Chapter X. I Go To Cambridge, And Do But Little Good There
My lord, who said he should like to revisit the old haunts of his youth,kindly accompanied Harry Esmond in his first journey to Cambridge. Theirroad lay through London, where my lord viscount would also have Harry staya few days to show him the pleasures of the town, before he entered uponhis University studies, and whilst here Harry's patron conducted the youngman to my lady dowager's house at Chelsey near London: the kind lady atCastlewood having specially ordered that the young gentleman and the oldshould pay a respectful visit in that quarter.
Her ladyship the viscountess dowager occupied a handsome new house inChelsey, with a garden behind it, and facing the river, always a brightand animated sight with its swarms of sailors, barges, and wherries. Harrylaughed at recognizing in the parlour the well-remembered old piece of SirPeter Lely, wherein his father's widow was represented as a virginhuntress, armed with a gilt bow and arrow, and encumbered only with thatsmall quantity of drapery which it would seem the virgins in KingCharles's day were accustomed to wear.
My lady dowager had left off this peculiar habit of huntress when shemarried. But though she was now considerably past sixty years of age, Ibelieve she thought that airy nymph of the picture could still be easilyrecognized in the venerable personage who gave an audience to Harry andhis patron.
She received the young man with even more favour than she showed to theelder, for she chose to carry on the conversation in French, in which myLord Castlewood was no great proficient, and expressed her satisfaction atfinding that Mr. Esmond could speak fluently in that language. "'Twas theonly one fit for polite conversation," she condescended to say, "andsuitable to persons of high breeding."
My lord laughed afterwards, as the gentlemen went away, at his kinswoman'sbehaviour. He said he remembered the time when she could speak Englishfast enough, and joked in his jolly way at the loss he had had of such alovely wife as that.
My lady viscountess deigned to ask his lordship news of his wife andchildren; she had heard that Lady Castlewood had had the small-pox; shehoped she was not so _very_ much disfigured as people said.
At this remark about his wife's malady, my lord viscount winced and turnedred; but the dowager, in speaking of the disfigurement of the young lady,turned to her looking-glass and examined her old wrinkled countenance init with such a grin of satisfaction, that it was all her guests could doto refrain from laughing in her ancient face.
She asked Harry what his profession was to be; and my lord, saying thatthe lad was to take orders, and have the living of Castlewood when old Dr.Tusher vacated it; she did not seem to show any particular anger at thenotion of Harry's becoming a Church of England clergyman, nay, was ratherglad than otherwise, that the youth should be so provided for. She badeMr. Esmond not to forget to pay her a visit whenever he passed throughLondon, and carried her graciousness so far as to send a purse with twentyguineas for him, to the tavern at which my lord put up (the "Greyhound",in Charing Cross); and, along with this welcome gift for her kinsman, shesent a little doll for a present to my lord's little daughter Beatrix, whowas growing beyond the age of dolls by this time, and was as tall almostas her venerable relative.
After seeing the town, and going to the plays, my Lord Castlewood andEsmond rode together to Cambridge, spending two pleasant days upon thejourney. Those rapid new coaches were not established as yet, thatperformed the whole journey between London and the University in a singleday; however, the road was pleasant and short enough to Harry Esmond, andhe always gratefully remembered that happy holiday, which his kind patrongave him.
Mr. Esmond was entered a pensioner of Trinity College in Cambridge, towhich famous college my lord had also in his youth belonged. Dr. Montaguewas master at this time, and received my lord viscount with greatpoliteness: so did Mr. Bridge, who was appointed to be Harry's tutor. TomTusher, who was of Emmanuel College, and was by this time a junior soph,came to wait upon my lord, and to take Harry under his protection; andcomfortable rooms being provided for him in the great court close by thegate, and near to the famous Mr. Newton's lodgings, Harry's patron tookleave of him with many kind words and blessings, and an admonition to himto behave better at the University than my lord himself had ever done.
'Tis needless in these memoirs to go at any length into the particulars ofHarry Esmond's college career. It was like that of a hundred younggentlemen of that day. But he had the ill fortune to be older by a coupleof years than most of his fellow students; and by his previous solitarymode of bringing up, the circumstances of his life, and the peculiarthoughtfulness and melancholy that had naturally engendered, he was, in agreat measure, cut off from the society of comrades who were much youngerand higher-spirited than he. His tutor, who had bowed down to the ground,as he walked my lord over the college grass-plats, changed his behaviouras soon as the nobleman's back was turned, and was--at least Harry thoughtso--harsh and overbearing. When the lads used to assemble in their _greges_in hall, Harry found himself alone in the midst of that little flock ofboys; they raised a great laugh at him when he was set on to read Latin,which he did with the foreign pronunciation taught to him by his oldmaster, the Jesuit, than which he knew no other. Mr. Bridge, the tutor,made him the object of clumsy jokes, in which he was fond of indulging.The young man's spirit was chafed, and his vanity mortified; and he foundhimself, for some time, as lonely in this place as ever he had been atCastlewood, whither he longed to return. His birth was a source of shameto him, and he fancied a hundred slights and sneers from young and old,who, no doubt, had treated him better had he met them himself morefrankly. And as he looks back, in calmer days, upon this period of hislife, which he thought so unhappy, he can see that his own pride andvanity caused no small part of the mortifications which he attributed toothers' ill will. The world deals good-naturedly with good-natured people,and I never knew a sulky misanthropist who quarrelled with it, but it washe, and not it, that was in the wrong. Tom Tusher gave Harry plenty ofgood advice on this subject, for Tom had both good sense and good humour;but Mr. Harry chose to treat his senior with a great deal of superfluousdisdain and absurd scorn, and would by no means part from his darlinginjuries, in which, very likely, no man believed but himself. As forhonest Doctor Bridge, the tutor found, after a few trials of wit with thepupil, that the younger man was an ugly subject for wit, and that thelaugh was often turned against him. This did not make tutor and pupil anybetter friends; but had, so far, an advantage for Esmond, that Mr. Bridgewas induced to leave him alone; and so long as he kept his chapels, anddid the college exercises required of him, Bridge was content not to seeHarry's glum face in his class, and to leave him to read and sulk forhimself in his own chamber.
A poem or two in Latin and English, which were pronounced to have somemerit, and a Latin oration (for Mr. Esmond could write that languagebetter than pronounce it), got him a little reputation both with theauthorities of the University and amongst the young men, with whom hebegan to pass for more than he was worth. A few victories over theircommon enemy Mr. Bridge, made them incline towards him, and look upon himas the champion of their order against the seniors. Such of the lads as hetook into his confidence, found him not so gloomy and haughty as hisappearance led them to believe; and Don Dismallo, as he was called, becamepresently a person of some little importance in his college, and was, ashe believes, set down by the seniors there as rather a dangerouscharacter.
Don Dismallo was a stanch young Jacobite, like the rest of his family;gave himself many absurd airs of loyalty; used to invite young friends toburgundy, and give the king's health on King James's birthday; wore blackon the day of his abdication; fasted on the anniversary of King William'scoronation; and performed a thousand absurd antics, of which he smiles nowto think.
These follies caused many remonstrances on Tom Tusher's part, who wasalways a friend to the powers that be, as Esmond was always in oppositionto them. Tom was a Whig, while Esmond was a Tory. Tom never missed alecture, and capped the proctor with the pro
foundest of bows. No wonder hesighed over Harry's insubordinate courses, and was angry when the otherslaughed at him. But that Harry was known to have my lord viscount'sprotection, Tom no doubt would have broken with him altogether. But honestTom never gave up a comrade as long as he was the friend of a great man.This was not out of scheming on Tom's part, but a natural inclinationtowards the great. 'Twas no hypocrisy in him to flatter, but the bent ofhis mind, which was always perfectly good-humoured, obliging, and servile.
Harry had very liberal allowances, for his dear mistress of Castlewood notonly regularly supplied him, but the dowager at Chelsey made her donationannual, and received Esmond at her house near London every Christmas; but,in spite of these benefactions, Esmond was constantly poor; whilst 'twas awonder with how small a stipend from his father, Tom Tusher contrived tomake a good figure. 'Tis true that Harry both spent, gave, and lent hismoney very freely, which Thomas never did. I think he was like the famousDuke of Marlborough in this instance, who, getting a present of fiftypieces, when a young man, from some foolish woman who fell in love withhis good looks, showed the money to Cadogan in a drawer scores of yearsafter, where it had lain ever since he had sold his beardless honour toprocure it. I do not mean to say that Tom ever let out his good looks soprofitably, for nature had not endowed him with any particular charms ofperson, and he ever was a pattern of moral behaviour, losing noopportunity of giving the very best advice to his younger comrade; withwhich article, to do him justice, he parted very freely. Not but that hewas a merry fellow, too, in his way; he loved a joke, if by good fortunehe understood it, and took his share generously of a bottle if anotherpaid for it, and especially if there was a young lord in company to drinkit. In these cases there was not a harder drinker in the University thanMr. Tusher could be; and it was edifying to behold him, fresh shaved andwith smug face, singing out "Amen!" at early chapel in the morning. In hisreading, poor Harry permitted himself to go a-gadding after all the NineMuses, and so very likely had but little favour from any one of them;whereas Tom Tusher, who had no more turn for poetry than a ploughboy,nevertheless, by a dogged perseverance and obsequiousness in courting thedivine Calliope, got himself a prize, and some credit in the University,and a fellowship at his college, as a reward for his scholarship. In thistime of Mr. Esmond's life, he got the little reading which he ever couldboast of, and passed a good part of his days greedily devouring all thebooks on which he could lay hand. In this desultory way the works of mostof the English, French, and Italian poets came under his eyes, and he hada smattering of the Spanish tongue likewise, besides the ancientlanguages, of which, at least of Latin, he was a tolerable master.
Then, about midway in his University career, he fell to reading for theprofession to which worldly prudence rather than inclination called him,and was perfectly bewildered in theological controversy. In the course ofhis reading (which was neither pursued with that seriousness or thatdevout mind which such a study requires), the youth found himself, at theend of one month, a Papist, and was about to proclaim his faith; the nextmonth a Protestant, with Chillingworth; and the third a sceptic, withHobbs and Bayle. Whereas honest Tom Tusher never permitted his mind tostray out of the prescribed University path, accepted the Thirty-nineArticles with all his heart, and would have signed and sworn to othernine-and-thirty with entire obedience. Harry's wilfulness in this matter,and disorderly thoughts and conversation, so shocked and afflicted hissenior, that there grew up a coldness and estrangement between them, sothat they became scarce more than mere acquaintances, from having beenintimate friends when they came to college first. Politics ran high, too,at the University; and here, also, the young men were at variance. Tomprofessed himself, albeit a High Churchman, a strong King William's-man;whereas Harry brought his family Tory politics to college with him, towhich he must add a dangerous admiration for Oliver Cromwell, whose side,or King James's by turns, he often chose to take in the disputes which theyoung gentlemen used to hold in each other's rooms, where they debated onthe state of the nation, crowned and deposed kings, and toasted past andpresent heroes or beauties in flagons of college ale.
Thus, either from the circumstances of his birth, or the naturalmelancholy of his disposition, Esmond came to live very much by himselfduring his stay at the University, having neither ambition enough todistinguish himself in the college career, nor caring to mingle with themere pleasures and boyish frolics of the students, who were, for the mostpart, two or three years younger than he. He fancied that the gentlemen ofthe common-room of his college slighted him on account of his birth, andhence kept aloof from their society. It may be that he made the ill will,which he imagined came from them, by his own behaviour, which, as he looksback on it in after-life, he now sees was morose and haughty. At any rate,he was as tenderly grateful for kindness as he was susceptible of slightand wrong; and, lonely as he was generally, yet had one or two very warmfriendships for his companions of those days.
One of these was a queer gentleman that resided in the University, thoughhe was no member of it, and was the professor of a science scarcerecognized in the common course of college education. This was a Frenchrefugee officer, who had been driven out of his native country at the timeof the Protestant persecutions there, and who came to Cambridge, where hetaught the science of the small-sword, and set up a saloon-of-arms. Thoughhe declared himself a Protestant, 'twas said Mr. Moreau was a Jesuit indisguise; indeed, he brought very strong recommendations to the Toryparty, which was pretty strong in that University, and very likely was oneof the many agents whom King James had in this country. Esmond found thisgentleman's conversation very much more agreeable, and to his taste, thanthe talk of the college divines in the common-room; he never wearied ofMoreau's stories of the wars of Turenne and Conde, in which he had borne apart; and being familiar with the French tongue from his youth, and in aplace where but few spoke it, his company became very agreeable to thebrave old professor of arms, whose favourite pupil he was, and who madeMr. Esmond a very tolerable proficient in the noble science of _escrime_.
At the next term Esmond was to take his degree of Bachelor of Arts, andafterwards, in proper season, to assume the cassock and bands which hisfond mistress would have him wear. Tom Tusher himself was a parson and afellow of his college by this time; and Harry felt that he would verygladly cede his right to the living of Castlewood to Tom, and that his owncalling was in no way the pulpit. But as he was bound, before all thingsin the world, to his dear mistress at home, and knew that a refusal on hispart would grieve her, he determined to give her no hint of hisunwillingness to the clerical office; and it was in this unsatisfactorymood of mind that he went to spend the last vacation he should have atCastlewood before he took orders.