere a necessity to me, _that_ had long been a reflected ray from a departed sunset. But peace, and freedom from strife, if love were no longer possible, (as so rarely it is in this world,) was the clamorous necessity of my nature. To contend with somebody was still my fate; how to escape the contention I could not see; and yet, for itself, and for the deadly pa.s.sions into which it forced me, I hated and loathed it more than death. It added to the distraction and internal feud of my mind, that I could not _altogether_ condemn the upper boys. I was made a handle of humiliation to them. And, in the mean time, if I had an undeniable advantage in one solitary accomplishment, which is all a matter of accident, or sometimes of peculiar direction given to the taste, they, on the other hand, had a great advantage over me in the more elaborate difficulties of Greek and of choral Greek poetry. I could not altogether wonder at their hatred of myself. Yet still, as they had chosen to adopt this mode of conflict with me, I did not feel that I had any choice but to resist. The contest was terminated for me by my removal from the school, in consequence of a very threatening illness affecting my head; but it lasted more than a year, and it did not close before several among my public enemies had become my private friends. They were much older, but they invited me to the houses of their friends, and showed me a respect which affected me--this respect having more reference, apparently, to the firmness I had exhibited, than to any splendor in my verses. And, indeed, these had rather drooped from a natural accident; several persons of my own cla.s.s had formed the practice of asking me to write verses for _them_. I could not refuse. But, as the subjects given out were the same for the entire cla.s.s, it was not possible to take so many crops off the ground without starving the quality of all.

The most interesting public event which, during my stay at this school, at all connected itself with Bath, and indeed with the school itself, was the sudden escape of Sir Sidney Smith from the prison of the Temple in Paris. The mode of his escape was as striking as its time was critical. Having accidently thrown a ball beyond the prison bounds in playing at tennis, or some such game, Sir Sidney was surprised to observe that the ball thrown back was not the same. Fortunately, he had the presence of mind to dissemble his sudden surprise. He retired, examined the ball, found it stuffed with letters; and, in the same way, he subsequently conducted a long correspondence, and arranged the whole circ.u.mstances of his escape; which, remarkably enough, was accomplished exactly eight days before the sailing of Napoleon with the Egyptian expedition; so that Sir Sidney was just in time to confront, and utterly to defeat, Napoleon in the breach of Acre. But for Sir Sidney, Bonaparte would have overrun Syria, _that_ is certain.

What would have followed from that event is a far more obscure problem.

Sir Sidney Smith, I must explain to readers of this generation, and Sir Edward Pellew, (afterwards Lord Exmouth,) figured as the two [3] Paladins of the first war with revolutionary France. Rarely were these two names mentioned but in connection with some splendid, prosperous, and unequal contest. Hence the whole nation was saddened by the account of Sir Sidney's capture; and this must be understood, in order to make the joy of his sudden return perfectly intelligible. Not even a rumor of Sir Sidney's escape had or could have run before him; for, at the moment of reaching the coast of England, he had started with post horses to Bath. It was about dusk when he arrived: the postilions were directed to the square in which his mother lived: in a few minutes he was in his mother's arms, and in fifty minutes more the news had flown to the remotest suburb of the city. The agitation of Bath on this occasion was indescribable. All the troops of the line then quartered in that city, and a whole regiment of volunteers, immediately got under arms, and marched to the quarter in which Sir Sidney lived. The small square overflowed with the soldiery; Sir Sidney went out, and was immediately lost to us, who were watching for him, in the closing ranks of the troops. Next morning, however, I, my younger brother, and a school-fellow of my own age, called formally upon the naval hero. _Why_, I know not, unless as _alumni_ of the school at which Sir Sidney Smith had received his own education, we were admitted without question or demur; and I may record it as an amiable trait in Sir Sidney, that he received us then with great kindness, and took us down with him to the pump room. Considering, however, that we must have been most afflicting bores to Sir Sidney,--a fact which no self-esteem could even then disguise from us,--it puzzled me at first to understand the principle of his conduct. Having already done more than enough in courteous acknowledgment of our fraternal claims as fellow-students at the Bath Grammar School, why should he think it necessary to burden himself further with our worshipful society? I found out the secret, and will explain it. A very slight attention to Sir Sidney's deportment in public revealed to me that he was morbidly afflicted with nervous sensibility and with _mauvaise honte_. He that had faced so cheerfully crowds of hostile and threatening eyes, could not support without trepidation those gentle eyes, beaming with gracious admiration, of his fair young countrywomen. By accident, at that moment Sir Sidney had no acquaintances in Bath, [4] a fact which is not at all to be wondered at. Living so much abroad and at sea, an English sailor, of whatever rank, has few opportunities for making friends at home. And yet there was a necessity that Sir Sidney should gratify the public interest, so warmly expressed, by presenting himself somewhere or other to the public eye.

But how trying a service to the most practised and otherwise most callous veteran on such an occasion, that he should step forward, saying in effect, "So you are wanting to see me: well, then, here I am: come and look at me!" Put it into what language you please, such a summons was written on all faces, and countersigned by his worship the mayor, who began to whisper insinuations of riots if Sir Sidney did not comply. Yet, if he _did_, inevitably his own act of obedience to the public pleasure took the shape of an ostentatious self-parading under the construction of those numerous persons who knew nothing of the public importunity, or of Sir Sidney's unaffected and even morbid reluctance to obtrude himself upon the public eye. The thing was unavoidable; and the sole palliation that it admitted was--to break the concentration of the public gaze, by a.s.sociating Sir Sidney with some alien group, no matter of what cattle. Such a group would relieve both parties--gazer and gazee--from too distressing a consciousness of the little business on which they had met. We, the schoolboys, being three, intercepted and absorbed part of the enemy's fire, and, by furnishing Sir Sidney with real _bona fide_ matter of conversation, we released him from the most distressing part of his sufferings, viz., the pa.s.sive and silent acquiescence in his own apotheosis--holding a lighted candle, as it were, to the glorification of his own shrine.

With our help, he weathered the storm of homage silently ascending.

And we, in fact, whilst seeming to ourselves too undeniably a triad of bores, turned out the most serviceable allies that Sir Sidney ever had by land or sea, until several moons later, when he formed the invaluable acquaintance of the Syrian "butcher," viz., Djezzar, the Pacha of Acre. I record this little trait of Sir Sidney's const.i.tutional temperament, and the little service through which I and my two comrades contributed materially to his relief, as an ill.u.s.tration of that infirmity which besieges the nervous system of our nation. It is a sensitiveness which sometimes amounts to lunacy, and sometimes even tempts to suicide. It is a mistake, however, to suppose this morbid affection unknown to Frenchmen, or unknown to men of the world. I have myself known it to exist in both, and particularly in a man that might be said to live in the street, such was the American publicity which circ.u.mstances threw around his life; and so far were his habits of life removed from reserve, or from any predisposition to gloom. And at this moment I recall a remarkable ill.u.s.tration of what I am saying, communicated by Wordsworth's accomplished friend, Sir George Beaumont.

To _him_ I had been sketching the distressing sensitiveness of Sir Sidney pretty much as I have sketched it to the reader; and how he, the man that on the breach at Acre valued not the eye of Jew, Christian, or Turk, shrank back--_me ipso teste_--from the gentle, though eager--from admiring, yet affectionate--glances of three very young ladies in Gay Street, Bath, the oldest (I should say) not more than seventeen. Upon which Sir George mentioned, as a parallel experience of his own, that Mr. Canning, being ceremoniously introduced to himself (Sir George) about the time when he had reached the meridian of his fame as an orator, and should therefore have become _blase_ to the extremity of being absolutely seared and case-hardened against all impressions whatever appealing to his vanity or egotism, did absolutely (_credite posteri!_) blush like any roseate girl of fifteen. And that this was no accident growing out of a momentary agitation, no sudden spasmodic pang, anomalous and transitory, appeared from other concurrent anecdotes of Canning, reported by gentlemen from Liverpool, who described to us most graphically and picturesquely the wayward fitfulness (not coquettish, or wilful, but nervously overmastering and most unaffectedly distressing) which besieged this great artist in oratory, and the time approached--was coming--was going, at which the private signal should have been shown for proposing his health. Mr.

P. (who had been, I think, the mayor on the particular occasion indicated) described the restlessness of his manner; how he rose, and retired for half a minute into a little parlor behind the chairman's seat; then came back; then whispered, _Not yet I beseech you; I cannot face them yet;_ then sipped a little water, then moved uneasily on his chair, saying, _One moment, if you please: stop, stop: don't hurry: one moment, and I shall be up to the mark:_ in short, fighting with the necessity of taking the final plunge, like one who lingers on the scaffold.