Melmoth the Wanderer 1820

by Charles Robert Maturin

  ‘“So in Mortimer Castle were, in their infancy, assembled the three grandchildren, born under such various auspices and destinies. Margaret Mortimer the heiress, a beautiful, intelligent, spirited girl, heiress of all the pride, aristocratical principle, and possible wealth of the family; Elinor Mortimer, the daughter of the Apostate, received rather than admitted into the house, and educated in all the strictness of her Independent family; and John Sandal, the son of the rejected daughter, whom Sir Roger admitted into the Castle only on the condition of his being engaged in the service of the royal family, banished and persecuted as they were; and he renewed his correspondence with some emigrant loyalists in Holland, for the establishment of his protégé, whom he described, in language borrowed from the Puritan preachers, as ‘a brand snatched from the burning.’

  ‘“While matters were thus at the Castle, intelligence arrived of Monk’s unexpected exertions in favour of the banished family. The result was as rapid as it was auspicious. The Restoration took place within a few days after, and the Mortimer family were then esteemed of so much consequence, that an express, girthed from his waist to his shoulders, was dispatched from London to announce the intelligence. He arrived when Sir Roger, whose chaplain he had been compelled by the ruling party to dismiss as a malignant, was reading prayers himself to his family. The return and restoration of Charles the Second was announced. The old loyalist rose from his knees, waved his cap, (which he had reverently taken from his white head), and, suddenly changing his tone of supplication for one of triumph, exclaimed, ‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation!’ As he spoke, the old man sunk on the cushion which Mrs Ann had placed beneath his knees. His grandchildren rose from their knees to assist him, – it was too late, – his spirit had parted in that last exclamation.”’

  *Vide Cervantes, apud Don Quixote de Collibus Ubedæ.

  *Vide Jonson’s play, in which is introduced a Puritan preacher, a Banbury man, named Zeal-of-the-land Busy.

  *I have been an inmate in this castle for many months – it is still inhabited by the venerable descendant of that ancient family. His son is now High-Sheriff of the King’s county. Half the castle was battered down by Oliver Cromwell’s forces, and rebuilt in the reign of Charles the Second. The remains of the castle are a tower of about forty feet square, and five storeys high, with a single spacious apartment on each floor, and a narrow staircase communicating with each, and reaching to the bartizan. A beautiful ash-plant, which I have often admired, is now displaying its foliage between the stones of the bartizan, – and how it got or grew there, heaven only knows. There it is, however; and it is better to see it there than to feel the discharge of hot water or molten lead from the apertures.

  CHAPTER XXX

  – She sat, and thought

  Of what a sailor suffers.

  Cowper

  ‘“The intelligence that was the cause of old Sir Roger’s death, who might be said to be conducted from this world to the next by a blessed euthanasia, (a kind of passing with a light and lofty step from a narrow entry to a spacious and glorious apartment, without ever feeling he trod the dark and rugged threshold that lies between), was the signal and pledge to this ancient family of the restitution of their faded honours, and fast-declining possessions. Grants, reversals of fine, restoration of land and chattels and offer of pensions, and provisions, and remunerations, and all that royal gratitude, in the effervescence of its enthusiasm, could bestow, came showering on the Mortimer family, as fast and faster than fines, confiscations, and sequestrations, had poured on them in the reign of the usurper. In fact, the language of King Charles to the Mortimers was like that of the Eastern monarchs to their favourites, – ‘Ask what thou wilt, and it shall be granted to thee, even to the half of my kingdom.’ The Mortimers asked only for their own, – and being thus more reasonable, both in their expectations and demands, than most other applicants at that period, they succeeded in obtaining what they required.

  ‘“Thus Mrs Margaret Mortimer (so unmarried females were named at the date of the narrative) was again acknowledged as the wealthy and noble heiress of the Castle. Numerous invitations were sent to her to visit the court, which, though recommended by letters from divers of the court-ladies, who had been acquainted, traditionally at least, with her family, and enforced by a letter from Catherine of Braganza, written by her own hand, in which she acknowledged the obligations of the king to the house of Mortimer, were steadily rejected by the high-minded heiress of its honours and its spirit. – ‘From these towers,’ said she to Mrs Ann, ‘my grandfather led forth his vassals and tenants in aid of his king, – to these towers he led what was left of them back, when the royal cause seemed lost for ever. Here he lived and died for his sovereign, – and here will I live and die. And I feel that I shall do more effectual service to his Majesty, by residing on my estates, and protecting my tenants, and repairing,’ – she added with a smile, – ‘even with my needle, the rents made in the banners of our house by many a Puritan’s bullet, than if I flaunted it in Hyde Park in my glass coach, or masqueraded it all night in that of *St James’s, even though I were sure to encounter the Duchess of Cleveland on one side, and Louise de Querouaille on the other, – fitter place for them than me.’ – And so saying, Mrs Margaret Mortimer resumed her tapestry work. Mrs Ann looked at her with an eye that spoke volumes, – and the tear that trembled in it made the lines more legible.

  ‘“After the decided refusal of Mrs Margaret Mortimer to go to London, the family resumed their former ancestorial habits of stately regularity, and decorous grandeur, such as became a magnificent and well-ordered household, of which a noble maiden was the head and president. But this regularity was without rigour, and this monotony without apathy – the minds of these highly fated females were too familiar with trains of lofty thinking, and images of noble deeds, to sink into vacancy, or feel depression from solitude.

  ‘“I behold them,” said the stranger, “as I once saw them, seated in a vast irregularly shaped apartment, wainscotted with oak richly and quaintly carved, and as black as ebony – Mrs Ann Mortimer, in a recess which terminated in an ancient casement window, the upper panes of which were gorgeously emblazoned with the arms of the Mortimers, and some legendary atchievements of the former heroes of the family. A book she valued much† lay on her knee, on which she fixed her eyes intently – the light that came through the casement chequering its dark lettered pages with hues of such glorious and fantastic colouring, that they resembled the leaves of some splendidly-illuminated missal, with all its pomp of gold, and azure and vermilion.

  ‘“At a little distance sat her two grand-nieces, employed in work, and relieving their attention to it by conversation, for which they had ample materials. They spoke of the poor whom they had visited and assisted, of the rewards they had distributed among the industrious and orderly, and of the books which they were studying; and of which the well-filled shelves of the library furnished them with copious and noble stores.

  ‘“Sir Roger had been a man of letters as well as of arms. He had been often heard to say, that next to a well-stocked armoury in time of war, was a well-stocked library in time of peace; and even in the midst of his latter grievances and privations, he contrived every year to make an addition to his own.

  ‘“His grand-daughters, well instructed by him in the French and Latin languages, had read Mezeray, Thuanus, and Sully. In English, they had Froissart in the black-letter translation of Pynson, imprinted 1525. Their poetry, exclusive of the classics, consisted chiefly of Waller, Donne and that constellation of writers that illuminated the drama in the latter end of the reign of Elizabeth, and the commencement of that of James, – Marlow, and Massinger, and Shirley, and Ford – cum multis aliis. Fairfax’s translations had made them familiar with the continental poets; and Sir Roger had consented to admit, among his modern collection, the Latin poems (the only ones then published) of Milton, for the sake of that in Quint
um Novembris, – for Sir Roger, next to the fanatics, held the Catholics in utter abomination.”

  ‘“Then he will be damned to all eternity,” said Aliaga, “and that’s some satisfaction.”

  ‘“Thus, their retirement was not inelegant, nor unaccompanied with those delights at once soothing and elating, which arise from a judicious mixture of useful occupation and literary tastes.

  ‘“On all they read or conversed of, Mrs Ann Mortimer was a living comment. Her conversation, rich in anecdote, and accurate to minuteness, sometimes rising to the loftiest strains of eloquence, as she related ‘deeds of the days of old,’ and often borrowing the sublimity of inspiration, as the reminiscences of religion softened and solemnized the spirit with which she spake, – like the influence of time on fine paintings, that consecrates the tints it mellows, and makes the colours it has half obscured more precious to the eye of feeling and of taste, than they were in the glow of their early beauty, – her conversation was to her grand-nieces at once history and poetry.

  ‘The events of English history then not recorded, had a kind of traditional history more vivid, if not so faithful as the records of modern historians, in the memories of those who had been agents and sufferers (the terms are probably synonymous) in those memorable periods.

  ‘“There was an entertainment then, banished by modern dissipation now, but alluded to by the great poet of that nation, whom your orthodox and undeniable creed justly devotes to eternal damnation.

  ‘In winter’s tedious nights sit by the fire,

  – and tell the tales

  Of woful ages long ago betid;

  And send the hearers weeping to their beds.

  We cited up a thousand heavy times.’

  ‘“When memory thus becomes the dispository of grief, how faithfully is the charge kept! – and how much superior are the touches of one who paints from the life, and the heart, and the senses, – to those of one who dips his pen in his ink-stand, and casts his eye on a heap of musty parchments, to glean his facts or his feelings from them! Mrs Ann Mortimer had much to tell, – and she told it well. If history was the subject, she could relate the events of the civil wars – events which resembled indeed those of all civil wars, but which derived a peculiar strength of character, and brilliancy of colouring, from the hand by which they were sketched. She told of the time when she rode behind her brother, Sir Roger, to meet the King at Shrewsbury; and she almost echoed the shout uttered in the streets of that loyal city, when the University of Oxford sent in its plate to be coined for the exigences of the royal cause. She told also, with grave humour, the anecdote of Queen Henrietta making her escape with some difficulty from a house on fire, – and, when her life was scarce secure from the flames that consumed it, rushing back among them – to save her lapdog!

  ‘“But of all her historical anecdotes, Mrs Ann valued most what she had to relate of her own family. On the virtue and valour of her brother Sir Roger, she dwelt with an unction whose balm imparted itself to her hearers; and even Elinor, in spite of the Puritanism of her early principles, wept as she listened. But when Mrs Ann told of the King taking shelter for one night in the Castle, under the protection only of her mother and herself, to whom he intrusted his rank and his misfortunes, (arriving under a disguise), – (Sir Roger being absent fighting his battles in Yorkshire) – when she added that her aged mother, Lady Mortimer, then seventy-four, after spreading her richest velvet mantle, lined with fur, as a quilt for the bed of her persecuted sovereign, tottered into the armoury, and, presenting the few servants that followed her with what arms could be found, adjured them by brand and blade, by lady’s love, and their hopes of heaven, to defend her royal guest. When she related that a band of fanatics, after robbing a church of all its silverplate, and burning the adjacent vicarage, drunk with their success, had invested the Castle, and cried aloud for ‘the man’ to be brought unto them, that he might be hewed to pieces before the Lord in Gilgal – and Lady Mortimer had called on a young French officer in Prince Rupert’s corps, who, with his men, had been billetted on the Castle for some days – and that this youth, but seventeen years of age, had met two desperate attacks of the assailants, and twice retired covered with his own blood and that of the assailants, whom he had in vain attempted to repel – and that Lady Mortimer, finding all was lost, had counselled the royal fugitive to make his escape, – and furnished him with the best horse left in Sir Roger’s stables to effect his flight, while she returned to the great hall, whose windows were now shattered by the balls that hissed and flew round her head, and whose doors were fast yielding to the crows and other instruments which a Puritan smith, who was both chaplain and colonel of the band, had lent them, and instructed them in the use of – and how Lady Mortimer fell on her knees before the young Frenchman, and adjured him to make good the defence till King Charles was safe, and free, and far – and how the young Frenchman had done all that man could do; – and finally, when the Castle, after an hour’s obstinate resistance, yielded to the assault of the fanatics, he had staggered, covered with blood, to the foot of the great chair which that ancient lady had immoveably occupied, (paralyzed by terror and exhaustion), and dropping his sword, then for the first time, exclaimed, ‘J’ai fait mon devoir!’ and expired at her feet – and how her mother sat in the same rigour of attitude, while the fanatics ravaged through the Castle, – drank half the wines in the cellar, – thrust their bayonets through the family-pictures, which they called the idols of the high-places, – fired bullets through the wainscot, and converted half the female servants after their own way, – and on finding their search after the King fruitless, in mere wantonness of mischief, were about to discharge a piece of ordnance in the hall that must have shattered it in pieces, while Lady Mortimer sat torpidly looking on, – till, perceiving that the piece was accidentally pointed towards the very door through which King Charles had passed from the hall, her recollection seemed suddenly to return, and starting up and before the mouth of the piece, exclaimed, ‘Not there! – you shall not there!’ – and as she spoke, dropt dead in the hall. When Mrs Ann told these and other thrilling tales of the magnanimity, the loyalty, and the sufferings of her high ancestry, in a voice that alternately swelled with energy, and trembled with emotion, and as she told them, pointed to the spot where each had happened, – her young hearers felt a deep stirring of the heart, – a proud yet mellowed elation that never yet was felt by the reader of a written history, though its pages were as legitimate as any sanctioned by the royal licenser at Madrid.

  ‘“Nor was Mrs Ann Mortimer less qualified to take an interesting share in their lighter studies. When Waller’s poetry was its subject, she could tell of the charms of his Sacharissa, whom she knew well, – the Lady Dorothea Sidney, daughter of the Earl of Leicester, – and compare, with those of his Amoret, the Lady Sophia Murray. And in balancing the claims of these poetical heroines, she gave so accurate an account of their opposite styles of beauty, – entered so minutely into the details of their dress and deportment, – and so affectingly hinted, with a mysterious sigh, that there was one then at court whom Lucius, Lord Falkland, the gallant, the learned, and the polished, had whispered was far superior to both, – that her auditors more than suspected she had herself been one of the most brilliant stars in that galaxy whose faded glories were still reflected in her memory, – and that Mrs Ann, amid her piety and patriotism, still blended a fond reminiscence of the gallantries of that court where her youth had been spent, – and over which the beauty, the magnificent taste, and national gaiété of the ill-fated Henrietta, had once thrown a light as dazzling as it was transient. She was listened to by Margaret and Elinor with equal interest, but with far different feelings. Margaret, beautiful, vivacious, haughty and generous, and resembling her grandfather and his sister alike in character and person, could have listened for ever to narrations that, while they confirmed her principles, gave a kind of holiness to the governing feelings of her heart, and made her enthusiasm a kind of virtue in he
r eyes. An aristocrat in politics, she could not conceive that public virtue could soar to a higher pitch than a devoted attachment to the house of Stuart afforded for its flight; and her religion had never given her any disturbance. – Strictly attached to the Church of England, as her forefathers had been from its first establishment, she included in an adherence to this not only all the graces of religion, but all the virtues of morality; and she could hardly conceive how there could be majesty in the sovereign, or loyalty in the subject, or valour in man, or virtue in woman, unless they were comprised within the pale of the Church of England. These qualities, with their adjuncts, had been always represented to her as co-existent with an attachment to monarchy and Episcopacy, and vested solely in those heroic characters of her ancestry, whose lives, and even deaths, it was a proud delight to their young descendant to listen to, – while all the opposite qualities, – all that man can hate, or woman despise, – had been represented to her as instinctively resident in the partizans of republicanism and the Presbytery. Thus her feelings and her principles, – her reasoning powers and the habits of her life, all took one way; and she was not only unable to make the least allowance for a divergence from this way, but utterly unable to conceive that another existed for those who believed in a God, or acknowledged human power at all. She was as much at a loss to conceive how any good could come out of that Nazareth of her abhorrence, as an ancient geographer would have been to have pointed out America in a classical map. – Such was Margaret.

  ‘“Elinor, on the other hand, bred up amid a clamour of perpetual contention, – for the house of her mother’s family, in which her first years had been passed, was, in the language of the profane of those times, a scruple-shop, where the godly of all denominations held their conferences of contradiction, – had her mind early awakened to differences of opinion, and opposition of principle. Accustomed to hear these differences and oppositions often expressed with the most unruly vehemence, she had never, like Margaret, indulged in a splendid aristocracy of imagination, that bore every thing before it, and made prosperity and adversity alike pay tribute to the pride of its triumph. Since her admission into the house of her grandfather, the mind of Elinor had become still more humble and patient, – more subdued and self-denied. Compelled to hear the opinions she was attached to decried, and the characters she reverenced vilified, she sat in reflective silence; and, balancing the opposite extremes which she was destined to witness, she came to the right conclusion, – that there must be good on both sides, however obscured or defaced by passion and by interest, and that great and noble qualities must exist in either party, where so much intellectual power, and so much physical energy, had been displayed by both. Nor could she believe that these clear and mighty spirits would be for ever opposed to each other in their future destinations, – she loved to view them as children who had ‘fallen out by the way,’ from mistaking the path that led to their father’s house, but who would yet rejoice together in the light of his presence, and smile at the differences that divided them on their journey.