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

for controlment. These menaces, however, frightened me little: my poor mother's thunder could not reach me; and my conscience, or casuistry, supplied me with other interpretations for her texts of Scripture, so that her oracles had not the least weight with me in frightening me from my purpose. How my new loves speeded I neither informed her, nor any other members of my maternal or paternal family, who, on both sides, had been bitter against my marriage. Of what use wrangling with them? It was better to carpere diem and its sweet loves and pleasures, and to leave the railers to grumble, or the seniors to advise, at their ease.

Besides Madam Esmond I had, it must be owned, in the frantic rage of my temporary separation, addressed notes of wondrous sarcasm to my Uncle Warrington, to my Aunt Madame de Bernstein, and to my Lord or Lady of Castlewood (I forget to which individually), thanking them for the trouble which they had taken in preventing the dearest happiness of my life, and promising them a corresponding gratitude from their obliged relative. Business brought the jovial Baronet and his family to London somewhat earlier than usual, and Madame de Bernstein was never sorry to get back to Clarges Street and her cards. I saw them. They found me perfectly well. They concluded the match was broken off, and I did not choose to undeceive them. The Baroness took heart at seeing how cheerful I was, and made many sly jokes about my philosophy, and my prudent behaviour as a man of the world. She was, as ever, bent upon finding a rich match for me: and I fear I paid many compliments at her house to a rich young soap-boiler's daughter from Mile End, whom the worthy Baroness wished to place in my arms.

“You court her with infinite wit and esprit, my dear,” says my pleased kinswoman, “but she does not understand half you say, and the other half, I think, frightens her. This ton de persiflage is very well in our society, but you must be sparing of it, my dear nephew, amongst these roturiers.”

Miss Badge married a young gentleman of royal dignity, though shattered fortunes, from a neighbouring island; and I trust Mrs. Mackshane has ere this pardoned my levity. There was another person besides Miss at my aunt's house, who did not understand my persiflage much better than Miss herself; and that was a lady who had seen James the Second's reign, and who was alive and as worldly as ever in King George's. I loved to be with her: but that my little folks have access to this volume, I could put down a hundred stories of the great old folks whom she had known in the great old days—of George the First and his ladies, of St. John and Marlborough, of his reigning Majesty and the late Prince of Wales, and the causes of the quarrel between them—but my modest muse pipes for boys and virgins. Son Miles does not care about court stories, or if he doth, has a fresh budget from Carlton House, quite as bad as the worst of our old Baroness. No, my dear wife, thou hast no need to shake thy powdered locks at me! Papa is not going to scandalise his nursery with old-world gossip, nor bring a blush over our chaste bread-and-butter.

But this piece of scandal I cannot help. My aunt used to tell it with infinite gusto; for, to do her justice, she hated your would-be good people, and sniggered over the faults of the self-styled righteous with uncommon satisfaction. In her later days she had no hypocrisy, at least; and in so far was better than some whitewashed... Well, to the story. My Lady Warrington, one of the tallest and the most virtuous of her sex, who had goodness for ever on her lips and “Heaven in her eye,” like the woman in Mr. Addison's tedious tragedy (which has kept the stage, from which some others, which shall be nameless, have disappeared), had the world in her other eye, and an exceedingly shrewd desire of pushing herself in it. What does she do, when my marriage with your ladyship yonder was supposed to be broken off, but attempt to play off on me those arts which she had tried on my poor Harry with such signal ill success, and which failed with me likewise! It was not the Beauty—Miss Flora was for my master—(and what a master! I protest I take off my hat at the idea of such an illustrious connexion!)—it was Dora, the Muse, was set upon me to languish at me and to pity me, and to read even my godless tragedy, and applaud me and console me. Meanwhile, how was the Beauty occupied? Will it be believed that my severe aunt gave a great entertainment to my Lady Yarmouth, presented her boy to her, and placed poor little Miles under her ladyship's august protection? That, so far, is certain; but can it be that she sent her daughter to stay at my lady's house, which our gracious lord and master daily visited, and with the views which old Aunt Bernstein attributed to her? “But for that fit of apoplexy, my dear,” Bernstein said, “that aunt of yours intended there should have been a Countess in her own right in the Warrington family!” [Compare Walpole's letters in Mr. Cunningham's excellent new edition. See the story of the supper at N. House, to show what great noblemen would do for a king's mistress, and the pleasant account of the waiting for the Prince of Wales before Holland House.-EDITOR.] My neighbour and kinswoman, my Lady Claypole, is dead and buried. Grow white, ye daisies, upon Flora's tomb! I can see my pretty Miles, in a gay little uniform of the Norfolk Militia, led up by his parent to the lady whom the King delighted to honour, and the good-natured old Jezebel laying her hand upon the boy's curly pate. I am accused of being but a lukewarm royalist; but sure I can contrast those times with ours, and acknowledge the difference between the late sovereign and the present, who, born a Briton, has given to every family in the empire an example of decorum and virtuous life. [The Warrington MS. is dated 1793.-ED.]

Thus my life sped in the pleasantest of all occupation; and, being so happy myself, I could afford to be reconciled to those who, after all, had done me no injury, but rather added to the zest of my happiness by the brief obstacle which they had placed in my way. No specific plans were formed, but Theo and I knew that a day would come when we need say Farewell no more. Should the day befall a year hence—ten years hence—we were ready to wait. Day after day we discussed our little plans, with Hetty for our confidante. On our drives we spied out pretty cottages that we thought might suit young people of small means; we devised all sorts of delightful schemes and childish economies. We were Strephon and Chloe to be sure. A cot and a brown loaf should content us! Gumbo and Molly should wait upon us (as indeed they have done from that day until this). At twenty, who is afraid of being poor? Our trials would only confirm our attachment. The “sweet sorrow” of every day's parting but made the morrow's meeting more delightful; and when we separated we ran home and wrote each other those precious letters which we and other young gentlemen and ladies write under such circumstances; but though my wife has them all in a great tin sugar-box in the closet in her bedroom, and, I own, I myself have looked at them once, and even thought some of them pretty,—I hereby desire my heirs and executors to burn them all, unread, at our demise; specially desiring my son the Captain (to whom I know the perusal of MSS. is not pleasant) to perform this duty. Those secrets whispered to the penny-post, or delivered between Molly and Gumbo, were intended for us alone, and no ears of our descendants shall overhear them.

We heard in successive brief letters how our dear Harry continued with the army, as Mr. General Amherst's aide-de-camp, after the death of