The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb Volume II Part 7

Very quick at inventing an argument, or detecting a sophistry, he is incapable of attending _you_ in any chain of arguing. Indeed he makes wild work with logic; and seems to jump at most admirable conclusions by some process, not at all akin to it. Consonantly enough to this, he hath been heard to deny, upon certain occasions, that there exists such a faculty at all in man as _reason_; and wondereth how man came first to have a conceit of it--enforcing his negation with all the might of _reasoning_ he is master of. He has some speculative notions against laughter, and will maintain that laughing is not natural to _him_--when peradventure the next moment his lungs shall crow like Chanticleer. He says some of the best things in the world--and declareth that wit is his aversion. It was he who said, upon seeing the Eton boys at play in their grounds--_What a pity to think, that these fine ingenuous lads in a few years will all be changed into frivolous Members of Parliament!_

His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous--and in age he discovereth no symptom of cooling. This is that which I admire in him. I hate people who meet Time half-way. I am for no compromise with that inevitable spoiler. While he lives, J.E. will take his swing.--It does me good, as I walk towards the street of my daily avocation, on some fine May morning, to meet him marching in a quite opposite direction, with a jolly handsome presence, and shining sanguine face, that indicates some purchase in his eye--a Claude--or a Hobbima--for much of his enviable leisure is consumed at Christie's, and Phillips's--or where not, to pick up pictures, and such gauds. On these occasions he mostly stoppeth me, to read a short lecture on the advantage a person like me possesses above himself, in having his time occupied with business which he _must do_--a.s.sureth me that he often feels it hang heavy on his hands--wishes he had fewer holidays--and goes off--Westward Ho!--chanting a tune, to Pall Mall--perfectly convinced that he has convinced me--while I proceed in my opposite direction tuneless.

It is pleasant again to see this Professor of Indifference doing the honours of his new purchase, when he has fairly housed it. You must view it in every light, till _he_ has found the best--placing it at this distance, and at that, but always suiting the focus of your sight to his own. You must spy at it through your fingers, to catch the aerial perspective--though you a.s.sure him that to you the landscape shows much more agreeable without that artifice. Wo be to the luckless wight, who does not only not respond to his rapture, but who should drop an unseasonable intimation of preferring one of his anterior bargains to the present!--The last is always his best hit--his "Cynthia of the minute."--Alas! how many a mild Madonna have I known to _come in_--a Raphael!--keep its ascendancy for a few brief moons--then, after certain intermedial degradations, from the front drawing-room to the back gallery, thence to the dark parlour,--adopted in turn by each of the Carracci, under successive lowering ascriptions of filiation, mildly breaking its fall--consigned to the oblivious lumber-room, _go out_ at last a Lucca Giordano, or plain Carlo Maratti!--which things when I beheld--musing upon the chances and mutabilities of fate below, hath made me to reflect upon the altered condition of great personages, or that woful Queen of Richard the Second--

--set forth in pomp, She came adorned hither like sweet May.

Sent back like Hollowma.s.s or shortest day.

With great love for _you_, J.E. hath but a limited sympathy with what you feel or do. He lives in a world of his own, and makes slender guesses at what pa.s.ses in your mind. He never pierces the marrow of your habits. He will tell an old established play-goer, that Mr.

Such-a-one, of So-and-so (naming one of the theatres), is a very lively comedian--as a piece of news! He advertised me but the other day of some pleasant green lanes which he had found out for me, _knowing me to be a great walker_, in my own immediate vicinity--who have haunted the identical spot any time these twenty years! He has not much respect for that cla.s.s of feelings which goes by the name of sentimental. He applies the definition of real evil to bodily sufferings exclusively--and rejecteth all others as imaginary. He is affected by the sight, or the bare supposition, of a creature in pain, to a degree which I have never witnessed out of womankind. A const.i.tutional acuteness to this cla.s.s of sufferings may in part account for this. The animal tribe in particular he taketh under his especial protection. A broken-winded or spur-galled horse is sure to find an advocate in him. An over-loaded a.s.s is his client for ever. He is the apostle to the brute kind--the never-failing friend of those who have none to care for them. The contemplation of a lobster boiled, or eels skinned _alive_, will wring him so, that "all for pity he could die." It will take the savour from his palate, and the rest from his pillow, for days and nights. With the intense feeling of Thomas Clarkson, he wanted only the steadiness of pursuit, and unity of purpose, of that "true yolk-fellow with Time," to have effected as much for the _Animal_, as _he_ hath done for the _Negro Creation_. But my uncontrollable cousin is but imperfectly formed for purposes which demand co-operation. He cannot wait. His amelioration-plans must be ripened in a day. For this reason he has cut but an equivocal figure in benevolent societies, and combinations for the alleviation of human sufferings. His zeal constantly makes him to outrun, and put out, his coadjutors. He thinks of relieving,--while they think of debating.

He was black-balled out of a society for the Relief of **********, because the fervor of his humanity toiled beyond the formal apprehension, and creeping processes, of his a.s.sociates. I shall always consider this distinction as a patent of n.o.bility in the Elia family! Do I mention these seeming inconsistencies to smile at, or upbraid, my unique cousin? Marry, heaven, and all good manners, and the understanding that should be between kinsfolk, forbid!--With all the strangenesses of this _strangest of the Elias_--I would not have him in one jot or t.i.ttle other than he is; neither would I barter or exchange my wild kinsman for the most exact, regular, and everyway consistent kinsman breathing.

In my next, reader, I may perhaps give you some account of my cousin Bridget--if you are not already surfeited with cousins--and take you by the hand, if you are willing to go with us, on an excursion which we made a summer or two since, in search of _more cousins_--

Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire.

MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE

Bridget Elia has been my housekeeper for many a long year. I have obligations to Bridget, extending beyond the period of memory. We house together, old bachelor and maid, in a sort of double singleness; with such tolerable comfort, upon the whole, that I, for one, find in myself no sort of disposition to go out upon the mountains, with the rash king's offspring, to bewail my celibacy. We agree pretty well in our tastes and habits--yet so, as "with a difference." We are generally in harmony, with occasional bickerings--as it should be among near relations. Our sympathies are rather understood, than expressed; and once, upon my dissembling a tone in my voice more kind than ordinary, my cousin burst into tears, and complained that I was altered. We are both great readers in different directions. While I am hanging over (for the thousandth time) some pa.s.sage in old Burton, or one of his strange contemporaries, she is abstracted in some modern tale, or adventure, whereof our common reading-table is daily fed with a.s.siduously fresh supplies. Narrative teazes me. I have little concern in the progress of events. She must have a story--well, ill, or indifferently told--so there be life stirring in it, and plenty of good or evil accidents. The fluctuations of fortune in fiction--and almost in real life--have ceased to interest, or operate but dully upon me. Out-of-the-way humours and opinions--heads with some diverting twist in them--the oddities of authorship please me most. My cousin has a native disrelish of any thing that sounds odd or bizarre.

Nothing goes down with her, that is quaint, irregular, or out of the road of common sympathy. She "holds Nature more clever." I can pardon her blindness to the beautiful obliquities of the Religio Medici; but she must apologise to me for certain disrespectful insinuations, which she has been pleased to throw out latterly, touching the intellectuals of a dear favourite of mine, of the last century but one--the thrice n.o.ble, chaste, and virtuous,--but again somewhat fantastical, and original-brain'd, generous Margaret Newcastle.

It has been the lot of my cousin, oftener perhaps than I could have wished, to have had for her a.s.sociates and mine, free-thinkers--leaders, and disciples, of novel philosophies and systems; but she neither wrangles with, nor accepts, their opinions.

That which was good and venerable to her, when a child, retains its authority over her mind still. She never juggles or plays tricks with her understanding.

We are both of us inclined to be a little too positive; and I have observed the result of our disputes to be almost uniformly this--that in matters of fact, dates, and circ.u.mstances, it turns out, that I was in the right, and my cousin in the wrong. But where we have differed upon moral points; upon something proper to be done, or let alone; whatever heat of opposition, or steadiness of conviction, I set out with, I am sure always, in the long run, to be brought over to her way of thinking.

I must touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman with a gentle hand, for Bridget does not like to be told of her faults. She hath an awkward trick (to say no worse of it) of reading in company: at which times she will answer _yes_ or _no_ to a question, without fully understanding its purport--which is provoking, and derogatory in the highest degree to the dignity of the putter of the said question. Her presence of mind is equal to the most pressing trials of life, but will sometimes desert her upon trifling occasions. When the purpose requires it, and is a thing of moment, she can speak to it greatly; but in matters which are not stuff of the conscience, she hath been known sometimes to let slip a word less seasonably.

Her education in youth was not much attended to; and she happily missed all that train of female garniture, which pa.s.seth by the name of accomplishments. She was tumbled early, by accident or design, into a s.p.a.cious closet of good old English reading, without much selection or prohibition, and browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty girls, they should be brought up exactly in this fashion. I know not whether their chance in wedlock might not be diminished by it; but I can answer for it, that it makes (if the worst come to the worst) most incomparable old maids.

In a season of distress, she is the truest comforter; but in the teazing accidents, and minor perplexities, which do not call out the _will_ to meet them, she sometimes maketh matters worse by an excess of partic.i.p.ation. If she does not always divide your trouble, upon the pleasanter occasions of life she is sure always to treble your satisfaction. She is excellent to be at a play with, or upon a visit; but best, when she goes a journey with you.

We made an excursion together a few summers since, into Hertfordshire, to beat up the quarters of some of our less-known relations in that fine corn country.

The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End; or Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps more properly, in some old maps of Hertfordshire; a farm-house,--delightfully situated within a gentle walk from Wheathampstead. I can just remember having been there, on a visit to a great-aunt, when I was a child, under the care of Bridget; who, as I have said, is older than myself by some ten years. I wish that I could throw into a heap the remainder of our joint existences, that we might share them in equal division. But that is impossible. The house was at that time in the occupation of a substantial yeoman, who had married my grandmother's sister. His name was Gladman. My grandmother was a Bruton, married to a Field. The Gladmans and the Brutons are still flourishing in that part of the county, but the Fields are almost extinct. More than forty years had elapsed since the visit I speak of; and, for the greater portion of that period, we had lost sight of the other two branches also. Who or what sort of persons inherited Mackery End--kindred or strange folk--we were afraid almost to conjecture, but determined some day to explore.

By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the n.o.ble park at Luton in our way from Saint Alban's, we arrived at the spot of our anxious curiosity about noon. The sight of the old farm-house, though every trace of it was effaced from my recollection, affected me with a pleasure which I had not experienced for many a year. For though _I_ had forgotten it, _we_ had never forgotten being there together, and we had been talking about Mackery End all our lives, till memory on my part became mocked with a phantom of itself, and I thought I knew the aspect of a place, which, when present, O how unlike it was to _that_, which I had conjured up so many times instead of it!

Still the air breathed balmily about it; the season was in the "heart of June," and I could say with the poet,

But them, that didst appear so fair To fond imagination, Dost rival in the light of day Her delicate creation!

Bridget's was more a waking bliss than mine, for she easily remembered her old acquaintance again--some altered features, of course, a little grudged at. At first, indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy; but the scene soon re-confirmed itself in her affections--and she traversed every out-post of the old mansion, to the wood-house, the orchard, the place where the pigeon-house had stood (house and birds were alike flown)--with a breathless impatience of recognition, which was more pardonable perhaps than decorous at the age of fifty odd. But Bridget in some things is behind her years.

The only thing left was to get into the house--and that was a difficulty which to me singly would have been insurmountable; for I am terribly shy in making myself known to strangers and out-of-date kinsfolk. Love, stronger than scruple, winged my cousin in without me; but she soon returned with a creature that might have sat to a sculptor for the image of Welcome. It was the youngest of the Gladmans; who, by marriage with a Bruton, had become mistress of the old mansion. A comely brood are the Brutons. Six of them, females, were noted as the handsomest young women in the county. But this adopted Bruton, in my mind, was better than they all--more comely. She was born too late to have remembered me. She just recollected in early life to have had her cousin Bridget once pointed out to her, climbing a style. But the name of kindred, and of cousinship, was enough. Those slender ties, that prove slight as gossamer in the rending atmosphere of a metropolis, bind faster, as we found it, in hearty, homely, loving Hertfordshire. In five minutes we were as thoroughly acquainted as if we had been born and bred up together; were familiar, even to the calling each other by our Christian names. So Christians should call one another. To have seen Bridget, and her--it was like the meeting of the two scriptural cousins! There was a grace and dignity, an amplitude of form and stature, answering to her mind, in this farmer's wife, which would have shined in a palace--or so we thought it. We were made welcome by husband and wife equally--we, and our friend that was with us--I had almost forgotten him--but B.F. will not so soon forget that meeting, if peradventure he shall read this on the far distant sh.o.r.es where the Kangaroo haunts. The fatted calf was made ready, or rather was already so, as if in antic.i.p.ation of our coming; and, after an appropriate gla.s.s of native wine, never let me forget with what honest pride this hospitable cousin made us proceed to Wheathampstead, to introduce us (as some new-found rarity) to her mother and sister Gladmans, who did indeed know something more of us, at a time when she almost knew nothing.--With what corresponding kindness we were received by them also--how Bridget's memory, exalted by the occasion, warmed into a thousand half-obliterated recollections of things and persons, to my utter astonishment, and her own--and to the astoundment of B.F. who sat by, almost the only thing that was not a cousin there,--old effaced images of more than half-forgotten names and circ.u.mstances still crowding back upon her, as words written in lemon come out upon exposure to a friendly warmth,--when I forget all this, then may my country cousins forget me; and Bridget no more remember, that in the days of weakling infancy I was her tender charge--as I have been her care in foolish manhood since--in those pretty pastoral walks, long ago, about Mackery End, in Hertfordshire.

MODERN GALLANTRY

In comparing modern with ancient manners, we are pleased to compliment ourselves upon the point of gallantry; a certain obsequiousness, or deferential respect, which we are supposed to pay to females, as females.

I shall believe that this principle actuates our conduct, when I can forget, that in the nineteenth century of the era from which we date our civility, we are but just beginning to leave off the very frequent practice of whipping females in public, in common with the coa.r.s.est male offenders.

I shall believe it to be influential, when I can shut my eyes to the fact, that in England women are still occasionally--hanged.

I shall believe in it, when actresses are no longer subject to be hissed off a stage by gentlemen.

I shall believe in it, when Dorimant hands a fish-wife across the kennel; or a.s.sists the apple-woman to pick up her wandering fruit, which some unlucky dray has just dissipated.

I shall believe in it, when the Dorimants in humbler life, who would be thought in their way notable adepts in this refinement, shall act upon it in places where they are not known, or think themselves not observed--when I shall see the traveller for some rich tradesman part with his admired box-coat, to spread it over the defenceless shoulders of the poor woman, who is pa.s.sing to her parish on the roof of the same stage-coach with him, drenched in the rain--when I shall no longer see a woman standing up in the pit of a London theatre, till she is sick and faint with the exertion, with men about her, seated at their ease, and jeering at her distress; till one, that seems to have more manners or conscience than the rest, significantly declares "she should be welcome to his seat, if she were a little younger and handsomer." Place this dapper warehouseman, or that rider, in a circle of their own female acquaintance, and you shall confess you have not seen a politer-bred man in Lothbury.

Lastly, I shall begin to believe that there is some such principle influencing our conduct, when more than one-half of the drudgery and coa.r.s.e servitude of the world shall cease to be performed by women.

Until that day comes, I shall never believe this boasted point to be any thing more than a conventional fiction; a pageant got up between the s.e.xes, in a certain rank, and at a certain time of life, in which both find their account equally.

I shall be even disposed to rank it among the salutary fictions of life, when in polite circles I shall see the same attentions paid to age as to youth, to homely features as to handsome, to coa.r.s.e complexions as to clear--to the woman, as she is a woman, not as she is a beauty, a fortune, or a t.i.tle.

I shall believe it to be something more than a name, when a well-dressed gentleman in a well-dressed company can advert to the topic of _female old age_ without exciting, and intending to excite, a sneer:--when the phrases "antiquated virginity," and such a one has "overstoocl her market," p.r.o.nounced in good company, shall raise immediate offence in man, or woman, that shall hear them spoken.

Joseph Paice, of Bread-street-hill, merchant, and one of the Directors of the South-Sea company--the same to whom Edwards, the Shakspeare commentator, has addressed a fine sonnet--was the only pattern of consistent gallantry I have met with. He took me under his shelter at an early age, and bestowed some pains upon me. I owe to his precepts and example whatever there is of the man of business (and that is not much) in my composition. It was not his fault that I did not profit more. Though bred a Presbyterian, and brought up a merchant, he was the finest gentleman of his time. He had not _one_ system of attention to females in the drawing-room, and _another_ in the shop, or at the stall. I do not mean that he made no distinction. But he never lost sight of s.e.x, or overlooked it in the casualties of a disadvantageous situation. I have seen him stand bare-headed--smile if you please--to a poor servant girl, while she has been inquiring of him the way to some street--in such a posture of unforced civility, as neither to embarra.s.s her in the acceptance, nor himself in the offer, of it. He was no dangler, in the common acceptation of the word, after women: but he reverenced and upheld, in every form in which it came before him, _womanhood_. I have seen him--nay, smile not--tenderly escorting a marketwoman, whom he had encountered in a shower, exalting his umbrella over her poor basket of fruit, that it might receive no damage, with as much carefulness as if she had been a Countess. To the reverend form of Female Eld he would yield the wall (though it were to an ancient beggar-woman) with more ceremony than we can afford to show our grandams. He was the Preux Chevalier of Age; the Sir Calidore, or Sir Tristan, to those who have no Calidores or Tristans to defend them. The roses, that had long faded thence, still bloomed for him in those withered and yellow cheeks.

He was never married, but in his youth he paid his addresses to the beautiful Susan Winstanley--old Winstanley's daughter of Clapton--who dying in the early days of their courtship, confirmed in him the resolution of perpetual bachelorship. It was during their short courtship, he told me, that he had been one day treating his mistress with a profusion of civil speeches--the common gallantries--to which kind of thing she had hitherto manifested no repugnance--but in this instance with no effect. He could not obtain from her a decent acknowledgment in return. She rather seemed to resent his compliments.

He could not set it down to caprice, for the lady had always shown herself above that littleness. When he ventured on the following day, finding her a little better humoured, to expostulate with her on her coldness of yesterday, she confessed, with her usual frankness, that she had no sort of dislike to his attentions; that she could even endure some high-flown compliments; that a young woman placed in her situation had a right to expect all sort of civil things said to her; that she hoped she could digest a dose of adulation, short of insincerity, with as little injury to her humility as most young women: but that--a little before he had commenced his compliments--she had overheard him by accident, in rather rough language, rating a young woman, who had not brought home his cravats quite to the appointed time, and she thought to herself, "As I am Miss Susan Winstanley, and a young lady--a reputed beauty, and known to be a fortune,--I can have my choice of the finest speeches from the mouth of this very fine gentleman who is courting me--but if I had been poor Mary Such-a-one (_naming the milliner_),--and had failed of bringing home the cravats to the appointed hour--though perhaps I had sat up half the night to forward them--what sort of compliments should I have received then?--And my woman's pride came to my a.s.sistance; and I thought, that if it were only to do _me_ honour, a female, like myself, might have received handsomer usage: and I was determined not to accept any fine speeches, to the compromise of that s.e.x, the belonging to which was after all my strongest claim and t.i.tle to them."

I think the lady discovered both generosity, and a just way of thinking, in this rebuke which she gave her lover; and I have sometimes imagined, that the uncommon strain of courtesy, which through life regulated the actions and behaviour of my friend towards all of womankind indiscriminately, owed its happy origin to this seasonable lesson from the lips of his lamented mistress.

I wish the whole female world would entertain the same notion of these things that Miss Winstanley showed. Then we should see something of the spirit of consistent gallantry; and no longer witness the anomaly of the same man--a pattern of true politeness to a wife--of cold contempt, or rudeness, to a sister--the idolater of his female mistress--the disparager and despiser of his no less female aunt, or unfortunate--still female--maiden cousin. Just so much respect as a woman derogates from her own s.e.x, in whatever condition placed--her handmaid, or dependent--she deserves to have diminished from herself on that score; and probably will feel the diminution, when youth, and beauty, and advantages, not inseparable from s.e.x, shall lose of their attraction. What a woman should demand of a man in courtship, or after it, is first--respect for her as she is a woman;--and next to that--to be respected by him above all other women. But let her stand upon her female character as upon a foundation; and let the attentions, incident to individual preference, be so many pretty additaments and ornaments--as many, and as fanciful, as you please--to that main structure. Let her first lesson be--with sweet Susan Winstanley--to _reverence her s.e.x_.

THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE

I was born, and pa.s.sed the first seven years of my life, in the Temple. Its church, its halls, its gardens, its fountain, its river, I had almost said--for in those young years, what was this king of rivers to me but a stream that watered our pleasant places?--these are of my oldest recollections. I repeat, to this day, no verses to myself more frequently, or with kindlier emotion, than those of Spenser, where he speaks of this spot.

There when they came, whereas those bricky towers, The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride, Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers, There whylome wont the Templer knights to bide; Till they decayd through pride.

Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis. What a transition for a countryman visiting London for the first time--the pa.s.sing from the crowded Strand or Fleet-street, by unexpected avenues, into its magnificent ample squares, its cla.s.sic green recesses! What a cheerful, liberal look hath that portion of it, which, from three sides, overlooks the greater garden: that goodly pile

Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight,