Mr. Hearty met me at the entrance, shook me very cordially by the hand, and taking me into the apartment where his wife and several other ladies were sitting, he presented me to the former, by whom I was very graciously received.
“Mr. Gernon, my love,” said he, “whom your brother, Sir Jeremy, has been so kind as to introduce to us.”
“We are very glad indeed to see you,” said the lady, rising and taking my hand, “and hope you will make this house your home whilst the ship remains.” I profoundly bowed my thanks.
“Mr. Hearty, my dear, will you shew Mr. Gernon his room—he may wish to arrange his things—and then bring him back to us?”
This was cordial and gratifying. I am apt to generalize from a few striking particulars. So I set the Madrassees down at once as polished and hospitable in the extreme—a perfectly correct inference, I believe, however precipitately formed by me on that occasion. Mr. Hearty was a fine, erect, fresh old gentleman, of aristocratic mien and peculiarly pleasing address. His manners, indeed, were quite of what is termed the old school, dignified and polished, but withal a little formal; far superior, however, to modern brusquerie, and that selfishness of purpose which, too often disdaining disguise, sets at nought the “small courtesies” which so greatly sweeten existence. His wife, much his junior, was a handsome woman of eight-and-twenty, gay and lively, and apparently much attached to her lord, in spite of the disparity of their years. He, in fact, was one of those rarely-seen well-preserved old men, of whom a young woman might be both proud and fond. My host lived in the good old style of Indian hospitality, of which absence of unnecessary restraint, abundance of good cheer, and the most unaffected and cordial welcome, constituted the essential elements.
In India, from various causes, perhaps sufficiently obvious, the English heart, naturally generous and kind, has or had full room for expansion; and the “luxury of doing good,” in the shape of assembling happy faces around the social board, can be enjoyed, without, as too frequently the case here, the concomitant dread of outrunning the constable, or trenching too deeply on the next day’s quantum of hashed mutton. Certainly, our close packing in these densely populated lands may give us polish, but it rubs off much of the natural enamel of our virtues.
Mr. Hearty’s house was quite Liberty Hall, in its fullest meaning. Each guest had his bedroom, where he could read, write, or doze; or if he preferred it, he could hunt squirrels, shoot with a rifle, as my friend, the Scotch cadet, and I did; sit with the ladies in the drawing room and play the flute, or enjoy any other equally intellectual amusement, between meals, at which the whole party, from various quarters, were wont to assemble, rubbing their hands, and greeting in that warm manner, which commonly results where people have been well employed in the interim, and not had too much of each other’s company. Mr. Hearty’s house was full of visitors from all points of the compass.
There was a captain of cavalry and lady, from Bangalore; a very dyspeptic-looking doctor from Vizagapatam; a missionary, bent on making the natives “all samo master’s caste,” through the medium of his proper vernacular; a strapping Scotch artillery cadet, before alluded to, some six feet two, and who was my particular friend and crony, with several others, birds of passage like myself. Amongst these, to my great delight and astonishment, I found the lovely Miss Olivia and her sister. Now, then, reader, prepare yourself for one of the most soul-stirring and pathetic passages of these Memoirs. Shade of Petrarch, I invoke thee! spirit of Jean Jacques, impart thy aid, whilst in honest but tender guise I pour forth my “confessions.” Yes, as an honest chronicler of events, I am bound to tell it—the candour of a griffin demands that it should out. I fell over head and ears in love—’twas a most violent attack I had, and I think I was full three months getting the better of it. It would be, however, highly derogatory to the dignity of that pleasing passion, were I to trail the account of its manifestations at the fag end of a chapter; I shall, therefore, reserve my confessions of the “soft impeachment,” and my voyage to Calcutta, for the next.
CHAPTER V.
“Peace be with the soul of that charitable and courteous author, who, for the common benefit of his fellow-authors, introduced the ingenious way of miscellaneous writing!”—so says the great Lord Shaftesbury; and I heartily respond to the sentiment, that mode admitting of those easy transitions from “grave to gay, from lively to severe,” which so well agree with my discursive humour. Having thus premised, let me proceed with my story, which now begins to assume a graver aspect.