Crotchet Castle

Lord Bossnowl.—Now really that would be too severe: my cook should read nothing but Ude.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—No, sir! let Ude and the learned friend singe fowls together; let both avaunt from my kitchen.  Θύρας δ’ ἐπίθεσθε βεβήλοις.  Ude says an elegant supper may be given with sandwiches.  Horresco referens.  An elegant supper.  Dî meliora piis.  No Ude for me.  Conviviality went out with punch and suppers.  I cherish their memory.  I sup when I can, but not upon sandwiches.  To offer me a sandwich, when I am looking for a supper, is to add insult to injury.  Let the learned friend, and the modern Athenians, sup upon sandwiches.

Mr. Mac Quedy.—Nay, sir; the modern Athenians know better than that.  A literary supper in sweet Edinbro’ would cure you of the prejudice you seem to cherish against us.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—Well, sir, well; there is cogency in a good supper; a good supper in these degenerate days bespeaks a good man; but much more is wanted to make up an Athenian.  Athenians, indeed! where is your theatre? who among you has written a comedy? where is your Attic salt? which of you can tell who was Jupiter’s great-grandfather? or what metres will successively remain, if you take off the three first syllables, one by one, from a pure antispastic acatalectic tetrameter?  Now, sir, there are three questions for you: theatrical, mythological, and metrical; to every one of which an Athenian would give an answer that would lay me prostrate in my own nothingness.

Mr. Mac Quedy.—Well, sir, as to your metre and your mythology, they may e’en wait a wee.  For your comedy there is the “Gentle Shepherd” of the divine Allan Ramsay.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—The “Gentle Shepherd”!  It is just as much a comedy as the Book of Job.

Mr. Mac Quedy.—Well, sir, if none of us have written a comedy, I cannot see that it is any such great matter, any more than I can conjecture what business a man can have at this time of day with Jupiter’s great-grandfather.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—The great business is, sir, that you call yourselves Athenians, while you know nothing that the Athenians thought worth knowing, and dare not show your noses before the civilised world in the practice of any one art in which they were excellent.  Modern Athens, sir! the assumption is a personal affront to every man who has a Sophocles in his library.  I will thank you for an anchovy.

Mr. Mac Quedy.—Metaphysics, sir; metaphysics.  Logic and moral philosophy.  There we are at home.  The Athenians only sought the way, and we have found it; and to all this we have added political economy, the science of sciences.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—A hyperbarbarous technology, that no Athenian ear could have borne.  Premises assumed without evidence, or in spite of it; and conclusions drawn from them so logically, that they must necessarily be erroneous.

Mr. Skionar.—I cannot agree with you, Mr. Mac Quedy, that you have found the true road of metaphysics, which the Athenians only sought.  The Germans have found it, sir: the sublime Kant and his disciples.

Mr. Mac Quedy.—I have read the sublime Kant, sir, with an anxious desire to understand him, and I confess I have not succeeded.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—He wants the two great requisites of head and tail.

Mr. Skionar.—Transcendentalism is the philosophy of intuition, the development of universal convictions; truths which are inherent in the organisation of mind, which cannot be obliterated, though they may be obscured, by superstitious prejudice on the one hand, and by the Aristotelian logic on the other.

Mr. Mac Quedy.—Well, sir, I have no notion of logic obscuring a question.

Mr. Skionar.—There is only one true logic, which is the transcendental; and this can prove only the one true philosophy, which is also the transcendental.  The logic of your Modern Athens can prove everything equally; and that is, in my opinion, tantamount to proving nothing at all.

Mr. Crotchet.—The sentimental against the rational, the intuitive against the inductive, the ornamental against the useful, the intense against the tranquil, the romantic against the classical; these are great and interesting controversies, which I should like, before I die, to see satisfactorily settled.

Mr. Firedamp.—There is another great question, greater than all these, seeing that it is necessary to be alive in order to settle any question; and this is the question of water against human life.  Wherever there is water, there is malaria, and wherever there is malaria, there are the elements of death.  The great object of a wise man should be to live on a gravelly hill, without so much as a duck-pond within ten miles of him, eschewing cisterns and waterbutts, and taking care that there be no gravel-pits for lodging the rain.  The sun sucks up infection from water, wherever it exists on the face of the earth.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—Well, sir, you have for you the authority of the ancient mystagogue, who said: ’Εστιν ὔδωρ ψυχῇ θάνατος.  For my part I care not a rush (or any other aquatic and inesculent vegetable) who or what sucks up either the water or the infection.  I think the proximity of wine a matter of much more importance than the longinquity of water.  You are here within a quarter of a mile of the Thames, but in the cellar of my friend, Mr. Crotchet, there is the talismanic antidote of a thousand dozen of old wine; a beautiful spectacle, I assure you, and a model of arrangement.

Mr. Firedamp.—Sir, I feel the malignant influence of the river in every part of my system.  Nothing but my great friendship for Mr. Crotchet would have brought me so nearly within the jaws of the lion.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—After dinner, sir, after dinner, I will meet you on this question.  I shall then be armed for the strife.  You may fight like Hercules against Achelous, but I shall flourish the Bacchic thyrsus, which changed rivers into wine: as Nonnus sweetly sings, Οίνω κυματόεντι μέλας κελάρυζεν Υδάςπης.

Mr. Crotchet, jun.—I hope, Mr. Firedamp, you will let your friendship carry you a little closer into the jaws of the lion.  I am fitting up a flotilla of pleasure-boats, with spacious cabins, and a good cellar, to carry a choice philosophical party up the Thames and Severn, into the Ellesmere canal, where we shall be among the mountains of North Wales; which we may climb or not, as we think proper; but we will, at any rate, keep our floating hotel well provisioned, and we will try to settle all the questions over which a shadow of doubt yet hangs in the world of philosophy.

Mr. Firedamp.—Out of my great friendship for you, I will certainly go; but I do not expect to survive the experiment.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—Alter erit tum Tiphys, et altera quæ vehat Argo Delectos Heroas.  I will be of the party, though I must hire an officiating curate, and deprive poor dear Mrs. Folliott, for several weeks, of the pleasure of combing my wig.

Lord Bossnowl.—I hope, if I am to be of the party, our ship is not to be the ship of fools: He! he!

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—If you are one of the party, sir, it most assuredly will not: Ha! ha!

Lord Bossnowl.—Pray sir, what do you mean by Ha! ha!?

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—Precisely, sir, what you mean by He! he!

Mr. Mac Quedy.—You need not dispute about terms; they are two modes of expressing merriment, with or without reason; reason being in no way essential to mirth.  No man should ask another why he laughs, or at what, seeing that he does not always know, and that, if he does, he is not a responsible agent.  Laughter is an involuntary action of certain muscles, developed in the human species by the progress of civilisation.  The savage never laughs.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—No, sir, he has nothing to laugh at.  Give him Modern Athens, the “learned friend,” and the Steam Intellect Society.  They will develop his muscles.

CHAPTER III

THE ROMAN CAMP

He loved her more then seven yere,Yet was he of her love never the nere;He was not ryche of golde and fe,A gentyll man forsoth was he.The Squyr of Lowe Degre.

The Reverend Doctor Folliott having promised to return to dinner, walked back to his vicarage, meditating whether he should pass the morning in writing his next sermon, or in angling for trout, and had nearly decided in favour of the latter proposition, repeating to himself, with great unction, the lines of Chaucer:

And as for me, though that I can but lite,On bokis for to read I me delite,And to ’hem yeve I faithe and full credence,And in mine herte have ’hem in reverence,So hertily, that there is gamé none,That fro my bokis makith me to gone,But it be seldome, on the holie daie;Save certainly whan that the month of MaieIs cousin, and I here the foulis sing,And that the flouris ginnin for to spring,Farwell my boke and my devocion:

when his attention was attracted by a young gentleman who was sitting on a camp stool with a portfolio on his knee, taking a sketch of the Roman Camp, which, as has been already said, was within the enclosed domain of Mr. Crotchet.  The young stranger, who had climbed over the fence, espying the portly divine, rose up, and hoped that he was not trespassing.  “By no means, sir,” said the divine, “all the arts and sciences are welcome here; music, painting, and poetry; hydrostatics and political economy; meteorology, transcendentalism, and fish for breakfast.”

The Stranger.—A pleasant association, sir, and a liberal and discriminating hospitality.  This is an old British camp, I believe, sir?

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—Roman, sir; Roman; undeniably Roman.  The vallum is past controversy.  It was not a camp, sir, a castrum, but a castellum, a little camp, or watch-station, to which was attached, on the peak of the adjacent hill, a beacon for transmitting alarms.  You will find such here and there, all along the range of chalk hills, which traverses the country from north-east to south-west, and along the base of which runs the ancient Iknield road, whereof you may descry a portion in that long straight white line.

The Stranger.—I beg your pardon, sir; do I understand this place to be your property?

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—It is not mine, sir: the more is the pity; yet is it so far well, that the owner is my good friend, and a highly respectable gentleman.

The Stranger.—Good and respectable, sir, I take it, means rich?

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—That is their meaning, sir.

The Stranger.—I understand the owner to be a Mr. Crotchet.  He has a handsome daughter, I am told.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—He has, sir.  Her eyes are like the fish-pools of Heshbon, by the gate of Bethrabbim; and she is to have a handsome fortune, to which divers disinterested gentlemen are paying their addresses.  Perhaps you design to be one of them?

The Stranger.—No, sir; I beg pardon if my questions seem impertinent; I have no such design.  There is a son too, I believe, sir, a great and successful blower of bubbles?

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—A hero, sir, in his line.  Never did angler in September hook more gudgeons.

The Stranger.—To say the truth, two very amiable young people, with whom I have some little acquaintance, Lord Bossnowl, and his sister, Lady Clarinda, are reported to be on the point of concluding a double marriage with Miss Crotchet and her brother; by way of putting a new varnish on old nobility.  Lord Foolincourt, their father, is terribly poor for a lord who owns a borough.

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—Well, sir, the Crotchets have plenty of money, and the old gentleman’s weak point is a hankering after high blood.  I saw your acquaintance, Lord Bossnowl, this morning, but I did not see his sister.  She may be there, nevertheless, and doing fashionable justice to this fine May morning, by lying in bed till noon.

The Stranger.—Young Mr. Crotchet, sir, has been, like his father, the architect of his own fortune, has he not?  An illustrious example of the reward of honesty and industry?

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—As to honesty, sir, he made his fortune in the city of London, and if that commodity be of any value there, you will find it in the price current.  I believe it is below par, like the shares of young Crotchet’s fifty companies.  But his progress has not been exactly like his father’s.  It has been more rapid, and he started with more advantages.  He began with a fine capital from his father.  The old gentleman divided his fortune into three not exactly equal portions; one for himself, one for his daughter, and one for his son, which he handed over to him, saying, “Take it once for all, and make the most of it; if you lose it where I won it, not another stiver do you get from me during my life.”  But, sir, young Crotchet doubled, and trebled, and quadrupled it, and is, as you say, a striking example of the reward of industry; not that I think his labour has been so great as his luck.

The Stranger.—But, sir, is all this solid? is there no danger of reaction? no day of reckoning to cut down in an hour prosperity that has grown up like a mushroom?

The Rev. Dr. Folliott.—Nay, sir, I know not.  I do not pry into these matters.  I am, for my own part, very well satisfied with the young gentleman.  Let those who are not so look to themselves.  It is quite enough for me that he came down last night from London, and that he had the good sense to bring with him a basket of lobsters.  Sir, I wish you a good morning.

The stranger having returned the reverend gentleman’s good morning, resumed his sketch, and was intently employed on it when Mr. Crotchet made his appearance with Mr. Mac Quedy and Mr. Skionar, whom he was escorting round his grounds, according to his custom with new visitors; the principal pleasure of possessing an extensive domain being that of showing it to other people.  Mr. Mac Quedy, according also to the laudable custom of his countrymen, had been appraising everything that fell under his observation; but, on arriving at the Roman camp, of which the value was purely imaginary, he contented himself with exclaiming: “Eh! this is just a curiosity, and very pleasant to sit in on a summer day.”

Mr. Skionar.—And call up the days of old, when the Roman eagle spread its wings in the place of that beechen foliage.  It gives a fine idea of duration, to think that that fine old tree must have sprung from the earth ages after this camp was formed.

Mr. Mac Quedy.—How old, think you, may the tree be?

Mr. Crotchet.—I have records which show it to be three hundred years old.

Mr. Mac Quedy.—That is a great age for a beech in good condition.  But you see the camp is some fifteen hundred years, or so, older; and three times six being eighteen, I think you get a clearer idea of duration out of the simple arithmetic, than out of your eagle and foliage.

Mr. Skionar.—That is a very unpoetical, if not unphilosophical, mode of viewing antiquities.  Your philosophy is too literal for our imperfect vision.  We cannot look directly into the nature of things; we can only catch glimpses of the mighty shadow in the camera obscura of transcendental intelligence.  These six and eighteen are only words to which we give conventional meanings.  We can reason, but we cannot feel, by help of them.  The tree and the eagle, contemplated in the ideality of space and time, become subjective realities, that rise up as landmarks in the mystery of the past.

Mr. Mac Quedy.—Well, sir, if you understand that, I wish you joy.  But I must be excused for holding that my proposition, three times six are eighteen, is more intelligible than yours.  A worthy friend of mine, who is a sort of amateur in philosophy, criticism, politics, and a wee bit of many things more, says: “Men never begin to study antiquities till they are saturated with civilisation.”

Mr. Skionar.—What is civilisation?

Mr. Mac Quedy.—It is just respect for property.  A state in which no man takes wrongfully what belongs to another, is a perfectly civilised state.

Mr. Skionar.—Your friend’s antiquaries must have lived in El Dorado, to have had an opportunity of being saturated with such a state.

Mr. Mac Quedy.—It is a question of degree.  There is more respect for property here than in Angola.

Mr. Skionar.—That depends on the light in which things are viewed.

Mr. Crotchet was rubbing his hands, in hopes of a fine discussion, when they came round to the side of the camp where the picturesque gentleman was sketching.  The stranger was rising up, when Mr. Crotchet begged him not to disturb himself, and presently walked away with his two guests.

Shortly after, Miss Crotchet and Lady Clarinda, who had breakfasted by themselves, made their appearance at the same spot, hanging each on an arm of Lord Bossnowl, who very much preferred their company to that of the philosophers, though he would have preferred the company of the latter, or any company to his own.  He thought it very singular that so agreeable a person as he held himself to be to others, should be so exceedingly tiresome to himself: he did not attempt to investigate the cause of this phenomenon, but was contented with acting on his knowledge of the fact, and giving himself as little of his own private society as possible.

The stranger rose as they approached, and was immediately recognised by the Bossnowls as an old acquaintance, and saluted with the exclamation of “Captain Fitzchrome!”  The interchange of salutations between Lady Clarinda and the Captain was accompanied with an amiable confusion on both sides, in which the observant eyes of Miss Crotchet seemed to read the recollection of an affair of the heart.

Lord Bossnowl was either unconscious of any such affair, or indifferent to its existence.  He introduced the Captain very cordially to Miss Crotchet; and the young lady invited him, as the friend of their guests, to partake of her father’s hospitality, an offer which was readily accepted.

The Captain took his portfolio under his right arm, his camp stool in his right hand, offered his left arm to Lady Clarinda, and followed at a reasonable distance behind Miss Crotchet and Lord Bossnowl, contriving, in the most natural manner possible, to drop more and more into the rear.

Lady Clarinda.—I am glad to see you can make yourself so happy with drawing old trees and mounds of grass.

Captain Fitzchrome.—Happy, Lady Clarinda! oh, no!  How can I be happy when I see the idol of my heart about to be sacrificed on the shrine of Mammon?

Lady Clarinda.—Do you know, though Mammon has a sort of ill name, I really think he is a very popular character; there must be at the bottom something amiable about him.  He is certainly one of those pleasant creatures whom everybody abuses, but without whom no evening party is endurable.  I dare say, love in a cottage is very pleasant; but then it positively must be a cottage ornée: but would not the same love be a great deal safer in a castle, even if Mammon furnished the fortification?

Captain Fitzchrome.—Oh, Lady Clarinda! there is a heartlessness in that language that chills me to the soul.

Lady Clarinda.—Heartlessness!  No: my heart is on my lips.  I speak just what I think.  You used to like it, and say it was as delightful as it was rare.

Captain Fitzchrome.—True, but you did not then talk as you do now, of love in a castle.

Lady Clarinda.—Well, but only consider: a dun is a horridly vulgar creature; it is a creature I cannot endure the thought of: and a cottage lets him in so easily.  Now a castle keeps him at bay.  You are a half-pay officer, and are at leisure to command the garrison: but where is the castle? and who is to furnish the commissariat?

Captain Fitzchrome.—Is it come to this, that you make a jest of my poverty?  Yet is my poverty only comparative.  Many decent families are maintained on smaller means.

Lady Clarinda.—Decent families: ay, decent is the distinction from respectable.  Respectable means rich, and decent means poor.  I should die if I heard my family called decent.  And then your decent family always lives in a snug little place: I hate a little place; I like large rooms and large looking-glasses, and large parties, and a fine large butler, with a tinge of smooth red in his face; an outward and visible sign that the family he serves is respectable; if not noble, highly respectable.

Captain Fitzchrome.—I cannot believe that you say all this in earnest.  No man is less disposed than I am to deny the importance of the substantial comforts of life.  I once flattered myself that in our estimate of these things we were nearly of a mind.

Lady Clarinda.—Do you know, I think an opera-box a very substantial comfort, and a carriage.  You will tell me that many decent people walk arm-in-arm through the snow, and sit in clogs and bonnets in the pit at the English theatre.  No doubt it is very pleasant to those who are used to it; but it is not to my taste.

Captain Fitzchrome.—You always delighted in trying to provoke me; but I cannot believe that you have not a heart.

Lady Clarinda.—You do not like to believe that I have a heart, you mean.  You wish to think I have lost it, and you know to whom; and when I tell you that it is still safe in my own keeping, and that I do not mean to give it away, the unreasonable creature grows angry.

Captain Fitzchrome.—Angry! far from it; I am perfectly cool.

Lady Clarinda.—Why, you are pursing your brows, biting your lips, and lifting up your foot as if you would stamp it into the earth.  I must say anger becomes you; you would make a charming Hotspur.  Your every-day-dining-out face is rather insipid: but I assure you my heart is in danger when you are in the heroics.  It is so rare, too, in these days of smooth manners, to see anything like natural expression in a man’s face.  There is one set form for every man’s face in female society: a sort of serious comedy walking gentleman’s face: but the moment the creature falls in love he begins to give himself airs, and plays off all the varieties of his physiognomy from the Master Slender to the Petruchio; and then he is actually very amusing.

Captain Fitzchrome.—Well, Lady Clarinda, I will not be angry, amusing as it may be to you: I listen more in sorrow than in anger.  I half believe you in earnest: and mourn as over a fallen angel.

Lady Clarinda.—What, because I have made up my mind not to give away my heart when I can sell it?  I will introduce you to my new acquaintance, Mr. Mac Quedy: he will talk to you by the hour about exchangeable value, and show you that no rational being will part with anything, except to the highest bidder.

Captain Fitzchrome.—Now, I am sure you are not in earnest.  You cannot adopt such sentiments in their naked deformity.

Lady Clarinda.—Naked deformity!  Why, Mr. Mac Quedy will prove to you that they are the cream of the most refined philosophy.  You live a very pleasant life as a bachelor, roving about the country with your portfolio under your arm.  I am not fit to be a poor man’s wife.  I cannot take any kind of trouble, or do any one thing that is of any use.  Many decent families roast a bit of mutton on a string; but if I displease my father I shall not have as much as will buy the string, to say nothing of the meat; and the bare idea of such cookery gives me the horrors.

By this time they were near the Castle, and met Miss Crotchet and her companion, who had turned back to meet them.  Captain Fitzchrome was shortly after heartily welcomed by Mr. Crotchet, and the party separated to dress for dinner, the Captain being by no means in an enviable state of mind, and full of misgivings as to the extent of belief that he was bound to accord to the words of the lady of his heart.

CHAPTER IV

THE PARTY

En quoi cognoissez-vous la folie anticque?  En quoi cognoissez-vous la sagesse présente?—Rabelais.

“If I were sketching a bandit who had just shot his last pursuer, having outrun all the rest, that is the very face I would give him,” soliloquised the Captain, as he studied the features of his rival in the drawing-room, during the miserable half-hour before dinner, when dulness reigns predominant over expectant company, especially when they are waiting for some one last comer, whom they all heartily curse in their hearts, and whom, nevertheless, or indeed therefore-the-more, they welcome as a sinner, more heartily than all the just persons who had been punctual to their engagement.  Some new visitors had arrived in the morning, and, as the company dropped in one by one, the Captain anxiously watched the unclosing door for the form of his beloved: but she was the last to make her appearance, and on her entry gave him a malicious glance, which he construed into a telegraphic communication that she had stayed away to torment him.  Young Crotchet escorted her with marked attention to the upper end of the drawing-room, where a great portion of the company was congregated around Miss Crotchet.  These being the only ladies in the company, it was evident that old Mr. Crotchet would give his arm to Lady Clarinda, an arrangement with which the Captain could not interfere.  He therefore took his station near the door, studying his rival from a distance, and determined to take advantage of his present position, to secure the seat next to his charmer.  He was meditating on the best mode of operation for securing this important post with due regard to bien-séance, when he was twitched by the button by Mr. Mac Quedy, who said to him: “Lady Clarinda tells me, sir, that you are anxious to talk with me on the subject of exchangeable value, from which I infer that you have studied political economy, and as a great deal depends on the definition of value, I shall be glad to set you right on that point.”  “I am much obliged to you, sir,” said the Captain, and was about to express his utter disqualification for the proposed instruction, when Mr. Skionar walked up and said: “Lady Clarinda informs me that you wish to talk over with me the question of subjective reality.  I am delighted to fall in with a gentleman who daily appreciates the transcendental philosophy.”  “Lady Clarinda is too good,” said the Captain; and was about to protest that he had never heard the word “transcendental” before, when the butler announced dinner.  Mr. Crotchet led the way with Lady Clarinda: Lord Bossnowl followed with Miss Crotchet: the economist and transcendentalist pinned in the Captain, and held him, one by each arm, as he impatiently descended the stairs in the rear of several others of the company, whom they had forced him to let pass; but the moment he entered the dining-room he broke loose from them, and at the expense of a little brusquerie, secured his position.