Boys and Girls from Thackeray

by Kate Dickinson Sweetser

There he had a dear, dear friend, who died, and whom he called Aunt. She used to visit him in his dreams sometimes; and her face, though it was homely, was a thousand times dearer to him than that of Mrs. Pastoureau, Bon Papa Pastoureau's new wife, who came to live with him after aunt went away. And there, at Spittlefields, as it used to be called, lived Uncle George, who was a weaver, too, but used to tell Harry that he was a little gentleman, and that his father was a captain, and his mother an angel.

When he said so, Bon Papa used to look up from the loom, where he was embroidering beautiful silk flowers, and shake his head. He had a little room where he always used to preach and sing hymns out of his great old nose. Little Harry did not like the preaching; he liked better the fine stories which aunt used to tell him. Bon Papa's new wife never told him pretty stories; she quarrelled with Uncle George, and he went away.

After this, Harry's Bon Papa, and his wife and two children of her own that she had brought with her, came to live at Ealing. The new wife gave her children the best of everything, and Harry many a whipping, he knew not why. So he was very glad when a gentleman dressed in black, on horseback, with a mounted servant behind him, came to fetch him away from Ealing. The unjust stepmother gave him plenty to eat before he went away, and did not beat him once, but told the children to keep their hands off him. One was a girl, and Harry never could bear to strike a girl; and the other was a boy, whom he could easily have beat, but he always cried out, when Mrs. Pastoureau came sailing to the rescue with arms like a flail. She only washed Harry's face the day he went away; nor ever so much as once boxed his ears. She whimpered rather when the gentleman in black came for the boy, and pretended to cry; but Harry thought it was only a sham, and sprung quite delighted upon the horse upon which the lackey helped him. This lackey was a Frenchman; his name was Blaise. The child could talk to him in his own language perfectly well. He knew it better than English, indeed, having lived hitherto among French people, and being called the Little Frenchman by other boys on Ealing Green.

The lackey was very talkative and informed the boy that the gentleman riding before him was my lord's chaplain, Father Holt; that he was now to be called Master Harry Esmond; that my Lord Viscount Castlewood was his patron; that he was to live at the great house of Castlewood, in the province of ——shire, where he would see Madame the Viscountess, who was a grand lady, and that he was to be educated for the priesthood. And so, seated on a cloth before Blaise's saddle, Harry Esmond was brought to London, and to a fine square called Covent Garden, near to which his patron lodged.

Mr. Holt, the priest, took the child by the hand and brought him to this grand languid nobleman, who sat in a great cap and flowered morning-gown, sucking oranges. He patted Harry on the head and gave him an orange, and directed Blaise to take him out for a holiday; and out for a holiday the boy and the valet went. Harry went jumping along; he was glad enough to go.

He remembered to his life's end the delights of those days. He was taken to see a play, in a house a thousand times greater and finer than the booth at Ealing Fair; and on the next happy day they took water on the river, and Harry saw London Bridge, with the houses and book: sellers' shops on it, looking like a street, and the tower of London, with the Armour, and the great lions and bears in the moat—all under company of Monsieur Blaise.

Presently, of an early morning, all the party set forth for the country, and all along the road the Frenchman told little Harry stories of brigands, which made the child's hair stand on end, and terrified him; so that at the great gloomy inn on the road where they lay, he besought to be allowed to sleep in a room with one of the servants, and Father Holt took pity on him and gave the child a little bed in his chamber.

His artless talk and answers very likely inclined this gentleman in his favour, for next day Mr. Holt said Harry should ride behind him, and not with the French lackey; and all along the journey put a thousand questions to the child—as to his foster-brother and relations at Ealing; what his old grandfather had taught him; what languages he knew; whether he could read and write, and sing, and so forth. And Mr. Holt found that Harry could read and write, and possessed the two languages of French and English very well. The lad so pleased the gentleman by his talk that they had him to dine with them at the inn, and encouraged him in his prattle; and Monsieur Blaise, with whom he rode and dined the day before, waited upon him now.

At length, on the third day, at evening, they came to a village on the green with elms around it, and the people there all took off their hats, and made curtsies to my Lord Viscount, who bowed to them all languidly; and there was one portly person that wore a cassock and a broad-leafed hat, who bowed lower than anyone, and with this one both my lord and Mr. Holt had a few words.

"This, Harry, is Castlewood church," says Mr. Holt, "and this is the pillar thereof, learned Dr. Tusher. Take off your hat, sirrah, and salute Dr. Tusher!"