The History of Henry Esmond, Esq.

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When the lady came back, Harry Esmond stood exactly in the same spot,
and with his hand as it had fallen when he dropped it on his black coat.

Her heart melted, I suppose (indeed she hath since owned as much), at
the notion that she should do anything unkind to any mortal, great or
small; for, when she returned, she had sent away the housekeeper upon an
errand by the door at the farther end of the gallery; and, coming back
to the lad, with a look of infinite pity and tenderness in her eyes, she
took his hand again, placing her other fair hand on his head, and saying
some words to him, which were so kind, and said in a voice so sweet,
that the boy, who had never looked upon so much beauty before, felt as
if the touch of a superior being or angel smote him down to the ground,
and kissed the fair protecting hand as he knelt on one knee. To the very
last hour of his life, Esmond remembered the lady as she then spoke and
looked, the rings on her fair hands, the very scent of her robe, the
beam of her eyes lighting up with surprise and kindness, her lips
blooming in a smile, the sun making a golden halo round her hair.

As the boy was yet in this attitude of humility, enters behind him a
portly gentleman, with a little girl of four years old in his hand. The
gentleman burst into a great laugh at the lady and her adorer, with
his little queer figure, his sallow face, and long black hair. The lady
blushed, and seemed to deprecate his ridicule by a look of appeal to her
husband, for it was my Lord Viscount who now arrived, and whom the lad
knew, having once before seen him in the late lord's lifetime.

"So this is the little priest" says my lord, looking down at the lad;
"welcome, kinsman."

"He is saying his prayers to mamma," says the little girl, who came up
to her papa's knees; and my lord burst out into another great laugh at
this, and kinsman Henry looked very silly. He invented a half-dozen of
speeches in reply, but 'twas months afterwards when he thought of this
adventure: as it was, he had never a word in answer.

"Le pauvre enfant, il n'a que nous," says the lady, looking to her lord;
and the boy, who understood her, though doubtless she thought otherwise,
thanked her with all his heart for her kind speech.

"And he shan't want for friends here," says my lord in a kind voice,
"shall he, little Trix?"

The little girl, whose name was Beatrix, and whom her papa called by
this diminutive, looked at Henry Esmond solemnly, with a pair of large
eyes, and then a smile shone over her face, which was as beautiful as
that of a cherub, and she came up and put out a little hand to him. A
keen and delightful pang of gratitude, happiness, affection, filled the
orphan child's heart, as he received from the protectors, whom heaven
had sent to him, these touching words and tokens of friendliness and
kindness. But an hour since, he had felt quite alone in the world: when
he heard the great peal of bells from Castlewood church ringing that
morning to welcome the arrival of the new lord and lady, it had rung
only terror and anxiety to him, for he knew not how the new owner would
deal with him; and those to whom he formerly looked for protection were
forgotten or dead. Pride and doubt too had kept him within-doors, when
the Vicar and the people of the village, and the servants of the house,
had gone out to welcome my Lord Castlewood--for Henry Esmond was no
servant, though a dependant; no relative, though he bore the name and
inherited the blood of the house; and in the midst of the noise and
acclamations attending the arrival of the new lord (for whom, you may
be sure, a feast was got ready, and guns were fired, and tenants and
domestics huzzahed when his carriage approached and rolled into the
court-yard of the hall), no one ever took any notice of young Henry
Esmond, who sat unobserved and alone in the Book-room, until the
afternoon of that day, when his new friends found him.

When my lord and lady were going away thence, the little girl, still
holding her kinsman by the hand, bade him to come too. "Thou wilt always
forsake an old friend for a new one, Trix," says her father to her
good-naturedly; and went into the gallery, giving an arm to his lady.
They passed thence through the music-gallery, long since dismantled, and
Queen Elizabeth's Rooms, in the clock-tower, and out into the terrace,
where was a fine prospect of sunset and the great darkling woods with
a cloud of rooks returning; and the plain and river with Castlewood
village beyond, and purple hills beautiful to look at--and the little
heir of Castlewood, a child of two years old, was already here on the
terrace in his nurse's arms, from whom he ran across the grass instantly
he perceived his mother, and came to her.

"If thou canst not be happy here," says my lord, looking round at the
scene, "thou art hard to please, Rachel."

"I am happy where you are," she said, "but we were happiest of all at
Walcote Forest." Then my lord began to describe what was before them to
his wife, and what indeed little Harry knew better than he--viz., the
history of the house: how by yonder gate the page ran away with the
heiress of Castlewood, by which the estate came into the present family;
how the Roundheads attacked the clock-tower, which my lord's father was
slain in defending. "I was but two years old then," says he, "but take
forty-six from ninety, and how old shall I be, kinsman Harry?"

"Thirty," says his wife, with a laugh.

"A great deal too old for you, Rachel," answers my lord, looking fondly
down at her. Indeed she seemed to be a girl, and was at that time scarce
twenty years old.

"You know, Frank, I will do anything to please you," says she, "and I
promise you I will grow older every day."

"You mustn't call papa, Frank; you must call papa my lord now," says
Miss Beatrix, with a toss of her little head; at which the mother
smiled, and the good-natured father laughed, and the little trotting boy
laughed, not knowing why--but because he was happy, no doubt--as every
one seemed to be there. How those trivial incidents and words, the
landscape and sunshine, and the group of people smiling and talking,
remain fixed on the memory!

As the sun was setting, the little heir was sent in the arms of his
nurse to bed, whither he went howling; but little Trix was promised to
sit to supper that night--"and you will come too, kinsman, won't you?"
she said.

Harry Esmond blushed: "I--I have supper with Mrs. Worksop," says he.

"D--n it," says my lord, "thou shalt sup with us, Harry, to-night!
Shan't refuse a lady, shall he, Trix?"--and they all wondered at Harry's
performance as a trencher-man, in which character the poor boy acquitted
himself very remarkably; for the truth is he had had no dinner, nobody
thinking of him in the bustle which the house was in, during the
preparations antecedent to the new lord's arrival.

"No dinner! poor dear child!" says my lady, heaping up his plate with
meat, and my lord, filling a bumper for him, bade him call a health; on
which Master Harry, crying "The King," tossed off the wine. My lord was
ready to drink that, and most other toasts: indeed only too ready. He
would not hear of Doctor Tusher (the Vicar of Castlewood, who came to
supper) going away when the sweetmeats were brought: he had not had a
chaplain long enough, he said, to be tired of him: so his reverence kept
my lord company for some hours over a pipe and a punch-bowl; and went
away home with rather a reeling gait, and declaring a dozen of times,
that his lordship's affability surpassed every kindness he had ever had
from his lordship's gracious family.

As for young Esmond, when he got to his little chamber, it was with a
heart full of surprise and gratitude towards the new friends whom this
happy day had brought him. He was up and watching long before the house
was astir, longing to see that fair lady and her children--that kind
protector and patron: and only fearful lest their welcome of the past
night should in any way be withdrawn or altered. But presently little
Beatrix came out into the garden, and her mother followed, who greeted
Harry as kindly as before. He told her at greater length the histories
of the house (which he had been taught in the old lord's time), and
to which she listened with great interest; and then he told her, with
respect to the night before, that he understood French, and thanked her
for her protection.

"Do you?" says she, with a blush; "then, sir, you shall teach me and
Beatrix." And she asked him many more questions regarding himself, which
had best be told more fully and explicitly than in those brief replies
which the lad made to his mistress's questions.




CHAPTER II.

RELATES HOW FRANCIS, FOURTH VISCOUNT, ARRIVES AT CASTLEWOOD.


'Tis known that the name of Esmond and the estate of Castlewood, com.
Hants, came into possession of the present family through Dorothea,
daughter and heiress of Edward, Earl and Marquis Esmond, and Lord of
Castlewood, which lady married, 23 Eliz., Henry Poyns, gent.; the said
Henry being then a page in the household of her father. Francis, son and
heir of the above Henry and Dorothea, who took the maternal name which
the family hath borne subsequently, was made Knight and Baronet by King
James the First; and being of a military disposition, remained long in
Germany with the Elector-Palatine, in whose service Sir Francis incurred
both expense and danger, lending large sums of money to that
unfortunate Prince; and receiving many wounds in the battles against the
Imperialists, in which Sir Francis engaged.

On his return home Sir Francis was rewarded for his services and
many sacrifices, by his late Majesty James the First, who graciously
conferred upon this tried servant the post of Warden of the Butteries
and Groom of the King's Posset, which high and confidential office he
filled in that king's and his unhappy successor's reign.

His age, and many wounds and infirmities, obliged Sir Francis to perform
much of his duty by deputy: and his son, Sir George Esmond, knight and
banneret, first as his father's lieutenant, and afterwards as inheritor
of his father's title and dignity, performed this office during almost
the whole of the reign of King Charles the First, and his two sons who
succeeded him.

Sir George Esmond married, rather beneath the rank that a person of his
name and honor might aspire to, the daughter of Thos. Topham, of the
city of London, alderman and goldsmith, who, taking the Parliamentary
side in the troubles then commencing, disappointed Sir George of the
property which he expected at the demise of his father-in-law, who
devised his money to his second daughter, Barbara, a spinster.

Sir George Esmond, on his part, was conspicuous for his attachment and
loyalty to the Royal cause and person: and the King being at Oxford in
1642, Sir George, with the consent of his father, then very aged and
infirm, and residing at his house of Castlewood, melted the whole of the
family plate for his Majesty's service.

For this, and other sacrifices and merits, his Majesty, by patent under
the Privy Seal, dated Oxford, Jan., 1643, was pleased to advance Sir
Francis Esmond to the dignity of Viscount Castlewood, of Shandon, in
Ireland: and the Viscount's estate being much impoverished by loans to
the King, which in those troublesome times his Majesty could not repay,
a grant of land in the plantations of Virginia was given to the Lord
Viscount.; part of which land is in possession of descendants of his
family to the present day.

The first Viscount Castlewood died full of years, and within a few
months after he had been advanced to his honors. He was succeeded by his
eldest son, the before-named George; and left issue besides, Thomas,
a colonel in the King's army, who afterwards joined the Usurper's
Government; and Francis, in holy orders, who was slain whilst defending
the House of Castlewood against the Parliament, anno 1647.

George Lord Castlewood (the second Viscount), of King Charles the
First's time, had no male issue save his one son, Eustace Esmond, who
was killed, with half of the Castlewood men beside him, at Worcester
fight. The lands about Castlewood were sold and apportioned to the
Commonwealth men; Castlewood being concerned in almost all of the plots
against the Protector, after the death of the King, and up to King
Charles the Second's restoration. My lord followed that king's Court
about in its exile, having ruined himself in its service. He had but one
daughter, who was of no great comfort to her father; for misfortune had
not taught those exiles sobriety of life; and it is said that the Duke
of York and his brother the King both quarrelled about Isabel Esmond.
She was maid of honor to the Queen Henrietta Maria; she early joined the
Roman Church; her father, a weak man, following her not long after at
Breda.

On the death of Eustace Esmond at Worcester, Thomas Esmond, nephew to
my Lord Castlewood, and then a stripling, became heir to the title. His
father had taken the Parliament side in the quarrels, and so had been
estranged from the chief of his house; and my Lord Castlewood was at
first so much enraged to think that his title (albeit little more than
an empty one now) should pass to a rascally Roundhead, that he would
have married again, and indeed proposed to do so to a vintner's daughter
at Bruges, to whom his lordship owed a score for lodging when the King
was there, but for fear of the laughter of the Court, and the anger
of his daughter, of whom he stood in awe; for she was in temper as
imperious and violent as my lord, who was much enfeebled by wounds and
drinking, was weak.

Lord Castlewood would have had a match between his daughter Isabel and
her cousin, the son of that Francis Esmond who was killed at Castlewood
siege. And the lady, it was said, took a fancy to the young man, who was
her junior by several years (which circumstance she did not consider to
be a fault in him); but having paid his court, and being admitted to the
intimacy of the house, he suddenly flung up his suit, when it seemed
to be pretty prosperous, without giving a pretext for his behavior.
His friends rallied him at what they laughingly chose to call his
infidelity; Jack Churchill, Frank Esmond's lieutenant in the Royal
Regiment of Foot-guards, getting the company which Esmond vacated, when
he left the Court and went to Tangier in a rage at discovering that his
promotion depended on the complaisance of his elderly affianced bride.
He and Churchill, who had been condiscipuli at St. Paul's School, had
words about this matter; and Frank Esmond said to him with an oath,
"Jack, your sister may be so-and-so, but by Jove my wife shan't!" and
swords were drawn, and blood drawn too, until friends separated them on
this quarrel. Few men were so jealous about the point of honor in those
days; and gentlemen of good birth and lineage thought a royal blot was
an ornament to their family coat. Frank Esmond retired in the sulks,
first to Tangier, whence he returned after two years' service, settling
on a small property he had of his mother, near to Winchester, and became
a country gentleman, and kept a pack of beagles, and never came to
Court again in King Charles's time. But his uncle Castlewood was never
reconciled to him; nor, for some time afterwards, his cousin whom he had
refused.

By places, pensions, bounties from France, and gifts from the King,
whilst his daughter was in favor, Lord Castlewood, who had spent in the
Royal service his youth and fortune, did not retrieve the latter quite,
and never cared to visit Castlewood, or repair it, since the death of
his son, but managed to keep a good house, and figure at Court, and to
save a considerable sum of ready money.

And now, his heir and nephew, Thomas Esmond, began to bid for his
uncle's favor. Thomas had served with the Emperor, and with the Dutch,
when King Charles was compelled to lend troops to the States; and
against them, when his Majesty made an alliance with the French King. In
these campaigns Thomas Esmond was more remarked for duelling, brawling,
vice, and play, than for any conspicuous gallantry in the field, and
came back to England, like many another English gentleman who has
travelled, with a character by no means improved by his foreign
experience. He had dissipated his small paternal inheritance of a
younger brother's portion, and, as truth must be told, was no better
than a hanger-on of ordinaries, and a brawler about Alsatia and the
Friars, when he bethought him of a means of mending his fortune.

His cousin was now of more than middle age, and had nobody's word but
her own for the beauty which she said she once possessed. She was lean,
and yellow, and long in the tooth; all the red and white in all the
toy-shops in London could not make a beauty of her--Mr. Killigrew called
her the Sybil, the death's-head put up at the King's feast as a memento
mori, &c.--in fine, a woman who might be easy of conquest, but whom
only a very bold man would think of conquering. This bold man was Thomas
Esmond. He had a fancy to my Lord Castlewood's savings, the amount of
which rumor had very much exaggerated. Madame Isabel was said to have
Royal jewels of great value; whereas poor Tom Esmond's last coat but one
was in pawn.

My lord had at this time a fine house in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, nigh to
the Duke's Theatre and the Portugal ambassador's chapel. Tom Esmond,
who had frequented the one as long as he had money to spend among the
actresses, now came to the church as assiduously. He looked so lean and
shabby, that he passed without difficulty for a repentant sinner; and
so, becoming converted, you may be sure took his uncle's priest for a
director.

This charitable father reconciled him with the old lord, his uncle,
who a short time before would not speak to him, as Tom passed under my
lord's coach window, his lordship going in state to his place at Court,
while his nephew slunk by with his battered hat and feather, and the
point of his rapier sticking out of the scabbard--to his twopenny
ordinary in Bell Yard.

Thomas Esmond, after this reconciliation with his uncle, very soon began
to grow sleek, and to show signs of the benefits of good living and
clean linen. He fasted rigorously twice a week, to be sure; but he made
amends on the other days: and, to show how great his appetite was, Mr.
Wycherley said, he ended by swallowing that fly-blown rank old morsel
his cousin. There were endless jokes and lampoons about this marriage at
Court: but Tom rode thither in his uncle's coach now, called him father,
and having won could afford to laugh. This marriage took place very
shortly before King Charles died: whom the Viscount of Castlewood
speedily followed.

The issue of this marriage was one son, whom the parents watched with an
intense eagerness and care; but who, in spite of nurses and physicians,
had only a brief existence. His tainted blood did not run very long in
his poor feeble little body. Symptoms of evil broke out early on him;
and, part from flattery, part superstition, nothing would satisfy my
lord and lady, especially the latter, but having the poor little cripple
touched by his Majesty at his church. They were ready to cry out miracle
at first (the doctors and quack-salvers being constantly in attendance
on the child, and experimenting on his poor little body with every
conceivable nostrum) but though there seemed, from some reason, a
notable amelioration in the infant's health after his Majesty touched
him, in a few weeks afterward the poor thing died--causing the
lampooners of the Court to say, that the King, in expelling evil out of
the infant of Tom Esmond and Isabella his wife, expelled the life out of
it, which was nothing but corruption.

The mother's natural pang at losing this poor little child must have
been increased when she thought of her rival Frank Esmond's wife, who
was a favorite of the whole Court, where my poor Lady Castlewood was
neglected, and who had one child, a daughter, flourishing and beautiful,
and was about to become a mother once more.

The Court, as I have heard, only laughed the more because the poor lady,
who had pretty well passed the age when ladies are accustomed to have
children, nevertheless determined not to give hope up, and even when she
came to live at Castlewood, was constantly sending over to Hexton for
the doctor, and announcing to her friends the arrival of an heir. This
absurdity of hers was one amongst many others which the wags used to
play upon. Indeed, to the last days of her life, my Lady Viscountess had
the comfort of fancying herself beautiful, and persisted in blooming
up to the very midst of winter, painting roses on her cheeks long after
their natural season, and attiring herself like summer though her head
was covered with snow.

Gentlemen who were about the Court of King Charles, and King James, have
told the present writer a number of stories about this queer old lady,
with which it's not necessary that posterity should be entertained. She
is said to have had great powers of invective and, if she fought with
all her rivals in King James's favor, 'tis certain she must have had
a vast number of quarrels on her hands. She was a woman of an intrepid
spirit, and, it appears, pursued and rather fatigued his Majesty with
her rights and her wrongs. Some say that the cause of her leaving Court
was jealousy of Frank Esmond's wife: others, that she was forced to
retreat after a great battle which took place at Whitehall, between her
ladyship and Lady Dorchester, Tom Killigrew's daughter, whom the King
delighted to honor, and in which that ill-favored Esther got the better
of our elderly Vashti. But her ladyship, for her part, always averred
that it was her husband's quarrel, and not her own, which occasioned the
banishment of the two into the country; and the cruel ingratitude of the
Sovereign in giving away, out of the family, that place of Warden of
the Butteries and Groom of the King's Posset, which the two last Lords
Castlewood had held so honorably, and which was now conferred upon a
fellow of yesterday, and a hanger-on of that odious Dorchester creature,
my Lord Bergamot;* "I never," said my lady, "could have come to see his
Majesty's posset carried by any other hand than an Esmond. I should have
dashed the salver out of Lord Bergamot's hand, had I met him." And those
who knew her ladyship are aware that she was a person quite capable of
performing this feat, had she not wisely kept out of the way.

* Lionel Tipton, created Baron Bergamot, ann. 1686,
Gentleman Usher of the Back Stairs, and afterwards appointed
Warden of the Butteries and Groom of the King's Posset (on
the decease of George, second Viscount Castlewood),
accompanied his Majesty to St. Germain's, where he died
without issue. No Groom of the Posset was appointed by the
Prince of Orange, nor hath there been such an officer in any
succeeding reign.

Holding the purse-strings in her own control, to which, indeed, she
liked to bring most persons who came near her, Lady Castlewood could
command her husband's obedience, and so broke up her establishment
at London; she had removed from Lincoln's-Inn-Fields to Chelsey, to a
pretty new house she bought there; and brought her establishment, her
maids, lap-dogs, and gentlewomen, her priest, and his lordship her
husband, to Castlewood Hall, that she had never seen since she quitted
it as a child with her father during the troubles of King Charles the
First's reign. The walls were still open in the old house as they had
been left by the shot of the Commonwealthmen. A part of the mansion
was restored and furbished up with the plate, hangings, and furniture
brought from the house in London. My lady meant to have a triumphal
entry into Castlewood village, and expected the people to cheer as
she drove over the Green in her great coach, my lord beside her, her
gentlewomen, lap-dogs, and cockatoos on the opposite seat, six horses to
her carriage, and servants armed and mounted following it and preceding
it. But 'twas in the height of the No-Popery cry; the folks in the
village and the neighboring town were scared by the sight of her
ladyship's painted face and eyelids, as she bobbed her head out of the
coach window, meaning, no doubt, to be very gracious; and one old woman
said, "Lady Isabel! lord-a-mercy, it's Lady Jezebel!" a name by which
the enemies of the right honorable Viscountess were afterwards in the
habit of designating her. The country was then in a great No-Popery
fervor; her ladyship's known conversion, and her husband's, the priest
in her train, and the service performed at the chapel of Castlewood
(though the chapel had been built for that worship before any other was
heard of in the country, and though the service was performed in the
most quiet manner), got her no favor at first in the county or
village. By far the greater part of the estate of Castlewood had been
confiscated, and been parcelled out to Commonwealthmen. One or two of
these old Cromwellian soldiers were still alive in the village, and
looked grimly at first upon my Lady Viscountess, when she came to dwell
there.