Miles Wallingford / Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore"

by James Fenimore Cooper

The honeymoon was passed at Clawbonny, and many, many other honeymoons that have since succeeded it. I never saw a man more delighted than Mr. Hardinge was, at finding me actually his son-in-law. I really believed he loved me more than he did Rupert, though he lived and died in ignorance of his own son's true character. It would have been cruel to undeceive him; and nothing particular ever occurred to bring about an éclaircissement. Rupert's want of principle was a negative, rather than an active quality, and was only rendered of account by his vanity and selfishness. Self-indulgence was all he aimed at, and he was much too self-indulgent and shrewd to become an active rogue. He would have spent Lucy's and my joint fortunes, had they been put at his control; but, as they never were, he was fain to limit his expenditures to such sums as we saw fit to give him, with certain extra allowances extorted by his debts. Our intercourse was very much restricted to visits of ceremony, at least on my part; though Lucy saw him oftener; and no allusion was ever made to the past. I called him "Mr. Hardinge" and he called me "Mr. Wallingford." "Rupert" and "Miles" were done with for ever, between us. I may as well dispose of the history of this person and his wife, at once; for I confess it gives me pain to speak of them, even at this distance of time.

Rupert lived but four years, after my marriage to his sister. As soon as he found it necessary to give up the Broadway house, he accepted the use of Riversedge and his sister's $2000 a-year, with gratitude, and managed to get along on that sum, apparently, down to the hour of his death. It is true, that I paid his debts, without Lucy's knowledge, twice in that short period; and I really think he was sensible of his errors, to a certain extent, before his eyes were closed. He left one child, a daughter, who survived him only a few months. Major Merton's complaints had carried him off previously to this. Between this old officer and myself, there had ever existed a species of cordiality; and I do believe he sometimes remembered his various obligations to me and Marble, in a proper temper. Like most officials of free governments, he left little or nothing behind him; so that Mrs. Hardinge was totally dependent on her late husband's friends for a support, during her widowhood. Emily was one of those semi-worldly characters, that are not absolutely wanting in good qualities, while there is always more or less of a certain disagreeable sort of calculation in all they do. Rupert's personal advantages and agreeable manners had first attracted her; and believing him to be Mrs. Bradfort's heir, she had gladly married him. I think she lived a disappointed woman, after her father's death; and I was not sorry when she let us know that she was about to "change her condition," as it is termed in widow's parlance, by marrying an elderly man, who possessed the means of giving her all that money can bestow. With this second, or, according to Venus's nomenclature, step-husband, she went to Europe, and there remained, dying only three years ago, an amply endowed widow. We kept up a civil sort of intercourse with her to the last, actually passing a few weeks with her, some fifteen years since, in a house, half-barn, half-castle, that she called a palace, on one of the unrivalled lakes of Italy. As la Signora Montiera, (Montier) she was sufficiently respected, finishing her career as a dowager of good reputation, and who loved the "pomps and vanities of this wicked world." I endeavoured, in this last meeting, to bring to her mind divers incidents of her early life, but with a singular want of success. They had actually passed, so far as her memory was concerned, into the great gulf of time, keeping company with her sins, and appeared to be entirely forgot. Nevertheless, la Signora was disposed to treat me and view me with consideration, as soon as she found me living in credit, with money, horses, and carriages at command, and to forget that I had been only a skip-master. She listened smilingly, and with patience, to what, I dare say, were my prolix narratives, though her own recollections were so singularly impaired. She did remember something about the wheelbarrow and the canal in Hyde Park; but as for the voyage across the Pacific, most of the incidents had passed out of her mind. To do her honour, Lucy wore the pearls, on an occasion in which she gave a little festa to her neighbours; and I ascertained she did remember them. She even hinted to one of her guests, in my hearing, that they had been intended for her originally; but "we cannot command the impulses of the heart, you know, câra mia," she added, with a very self-complacent sort of a sigh.

What of all this? The ci-devant Emily was no more than a summary of the feelings, interests, and passions of millions, living and dying in a narrow circle erected by her own vanities, and embellished by her own contracted notions of what is the end and aim of human existence, and within a sphere that she fancied respectable and refined.

As for the race of the Clawbonnys, all the elderly members of this extensive family lived and died in my service; or, it might be better to say, I lived in theirs. Venus saw several repetitions of her own charms in the offspring of Neb and Chloe, though she pertinaciously insisted to the last, that Cupid, as a step-husband, had no legitimate connection with any of the glistening, thick-lipped, chubby set. But, even closer family ties than those which bound my slaves to me, are broken by the pressure of human institutions. The conscript fathers of New York had long before determined that domestic slavery should not continue within their borders; and, one by one, these younger dependants dropped off, to seek their fortunes in town, or in other portions of the State; until few were left beside Neb, his consort, and their immediate descendants. Some of these last still cling to me; the parents having instilled into the children, in virtue of their example and daily discourse, feelings that set at naught the innovations of a changeable state of society. With them, Clawbonny is still Clawbonny; and I and mine remain a race apart in their perception of things. I gave Neb and Chloe their freedom-papers, the day the faithful couple were married, and at once relieved their posterity from the servitude of eight-and-twenty, and five-and-twenty years, according to sex, that might otherwise have hung over all their elder children, until the law, by a general sweep, manumitted everybody. These papers Neb put in the bottom of his tobacco-box, not wishing to do any discredit to a gift from me; and there I accidentally saw them, in rags, seventeen years later, not having been opened, or seen by a soul, as I firmly believe, in all that time. It is true, the subsequent legislation of the State rendered all this of no moment; but the procedure showed the character and disposition of the man, demonstrating his resolution to stick by me to the last. He has had no intention to free me, whatever may have been my plans for himself and his race.

I never had more than one conversation with either Neb or his wife, on the subject of wages, and then I discovered how tender a thing it was, with the fellow, to place him on a level with the other hired people of my farm and household.

"I won'er what I done, Masser Mile, dat you want to pay me wages, like a hired man!" said Neb, half-disposed to resent, and half-disposed to grieve at the proposal. "I was born in de family, and it seem to me dat quite enough; but, if dat isn't enough, I went to sea wid you, Masser Mile, de fuss day you go, and I go ebbery time since."

These words, uttered a little reproachfully, disposed of the matter. From that hour to this, the subject of wages has never been broached between us. When Neb wants clothes he goes and gets them, and they are charged to "Masser Mile;" when he wants money he comes and gets it, never manifesting the least shame or reluctance, but asking for all he has need of, like a man. Chloe does the same with Lucy, whom she regards, in addition to her having the honour to be my wife, as a sort of substitute for "Miss Grace." With this honest couple, Mr. and Mrs. Miles Wallingford, of Clawbonny, and Riversedge; and Union Place, are still nothing but "Masser Mile" and "Miss Lucy;"--and I once saw an English traveller take out her note-book, and write something very funny, I dare say, when she heard Chloe thus address the mother of three fine children, who were hanging around her knee, and calling her by that, the most endearing of all appellations. Chloe was indifferent to the note of the traveller, however, still calling her mistress "Miss Lucy," though the last is now a grandmother.

As for the children of the house of Nebuchadnezzar, truth compels me to say, that they have been largely influenced by the spirit of the age, and that they look on the relation that existed for more than a century, between the Wallingfords and the Clawbonnys, with eyes somewhat different from those of their parents. They have begun to migrate; and I am not sorry to see them go. Notwithstanding, the tie will not be wholly broken, so long as any of the older stock remain, tradition leaving many of its traces among them. Not one has ever left my rule without my consent; and I have procured places for them all, as ambition, or curiosity, has carried them into the world.

As for this new spirit of the age that is doing so much among us, I am not twaddler enough to complain of all change, for I know that many of these changes have had the most beneficial effects. I am far from thinking that domestic slavery, as it once existed at Clawbonny, is a picture of domestic slavery as it existed throughout the land; but I do believe that the institution, as it was formerly known in New York, was quite as much to the disadvantage of the white man, as to that of the black. There was always something of the patriarchal character in one of our households, previously to the change in the laws; and the relation of master and slave, in old, permanent families, in which plenty was no stranger, had ever more or less of that which was respectable and endearing. It is not so much in relation to the abolition spirit, (if it would only confine its exertions to communities over which it may happen to possess some right of control,) that I feel alarmed as in reference to a certain spirit, which appears to think there always must be more and more change, and that in connection with any specific interest, whatever may have been its advancement under previous régimes; nothing in social life being fully developed, according to the creed of these movement philosophers. Now, in my view of the matter, the two most dangerous of all parties in a state, are that which sets up conservatism as its standard, and that which sets up progress: the one is for preserving things of which it would be better to be rid, while the other crushes all that is necessary and useful in its headlong course. I now speak of these opposing principles, as they are marshalled in parties, opposition giving pertinacity and violence to each. No sane man can doubt that, in the progress of events, much is produced that ought to be retained, and much generated that it would be wiser to reject. He, alone, is the safe and wise legislator, who knows how, and when, to make the proper distinctions. As for conservatism, Lafayette once characterized it excellently well, in one of his happiest hits in the tribune. "Gentlemen talk of the just medium (juste milieu)" he said, "as if it embraced a clear political creed. We all know what the just medium is, as relates to any particular question; it is simply the truth, as it is connected with that question. But when gentlemen say, that they belong to the juste milieu, as a party, and that they intend to steer a middle course in all the public events of the day, they remind me of a case like this--A man of exaggerated notions lays down the proposition that four and four make ten; another of more discretion and better arithmetic combats this idea, by maintaining that four and four make only eight; whereupon, your gentleman of the juste milieu, finds himself obliged to say, 'Messieurs, you are equally in the wrong; the truth never lies in extremes, and four and four make nine.'"

What is true of conservatism, as a principle, is still more true as to the movement; for it often happens in morals, as well as in physics, that the remedy is worse than the disease. The great evil of Europe, in connection with interests of this nature, arises from facts that have little or no influence here. There, radical changes have been made, the very base of the social edifice having been altered, while much of the ancient architecture remains in the superstructure. Where this is the case, some errors may be pardoned in the artisans who are for reducing the whole to the simplicity of a single order. But, among ourselves, the man who can see no end to anything earthly, ever maintaining that the best always lies beyond, if he live long enough to succeed, may live long enough to discover that truth is always on an eminence, and that the downward course is only too easy to those who rush in so headlong a manner at its goal, as to suffer the impetus of the ascent to carry them past the apex. A social fact cannot be carried out to demonstration like a problem in Euclid, the ramifications being so infinite as to reduce the results to something very like a conclusion from a multitude of interests.