James Wolfe, Harry’s new Colonel, came back from America a few weeks after our Virginian had joined his regiment. Wolfe had previously been Lieutenant-Colonel of Kingsley’s, and a second battalion of the regiment had been formed and given to him in reward for his distinguished gallantry and services at Cape Breton. Harry went with quite unfeigned respect and cordiality to pay his duty to his new commander, on whom the eyes of the world began to be turned now — the common opinion being that he was likely to become a great general. In the late affairs in France, several officers of great previous repute had been tried and found lamentably wanting. The Duke of Marlborough had shown himself no worthy descendant of his great ancestor. About my Lord George Sackville’s military genius there were doubts, even before his unhappy behaviour at Minden prevented a great victory. The nation was longing for military glory, and the Minister was anxious to find a general who might gratify the eager desire of the people. Mr. Wolfe’s and Mr. Lambert’s business keeping them both in London, the friendly intercourse between those officers was renewed, no one being more delighted than Lambert at his younger friend’s good fortune.
Harry, when he was away from his duty, was never tired of hearing Mr. Wolfe’s details of the military operations of the last year, about which Wolfe talked very freely and openly. Whatever thought was in his mind, he appears to have spoken it out generously. He had that heroic simplicity which distinguished Nelson afterwards: he talked frankly of his actions. Some of the fine gentlemen at St. James’s might wonder and sneer at him; but amongst our little circle of friends we may be sure he found admiring listeners. The young General had the romance of a boy on many matters. He delighted in music and poetry. On the last day of his life he said he would rather have written Gray’s Elegy than have won a battle. We may be sure that with a gentleman of such literary tastes our friend George would become familiar; and as they were both in love, and both accepted lovers, and both eager for happiness, no doubt they must have had many sentimental conversations together which would be very interesting to report could we only have accurate accounts of them. In one of his later letters, Warrington writes:
“I had the honour of knowing the famous General Wolfe, and seeing much of him during his last stay in London. We had a subject of conversation then which was of unfailing interest to both of us, and I could not but admire Mr. Wolfe’s simplicity, his frankness, and a sort of glorious bravery which characterised him. He was much in love, and he wanted heaps and heaps of laurels to take to his mistress. ‘If it be a sin to covet honour,’ he used to say with Harry the Fifth (he was passionately fond of plays and poetry), ‘I am the most offending soul alive.’ Surely on his last day he had a feast which was enough to satisfy the greediest appetite for glory. He hungered after it. He seemed to me not merely like a soldier going resolutely to do his duty, but rather like a knight in quest of dragons and giants. My own country has furnished of late a chief of a very different order, and quite an opposite genius. I scarce know which to admire most. The Briton’s chivalrous ardour, or the more than Roman constancy of our great Virginian.”
As Mr. Lambert’s official duties detained him in London, his family remained contentedly with him, and I suppose Mr. Warrington was so satisfied with the rural quiet of Southampton Row and the beautiful flowers and trees of Bedford Gardens, that he did not care to quit London for any long period. He made his pilgrimage to Castlewood, and passed a few days there, occupying the chamber of which he had often heard his grandfather talk, and which Colonel Esmond had occupied as a boy and he was received kindly enough by such members of the family as happened to be at home. But no doubt he loved better to be in London by the side of a young person in whose society he found greater pleasure than any which my Lord Castlewood’s circle could afford him, though all the ladies were civil, and Lady Maria especially gracious, and enchanted with the tragedy which George and Parson Sampson read out to the ladies. The chaplain was enthusiastic in its praises, and indeed it was through his interest and not through Mr. Johnson’s after all, that Mr. Warrington’s piece ever came on the stage. Mr. Johnson, it is true, pressed the play on his friend Mr. Garrick for Drury Lane, but Garrick had just made an arrangement with the famous Mr. Home for a tragedy from the pen of the author of Douglas. Accordingly, Carpezan was carried to Mr. Rich at Covent Garden, and accepted by that manager.
On the night of the production of the piece, Mr. Warrington gave an elegant entertainment to his friends at the Bedford Head, in Covent Garden, whence they adjourned in a body to the theatre; leaving only one or two with our young author, who remained at the coffee-house, where friends from time to time came to him with an account of the performance. The part of Carpezan was filled by Barry, Shuter was the old nobleman, Reddish, I need scarcely say, made an excellent Ulric, and the King of Bohemia was by a young actor from Dublin, Mr. Geoghegan, or Hagan as he was called on the stage, and who looked and performed the part to admiration. Mrs. Woffington looked too old in the first act as the heroine, but her murder in the fourth act, about which great doubts were expressed, went off to the terror and delight of the audience. Miss Wayn sang the ballad which is supposed to be sung by the king’s page, just at the moment of the unhappy wife’s execution, and all agreed that Barry was very terrible and pathetic as Carpezan, especially in the execution scene. The grace and elegance of the young actor, Hagan, won general applause. The piece was put very elegantly on the stage by Mr. Rich, though there was some doubt whether, in the march of Janissaries in the last, the manager was correct in introducing a favourite elephant, which had figured in various pantomimes, and by which one of Mr. Warrington’s black servants marched in a Turkish habit. The other sate in the footman’s gallery, and uproariously wept and applauded at the proper intervals.
The execution of Sybilla was the turning-point of the piece. Her head off, George’s friends breathed freely, and one messenger after another came to him at the coffee-house, to announce the complete success of the tragedy. Mr. Barry, amidst general applause, announced the play for repetition, and that it was the work of a young gentleman of Virginia, his first attempt in the dramatic style.
We should like to have been in the box where all our friends were seated during the performance, to have watched Theo’s flutter and anxiety whilst the success of the play seemed dubious, and have beheld the blushes and the sparkles in her eyes, when the victory was assured. Harry, during the little trouble in the fourth act, was deadly pale — whiter, Mrs. Lambert said, than Barry, with all his chalk. But if Briareus could have clapped hands, he could scarcely have made more noise than Harry at the end of the piece. Mr. Wolfe and General Lambert huzzayed enthusiastically. Mrs. Lambert, of course, cried: and though Hetty said, “Why do you cry, mamma? I you don’t want any of them alive again; you know it serves them all right”— the girl was really as much delighted as any person present, including little Charley from the Chartreux, who had leave from Dr. Crusius for that evening, and Miss Lucy, who had been brought from boarding-school on purpose to be present on the great occasion. My Lord Castlewood and his sister, Lady Maria, were present; and his lordship went from his box and complimented Mr. Barry and the other actors on the stage; and Parson Sampson was invaluable in the pit, where he led the applause, having, I believe, given previous instructions to Gumbo to keep an eye upon him from the gallery, and do as he did.
Be sure there was a very jolly supper of Mr. Warrington’s friends that night — much more jolly than Mr. Garrick’s, for example, who made but a very poor success with his Agis and its dreary choruses, and who must have again felt that he had missed a good chance, in preferring Mr. Home’s tragedy to our young author’s. A jolly supper, did we say? — Many jolly suppers. Mr. Gumbo gave an entertainment to several gentlemen of the shoulder-knot, who had concurred in supporting his master’s masterpiece: Mr. Henry Warrington gave a supper at the Star and Garter, in Pall Mall, to ten officers of his new regiment, who had come up for the express purpose of backing Carpezan; and finally, Mr. Warrington received the three principal actors of the tragedy, our family party from the side box, Mr. Johnson and his ingenious friend, Mr. Reynolds the painter, my Lord Castlewood and his sister, and one or two more. My Lady Maria happened to sit next to the young actor who had performed the part of the King. Mr. Warrington somehow had Miss Theo for a neighbour, and no doubt passed a pleasant evening beside her. The greatest animation and cordiality prevailed, and when toasts were called, Lady Maria gaily gave “The King of Hungary” for hers. That gentleman, who had plenty of eloquence and fire, and excellent manners, on as well as off the stage, protested that he had already suffered death in the course of the evening, hoped that he should die a hundred times more on the same field; but, dead or living, vowed he knew whose humble servant he ever should be. Ah, if he had but a real crown in place of his diadem of pasteboard and tinsel, with what joy would he lay it at her ladyship’s feet! Neither my lord nor Mr. Esmond were over well pleased with the gentleman’s exceeding gallantry — a part of which they attributed, no doubt justly, to the wine and punch, of which he had been partaking very freely. Theo and her sister, who were quite new to the world, were a little frightened by the exceeding energy of Mr. Hagan’s manner — but Lady Maria, much more experienced, took it in perfectly good part. At a late hour coaches were called, to which the gentlemen attended the ladies, after whose departure some of them returned to the supper-room, and the end was that Carpezan had to be carried away in a chair, and that the King of Hungary had a severe headache; and that the Poet, though he remembered making a great number of speeches, was quite astounded when half a dozen of his guests appeared at his house the next day, whom he had invited overnight to come and sup with him once more.
As he put Mrs. Lambert and her daughters into their coach on the night previous, all the ladies were flurried, delighted, excited; and you may be sure our gentleman was with them the next day, to talk of the play and the audience, and the actors, and the beauties of the piece, over and over again. Mrs. Lambert had heard that the ladies of the theatre were dangerous company for young men. She hoped George would have a care, and not frequent the greenroom too much.
George smiled, and said he had a preventive against all greenroom temptations, of which he was not in the least afraid; and as he spoke he looked in Theo’s face, as if in those eyes lay the amulet which was to preserve him from all danger.
“Why should he be afraid, mamma?” asks the maiden simply. She had no idea of danger or of guile.
“No, my darling, I don’t think he need be afraid,” says the mother, kissing her.
“You don’t suppose Mr. George would fall in love with that painted old creature who performed the chief part?” asks Miss Hetty, with a toss of her head. “She must be old enough to be his mother.”
“Pray, do you suppose that at our age nobody can care for us, or that we have no hearts left?” asks mamma, very tartly. “I believe, or I may say, I hope and trust, your father thinks otherwise. He is, I imagine, perfectly satisfied, miss. He does not sneer at age, whatever little girls out of the schoolroom may do. And they had much better be back there, and they had much better remember what the fifth commandment is — that they had, Hetty!”
“I didn’t think I was breaking it by saying that an actress was as old as George’s mother,” pleaded Hetty.
“George’s mother is as old as I am, miss! — at least she was when we were at school. And Fanny Parker — Mrs. Mountain who now is — was seven months older, and we were in the French class together; and I have no idea that our age is to be made the subject of remarks and ridicule by our children, and I will thank you to spare it, if you please! Do you consider your mother too old, George?”
“I am glad my mother is of your age, Aunt Lambert,” says George, in the most sentimental manner.
Strange infatuation of passion — singular perversity of reason! At some period before his marriage, it not unfrequently happens that a man actually is fond of his mother-inlaw! At this time our good General vowed, and with some reason, that he was jealous. Mrs. Lambert made much more of George than of any other person in the family. She dressed up Theo to the utmost advantage in order to meet him; she was for ever caressing her, and appealing to her when he spoke. It was, “Don’t you think he looks well?”—“Don’t you think he looks pale, Theo, today?”— “Don’t you think he has been sitting up over his books too much at night?” and so forth. If he had a cold, she would have liked to make gruel for him and see his feet in hot water. She sent him recipes of her own for his health. When he was away, she never ceased talking about him to her daughter. I dare say Miss Theo liked the subject well enough. When he came, she was sure to be wanted in some other part of the house, and would bid Theo take care of him till she returned. Why, before she returned to the room, could you hear her talking outside the door to her youngest innocent children, to her servants in the upper regions, and so forth? When she reappeared, was not Mr. George always standing or sitting at a considerable distance from Miss Theo — except, to be sure, on that one day when she had just happened to drop her scissors, and he had naturally stooped down to pick them up? Why was she blushing? Were not youthful cheeks made to blush, and roses to bloom in the spring? Not that mamma ever noted the blushes, but began quite an artless conversation about this or that, as she sate down brimful of happiness to her worktable.
And at last there came a letter from Virginia in Madam Esmond’s neat, well-known hand, and over which George trembled and blushed before he broke the seal. It was in answer to the letter which he had sent home, respecting his brother’s commission and his own attachment to Miss Lambert. Of his intentions respecting Harry, Madam Esmond fully approved. As for his marriage, she was not against early marriages. She would take his picture of Miss Lambert with the allowance that was to be made for lovers’ portraits, and hope, for his sake, that the young lady was all he described her to be. With money, as Madam Esmond gathered from her son’s letter, she did not appear to be provided at all, which was a pity, as, though wealthy in land, their family had but little ready-money. However, by Heaven’s blessing, there was plenty at home for children and children’s children, and the wives of her sons should share all she had. When she heard more at length from Mr. and Mrs. Lambert, she would reply for her part more fully. She did not pretend to say that she had not greater hopes for her son, as a gentleman of his name and prospects might pretend to the hand of the first lady of the land; but as Heaven had willed that her son’s choice should fall upon her old friend’s daughter, she acquiesced, and would welcome George’s wife as her own child. This letter was brought by Mr. Van den Bosch of Albany, who had lately bought a very large estate in Virginia, and who was bound for England to put his granddaughter to a boarding-school. She, Madam Esmond, was not mercenary, nor was it because this young lady was heiress of a very great fortune that she desired her sons to pay Mr. Van d. B. every attention. Their properties lay close together, and could Harry find in the young lady those qualities of person and mind suitable for a companion for life, at least she would have the satisfaction of seeing both her children near her in her declining years. Madam Esmond concluded by sending her affectionate compliments to Mrs. Lambert, from whom she begged to hear further, and her blessing to the young lady who was to be her daughter-inlaw.
The letter was not cordial, and the writer evidently but half satisfied; but, such as it was, her consent was here formally a............