Arthur, thou hast had a life of more than man’s share of pleasure; thou hast tasted much happiness, and known but few sorrows; but would not a moment like this outnumber them all? Where is love so full, so generous, so confiding? What affection comes so pure and unalloyed, not chilled by jealous doubts or fears, but warm and gushing—the incense of a happy heart, the outpourings of a guileless nature. Nothing can be more beautiful than the picture of maternal fondness, the gracefulness of woman thrown like a garment around her children. Her look of love etherealised by the holiest sentiment of tenderness; her loveliness exalted above the earth by the contemplation of those, her own dear ones, who are but a ‘little lower than the angels’—is a sight to make the eyes gush tears of happiness, and the heart swell with thankfulness to Heaven. Second alone to this is the unbending of man’s stern nature before the charms of childhood, when, casting away the pride of manhood and the cold spirit of worldly ambition, he becomes like one among his children, the participator in their joys and sorrows, the companion of their games, the confidant of their little secrets. How insensibly does each moment thus passed draw him further from the world and its cares; how soon does he forget disappointments, or learn to think of them less poignantly; and how by Nature’s own magnetism does the sinless spirit of the child mix with the subtle workings of the man, and lift him above the petty jarrings and discords of life! And thus, while he teaches them precepts of truth and virtue, they pour into his heart lessons of humility and forbearance. If he point out the future to them, with equal force they show the past to him, and a blessing rests on both. The populus me sibilat of the miser is a miserable philosophy compared to his who can retire from the rancorous assaults of enemies and the dark treachery of false friends, to the bosom of a happy home, and feel his hearth a sanctuary where come no forms of malice to assail him!
Such were my musings as I saw the father pass on with his children; and never before did my loneliness seem so devoid of happiness.
Would that I could stop here; would that I might leave my reader to ponder over these things, and fashion them to his mind’s liking; but I may not. I have but one object in these notes of my loiterings. It is to present to those younger in the world, and fresher to its wiles than myself, some of the dangers as well as some of the enjoyments of foreign travel; and having surveyed the cost with much care and caution, I would fix a wreck-buoy here and there along the channel as a warning and a guide. And now to begin.
Let me take the character before me—one of whom I hesitate not to say that only the name is derived from invention. Some may have already identified him; many more may surmise the individual meant. It is enough that I say he still lives, and the correctness of the portrait may easily be tested by any traveller Rhinewards; but I prefer giving him a chapter to himself.
CHAPTER XXVI. SIR HARRY WYCHERLEY
Sir Harry Wycherley was of an old Hampshire family, who, entering the army when a mere boy, contrived, before he came of age, so completely to encumber a very large estate that his majority only enabled him to finish the ruin he had so actively begun, and to leave him penniless at seven-and-twenty. Before the wreck of his property became matter of notoriety, he married an earl’s daughter with a vast fortune, a portion of which was settled on any children that might be born to their union. She, poor girl, scarcely nineteen when she married (for it was a love match), died of a broken heart at three-and-twenty—leaving Sir Harry, with two infant children, all but irretrievably ruined, nearly everything he possessed mortgaged beyond its value, and not even a house to shelter him. By the advice of his lawyer, he left England secretly and came over to Paris, whence he travelled through Germany down to Italy, where he resided some time. The interest of the fortune settled on the children sufficed to maintain him in good style, and enabled him to associate with men of his own rank, provided he incurred no habits of extravagance. A few years of such prudence would, he was told, enable him to return with a moderate income; and he submitted.
This career of quiet, unobtrusive character was gradually becoming more and more insupportable to him. At first the change from a life beset by duns and bailiffs, by daily interviews with Jews and consultations with scheming lawyers, was happiness itself; the freedom he enjoyed from pressing difficulties and contingencies which arose with every hour was a pleasure he never knew before, and he felt like a schoolboy escaped from the drudgery of the desk. But by degrees, as he mixed more with those who were his former associates and companions—many of them exiles on the same plea as himself—the old taste for past pleasures revived. Their conversation brought back London with all its brilliant gaiety before him. Its clubs and coteries, the luxurious display of the dinners at the ‘Clarendon’ or the reckless extravagance of the nights at Crockford’s, the triumphs of the Derby, and the glories of Ascot, passed all in review before him, heightened by the recollection of the high spirits of his youth. He began once more to hanker after the world he believed he had quitted without regret; and a morbid anxiety to learn what was doing and going forward in the circles he used to move in took possession of his mind. All the gossip of Tattersall’s, all the chitchat of the Carlton, all the scandal of Graham’s, became at once indispensable to his existence, Who was going it ‘fastest’ among the rising spirits of the day, and which was the favourite of ‘Scott’s lot,’ were points of vital interest to him; while he felt the deepest anxiety about the fortunes of those who were tottering on the brink of ruin, and spent many a sleepless night in conjectures as to how they were to get through this difficulty or that, and whether they could ever ‘come round’ again.
Not one of the actors in that busy scene, into whose wild chaos fate mixes up all that is highest and everything the most depraved of human nature, ever took the same interest in it as he did. He lived henceforth in an ideal world, ignorant and careless of what was passing around him; his faculties strained to regard events at a distance, he became abstracted and silent. A year passed over thus, twelve weary months, in which his mind dwelt on home and country with all the ardour of a banished man. At last the glad tidings reached him that a compromise had been effected with his principal creditors; his most pressing debts had been discharged, and time obtained to meet others of less moment; and no obstacle any longer existed to his returning to England.
What a glorious thing it was to come back again once more to the old haunts and scenes of pleasure; to revisit the places of which his days and nights were filled with the very memory; to be once again the distinguished among that crowd who ruled supreme at the table and on the turf, and whose fiat was decisive from the Italian Opera to Doncaster! Alas and alas! the resumption of old tastes and habits will not bring back the youth and buoyancy which gave them all their bright colouring. There is no standing still in life; there is no resting-place whence we can survey the panorama, and not move along with it. Our course continues, and as changes follow one another in succession without, so within our own natures are we conforming to the rule, and becoming different from what we had been. The dream of home, the ever-present thought to the exile’s mind, suffers the rude shock when comes the hour of testing its reality; happy for him if he die in the delusion! Early remembrances are hallowed by a light that age and experience dissipate for ever, and as the highland tarn we used to think grand in its wild desolation in the hours of our boyhood becomes to our manhoods eye but a mere pond among the mountains, so do we look with changed feelings on all about us, and feel disappointment where we expected pleasure.