Chapter XII: The Little Bill

Lucy, during those last fifteen minutes of her sojourn in the Framley Court drawing-room, somewhat modified the very strong opinion she had before formed as to her unfitness for such society. It was very pleasant sitting there in that easy chair, while Lord Lufton stood at the back of it saying nice, soft, good-natured words to her. She was sure that in a little time she could feel a true friendship for him, and that she could do so without any risk of falling in love with him. But then she had a glimmering of an idea that such a friendship would be open to all manner of remarks, and would hardly be compatible with the world’s ordinary ways. At any rate it would be pleasant to be at Framley Court, if he would come and occasionally notice her. But she did not admit to herself that such a visit would be intolerable if his whole time were devoted to Griselda Grantly. She neither admitted it, nor thought it; but nevertheless, in a strange unconscious way, such a feeling did find entrance in her bosom.

And then the Christmas holidays passed away. How much of this enjoyment fell to her share, and how much of this suffering she endured, we will not attempt accurately to describe. Miss Grantly remained at Framley Court up to Twelfth Night, and the Robarts’s also spent most of the season at the house. Lady Lufton, no doubt, had hoped that everything might have been arranged on this occasion in accordance with her wishes, but such had not been the case. Lord Lufton had evidently admired Miss Grantly very much; indeed, he had said so to his mother half-a-dozen times; but it may almost be questioned whether the pleasure Lady Lufton derived from this was not more than neutralized by an opinion he once put forward that Griselda Grantly wanted some of the fire of Lucy Robarts.

“Surely, Ludovic, you would never compare the two girls,” said Lady Lufton.

“Of course not. They are the very antipodes to each other. Miss Grantly would probably be more to my taste; but then I am wise enough to know that it is so because my taste is a bad taste.”

“I know no man with a more accurate or refined taste in such matters,” said Lady Lufton. Beyond this she did not dare to go. She knew very well that her strategy would be vain should her son once learn that she had a strategy. To tell the truth, Lady Lufton was becoming somewhat indifferent to Lucy Robarts. She had been very kind to the little girl; but the little girl seemed hardly to appreciate the kindness as she should do—and then Lord Lufton would talk to Lucy, “which was so unnecessary, you know;” and Lucy had got into a way of talking quite freely with Lord Lufton, having completely dropped that short, spasmodic, ugly exclamation of “my lord.”

And so the Christmas festivities were at an end, and January wore itself away. During the greater part of this month Lord Lufton did not remain at Framley, but was nevertheless in the county, hunting with the hounds of both divisions, and staying at various houses. Two or three nights he spent at Chaldicotes; and one—let it only be told in an under voice—at Gatherum Castle! Of this he said nothing to Lady Lufton. “Why make her unhappy?” as he said to Mark. But Lady Lufton knew it, though she said not a word to him—knew it, and was unhappy. “If he would only marry Griselda, there would be an end of that danger,” she said to herself.

But now we must go back for a while to the vicar and his little bill. It will be remembered, that his first idea with reference to that trouble, after the reading of his father’s will, was to borrow the money from his brother John. John was down at Exeter at the time, and was to stay one night at the parsonage on his way to London. Mark would broach the matter to him on the journey, painful though it would be to him to tell the story of his own folly to a brother so much younger than himself, and who had always looked up to him, clergyman and full-blown vicar as he was, with a deference greater than that which such difference in age required.

The story was told, however; but was told all in vain, as Mark found out before he reached Framley. His brother John immediately declared that he would lend him the money, of course—eight hundred, if his brother wanted it. He, John, confessed that, as regarded the remaining two, he should like to feel the pleasure of immediate possession. As for interest, he would not take any—take interest from a brother! of course not. Well, if Mark made such a fuss about it, he supposed he must take it; but would rather not. Mark should have his own way, and do just what he liked.

This was all very well, and Mark had fully made up his mind that his brother should not be kept long out of his money. But then arose the question, how was that money to be reached? He, Mark, was executor, or one of the executors under his father’s will, and, therefore, no doubt, could put his hand upon it; but his brother wanted five months of being of age, and could not therefore as yet be put legally in possession of the legacy.

“That’s a bore,” said the assistant private secretary to the Lord Petty Bag, thinking, perhaps, as much of his own immediate wish for ready cash as he did of his brother’s necessities. Mark felt that it was a bore, but there was nothing more to be done in that direction. He must now find out how far the bankers could assist him.

Some week or two after his return to Framley he went over to Barchester, and called there on a certain Mr. Forrest, the manager of one of the banks, with whom he was acquainted; and with many injunctions as to secrecy told this manager the whole of his story. At first, he concealed the name of his friend Sowerby, but it soon appeared that no such concealment was of any avail. “That’s Sowerby, of course,” said Mr. Forrest. “I know you are intimate with him; and all his friends go through that, sooner or later.”

It seemed to Mark as though Mr. Forrest made very light of the whole transaction.

“I cannot possibly pay the bill when it falls due,” said Mark.

“Oh, no, of course not,” said Mr. Forrest. “It’s never very convenient to hand out four hundred pounds at a blow. Nobody will expect you to pay it!”

“But I suppose I shall have to do it sooner or later?”

“Well, that’s as may be. It will depend partly on how you manage with Sowerby, and partly on the hands it gets into. As the bill has your name on it, they’ll have patience as long as the interest is paid, and the commissions on renewal. But no doubt it will have to be met some day by somebody.”

Mr. Forrest said that he was sure that the bill was not in Barchester; Mr. Sowerby would not, he thought, have brought it to a Barchester bank. The bill was probably in London, but, doubtless, would be sent to Barchester for collection. “If it comes in my way,” said Mr. Forrest, “I will give you plenty of time, so that you may manage about the renewal with Sowerby. I suppose he’ll pay the expense of doing that.”

Mark’s heart was somewhat lighter as he left the bank. Mr. Forrest had made so little of the whole transaction that he felt himself justified in making little of it also. “It may be as well,” said he to himself, as he drove home, “not to tell Fanny anything about it till the three months have run round. I must make some arrangement then.” And in this way his mind was easier during the last of those three months than it had been during the two former. That feeling of over-due bills, of bills coming due, of accounts overdrawn, of tradesmen unpaid, of general money cares, is very dreadful at first; but it is astonishing how soon men get used to it. A load which would crush a man at first becomes, by habit, not only endurable, but easy and comfortable to the bearer. The habitual debtor goes along jaunty and with elastic step, almost enjoying the excitement of his embarrassments. There was Mr. Sowerby himself; who ever saw a cloud on his brow? It made one almost in love with ruin to be in his company. And even now, already, Mark Robarts was thinking to himself quite comfortably about this bill;—how very pleasantly those bankers managed these things. Pay it! No; no one will be so unreasonable as to expect you to do that! And then Mr. Sowerby certainly was a pleasant fellow, and gave a man something in return for his money. It was still a question with Mark whether Lord Lufton had not been too hard on Sowerby. Had that gentleman fallen across his clerical friend at the present moment, he might no doubt have gotten from him an acceptance for another four hundred pounds.

One is almost inclined to believe that there is something pleasurable in the excitement of such embarrassments, as there is also in the excitement of drink. But then, at last, the time does come when the excitement is over, and when nothing but the misery is left. If there be an existence of wretchedness on earth it must be that of the elderly, worn-out _roué_, who has run this race of debt and bills of accommodation and acceptances,—of what, if we were not in these days somewhat afraid of good broad English, we might call lying and swindling, falsehood and fraud—and who, having ruined all whom he should have loved, having burnt up every one who would trust him much, and scorched all who would trust him a little, is at last left to finish his life with such bread and water as these men get, without one honest thought to strengthen his sinking heart, or one honest friend to hold his shivering hand! If a man could only think of that, as he puts his name to the first little bill, as to which he is so good-naturedly assured that it can easily be renewed!

When the three months had nearly run out, it so happened that Robarts met his friend Sowerby. Mark had once or twice ridden with Lord Lufton as far as the meet of the hounds, and may, perhaps, have gone a field or two farther on some occasions. The reader must not think that he had taken to hunting, as some parsons do; and it is singular enough that whenever they do so they always show a special aptitude for the pursuit, as though hunting were an employment peculiarly congenial with a cure of souls in the country. Such a thought would do our vicar injustice. But when Lord Lufton would ask him what on earth could be the harm of riding along the roads to look at the hounds, he hardly knew what sensible answer to give his lordship. It would be absurd to say that his time would be better employed at home in clerical matters, for it was notorious that he had not clerical pursuits for the employment of half his time. In this way, therefore, he had got into a habit of looking at the hounds, and keeping up his acquaintance in the county, meeting Lord Dumbello, Mr. Green Walker, Harold Smith, and other such like sinners; and on one such occasion, as the three months were nearly closing, he did meet Mr. Sowerby.

“Look here, Sowerby; I want to speak to you for half a moment. What are you doing about that bill?”

“Bill—bill! what bill?—which bill? The whole bill, and nothing but the bill. That seems to be the conversation now-a-days of all men, morning, noon, and night.”

“Don’t you know the bill I signed for you for four hundred pounds?”

“Did you, though? Was not that rather green of you?”

This did seem strange to Mark. Could it really be the fact that Mr. Sowerby had so many bills flying about that he had absolutely forgotten that occurrence in the Gatherum Castle bedroom. And then to be called green by the very man whom he had obliged!

“Perhaps I was,” said Mark, in a tone that showed that he was somewhat piqued. “But all the same I should be glad to know how it will be taken up.”

“Oh, Mark, what a ruffian you are to spoil my day’s sport in this way. Any man but a parson would be too good a Christian for such intense cruelty. But let me see—four hundred pounds? Oh, yes—Tozer has it.”

“And what will Tozer do with it?”

“Make money of it; whatever way he may go to work he will do that.”

“But will Tozer bring it to me on the 20th?”

“Oh, Lord, no! Upon my word, Mark, you are deliciously green. A cat would as soon think of killing a mouse directly she got it into her claws. But, joking apart, you need not trouble yourself. Maybe you will hear no more about it; or, perhaps, which no doubt is more probable, I may have to send it to you to be renewed. But you need do nothing till you hear from me or somebody else.”

“Only do not let any one come down upon me for the money.”

“There is not the slightest fear of that. Tally-ho, old fellow! He’s away. Tally-ho! right over by Gossetts’ barn. Come along, and never mind Tozer—‘Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.’” And away they both went together, parson and member of parliament.

And then again on that occasion Mark went home with a sort of feeling that the bill did not matter. Tozer would manage it somehow; and it was quite clear that it would not do to tell his wife of it just at present.

On the 21st of that month of February, however, he did receive a reminder that the bill and all concerning it had not merely been a farce. This was a letter from Mr. Sowerby, dated from Chaldicotes, though not bearing the Barchester post-mark, in which that gentleman suggested a renewal—not exactly of the old bill, but of a new one. It seemed to Mark that the letter had been posted in London. If I give it entire, I shall, perhaps, most quickly explain its purport:

“Chaldicotes,—20th February, 185—.

“MY DEAR MARK,—”‘Lend not thy name to the money-dealers, for
the same is a destruction and a snare.’ If that be not in the
Proverbs, it ought to be. Tozer has given me certain signs of
his being alive and strong this cold weather. As we can neither
of us take up that bill for 400_l_. at the moment, we must
renew it, and pay him his commission and interest, with all the
rest of his perquisites, and pickings, and stealings—from all
which, I can assure you, Tozer does not keep his hands as he
should do.

“To cover this and some other little outstanding trifles, I
have filled in the new bill for 500_l._, making it due 23rd of
May next. Before that time, a certain accident will, I trust,
have occurred to your impoverished friend. By-the-by, I never
told you how she went off from Gatherum Castle, the morning
after you left us, with the Greshams. Cart-ropes would not hold
her, even though the duke held them; which he did, with all the
strength of his ducal hands. She would go to meet some doctor
of theirs, and so I was put off for that time; but I think that
the matter stands in a good train.

“Do not lose a post in sending back the bill accepted, as Tozer
may annoy you—nay, undoubtedly will, if the matter be not in
his hand, duly signed by both of us, the day after to-morrow.
He is an ungrateful brute; he has lived on me for these eight
years, and would not let me off a single squeeze now to save my
life. But I am specially anxious to save you from the annoyance
and cost of lawyers’ letters; and if delayed, it might get into
the papers.

“Put it under cover to me, at No. 7, Duke Street, St. James’s.
I shall be in town by that time.

“Good-bye, old fellow. That was a decent brush we had the other
day from Cobbold’s Ashes. I wish I could get that brown horse
from you. I would not mind going to a hundred and thirty.

“Yours ever,

“N. SOWERBY.”

When Mark had read it through he looked down on his table to see whether the old bill had fallen from the letter; but no, there was no enclosure, and had been no enclosure but the new bill. And then he read the letter through again, and found that there was no word about the old bill,—not a syllable, at least, as to its whereabouts. Sowerby did not even say that it would remain in his own hands.

Mark did not in truth know much about such things. It might be that the very fact of his signing this second document would render that first document null and void; and from Sowerby’s silence on the subject, it might be argued that this was so well known to be the case, that he had not thought of explaining it. But yet Mark could not see how this should be so.

But what was he to do? That threat of cost and lawyers, and specially of the newspapers, did have its effect upon him—as no doubt it was intended to do. And then he was utterly dumfounded by Sowerby’s impudence in drawing on him for 500_l._ instead of 400_l._, “covering,” as Sowerby so good-humouredly said, “sundry little outstanding trifles.”

But at last he did sign the bill, and sent it off, as Sowerby had directed. What else was he to do?

Fool that he was. A man always can do right, even though he has done wrong before. But that previous wrong adds so much difficulty to the path—a difficulty which increases in tremendous ratio, till a man at last is choked in his struggling, and is drowned beneath the waters.

And then he put away Sowerby’s letter carefully, locking it up from his wife’s sight. It was a letter that no parish clergyman should have received. So much he acknowledged to himself. But nevertheless it was necessary that he should keep it. And now again for a few hours this affair made him very miserable.

Ideal Houses.

Wandering one morning into the Lowther Arcade, I found myself behind an old man and a little girl. The man was very feeble and tottering in his steps, and the child was very young. It was near the Christmas season, and many children, richly dressed, in the care of mothers, sisters, and nursery governesses, were loading themselves with all kinds of amusing and expensive toys. The vaulted roof re-echoed with the sounds of young voices, shrill whistles, wiry tinklings of musical gocarts, the rustling of paper, and the notes of cornopeans or pianos. It was the Exhibition of 1851 repeated, in miniature; the toys of manhood being exchanged for the toys of youth.

My old man and my little girl were not amongst the happy buyers, or the richly dressed, for they were evidently very poor. They had wandered into the bazaar to feast upon its sights, and it was difficult to say which was the more entranced of the two. The old man gazed about him, with a vacant, gratified smile upon his face, and the child was too young to know that any barrier existed to prevent her plucking the tempting fruit which she saw hanging in clusters on every side. This barrier—the old, thick, black, impassable barrier of poverty—though invisible to the child, was not invisible to me; and I blamed the old man for turning her steps into such a glittering enchanted cavern, whose walls were really lined, to her, with bitterness and despair.

“Why don’t we live here, gran’da?” asked the child. The old man gave no other answer than a weak laugh.

“Why don’t I have a house like that?” continued the child, pointing to a bright doll’s-house displayed upon a stall, and trying to drag her guardian towards it.

The old man still only laughed feebly, as he shuffled past the attraction, and before the thought had struck me that I might have purchased a cheap pleasure by giving this house to the child, they were both lost in the pushing, laughing crowd.

This incident naturally set me thinking about toys, and their effect in increasing the amount of human happiness. I asked myself if I, ——, a respectable, middle-aged man of moderate means, was free from the influence of these powerful trifles. I was compelled, in all the cheap honesty of self-examination, to answer “No.” I felt, upon reflection, that I was even weaker than the poor child I had just seen. The chief toy that I was seeking for was an ideal house that I had never been able to find. I was led away by a vague sentiment about the poetry of neighbourhoods—a secret consuming passion for red-brick—a something that could hardly be weighed or spanned; the echo of an old song; the mists of a picture; the shadow of a dream. She was led away by no such unsubstantial phantoms. Her eyes had suddenly rested, for a few moments, upon her childish paradise, and a few shillings would have made her happy. I, on the contrary, had exhausted years in searching for my paradise, but without a prospect of success.

The fact is, I have got an unfortunate habit of looking back. I am fond of the past, though only in a dreamy, unsystematic way. My history is a little out of order, and I am no authority upon dates; but I like to hover about places. I cannot tell the day, the hour, or even the year in which the battle of Sedgemoor occurred; but I have gloated over the old roadside mill from which the Duke of Monmouth watched his losing contest, and the old houses at Bridgewater, whose roofs were then probably crowded with women and children. I have even been through the straggling village of Weston Zoyland, and into the sanded tavern where the late Lord Macaulay resided for weeks while he wrote this portion of his history. I have heard the landlord’s proud account of his distinguished guest, and how “he worrited about the neighbourhood.” This interesting fact, so I am informed, is duly recorded, upon my authority, in the latest edition of _Men of the Time_. My only objection to the late Lord Macaulay is, that he was one of these men of the time—of my own time. If Gibbon had been the careful historian of Sedgemoor, the village pothouse would have had a finer old crusted flavour, to my taste. The sentiment that governs me scarcely blooms under a hundred years, neither more nor less. I cannot learn to love the Elizabethan times—they are too remote. I have no more real sympathy with fifteen hundred and fifty, than with eighteen hundred and fifty. I can tolerate the seventeenth century; but the eighteenth always “stirs my heart, like a trumpet.”

Notwithstanding all this, I am not an obstructive man; I am not a “fogey.” I take the good the gods provide me. I have no prejudices against gas; though I wish it could be supplied without so much parochial quarrelling. It may generate poison, as certain chemists assert; but it certainly generates too many pamphlets and public meetings. I use the electric telegraph; I travel by the railway; and I am thankful to their inventors and originators. The moment, however, I leave the railway, I plunge rapidly into the past. I never linger, for a moment, at the bright, new, damp, lofty railway hotel (I hate the name of hotel, although I know it springs from hostelry); nor amongst the mushroom houses that rally round the station. My course is always through the distant trees, beyond the dwarfish, crumbling church, whose broad low windows seem to have taken root amongst the flat, uneven tombstones, into the old town or village, into its very heart—its market-place—and up to the brown old door of its oldest inn. I know everything that can be said against such places. They are very yellow; they have too strong a flavour of stale tobacco-smoke; their roofs are low, and their floors have a leaning either to one side or the other. Their passages are dark, and often built on various levels; so that you may tumble down into your bed-chamber, or tumble up into your sitting-room, shaking every tooth in your head, or possibly biting your tongue. These may be serious drawbacks to some people, but they are not so serious to me, and I am able to find many compensating advantages. The last vestige of the real old able-bodied port lingers only in such nooks and corners, and is served out by matronly servants, like housekeepers in ancient families. I know one inn of the kind where the very “boots” looks positively venerable. He wears a velvet skull-cap that Cardinal Wolsey might have been proud of; he has saved ten thousand pounds in his humble servitude, and is a large landed proprietor in the county. Prosperity has not made him inattentive. No one will give your shoes such an enduring polish, or call you up for an early train with such unerring punctuality.

With these sentiments, fancies, and prejudices in favour of the past, joined to a fastidious, quaintly luxurious taste, and limited funds, it is hardly to be wondered at that I have searched long and vainly for my ideal dwelling. I might, perhaps, have found it readily enough in the country, but my habits only allowed me to seek it in town. I am a London man—London born and London bred—a genuine cockney, I hope, of the school of Dr. Johnson and Charles Lamb. I cannot tear myself away from old taverns, old courts and alleys, old suburbs (now standing in the very centre of the town), old print-shops, old mansions, old archways, and old churches. I must hear the London chimes at midnight, or life would not be worth a jot. I hear them, as they were heard a century and more ago, for they are the last things to change; but forty or fifty years have played sad havoc with land, and brick, and stone. Fire has done something; metropolitan improvements have done more. Not only do I mourn over what is lost, but what is gained. The town grows newer every day that it grows older. I know it must be so; I know it ought to be so; I know it is a sign of increased prosperity and strength. I see this with one half of my mind, while I abhor it with the other. I cannot love New Oxford Street, while St. Giles’s Church and old Holborn still remain. I have no affection for Bayswater and Notting-hill, but a tender remembrance of Tyburn Gate. I feel no sensation of delight when I hear the name of St. John’s Wood or the Regent’s Park; and Camden Town is a thing of yesterday that I treat with utter contempt. If I allow my footsteps to wander along Piccadilly and through Knightsbridge, they turn down, on one side, into Chelsea, or up, on the other side, into Kensington, leaving Brompton unvisited in the middle. I am never tired of sitting under the trees in Cheyne Walk; of walking round the red bricks and trim gravel pathways of Chelsea Hospital; of peeping through the railings at Gough House, or watching the old Physic Garden from a boat on the river. I am never weary of roaming hand-in-hand with an amiable, gossiping companion, like Leigh Hunt, listening to stories at every doorstep in the old town, and repeopling faded, half-deserted streets with the great and little celebrities of the past. I never consider a day ill spent that has ended in plucking daisies upon Kew Green, or in wasting an hour or two in the cathedral stillness of Charter-House Square. I am fond of tracing resemblances, perhaps imaginary, between Mark Lane and Old Highgate, and of visiting old merchants’ decayed mansions far away in tarry Poplar. I could add a chapter to Leigh Hunt’s pleasant essay upon City trees,[14] and tell of many fountains and flower-gardens that stand under the windows of dusky counting-houses.

Humanizing as such harmless wandering ought to be, it seems only to make me break a commandment. I am sorely afraid that I covet my neighbour’s house. When I find the nearest approach to my ideal—my day-dream—my toy dwelling—it is always in the occupation of steady, unshifting people. Such habitations, in or near London, seem to descend as heirlooms from generation to generation. They are never to be let; they are seldom offered for sale; and the house agent—the showman of “eligible villas”—is not familiar with them. I will describe the rarity.

It must be built of red brick, not earlier than 1650, not later than 1750, picked out at the edges with slabs of yellow stone. It must not be too lofty, and must be equally balanced on each side of its doorway. It must stand detached, walled in on about an acre of ground, well surrounded by large old trees. Its roof must be sloping, and if crowned with a bell-turret, so much the better. Its outer entrance must be a lofty gate of flowered ironwork, supported on each side by purple-red brick columns, each one surmounted by a globe of stone. Looking through the tracery of this iron gate, you must see a few broad white steps leading up to the entrance-hall. The doorway of this hall must be dark and massive, the lower half wood and the upper half window-framed glass. Over the top must be a projecting hood-porch filled with nests of wood-carving, representing fruit, flowers, and figures, brown with age. Looking through the glass of the hall-door, you must see more carving like this along the lofty walls; and a broad staircase with banisters, dark as ebony, leading up to a long narrow window, shaded by the rich wings of a spreading cedar-tree. The rooms of this mansion will necessarily be in keeping with its external features, presenting many unexpected, irregular closets and corners, with, perhaps, a mysterious double staircase leading down to the cellars, to which a romantic, unauthenticated story is attached. Such houses are none the worse for being filled with legends; for having one apartment, at least, with a reputed murder-stain upon its floor; and for being generally alluded to as Queen Elizabeth’s palaces, although probably not built for nearly a century after that strong-minded monarch’s death. The window-shutters are none the worse for being studded with alarm-bells, as thick as grapes upon a fruitful vine; as an additional comfort is derived from the security of the present, when we are made to reflect upon the dangers of the past. A few rooks will give an additional charm to the place; and it will be pleasant, when a few crumbs are thrown upon the gravel, to see a fluttering cloud of sparrows dropping down from the sheltering eaves.

With regard to the neighbourhood in which such a house should stand, it must be essentially _ripe_. Better that it should be a little faded; a little deserted; a little unpopular, and very unfashionable; than so dreadfully raw and new. It should have a flavour of old literature, old politics, and old art. If it is just a little obstructive and High Tory—inclined to stand upon the ancient ways—no sensible man of progress should blame it, but smile blandly and pass on. It will, at least, possess the merit, in his eyes, of being self-supporting; asking for, or obtaining no government aid. While Boards of Works are freely supplied with funds to construct the new, there is no board but unorganized sentiment to maintain the old.

This house and this neighbourhood should not be far from London—from the old centre of the old town. They should stand in Soho, or in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, or in Westminster, like Queen’s Square, near St. James’s Park; or even in Lambeth, like the Archbishop’s Palace. Better still if in the Strand, like Northumberland House; or in Fleet Street, like the Temple Gardens. What luxury would there be, almost equal to anything we read of in the _Arabian Nights_, in turning on one side from the busy crowd, unlocking a dingy door that promised to lead to nothing but a miserable court, and passing, at once, into a secret, secluded garden! What pleasures would be equal to those of hearing the splash of cool fountains; the sighing of the wind through lofty elms and broad beeches; of standing amongst the scent and colours of a hundred growing flowers; of sitting in an oaken room with a tiled fireplace, surrounded by old china in cabinets, old folios upon carved tables, old portraits of men and women in the costume of a bygone time, and looking out over a lawn of grass into a winding vista of trees, so contrived as to shut out all signs of city life, while the mellow hum of traffic came in at the open window, or through the walls, and you felt that you were within a stone’s throw of Temple Bar!

In such a house, on such a spot, a man might live, and his life be something more than a weary round of food and sleep. His nature would become subdued to what it rested in: the clay would happily take the shape of the mould. I believe more in the influence of dwellings upon human character, than in the influence of authority on matters of opinion. The man may seek the house; or the house may form the man; but in either case the result is the same. A few yards of earth, even on this side of the grave, will make all the difference between life and death. If our dear old friend Charles Lamb was now alive (and we all must wish he was, if only that he might see how every day is bringing him nearer the crown that belongs only to the Prince of British Essayists), there would be something singularly jarring to the human nerves in finding him at Dalston; but not so jarring in finding him a little farther off, at Hackney. He would still have drawn nourishment in the Temple and in Covent Garden; but he must surely have perished if transplanted to New Tyburnia. I cannot imagine him living at Pentonville (I cannot, in my uninquiring ignorance, imagine who Penton was that he should name a _ville_!), but I can see a certain appropriate oddity in his cottage at Colebrook Row, Islington. In the first place, we may agree that this London suburb is very old, without going into the vexed question of whether it was really very “merry.” In the second place, this same Colebrook Row was built a few years before our dear old friend was born—I believe, in seventeen hundred and seventy. In the third place, it was called a “Row,” though “Lane” or “Walk” would have been as old and as good; but “Terrace” or “Crescent” would have rendered it unbearable. The New River flowed calmly past, the cottage walls—as poor George Dyer found to his cost—bringing with it fair memories of Izaak Walton and the last two centuries. The house itself had also certain peculiarities to recommend it. The door was so constructed that it opened into the chief sitting-room; and this, though promising much annoyance, was really a source of fun and enjoyment to our dear old friend. He was never so delighted as when he stood on the hearthrug receiving many congenial visitors, as they came to him on the muddiest-boot, and the wettest-of-umbrella days. His immediate neighbourhood was also peculiar. It was there that weary wanderers came to seek the waters of oblivion. Suicide could pitch upon no spot so favourable for its sacrifices as the gateway leading into the river enclosure before Charles Lamb’s cottage. Waterloo Bridge had not long been built, and was not then a fashionable theatre for self-destruction. The drags were always kept ready in Colebrook Row, and are still so kept at a small tavern a few doors from the cottage. The landlord’s ear, according to his own account, had become so sensitive by repeated practice, that when aroused at night by a heavy splash in the water, he could tell by the sound whether it was an accident, or a wilful plunge. He never believed that poor George Dyer tumbled in from carelessness, though it was no business of his to express an opinion on the matter. After the eighth suicide, within a short period, Charles Lamb began to grow restless.

“Mary,” he said to his sister, “I think it’s high time we left this place;” and so they went to Edmonton. Those who are painfully familiar with the unfortunate mental infirmity under which they both laboured, will see a sorrowful meaning in words like these. Those who, like me, can see an odd harmony between our dear old friend and Colebrook Row, will lament, the sad necessity which compelled them to part company.

Without wishing for a moment to erect my eccentric taste in houses as an unerring guide for my fellow-creatures (especially as the ancient London dwellings are growing fewer every day, and I am still seeking my ideal toy), I must still be allowed to wonder at that condition of mind which can settle down, with seeming delight, in the new raw buildings that I see springing up on every side. I am not speaking of those who are compelled to practise economy (I am compelled to practise it myself), nor of those whose business arrangements require them to keep within a particular circle; but of those who have the power, to a certain extent, of choosing their ground, and choose it upon some principle that I am unable to understand.

I have a sensitive horror of regularity, of uniformity, of straight lines, of obtrusive geometrical forms. I prefer a winding alley to a direct street. I detest a modern, well-advertised building estate. The water-colour sketch of such a place is meant to be very fascinating and attractive as it hangs in the great house-agent’s office or window, but it has no charms for me. My theory is that a man must be perpetually struggling if he wishes to preserve his individuality in such a settlement. The water may be pure; the soil may be gravelly; the neighbourhood may be well supplied with all kinds of churches and chapels; the “red book” may not pass it by as being out of the fashionable circle; blue books may refer to it approvingly as a model of perfect drainage; it may be warmed up by thorough occupation; perambulators may be seen in its bare new squares; broughams may stand by the side of its bright level kerbstones; but the demon of sameness, in my eyes, would always be brooding over it. I should feel that when I retired to rest, perhaps eight hundred masters of households were slumbering in eight hundred bedchambers exactly the same size and the same shape as my own. When I took a bath, or lingered over the breakfast-table, I should be haunted by the knowledge that eight hundred people might probably be taking similar baths and similar breakfasts in precisely similar apartments. My library, my dining-room, and my drawing-room would correspond in shape and size with eight hundred other receptacles devoted to study, refreshment, and recreation. If I gazed from a window, or stood at a doorway, I should see hundreds of other windows, and hundreds of other doorways, that matched mine in relative position and design. I should look down upon the same infant shrubs, and the same even, level walls, or up at the same long, level parapets, without break, the same regular army of chimney-pots, without variety,—until I should feel as if I had settled in a fashionable penitentiary, to feed upon monotony for the rest of my days. My dreams at night would probably be a mixture of the past and the present, of my old tastes and my new sufferings. The builder, whose trowel seemed ever ringing in my ears, would dance over me in hoops and patches; and the whitewasher, whose brush seemed always flopping above my head, would be mixing his composition in my favourite punch-bowl. My old books, my old prints, my old china, my old furniture, my old servants, would pine away in such a habitation; and I should have to surround myself with fresh faces and fresh voices, according to the latest model. Finally, I should die of a surfeit of stucco, and be the first lodger entered in the records of the adjoining bleak, unfinished cemetery.

If I have little sympathy with those people who dwell in such tents as these,—who neither belong to the town nor the country,—who hang upon the skirts of London in mushroom suburbs that blend as inharmoniously with the great old city as a Wandsworth villa would blend with Rochester Castle,—I am totally unable to understand the character of those other people whose love for the modern carries them even farther than this, and who take a pride in planting damp and comfortless homes in the very centre of wild, unfinished neighbourhoods. Who are they? Have they human form and shape, with minds and hearts; or are they, as I have often suspected, merely window-blinds? If they are not policemen and laundresses in charge of bare walls and echoing passages; if they are not hired housekeepers put in to bait the trap, and catch unwary tenants; if they are not restless spirits, who, for an abatement of rent, are always willing to lead the advanced posts in suburban colonization,—whence springs that singular ambition which is always anxious to be literally first in the field, and the oldest inhabitant in a settlement of yesterday? Surely, there can be little pleasure in living, for months, amongst heaps of brick-dust, shavings, mortar and wet clay; in staring at hollow shops that are boarded up for years until they are wanted, and at undecided mansions which may turn out to be public-houses; or in being stared at, in a tenfold degree, by rows of spectral carcases and yawning cellars? There can be little pleasure in contemplating cold stucco porticos of a mongrel Greek type, that crack and fall to pieces in rain and frost; or gaping gravel-pits; or stagnant ponds; or lines of oven-like foundations waiting for more capital and more enterprise to cover them with houses. There can be just as little pleasure in seeing your scanty pavement breaking suddenly off before your door, and your muddy, hilly road tapering away in a few rotten planks that lead into a marshy, grassless field, where you may stand and easily fancy yourself the last man at the end of a melancholy, unsuccessful, deserted world, looking into space, with no one person or thing behind you.

The old places that I shall always cling to are unhappily often visited by decay; but it is the decay of ripe old age, which is always venerable. My ideal toy-house—the nearest approach to it that I can find—may become uninhabitable in the fulness of years, but it will still be picturesque; and those who may despise it as a dwelling will admire it upon canvas. In this form it is often brought within my humble reach, and I secure the shadow if I cannot obtain the substance. I still, however, look longingly at the reality, as my little girl looked at her toy-house in her morning’s walk; and, like her, I shall doubtless be swept past it, still looking back, until I am sucked into that countless crowd from which there is no returning.

FOOTNOTES

[14] _The Town: its Memorable Characters and Events._

Dante.

I wait, in patience, and in trembling hope,
The last sands in my glass; a few brief grains
Divide me from the Angel in yon cope,
Whose studded azure never sheltered pains
Keener than mine! But, from my mount of years,
I look on my past life, as one whose chains
Have fall’n, saint-touched; and thro’ the mist of tears
Sweet glimmerings of the Empyrean come
Athwart the troubled vale of doubts and fears;
And as a child, who, wandered from his home,
Sees, suddenly, with speechless joy, his cot,
Thus seems the hour, when I no more shall roam,
But, in a blessed, and abiding lot,
Merge my long exile. Florence! when these eyes,
So long athirst! shall gaze upon the spot,
This atom-earth, in space, with ken more wise
Than erring nature would permit to clay,
Methinks that sorrow, for thy destinies,
Will yet pursue me to the realms of day;
For, wert not thou the life-hope of my breast?
Altho’, my grief-schooled spirit gave not way
To its deep yearning, so, at thy behest,
To tread thy streets once more: I could not bend
Truth to the shameless compromise! Unrest,
Want, banishment, were better, than to lend
Myself to falsehood! More thou neededst me
Than I thee. So, I know, unto the end,
How hard ’tis to climb others’ stairs; to see
Anarchy’s gory reign; to beg my bread
In alien courts, midst lewd society;
At times without a shelter for the head
A price was set on! Centuries follow this,
When thou shalt think upon thy Dante dead,
And his poor tomb; which ever the abyss
Of waves shall moan to: Yes, my Florence, then,
When bright Italia, ’neath the brutal kiss
Of the barbarian ravishers, shall plain,
In useless struggles, growing faint to death!
How shalt thou wish thy Dante back again!
But, even then, an echo of my breath
Through the long years, with trumpet inspiration,
Shall lead thy Best to victory, or death!
And, if no more they may be called a Nation,
Shall teach them how to fall with Samson-wrath;
Yea! fall in triumph, midst the desolation
Of throne, and rostrum, altar, and of hearth!
Nor, where the blessed corn-crop fail, to leave
To poisonous weeds the heirship of the earth.
Oh! well these tried and aged eyes may grieve,
To read, in spirit, this fore-acted doom;
Which others neither _can_ see, nor believe!
But laugh upon the threshold of the tomb;
As sports the summer-fly, whilst spiders weave
Their fateful nets! Well, let the earth resume
This failing garment of my flesh; I feel
My present life has not been without bloom,
Or fruits: Due time their flavour will reveal!
And if the Statesman’s sole reward hath been
Long years of wandering, seeking to conceal
A forfeit life: If spoken words, like wind
Have passed away! My fame seared, in its green;
I leave, at least, _one_ testament behind,
Of which my Florence shall not say, I ween
(However callous, and unjustly blind),
It dies, along with the old Ghibelline!
No: with Italia’s land my Book shall live;
Her thoughts, and very language be of mine!
Yes, what my _City_ was too false to give,
A _world_ will yet award me! So, I end:
My strength hath been in patience, whose close sieve,
Well-used, the Garner’s labour will befriend.
Florence, my mighty wrongs I can forgive!
Honour me in my ashes; this thou _must_!
Now, Sainted Name, in whose pure memories live
The all, that shall make glorious my—dust;
My sole thoughts turn with speechless love to thee!
Thou wert my Alpha and Omega: First
And Last! Let me return to liberty;
I found it but in Paradise—with Thee!

The Last Sketch.

Not many days since I went to visit a house where in former years I had received many a friendly welcome. We went in to the owner’s—an artist’s—studio. Prints, pictures, and sketches hung on the walls as I had last seen and remembered them. The implements of the painter’s art were there. The light which had shone upon so many, many hours of patient and cheerful toil, poured through the northern window upon print and bust, lay figure and sketch, and upon the easel before which the good, the gentle, the beloved Leslie laboured. In this room the busy brain had devised, and the skilful hand executed, I know not how many of the noble works which have delighted the world with their beauty and charming humour. Here the poet called up into pictorial presence, and informed with life, grace, beauty, infinite friendly mirth and wondrous naturalness of expression, the people of whom his dear books told him the stories,—his Shakspeare, his Cervantes, his Molière, his Le Sage. There was his last work on the easel—a beautiful fresh smiling shape of Titania, such as his sweet guileless fancy imagined the _Midsummer Night’s_ queen to be. Gracious, and pure, and bright, the sweet smiling image glimmers on the canvas. Fairy elves, no doubt, were to have been grouped around their mistress in laughing clusters. Honest Bottom’s grotesque head and form are indicated as reposing by the side of the consummate beauty. The darkling forest would have grown around them, with the stars glittering from the midsummer sky: the flowers at the queen’s feet, and the boughs and foliage about her, would have been peopled with gambolling sprites and fays. They were dwelling in the artist’s mind no doubt, and would have been developed by that patient, faithful, admirable genius: but the busy brain stopped working, the skilful hand fell lifeless, the loving, honest heart ceased to beat. What was she to have been—that fair Titania—when perfected by the patient skill of the poet, who in imagination saw the sweet innocent figure, and with tender courtesy and caresses, as it were, posed and shaped and traced the fair form? Is there record kept anywhere of fancies conceived, beautiful, unborn? Some day will they assume form in some yet undeveloped light? If our bad unspoken thoughts are registered against us, and are written in the awful account, will not the good thoughts unspoken, the love and tenderness, the pity, beauty, charity, which pass through the breast, and cause the heart to throb with silent good, find a remembrance, too? A few weeks more, and this lovely offspring of the poet’s conception would have been complete—to charm the world with its beautiful mirth. May there not be some sphere unknown to us where it may have an existence? They say our words, once out of our lips, go travelling in _omne ærum_, reverberating for ever and ever. If our words, why not our thoughts? If the Has Been, why not the Might Have Been?

Some day our spirits may be permitted to walk in galleries of fancies more wondrous and beautiful than any achieved works which at present we see, and our minds to behold and delight in masterpieces which poets’ and artists’ minds have fathered and conceived only.

With a feeling much akin to that with which I looked upon the friend’s—the admirable artist’s—unfinished work, I can fancy many readers turning to these—the last pages which were traced by Charlotte Brontë’s hand. Of the multitude that has read her books, who has not known and deplored the tragedy of her family, her own most sad and untimely fate? Which of her readers has not become her friend? Who that has known her books has not admired the artist’s noble English, the burning love of truth, the bravery, the simplicity, the indignation at wrong, the eager sympathy, the pious love and reverence, the passionate honour, so to speak, of the woman! What a story is that of that family of poets in their solitude yonder on the gloomy northern moors! At nine o’clock at night, Mrs. Gaskell tells, after evening prayers, when their guardian and relative had gone to bed, the three poetesses—the three maidens, Charlotte, and Emily, and Anne—Charlotte being the “motherly friend and guardian to the other two”—“began, like restless wild animals, to pace up and down their parlour, “making out” their wonderful stories, talking over plans and projects, and thoughts of what was to be their future life.”

One evening, at the close of 1854, as Charlotte Nicholls sat with her husband by the fire, listening to the howling of the wind about the house, she suddenly said to her husband, “If you had not been with me, I must have been writing now.” She then ran upstairs, and brought down, and read aloud, the beginning of a new tale. When she had finished, her husband remarked, “The critics will accuse you of repetition.” She replied, “Oh! I shall alter that. I always begin two or three times before I can please myself.” But it was not to be. The trembling little hand was to write no more. The heart, newly awakened to love and happiness, and throbbing with maternal hope, was soon to cease to beat; that intrepid outspeaker and champion of truth, that eager, impetuous redresser of wrong, was to be called out of the world’s fight and struggle, to lay down the shining arms, and to be removed to a sphere where even a noble indignation _cor ulterius nequit lacerare_, and where truth complete, and right triumphant, no longer need to wage war.

I can only say of this lady, _vidi tantum_. I saw her first just as I rose out of an illness from which I had never thought to recover. I remember the trembling little frame, the little hand, the great honest eyes. An impetuous honesty seemed to me to characterize the woman. Twice I recollect she took me to task for what she held to be errors in doctrine. Once about Fielding we had a disputation. She spoke her mind out. She jumped too rapidly to conclusions. (I have smiled at one or two passages in the _Biography_, in which my own disposition or behaviour forms the subject of talk.) She formed conclusions that might be wrong, and built up whole theories of character upon them. New to the London world, she entered it with an independent, indomitable spirit of her own; and judged of contemporaries, and especially spied out arrogance or affectation, with extraordinary keenness of vision. She was angry with her favourites if their conduct or conversation fell below her ideal. Often she seemed to me to be judging the London folk prematurely: but perhaps the city is rather angry at being judged. I fancied an austere little Joan of Arc marching in upon us, and rebuking our easy lives, our easy morals. She gave me the impression of being a very pure, and lofty, and high-minded person. A great and holy reverence of right and truth seemed to be with her always. Such, in our brief interview, she appeared to me. As one thinks of that life so noble, so lonely—of that passion for truth—of those nights and nights of eager study, swarming fancies, invention, depression, elation, prayer; as one reads the necessarily incomplete, though most touching and admirable history of the heart that throbbed in this one little frame—of this one amongst the myriads of souls that have lived and died on this great earth—this great earth?—this little speck in the infinite universe of God,—with what wonder do we think of to-day, with what awe await to-morrow, when that which is now but darkly seen shall be clear! As I read this little fragmentary sketch, I think of the rest. Is it? And where is it? Will not the leaf be turned some day, and the story be told? Shall the deviser of the tale somewhere perfect the history of little EMMA’S griefs and troubles? Shall TITANIA come forth complete with her sportive court, with the flowers at her feet, the forest around her, and all the stars of summer glittering overhead?

How well I remember the delight, and wonder, and pleasure with which I read _Jane Eyre_, sent to me by an author whose name and sex were then alike unknown to me; the strange fascinations of the book; and how with my own work pressing upon me, I could not, having taken the volumes up, lay them down until they were read through! Hundreds of those who, like myself, recognized and admired that master-work of a great genius, will look with a mournful interest and regard and curiosity upon this, the last fragmentary sketch from the noble hand which wrote _Jane Eyre_.

W. M. T.

Emma.

(A FRAGMENT OF A STORY BY THE LATE CHARLOTTE BRONTË.)