The new dwelling-house was so well planned, and fitted in so well between the ancient walls, that very few vestiges of the modern architect were discernible; and it was obvious that the growth of the ivy, and of numerous trailing and twining plants, would soon overrun all vestiges of the innovation, and blend the whole exterior into one venerable character of antiquity.
‘I do not think,’ said Mr. Forester, as they proceeded through part of the grounds, ‘that the most determined zealot of the picturesque would quarrel with me here. I found the woods around the abbey matured by time and neglect into a fine state of wildness and intricacy, and I think I have left enough of them to gratify their most ardent admirer.’
‘Quite enough, in all conscience,’ said Sir Telegraph, who was in white jean trousers, with very thin silk stockings and pumps. ‘I do not generally calculate on being, as an old song I have somewhere heard expresses it,
Forced to scramble,
When I ramble,
Through a copse of furze and bramble; which would be all very pleasant perhaps, if the fine effect of picturesque roughness were not unfortunately, as Macbeth says of his dagger, “sensible to feeling as to sight.” But who is that gentleman, sitting under the great oak yonder in the green coat and nankins? He seems very thoughtful.’
‘ He is of a contemplative disposition,’ said Mr. Forester: ‘you must not be surprised if he should not speak a word during the whole time you are here. The politeness of his manner makes amends for his habitual taciturnity. I will introduce you.’
The gentleman under the oak had by this time discovered them, and came forward with great alacrity to meet Mr. Forester, who cordially shook hands with him, and introduced him to Sir Telegraph as Sir Oran Haut-ton, Baronet.
Sir Telegraph looked earnestly at the stranger, but was too polite to laugh, though he could not help thinking there was something very ludicrous in Sir Oran’s physiognomy, notwithstanding the air of high fashion which characterised his whole deportment, and which was heightened by a pair of enormous whiskers, and the folds of a vast cravat. He therefore bowed to Sir Oran with becoming gravity, and Sir Oran returned the bow with very striking politeness.
‘Possibly,’ thought Sir Telegraph, ‘possibly I may have seen an uglier fellow.’
The trio entered the abbey, and shortly after sat down to dinner.
Mr. Forester and Sir Oran Haut-ton took the head and foot of the table. Sir Telegraph sat between them. ‘Some soup, Sir Telegraph?’ said Mr. Forester. ‘I rather think,’ said Sir Telegraph, ‘I shall trouble Sir Oran for a slice of fish.’ Sir Oran helped him with great dexterity, and then performed the same office for himself. ‘I think you will like this Madeira?’ said Mr. Forester. ‘Capital!’ said Sir Telegraph: ‘Sir Oran, shall I have the pleasure of taking wine with you?’ Sir Oran Haut-ton bowed gracefully to Sir Telegraph Paxarett, and the glasses were tossed off with the usual ceremonies. Sir Oran preserved an inflexible silence during the whole duration of dinner, but showed great proficiency in the dissection of game.
When the cloth was removed, the wine circulated freely, and Sir Telegraph, as usual, filled a numerous succession of glasses. Mr. Forester, not as usual, did the same; for he was generally very abstemious in this respect; but, on the present occasion, he relaxed from his severity, quoting the Placari genius festis impune diebus, and the Dulce est desipere in loco, of Horace. Sir Oran likewise approved, by his practice, that he thought the wine particularly excellent, and Beviamo tutti tre appeared to be the motto of the party. Mr. Forester inquired into the motives which had brought Sir Telegraph to Westmoreland; and Sir Telegraph entered into a rapturous encomium of the heiress of Melincourt which was suddenly cut short by Sir Oran, who, having taken a glass too much, rose suddenly from table, took a flying leap through the window, and went dancing along the woods like a harlequin.
‘Upon my word,’ said Sir Telegraph, ‘a devilish lively, pleasant fellow! Curse me if I know what to make of him.’
‘I will tell you his history,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘by and by. In the meantime I must look after him, that he may neither do nor receive mischief. Pray take care of yourself till I return.’ Saying this, he sprang through the window after Sir Oran, and disappeared by the same track among the trees.
‘Curious enough!’ soliloquised Sir Telegraph; ‘however, not much to complain of, as the best part of the company is left behind: videlicet, the bottle.
CHAPTER V
SUGAR
SIR TELEGRAPH WAS tossing off the last heeltap of his regular diurnal allowance of wine, when Mr. Forester and Sir Oran Haut-ton reappeared, walking past the window arm in arm; Sir Oran’s mode of progression being very vacillating, indirect, and titubant; enough so, at least, to show that he had not completely danced off the effects of the Madeira. Mr. Forester shortly after entered; and Sir Telegraph inquiring concerning Sir Oran, ‘I have persuaded him to go to bed,’ said Mr. Forester, ‘and I doubt not he is already fast asleep.’ A servant now entered with tea. Sir Telegraph proceeded to help himself, when he perceived there was no sugar, and reminded his host of the omission.
Mr. Forester. If I had anticipated the honour of your company, Sir Telegraph, I would have provided myself with a small quantity of that nefarious ingredient: but in this solitary situation, these things are not to be had at a moment’s notice. As it is, seeing little company, and regulating my domestic arrangements on philosophical principles, I never suffer an atom of West Indian produce to pass my threshold. I have no wish to resemble those pseudo-philanthropists, those miserable declaimers against slavery, who are very liberal of words which cost them nothing, but are not capable of advancing the object they profess to have at heart, by submitting to the smallest personal privation. If I wish seriously to exterminate an evil, I begin by examining how far I am myself, in any way whatever, an accomplice in the extension of its baleful influence. My reform commences at home. How can I unblushingly declaim against thieves, while I am a receiver of stolen goods? How can I seriously call myself an enemy to slavery, while I indulge in the luxuries that slavery acquires? How can the consumer of sugar pretend to throw on the grower of it the exclusive burden of their participated criminality? How can he wash his hands, and say with Pilate, “I am innocent of this blood, see ye to it”?
Sir Telegraph poured some cream into his unsweetened tea, drank it, and said nothing. Mr. Forester proceeded:
If every individual in this kingdom, who is truly and conscientiously an enemy to the slave-trade, would subject himself to so very trivial a privation as abstinence from colonial produce, I consider that a mortal blow would be immediately struck at the roots of that iniquitous system.
Sir Telegraph Paxarett. If every individual enemy to the slave-trade would follow your example, the object would no doubt be much advanced; but the practice of one individual more or less has little or no influence on general society: most of us go on with the tide, and the dread of the single word quiz has more influence in keeping the greater part of us within the pale of custom, fashion, and precedent, than all the moral reasonings and declamations in the world will ever have in persuading us to break through it. As to the diffusion of liberty, and the general happiness of mankind, which used to be your favourite topics when we were at college together, I should have thought your subsequent experience would have shown you that there is not one person in ten thousand who knows what liberty means, or cares a single straw for any happiness but his own —— ——
Mr. Forester. Which his own miserable selfishness must estrange from him for ever. He whose heart has never glowed with a generous resolution, who has never felt the conscious triumph of a disinterested sacrifice, who has never sympathised with human joys or sorrows, but when they have had a direct and palpable reference to himself, can never be acquainted with even the semblance of happiness. His utmost enjoyment must be many degrees inferior to that of a pig, inasmuch as the sordid mire of selfish and brutal stupidity is more defiling to the soul, than any coacervation of mer
e material mud can possibly be to the body. The latter may be cleared away with two or three ablutions, but the former cleaves and accumulates into a mass of impenetrable corruption, that bids defiance to the united powers of Hercules and Alpheus.
Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Be that as it may, every man will continue to follow his own fancy. The world is bad enough, I daresay; but it is not for you or me to mend it.
Mr. Forester. There is the keystone of the evil — mistrust of the influence of individual example. ‘We are bad ourselves, because we despair of the goodness of others.’ Yet the history of the world abounds with sudden and extraordinary revolutions in the opinions of mankind, which have been effected by single enthusiasts.
Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Speculative opinions have been sometimes changed by the efforts of roaring fanatics. Men have been found very easily permutable into ites and onians, avians, and arians, Wesleyites or Whitfieldites, Huntingdonians or Muggletonians, Moravians, Trinitarians, Unitarians, Anythingarians: but the metamorphosis only affects a few obscure notions concerning types, symbols, and mysteries, which lave scarcely any effect on moral theory, and of course, a fortiori, none whatever on moral practice: the latter is for the most part governed by the general habits and manners of the society we live in. One man may twang responses in concert with the parish clerk; another may sit silent in a Quakers’ meeting, waiting for the inspiration of the Spirit; a third may groan and howl in a tabernacle; a fourth may breakfast, dine, and sup in a Sandemanian chapel: but meet any of the four in the common intercourse of society, you will scarcely know one from another. The single adage, Charity begins at home, will furnish a complete key to the souls of all four; for I have found, as far as my observation has extended, that men carry their religion in other men’s heads, and their morality in their own pockets.
Mr. Forester. I think it will be found that individual example has in many instances produced great moral effects on the practice of society. Even if it were otherwise, is it not better to be Abdiel among the fiends, than to be lost and confounded in the legion of imps grovelling in the train of the evil power?
Sir Telegraph Paxarett. There is something in that.
Mr. Forester. To borrow an allegory from Homer: I would say society is composed of two urns, one of good, and one of evil. I will suppose that every individual of the human species receives from his natal genius a little phial, containing one drop of a fluid, which shall be evil, if poured into the urn of evil, and good if into that of good. If you were proceeding to the station of the urns with ten thousand persons, every one of them predetermined to empty his phial into the urn of evil, which I fear is too true a picture of the practice of society, should you consider their example, if you were hemmed in in the centre of them, a sufficient excuse for not breaking from them, and approaching the neglected urn? Would you say, “The urn of good will derive little increase from my solitary drop, and one more or less will make very little difference in the urn of ill; I will spare myself trouble, do as the world does, and let the urn of good take its chance, from those who can approach it with less difficulty”? No: you would rather say, “That neglected urn contains the hopes of the human species: little, indeed, is the addition I can make to it, but it will be good as far as it goes”; and if, on approaching the urn, you should find it not so empty as you had anticipated, if the genius appointed to guard it should say to you, “There is enough in this urn already to allow a reasonable expectation that it will one day be full, and yet it has only accumulated drop by drop locks and keys, into his custody, and, indeed, makes the very person of that man his religion, esteems his associating with him a sufficient evidence and commendatory of his own piety. So that a man may say, his religion is now no more within himself, but is become a dividual movable, and goes and comes near him according as that good man frequents the house. He entertains him, gives him gifts, feasts him, lodges him: his religion comes home at night, prays, is liberally supped, and sumptuously laid to sleep, rises, is saluted, and after the malmsey, or some well-spiced brewage, and better breakfasted than he whose morning appetite would have gladly fed on green figs between Bethany and Jerusalem, his religion walks abroad at eight, and leaves his kind entertainer in the shop, trading all day without his religion.’ — MILTON’S Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing. through the efforts of individuals, who broke through the pale and pressure of the multitude, and did not despair of human virtue”; would you not feel ten thousand times repaid for the difficulties you had overcome, and the scoffs of the fools and slaves you had abandoned, by the single reflection that would then rush upon your mind, I am one of these?
Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Gad, very likely: I never considered the subject in that light. You have made no allowance for the mixture of good and evil, which I think the fairest state of the case. It seems to me, that the world always goes on pretty much in one way. People eat, drink, and sleep, make merry with their friends, get as much money as they can, marry when they can afford it, take care of their children because they are their own, are thought well of while they live in proportion to the depth of their purse, and when they die, are sure of as good a character on their tombstones as the bellman and stonemason can afford for their money.
Mr. Forester. Such is the multitude; but there are noble exceptions to this general littleness.
Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Now and then an original genius strikes out of the common track; but there are two ways of doing that — into a worse as well as a better.
Mr. Forester. There are some assuredly who strike into a better, and these are the ornaments of their age, and the lights of the world. You must admit too, that there are many, who, though without energy or capacity to lead, have yet virtue enough to follow an illustrious example.
Sir Telegraph Paxarett. One or two.
Mr. Forester. In every mode of human action there are two ways to be pursued — a good and a bad one. It is the duty of every man to ascertain the former, as clearly as his capacity will admit, by an accurate examination of general relations; and to act upon it rigidly, without regard to his own previous habits, or the common practice of the world.
Sir Telegraph Paxarett. And you infer from all this that it is my duty to drink my tea without sugar.
Mr. Forester. I infer that it is the duty of every one, thoroughly penetrated with the iniquity of the slave-trade, to abstain entirely from the use of colonial produce.
Sir Telegraph Paxarett. I may do that, without any great effort of virtue. I find the difference, in this instance, more trivial than I could have supposed. In fact, I never thought of it before.
Mr. Forester. I hope I shall before long have the pleasure of enrolling you a member of the Anti-saccharine Society, which I have had the happiness to organise, and which is daily extending its numbers. Some of its principal members will shortly pay a visit to Redrose Abbey; and I purpose giving a festival, to which I shall invite all that is respectable and intelligent in this part of the country, and in which I intend to demonstrate practically, that a very elegant and luxurious entertainment may be prepared without employing a single particle of that abominable ingredient, and theoretically, that the use of sugar is economically superfluous, physically pernicious, morally atrocious, and politically abominable.
Sir Telegraph Paxarett. I shall be happy to join the party, and I may possibly bring with me one or two inside passengers, who will prove both ornamental and attractive to your festival. But you promised me an account of Sir Oran.
CHAPTER VI
SIR ORAN HAUT-TON
MR. FORESTER. SIR Oran Haut-ton was caught very young in the woods of Angola.
Sir Telegraph Paxarett. Caught!
Mr. Forester. Very young. He is a specimen of the natural and original man — the wild man of the woods; called in the language of the more civilised and sophisticated natives of Angola, Pongo, and in that of the Indians of South America, Oran Outang.
Sir Telegraph Paxarett. The devil he is!
Mr. Forester. Positiv
ely. Some presumptuous naturalists have refused his species the honours of humanity; but the most enlightened and illustrious philosophers agree in considering him in his true light as the natural and original man.
One French philosopher, indeed, has been guilty of an inaccuracy, in considering him as a degenerated man; degenerated he cannot be; as his prodigious physical strength, his uninterrupted health, and his amiable simplicity of manners demonstrate. He is, as I have said, a specimen of the natural and original man — a genuine facsimile of the philosophical Adam.
He was caught by an intelligent negro very young, in the woods of Angola; and his gentleness and sweet temper winning the hearts of the negro and negress, they brought him up in their cottage as the playfellow of their little boys and girls, where, with the exception of speech, he acquired the practice of such of the simpler arts of life as the degree of civilisation in that part of Africa admits. In this way he lived till he was about seventeen years of age —
Sir Telegraph Paxarett. By his own reckoning?
Mr. Forester. By analogical computation. At this period, my old friend Captain Hawltaught of the Tornado frigate, being driven by stress of weather to the coast of Angola, was so much struck with the contemplative cast of Sir Oran’s countenance, that he offered the negro an irresistible bribe to surrender him to his possession. The negro brought him on board, and took an opportunity to leave him slily, but with infinite reluctance and sympathetic grief. When the ship weighed anchor, and Sir Oran found himself separated from the friends of his youth, and surrounded with strange faces, he wept bitterly, and fell into such deep grief that his life was despaired of. The surgeon of the ship did what he could for him; and a much better doctor, Time, completed his cure. By degrees a very warm friendship for my friend Captain Hawltaught extinguished his recollection of his negro friends. Three years they cruised together in the Tornado, when a dangerous wound compelled the old captain to renounce his darling element, and lay himself up in ordinary for the rest of his days. He retired on his half-pay and the produce of his prize-money to a little village in the West of England, where he employed himself very assiduously in planting cabbages and watching the changes of the wind. Mr. Oran, as he was then called, was his inseparable companion, and became a very expert practical gardener. The old captain used to observe, he could always say he had an honest man in his house, which was more than could be said of many honourable houses where there was much vapouring about honour.
Complete Works of Thomas Love Peacock Page 13