It must be said of this curiosity of a physician, that he is the descendant of a very curious family; whose history for the last three generations would be a regular series of eccentricities; and the first of whom, here resident, was a celebrated piratical captain, who is said to have come hither disguised as a peasant, seeking as secluded a country as he could find, and driving before him an ass loaded with gold. It is certain that he purchased very extensive estates, and that one of his descendants was lately in Parliament, who, partaking of the family qualities, excited more surprise and more laughter in the house, than, perhaps, any man since the days of Sir Thomas Lethbridge.
Not far thence, stands another residence. At some distance it appears a goodly manor-house. It is large; with white walls and many antique gables; a stately avenue of elms in front; tall pines about it, the landmark of the whole country round: a spacious garden, with a summer-house on the wall, seeming to have been built when there was some taste there for those rural enjoyments which such a place is calculated to afford to the amiable, country-loving, and refined. As you come near, there appear signs of neglect and decay. Old timber, litter, and large stones lie about; there are broken windows, unpainted and rotting wood-work: every thing looks forlorn, as if it were the residence of poverty on the verge of utter destitution.
The fact is, the owner has landed property worth from thirty to forty thousand pounds. But see the man himself! There he goes, limping across his yard, having permanently injured one of his legs in some of his farming operations. There he goes—a tall hard-featured, weather-beaten man, dressed in the garb of the most rustic husbandman: strong clouted ankle-boots, blue or black ribbed worsted stockings; corduroy small-clothes; a yellow striped waistcoat, and a coat of coarse grey cloth, cut short, in a rude fashion, and illustrated with metal buttons; a hat that seems to have been originally made of coarse wool or dog’s hair—to have cost some four-and-sixpence some dozen years ago—brown, threadbare, and cocked up behind, by propping on his coat collar.
He has brought up a family of three sons, and never spent on their education three pounds. The consequence has been just what might be expected. They came to know, as they grew up, “for quickly comes such knowledge,” their expectations; and they turned out rude, savage, and drunken. One married a servant girl, and she dying, the son brought himself and several children to the old man’s to live. Warned by this—for, with all his clownish parsimony, he has pride—the pride of property—he has put the others on farms, and they have married farmer’s daughters: but, always living in expectation of the old man’s death, they attend to no business; always looking forward to the possession of his wealth, they have already condemned a good part of it. If any man could be punished that man is, for sparing the expense of their education, and for the example set before them; for, what he has made the sole object of all his thoughts and labours, he sees them squandering, and knows that they will squander it all. But he himself is not guilty of all this; he is but the victim of his own education, and the maxims and manners of his ancestors. If he could have seen the usefulness of education to his sons, he could not have found in his heart to spend the necessary money; but he could not see it: anything further than to be able to sign a receipt, and reckon a sum of money in their heads, he called trash and nonsense.
When his sons were growing towards men, I have chanced to pass his farm-yard, and seen him and two of them filling a manure-cart; labouring, puffing and blowing, and perspiring, as if their lives depended on their labour; and the old man was urging them on with continual curses—“Curse thy body, Dick! Curse thy body, Ben!—Ben! Dick! Ben! Dick! work, lads, work!” And these hopeful sons were repaying their father’s curses with the same horrible earnestness.
A gentleman once told me that, having to call on this man about some money transaction, he was detained till twelve o’clock, and desired to stay dinner, that being his hour. Out of curiosity he consented. Every thing about the house was in the rudest and most desolate state. I do not know whether they had a cloth spread on the sturdy oak table, which supported a set of pewter plates, a roasted fowl, and a pudding in a huge brown earthen dish. The wife, stripped to her stays and quilted petticoat, was too busy making cheese and scolding the servants to come to dinner. The pater familias and his guest sat down together. As he cut up the fowl, the two great lads, Dick and Ben, then about twelve and fourteen years of age, came with their wild eyes staring sharply out of their bushy heads of wild hair, and hung over their father’s chair, one on each side, with an eager expression of voracity; for they were not asked to sit down. The father, as if he expected them to pounce on the dinner and carry it off, kept a sharp look-out on them; and though, out of deference to his guest, he restrained his curses, he kept vociferating, as he turned first to one and then to the other, and then gave a cut at the fowl—“Ben! Dick! get away, lads! get away! get away! get away!” But the moment a leg and a wing were cut off, the lads made a sudden spring, and each seizing a joint, bounded out of the apartment, leaving the old man in wonder at the unmanageableness of his sons. From such an education who can doubt the result?—a brood of savages, the nuisance of the neighbourhood, and torment of the old man’s days. To such a height has the old man’s agony arisen at times, as he saw the wasteful conduct of his sons, that it is a pretty well established fact, that on one occasion he threw himself down in a ditch in one of his own fields, and—did not pray to die, for he never knew the beginning, middle, or end of a prayer, but he tried to die; but, after a long and weary endeavour, finding it in vain, he got up and hobbled off home again, saying—“Well, I see it is as hard to die as to live. I can’t die! I can’t die! I must even bear it, till these lads kill me by inches—and that must be a plaguy while first; for I measure two yards of bad stuff, and I think I’m as hard as a nur,[5] and as tough as whit-leather.”
[5] Nur—a hard knot of wood used by boys at bandy instead of a ball.
Ben, now upwards of forty years of age, still lives with the old man, working as a labourer on his farm, and is maintained with his children. Money he never sees: but his father allows him to sell bundles of straw; and he may be seen, in an evening, with two bundles of straw under each arm, proceeding to the alehouse in the next village, where he barters them for the evening cup. Nay, the other night, a person encountered, as he supposed, a thief, issuing from the old man’s yard, with a huge beam on his shoulder. It was Ben, going to turn it into ale; who desired his neighbour to say nothing. Nothing can more strikingly close this account than the old man’s usual description of his three sons. “My son Dick has Cain’s mark on his forehead; Ben, if ale was a guinea a-pint, and he had but one guinea in the world, would buy a pint of ale; and, as for Simon—he is a gentleman! He takes a certificate to shoot. He runs with those long legs of his over three parishes, and comes slinging home with a crow, or a pinet[6]—ay, ay, Simon is a gentleman!”
[6] Magpie.
In this same nook of the world might be seen, some years ago, two brothers, stout farmers—farmers of their own property—heaping curses and recriminations on each other about their possessions, in so loud a voice that they have been heard half a mile off. This enmity outlasted the elder, and burned in the breast of the younger for years after. For it was some years after, that he attended the funeral of a niece whom he left through life to the charity of another. When the funeral was over, they adjourned with the parson to the public-house; and here the person who had cared for the neglected niece, urged the uncle now to pay some part of the funeral charges. “Yes,” said he, “thou hast been at a deal of cost,” (these country people still retain the use of thou and thee), “and here is sixpence for the parson’s glass of brandy and water.” The astonished man pushed back the sixpence with contempt; but, at this moment, in came a lad to tell them that the grave being made too near that of the deceased brother, the earth had suddenly fallen in, and broken in the lid of the old man’s coffin. At this, the living brother started up in evident delight, and exclaimed—“Why, has it? Why, has it? Thou tells me summut, lad! thou tells me summut!” And he gave him the sixpence he had generously destined for the parson’s glass.