The Plague, Pestilence & Apocalypse MEGAPACK™

by Robert Reed

  orb was as a fable, to have forgotten which would have cost neither

  my imagination nor understanding an effort .

  My fortunes have been, from the beginning, an exemplification

  of the power that mutability may possess over the varied tenor of

  man’s life . With regard to myself, this came almost by inheritance .

  My father was one of those men on whom nature had bestowed to

  prodigality the envied gifts of wit and imagination, and then left his

  bark of life to be impelled by these winds, without adding reason

  as the rudder, or judgment as the pilot for the voyage . His extrac-

  tion was obscure; but circumstances brought him early into public

  notice, and his small paternal property was soon dissipated in the

  splendid scene of fashion and luxury in which he was an actor . Dur-

  ing the short years of thoughtless youth, he was adored by the high-

  bred triflers of the day, nor least by the youthful sovereign, who

  escaped from the intrigues of party, and the arduous duties of kingly

  business, to find never-failing amusement and exhilaration of spirit

  in his society . My father’s impulses, never under his own controul,

  perpetually led him into difficulties from which his ingenuity alone

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  could extricate him; and the accumulating pile of debts of honour

  and of trade, which would have bent to earth any other, was sup-

  ported by him with a light spirit and tameless hilarity; while his

  company was so necessary at the tables and assemblies of the rich,

  that his derelictions were considered venial, and he himself received

  with intoxicating flattery.

  This kind of popularity, like every other, is evanescent: and the

  difficulties of every kind with which he had to contend, increased

  in a frightful ratio compared with his small means of extricating

  himself . At such times the king, in his enthusiasm for him, would

  come to his relief, and then kindly take his friend to task; my father

  gave the best promises for amendment, but his social disposition, his

  craving for the usual diet of admiration, and more than all, the fiend

  of gambling, which fully possessed him, made his good resolutions

  transient, his promises vain . With the quick sensibility peculiar to

  his temperament, he perceived his power in the brilliant circle to be

  on the wane . The king married; and the haughty princess of Austria,

  who became, as queen of England, the head of fashion, looked with

  harsh eyes on his defects, and with contempt on the affection her

  royal husband entertained for him . My father felt that his fall was

  near; but so far from profiting by this last calm before the storm to

  save himself, he sought to forget anticipated evil by making still

  greater sacrifices to the deity of pleasure, deceitful and cruel arbiter

  of his destiny .

  The king, who was a man of excellent dispositions, but easily led,

  had now become a willing disciple of his imperious consort . He was

  induced to look with extreme disapprobation, and at last with dis-

  taste, on my father’s imprudence and follies . It is true that his pres-

  ence dissipated these clouds; his warm-hearted frankness, brilliant

  sallies, and confiding demeanour were irresistible: it was only when

  at a distance, while still renewed tales of his errors were poured

  into his royal friend’s ear, that he lost his influence. The queen’s

  dextrous management was employed to prolong these absences, and

  gather together accusations . At length the king was brought to see

  in him a source of perpetual disquiet, knowing that he should pay

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  for the short-lived pleasure of his society by tedious homilies, and

  more painful narrations of excesses, the truth of which he could not

  disprove . The result was, that he would make one more attempt to

  reclaim him, and in case of ill success, cast him off for ever .

  Such a scene must have been one of deepest interest and high-

  wrought passion . A powerful king, conspicuous for a goodness which

  had heretofore made him meek, and now lofty in his admonitions,

  with alternate entreaty and reproof, besought his friend to attend to

  his real interests, resolutely to avoid those fascinations which in fact

  were fast deserting him, and to spend his great powers on a worthy

  field, in which he, his sovereign, would be his prop, his stay, and

  his pioneer . My father felt this kindness; for a moment ambitious

  dreams floated before him; and he thought that it would be well

  to exchange his present pursuits for nobler duties . With sincerity

  and fervour he gave the required promise: as a pledge of continued

  favour, he received from his royal master a sum of money to defray

  pressing debts, and enable him to enter under good auspices his new

  career . That very night, while yet full of gratitude and good resolves,

  this whole sum, and its amount doubled, was lost at the gaming-

  table. In his desire to repair his first losses, my father risked double

  stakes, and thus incurred a debt of honour he was wholly unable to

  pay . Ashamed to apply again to the king, he turned his back upon

  London, its false delights and clinging miseries; and, with poverty

  for his sole companion, buried himself in solitude among the hills

  and lakes of Cumberland . His wit, his bon mots, the record of his

  personal attractions, fascinating manners, and social talents, were

  long remembered and repeated from mouth to mouth . Ask where

  now was this favourite of fashion, this companion of the noble, this

  excelling beam, which gilt with alien splendour the assemblies of

  the courtly and the gay—you heard that he was under a cloud, a lost

  man; not one thought it belonged to him to repay pleasure by real

  services, or that his long reign of brilliant wit deserved a pension

  on retiring . The king lamented his absence; he loved to repeat his

  sayings, relate the adventures they had had together, and exalt his

  talents—but here ended his reminiscence .

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  Meanwhile my father, forgotten, could not forget . He repined for

  the loss of what was more necessary to him than air or food—the

  excitements of pleasure, the admiration of the noble, the luxurious

  and polished living of the great . A nervous fever was the conse-

  quence; during which he was nursed by the daughter of a poor

  cottager, under whose roof he lodged . She was lovely, gentle, and,

  above all, kind to him; nor can it afford astonishment, that the late

  idol of high-bred beauty should, even in a fallen state, appear a be-

  ing of an elevated and wondrous nature to the lowly cottage-girl .

  The attachment between them led to the ill-fated marriage, of which

  I was the offspring . Notwithstanding the tenderness and sweetness

  of my mother, her husband still deplored his degraded state . Unac-

  customed to industry, he knew not in what way to contribute to the

  support of his increasing family . Sometimes he thought of applying

  to the king; pride and shame for a while withheld him; and, before

  his necessities becam
e so imperious as to compel him to some kind

  of exertion, he died . For one brief interval before this catastrophe,

  he looked forward to the future, and contemplated with anguish the

  desolate situation in which his wife and children would be left . His

  last effort was a letter to the king, full of touching eloquence, and of

  occasional flashes of that brilliant spirit which was an integral part

  of him . He bequeathed his widow and orphans to the friendship of

  his royal master, and felt satisfied that, by this means, their prosper-

  ity was better assured in his death than in his life . This letter was

  enclosed to the care of a nobleman, who, he did not doubt, would

  perform the last and inexpensive office of placing it in the king’s

  own hand .

  He died in debt, and his little property was seized immediately

  by his creditors . My mother, pennyless and burthened with two

  children, waited week after week, and month after month, in sicken-

  ing expectation of a reply, which never came . She had no experi-

  ence beyond her father’s cottage; and the mansion of the lord of

  the manor was the chiefest type of grandeur she could conceive .

  During my father’s life, she had been made familiar with the name

  of royalty and the courtly circle; but such things, ill according with

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  her personal experience, appeared, after the loss of him who gave

  substance and reality to them, vague and fantastical . If, under any

  circumstances, she could have acquired sufficient courage to ad-

  dress the noble persons mentioned by her husband, the ill success of

  his own application caused her to banish the idea . She saw therefore

  no escape from dire penury: perpetual care, joined to sorrow for the

  loss of the wondrous being, whom she continued to contemplate

  with ardent admiration, hard labour, and naturally delicate health,

  at length released her from the sad continuity of want and misery .

  The condition of her orphan children was peculiarly desolate . Her

  own father had been an emigrant from another part of the country,

  and had died long since: they had no one relation to take them by the

  hand; they were outcasts, paupers, unfriended beings, to whom the

  most scanty pittance was a matter of favour, and who were treated

  merely as children of peasants, yet poorer than the poorest, who, dy-

  ing, had left them, a thankless bequest, to the close-handed charity

  of the land .

  I, the elder of the two, was five years old when my mother died. A

  remembrance of the discourses of my parents, and the communica-

  tions which my mother endeavoured to impress upon me concerning

  my father’s friends, in slight hope that I might one day derive benefit

  from the knowledge, floated like an indistinct dream through my

  brain . I conceived that I was different and superior to my protectors

  and companions, but I knew not how or wherefore . The sense of

  injury, associated with the name of king and noble, clung to me; but

  I could draw no conclusions from such feelings, to serve as a guide

  to action. My first real knowledge of myself was as an unprotected

  orphan among the valleys and fells of Cumberland . I was in the

  service of a farmer; and with crook in hand, my dog at my side,

  I shepherded a numerous flock on the near uplands. I cannot say

  much in praise of such a life; and its pains far exceeded its pleasures .

  There was freedom in it, a companionship with nature, and a reck-

  less loneliness; but these, romantic as they were, did not accord with

  the love of action and desire of human sympathy, characteristic of

  youth. Neither the care of my flock, nor the change of seasons, were

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  sufficient to tame my eager spirit; my out-door life and unemployed

  time were the temptations that led me early into lawless habits . I

  associated with others friendless like myself; I formed them into a

  band, I was their chief and captain . All shepherd-boys alike, while

  our flocks were spread over the pastures, we schemed and executed

  many a mischievous prank, which drew on us the anger and revenge

  of the rustics . I was the leader and protector of my comrades, and

  as I became distinguished among them, their misdeeds were usu-

  ally visited upon me . But while I endured punishment and pain in

  their defence with the spirit of an hero, I claimed as my reward their

  praise and obedience .

  In such a school my disposition became rugged, but firm. The

  appetite for admiration and small capacity for self-controul which I

  inherited from my father, nursed by adversity, made me daring and

  reckless . I was rough as the elements, and unlearned as the animals

  I tended. I often compared myself to them, and finding that my chief

  superiority consisted in power, I soon persuaded myself that it was

  in power only that I was inferior to the chiefest potentates of the

  earth. Thus untaught in refined philosophy, and pursued by a restless

  feeling of degradation from my true station in society, I wandered

  among the hills of civilized England as uncouth a savage as the

  wolf-bred founder of old Rome . I owned but one law, it was that of

  the strongest, and my greatest deed of virtue was never to submit .

  Yet let me a little retract from this sentence I have passed on

  myself . My mother, when dying, had, in addition to her other half-

  forgotten and misapplied lessons, committed, with solemn exhorta-

  tion, her other child to my fraternal guardianship; and this one duty

  I performed to the best of my ability, with all the zeal and affection

  of which my nature was capable . My sister was three years younger

  than myself; I had nursed her as an infant, and when the difference

  of our sexes, by giving us various occupations, in a great measure

  divided us, yet she continued to be the object of my careful love .

  Orphans, in the fullest sense of the term, we were poorest among

  the poor, and despised among the unhonoured . If my daring and

  courage obtained for me a kind of respectful aversion, her youth and

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  sex, since they did not excite tenderness, by proving her to be weak,

  were the causes of numberless mortifications to her; and her own

  disposition was not so constituted as to diminish the evil effects of

  her lowly station .

  She was a singular being, and, like me, inherited much of the

  peculiar disposition of our father . Her countenance was all expres-

  sion; her eyes were not dark, but impenetrably deep; you seemed to

  discover space after space in their intellectual glance, and to feel that

  the soul which was their soul, comprehended an universe of thought

  in its ken . She was pale and fair, and her golden hair clustered on her

  temples, contrasting its rich hue with the living marble beneath . Her

  coarse peasant-dress, little consonant apparently with the refinement

  of feeling which her face expressed, yet in a strange manner ac-

  corded with it . She was like one of Guido’s saints, with heaven in

  her heart and in her look, so that when you saw h
er you only thought

  of that within, and costume and even feature were secondary to the

  mind that beamed in her countenance .

  Yet though lovely and full of noble feeling, my poor Perdita (for

  this was the fanciful name my sister had received from her dying

  parent), was not altogether saintly in her disposition . Her manners

  were cold and repulsive . If she had been nurtured by those who

  had regarded her with affection, she might have been different; but

  unloved and neglected, she repaid want of kindness with distrust

  and silence . She was submissive to those who held authority over

  her, but a perpetual cloud dwelt on her brow; she looked as if she

  expected enmity from every one who approached her, and her ac-

  tions were instigated by the same feeling . All the time she could

  command she spent in solitude . She would ramble to the most unfre-

  quented places, and scale dangerous heights, that in those unvisited

  spots she might wrap herself in loneliness . Often she passed whole

  hours walking up and down the paths of the woods; she wove gar-

  lands of flowers and ivy, or watched the flickering of the shadows

  and glancing of the leaves; sometimes she sat beside a stream, and

  as her thoughts paused, threw flowers or pebbles into the waters,

  watching how those swam and these sank; or she would set afloat

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  boats formed of bark of trees or leaves, with a feather for a sail, and

  intensely watch the navigation of her craft among the rapids and

  shallows of the brook . Meanwhile her active fancy wove a thou-

  sand combinations; she dreamt “of moving accidents by flood and

  field”—she lost herself delightedly in these self-created wanderings,

  and returned with unwilling spirit to the dull detail of common life .

  Poverty was the cloud that veiled her excellencies, and all that was

  good in her seemed about to perish from want of the genial dew of

  affection . She had not even the same advantage as I in the recollec-

  tion of her parents; she clung to me, her brother, as her only friend,

  but her alliance with me completed the distaste that her protectors

  felt for her; and every error was magnified by them into crimes. If

  she had been bred in that sphere of life to which by inheritance the

  delicate framework of her mind and person was adapted, she would