Chapter 10

BEFORE dropping the curtain on my college days I must relatea little adventure which is amusing as an illustration of myreverend friend Napier's enthusiastic spontaneity. My ownshare in the farce is a subordinate matter.

　　During the Christmas party at Holkham I had 'fallen in love,'

　　as the phrase goes, with a young lady whose uncle (she hadneither father nor mother) had rented a place in theneighbourhood. At the end of his visit he invited me toshoot there the following week. For what else had I paid himassiduous attention, and listened like an angel to theinterminable history of his gout? I went; and before I left,proposed to, and was accepted by, the young lady. I wasstill at Cambridge, not of age, and had but moderate means.

　　As for the maiden, 'my face is my fortune' she might havesaid. The aunt, therefore, very properly pooh-poohed thewhole affair, and declined to entertain the possibility of anengagement; the elderly gentleman got a bad attack of gout;and every wire of communication being cut, not an obstaclewas wanting to render persistence the sweetest of miseries.

　　Napier was my confessor, and became as keen to circumvent the'old she-dragon,' so he called her, as I was. Frequent andlong were our consultations, but they generally ended insuggestions and schemes so preposterous, that the only resultwas an immoderate fit of laughter on both sides. At lengthit came to this (the proposition was not mine): we were tohire a post chaise and drive to the inn at G-. I was towrite a note to the young lady requesting her to meet me atsome trysting place. The note was to state that a clergymanwould accompany me, who was ready and willing to unite usthere and then in holy matrimony; that I would bring thelicence in my pocket; that after the marriage we could conferas to ways and means; and that - she could leave the REST tome.

　　No enterprise was ever more merrily conceived, or moreseriously undertaken. (Please to remember that my friend wasnot so very much older than I; and, in other respects, wasquite as juvenile.)Whatever was to come of it, the drive was worth the venture.

　　The number of possible and impossible contingencies providedfor kept us occupied by the hour. Furnished with a well-filled luncheon basket, we regaled ourselves and fortifiedour courage; while our hilarity increased as we neared, orimagined that we neared, the climax. Unanimously we repeatedDr. Johnson's exclamation in a post chaise: 'Life has notmany things better than this.'

　　But where were we? Our watches told us that we had been twohours covering a distance of eleven miles.

　　'Hi! Hullo! Stop!' shouted Napier. In those days posthorses were ridden, not driven; and about all we could see ofthe post boy was what Mistress Tabitha Bramble saw ofHumphrey Clinker. 'Where the dickens have we got to now?'

　　'Don't know, I'm sure, sir,' says the boy; 'never was inthese 'ere parts afore.'

　　'Why,' shouts the vicar, after a survey of the landscape, 'ifI can see a church by daylight, that's Blakeney steeple; andwe are only three miles from where we started.'

　　Sure enough it was so. There was nothing for it but to stopat the nearest house, give the horses a rest and a feed, andmake a fresh start, - better informed as to our topography.

　　It was past four on that summer afternoon when we reached ourdestination. The plan of campaign was cut and dried. Icalled for writing materials, and indicted my epistle asagreed upon.

　　'To whom are you telling her to address the answer?' asked myaccomplice. 'We're INCOG. you know. It won't do for eitherof us to be known.'

　　'Certainly not,' said I. 'What shall it be? White? Black?

　　Brown? or Green?'

　　'Try Browne with an E,' said he. 'The E gives anaristocratic flavour. We can't afford to risk ourrespectability.'

　　The note sealed, I rang the bell for the landlord, desiredhim to send it up to the hall and tell the messenger to waitfor an answer.

　　As our host was leaving the room he turned round, with hishand on the door, and said:

　　'Beggin' your pardon, Mr. Cook, would you and Mr. Napeerplease to take dinner here? I've soom beatiful lamb chops,and you could have a ducklin' and some nice young peas toyour second course. The post-boy says the 'osses is prettynigh done up; but by the time - '

　　'How did you know our names?' asked my companion.

　　'Law sir! The post-boy, he told me. But, beggin' yourpardon, Mr. Napeer, my daughter, she lives in Holkhamwillage; and I've heard you preach afore now.'

　　'Let's have the dinner by all means,' said I.

　　'If the Bishop sequesters my living,' cried Napier, withsolemnity, 'I'll summon the landlord for defamation ofcharacter. But time's up. You must make for the boat-house,which is on the other side of the park. I'll go with you tothe head of the lake.'

　　We had not gone far, when we heard the sound of anapproaching vehicle. What did we see but an open carriage,with two ladies in it, not a hundred yards behind us.

　　'The aunt! by all that's - !'

　　What - I never heard; for, before the sentence wascompleted, the speaker's long legs were scampering out ofsight in the direction of a clump of trees, I following ashard as I could go.

　　As the carriage drove past, my Friar Lawrence was lying in aditch, while I was behind an oak. We were near enough todiscern the niece, and consequently we feared to berecognised. The situation was neither dignified norromantic. My friend was sanguine, though big ardour wasslightly damped by the ditch water. I doubted the expediencyof trying the boat-house, but he urged the risk of herdisappointment, which made the attempt imperative.

　　The padre returned to the inn to dry himself, and, in duecourse, I rejoined him. He met me with the answer to mynote. 'The boat-house,' it declared, 'was out of thequestion. But so, of course, was the POSSIBILITY of CHANGE.

　　We must put our trust in PROVIDENCE. Time could make NOdifference in OUR case, whatever it might do with OTHERS.

　　SHE, at any rate, could wait for YEARS.' Upon the whole theresult was comforting - especially as the 'years' dispensedwith the necessity of any immediate step more desperate thandinner. This we enjoyed like men who had earned it; and longbefore I deposited my dear friar in his cell both of us weresnoring in our respective corners of the chaise.

　　A word or two will complete this romantic episode. The nextlong vacation I spent in London, bent, needless to say, on ahappy issue to my engagement. How simple, in the retrospect,is the frustration of our hopes! I had not been a week intown, had only danced once with my FIANCEE, when, one day,taking a tennis lesson from the great Barre, a forced ballgrazed the frame of my racket, and broke a blood vessel in myeye.

　　For five weeks I was shut up in a dark room. It was two morebefore I again met my charmer. She did not tell me, but herman did, that their wedding day was fixed for the 10th of thefollowing month; and he 'hoped they would have the pleasureof seeing me at the breakfast!' [I made the following noteof the fact: N.B. - A woman's tears may cost her nothing;but her smiles may be expensive.]

　　I must, however, do the young lady the justice to state that,though her future husband was no great things as a 'man,' asshe afterwards discovered, he was the heir to a peerage andgreat wealth. Both he and she, like most of my collaboratorsin this world, have long since passed into the other.

　　The fashions of bygone days have always an interest for theliving: the greater perhaps the less remote. We like tothink of our ancestors of two or three generations off - theheroes and heroines of Jane Austen, in their pantaloons andhigh-waisted, short-skirted frocks, their pigtails andpowdered hair, their sandalled shoes, and Hessian boots. Ournear connection with them entrances our self-esteem. Theirprim manners, their affected bows and courtesies, the 'dearMr. So-and-So' of the wife to her husband, the 'Sir' and'Madam' of the children to their parents, make us wonderwhether their flesh and blood were ever as warm as ours; orwhether they were a race of prigs and puppets?

　　My memory carries me back to the remnants of these lostexternals - that which is lost was nothing more; the men andwomen were every whit as human as ourselves. My half-sisterswore turbans with birds-of-paradise in them. My mother woregigot sleeves; but objected to my father's pigtail, so cut itoff. But my father powdered his head, and kept to his knee-breeches to the last; so did all elderly gentlemen, when Iwas a boy. For the matter of that, I saw an old fellow witha pigtail walking in the Park as late as 1845. He, no doubt,was an ultra-conservative.

　　Fashions change so imperceptibly that it is difficult for thehistorian to assign their initiatory date. Does the youngdandy of to-day want to know when white ties came into vogue?

　　- he knows that his great-grandfather wore a white neckcloth,and takes it for granted, may be, that his grandfather did sotoo. Not a bit of it. The young Englander of the Coningsbytype - the Count d'Orsays of my youth, scorned the white tiealike of their fathers and their sons. At dinner-parties orat balls, they adorned themselves in satin scarfs, with ajewelled pin or chained pair of pins stuck in them. I wellremember the rebellion - the protest against effeminacy -which the white tie called forth amongst some of us upon itsfirst invasion on evening dress. The women were in favour ofit, and, of course, carried the day; but not without astruggle. One night at Holkham - we were a large party, Idaresay at least fifty at dinner - the men came down in blackscarfs, the women in white 'chokers.' To make the contestcomplete, these all sat on one side of the table, and we menon the other. The battle was not renewed; both factionssurrendered. But the women, as usual, got their way, and -their men.

　　For my part I could never endure the original whiteneckcloth. It was stiffly starched, and wound twice roundthe neck; so I abjured it for the rest of my days; now andthen I got the credit of being a coxcomb - not for my pains,but for my comfort. Once, when dining at the Viceregal Lodgeat Dublin, I was 'pulled up' by an aide-de-camp for myunbecoming attire; but I stuck to my colours, and was nonethe worse. Another time my offence called forth a touch ofgood nature on the part of a great man, which I hardly knowhow to speak of without writing me down an ass. It was at acrowded party at Cambridge House. (Let me plead my youth; Iwas but two-and-twenty.) Stars and garters were scarcely adistinction. White ties were then as imperative as shoes andstockings; I was there in a black one. My candid friendssuggested withdrawal, my relations cut me assiduously,strangers by my side whispered at me aloud, women turnedtheir shoulders to me; and my only prayer was that myaccursed tie would strangle me on the spot. One pair ofsharp eyes, however, noticed my ignominy, and their owner wasmoved by compassion for my sufferings. As I was slinkingaway, Lord Palmerston, with a BONHOMIE peculiarly his own,came up to me; and with a shake of the hand and heartymanner, asked after my brother Leicester, and when he wasgoing to bring me into Parliament? - ending with a smile:

　　'Where are you off to in such a hurry?' That is the sort oftact that makes a party leader. I went to bed a proud,instead of a humiliated, man; ready, if ever I had thechance, to vote that black was white, should he but state itwas so.

　　Beards and moustache came into fashion after the Crimean war.

　　It would have been an outrage to wear them before that time.

　　When I came home from my travels across the Rocky Mountainsin 1851, I was still unshaven. Meeting my younger brother -a fashionable guardsman - in St. James's Street, heexclaimed, with horror and disgust at my barbarity, 'Isuppose you mean to cut off that thing!'

　　Smoking, as indulged in now, was quite out of the questionhalf a century ago. A man would as soon have thought ofmaking a call in his dressing-gown as of strolling about theWest End with a cigar in his mouth. The first whom I eversaw smoke a cigarette at a dining-table after dinner was theKing; some forty years ago, or more perhaps. One of the manysocial benefits we owe to his present Majesty.