CHAPTER CVII.

THE AUTHOR INTRODUCES HIS READERS TO A RETIRED DUCHESS, AND SUGGESTS A PARALLEL BETWEEN HER GRACE AND THE RETIRED TOBACCONIST.

In midst of plenty only to embrace
    Calm patience, is not worthy of your praise;
But he that can look sorrow in the face
    And not be daunted, he deserves the bays.
This is prosperity, where'er we find
A heavenly solace in an earthly mind.
                                                           HUGH CROMPTON.

There is a very pleasing passage in a letter of the Duchess of Somerset's, written in the unreserved intimacy of perfect friendship, without the slightest suspicion that it would ever find its way to the press. “'Tis true my dear Lady Luxborough,” she says, “times are changed with us, since no walk was long enough, or exercise painful enough to hurt us, as we childishly imagined; yet after a ball, or a masquerade, have we not come home very well contented to pull off our ornaments and fine clothes, in order to go to rest? Such methinks is the reception we naturally give to the warnings of our bodily decays; they seem to undress us by degrees, to prepare us for a rest that will refresh us far more powerfully than any night's sleep could do. We shall then find no weariness from the fatigues which either our bodies or our minds have undergone; but all tears shall be wiped from our eyes, and sorrow and crying and pain shall be no more: we shall then without weariness move in our new vehicles, and transport ourselves from one part of the skies to another, with much more ease and velocity, than we could have done in the prime of our strength, upon the fleetest horses, the distance of a mile. This cheerful prospect enables us to see our strength fail, and await the tokens of our approaching dissolution with a kind of awful pleasure. I will ingenuously own to you, dear Madam, that I experience more true happiness in the retired manner of life that I have embraced, than I ever knew from all the splendour or flatteries of the world. There was always a void; they could not satisfy a rational mind: and at the most heedless time of my youth I well remember that I always looked forward with a kind of joy to a decent retreat when the evening of life should make it practicable.”

“If one only anticipates far enough, one is sure to find comfort,” said a young moralizer, who was then for the first time experiencing some of the real evils of life. A sense of its vanities taught the Duchess that wisdom, before she was visited with affliction. Frances, wife and widow of Algernon seventh Duke of Somerset, was a woman who might perhaps have been happier in a humbler station, but could not have been more uncorrupted by the world. Her husband inherited from his father the honours of the Seymour, from his mother those of the Percy family: but Lord Beauchamp,—

Born with as much nobility as would,
Divided, serve to make ten noblemen
Without a herald; but with so much spirit
And height of soul, as well might furnish twenty,—1

Lord Beauchamp I say, the son thus endowed, who should have succeeded to these accumulated honours, died on his travels at Bologna of the small-pox, in the flower of his youth. His afflicted mother in reply to a letter of consolation expressed herself thus: “The dear lamented son I have lost was the pride and joy of my heart: but I hope I may be the more easily excused for having looked on him in this light, since he was not so from the outward advantages he possessed, but from the virtues and rectitude of his mind. The prospects which flattered me in regard to him, were not drawn from his distinguished rank, or from the beauty of his person; but from the hopes that his example would have been serviceable to the cause of virtue, and would have shown the younger part of the world that it was possible to be cheerful without being foolish or vicious, and to be religious without severity or melancholy. His whole life was one uninterrupted course of duty and affection to his parents, and when he found the hand of death upon him, his only regret was to think on the agonies which must rend their hearts: for he was perfectly contented to leave the world, as his conscience did not reproach him with any presumptuous sins, and he hoped his errors would be forgiven. Thus he resigned his innocent soul into the hands of his merciful Creator, on the evening of his birthday, which completed him nineteen.”

1 SHIRLEY.

In another letter she says, “when I lost my dear, and by me ever-lamented son, every faculty to please (if ever I were possessed of any such) died with him. I have no longer any cheerful thoughts to communicate to my friends; but as the joy and pride of my heart withers in his grave, my mind is continually haunting those mansions of the dead, and is but too inattentive to what passes in a world where I have still duties and attachments which I ought to be, and I hope I may truly say, I am, thankful for. But I enjoy all these blessings with trembling and anxiety, for after my dear Beauchamp, what human things can appear permanent? Youth, beauty, virtue, health, were not sufficient to save him from the hand of death, and who then can think themselves secure? These are the melancholy considerations which generally entertain my waking hours; though sometimes I am able to view the bright side of my fate, and ask myself for whom I grieve? only for myself? how narrow an affection does this imply! Could he have lived long as my fondest wish desired, what could I have asked at the end of that term more than the assurance that he should be placed where I humbly hope, and confidently trust, he is, beyond the reach of sorrow, sin, or sickness?”

I have said that this Duchess, the Eusebia of Dr. Watts' Miscellanies, and once more known as the Cleora of her then famous friend Mrs. Rowe's Letters, might perhaps have been happier in a humbler station; but she could not have been more meek and more amiable, nor have possessed in a greater degree the christian virtue of humility. She was one of the daughters and coheiresses of the Honourable Henry Thynne, and was of the bed-chamber to the Princess of Wales, in which office she continued after that Princess became Queen Caroline. It was through her intercession that Savage's life was spared. When the Queen being prejudiced against that wretched man had refused to hear any application in his behalf, “she engaged in it,” says Johnson, “with all the tenderness that is excited by pity, and all the zeal that is kindled by generosity; an advocate,” he calls her, “of rank too great to be rejected unheard, and of virtue too eminent to be heard without being believed.” Her husband's father was commonly called the proud Duke of Somerset,—an odious designation, which could not have been obtained unless it had been richly deserved: but there are some evil examples which incidentally produce a good effect, and Lord Beauchamp whose affability and amiable disposition endeared him to all by whom he was known, was perhaps more carefully instructed in the principles of Christian humility, and more sensible of their importance and their truth, because there was in his own family so glaring an instance of the folly and hatefulness of this preposterous and ridiculous sin. “It is a most terrible thing for his parents,” says Horace Walpole, “Lord Beauchamp's death; if they were out of the question, one could not be sorry for such a mortification to the pride of old Somerset. He has written the most shocking letter imaginable to poor Lord Hartford, telling him that it is a judgment upon him for all his undutifulness, and that he must always look upon himself as the cause of his son's death. Lord Hartford is as good a man as lives, and has always been most unreasonably ill-treated by that old tyrant.” The Duke was brute enough to say that his mother had sent him abroad to kill him. It was not his mother's fault that he had not been secured, as far as human precautions avail against the formidable disease of which he died. Three years before that event she said in one of her letters, “Inoculation is at present more in fashion than ever; half my acquaintance are shut up to nurse their children, grandchildren, nephews or nieces. I could be content notwithstanding the fine weather to stay in town upon the same account, if I were happy enough to see my son desire it; but that is not the case, and at his age it must either be a voluntary act or left undone.”

The proud Duke lived to the great age of eighty-six, and his son died little more than twelvemonths after him, leaving an irreproachable name. The Duchess survived her son ten years, and her husband four. Upon the Duke's death the Seymour honours were divided between two distant branches of that great and ancient house; those of the Percys devolved to his only daughter and heiress the Lady Elizabeth, then wife of Sir Hugh Smithson, in whom the Dukedom of Northumberland was afterwards revived. The widow passed the remainder of her days at a seat near Colnbrook, which her husband had purchased from Lord Bathurst, and had named Percy Lodge: Richkings was its former appellation. Pope in one of his letters calls it “Lord Bathurst's extravagante bergerie,” in allusion to the title of an old mock-romance. “The environs,” says the Duchess, “perfectly answer to that title, and come nearer to my idea of a scene in Arcadia than any place I ever saw. The house is old but convenient, and when you are got within the little paddock it stands on, you would believe yourself an hundred miles from London, which I think a great addition to its beauty.” Moses Brown wrote a poem upon it, the Duke and Duchess having appointed him their laureate for the nonce; but though written by their command, it was not published till after the death of both, and was then inscribed to her daughter, at that time Countess of Northumberland. If Olney had not a far greater poet to boast of, it might perhaps have boasted of Moses Brown. Shenstone's Ode on Rural Elegance, which is one of his latest productions, related especially to this place. He inscribed it to the Duchess, and communicated it to her in manuscript through their mutual friend Lady Luxborough, sister to Bolingbroke, who possessed much of her brother's talents, but nothing of his cankered nature.

The Duchess was a great admirer of Shenstone's poetry, but though pleased with the poem, and gratified by the compliment, she told him that it had given her some pain, and requested that wherever her name or that of Percy Lodge occurred, he would oblige her by leaving a blank, without suspecting her of an affected or false modesty, for to that accusation she could honestly plead not guilty. The idea he had formed of her character, he had taken, she said, from a partial friend whose good nature had warped her judgment. The world in general since they could find no fault in his poem, would blame the choice of the person to whom it was inscribed, and draw mortifying comparisons between the ideal lady, and the real one. “But I,” said she, “have a more impartial judge to produce than either my friend or the world,—and that is my own heart, which though it may flatter me I am not quite so faulty as the world would represent, at the same time loudly admonishes me that I am still further from the valuable person Lady Luxborough has drawn you in to suppose me. I hope you will accept these reasons as the genuine and most sincere sentiments of my mind, which indeed they are, though accompanied with the most grateful sense of the honour you designed me.”

I have said something, and have yet more to say of a retired Tobacconist; and I will here describe the life of a retired Duchess, of the same time and country, drawn from her own letters. Some of Plutarch's parallels are less apposite, and none of them in like manner equally applicable to those of high station and those of low degree.

The duchess had acquired that taste for landscape gardening, the honour of introducing which belongs more to Shenstone than to any other individual, and has been properly awarded to him by D'Israeli, one of the most just and generous of critical authors. Thus she described the place of her retreat when it came into their possession: “It stands in a little paddock of about a mile and a half round; which is laid out in the manner of a French park, interspersed with woods and lawns. There is a canal in it about twelve hundred yards long, and proportionably broad, which has a stream continually running through it, and is deep enough to carry a pleasure-boat. It is well stocked with carp and tench; and at its upper end there is a green-house, containing a good collection of orange, myrtle, geranium, and oleander trees. This is a very agreeable room, either to drink tea, play at cards, or sit in with a book on a summer's evening. In one of the woods (through all which there are winding paths), there is a cave; which though little more than a rude heap of stones, is not without charms for me. A spring gushes out at the back of it; which, falling into a basin (whose brim it overflows), passes along a channel in the pavement where it loses itself. The entrance to this recess is overhung with periwinkle, and its top is shaded with beeches, large elms, and birch. There are several covered benches, and little arbours interwoven with lilacs, woodbines, seringas and laurels; and seats under shady trees, disposed all over the park. One great addition to the pleasure of living here, is the gravelly soil; which after a day of rain (if it holds up only for two or three hours), one may walk over without being wet through one's shoes: and there is one gravel walk that encompasses the whole. We propose to make an improvement, by adding to the present ground a little pasture farm which is just without the pale, because there is a very pretty brook of clear water which runs through the meadows to supply our canal, and whose course winds in such a manner that it is almost naturally a serpentine river. I am afraid I shall have tired you with the description of what appear to me beauties in our little possession; yet I cannot help adding one convenience that attends it:—this is, the cheap manner in which we keep it: since it only requires a flock of sheep, who graze the lawns fine; and whilst these are feeding, their shepherd cleans away any weeds that spring up in the gravel, and removes dry leaves or broken branches that would litter the walks.”

“On the spot where the green-house now stands, there was formerly a chapel, dedicated to St. Leonard; who was certainly esteemed as a tutelar saint of Windsor Forest and its purlieus, for the place we left was originally a hermitage founded in honour of him. We have no relics of the saint; but we have an old covered bench with many remains of the wit of my lord Bathurst's visitors, who inscribed verses upon it. Here is the writing of Addison, Pope, Prior, Congreve, Gay, and, what he esteemed no less, of several fine ladies. I cannot say that the verses answered my expectation from such authors; we have however all resolved to follow the fashion, and to add some of our own to the collection. That you may not be surprized at our courage for daring to write after such great names, I will transcribe one of the old ones, which I think as good as any of them:

Who set the trees shall he remember
That is in haste to fell the timber?
What then shall of thy woods remain,
Except the box that threw the main?

There has been only one added as yet by our company, which is tolerably numerous at present. I scarcely know whether it is worth reading or not:

By Bathurst planted, first these shades arose;
Prior and Pope have sung beneath these boughs:
Here Addison his moral theme pursued,
And social Gay has cheer'd the solitude.

There is one walk that I am extremely partial to, and which is rightly called the Abbey-walk, since it is composed of prodigiously high beech-trees, that form an arch through the whole length, exactly resembling a cloister. At the end is a statue; and about the middle a tolerably large circle, with Windsor chairs round it: and I think, for a person of contemplative disposition, one would scarcely find a more venerable shade in any poetical description.”

She had amused herself with improving the grounds of Percy Lodge before her husband's death, as much for his delight as her own.

“Those shady elms, my favourite trees,
      Which near my Percy's window grew,
  (Studious his leisure hours to please)
      I decked last year for smell and shew;
  To each a fragrant woodbine bound,
  And edged with pinks the verdant mound.

  Nor yet the areas left ungraced
      Betwixt the borders and each tree;
  But on them damask roses placed,
      Which rising in a just degree,
  Their glowing lustre through the green
  Might add fresh beauties to the scene.”

Afterwards when it became her own by the Duke's bequest, and her home was thereby fixed upon the spot of earth which she would have chosen for herself, the satisfaction which she took in adding to it either beauty or convenience was enhanced by the reflection that in adorning it she was at the same time shewing her value for the gift, and her gratitude to the lamented giver. “Every thing,” said she, “both within and without the house reminds me of my obligations to him; and I cannot turn my eyes upon any object which is not an object of his goodness to me.—And as I think it a duty while it pleases God to continue us here, not to let ourselves sink into a stupid and unthankful melancholy, I endeavour to find out such entertainments as my retirement, and my dear Lord's unmerited bounty will admit of.”

                 And oh the transport, most allied to song,
                     In some fair villa's peaceful bound,
                 To catch soft hints from nature's tongue
                     And bid Arcadia bloom around:
                 Whether we fringe the sloping hill,
                     Or smoothe below the verdant mead;
                 Whether we break the falling rill,
                     Or thro' meandering mazes lead;
                 Or in the horrid bramble's room
                 Bid careless groups of roses bloom;
                     Or let some sheltered lake serene
Reflect flowers, woods, and spires, and brighten all the scene.

                 O sweet disposal of the rural hour!
                     O beauties never known to cloy!
                 While worth and genius haunt the favoured bower,
                     And every gentle breast partakes the joy.
                 While Charity at eve surveys the swain,
                     Enabled by these toils to cheer
                     A train of helpless infants dear,
                     Speed whistling home across the plain;
                 Sees vagrant Luxury, her handmaid grown,
                     For half her graceless deeds atone,
And hails the bounteous work, and ranks it with her own.2

2 SHENSTONE.

The Duchess was too far advanced in life to find any of that enjoyment in her occupations, which her own poet described in these stanzas, and which he felt himself only by an effort of reflection. But if there was not the excitement of hope, there was the satisfaction of giving useful employment to honest industry. “When one comes,” said she, “to the last broken arches of Mirza's bridge, rest from pain must bound our ambition, for pleasure is not to be expected in this world. I have no more notion of laying schemes to be executed six months, than I have six years hence; and this I believe helps to keep my spirits in an even state of cheerfulness to enjoy the satisfactions that present themselves, without anxious solicitude about their duration. As our journey seems approaching towards the verge of life, is it not more natural to cast our eyes to the prospect beyond it, than by a retrospective view to recall the troublesome trifles that ever made our road difficult or dangerous? Methinks it would be imitating Lot's wife (whose history is not recorded as an example for us to follow) to want to look back upon the miserable scene we are so near escaping from.”

In another letter to the same old friend she says, “I have a regular, and I hope a religious family. My woman, though she has not lived with me quite three years, had before lived twenty-three betwixt Lord Grantham's and Lady Cowper's: my housekeeper has been a servant as long: the person who takes in my accounts, pays my bills, and overlooks the men within doors, has been in the family thirteen years; and the other, who has lived ten, has the care of the stables and every thing without. I rise at seven, but do not go down till nine when the bell rings and my whole family meet me at chapel. After prayers we go to breakfast; any friend who happens to be there, myself, and my chaplain, have ours in the little library; the others in their respective eating rooms. About eleven if the weather permits, we go to walk in the park, or take the air in the coach; but if it be too bad for either we return to our various occupations. At three we dine, sit perhaps near an hour afterwards, then separate till we meet at eight for prayers; after which we adjourn again to the library, where somebody reads aloud (unless some stranger comes who chooses cards), until half past nine, when we sup, and always part before eleven. This to the fine would sound a melancholy monastic life; and I cannot be supposed to have chosen it from ignorance of the splendour and gaiety of a court, but from a thorough experience that they can give no solid happiness; and I find myself more calmly pleased in my present way of living, and more truly contented, than I ever was in the bloom and pomp of my youth. I am no longer dubious what point to pursue. There is but one proper for the decline of life, and indeed the only one worth the anxiety of a rational creature at any age: but how do the fire of youth, and flattery of the world blind our eyes, and mislead our fancies, after a thousand imaginary pleasures which are sure to disappoint us in the end!”

The Duchess was a person whose moral constitution had not been injured by the atmosphere of a court. But though she kept aloof from its intrigues and had acquired even a distaste for its vanities, she retained always an affectionate regard for Queen Caroline's memory. “I should have been glad,” she says to Lady Pomfret, “to have shared your reverence and have indulged my own at Blansfelden, whilst you were overlooking the fields and the shades where our late mistress had passed the first scenes of her life, before the cares of royalty had clouded the natural vivacity of her temper, or the disguise which greatness is often forced to wear had veiled any of her native goodness; and certainly she had a greater stock of both than is often found in any rank.” She could never think of her without a sigh, she said. The most amiable mistress she calls her that ever adorned a court, and so fitted to charm in society, that it was impossible not to grudge her to that life which involved her in cares and encompassed her with such a cloud of different people, that her real lustre could not always reach those who perhaps had the most pleasure in it.

Before the loss of her son (from which the Duchess never entirely recovered), her spirits had been affected by the state of her husband's health. “The many solitary hours I pass in a day,” she says, “and the melancholy employment of attending a person in his sufferings, to whom I owe every happiness I enjoy, cannot furnish me with many smiling ideas relating to this world.” The country in its wintry appearances accorded with her feelings, “where,” said she, “every thing around instructs me that decay is the lot of all created beings; where every tree spreads out its naked arms to testify the solemn truth, which I thank heaven I feel no pain in assenting to. It has long been my fixed opinion, that in the latter part of life, when the duties owing to a family no longer call upon us to act on the public stage of life, it is not only more decent, but infinitely more eligible to live in an absolute retirement. However this is not the general opinion of the world, and therefore I conclude that it is better it is not so, since Providence undoubtedly orders better for us than we are able to do for ourselves.”

During the latter years of her life, however, she enjoyed that absolute retirement which was her heart's desire. But the peaceful mansion in which this wise and amiable woman passed her latter years was, after her decease, inhabited by one of those men who insulted public decency by the open and ostentatious profligacy of their lives. Mrs. Carter writing from the Castle Inn at Marlborough, which had not long before been one of the residences of the Seymour family, says, “this house I consider with great respect and veneration, not without a strong mixture of regret, that what was once the elegant abode of virtue and genius, and honoured by the conversation of the Duchess of Somerset and Mrs. Rowe, should now resound with all the disorderly and riotous clamour of an inn. And yet its fate is more eligible than that of Percy Lodge, as it stands the chance of receiving indifferently good and bad people, and is not destined to be the constant reception of shocking profligate vice.”