John de Lancaster: a novel; vol. I.

by Richard Cumberland

Colonel Wilson was a disabled officer, having lost a leg in the service, and had now retired upon a sinecure government of twenty shillings per day to a small patrimonial estate in the near neighbourhood of Kray Castle: he was a few years younger than Robert De Lancaster, who had now kept his sixtieth birthday. Wilson had two sons; the elder was in the army, and the younger at the head of Westminster school: he was a man of strict probity, good understanding and an excellent heart. These were qualities, which De Lancaster knew how to appreciate as well as any man, and though his studies and pursuits had been widely different from those of the Colonel, yet he courted his company, and lived in perfect harmony with him as his friend and neighbour. Wilson on his part was not blind to the eccentricities of De Lancaster, but as they never disagreed except upon points, that did not interest the passions, their disputes were carried on without any mixture of acrimony, and only served to keep the conversation amicably alive.

Wilson had lived in the world; De Lancaster in study and retirement: the latter would sometimes contend against assumptions, which to the former appeared to be little less than self-evident; in the mean time De Lancaster would oftentimes undertake to demonstrate paradoxes, that to Wilson’s unsophisticated understanding seemed perfectly inexplicable: these he was in the habit neither to admit, nor pertinaciously to contest: if he had done the first, there would have been a speedy end to the discussion; if he had pursued the latter course, there would have been no end at all, for De Lancaster was not often in the humour to recede from his positions.

Philip De Lancaster on the contrary believed all things, and examined none: he was a man of great faith and few words; by no means wanting in curiosity, but extremely averse from enquiry and trouble. Being an only son and heir to the wealthy house of De Lancaster, it was thought adviseable by the fathers on each side, who were the contracting parties, that he should take to wife Matilda, only child of old Morgan of Glen-Morgan, and presumptive heiress to his fortune and estate. Philip, who had shewn no ardour as a lover, was by no means remarkably uxorious as a husband; and Matilda did not molest him with her fondness or attentions: They lived in the same house as appurtenances to the family at Kray Castle, (for such from time immemorial had been the custom of the De Lancasters) and they lived without quarrelling; for they were very little together; their passions were never roused by contradiction, or enflamed by jealousy; the husband had no attachments, and the wife, who was said to have been thwarted in her first love, laid herself out for no future admirers.

These few preliminary remarks may probably account for the placidity, with which Philip now sate down in the library between his father and the colonel to wait the issue of an event, in which if he did not manifest a very lively interest, the reason very probably was, because he did not feel it.

Philip, (if his sage remark is in the recollection of the reader) had risqued a truism, when he modestly suggested that it was a troublesome task to write a book. Philip did not speak this from his own experience; therefore it is, that I call his truism a risque, for it was not always that his father gave his passport to assertions of that character; but the learned gentleman’s thoughts were just then employed not upon the trouble, that we take when we bring our works into the world, but the trouble, which we give, when we ourselves are brought into it, and upon this topic he began to descant, as follows.

The unlucky accident, by which my blundering neighbour has precipitated Mrs. De Lancaster into labour-pains, must in all probability tend to aggravate and enhance those sorrows, in which by the condition of her sex she is destined to bring forth; and indeed, independent of that accident, I should not wonder if the pains she suffers, and the screams she utters, were more than ordinarily acute and piercing, planted as she now is, by adoption into my family, in the very stream and current from the fountain head of the primæval curse—

Whereabouts are we now, said the colonel within himself?

—Nevertheless, under the pressure of these apprehensions, I console myself with the reflection, that if the general observation, that what we produce with difficulty we are thereby influenced to preserve with diligence, be true in all other cases, it will be also true in that of child-bearing. If so, we may expect that the storgee, or natural affection of my daughter-in-law towards her infant will be proportionally greater than that of mothers, who shall have had easier times.

I see no grounds for that conclusion, replied the colonel.

Surely, sir, resumed De Lancaster, you must have remarked, that in all our operations, whether mental or manual, we are naturally most attached to those on which most pains and labour have been expended. Slight performances and slight opinions may be easily given up, but where great deliberation has been bestowed, we are not soon persuaded to admit that our time has been misspent and our talents misapplied.