Here we are, dearest Julia, and, as I find that we are to stay here for some days, I cannot employ myself more agreeably than in writing you “a few more last words” ere we embark for the Continent. But I must carry you back to Marsden, where we remained full three weeks after the period which had been fixed upon for our departure, on account of the fluctuations in my uncle’s health. The day after I sent you my last letter, we received the sad news from Glenalta, which mamma conveyed to Checkley. Till we lost dear Mr. Bentley, I had no idea how much we all loved him; and I feel that his death has left a cruel blank in our social circle. The intelligence of an event so painful, naturally restrained the course of our amusement, if that deserve the name which owes to the weakness of our fellow creatures its whole power of affording entertainment. I am such a novice in the ways of polite life, that I have not yet learned to laugh at the people around me, without something of self-reproach, which sends me to my pillow in an uneasy state of mind, that “murders sleep;” and I was growing very weary of what is so falsely, in my opinion, called pleasure, when Mr. Oliphant’s melancholy letter occasioned a complete cessation of dinner and evening parties, so far as we were concerned. We had no spirits to join the insipid society of the neighbourhood, when our minds were transplanted to the awful scene at Mount Prospect. During several days we did not stir from the demesne of Marsden, and these, if not clouded by the death of our kind neighbour, would have been by far the happiest that I have passed since we left home—talismanic word, which I never write, nor speak, without an emotion peculiar to itself. We are greatly delighted with your friend Alfred Stanley. What a heavenly sight is that of a young heart devoted to its God? Mr. Stanley is, indeed, a clergyman, and his life and manners explain that text of Scripture so often cavilled at, which beautifully provides at once for the purity of the Apostle and the utility of his example, in the injunction to come out of the world; yet, while avoiding its contagion, not to mistake a local removal, or a cold abstraction from its concerns, for that holiness which the Great Founder of our religion urges on his followers. Mr. Stanley is a practical illustration of the precept intended, I am convinced, to be understood, as he enacts it.—Cheerful, elegant, informed, and pleasing, there is no society which is not rendered more agreeable by his presence; but there is none in which it would be possible to forget his sacred calling. Religion seems to have its rise in the centre of his heart, and to send forth streams into every action; yet not such as dash and foam, and startle by their impetuosity, but the existence of which, within the soil, is discovered from the verdure and fertility of the surface. His opinions seem, as far as I can judge in a short time, to be purely those of Gospel truth, equally remote from the lifeless formalism of what is now, by a strange and melancholy distinction, designated Orthodoxy; and, on the other side, those peculiar tenets so seldom honestly avowed, but sometimes defacing the Christian scheme, which derive their name and character from Geneva. Your friend, Alfred, realizes my idea of a faithful messenger. His piety is evangelical, but he is not a Calvinist—he is—what was I going to say? I had just begun a sentence when Fanny came flying into my room to tell me that the packet which sails on Monday is to waft us from the British shores. My uncle, it appears also, has received a letter stating, that the repairs of the parish church at Swainton, where Mr. Stanley is to officiate, cannot be completed under three months. In consequence of this intelligence, a warm invitation to accompany us on the Continent has been made and accepted; so we shall take our chaplain with us, and I have no doubt that we shall find him a great acquisition to our party. The concluding week of our sojournment at Marsden was marked by some extraordinary events. Sir Christopher Cromie, the most pudding-headed puffin that ever was destined to take his seat in the House of Commons, has now the privilege of franking in such a claw—for hand-writing you cannot call it—that if he should doze away, per force of segars, the recollection of his own name, as I have been assured that a gentleman, equally enlightened with our baronet, once did, Sir Christopher’s autograph has this advantage over all others, that it may stand for any, or for every thing, according to the skill employed in deciphering his pot-hooks and hangers. He was duly returned—chaired—feasted; and gave a foretaste of his Parliamentary eloquence at a great election “feed,” as Mr. Bolton told us, in a speech which, though evidently conned over long before it was spoken, proved such a desperate failure, that even the newspaper editor in his pay could not tack any epithet more flattering than “neat” to Sir Kit’s address to his constituents. Quere, may not this word neat, applied to gentlemen’s harangues, which are neither sensible, witty, eloquent, nor impressive, be a delicate cover for—calf? Well, shouts rent the air, and the sweet sounds of “Sir Christopher for ever!” struck upon the listening organs of Mrs. Hannaper, who was seated in a balcony of the Red Lion inn, glowing like a Chinese poppy, and surrounded with her attendant nymphs, though certainly very unlike Calypso herself, awaiting the happy moment of victory to buff and blue. No sooner did the glad tidings reach the portals of her ear, than Mrs. Hannaper, with her plumed hat in one hand, and a white handkerchief in the other, cheered the populace. A shower of silver next bestrewed the pavement. Tar barrels, beer barrels, and all the usual vulgarities of mobbish demonstration, had their turn, and the tables at Parham Hall groaned under the hecatomb sacrificed that day to this new pillar of the Constitution, this swollen, shining faced, addle pated, member of the British Senate, duly elected to represent that goodly portion of the British empire; the ale-steeped suffrages of which gave him a trifling majority over a sensible, worthy man, who was his opponent, and committed its interests to the head of one who would never have made the troublesome discovery through any appeal to his judgment, that he had a head at all on his shoulders, if it had not been for a reference once submitted to his fiat, to decide between the rival merits of unadulterated Lundy Foot, and the Duke of York’s mixture. On the evening of that auspicious day, Mrs. Hannaper, wound up to the highest height of generous enthusiasm, took her niece aside, and just as the dancing was about to commence, presented her with a power of attorney, duly executed to her agents in London, and enabling them to transfer £20,000 from her name to that of Miss Ormsby, in the New Four per Cents, saying, as she slipped the paper into her niece’s hand, “we do not know what is before us; this is a day of rejoicing, and you shall have your share in it. Here I have made you independent, and you may please yourself in the choice of a husband.” Little did the poor lady dream of what she was about, nor guess the prompt obedience of Miss Ormsby in adopting her aunt’s suggestion.
Mrs. Hannaper retired from the revels worn out with fatigue at twelve o’clock; but when Sol, drawing aside the golden curtains of the east, ventured to peep within the crimson hangings of Mrs. Hannaper’s pavilion, Sir Christopher Cromie and the fair Ormsby were dashing away towards London, carrying safely with them those credentials which, on their being presented at the Bank of England, put the young lady in possession of her fortune, and by so doing, kicked the beam, and sent poor Hannaper up in her scale, which had previously been kept by the pressure of her purse in trembling balance with its partner, in which Miss Ormsby’s beauty weighed but unsteadily against it. Words are inadequate to paint the surprise, rage, and disappointment which alternately struggled, and then burst all in a mess together from the lips of our heroine. After the first explosion was over, the spirit of intrigue raised its head over the troubled waters, and, re-asserting its wonted pre-eminence, suggested the idea of a glorious revenge, in setting aside Sir Christopher’s election, on the ground of bribery and corruption, most abundant proof of which, Mrs Hannaper was able to command, her own diminished caskets having chiefly supplied the sinews of the war, and bearing testimony to the truth of that plea, on which it is now her object to humble the god of her whilom idolatry. If she is able to succeed, it is imagined that she has two strings to her bow, as a corps of reserve, either to bring forward an old East Indian, who has a fine place in her neighbourhood for the borough of Jobton, and marry him out of spite to Sir Kit; or, to set up a numskull nephew, who sold out of the guards some time ago, and has been since trying to barter a fine figure for a heavy purse. It is thought that with M. P. gracefully appended to his name, he might prevail on Lady Florence Languish, to accept his hand upon a life insurance, and certain reversionary hopes connected with Parham Hall, in which case, Mrs. Hannaper will make him heir, and cut out her niece’s farther expectations.
Oh, Julia, what abominations have I been describing! This narrative, as I have given it to you, is as nearly as I can remember, in the very words of Mr. Bolton, our merry chronicler; and this was the mystery, to which he alluded, when he hinted at back stairs intelligence, but refused to explain farther, lest we should mar poetic justice, by revealing the plot. Alas! I have worse than this to tell you, and then my pen shall never be dipped again in subjects such as these. It is not good to talk, to write, to think on themes of this nature; were they simply disgusting, they would not be dangerous; but it is not in human nature to resist the ridiculous when Mr. Bolton is the Biographer, and such people as I have been introducing to your acquaintance are the subjects of a memoir compiled by him. I laughed till the tears made channels in my cheeks. Not so, when he told us a story of another neighbour, whose house I have journalized you into visiting along with me. Only conceive Lady Campion’s having made proposals of marriage to Lord Thornborough, who had, after too liberal a potation of Burgundy, made his to her daughter; and preparations are actually in train for this unnatural union, Lord T. having deserted his first love. The contemptible animal, miscalled nobleman, has made his terms: Lady Campion settles a thousand a-year upon him in perpetuity, of which she deprives her own offspring, and receives a coronet in exchange! Thank heaven that we have left Marsden, the air of which seems tainted by such corruption.
Before I close my letter I must refresh myself, and obey you, by looking into Frederick’s humourous diary, and trying whether I can give you another scrap out of it in the way of a vignette. I told you the dear fellow diverted himself by scribbling in verse, when he reached his lodgings at night, rehearsing for his diversion the principal circumstances that had struck him ludicrously in the course of each day, while in London. I find a ball at Lady Gosling’s mentioned in the three following stanzas, which are a good specimen of Frederick’s merry vein:—
There, as each dandy sidles round the room,
So like a crab, both in his claws and motion,
Whose head is a soft sponge to hold perfume,
Whose face a platter, shining with some lotion,