Well, to take my brother's money would delay his promotion, and I naturally did not draw on him, though I own I was tempted; nor, knowing my dear General Lambert's small means, did I care to impoverish him by asking for supplies. These simple acts of forbearance my worthy brewer must choose to consider as instances of exalted virtue. And what does my gentleman do but write privately to my brother in America, lauding me and my wife as the most admirable of human beings, and call upon Madame de Bernstein, who never told me of his visit indeed, but who, I perceived, about this time treated us with singular respect and gentleness, that surprised me in one whom I could not but consider as selfish and worldly. In after days I remember asking him how he had gained admission to the Baroness? He laughed: “De Baroness!” says he. “I knew de Baron when he was a walet at Munich, and I was a brewer-apprentice.” I think our family had best not be too curious about our uncle the Baron.
Thus, the part of my life which ought to have been most melancholy was in truth made pleasant by many friends, happy circumstances, and strokes of lucky fortune. The bear I led was a docile little cub, and danced to my piping very readily. Better to lead him about, than to hang round booksellers' doors, or wait the pleasure or caprice of managers! My wife and I, during our exile, as we may call it, spent very many pleasant evenings with these kind friends and benefactors. Nor were we without intellectual enjoyments; Mrs. Foker and Mrs. Warrington sang finely together; and sometimes when I was in the mood, I read my own play of Pocahontas, to this friendly audience, in a manner better than Hagan's own, Mr. Foker was pleased to say.
After that little escapade of Miles Warrington, junior, I saw nothing of him, and heard of my paternal relatives but rarely. Sir Miles was assiduous at court (as I believe he would have been at Nero's), and I laughed one day when Mr. Foker told me that he had heard on 'Change “that they were going to make my uncle a Beer.”—“A Beer?” says I in wonder. “Can't you understand de vort, ven I say it?” says the testy old gentleman. “Vell, veil, a Lort!” Sir, Miles indeed was the obedient humble servant of the Minister, whoever he might be. I am surprised he did not speak English with a Scotch accent during the first favourite's brief reign. I saw him and his wife coming from court, when Mrs. Claypool was presented to her Majesty on her marriage. I had my little boy on my shoulder. My uncle and aunt stared resolutely at me from their gilt coach window. The footmen looked blank over their nosegays. Had I worn the Fairy's cap and been invisible, my father's brother could not have passed me with less notice.
We did not avail ourselves much, or often, of that queer invitation of Lady Castlewood, to go and drink tea and sup with her ladyship when there was no other company. Old Van den Bosch, however shrewd his intellect, and great his skill in making a fortune, was not amusing in conversation, except to his daughter, who talked household and City matters, bulling and bearing, raising and selling farming-stock, and so forth, quite as keenly and shrewdly as her father. Nor was my Lord Castlewood often at home, or much missed by his wife when absent, or very much at ease in the old father's company. The Countess told all this to my wife in her simple way. “Guess,” says she, “my lord and father don't pull well together nohow. Guess my lord is always wanting money, and father keeps the key of the box and quite right, too. If he could have the fingering of all our money, my lord would soon make away with it, and then what's to become of our noble family? We pay everything, my dear (except play-debts, and them we won't have nohow). We pay cooks, horses, wine-merchants, tailors, and everybody—and lucky for them too—reckon my lord wouldn't pay 'em! And we always take care that he has a guinea in his pocket, and goes out like a real nobleman. What that man do owe to us: what he did before we come—gracious goodness only knows! Me and father does our best to make him respectable: but it's no easy job, my dear. Law! he'd melt the plate, only father keeps the key of the strong-room; and when we go to Castlewood, my father travels with me, and papa is armed too, as well as the people.”
“Gracious heavens!” cries my wife, “your ladyship does not mean to say you suspect your own husband of a desire to——”
“To what?—Oh no, nothing, of course! And I would trust our brother Will with untold money, wouldn't I? As much as I'd trust the cat with the cream-pan! I tell you, my dear, it's not all pleasure being a woman of rank and fashion: and if I have bought a countess's coronet, I have paid a good price for it—that I have!”
And so had my Lord Castlewood paid a large price for having his estate freed from incumbrances, his houses and stables furnished, and his debts discharged. He was the slave of the little wife and her father. No wonder the old man's society was not pleasant to the poor victim, and that he gladly slunk away from his own fine house, to feast at the club when he had money, or at least to any society save that which he found at home. To lead a bear, as I did, was no very pleasant business, to be sure: to wait in a bookseller's anteroom until it should please his honour to finish his dinner and give me audience, was sometimes a hard task for a man of my name and with my pride; but would I have exchanged my poverty against Castlewood's ignominy, or preferred his miserable dependence to my own? At least I earned my wage, such as it was; and no man can say that I ever flattered my patrons, or was servile to them; or indeed, in my dealings with them, was otherwise than sulky, overbearing, and, in a word, intolerable.
Now there was a certain person with whom Fate had thrown me into a life-partnership, who bore her poverty with such a smiling sweetness and easy grace, that niggard Fortune relented before her, and, like some savage Ogre in the fairy tales, melted at the constant goodness and cheerfulness of that uncomplaining, artless, innocent creature. However poor she was, all who knew her saw that here was a fine lady; and the little tradesmen and humble folks round about us treated her with as much respect as the richest of our neighbours. “I think, my dear,” says good-natured Mrs. Foker, when they rode out in the latter's chariot, “you look like the mistress of the carriage, and I only as your maid.” Our landladies adored her; the tradesfolk executed her little orders as eagerly as if a duchess gave them, or they were to make a fortune by waiting on her. I have thought often of the lady in Comus, and how, through all the rout and rabble, she moves, entirely serene and pure.
Several times, as often as we chose indeed, the good-natured parents of my young bear lent us their chariot to drive abroad or to call on the few friends we had. If I must tell the truth, we drove once to the Protestant Hero and had a syllabub in the garden there: and the hostess would insist upon calling my wife her ladyship during the whole afternoon. We also visited Mr. Johnson, and took tea with him (the ingenious Mr. Goldsmith was of the company); the Doctor waited upon my wife to her coach. But our most frequent visits were to Aunt Bernstein, and I promise you I was not at all jealous because my aunt presently professed to have a wonderful liking for Theo.
This liking grew so that she would have her most days in the week, or to stay altogether with her, and thought that Theo's child and husband were only plagues to be sure, and hated us in the most amusing way for keeping her favourite from her. Not that my wife was unworthy of anybody's favour; but her many forced absences, and the constant difficulty of intercourse with her, raised my aunt's liking for a while to a sort of passion. She poured in notes like love-letters; and her people were ever about our kitchen. If my wife did not go to her, she wrote heartrending appeals, and scolded me severely when I saw her; and, the child being ill once (it hath pleased Fate to spare our Captain to be a prodigious trouble to us, and a wholesome trial for our tempers), Madame Bernstein came three days running to Lambeth; vowed there was nothing the matter with the baby;—nothing at all;—and that we only pretended his illness, in order to vex her.