“Mistress Gainor’s house was full of these gentlemen, whom she entertained with a freedom only equalled by that with which she spoke her good Whig mind. The air was full of excitement. Business fell off, and Hugh and I had ample leisure to do much as we liked.
“I must honestly declare that I deserve no praise for having escaped the temptations which beset Hugh. I hated all excess, and suffered in body if I drank or ate more than was wise. As regards worse things than wine and cards, I think Miss Wynne was right when she described me as a girl-boy; for the least rudeness or laxity of talk in women I disliked, and as to the mere modesties of the person, I have always been like some well-nurtured maid.
“Thus it was that when Hugh, encouraged by his aunt, fell into the company of these loose, swaggering captains and cornets, I had either to give up him, who was unable to resist them, or to share in their vicious ways myself. It was my personal disgust at drunkenness or loose society which saved me, not any moral or religious safeguards, although. I trust I was not altogether without these helps. I have seen now and then that to be refined in tastes and feelings is a great aid to a virtuous life. Also I have known some who would have been drunkards but for their heads and stomachs, which so behaved as to be good substitutes for conscience. It is sometimes the body which saves the soul. Both of these helps I had, but my dear Hugh had neither. He was a great, strong, masculine fellow, and if I may seem to have said that he wanted refined feelings, that is not so, and to him, who will never read these lines, and to myself, I must apologise.”
I did come to see these pages, as you know. I think he meant, that with the wine of youth and at times of other vintages, in my veins, the strong paternal blood, which in my father only a true, if hard, religion kept in order, was too much for me. If I state this awkwardly it is because all excuses are awkward. Looking back, I wonder that I was not worse, and that I did not go to the uttermost devil. I was vigorous, and had the stomach of a temperate ox, and a head which made no complaints. The morning after some mad revel I could rise at five, and go out in my boat and overboard, and then home in a glow, with a fine appetite for breakfast; and I was so big and tall that I was thought to be many years older than I was.
I should have been less able unwatched to go down this easy descent, had it not been for a train of circumstances which not only left me freer than I ought to have been, but, in the matter of money, made it only too possible for me to hold my own amid evil or lavish company. My aunt had lived in London, and in a society which had all the charm of breeding, and all the vices of a period more coarse than ours. She detested my father’s notions, and if she meant to win me to her own she took an ill way to do it. I was presented to the English officers, and freely supplied with money, to which I had been quite unused, so long as my father was the only source of supply. We were out late when I was presumed to be at my Aunt Gainor’s; and to drink and bet, or to see a race or cock-fight, or to pull off knockers, or to bother the ancient watchmen, were now some of my most reputable amusements. I began to be talked about as a bit of a rake, and my Aunt Gainor was not too greatly displeased; she would hear of our exploits and say “Fie! fie!” and then give me more guineas. Worse than all, my father was deep in his business, lessening his ventures, and thus leaving me more time to sow the seed of idleness. Everything, as I now see it, combined to make easy for me the downward path. I went along it without the company of Jack Warder, and so we drew apart; he would none of it.
When my father began to withdraw his capital my mother was highly pleased, and more than once in my presence said to him: “Why, John, dost thou strive for more and more money? Hast thou not enough? Let us give up all this care and go to our great farm at Merion, and live as peaceful as our cattle.” She did not reckon upon the force with which the habits of a life bound my father to his business.
I remember that it was far on in April, 1773, when my Aunt Gainer appeared one day in my father’s counting-house. Hers was a well-known figure on King street, and even in the unpleasant region alongshore to the south of Dock street. She would dismount, leave her horse to the groom, and, with a heavily mounted, silver-topped whip in hand, and her riding-petticoat gathered up, would march along, picking her way through mud and filth. Here she contrived to find the queer china things she desired, or in some mysterious way she secured cordials and such liquors as no one else could get.
Once she took my mother with her, and loaded her with gods of the Orient and fine China pongee silks.
“But, Hugh,” said the dear lady, “il n’est pas possible de vous la decrire. Mon Dieu! she can say terrible words, and I have seen a man who ventured some rudeness to me—no, no, mon cher, nothing to anger you; il avait peur de cette femme. He was afraid of her—her and her whip. He was so alarmed that he let her have a great china mandarin for a mere nothing. I think he was glad to see her well out of his low tavern.”
“But the man,” I urged; “what did he say to thee, mother?”