The Virginians by William Makepeace Thackeray (top books to read txt) 📕

found William was deficient in courage, and no man as wants that can ever have the esteem of Lydia, Countess of Castlewood, no more he can! He said 'twas you that wanted for spirit, cousin, and angered me by telling me that you was always abusing of me. But I forgive you, George, that I do! And when I tell you that it was he was afraid—the mean skunk!—and actually sent for them constables to prevent the match between you and he, you won't wonder I wouldn't vally a feller like that—no, not that much!” and her ladyship snapped her little fingers. “I say, noblesse oblige, and a man of our family who hasn't got courage, I don't care not this pinch of snuff for him—there, now, I don't! Look at our ancestors, George, round these walls! Haven't the Esmonds always fought for their country and king? Is there one of us that, when the moment arrives, ain't ready to show that he's an Esmond and a nobleman? If my eldest son was to show the white feather, 'My Lord Esmond!' I would say to him (for that's the second title in our family), 'I disown your lordship!'” And so saying, the intrepid little woman looked round at her ancestors, whose effigies, depicted by Lely and Kneller, figured round the walls of her drawing-room at Castlewood.

Over that apartment, and the whole house, domain, and village, the new Countess speedily began to rule with an unlimited sway. It was surprising how quickly she learned the ways of command; and, if she did not adopt those methods of precedence usual in England among great ladies, invented regulations for herself, and promulgated them, and made others submit. Having been bred a Dissenter, and not being over-familiar with the Established Church service, Mr. Warrington remarked that she made a blunder or two during the office (not knowing, for example, when she was to turn her face towards the east, a custom not adopted, I believe, in other Reforming churches besides the English); but between Warrington's first bridal visit to Castlewood and his second, my lady had got to be quite perfect in that part of her duty, and sailed into chapel on her cousin's arm, her two footmen bearing her ladyship's great Prayer-book behind her, as demurely as that delightful old devotee with her lackey, in Mr. Hogarth's famous picture of “Morning,” and as if my Lady Lydia had been accustomed to have a chaplain all her life. She seemed to patronise not only the new chaplain, but the service and the church itself, as if she had never in her own country heard a Ranter in a barn. She made the oldest established families in the country—grave baronets and their wives—worthy squires of twenty descents, who rode over to Castlewood to pay the bride and bridegroom honour—know their distance, as the phrase is, and give her the pas. She got an old heraldry book; and a surprising old maiden lady from Winton, learned in politeness and genealogies, from whom she learned the court etiquette (as the old Winton lady had known it in Queen Anne's time); and ere long she jabbered gules and sables, bends and saltires, not with correctness always, but with a wonderful volubility and perseverance. She made little progresses to the neighbouring towns in her gilt coach-and-six, or to the village in her chair, and asserted a quasi-regal right of homage from her tenants and other clodpoles. She lectured the parson on his divinity; the bailiff on his farming; instructed the astonished housekeeper how to preserve and pickle; would have taught the great London footmen to jump behind the carriage, only it was too high for her little ladyship to mount; gave the village gossips instructions how to nurse and take care of their children long before she had one herself; and as for physic, Madam Esmond in Virginia was not more resolute about her pills and draughts than Miss Lydia, the earl's new bride. Do you remember the story of the Fisherman and the Genie, in the Arabian Nights? So one wondered with regard to this lady, how such a prodigious genius could have been corked down into such a little bottle as her body. When Mr. Warrington returned to London after his first nuptial visit, she brought him a little present for her young friends in Dean Street, as she called them (Theo being older, and Hetty scarce younger than herself), and sent a trinket to one and a book to the other—G. Warrington always vowing that Theo's present was a doll, while Hetty's share was a nursery-book with words of one syllable. As for Mr. Will, her younger brother-in-law, she treated him with a maternal gravity and tenderness, and was in the habit of speaking of and to him with a protecting air, which was infinitely diverting to Warrington, although Will's usual curses and blasphemies were sorely increased by her behaviour.

As for old age, my Lady Lydia had little respect for that accident in the life of some gentlemen and gentlewomen; and, once the settlements were made in her behalf, treated the ancient Van den Bosch and his large periwig with no more ceremony than Dinah her black attendant, whose great ears she would pinch, and whose woolly pate she would pull without scruple, upon offence given—so at least Dinah told Gumbo, who told his master. All the household trembled before my lady the Countess: the housekeeper, of whom even my lord and the dowager had been in awe; the pampered London footmen, who used to quarrel if they were disturbed at their cards, and grumbled as they swilled the endless beer, now stepped nimbly about their business when they heard her ladyship's call; even old Lockwood, who had been gate-porter for half a century or more, tried to rally his poor old wandering wits when she came into his lodge to open his window, inspect his wood-closet, and turn his old dogs out of doors. Lockwood bared his old bald head before his new mistress, turned an appealing look towards his niece, and vaguely trembled before her little ladyship's authority. Gumbo, dressing his master for dinner, talked about Elisha (of whom he had heard the chaplain read in the morning), “and his bald head and de boys who call um names, and de bars eat em up, and serve um right,” says Gumbo. But as for my lady, when discoursing with her cousin about the old porter, “Pooh, pooh! Stupid old man!” says she; “past his work, he and his dirty old dogs! They are as old and ugly as those old fish in the pond!” (Here she pointed to two old monsters of carp that had been in a pond in Castlewood gardens for centuries, according to tradition, and had their backs all covered with a hideous grey mould.) “Lockwood must pack off; the workhouse is the place for him; and I shall have a smart, good-looking, tall fellow in the lodge that will do credit to our livery.”

“He was my grandfather's man, and served him in the wars of Queen Anne,” interposed Mr. Warrington. On which my lady cried, petulantly, “O Lord! Queen Anne's dead, I suppose, and we ain't a-going into mourning for her.”

This matter of Lockwood was discussed at the family dinner, when her ladyship announced her intention of getting rid of the old man.

“I am told,” demurely remarks Mr. Van den Bosch, “that, by the laws, poor servants and poor folks of all kinds are admirably provided in their old age here in England. I am sure I wish we had such an asylum for our folks at home, and that we were eased of the expense of keeping our old hands.”

“If a man can't work he ought to go!” cries her ladyship.

“Yes, indeed, and that's a fact!” says grandpapa.

“What! an old servant?” asks my lord.

“Mr. Van den Bosch possibly was independent of servants when he was young,” remarks Mr. Warrington.

“Greased my own boots, opened my own shutters, sanded and watered my own——”