The History of Henry Esmond, Esq.

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THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND, ESQ.

A COLONEL IN THE SERVICE OF HER MAJESTY QUEEN ANNE

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF


By William Makepeace Thackeray



Boston, Estes and Lauriat, Publishers



TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE

WILLIAM BINGHAM, LORD ASHBURTON.


MY DEAR LORD,

The writer of a book which copies the manners and language of Queen
Anne's time, must not omit the Dedication to the Patron; and I ask leave
to inscribe this volume to your Lordship, for the sake of the great
kindness and friendship which I owe to you and yours.

My volume will reach you when the Author is on his voyage to a country
where your name is as well known as here. Wherever I am, I shall
gratefully regard you; and shall not be the less welcomed in America
because I am,

Your obliged friend and servant,

W. M. THACKERAY.

LONDON, October 18, 1852.




PREFACE.

THE ESMONDS OF VIRGINIA.


The estate of Castlewood, in Virginia, which was given to our ancestors
by King Charles the First, as some return for the sacrifices made in
his Majesty's cause by the Esmond family, lies in Westmoreland county,
between the rivers Potomac and Rappahannock, and was once as great as
an English Principality, though in the early times its revenues were
but small. Indeed, for near eighty years after our forefathers possessed
them, our plantations were in the hands of factors, who enriched
themselves one after another, though a few scores of hogsheads of
tobacco were all the produce that, for long after the Restoration, our
family received from their Virginian estates.

My dear and honored father, Colonel Henry Esmond, whose history, written
by himself, is contained in the accompanying volume, came to Virginia
in the year 1718, built his house of Castlewood, and here permanently
settled. After a long stormy life in England, he passed the remainder
of his many years in peace and honor in this country; how beloved and
respected by all his fellow-citizens, how inexpressibly dear to his
family, I need not say. His whole life was a benefit to all who were
connected with him. He gave the best example, the best advice, the
most bounteous hospitality to his friends; the tenderest care to
his dependants; and bestowed on those of his immediate family such a
blessing of fatherly love and protection as can never be thought of,
by us, at least, without veneration and thankfulness; and my sons'
children, whether established here in our Republic, or at home in
the always beloved mother country, from which our late quarrel hath
separated us, may surely be proud to be descended from one who in all
ways was so truly noble.

My dear mother died in 1736, soon after our return from England, whither
my parents took me for my education; and where I made the acquaintance
of Mr. Warrington, whom my children never saw. When it pleased heaven,
in the bloom of his youth, and after but a few months of a most happy
union, to remove him from me, I owed my recovery from the grief which
that calamity caused me, mainly to my dearest father's tenderness, and
then to the blessing vouchsafed to me in the birth of my two beloved
boys. I know the fatal differences which separated them in politics
never disunited their hearts; and as I can love them both, whether
wearing the King's colors or the Republic's, I am sure that they love
me and one another, and him above all, my father and theirs, the dearest
friend of their childhood, the noble gentleman who bred them from their
infancy in the practice and knowledge of Truth, and Love and Honor.

My children will never forget the appearance and figure of their revered
grandfather; and I wish I possessed the art of drawing (which my papa
had in perfection), so that I could leave to our descendants a portrait
of one who was so good and so respected. My father was of a dark
complexion, with a very great forehead and dark hazel eyes, overhung by
eyebrows which remained black long after his hair was white. His nose
was aquiline, his smile extraordinary sweet. How well I remember it, and
how little any description I can write can recall his image! He was of
rather low stature, not being above five feet seven inches in height; he
used to laugh at my sons, whom he called his crutches, and say they
were grown too tall for him to lean upon. But small as he was, he had
a perfect grace and majesty of deportment, such as I have never seen in
this country, except perhaps in our friend Mr. Washington, and commanded
respect wherever he appeared.

In all bodily exercises he excelled, and showed an extraordinary
quickness and agility. Of fencing he was especially fond, and made my
two boys proficient in that art; so much so, that when the French came
to this country with Monsieur Rochambeau, not one of his officers was
superior to my Henry, and he was not the equal of my poor George,
who had taken the King's side in our lamentable but glorious war of
independence.

Neither my father nor my mother ever wore powder in their hair; both
their heads were as white as silver, as I can remember them. My dear
mother possessed to the last an extraordinary brightness and freshness
of complexion; nor would people believe that she did not wear rouge. At
sixty years of age she still looked young, and was quite agile. It was
not until after that dreadful siege of our house by the Indians, which
left me a widow ere I was a mother, that my dear mother's health broke.
She never recovered her terror and anxiety of those days which ended so
fatally for me, then a bride scarce six months married, and died in my
father's arms ere my own year of widowhood was over.

From that day, until the last of his dear and honored life, it was
my delight and consolation to remain with him as his comforter and
companion; and from those little notes which my mother hath made here
and there in the volume in which my father describes his adventures
in Europe, I can well understand the extreme devotion with which she
regarded him--a devotion so passionate and exclusive as to prevent her,
I think, from loving any other person except with an inferior regard;
her whole thoughts being centred on this one object of affection and
worship. I know that, before her, my dear father did not show the love
which he had for his daughter; and in her last and most sacred moments,
this dear and tender parent owned to me her repentance that she had
not loved me enough: her jealousy even that my father should give his
affection to any but herself: and in the most fond and beautiful words
of affection and admonition, she bade me never to leave him, and to
supply the place which she was quitting. With a clear conscience, and a
heart inexpressibly thankful, I think I can say that I fulfilled those
dying commands, and that until his last hour my dearest father never had
to complain that his daughter's love and fidelity failed him.

And it is since I knew him entirely--for during my mother's life he
never quite opened himself to me--since I knew the value and splendor of
that affection which he bestowed upon me, that I have come to understand
and pardon what, I own, used to anger me in my mother's lifetime, her
jealousy respecting her husband's love. 'Twas a gift so precious, that
no wonder she who had it was for keeping it all, and could part with
none of it, even to her daughter.

Though I never heard my father use a rough word, 'twas extraordinary
with how much awe his people regarded him; and the servants on our
plantation, both those assigned from England and the purchased negroes,
obeyed him with an eagerness such as the most severe taskmasters round
about us could never get from their people. He was never familiar,
though perfectly simple and natural; he was the same with the meanest
man as with the greatest, and as courteous to a black slave-girl as to
the Governor's wife. No one ever thought of taking a liberty with him
(except once a tipsy gentleman from York, and I am bound to own that
my papa never forgave him): he set the humblest people at once on their
ease with him, and brought down the most arrogant by a grave satiric
way, which made persons exceedingly afraid of him. His courtesy was not
put on like a Sunday suit, and laid by when the company went away; it
was always the same; as he was always dressed the same, whether for a
dinner by ourselves or for a great entertainment. They say he liked
to be the first in his company; but what company was there in which
he would not be first? When I went to Europe for my education, and we
passed a winter at London with my half-brother, my Lord Castlewood and
his second lady, I saw at her Majesty's Court some of the most famous
gentlemen of those days; and I thought to myself none of these are
better than my papa; and the famous Lord Bolingbroke, who came to us
from Dawley, said as much, and that the men of that time were not like
those of his youth:--"Were your father, Madam," he said, "to go into the
woods, the Indians would elect him Sachem;" and his lordship was pleased
to call me Pocahontas.

I did not see our other relative, Bishop Tusher's lady, of whom so much
is said in my papa's memoirs--although my mamma went to visit her in
the country. I have no pride (as I showed by complying with my mother's
request, and marrying a gentleman who was but the younger son of a
Suffolk Baronet), yet I own to A DECENT RESPECT for my name, and wonder
how one who ever bore it, should change it for that of Mrs. THOMAS
TUSHER. I pass over as odious and unworthy of credit those reports
(which I heard in Europe and was then too young to understand), how this
person, having LEFT HER FAMILY and fled to Paris, out of jealousy of
the Pretender betrayed his secrets to my Lord Stair, King George's
Ambassador, and nearly caused the Prince's death there; how she came to
England and married this Mr. Tusher, and became a great favorite of
King George the Second, by whom Mr. Tusher was made a Dean, and then a
Bishop. I did not see the lady, who chose to remain AT HER PALACE all
the time we were in London; but after visiting her, my poor mamma said
she had lost all her good looks, and warned me not to set too much
store by any such gifts which nature had bestowed upon me. She grew
exceedingly stout; and I remember my brother's wife, Lady Castlewood,
saying--"No wonder she became a favorite, for the King likes them old
and ugly, as his father did before him." On which papa said--"All women
were alike; that there was never one so beautiful as that one; and that
we could forgive her everything but her beauty." And hereupon my mamma
looked vexed, and my Lord Castlewood began to laugh; and I, of course,
being a young creature, could not understand what was the subject of
their conversation.

After the circumstances narrated in the third book of these Memoirs, my
father and mother both went abroad, being advised by their friends to
leave the country in consequence of the transactions which are recounted
at the close of the volume of the Memoirs. But my brother, hearing how
the FUTURE BISHOP'S LADY had quitted Castlewood and joined the Pretender
at Paris, pursued him, and would have killed him, Prince as he was, had
not the Prince managed to make his escape. On his expedition to Scotland
directly after, Castlewood was so enraged against him that he asked
leave to serve as a volunteer, and join the Duke of Argyle's army
in Scotland, which the Pretender never had the courage to face; and
thenceforth my Lord was quite reconciled to the present reigning family,
from whom he hath even received promotion.

Mrs. Tusher was by this time as angry against the Pretender as any of
her relations could be, and used to boast, as I have heard, that she
not only brought back my Lord to the Church of England, but procured
the English peerage for him, which the JUNIOR BRANCH of our family at
present enjoys. She was a great friend of Sir Robert Walpole, and would
not rest until her husband slept at Lambeth, my papa used laughing to
say. However, the Bishop died of apoplexy suddenly, and his wife erected
a great monument over him; and the pair sleep under that stone, with
a canopy of marble clouds and angels above them--the first Mrs. Tusher
lying sixty miles off at Castlewood.

But my papa's genius and education are both greater than any a woman can
be expected to have, and his adventures in Europe far more exciting than
his life in this country, which was passed in the tranquil offices of
love and duty; and I shall say no more by way of introduction to his
Memoirs, nor keep my children from the perusal of a story which is much
more interesting than that of their affectionate old mother,

RACHEL ESMOND WARRINGTON.

CASTLEWOOD, VIRGINIA,

November 3, 1778.



CONTENTS.


BOOK I.

THE EARLY YOUTH OF HENRY ESMOND, UP TO THE TIME OF HIS LEAVING TRINITY
COLLEGE, IN CAMBRIDGE.


CHAPTER

I. An Account of the Family of Esmond of Castlewood Hall

II. Relates how Francis, Fourth Viscount, arrives at Castlewood

III. Whither, in the time of Thomas, Third Viscount, I had preceded him
as Page to Isabella

IV. I am placed under a Popish Priest and bred to that Religion.--
Viscountess Castlewood

V. My Superiors are engaged in Plots for the Restoration of King James
II

VI. The Issue of the Plots.--The Death of Thomas, Third Viscount of
Castlewood; and the Imprisonment of his Viscountess

VII. I am left at Castlewood an Orphan, and find most kind Protectors
there

VIII. After Good Fortune comes Evil

IX. I have the Small-pox, and prepare to leave Castlewood

X. I go to Cambridge, and do but little Good there

XI. I come home for a Holiday to Castlewood, and find a Skeleton in the
House

XII. My Lord Mohun comes among us for no Good

XIII. My Lord leaves us and his Evil behind him

XIV. We ride after him to London


BOOK II.

CONTAINS MR. ESMOND'S MILITARY LIFE, AND OTHER MATTERS APPERTAINING TO
THE ESMOND FAMILY.


I. I am in Prison, and Visited, but not Consoled there

II. I come to the End of my Captivity, but not of my Trouble

III. I take the Queen's Pay in Quin's Regiment

IV. Recapitulations

V. I go on the Vigo Bay Expedition, taste Salt Water and smell Powder

VI. The 29th December

VII. I am made Welcome at Walcote

VIII. Family Talk

IX. I make the Campaign of 1704

X. An Old Story about a Fool and a Woman

XI. The famous Mr. Joseph Addison

XII. I get a Company in the Campaign of 1706

XIII. I meet an Old Acquaintance in Flanders, and find my Mother's Grave
and my own Cradle there

XIV. The Campaign of 1707, 1708

XV. General Webb wins the Battle of Wynendael


BOOK III.

CONTAINING THE END OF MR. ESMOND'S ADVENTURES IN ENGLAND.


I. I come to an End of my Battles and Bruises

II. I go Home, and harp on the Old String

III. A Paper out of the "Spectator"

IV. Beatrix's New Suitor

V. Mohun appears for the Last Time in this History

VI. Poor Beatrix

VII. I visit Castlewood once more

VIII. I travel to France and bring Home a Portrait of Rigaud

IX. The Original of the Portrait comes to England

X. We entertain a very Distinguished Guest at Kensington

XI. Our Guest quits us as not being Hospitable enough

XII. A great Scheme, and who Balked it

XIII. August 1st, 1714




THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND.




BOOK I

THE EARLY YOUTH OF HENRY ESMOND, UP TO THE TIME OF HIS LEAVING TRINITY
COLLEGE, IN CAMBRIDGE.


The actors in the old tragedies, as we read, piped their iambics to
a tune, speaking from under a mask, and wearing stilts and a great
head-dress. 'Twas thought the dignity of the Tragic Muse required these
appurtenances, and that she was not to move except to a measure and
cadence. So Queen Medea slew her children to a slow music: and King
Agamemnon perished in a dying fall (to use Mr. Dryden's words): the
Chorus standing by in a set attitude, and rhythmically and decorously
bewailing the fates of those great crowned persons. The Muse of History
hath encumbered herself with ceremony as well as her Sister of the
Theatre. She too wears the mask and the cothurnus, and speaks to
measure. She too, in our age, busies herself with the affairs only of
kings; waiting on them obsequiously and stately, as if she were but a
mistress of court ceremonies, and had nothing to do with the registering
of the affairs of the common people. I have seen in his very old age and
decrepitude the old French King Lewis the Fourteenth, the type and
model of kinghood--who never moved but to measure, who lived and died
according to the laws of his Court-marshal, persisting in enacting
through life the part of Hero; and, divested of poetry, this was but a
little wrinkled old man, pock-marked, and with a great periwig and red
heels to make him look tall--a hero for a book if you like, or for a
brass statue or a painted ceiling, a god in a Roman shape, but what
more than a man for Madame Maintenon, or the barber who shaved him, or
Monsieur Fagon, his surgeon? I wonder shall History ever pull off her
periwig and cease to be court-ridden? Shall we see something of France
and England besides Versailles and Windsor? I saw Queen Anne at the
latter place tearing down the Park slopes, after her stag-hounds, and
driving her one-horse chaise--a hot, red-faced woman, not in the least
resembling that statue of her which turns its stone back upon St.
Paul's, and faces the coaches struggling up Ludgate Hill. She was
neither better bred nor wiser than you and me, though we knelt to hand
her a letter or a wash-hand basin. Why shall History go on kneeling to
the end of time? I am for having her rise up off her knees, and take a
natural posture: not to be for ever performing cringes and congees
like a court-chamberlain, and shuffling backwards out of doors in the
presence of the sovereign. In a word, I would have History familiar
rather than heroic: and think that Mr. Hogarth and Mr. Fielding will
give our children a much better idea of the manners of the present
age in England, than the Court Gazette and the newspapers which we get
thence.

There was a German officer of Webb's, with whom we used to joke, and of
whom a story (whereof I myself was the author) was got to be believed in
the army, that he was eldest son of the hereditary Grand Bootjack of the
Empire, and the heir to that honor of which his ancestors had been very
proud, having been kicked for twenty generations by one imperial foot,
as they drew the boot from the other. I have heard that the old
Lord Castlewood, of part of whose family these present volumes are a
chronicle, though he came of quite as good blood as the Stuarts whom
he served (and who as regards mere lineage are no better than a dozen
English and Scottish houses I could name), was prouder of his post about
the Court than of his ancestral honors, and valued his dignity (as Lord
of the Butteries and Groom of the King's Posset) so highly, that he
cheerfully ruined himself for the thankless and thriftless race who
bestowed it. He pawned his plate for King Charles the First, mortgaged
his property for the same cause, and lost the greater part of it by
fines and sequestration: stood a siege of his castle by Ireton,
where his brother Thomas capitulated (afterward making terms with the
Commonwealth, for which the elder brother never forgave him), and
where his second brother Edward, who had embraced the ecclesiastical
profession, was slain on Castlewood Tower, being engaged there both as
preacher and artilleryman. This resolute old loyalist, who was with the
King whilst his house was thus being battered down, escaped abroad with
his only son, then a boy, to return and take a part in Worcester fight.
On that fatal field Eustace Esmond was killed, and Castlewood fled from
it once more into exile, and henceforward, and after the Restoration,
never was away from the Court of the monarch (for whose return we offer
thanks in the Prayer-Book) who sold his country and who took bribes of
the French king.

What spectacle is more august than that of a great king in exile? Who is
more worthy of respect than a brave man in misfortune? Mr. Addison has
painted such a figure in his noble piece of Cato. But suppose fugitive
Cato fuddling himself at a tavern with a wench on each knee, a dozen
faithful and tipsy companions of defeat, and a landlord calling out
for his bill; and the dignity of misfortune is straightway lost. The
Historical Muse turns away shamefaced from the vulgar scene, and closes
the door--on which the exile's unpaid drink is scored up--upon him and
his pots and his pipes, and the tavern-chorus which he and his friends
are singing. Such a man as Charles should have had an Ostade or Mieris
to paint him. Your Knellers and Le Bruns only deal in clumsy and
impossible allegories: and it hath always seemed to me blasphemy to
claim Olympus for such a wine-drabbled divinity as that.

About the King's follower, the Viscount Castlewood--orphan of his son,
ruined by his fidelity, bearing many wounds and marks of bravery,
old and in exile--his kinsmen I suppose should be silent; nor if this
patriarch fell down in his cups, call fie upon him, and fetch passers-by
to laugh at his red face and white hairs. What! does a stream rush out
of a mountain free and pure, to roll through fair pastures, to feed and
throw out bright tributaries, and to end in a village gutter? Lives that
have noble commencements have often no better endings; it is not without
a kind of awe and reverence that an observer should speculate upon such
careers as he traces the course of them. I have seen too much of success
in life to take off my hat and huzzah to it as it passes in its gilt
coach: and would do my little part with my neighbors on foot, that they
should not gape with too much wonder, nor applaud too loudly. Is it the
Lord Mayor going in state to mince-pies and the Mansion House? Is it
poor Jack of Newgate's procession, with the sheriff and javelin-men,
conducting him on his last journey to Tyburn? I look into my heart
and think that I sin as good as my Lord Mayor, and know I am as bad as
Tyburn Jack. Give me a chain and red gown and a pudding before me, and
I could play the part of Alderman very well, and sentence Jack after
dinner. Starve me, keep me from books and honest people, educate me to
love dice, gin, and pleasure, and put me on Hounslow Heath, with a purse
before me, and I will take it. "And I shall be deservedly hanged," say
you, wishing to put an end to this prosing. I don't say No. I can't but
accept the world as I find it, including a rope's end, as long as it is
in fashion.




CHAPTER I.

AN ACCOUNT OF THE FAMILY OF ESMOND OF CASTLEWOOD HALL.


When Francis, fourth Viscount Castlewood, came to his title, and
presently after to take possession of his house of Castlewood, county
Hants, in the year 1691, almost the only tenant of the place besides
the domestics was a lad of twelve years of age, of whom no one seemed to
take any note until my Lady Viscountess lighted upon him, going over the
house with the housekeeper on the day of her arrival. The boy was in the
room known as the Book-room, or Yellow Gallery, where the portraits of
the family used to hang, that fine piece among others of Sir Antonio Van
Dyck of George, second Viscount, and that by Mr. Dobson of my lord the
third Viscount, just deceased, which it seems his lady and widow did not
think fit to carry away, when she sent for and carried off to her house
at Chelsey, near to London, the picture of herself by Sir Peter Lely, in
which her ladyship was represented as a huntress of Diana's court.

The new and fair lady of Castlewood found the sad, lonely, little
occupant of this gallery busy over his great book, which he laid down
when he was aware that a stranger was at hand. And, knowing who that
person must be, the lad stood up and bowed before her, performing a shy
obeisance to the mistress of his house.

She stretched out her hand--indeed when was it that that hand would
not stretch out to do an act of kindness, or to protect grief and
ill-fortune? "And this is our kinsman," she said "and what is your name,
kinsman?"

"My name is Henry Esmond," said the lad, looking up at her in a sort
of delight and wonder, for she had come upon him as a Dea certe, and
appeared the most charming object he had ever looked on. Her golden hair
was shining in the gold of the sun; her complexion was of a dazzling
bloom; her lips smiling, and her eyes beaming with a kindness which made
Harry Esmond's heart to beat with surprise.

"His name is Henry Esmond, sure enough, my lady," says Mrs. Worksop,
the housekeeper (an old tyrant whom Henry Esmond plagued more than he
hated), and the old gentlewoman looked significantly towards the late
lord's picture, as it now is in the family, noble and severe-looking,
with his hand on his sword, and his order on his cloak, which he had
from the Emperor during the war on the Danube against the Turk.

Seeing the great and undeniable likeness between this portrait and the
lad, the new Viscountess, who had still hold of the boy's hand as she
looked at the picture, blushed and dropped the hand quickly, and walked
down the gallery, followed by Mrs. Worksop.