“You have a calm and quiet habitation here,” said I; “the very rooks seem to have something lulling in that venerable caw which it always does me such good to hear.”
“Yes,” answered Clutterbuck, “I own that there is much that is grateful to the temper of my mind in this retired spot. I fancy that I can the better give myself up to the contemplation which makes, as it were, my intellectual element and food. And yet I dare say that in this (as in all other things) I do strongly err; for I remember that during my only sojourn in London, I was wont to feel the sound of wheels and of the throng of steps shake the windows of my lodging in the Strand, as if it were but a warning to recal my mind more closely to its studies—of a verity that noisy evidence of man’s labour reminded me how little the great interests of this rolling world were to me, and the feeling of solitude amongst the crowds without, made me cling more fondly to the company I found within. For it seems that the mind is ever addicted to contraries, and that when it be transplanted into a soil where all its neighbours do produce a certain fruit, it doth, from a strange perversity, bring forth one of a different sort. You would little believe, my honoured friend, that in this lonely seclusion, I cannot at all times prohibit my thoughts from wandering to that gay world of London, which, during my tarry therein, occupied them in so partial a degree. You smile, my friend, nevertheless it is true; and when you reflect that I dwelt in the western department of the metropolis, near unto the noble mansion of Somerset House, and consequently in the very centre of what the idle call Fashion, you will not be so surprised at the occasional migration of my thoughts.”
Here the worthy Clutterbuck paused and sighed slightly. “Do you farm or cultivate your garden,” said I; “they are no ignoble nor unclassical employments?”
“Unhappily,” answered Clutterbuck, “I am inclined to neither; my chest pains me with a sharp and piercing pang when I attempt to stoop, and my respiration is short and asthmatic; and, in truth, I seldom love to stir from my books and papers. I go with Pliny to his garden, and with Virgil to his farm; those mental excursions are the sole ones I indulge in; and when I think of my appetite for application, and my love of idleness, I am tempted to wax proud of the propensities which reverse the censure of Tacitus on our German ancestors, and incline so fondly to quiet, while they turn so restlessly from sloth.”
Here the speaker was interrupted by a long, low, dry cough, which penetrated me to the heart. ‘Alas!’ thought I, as I heard it, and looked upon my poor friend’s hectic and hollow cheek, ‘it is not only his mind that will be the victim to the fatality of his studies.’
It was some moments before I renewed the conversation, and I had scarcely done so before I was interrupted by the entrance of Benjamin Jeremiah, with a message from his aunt that dinner would be ready in a few minutes. Another long whisper to Christopher succeeded. The ci-devant fellow of Trinity looked down at his garments with a perplexed air. I saw at once that he had received a hint on the propriety of a change of raiment. To give him due leisure for this, I asked the youth to shew me a room in which I might perform the usual ablutions previous to dinner, and followed him upstairs to a comfortless sort of dressing-room, without a fire-place, where I found a yellow were jug and basin, and a towel, of so coarse a huckaback, that I did not dare adventure its rough texture next my complexion—my skin is not made for such rude fellowship. While I was tenderly and daintily anointing my hands with some hard water, of no Blandusian spring, and that vile composition entitled Windsor soap, I heard the difficult breathing of poor Clutterbuck on the stairs, and soon after he entered the adjacent room. Two minutes more, and his servant joined him, for I heard the rough voice of the domestic say, “There is no more of the wine with the black seal left, Sir!”
“No more, good Dixon; you mistake grievously. I had two dozen not a week since.”
“Don’t know, I’m sure, Sir!” answered Dixon, with a careless and half impertinent accent; “but there are great things, like alligators, in the cellar, which break all the bottles!”
“Alligators in my cellar!” said the astonished Clutterbuck.
“Yes, Sir—at least a venomous sort of reptile like them, which the people about here call efts!”