THE CONTRAST,

BY THE AUTHOR OF “MATILDA,” “YES AND NO,” &c. &c.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON: HENRY COLBURN AND RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 1832.

CONTENTS

ADVERTISEMENT. THE CONTRAST. CHAPTER I. CHAPTER II. CHAPTER III. CHAPTER IV. CHAPTER V. CHAPTER VI. CHAPTER VII. CHAPTER VIII. CHAPTER IX. CHAPTER X. CHAPTER XI. CHAPTER XII. CHAPTER XIII. CHAPTER XIV. CHAPTER XV. CHAPTER XVI. CHAPTER XVII. CHAPTER XVIII. CHAPTER XIX. CHAPTER XX.

ADVERTISEMENT.

“What’s in a name?” is a question to which, perhaps, a bookseller would be apt to reply—“More than meets the eye.” With some suspicion of this kind, I have hesitated much what Title to prefix to the following pages.

I might, it is true, have been satisfied with the safe expedient of any two or three mellifluous, though unmeaning syllables, in the shape of a proper name; but I was anxious, if possible, rather to explain the character than to record the family appellation of my hero—if hero that person must be called whose failings and whose errors occupy most of these pages.

If I had been writing in French, “L’Homme Difficile” would most nearly have defined the character I meant to pourtray; but there is no synonymous phrase in English. “The Fastidious Man” did not quite please me. I am myself fastidious as to the use of the term, “the Man,” in a title explanatory of character. “Fastidiousness” is not euphonious, still less “Fastidiosity,” which Johnson passes current.

Under these difficulties I have left my hero to speak for himself, without introduction; and taking what would, perhaps, at first have been the more gallant course, I have attempted to draw the attention of the reader to the diversity of female character arising, in great part, from difference of situation, under the form, and with the title, of “The Contrast.”

One word more, kind Reader, in the shape of an humble petition for that general indulgence which no one can feel more than myself how much I require.

CHAPTER I.

In that iron age when Frenchmen marched “en masse” from Madrid to Moscow; when Continental travelling was effected by drawing not bills, but swords; when cannon, not credit, gave to strangers the comforts of home in foreign lands, then were the locomotive propensities of the peaceable portion of our countrymen necessarily confined within the narrow limits of our sea-girt island. Impatient at being thus temporarily dammed up, the stream of society annually flowed outwards from the metropolis down to the extremest low-water mark of the different bathing-places.

It was during this period, that a large party had assembled, at the conclusion of the London season, at the hospitable mansion of Sir North Saunders. Sir North’s father had been a great contractor in those days when contracts were worth something; and, having realized an immense sum in the course of the American war, he, in gratitude, christened his son and heir after that minister, to whose persevering profusion he owed all to which he would be heir. When the almost unanimous voice of an indignant nation had closed the disastrous struggle, Sir Simon Saunders (as the contractor and first baronet was called) was, after a time, completely puzzled how to act.

During the first rapid succession of short and inconsistent administrations, he stuck by the Treasury, with a tenacity as to place, and versatility as to persons, worthy of that renowned vicar, whose peculiar talents in that line have become proverbial. Yet, as upon the permanent ascendancy of the Pitt party of that day, he found that retrenchment and reform were the watch-words at head-quarters, he, in disgust, threw up the whole concern, laid out some of his previously-acquired spoil in the purchase of Hornscliff Abbey, and retired to that beautiful retreat, thinking that, at any rate, a country gentleman contractor was not a greater contradiction in terms, than a patriot minister.

He was not, however, long condemned to pretend to enjoy a state of existence so uncongenial to all his tastes and habits; and his son and heir, Sir North, not only succeeded in full to all the acquirements of his father’s later years, but also inherited, in all its original freshness, that turn of mind which had in youth raised Sir Simon from nobody.

It was not therefore to be expected that he would long bury himself in the solitudes of Hornscliff Abbey, more especially as, coming of age soon after the breaking out of the revolutionary war, and having a great deal of parliamentary interest, the same minister who had disappointed the expectations of the father, now acting upon a different system, granted upon many occasions the utmost demands of the son.

From this time for nearly twenty years, Sir North continued in heart and soul nothing more nor less than a thorough-paced trading politician; most anxious, nevertheless, to veil that character under the reputation of a bon vivant, bel esprit, and connoisseur. To these pretensions, since the last audit-day had given him a glimpse of his beautiful property at Hornscliff, he had added an eager desire to be thought an enthusiast in the picturesque. He had, in imitation of some of his acquaintance, a service of china painted with views of the romantic environs of his place: the beauties which the plates and dishes thus displayed, were, during the season, the constant theme of his conversation, coupled with pressing invitations to his various acquaintance, that as his boasted property was upon the coast, they would make Hornscliff Abbey their sojourning place during the ensuing summer.

This many of them seemed nothing loth to do, particularly as they ascertained that the other artiste, whose labours, in their opinion, no less profitably adorned the plates and dishes, was to continue his successful attempts to eclipse the performance of the painter.

“What a beautiful place it must be!” said Lady Madelina Manfred to her neighbour, young Lord Castleton, as she pensively dropped her beautiful eyes on her plate, and continued in a sentimental tone, “I hope that you are as passionately fond of the sea as I am. How sublime its eternal sameness! How grand its boundless limits! Oh, I could look on it for ever!” she added, as she completely covered the German ocean with half a spoonful of bread sauce. “Shall we adjourn there at the end of the season?” continued the lady, with a peculiar emphasis on that comprehensive monosyllable we.

It was, indeed, to establish such an identity of interest between her and young Lord Castleton, as would give her a common property in the use of the first person plural, that she had been labouring all through the season. Lady Madelina Manfred was born a fool, but had through life cultivated that species of cunning which fools so often display in the pursuit of an object, if they have one. The object which she had been—I will not say for how many years, successfully pursuing, was admiration. To be sure, nature had assisted her with a pair of eyes which looked as if they could not but mean something, and a voice, whose seductive tones could give a charm even to folly. Her husband was one of those good, easy men, who seem as if only born to give their wives a name, inasmuch as their own is never by any chance heard after they have once accomplished that purpose. Seasons had rolled on; and if Lady Madelina Manfred’s eye had lost some of its brilliancy, her complexion some of its bloom, and her form some of its freshness, there were still many who were wilfully blind

to such changes. As Lord Castleton will, in the course of these pages, have much to say for himself, it is unnecessary to say any more for him at present, than that he was but just nineteen; and whatever opinion might then be entertained of the liaison lately formed between him and Lady Madelina, it was no scandal, when gossips said that there was a time when she had held him in her arms.

To the attractions of the invitation to Hornscliff Abbey, often urged by Sir North, and so sweetly echoed by Lady Madelina, Lord Castleton was not then in a frame of mind to be insensible, particularly as, in addition to all other reasons for accepting it, his guardians were very anxious that he should not; and he therefore longed to show he was his own master, by putting himself completely at the disposal of Sir North and Lady Madelina, who had both the most deliberate designs, the one personal, the other political, upon his future independence.

To Hornscliff Abbey, therefore, he transported himself, as soon as he found that the waiters at the clubs monopolized the newspapers, and sauntering hackney-coachmen elbowed him as they lounged along the foot-pavement.

Lord Castleton was not by nature at all that sort of being which the acquired habits of the last few months had made him appear, to all who had never known him before. The parting jolt of his carriage moving off the London pavement, seemed to shake from his nature much of that affectation with which the season had encrusted it; and the first breath of pure country air, as he cleared the last Cockney villa, seemed to revive in their springy freshness, many of those early feelings and tastes, which, however faded for a time, can at nineteen hardly be irrecoverably seared and withered.

As he approached his destination, his spirit seemed to expand with the bolder features of the mountain-scenery by which he found himself surrounded. Though within the immediate limits of Sir North’s domain, the effect was almost ludicrous of the attempts which had evidently been hastily and recently made to cripple and confine the bold and gigantic shapes which nature here displayed, in the scanty and servile livery of a dress place. The contrasts thus produced were quite comical. Rugged rocks were encircled by invisible railings; cast-iron bridges swung across the wildest glens; Chinese pagodas rose out of mountain heather; gilt wire aviaries were dotted about in solitudes, where eagles might have stooped, or black game brooded; and Thames wherries were moored by silken cords along the banks of the shallow, but rapid torrent, which rushed over a rocky bed down to the sea.

At the Abbey itself, these contradictions were more various and more numerous, though perhaps not more striking. It requires nothing else but an unlimited command of money to transport, in an incredibly short space of time, all the contents of a London upholsterer’s shop to the remotest and most uncivilized corner of the kingdom; and due activity had been shown in attending to Sir North’s order, that Hornscliff Abbey should, without delay, be furnished from cellar to attic. The building itself, situated in one of those snugly-sheltered, but romantic glens, where in former times the monks had generally the good taste to fix, remained one of the best preserved and most perfect specimens of the abbey-gothic style of architecture: it was not to be expected that any furniture, thus hastily huddled together, should be in perfect keeping with the walls by which it was surrounded; less care was therefore taken that one part should tally with the rest, and articles of every description were crammed into all the rooms, with the same ill-assorted propinquity in which they

stood in the warehouses, whence they had been removed wholesale.

But neither French paper on cedar panels, nor fragile wherries on mountain torrents, seemed so much misplaced, as did some of the company whom Sir North had collected to witness his installation as a country gentleman. Many men, whose utmost previous pedestrian feat had been daily gliding from their offices along the smooth flags of Parliament-street to make a House, and ladies, who thought it an exertion to step from their carriage across a broad trottoir on a morning visit, were now expected to thread tangled brakes, and to climb over rugged rocks, in search of the picturesque.

Sir North was determined, however, to play what is called the whole game; and the very day after the arrival of Lord Castleton, had been fixed on for a distant excursion, to a romantic bay on the coast; the beauties of which had been much vaunted by the Rev. Mr. Turner, the picturesque-loving Rector of the adjoining parish; who, upon these occasions, acted as guide, and wasted a great deal of intelligence, taste, and enthusiasm, upon parties generally both indifferent and ignorant; and took a considerable deal of useless trouble in endeavouring to cultivate a mutual spirit of good-will between the wild scenes he loved, and their present super-refined visitors, by smoothing rugged inhospitalities on one side, and endeavouring to cultivate a feeling of admiration on the other.

CHAPTER II.

Lord Castleton, in accordance with the claim which we have seen Lady Madelina had established to a common property with him in the use of the monosyllable “we,” had passed the evening in hanging over the sofa, on which she gracefully reclined, apart from the rest of the world, within the recess of a roseate-draperied tent, into which a ci-devant oriel window had been converted.

On the next eventful morning the ladies were to perform the first part of the expedition in open carriages, the gentlemen on horseback; when the road no longer admitted of such civilized modes of conveyance, the ladies were to be transferred to donkeys, and the men to try their pedestrian powers. Lord Castleton had escorted Lady Madelina to her carriage, and had started, with one hand on the barouche door, and the other promoting, through the medium of his horse’s mouth, that sort of curveting canter which made conversation during progress easy; but before they were even out of sight of the abbey his attention was diverted by the oft-repeated cry, just behind him, in his host’s voice, of “Soho! soho! quiet there!” and looking back he caught occasional glimpses even of the highest guérite of Hornscliff, in short of the whole of poor Sir North’s country seat, between his equestrian seat and his saddle. The fact was that Sir North’s stable, like his house, had been furnished wholesale and indiscriminately; but as a sofa is easier to sit than a horse, and as Sir North’s

figure and habits were much more adapted to the one than the other, the want of proper selection was here infinitely more inconvenient. Lord Castleton, seeing the imminent danger in which his host was, could do no other than offer to change with him. This proposal Sir North received without the slightest scruple, which, considering that at the time he thought he was consigning his young friend to the merciless power of the most terrific animal in creation, was a conduct which nothing but an extreme case of self-preservation could justify. Though his new rider did not find much difficulty in managing the unruly beast, yet as Lady Madelina’s nerves no longer allowed Lord Castleton to ride by the side of the carriage, he was left, up to the time of quitting these vehicles, more unoccupied than he otherwise would have been, to admire the increasing beauty of the surrounding scenery.

A train of thoughts long neglected, and a tone of feeling of late untouched, seemed to revive within him, under the impression of outward objects, to which his eye had been now for some time a stranger. The meditations into which he was thus insensibly led were only occasionally interrupted by the bungling explanations attempted by Sir North of the different objects they passed, as he mistook in attempting to re-state the information he had received from the Rev. Mr. Turner. These explanatory observations of Sir North became more frequent, as his equanimity was by degrees revived by the confidence he felt, after the change of steeds, in his restored safety: as he himself technically expressed it, “His seat was now as secure as Old Sarum.”

“Pray observe,” said Sir North, “the secluded situation of these Druidical remains, which have withstood the changes of centuries, there to your right.”

“The Druidical remains I showed you,” said Mr. Turner in an under-tone, and as much in Sir North’s ear as the height of the little white pony he was riding would enable him to reach, “are half a mile farther to the left.”

“Pardon me, my good Sir,” said Sir North, “what is that which I see to the right?”

“The remains of a windmill, pulled down by order of the magistrates, for its neighbourhood to the high road,” replied the reverend Cicerone.

This little mistake of Sir North’s rather checked the torrent of his information, till, after passing a beautiful variety of highland and lowland, in crossing a succession of ridges, they at length arrived at the entrance of the rocky glen, through which they were to wind their way down to the sea. Here they were obliged to leave carriages and horses, as there was no longer any better road than the timber-track by which the produce of Sir North’s woods was annually taken to be shipped.

Lord Castleton, still in close attendance on Lady Madelina, after smoothing many little difficulties, and soothing many affected alarms in settling her upon her donkey, prepared to lead the animal down the path, into the wild and romantic scene whose bold features at every step became more striking.

He looked up on one side at the fantastic forms of the venerable trunks whose roots had for centuries been entwined in the rocky crags from which they grew, but whose wide-spreading branches then luxuriated in the green vigour of a summer foliage; and he looked down on the other at the clear unruffled surface of the brook, which ran murmuring below them. He scented the freshness of the hitherto untrodden fern, as his feet passed over it, and he then cast his eyes upon the fascinating but fané beauty by his side, and felt that there was something uncongenial in visiting such a scene under the protection of such a guardian genius, one certainly better adapted to the artificial state in which he had been lately living than to the freshness and nature of the present. Her personal charms, too, no longer in their first bloom, suited better the softened light of the shaded boudoir than the searching glance of the evening sun, to which they were now exposed, as upon approaching the sea the wood no longer afforded the same shelter from its rays, and against the effect of which the utmost

skill in the management of the pink parasol could not always guard its mistress, thwarted as her efforts were by the constant windings of the steep path by which they descended, and the rough motions of the humble donkey on which she was mounted; and even those graceful limbs, whose slightest movement had had its charm when stretched with studied ease upon the luxurious sofa, were now necessarily cramped into angles on an awkward side-saddle.

All these circumstances, though not embodied in the shape of distinct doses towards effecting Lord Castleton’s cure, had not been without their effect upon him. They had both been for some time silent, when, just before the last angle in the glen was to open to them that sea-view which was the object of their expedition, Lord Castleton stopping to re-arrange some part of Lady Madelina’s dress, which the uneasy motion of the donkey had discomposed, his ear caught for the first time the soothing sound of the measured breaking of the waters in their regular rise and fall against a sloping shore.

The very idea of eternal sameness with which this sound never fails to impress a romantic fancy when unexpectedly heard, has in itself a tendency to recall the different circumstances, to revive the faded feelings, and to connect the distant spots in which its unvaried monotony has met the ear.