John de Lancaster: a novel; vol. I.

by Richard Cumberland

Colonel Wilson was now returned, and heard with infinite delight the story of the dead soldier, told by Cecilia so greatly to the credit of his darling boy John; but when his friend De Lancaster told him with an air of triumph of his reigning passion for the trumpet, he treated it as a jest, and ridiculed the idea. Disappointed by this reception, and somewhat piqued, De Lancaster was determined to stand to his defences, and that Wilson, who had arraigned the trumpet, should be doomed to hear the trumpet’s advocate.

Sir, said he, you will permit me to remind you, that the trumpet is an ancient and a venerable instrument. If it be said that the walls of the city of Thebes were raised by the lute of Amphion, we have better authority for believing that the walls of Jericho were thrown down by the trumpets of the Israelitish Priests.

I hope, replied Wilson, the trumpet of my friend John will not be quite so efficacious. If the castle tumbles down with the blast, we may chance to be buried in its ruins.

Wilson had better have left this skit alone, for his friend was at no time guilty of giving his hearers too little information, and he was just now put upon his mettle to discuss the merits of the insulted trumpet under its three denominations according to the respective characters, in which the ancients employed, and have described it. The first of these, he told him, was the tuba, or straight trumpet, properly so called: the second was the lituus, or shrill-toned trumpet, curved at the extremity: the third and last the cornuus, or deep-toned horn, of natural conformation, curved throughout: of these the chief was the tuba first named, which he informed him was unknown to the Greeks, though not to Homer, who did not employ it in his battles, knowing it was not then in use.

He was right in not doing so, said Wilson; but if he had done otherwise, I, for one, should never have found him out.

Whether Wilson imagined that his friend had done with his trumpets it is impossible to say, but it is very easy to believe that he was not aware how many he had in petto, for he seemed astonished when given to understand, that there were not less than six different sorts of the tuba, as classed by Eustathius into that of the Athenians, invented by Minerva; the Egyptian trumpet, contrived by Osiris, and employed in their sacrifices; the trumpet of the Gauls, with a peculiar mouthpiece, of a shrill tone, and by them called Carynx; the Paphlagonian trumpet, mouthed like a bull and very deep-toned; that of the Medes, blown with a reed, also of a deep tone, and lastly, the Tyrrhenian trumpet, extremely acute and high-pitched in conformity to which it is supposed the Romans modelled their’s.

Scarcely was this edifying dissertation finished, when the hall resounded with a blast, loud enough, it should seem, to shake its aged banners into tatters: Wilson hastened to the scene of action, and found his friend John under the tuition not of any of the great masters above-mentioned, but of a puppet-show man, who travelled the country, and recommended himself by the strength, rather than by the sweetness, of his tones. This gentleman, who had just recruited his lungs with an emollient dose of sweet Welch ale, blew with might and main in return for the hospitality he had received, and doubtless for the honour of the corps he belonged to. The Goddess Fame never gave a louder crack for the best favourite she had, though he were standing at her back, and, like the bellows-blower of an organ, had pumped breath into her lungs to let the people hear his own good deeds. The performer, who was an adept in more arts than one, had just then played a somerset, to the great delight of his pupil John, and was standing on his hands with his heels erect in the air, when Mrs. Elizabeth Wood entering the hall, and seeing a pair of human legs in an attitude so totally irreconcileable to her idea of the proper place, which human legs ought to hold in society, uttered, as in duty bound, a most violent scream, and in the same breath announced an order for silencing that horrid trumpet; it had nearly thrown her lady into fits. That ancient and venerable instrument, (so called by Mr. De Lancaster) was accordingly for ever laid aside, and Scaramouch was fain to make his retreat without sound of trumpet; but as he could tumble, conjure and shew tricks, that would give no offence to the nervous system of the lady above stairs, it is probable that both the ladies and gentlemen below stairs suffered him to entertain them before he left the castle; and as he very politely invited them to be present at the opening of his theatre in the village, when Punch and his company would present them with the entertaining interlude of the Rape of the Sabines, with appropriate screamings by the ladies concerned in the representation, it is presumed, that not a few of them were prevailed upon to be present at that interesting exhibition.

The shock, that Mrs. De Lancaster had received, was by no means feigned. She had now become a confirmed hypochondriac, and great alarm was sounded forth by Mr. Llewellyn of an approaching decay, that he endeavoured to stem by an unceasing course of medicines, which if they had suited her case, were certainly not sparingly administered; but, as she regularly grew worse and worse, it occasioned some to doubt whether they had even the merit of being innocently neutral.

Thus ended the second abortive effort of our hero’s genius in the musical department. Not totally discouraged, but cautious of annoying his unhappy mother, he now betook himself to the humble Jew’s-harp, whose sibilous strains by long practice and unwearied assiduity he so contrived to modulate and diversify, as obtained for him the reputation, amongst the servants at least, of executing some of the familiar Welch airs in a style, that seemed the very echo of David Williams’s harp.

For this small accomplishment he was indebted to his genius only: There were however other arts, in which he exercised himself under tuition. By the favour of the gamekeeper he became an expert shooter at a mark, and, since Colonel Wilson had returned, he put himself under the command of his servant, a disabled veteran, who taught him to perform all the motions of the manual and platoon so correctly, that the effects of this discipline soon became conspicuous in the firmness of his step, and the uprightness of his carriage.