The Adventures of Hugh Trevor

by Thomas Holcroft

One of my pleasures, and duties as I conceived it to be, was to introduce Turl and Wilmot to such of my higher order of acquaintance as might afford both parties gratification. There is much frivolity among people of rank and fashion: but there is likewise some enquiry and sound understanding; and, where these qualities exist in any eminent degree, the friends I have named could not but be welcome.

It is the interest of men of all orders to converse with each other, to listen to their mutual pretensions with patience, to be slow to condemn, and to be liberal in the construction of what they at first suppose to be dangerous novelty.

Turl was peculiarly fitted to promote these principles: and Wilmot, in addition to the charms of an imagination finely stored, was possessed, as the reader may remember, of musical talents; and those of no inferior order. Days and weeks passed not unpleasantly away: for hope and Olivia were ever present to my imagination, and of the ills which fortune had in reserve I was little aware.

While business and pleasure thus appeared to promote each other, it came to my knowledge that an advertisement had appeared in the papers: stating that, if Hugh Trevor, the grandson of the reverend **** rector of ***, were alive, by application at a place there named, he might hear of something very much to his advantage.

I cannot enumerate the conjectures that this intelligence immediately excited; for they were endless. I searched the papers, found the advertisement, and hastened to the place to which it directed me.

The information I there received was not precisely what my elevated hopes had taught me to expect: but it was of considerable moment. I learned that my grandfather's executor, Mr. Thornby, was dead; that his nephew, Wakefield, had taken possession of the property he had left; but that he had done this illegally: for the person who caused the advertisement to be put into the paper was an attorney, who had drawn and witnessed the will of Thornby, which will was in my favour; and which moreover stated that the property bequeathed to me was mine in right of a will of my grandfather's; which will Thornby had till that time kept concealed. Whether the testament he had produced, immediately after the death of the rector, were one that Thornby had forged, or one that my grandfather had actually made but had ordered his executor to destroy, did not at present appear. The account I gave of it in a preceding volume, and of the manner in which it was procured, was the substance of what I learned from the conversation of my mother and Thornby at the time.

A death-bed compunction had wrested from the deceased an avowal of his guilt; and the facts were explicitly stated, in the preamble of his will, in order to prevent the contest which he foresaw might probably take place, between me and his nephew. He seemed to have been painfully anxious to do justice at last; and save his soul, when he found it must take flight.

The business was urgent; and, if I meant to profit by that which was legally mine, it was necessary, as I was advised, immediately to go down and examine into all the circumstances on the spot.

I was the more surprised at what I had heard because it was but very lately that I had sent a remittance to my mother; which she had acknowledged, and which must have been received after her husband had taken possession of his uncle's effects. But, when I recollected the character that had been given me of Wakefield, as far as the transaction related to him, my surprise was of short duration.

With respect to my mother, I heard with no small degree of astonishment that she had been applied to, in order to discover where I might be found; and that she had returned evasive answers: which as it was supposed had been dictated by her husband; under whose control, partly from fear and partly from an old woman's doating, she was completely held.