Cain.
Among the few subjects which are still left at the disposal of the duly-gifted writer of romance is the Pirate. Not but that many have written of pirates. Defoe, after preparing the ground by a pamphlet story on the historic Captain Avery, wrote The Life, Adventures, and Piracies of Captain Singleton. Sir Walter Scott made use in somewhat the same fashion of the equally historic Gow—that is to say, his pirate bears about the same relation to the marauder who was suppressed by James Laing, that Captain Singleton does to Captain Avery. Michael Scott had much to say of pirates, and he had heard much of them during his life in the West Indies, for they were then making their last fight against law and order. The pirate could not escape the eye of Mr. R. L. Stevenson, and accordingly we have an episode of pirates in the episode of the Master of Ballantrae. Balsac, too, wrote Argow le Pirate among the stories which belong to the years when he was exhausting all the ways in which a novel ought not to be written. Also the pirate is a commonplace in boys' books. Yet for as much as he figures in stories for old and young, it may be modestly maintained that nobody has ever yet done him quite right.
Defoe's Captain Singleton is a harmless, thrifty, and ever moral pirate, of whom it is impossible to disapprove. Sir Walter's is a mild gentleman, concerning whom one wonders how he ever came to be in such company. Michael Scott's pirate is a bloodthirsty ruffian enough, and yet it is difficult to feel that a person who dressed in such a highly picturesque manner, and who was commonly either a Don or a Scotch gentleman of ancient descent, was quite the real thing. Mr. Stevenson's pirate is nearer what one knows must have been the life. He is a cowardly, lurking, petty scoundrel. John Silver is certainly something very different, but then when Mr. Stevenson drew the commanding figure in Treasure Island he was not making a portrait of a pirate, but was only making play with the well-established puppet of boys' books. Yet, after all, the pirate, if he was not such an agreeable rascal as John Silver, was not always the greedy, spiritless rogue drawn in the Master of Ballantrae. To do him properly and as he was, he ought to be approached with a mixture of humour and morality, and also with a knowledge of the facts concerning him, which to the best of my knowledge have never been combined in any writer.
Captain Johnson, in his valuable General History of the Pirates from their First Rise and Settlement in the Island of Providence to the present time, begins with antiquity. He mounts up the dark backward abyss of time till he meets with the pirates who captured Julius Caesar, and were suppressed by Pompey. This is not necessary. Our pirate was a very different fellow from those broken men of the ancient world, the wrecks of States shattered by Rome and the victims of the usury of the Knights who collected in the creeks of Cilicia. It is not quite easy to say what he was, but we know well enough what he was not. He was not for many generations the recognised enemy of the human race. On the contrary, he was often a comparative respectable person, who was disposed to render service to his king and country at a crisis, even if he did not see his advantage in virtuous conduct. To begin with, he was only a seafaring man who carried on the universal practice of the Middle Ages after they had ceased to be recognised as legitimate. Then for a long time a pirate was not thought worthy of hanging until he had shown a hopelessly contumacious disposition by refusing the king's pardon several times. Sir William Monson, who was admiral to James I., saw no harm in recruiting well-known pirates for His Majesty's service. On the coast of Ireland he found Irish country gentlemen of respectable position, and the agents of London trading firms, engaged in friendly business transactions with these skimmers of the sea. The redoubted Captain Bartholomew Roberts, to skip over a century, went about the world recruiting for a well-organised piratical business, and there were many among his followers who would have been honest men if temptation had not come in their way, and who hastened to leave a life of vice so soon as the neighbourhood of one of His Majesty's cruisers made it dangerous. We ought not to speak of these men with harsh contempt. The king's government was largely responsible for their existence, by promising pardon to all who would come in before a given date. They came in and brought their booty with them. Captain Johnson had the pleasure of the personal acquaintance of several who were living in comfortable retirement at Rotherhithe or at Limehouse, and in the enjoyment, for aught we know to the contrary, of the respect of their neighbours. They had come in on a proclamation, and there was nothing more to be said against them. In many cases, no doubt, when the booty was spent they drifted back to the old irregular courses, and on that road those of them who did not get shot when boarding a galleon, or go down at sea, or die of starvation among the keys of the West Indies, did sooner or later contrive to overtake the gallows. But these men, if they were not quite so moral and orderly as Captain Singleton, or so romantic as the pirates of Michael Scott, were not altogether bloodthirsty, merciless scoundrels. Many of them had every intention of returning to their country upon the appearance of the next proclamation, and as they saw the prospect of a safe return for themselves they were not under the necessity of acting on the rule that dead men tell no tales. They did not make their prisoners walk the plank. They did not even burn their prizes, but were often content with taking out such provisions and portable property as their immediate occasions made desirable, and then allowing the plundered merchant-ship to continue her voyage. They were by no means so thoroughly hated as they ought to have been, to judge by the more recent opinion held of the pirate.
In fact, till towards the end of the pirate's existence he was nearly as much the product of the Government's management as of his own sins. During Charles II.'s reign, his governors in Jamaica gave what they were pleased to term commissions to all who would plunder the Spaniard. The Spaniards retaliated by giving commissions to all who would plunder anyone else. The marauder who victimised the Spaniard was sure of a market, and a refuge in Jamaica. The other marauder who was prepared to feed upon English, Dutch, or French, was sure of a welcome in Cuba. When Governments suddenly took to being virtuous, a sense of wrong inflamed the minds of the men who had hitherto been allowed to live in recognised lawlessness. Captain Kidd, for example, manifestly thought that Lord Bellomont and the other gentleman who sent him out to Madagascar to cruise against the pirates, were only assuming a decent excuse for a little speculation in piracy on their own account. The freebooters who settled at Providence, in the Bahamas, were really to be pardoned for not realising that the happy days of Governor Moddiford at Jamaica were over. When they were made to understand that there were to be no more of these cakes and ale, the majority, under the command of Captain Jennings, promptly came in. Captain Jennings was the owner of an estate in Jamaica, and he brought a comfortable little sum back with him from his piratical adventures. The residue, who probably had no comfortable sum to bring with them, did not come in, and as they were given to understand that they would certainly be hanged if caught, they took in self-defence to giving no quarter. So at the end of the great war, the powers who had encouraged privateering while the fighting lasted, without inquiring too closely how far the privateer confined his operations to the enemy only without plundering the neutral, became suddenly very strict. Then the men whom they had allowed to become hardened to a life of pillage took refuge in downright piracy. These men were the Pescadores del Puerto Escondido who enlightened the pages of Michael Scott. The Spaniards tolerated them as the English Governors of Jamaica had once encouraged the Buccaneers. It was not until a combined vigorous effort of the English and the United States navies had driven them off the sea, and till they had begun to support themselves by plundering plantations, that the Captains-General of Cuba took them in hand.
Now, in all this life, floating as it did between the honest and the dishonest, there was room for something more human than the be-sashed, velvet-jacketed, crimson-capped, and long-knifed heroes of Michael Scott, or than the mere rogue and floating footpad we meet in The Master of Ballantrae. There was also room, it must be candidly allowed, for something better than Captain Cain of the Avenger. The Pirate is not among the books which one most willingly re-reads out of Marryat's very respectably lengthy list of stories. Yet it is not without gaiety, and, as is ever the case with him, the man-of-war scenes are all alive. Captain Plumpton, and Mr. Markital the first lieutenant, and Edward Templemore the midshipman, are credible. Whenever Marryat has to introduce us to a man-of-war, he could draw on inexhaustible treasure of reminiscences, or of what is for the story-writer's purpose quite as good, of types and incidents which his imagination had made out of incidents supplied by his memory. The naval parts of the Pirate are no doubt variations on what he had recently written in Midshipman Easy, but they are not mere repetitions, and they have the one saving quality of life, which will make even a poorly constructed story readable.
It is impossible to say as much for the captain and crew of the Avenger. Cain is not only not a pirate, but he is not a human being. He is a Byronic or even a Michael Scottish hero—an impossible monster, compounded of one virtue and a thousand crimes. There never was any such person, and even on paper he is not tolerable for more than a paragraph or two without the help of verse. The crew of the Avenger is an inconceivable ship's complement for any pirate. Credulity itself cannot even in early life accept the capture of the Portuguese carrack. Marryat drew on his recollections of the time when he was a midshipman with Cochrane in the Impèrieuse, for the figure of the old steersman, who sticks to his post under the fire of the Avenger. He had seen the mate of a Spanish trading ship behaving in just that way when attacked by boats from the Impèrieuse. When he was asked why he did not surrender, though he was mortally wounded and had no chance of escape, he answered that he was an 'old Christian.' The term, which by the way only means a pure-blooded Spaniard, puzzled Marryat and his shipmates. It is not wonderful that he did not understand its meaning, since in spite of campaigning in Spain, and many visits to Spanish ports, he never learnt to avoid the absurd blunder of putting the title Don before a surname. But if the steersman is drawn from life, so are not either the carrack, which is a fragment of the sixteenth century, out of its place, nor 'Don' Ribiera and his sons, nor the bishop, nor anybody else in that ill-fated ship, nor the stilted, transpontine style of their conversation. Francisco and his bible are no more credible than the carrack and the bishop. Francisco's brother and his love affairs are not more credible, though they are decidedly more tolerable. The daughters of Spanish Governors who carry on flirtations on the sea-shore with the captains of English men-of-war, who are carried off by pirates and rescued in the nick of time, whose papas not only consent to their marriage with the heretical object of their affections but send boxes full of gold doubloons, together with their blessing, are so much better than life that we need not quarrel when invited to meet any number of them. The sea adventures in Marryat are always good, and so are the fights. The storms and wrecks, the rafts and wonderful escapes, the defences of houses, and the escapes of pirates and smugglers from under the very guns of His Majesty's frigates, are as welcome as, and are much more credible than, the lovely daughters of benevolent Spanish governors. Of them there is no want, and for their sake the Pirate can be read; but it is not what Marryat might have made it if he had written it in the spirit in which he was to write Snarley-Yow.
In The Three Cutters Marryat allowed himself to take a little holiday in company with another kind of sea malefactor whom he knew intimately well. He had already played with the smuggler in The King's Own. In this little story he reintroduces us to M'Elvina, somewhat disguised, and in altered circumstances, but essentially the same.
The Three Cutters may be supposed to have been written to fill out the volume containing The Pirate and those twenty engravings from drawings by Clarkson Stanfield, which still make the first edition a desirable possession. This function, whether it was originally designed or not, is very agreeably fulfilled by the history of the Arrow, the Active, and Happy-go-lucky. Although he wrote very few of them, Marryat had a happy hand with a short story. The S. W. and by W. and ¼ W. Wind and Moonshine are very happy examples of the magazine story. The Three Cutters is somewhat longer than either, but the difference in bulk is due less to any greater amount of pure story there is than to the care with which Marryat introduces his three vessels, and sketches their respective starting-places—Plymouth, Portsmouth, and St. Malo. Here again it is to be noted that Marryat is far more at home in the man-of-war than in the smuggler or the yacht. Mr. Appleboy, with his forty-five years' service, and the interesting story which remains untold of the something which took place in '93 or '94, his seventeen daily tumblers of gin-toddy, his mate and his midshipman, is a part, and not an inferior one, of Marryat's inimitable naval gallery. The Happy-go-lucky is perhaps rather a smuggler of the Pays Bleu than of the British Channel, but she is sufficiently in place in a story not intended to be too slavishly faithful to life. Morrison, the sailing-master, with his augury of the blue pigeon, is real, and nothing can be more consistent with human nature than that he should have cursed the bird when he did finally find himself in prison. As for the adventures, they belong to the region of the fantastic, which does not pretend to be anything else. The idea of a yacht which endeavours the capture of a smuggler, and is herself made prize by him, is of course a motive for farce.
The scenes on board the captive yacht are not exactly horse-play. There are too many ladies concerned, and Marryat, in spite of occasional lapses of taste, preferred to write like a gentleman. But if there is no horse-play there is a great deal of what I hope it is permissible to describe as 'lark.' The sour old maid Miss Ossulton, her niece Cecilia, who, if she has not much character, is still a very nice girl, the frisky widow Mrs. Lascelles, make a capital trio. Given a gallant dashing smuggler, who is really a gentleman in disguise, in possession of the yacht, and determined to revenge himself on the owner by taking a little harmless amusement, it follows that lively incidents are to be expected. Marryat did not work the situation out at any length, probably because he felt that the stuff would not bear much handling. If he cut his story short for this reason he was undoubtedly right. It is so difficult as to be quite impossible for the majority of writers to hang just on the border of the outrageously impossible for more than a few pages. While it lasts it is very good fun. The reformation of Pickersgill through the influence of Mrs. Lascelles is quite in Marryat's manner. His heroes, when they need reformation, are commonly brought into the right path by the combined influence of a pretty woman and a round sum of money. Mrs. Lascelles, too, was unquestionably just the woman to marry Pickersgill. Having married an old man to please her parents, and having inherited his money, she had decided both to marry again and to please herself in her second husband. Experience shows that the Mrs. Lascelles of real life not uncommonly fall into the hands of a ruffian or an adventurer. Marryat was not making a study of real life, and he was too fond of his puppets; and besides that would have been another story, which would have been superfluous, considering that Marryat wanted to end this one. So Mrs. Lascelles had her fine dashing seaman, who stood six feet odd in his stockings, and was also a gentleman in disguise. Of course she was happy ever after. One has a haunting suspicion that the story was not only written to fill out the volume, but also to accompany Clarkson Stanfield's three very pretty plates of Plymouth, Portsmouth, and St. Malo. If so, that only proves that when a man is a born storyteller he can write good stories for very humble business reasons.
It was in the latter part of the month of June, of the year 179—, that the angry waves of the Bay of Biscay were gradually subsiding, after a gale of wind as violent as it was unusual during that period of the year. Still they rolled heavily; and, at times, the wind blew up in fitful, angry gusts, as if it would fain renew the elemental combat; but each effort was more feeble, and the dark clouds which had been summoned to the storm now fled in every quarter before the powerful rays of the sun, who burst their masses asunder with a glorious flood of light and heat; and, as he poured down his resplendent beams, piercing deep into the waters of that portion of the Atlantic to which we now refer, with the exception of one object, hardly visible, as at creation, there was a vast circumference of water, bounded by the fancied canopy of heaven. We have said, with the exception of one object; for in the centre of this picture, so simple, yet so sublime, composed of the three great elements, there was a remnant of the fourth. We say a remnant, for it was but the hull of a vessel, dismasted, water-logged, its upper works only floating occasionally above the waves, when a transient repose from their still violent undulation permitted it to reassume its buoyancy. But this was seldom; one moment it was deluged by the seas, which broke as they poured over its gunwale; and the next it rose from its submersion, as the water escaped from the portholes at its sides.
How many thousands of vessels—how many millions of property—have been abandoned, and eventually consigned to the all-receiving depths of the ocean, through ignorance or through fear! What a mine of wealth must lie buried in its sands! what riches lie entangled amongst its rocks, or remain suspended in its unfathomable gulf, where the compressed fluid is equal in gravity to that which it encircles, there to remain secured in its embedment from corruption and decay, until the destruction of the universe and the return of chaos! Yet, immense as the accumulated loss may be, the major part of it has been occasioned from an ignorance of one of the first laws of nature, that of specific gravity. The vessel to which we have referred was, to all appearance, in a situation of as extreme hazard as that of a drowning man clinging to a single rope-yarn; yet, in reality, she was more secure from descending to the abyss below than many gallantly careering on the waters, their occupants dismissing all fear, and only calculating upon a quick arrival into port.
The Circassian had sailed from New Orleans, a gallant and well-appointed ship, with a cargo, the major part of which consisted of cotton. The captain was, in the usual acceptation of the term, a good sailor; the crew were hardy and able seamen. As they crossed the Atlantic, they had encountered the gale to which we have referred, were driven down into the Bay of Biscay, where, as we shall hereafter explain, the vessel was dismasted, and sprang a leak, which baffled all their exertions to keep under. It was now five days since the frightened crew had quitted the vessel in two of her boats, one of which had swamped, and every soul that occupied it had perished; the fate of the other was uncertain.
We said that the crew had deserted the vessel, but we did not assert that every existing being had been removed out of her. Had such been the case, we should not have taken up the reader's time in describing inanimate matter. It is life that we portray, and life there still was in the shattered hull thus abandoned to the mockery of the ocean. In the caboose of the Circassian, that is, in the cooking-house secured on deck, and which fortunately had been so well fixed as to resist the force of the breaking waves, remained three beings—a man, a woman, and a child. The two first-mentioned were of that inferior race which have, for so long a period, been procured from the sultry Afric coast, to toil, but reap not for themselves; the child which lay at the breast of the female was of European blood, now, indeed, deadly pale, as it attempted in vain to draw sustenance from its exhausted nurse, down whose sable cheeks the tears coursed, as she occasionally pressed the infant to her breast, and turned it round to leeward to screen it from the spray which dashed over them at each returning swell. Indifferent to all else, save her little charge, she spoke not, although she shuddered with the cold as the water washed her knees each time that the hull was careened into the wave. Cold and terror had produced a change in her complexion, which now wore a yellow, or sort of copper hue.
The male, who was her companion, sat opposite to her upon the iron range which once had been the receptacle of light and heat, but was now but a weary seat to a drenched and worn-out wretch. He, too, had not spoken for many hours; with the muscles of his face relaxed, his thick lips pouting far in advance of his collapsed cheeks, his high cheekbones prominent as budding horns, his eyes displaying little but their whites, he appeared to be an object of greater misery than the female, whose thoughts were directed to the infant and not unto herself. Yet his feelings were still acute, although his faculties appeared to be deadened by excess of suffering.
'Eh, me!' cried the negro woman faintly, after a long silence, her head falling back with extreme exhaustion. Her companion made no reply, but, roused at the sound of her voice, bent forward, slid open the door a little, and looked out to windward. The heavy spray dashed into his glassy eyes, and obscured his vision; he groaned, and fell back into his former position. 'What you tink, Coco?' inquired the negress, covering up more carefully the child, as she bent her head down upon it. A look of despair, and a shudder from cold and hunger, were the only reply.
It was then about eight o'clock in the morning, and the swell of the ocean was fast subsiding. At noon the warmth of the sun was communicated to them through the planks of the caboose, while its rays poured a small stream of vivid light through the chinks of the closed panels. The negro appeared gradually to revive; at last he rose, and with some difficulty contrived again to slide open the door. The sea had gradually decreased its violence, and but occasionally broke over the vessel; carefully holding on by the door-jambs, Coco gained the outside, that he might survey the horizon.
'What you see, Coco?' said the female, observing from the caboose that his eyes were fixed upon a certain quarter.
'So help me God, me tink me see something; but ab so much salt water in um eye, me no see clear,' replied Coco, rubbing away the salt which had crystallised on his face during the morning.
'What you tink um like, Coco?'
'Only one bit cloud,' replied he, entering the caboose, and resuming his seat upon the grate with a heavy sigh.
'Eh, me!' cried the negress, who had uncovered the child to look at it, and whose powers were sinking fast. 'Poor lilly Massa Eddard, him look very bad indeed—him die very soon, me fear. Look, Coco, no ab breath.'
The child's head fell back upon the breast of its nurse, and life appeared to be extinct.
'Judy, you no ab milk for piccaninny; suppose um ab no milk, how can live? Eh! stop, Judy, me put lilly finger in um mouth; suppose Massa Eddard no dead, him pull.'
Coco inserted his finger into the child's mouth, and felt a slight drawing pressure. 'Judy,' cried Coco, 'Massa Eddard no dead yet. Try now, suppose you ab lilly drop oder side.'
Poor Judy shook her head mournfully, and a tear rolled down her cheek; she was aware that nature was exhausted. 'Coco,' said she, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand, 'me give me heart blood for Massa Eddard; but no ab milk—all gone.'
This forcible expression of love for the child, which was used by Judy, gave an idea to Coco. He drew his knife out of his pocket, and very coolly sawed to the bone of his forefinger. The blood flowed and trickled down to the extremity, which he applied to the mouth of the infant.
'See, Judy, Massa Eddard suck—him not dead,' cried Coco, chuckling at the fortunate result of the experiment, and forgetting at the moment their almost hopeless situation.
The child, revived by the strange sustenance, gradually recovered its powers, and in a few minutes it pulled at the finger with a certain degree of vigour.
'Coco ab ten finger, and take long while suck em all dry.'
'Look, Judy, how Massa Eddard take it,' continued Coco. 'Pull away, Massa Eddard, pull away. Coco ab ten finger, and take long while suck em all dry.' But the child was soon satisfied, and fell asleep in the arms of Judy.
'Coco, suppose you go see again,' observed Judy. The negro again crawled out, and again he scanned the horizon.
'So help me God, dis time me tink, Judy—yes, so help me God, me see a ship!' cried Coco joyfully.
'Eh!' screamed Judy faintly, with delight; 'den Massa Eddard no die.'
'Yes, so help me God—he come dis way!' and Coco, who appeared to have recovered a portion of his former strength and activity, clambered on the top of the caboose, where he sat, cross-legged, waving his yellow handkerchief, with the hope of attracting the attention of those on board; for he knew that it was very possible that an object floating little more than level with the water's surface might escape notice.
As it fortunately happened, the frigate, for such she was, continued her course precisely for the wreck, although it had not been perceived by the look-out men at the mast-heads, whose eyes had been directed to the line of the horizon. In less than an hour our little party were threatened with a new danger, that of being run over by the frigate, which was now within a cable's length of them, driving the seas before her in one widely extended foam, as she pursued her rapid and impetuous course. Coco shouted to his utmost, and fortunately attracted the notice of the men who were on the bowsprit, stowing away the foretopmast-staysail, which had been hoisted up to dry after the gale.
Coco shouted to his utmost, and fortunately attracted notice.
'Starboard, hard!' was roared out.
'Starboard it is,' was the reply from the quarter-deck, and the helm was shifted without inquiry, as it always is on board of a man-of-war; although, at the same time, it behoves people to be rather careful how they pass such an order, without being prepared with a subsequent and most satisfactory explanation.
The topmast studding-sail flapped and fluttered, the foresail shivered, and the jib filled as the frigate rounded to, narrowly missing the wreck, which was now under the bows, rocking so violently in the white foam of the agitated waters that it was with difficulty that Coco could, by clinging to the stump of the mainmast, retain his elevated position. The frigate shortened sail, hove-to, and lowered down a quarter-boat, and in less than five minutes Coco, Judy, and the infant were rescued from their awful situation. Poor Judy, who had borne up against all for the sake of the child, placed it in the arms of the officer who relieved them, and then fell back in a state of insensibility, in which condition she was carried on board. Coco, as he took his place in the stern-sheets of the boat, gazed wildly round him, and then broke out into peals of extravagant laughter, which continued without intermission, and were the only replies which he could give to the interrogatories of the quarter-deck, until he fell down in a swoon, and was entrusted to the care of the surgeon.
On the evening of the same day on which the child and the two negroes had been saved from the wreck by the fortunate appearance of the frigate, Mr. Witherington, of Finsbury Square, was sitting alone in his dining-room, wondering what could have become of the Circassian, and why he had not received intelligence of her arrival. Mr. Witherington, as we said before, was alone; he had his port and his sherry before him; and although the weather was rather warm, there was a small fire in the grate, because, as Mr. Witherington asserted, it looked comfortable. Mr. Witherington having watched the ceiling of the room for some time, although there was certainly nothing new to be discovered, filled another glass of wine, and then proceeded to make himself more comfortable by unbuttoning three more buttons of his waistcoat, pushing his wig farther off his head, and casting loose all the buttons at the knees of his breeches; he completed his arrangements by dragging towards him two chairs within his reach, putting his legs upon one while he rested his arm upon the other. And why was not Mr. Witherington to make himself comfortable? He had good health, a good conscience, and eight thousand a year.
Satisfied with all his little arrangements, Mr. Witherington sipped his port wine, and putting down his glass again, fell back in his chair, placed his hands on his breast, interwove his fingers; and in this most comfortable position recommenced his speculations as to the non-arrival of the Circassian.
We will leave him to his cogitations while we introduce him more particularly to our readers.
The father of Mr. Witherington was a younger son of one of the oldest and proudest families in the West Riding of Yorkshire; he had his choice of the four professions allotted to younger sons whose veins are filled with patrician blood—the army, the navy, the law, and the Church. The army did not suit him, he said, as marching and counter-marching were not comfortable; the navy did not suit him, as there was little comfort in gales of wind and mouldy biscuit; the law did not suit him, as he was not sure that he would be at ease with his conscience, which would not be comfortable; the Church was also rejected, as it was, with him, connected with the idea of a small stipend, hard duty, a wife and eleven children, which were anything but comfortable. Much to the horror of his family he eschewed all the liberal professions, and embraced the offer of an old backslider of an uncle, who proposed to him a situation in his banking-house, and a partnership as soon as he deserved it; the consequence was, that his relations bade him an indignant farewell, and then made no further inquiries about him: he was as decidedly cut as one of the female branches of the family would have been had she committed a faux pas.
Nevertheless Mr. Witherington senior stuck diligently to his business, in a few years was partner, and at the death of the old gentleman, his uncle, found himself in possession of a good property, and every year coining money at his bank.
Mr. Witherington senior then purchased a house in Finsbury Square, and thought it advisable to look out for a wife.
Having still much of the family pride in his composition, he resolved not to muddle the blood of the Witheringtons by any cross from Cateaton Street or Mincing Lane; and after a proper degree of research, he selected the daughter of a Scotch earl, who went to London with a bevy of nine in a Leith smack to barter blood for wealth. Mr. Witherington being so unfortunate as to be the first comer, had the pick of the nine ladies by courtesy; his choice was light-haired, blue-eyed, a little freckled, and very tall, by no means bad-looking, and standing on the list in the Family Bible No. IV. From this union Mr. Witherington had issue: first, a daughter, christened Moggy, whom we shall soon have to introduce to our readers as a spinster of forty-seven; and second, Antony Alexander Witherington, Esquire, whom we just now have left in a very comfortable position, and in a very brown study.
Mr. Witherington senior persuaded his son to enter the banking-house, and, as a dutiful son, he entered it every day: but he did nothing more, having made the fortunate discovery that 'his father was born before him'; or, in other words, that his father had plenty of money, and would be necessitated to leave it behind him.
As Mr. Witherington senior had always studied comfort, his son had early imbibed the same idea, and carried his feelings, in that respect, to a much greater excess: he divided things into comfortable and uncomfortable. One fine day Lady Mary Witherington, after paying all the household bills, paid the debt of Nature; that is, she died: her husband paid the undertaker's bill, so it is to be presumed that she was buried.
Mr. Witherington senior shortly afterwards had a stroke of apoplexy, which knocked him down. Death, who has no feelings of honour, struck him when down. And Mr. Witherington, after having lain a few days in bed, was by a second stroke laid in the same vault as Lady Mary Witherington; and Mr. Witherington junior (our Mr. Witherington), after deducting £40,000 for his sister's fortune, found himself in possession of a clear £8000 per annum, and an excellent house in Finsbury Square. Mr. Witherington considered this a comfortable income, and he therefore retired altogether from business.
During the lifetime of his parents he had been witness to one or two matrimonial scenes, which had induced him to put down matrimony as one of the things not comfortable; therefore he remained a bachelor.
His sister Moggy also remained unmarried; but whether it was from a very unprepossessing squint which deterred suitors, or from the same dislike to matrimony as her brother had imbibed, it is not in our power to say. Mr. Witherington was three years younger than his sister; and although he had for some time worn a wig, it was only because he considered it more comfortable. Mr. Witherington's whole character might be summed up in two words—eccentricity and benevolence; eccentric he certainly was, as most bachelors usually are. Man is but a rough pebble without the attrition received from contact with the gentler sex; it is wonderful how the ladies pumice a man down to a smoothness which occasions him to roll over and over with the rest of his species, jostling but not wounding his neighbours, as the waves of circumstances bring him into collision with them.
Mr. Witherington roused himself from his deep reverie and felt for the string, connected with the bell-pull, which it was the butler's duty invariably to attach to the arm of his master's chair previous to his last exit from the dining-room; for, as Mr. Witherington very truly observed, it was very uncomfortable to be obliged to get up and ring the bell; indeed, more than once Mr. Witherington had calculated the advantages and disadvantages of having a daughter about eight years old who could ring the bell, air the newspapers, and cut the leaves of a new novel.
When, however, he called to mind that she could not always remain at that precise age, he decided that the balance of comfort was against it.
Mr. Witherington having pulled the bell again, fell into a brown study.
Mr. Jonathan, the butler, made his appearance; but observing that his master was occupied, he immediately stopped at the door, erect, motionless, and with a face as melancholy as if he was performing mute at the porch of some departed peer of the realm; for it is an understood thing, that the greater the rank of the defunct the longer must be the face, and, of course, the better must be the pay.
Now, as Mr. Witherington is still in profound thought, and Mr. Jonathan will stand as long as a hackney-coach horse, we will just leave them as they are, while we introduce the brief history of the latter to our readers. Jonathan Trapp has served as foot-boy, which term, we believe, is derived from those who are in that humble capacity receiving a quantum suff. of the application of the feet of those above them to increase the energy of their service; then as foot-man, which implies that they have been promoted to the more agreeable right of administering instead of receiving the above dishonourable applications; and lastly, for promotion could go no higher in the family, he had been raised to the dignity of butler in the service of Mr. Witherington senior. Jonathan then fell in love, for butlers are guilty of indiscretions as well as their masters: neither he nor his fair flame, who was a lady's-maid in another family, notwithstanding that they had witnessed the consequences of this error in others, would take warning; they gave warning, and they married.
Like most butlers and ladies'-maids who pair off, they set up a public-house; and it is but justice to the lady's-maid to say that she would have preferred an eating-house, but was overruled by Jonathan, who argued, that although people would drink when they were not dry, they never would eat unless they were hungry.
Now, although there was truth in the observation, this is certain, that business did not prosper: it has been surmised that Jonathan's tall, lank, lean figure injured his custom, as people are but too much inclined to judge of the goodness of the ale by the rubicund face and rotundity of the landlord, and therefore inferred that there could be no good beer where mine host was the picture of famine. There certainly is much in appearances in this world; and it appears, that in consequence of Jonathan's cadaverous appearance, he very soon appeared in the Gazette; but what ruined Jonathan in one profession procured him immediate employment in another. An appraiser, upholsterer, and undertaker, who was called in to value the fixtures, fixed his eye upon Jonathan, and knowing the value of his peculiarly lugubrious appearance, and having a half-brother of equal height, offered him immediate employment as a mute. Jonathan soon forgot to mourn his own loss of a few hundreds in his new occupation of mourning the loss of thousands; and his erect, stiff, statue-like carriage, and long melancholy face, as he stood at the portals of those who had entered the portals of the next world, were but too often a sarcasm upon the grief of the inheritors. Even grief is worth nothing in this trafficking world unless it is paid for. Jonathan buried many, and at last buried his wife. So far all was well; but at last he buried his master, the undertaker, which was not quite so desirable. Although Jonathan wept not, yet did he express mute sorrow as he marshalled him to his long home, and drank to his memory in a pot of porter as he returned from the funeral, perched, with many others, like carrion crows on the top of the hearse.
And now Jonathan was thrown out of employment from a reason which most people would have thought the highest recommendation. Every undertaker refused to take him, because they could not match him. In this unfortunate dilemma Jonathan thought of Mr. Witherington junior; he had served and he had buried Mr. Witherington his father, and Lady Mary his mother; he felt that he had strong claims for such variety of services, and he applied to the bachelor. Fortunately for Jonathan, Mr. Witherington's butler-incumbent was just about to commit the same folly as Jonathan had done before, and Jonathan was again installed, resolving in his own mind to lead his former life, and have nothing more to do with ladies'-maids. But from habit Jonathan still carried himself as a mute on all ordinary occasions—never indulging in an approximation to mirth, except when he perceived that his master was in high spirits, and then rather from a sense of duty than from any real hilarity of heart.
Jonathan was no mean scholar for his station in life, and, during his service with the undertaker, he had acquired the English of all the Latin mottoes which are placed upon the hatchments; and these mottoes, when he considered them as apt, he was very apt to quote. We left Jonathan standing at the door; he had closed it, and the handle still remained in his hand. 'Jonathan,' said Mr. Witherington, after a long pause, 'I wish to look at the last letter from New York; you will find it on my dressing-table.'
Jonathan quitted the room without reply, and made his reappearance with the letter.
'It is a long time that I have been expecting this vessel, Jonathan,' observed Mr. Witherington, unfolding the letter.
'Yes, sir, a long while; tempus fugit,' replied the butler in a low tone, half shutting his eyes.
'I hope to God no accident has happened,' continued Mr. Witherington; 'my poor little cousin and her twins! e'en now that I speak, they may be all at the bottom of the sea.'
'Yes, sir,' replied the butler; 'the sea defrauds many an honest undertaker of his profits.'
'By the blood of the Witheringtons! I may be left without an heir, and shall be obliged to marry, which would be very uncomfortable.'
'Very little comfort,' echoed Jonathan—'my wife is dead. In cœlo quies.'
'Well, we must hope for the best; but this suspense is anything but comfortable,' observed Mr. Witherington, after looking over the contents of the letter for at least the twentieth time.
'That will do, Jonathan; I'll ring for coffee presently;' and Mr. Witherington was again alone and with his eyes fixed upon the ceiling.
'That will do, Jonathan; I'll ring for coffee presently.'
, with the necessity of appearing at parade every morning at 9a.m.