Hard times were now over with me, and I had to battle with poverty no more. My little kinsman’s death made a vast difference in my worldly prospects. I became next heir to a good estate. My uncle and his wife were not likely to have more children. “The woman is capable of committing any crime to disappoint you,” Sampson vowed; but, in truth, my Lady Warrington was guilty of no such treachery. Cruelly smitten by the stroke which fell upon them, Lady Warrington was taught by her religious advisers to consider it as a chastisement of Heaven, and submit to the Divine Will. “Whilst your son lived, your heart was turned away from the better world” (her clergyman told her), “and your ladyship thought too much of this. For your son’s advantage you desired rank and title. You asked and might have obtained an earthly coronet. Of what avail is it now, to one who has but a few years to pass upon earth — of what importance compared to the heavenly crown, for which you are an assured candidate?” The accident caused no little sensation. In the chapels of that enthusiastic sect, towards which, after her son’s death, she now more than ever inclined, many sermons were preached bearing reference to the event. Far be it from me to question the course which the bereaved mother pursued, or to regard with other than respect and sympathy any unhappy soul seeking that refuge whither sin and grief and disappointment fly for consolation. Lady Warrington even tried a reconciliation with myself. A year after her loss, being in London, she signified that she would see me, and I waited on her; and she gave me, in her usual didactic way, a homily upon my position and her own. She marvelled at the decree of Heaven, which had permitted, and how dreadfully punished! her poor child’s disobedience to her — a disobedience by which I was to profit. (It appeared my poor little man had disobeyed orders, and gone out with his gun, unknown to his mother.) She hoped that, should I ever succeed to the property, though the Warringtons were, thank Heaven, a long-lived family, except in my own father’s case, whose life had been curtailed by the excesses of a very ill-regulated youth — but should I ever succeed to the family estate and honours, she hoped, she prayed, that my present course of life might be altered; that I should part from my unworthy associates; that I should discontinue all connexion with the horrid theatre and its licentious frequenters; that I should turn to that quarter where only peace was to be had; and to those sacred duties which she feared — she very much feared that I had neglected. She filled her exhortation with Scripture language, which I do not care to imitate. When I took my leave she gave me a packet of sermons for Mrs. Warrington, and a little book of hymns by Miss Dora, who has been eminent in that society of which she and her mother became avowed professors subsequently, and who, after the dowager’s death, at Bath, three years since, married young Mr. Juffles, a celebrated preacher. The poor lady forgave me then, but she could not bear the sight of our boy. We lost our second child, and then my aunt and her daughter came eagerly enough to the poor suffering mother, and even invited us hither. But my uncle was now almost every day in our house. He would sit for hours looking at our boy. He brought him endless toys and sweetmeats. He begged that the child might call him Godpapa. When we felt our own grief (which at times still, and after the lapse of five-and-twenty years, strikes me as keenly as on the day when we first lost our little one)— when I felt my own grief, I knew how to commiserate his. But my wife could pity him before she knew what it was to lose a child of her own. The mother’s anxious heart had already divined the pang which was felt by the sorrow-stricken father; mine, more selfish, has only learned pity from experience, and I was reconciled to my uncle by my little baby’s coffin.
The poor man sent his coach to follow the humble funeral, and afterwards took out little Miles, who prattled to him unceasingly, and forgot any grief he might have felt in the delights of his new black clothes, and the pleasures of the airing. How the innocent talk of the child stabbed the mother’s heart! Would we ever wish that it should heal of that wound? I know her face so well that, to this day, I can tell when, sometimes, she is thinking of the loss of that little one. It is not a grief for a parting so long ago; it is a communion with a soul we love in Heaven.
We came back to our bright lodgings in Bloomsbury soon afterwards, and my young bear, whom I could no longer lead, and who had taken a prodigious friendship for Charley, went to the Chartreux School, where his friend took care that he had no more beating than was good for him, and where (in consequence of the excellence of his private tutor, no doubt) he took and kept a good place. And he liked the school so much, that he says, if ever he has a son, he shall be sent to that seminary.
Now, I could no longer lead my bear, for this reason, that I had other business to follow. Being fully reconciled to us, I do believe, for Mr. Miles’s sake, my uncle (who was such an obsequious supporter of Government, that I wonder the Minister ever gave him anything, being perfectly sure of his vote) used his influence in behalf of his nephew and heir; and I had the honour to be gazetted as one of his Majesty’s Commissioners for licensing hackney-coaches, a post I filled, I trust, with credit, until a quarrel with the Minister (to be mentioned in its proper place) deprived me of that one. I took my degree also at the Temple, and appeared in Westminster Hall in my gown and wig. And, this year, my good friend, Mr. Foker, having business at Paris, I had the pleasure of accompanying him thither, where I was received a bras ouverts by my dear American preserver, Monsieur de Florac, who introduced me to his noble family, and to even more of the polite society of the capital than I had leisure to frequent; for I had too much spirit to desert my kind patron Foker, whose acquaintance lay chiefly amongst the bourgeoisie, especially with Monsieur Santerre, a great brewer of Paris, a scoundrel who hath since distinguished himself in blood and not beer. Mr. F. had need of my services as interpreter, and I was too glad that he should command them, and to be able to pay back some of the kindness which he had rendered to me. Our ladies, meanwhile, were residing at Mr. Foker’s new villa at Wimbledon, and were pleased to say that they were amused with the “Parisian letters” which I sent to them, through my distinguished friend Mr. Hume, then of the Embassy, and which subsequently have been published in a neat volume.
Whilst I was tranquilly discharging my small official duties in London, those troubles were commencing which were to end in the great separation between our colonies and the mother country. When Mr. Grenville proposed his stamp-duties, I said to my wife that the bill would create a mighty discontent at home, for we were ever anxious to get as much as we could from England, and pay back as little; but assuredly I never anticipated the prodigious anger which the scheme created. It was with us as with families or individuals. A pretext is given for a quarrel: the real cause lies in long bickerings and previous animosities. Many foolish exactions and petty tyrannies, the habitual insolence of Englishmen towards all foreigners, all colonists, all folk who dare to think their rivers as good as our Abana and Pharpar, the natural spirit of men outraged by our imperious domineering spirit, set Britain and her colonies to quarrel; and the astonishing blunders of the system adopted in England brought the quarrel to an issue, which I, for one, am not going to deplore. Had I been in Virginia instead of London, ’tis very possible I should have taken the provincial side, if out of mere opposition to that resolute mistress of Castlewood, who might have driven me into revolt, as England did the colonies. Was the Stamp Act the cause of the revolution? — a tax no greater than that cheerfully paid in England. Ten years earlier, when the French were within our territory, and we were imploring succour from home, would the colonies have rebelled at the payment of this tax? Do not most people consider the tax-gatherer the natural enemy? Against the British in America there were arrayed thousands and thousands of the high-spirited and brave, but there were thousands more who found their profit in the quarrel, or had their private reasons for engaging in it. I protest I don’t know now whether mine were selfish or patriotic, or which side was in the right, or whether both were not. I am sure we in England had nothing to do but to fight the battle out; and, having lost the game, I do vow and believe that, after the first natural soreness, the loser felt no rancour.
What made brother Hal write home from Virginia, which he seemed exceedingly loth to quit, such flaming patriotic letters? My kind, best brother was always led by somebody; by me when we were together (he had such an idea of my wit and wisdom, that if I said the day was fine, he would ponder over the observation as though it was one of the sayings of the Seven Sages), by some other wiseacre when I was away. Who inspired these flaming letters, this boisterous patriotism, which he sent to us in London? “He is rebelling against Madam Esmond,” said I. “He is led by some colonial person — by that lady, perhaps,” hinted my wife. Who “that lady” was Hal never had told us; and, indeed, besought me never to allude to the delicate subject in my letters to him; “for Madam wishes to see ’em all, and I wish to say nothing about you know what until the proper moment,” he wrote. No affection could be greater than that which his letters showed. When he heard (from the informant whom I have mentioned) that in the midst of my own extreme straits I had retained no more than a hundred pounds out of his aunt’s legacy, he was for mortgaging the estate which he had just bought; and had more than one quarrel with his mother in my behalf, and spoke his mind with a great deal more frankness than I should ever have ventured to show. Until her angry recriminations (when she charged him with ingratitude, after having toiled and saved so much and so long for him), the poor fellow did not know that our mother had cut off my supplies to advance his interests; and by the time this news came to him his bargains were made, and I was fortunately quite out of want.
Every scrap of paper which we ever wrote, our thrifty parent at Castlewood taped and docketed and put away. We boys were more careless about our letters to one another: I especially, who perhaps chose rather to look down upon my younger brother’s literary performances; but my wife is not so supercilious, and hath kept no small number of Harry’s letters, as well as those of the angelic being whom we were presently to call sister.
“To think whom he has chosen, and whom he might have had! Oh, ’tis cruel!” cries my wife, when we got that notable letter in which Harry first made us acquainted with the name of his charmer.
“She was a very pretty little maid when I left home, she may be a perfect beauty now,” I remarked, as I read over the longest letter Harry ever wrote on private affairs.
“But is she to compare to my Hetty?” says Mrs. Warrington.
“We agreed that Hetty and Harry were not to be happy together, my love,” say I.
Theo gives her husband a kiss. “My dear, I wish they had tried,” she says with a sigh. “I was afraid lest — lest Hetty should have led him, you see; and I think she hath the better head. But, from reading this, it appears that the new lady has taken command of poor Harry,” and she hands me the letter:—
“My dearest George hath been prepared by previous letters to understand how a certain lady has made a conquest of my heart, which I have given away in exchange for something infinitely more valuable, namely, her own. She is at my side as I write this letter, and if there is no bad spelling, such as you often used to laugh at, ’tis because I have my pretty dictionary at hand, which makes no faults in the longest word, nor in anything else I know of: being of opinion that she is perfection.
“As Madam Esmond saw all your letters, I writ you not to give any hint of a certain delicate matter — but now ’tis no secret, and is known to all the country. Mr. George is not the only one of our family who has made a secret marriage, and been scolded by his mother. As a dutiful younger brother I have followed his example; and now I may tell you how this mighty event came about.
“I had not been at home long before I saw my fate was accomplisht. I will not tell you how beautiful Miss Fanny Mountain had grown since I had been away in Europe. She saith, ‘You never will think so,’ and I am glad, as she is the only thing in life I would grudge to my dearest brother.
“That neither Madam Esmond nor my other mother (as Mountain is now) should have seen our mutual attachment, is a wonder — only to be accounted for by supposing that love makes other folks blind. Mine for my Fanny was increased by seeing what the treatment was she had from Madam Esmond, who indeed was very rough and haughty with her, which my love bore with a sweetness perfectly angelic (this I will say, though she will order me not to write any such nonsense). She was scarce better treated than a servant of the house — indeed our negroes can talk much more free before Madam Esmond than ever my Fanny could.
“And yet my Fanny says she doth not regret Madam’s unkindness, as without it I possibly never should have been what I am to her. Oh, dear brother! when I remember how great your goodness hath been, how, in my own want, you paid my debts, and rescued me out of prison; how you have been living in poverty which never need have occurred but for my fault; how you might have paid yourself back my just debt to you and would not, preferring my advantage to your own comfort, indeed I am lost at the thought of such goodness; and ought I not to be thankful to Heaven that hath given me such a wife and such a brother?
“When I writ to you requesting you to send me my aunt’s legacy money, for which indeed I had the most profitable and urgent occasion, I had no idea that you were yourself suffering poverty. That you, the head of our family, should condescend to be governor to a brewer’s son! — that you should have to write for booksellers (except in so far as your own genius might prompt you), never once entered my mind, until Mr. Foker’s letter came to us, and this would never have been shown — for Madam kept it secret — had it not been for the difference which sprang up between us.
“Poor Tom Diggle’s estate and negroes being for sale, owing to Tom’s losses and extravagance at play, and his father’s debts before him &mdash............