Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851

He had two sons: the pretty child we first knew, and an elder one—a slim, delicate youth, who was by nature an artist. His father's parsimony rendered it, however, a difficult matter for him to procure materials for the exercise of his art, which was wholly self-taught; and it was wonderful to witness the effect he could produce from a bit of common lamp-black, or an ordinary drawing-pencil. His genius at last found aid in the loving heart of his mother, who secretly and at night—often while her strange husband filled the house with solemn music—worked at her needle to procure the means of purchasing paints, canvas, brushes, &c., for her boy; toiling secretly, for if she had permitted the father to know that she possessed even a few shillings, he would have extorted them from her. It was all she could do to help the young painter in his eager self-teaching; for she possessed no other knowledge than that acquired at a village school during her childhood. Her own fate had been a very sad one. She was a laborer's daughter, betrothed from early girlhood to a sailor, who was her cousin; but during one of his voyages—the last he was to make before their marriage—her beauty attracted the admiration of the rich Mr. Monckton, and he offered to make her his wife. The poor girl would fain have refused him, and kept her promise to her absent lover, but her family were flattered and dazzled by the idea of her wedding a man known to be so wealthy, and she was not proof against their entreaties and their anger. She married him; her relatives, however, derived no benefit from the match their selfishness had made. The miser's doors were closed against them; and lest his wife should be tempted to assist their poverty at his expense, he forbade her ever seeing her parents. A weary lot had been poor Mary's from that hour she married. Her only comfort was derived from her children; and even they became a source of sorrow as they grew past infancy, and she found that her husband's avarice would deny them even the advantages she had enjoyed as a poor cottage child. They received no education but such as she could give them; nay, were made to toil at the lowest drudgery in return for the scanty food and clothing their father bestowed. She taught them to read and write; and afterward Richard, the elder, became his own instructor. There were many old books to be found in the farm-house, and of those he made himself master. The villagers, who had a few volumes, were willing to lend them to such a clever lad; and at length, as we have said, his genius for painting developed itself, and was ministered to by his mother's industry. We remember seeing his first attempt at original composition. It was boldly conceived and well executed, considering the difficulties under which he labored: the subject was Phaeton driving the chariot of the sun. It was shown to the clergyman of the village, a man of great taste, and a connoisseur in painting. He was so much pleased with it that he became the warm friend of the young artist, and, as far as circumstances permitted, his instructor in literature and painting. The younger brother inherited his father's taste for music, and was a quiet, thoughtful child, passionately attached to Richard, on whom he looked as a prodigy of learning and talent. Nothing, in fact, could be more touching than the attachment of these two brothers: at their leisure hours they were always to be seen together; their pleasures or sorrows were mutual.

The privations, injustice, and restraint to which they were subjected appeared to bind them to each other with a love "passing the love of woman;" and both found consolation in the mental gifts mercifully imparted to them.

About four years after we first became acquainted with the Moncktons, the fair, gentle child, then nearly fourteen, became ill; growing thin, pale, and weak, till his mother and Richard, in great alarm, besought old Monckton to let him have medical advice. The request produced a storm of passionate reproaches. "The boy," he said, "was well enough. He ate as much as was good for him. Did they think people could not live without gormandizing as they did? Did they imagine he should throw away his little means upon doctors, who were all a set of cheats? He should do nothing of the kind!" And poor Ernest was left to pine and wither, till Richard in despair sought out a physician, and telling him their story, besought him to come and see his brother, promising to repay the advice he asked by his future toil.

Dr. N– was a kind-hearted, benevolent man. He at once complied with the youth's entreaty, and called at an hour when the old man was absent at the farm. He found his patient worse than the brother's report had led him to believe. The illness was decline, caused probably by want of sufficiently nourishing food at a period of rapid growth, and increased by the overworking of a mind that was ever craving after knowledge. He prescribed such remedies as he judged best; but informed the mother, at the same time, that strengthening food was of the first importance, and would be the best means to effect a cure. Alas! how was it to be obtained? The heart of the miser was impenetrable to their remonstrances and entreaties—what was life in his eyes compared with gold? When they found that no human sympathy could be expected from the father, the mother and brother determined to use their own exertions to obey the behest of the physician. Early and late the former worked at her needle, the good doctor finding her as much employment as he could; while Richard, abandoning the study of his art, painted valentines, card-racks, and fancy articles for the stationers, and sought eagerly for every opportunity of winning a few shillings, to be spent in ministering to the comfort of the beloved sufferer. But it was all too late: Ernest sank slowly, but surely.

There were intervals when life, like the flicker of an expiring lamp, appeared successfully struggling with death; but these occasional brightenings were always succeeded by a more entire prostration and languor. The personal beauty, for which Ernest had always been remarkable, grew almost superhuman during his illness, and Richard could not resist stealing a little time from his busy labors to paint his brother's portrait. In the execution of this task of love, however, many hindrances occurred; and before it was more than a sketch, the dear original had passed away from them in one of those quiet sleeps which in such cases, are the usual harbingers of death. The painting was removed to Richard's chamber, and in the first agony of his grief, forgotten; but when Ernest had been committed to the grave, and life had assumed its usual monotony—more gloomy now than ever—he remembered his attempt, and resolved on finishing the likeness from memory. An easy task! for nightly, in his slumbers, he saw the fair, sweet face of his young brother. The second morning after he had resumed his pencil, he was startled at finding that the painting appeared to be in a more advanced state than he had left it the night before, but he fancied imagination must be juggling him, and that he really had done more than he remembered. The following day, however, the same phenomenon startled him, and he mentioned the circumstance to his mother. She was superstitious, and nervous from sorrow and regret; and she at once adopted the fanciful notion that there was something supernatural in the matter; suggesting the possibility of their dear Ernest's gentle spirit having thus endeavored to show them, that in another world he still thought of them and loved them. Richard combated the idea by every argument his reason offered him; but as he was convinced of the fact, and could give no satisfactory explanation of it, he was at last persuaded by her earnest entreaties to leave the picture untouched for two or three days, and see what consequences would follow. The painting progressed! daily, or rather nightly, it advanced toward completion. Every morning a stronger likeness of the dead smiled on them from the canvas, and a more skillful hand than the young painter's appeared to be engaged on the work. It was a marvel past their simple comprehension; but the mother, confirmed in her first belief, resolved to watch, and try if it might be permitted to her living eyes to gaze upon the child whom the grave had shut from her sight. With this hope she concealed herself, without Richard's knowledge, in a large closet in his bed-room—placing the door ajar that she might see all that passed in the chamber. Her watch was of no long duration; suddenly her sleeping son rose from his couch, lighted his candle, approached his easel, and began to work at the portrait! Much amazed and half angry at the deception she believed he had practiced on her, Mrs. Monckton issued from her hiding-place, and spoke to him. He made her no answer; she stood before him—he saw her not; he was fast asleep! It was indeed a spirit's painting; for love had in this instance burst the bands of matter, and the somnambulist had achieved a work of art that surpassed all the efforts of his waking hours.

The story of the sleep-painting got abroad, and reached the ears of a gentleman of large fortune, who resided in the neighborhood. He called on the young artist; was pleased with his manners; and proposed engaging him as traveling companion to his own son, a youth about to visit Italy with his tutor; proffering a salary that would enable him to cultivate his genius for painting in the land of its birth, and of its perfect maturity. The offer was eagerly and thankfully accepted, and old Monckton made no opposition to his son's wish: he was only too thankful to be relieved from the burden of supporting him. Indeed the miser was somewhat changed since Ernest's death; not that he expressed in words any remorse for having preferred his gold to the life of his fair young son; but from that time he never touched the organ—the spirit of music appeared to have died with Ernest; and he often visibly shrank from meeting the silent reproach of Richard's eyes. The neighbors also shunned him; they had loved poor Ernest, and the conduct of his father toward him—the fact of his refusing to pay the physician who had attended him, "because he never sent for him"—and the mean, pauper-like funeral which he had grudgingly bestowed on the dead—revolted and disgusted them. A mean funeral was one of the offenses the people of K– never forgave! The old man probably detected something of their feelings in their manners, for he gradually gave up his ordinary work about the village—that is, the keeping in repair such cottages as belonged to him—and remained much within doors. This change of habits and want of exercise told fatally on three score and ten, and probably hastened his death, which took place two years after his son's. He died without a will, but left very considerable property. It was supposed he died intestate, either because he grudged the expense of making a will, or because he could not endure the thought of parting from the gold which had had the worship and service of his life. Richard, on his return, repaired the old farm-house, and restored it to something like comfort. He proved liberal, but not (as is frequently the case in such instances) lavish. The only piece of extravagance of which he was ever accused—and it was the village stone-mason who blamed him for that—being the procuring an elegant marble monument from Italy, the work of a first-rate sculptor, to place over the grave of his beloved brother. The figures on it were—an admirable likeness of Ernest, taken from the somnambulist's picture, and two angelic beings in the act of presenting the risen spirit with the palms and crown of victory gained over sorrow, suffering, and death. The inscription on the tomb had an awful and touching meaning to those who knew the story of the brother's life; and we know not how we can better conclude our sketches of the insane folly of gold-worship, than by finishing them with those solemn words—"Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven."

MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.13

CHAPTER VII

LEONARD had been about six weeks with his uncle, and those weeks were well spent. Mr. Richard had taken him to his counting-house, and initiated him into the business and the mysteries of double entry; and, in return, for the young man's readiness and zeal in matters which the acute trader instinctively felt were not exactly to his tastes, Richard engaged the best master the town afforded to read with his nephew in the evening. This gentleman was the head-usher of a large school—who had his hours to himself after eight o'clock—and was pleased to vary the dull routine of enforced lessons by instructions to a pupil who took delightedly—even to the Latin grammar. Leonard made rapid strides, and learned more in those six weeks than many a cleverish boy does in twice as many months. These hours which Leonard devoted to study Richard usually spent from home—sometimes at the houses of his grand acquaintances in the Abbey Gardens, sometimes in the Reading-room appropriated to those aristocrats. If he staid at home, it was in company with his head-clerk, and for the purpose of checking his account-books, or looking over the names of doubtful electors.

Leonard had naturally wished to communicate his altered prospects to his old friends, that they in turn might rejoice his mother with such good tidings. But he had not been two days in the house before Richard had strictly forbidden all such correspondence.

"Look you," said he, "at present we are on an experiment—we must see if we like each other. Suppose we don't, you will only have raised expectations in your mother which must end in bitter disappointment; and suppose we do, it will be time enough to write when something definite is settled."

"But my mother will be so anxious—"

"Make your mind easy on that score. I will write regularly to Mr. Dale, and he can tell her that you are well and thriving. No more words, my man—when I say a thing, I say it." Then, observing that Leonard looked blank and dissatisfied, Richard added, with a good-humored smile, "I have my reasons for all this—you shall know them later. And I tell you what, if you do as I bid you, it is my intention to settle something handsome on your mother; but if you don't, devil a penny she'll get from me."

With that Richard turned on his heel, and in a few moments his voice was heard loud in objurgation with some of his people.

About the fourth week of Leonard's residence at Mr. Avenel's, his host began to evince a certain change of manner. He was no longer quite so cordial with Leonard, nor did he take the same interest in his progress. About the same period he was frequently caught by the London butler before the looking-glass. He had always been a smart man in his dress, but he was now more particular. He would spoil three white cravats when he went out of an evening, before he could satisfy himself as to a tie. He also bought a peerage, and it became his favorite study at odd quarters of an hour. All these symptoms proceeded from a cause, and that cause was—Woman.

CHAPTER VIII

The first people at Screwstown were indisputably the Pompleys. Colonel Pompley was grand, but Mrs. Pompley was grander. The Colonel was stately in right of his military rank and his services in India; Mrs. Pompley was majestic in right of her connections. Indeed, Colonel Pompley himself would have been crushed under the weight of the dignities which his lady heaped upon him, if he had not been enabled to prop his position with a "connection" of his own. He would never have held his own, nor been permitted to have an independent opinion on matters aristocratic, but for the well-sounding name of his relations, "the Digbies." Perhaps on the principle that obscurity increases the natural size of objects, and is an element of the Sublime, the Colonel did not too accurately define his relations "the Digbies;" he let it be casually understood that they were the Digbies to be found in Debrett. But if some indiscreet Vulgarian (a favorite word with both the Pompleys) asked point-blank if he meant "my Lord Digby," the Colonel, with a lofty air, answered—"The elder branch, sir." No one at Screwstown had ever seen these Digbies: they lay amidst the Far—the Recondite—even to the wife of Colonel Pompley's bosom. Now and then, when the Colonel referred to the lapse of years, and the uncertainty of human affections, he would say—"When young Digby and I were boys together," and then add with a sigh, "but we shall never meet again in this world. His family interest secured him a valuable appointment in a distant part of the British dominions." Mrs Pompley was always rather cowed by the Digbies. She could not be skeptical as to this connection, for the Colonel's mother was certainly a Digby, and the Colonel impaled the Digby arms. En revanche, as the French say, for these marital connections, Mrs. Pompley had her own favorite affinity, which she specially selected from all others when she most desired to produce effect; nay, even upon ordinary occasions the name rose spontaneously to her lips—the name of the Honorable Mrs. M'Catchley. Was the fashion of a gown or cap admired, her cousin, Mrs. M'Catchley, had just sent to her the pattern from Paris. Was it a question whether the Ministry would stand, Mrs. M'Catchley was in the secret, but Mrs. Pompley had been requested not to say. Did it freeze, "my cousin, Mrs. M'Catchley, had written word that the icebergs at the Pole were supposed to be coming this way." Did the sun glow with more than usual fervor, Mrs. M'Catchley had informed her "that it was Sir Henry Halford's decided opinion that it was on account of the cholera." The good people knew all that was doing at London, at court, in this world—nay, almost in the other—through the medium of the Honorable Mrs. M'Catchley. Mrs. M'Catchley was, moreover, the most elegant of women, the wittiest creature, the dearest. King George the Fourth had presumed to admire Mrs. M'Catchley, but Mrs. M'Catchley, though no prude, let him see that she was proof against the corruptions of a throne. So long had the ears of Mrs. Pompley's friends been filled with the renown of Mrs. M'Catchley, that at last Mrs. M'Catchley was secretly supposed to be a myth, a creature of the elements, a poetic fiction of Mrs. Pompley's. Richard Avenel, however, though by no means a credulous man, was an implicit believer in Mrs. M'Catchley. He had learned that she was a widow—an honorable by birth, an honorable by marriage—living on her handsome jointure, and refusing offers every day that she so lived. Somehow or other, whenever Richard Avenel thought of a wife, he thought of the Honorable Mrs. M'Catchley. Perhaps that romantic attachment to the fair invisible preserved him heart-whole among the temptations of Screwstown. Suddenly, to the astonishment of the Abbey Gardens, Mrs. M'Catchley proved her identity, and arrived at Col. Pompley's in a handsome traveling-carriage, attended by her maid and footman. She had come to stay some weeks—a tea-party was given in her honor. Mr. Avenel and his nephew were invited. Colonel Pompley, who kept his head clear in the midst of the greatest excitement, had a desire to get from the Corporation a lease of a piece of ground adjoining his garden, and he no sooner saw Richard Avenel enter, than he caught him by the button, and drew him into a quiet corner in order to secure his interest. Leonard, meanwhile, was borne on by the stream, till his progress was arrested by a sofa table at which sat Mrs. M'Catchley herself, with Mrs. Pompley by her side. For on this great occasion the hostess had abandoned her proper post at the entrance, and, whether to show her respect to Mrs. M'Catchley, or to show Mrs. M'Catchley her well-bred contempt for the people of Screwstown, remained in state by her friend, honoring only the élite of the town with introductions to the illustrious visitor.

Mrs. M'Catchley was a very fine woman—a woman who justified Mrs. Pompley's pride in her. Her cheek-bones were rather high, it is true, but that proved the purity of her Caledonian descent; for the rest, she had a brilliant complexion, heightened by a soupçon of rouge—good eyes and teeth, a showy figure, and all the ladies of Screwstown pronounced her dress to be perfect. She might have arriven at that age at which one intends to stop for the next ten years, but even a Frenchman would not have called her passée—that is, for a widow. For a spinster, it would have been different.

Looking round her with a glass, which Mrs. Pompley was in the habit of declaring that "Mrs. M'Catchley used like an angel," this lady suddenly perceived Leonard Avenel; and his quiet, simple, thoughtful air and looks so contrasted with the stiff beaux to whom she had been presented, that experienced in fashion as so fine a personage must be supposed to be, she was nevertheless deceived into whispering to Mrs. Pompley—

"That young man has really an air distingué—who is he?"

"Oh," said Mrs. Pompley, in unaffected surprise, "that is the nephew of the rich Vulgarian I was telling you of this morning."

"Ah! and you say that he is Mr. Arundel's heir?"

"Avenel—not Arundel—my sweet friend."

"Avenel is not a bad name," said Mrs. M'Catchley. "But is the uncle really so rich?"

"The Colonel was trying this very day to guess what he is worth; but he says it is impossible to guess it."

"And the young man is his heir?"

"It is thought so: and reading for College, I hear. They say he is clever."

"Present him, my love; I like clever people," said Mrs. M'Catchley, falling back, languidly.

About ten minutes afterward, Richard Avenel, having effected his escape from the Colonel, and his gaze being attracted toward the sofa table by the buzz of the admiring crowd, beheld his nephew in animated conversation with the long-cherished idol of his dreams. A fierce pang of jealousy shot through his breast. His nephew had never looked so handsome and so intelligent; in fact, poor Leonard had never before been drawn out by a woman of the world, who had learned how to make the most of what little she knew. And, as jealousy operates like a pair of bellows on incipient flames, so, at first sight of the smile which the fair widow bestowed upon Leonard, the heart of Mr. Avenel felt in a blaze.

He approached with a step less assured than usual, and, overhearing Leonard's talk, marveled much at the boy's audacity. Mrs. M'Catchley had been speaking of Scotland and the Waverley Novels, about which Leonard knew nothing. But he knew Burns, and on Burns he grew artlessly eloquent. Burns the poet and peasant; Leonard might well be eloquent on him. Mrs. M'Catchley was amused and pleased with his freshness and naïveté, so unlike any thing she had ever heard or seen, and she drew him on and on, till Leonard fell to quoting: and Richard heard, with less respect for the sentiment than might be supposed, that

"Rank is but the guinea stamp,The man's the gowd for a' that."

"Well!" exclaimed Mr. Avenel. "Pretty piece of politeness to tell that to a lady like the Honorable Mrs. M'Catchley. You'll excuse him, ma'am."

"Sir!" said Mrs. M'Catchley, startled, and lifting her glass. Leonard, rather confused, rose, and offered his chair to Richard, who dropped into it. The lady, without waiting for formal introduction, guessed that she saw the rich uncle.

"Such a sweet poet—Burns!" said she, dropping her glass. "And it is so refreshing to find so much youthful enthusiasm," she added, pointing her fan toward Leonard, who was receding fast among the crowd.

"Well, he is youthful, my nephew—rather green!"

"Don't say green!" said Mrs. M'Catchley. Richard blushed scarlet. He was afraid he had committed himself to some expression low and shocking. The lady resumed, "Say unsophisticated."

"A tarnation long word," thought Richard; but he prudently bowed, and held his tongue.

"Young men nowadays," continued Mrs. M'Catchley, resettling herself on the sofa, "affect to be so old. They don't dance, and they don't read, and they don't talk much; and a great many of them wear toupets before they are two-and-twenty!"

Richard mechanically passed his hand through his thick curls. But he was still mute; he was still ruefully chewing the cud of the epithet green. What occult horrid meaning did the word convey to ears polite? Why should he not say "green?"

"A very fine young man your nephew, sir," resumed Mrs. M'Catchley.

Richard grunted.

"And seems full of talent. Not yet at the University? Will he go to Oxford or Cambridge?"