Blue-Stocking Hall, (Vol. 1 of 3)

by William Pitt Scargill

Perhaps you and I are at this moment similarly situated, and similarly employed. I am seated at a window which opens on the sea, waiting for a summons to the steam-packet which is to waft me over to Calais—while you are, probably, expecting that which is to convey you to Ireland. When I reach France I shall certainly send you a bill of health from time to time; but as few things are less satisfactory than letters from the road, I shall reserve my share in the performance of our parting covenant till I am quietly settled at Geneva.

You do not require descriptions of either places or people; because innumerable diaries, journals, and sketch-books, tell you as much as you want to know of all the scenes which it is your intention ere long to visit; and as to men and women, no second-hand account can supply the place of actual acquaintance with the few of either sex that deserve to occupy thoughts or pen. What you do desire, and what I have engaged to furnish, is a history of my own employments, pursuits, and impressions; but leisure is necessary for collecting and arranging; and, till I can satisfy myself by sending you such details as I hope may interest, you must be content to receive only certificates of whole bones.

Now you are to be set down quietly in less than a week at the end of your journey; and before I set sail I shall take the liberty of repeating the terms of our epistolary contract, by way of flapper to your memory, and leaving you no possible excuse for violating the treaty ratified at Cambridge on Monday evening, ere a mutual Vale dismissed us on our several adventures.

You see that I have first registered my own part in our engagement, and generously bound myself, before I proceed to tie you down.—Now for your undertaking. Remember, that when you reach the wilds of Kerry, you are under a heavy bond to devote a part of every day regularly to the task which I have assigned you of narrating, in minute detail, every circumstance connected with the external situation, personal appearance, mind, manners, and habits of your aunt and her family. Aye, there I see you at this instant in a full roar of laughter: so be it.—I am case-hardened; and have so long endured your merriment with becoming philosophy, that I am not to be subdued by a little louder ridicule than you are accustomed to level at my romance. Well, I will confess (now that I am a few miles distant from that taunting smile), that my notions are somewhat odd, quaint, old fashioned, or romantic if you will; and in return for this concession, I only ask that you will bear with me, and indulge your friend's peculiarities, as they are at least harmlessly eccentric. The bias of my mind is to be traced without difficulty to the circumstances of my early life, so different from your own, that it would be very extraordinary if much dissimilarity were not discoverable in our ways of thinking. My boyish years were passed in the seclusion of almost perfect solitude, with a mother, whose image lives indelibly engraven on my heart. A child of feeble frame, I was unable in early life to bear the "peltings of the pitiless storm," and from every wind that would have visited my infant form too roughly, did the tenderest of maternal affections shroud, without enervating, my childhood. My widowed mother was every thing to me—my friend, my tutor, my protectress, my play-fellow—my all on earth. In losing her at sixteen, I was left a mere wreck upon the ocean of life; and, while "Memory holds her seat," never shall I forget the sweet expression of her elegant and feminine countenance, as it spoke the language of love, kindness, or pity; nor shall I ever lose the recollection of that fine understanding which sparkled through her eye, in the brightest scintillations of intellectual energy, and acuteness. She was my Gamaliel, and no wonder if her lessons, her thoughts, her sentiments, have left traces upon my mind not easily to be obliterated. When I entered Cambridge, I felt no affection for any living creature. Relations I had none, that were not too remote to fill the chasm which death had created in my heart. My guardian, though an excellent man, only put me painfully in mind of my bereavement, when he attempted to condole or advise; and I turned from him, not with disrespect, but in disgust with all created things.

The natural elasticity of youth, and your society, gradually reclaimed me from a state which, had it continued, must have ended in madness, or idiotcy; and I am able now, at the termination of our collegiate career, to think gratefully of prolonged existence, and look back with thankfulness.

Perhaps you have just laid down my letter to exclaim, "Poor Falkland! surely the man is bewildered, or he would not tell me now, as if for the first time, what I have known these six years." Now, my good fellow, be not so hasty in declaring me non compos. You know the general outline of my story, and you are acquainted sufficiently with what you call my romance of character, to find in it a constant fund of amusement when we are together; but you do not know more than this! You are not aware that the tree has adopted its decided inclination from that bias which the twig received. Nothing, I feel, can ever make me a man of fashion. Nothing, I hope, will loosen the ties which, all unseen as they are, bind me to the memory of her by whose judgment, were she living, I should desire to be directed in all things to which her admirable sense would permit her to apply those reasoning powers which never dogmatized, nor lost themselves in the mazes of imagination.—I admired my mother's taste as much as I reverenced her virtues—I respected her talents; and since her death have not met with any one capable of interesting me who did not resemble, in some degree, the character which faithful memory attaches to her much-loved image.

Different as has been your path from mine, your affectionate heart has been my best solace; and though you have been trained in the school of modern luxury, which is so little conversant with Nature, the generous impulses of your breast have not been sacrificed, and you are not yet spoiled by what is called The World. For being what you are, you are, I firmly believe, indebted in part to original structure; and perhaps, in some degree, to that friendship which has united us both at school, and at the University.—Somewhat older, and much graver than you, I have always been permitted to take the lead, and exercise an influence over your pleasures and pursuits, which, though frequently counteracted, has, notwithstanding, communicated an individuality to one and the other, that distinguishes you essentially from the heartless specimens of human mechanism that pass for men of ton.

You know what pleasant day-dreams occupy my fancy—I anticipate nothing less than your radical reform, from all the follies which sometimes obscure your good sense; and I look for this change, not as the result of a Hohenlohe miracle, wrought upon you through the intercession of the Irish priesthood, but as the natural effect of living domesticated with such a family as I conceive to be now about to welcome you at Glenalta. I know your charming aunt and cousins only through their letters to you; but by "these presents," I feel that I cannot be mistaken in the attributes with which I have invested them: and, laugh as you like, you know that my castles are all built with materials from the county of Kerry, in Ireland; and I only say, if it be enthusiasm to love and venerate a set of people whom I have never seen—yes, and fully to intend, if life be spared me, to make a pilgrimage in quest of your relations, inspired by as much zeal as ever actuated the followers of Mahomet in their pious journeys to Mecca, why, let me cry with Falstaff, "God help the wicked." A sort of internal evidence quite incommunicable to any one else, assures me, that my fate is linked with that of the Douglas family; and I can give you no better reason for this belief, than the improbability that so much sympathy as draws me towards Glenalta, should be thrown away.

However baseless you may consider the fabric of my visions, you can at least imagine that, while they possess my mind, they are not a little interesting; and therefore I conclude, as I began, by entreating that you will feed my Quixotism with journals containing the most accurate and minute accounts of all that is said and done, planned and projected, at that Ultima Thule, as you call it, whither you are bending your steps.

The gun is fired as a signal for sailing—I see an army of carpet-bags and portmanteaus in full march, and must say—farewell! God bless you, my dear Howard.