I always considered my father--I speak of him in the past tense,
because we are now separated for ever; because he is henceforth as
dead to me as if the grave had closed over him--I always considered my
father to be the proudest man I ever knew; the proudest man I ever
heard of. His was not that conventional pride, which the popular
notions are fond of characterising by a stiff, stately carriage; by a
rigid expression of features; by a hard, severe intonation of voice;
by set speeches of contempt for poverty and rags, and rhapsodical
braggadocio about rank and breeding. My father's pride had nothing of
this about it. It was that quiet, negative, courteous, inbred pride,
which only the closest observation could detect; which no ordinary
observers ever detected at all.
Who that observed him in communication with any of the farmers on any
of his estates--who that saw the manner in which he lifted his hat,
when he accidentally met any of those farmers' wives--who that noticed
his hearty welcome to the man of the people, when that man happened to
be a man of genius--would have thought him proud? On such occasions as
these, if he had any pride, it was impossible to detect it. But seeing
him when, for instance, an author and a new-made peer of no ancestry
entered his house together--observing merely the entirely different
manner in which he shook hands with each--remarking that the polite
cordiality was all for the man of letters, who did not contest his
family rank with him, and the polite formality all for the man of
title, who did--you discovered where and how he was proud in an
instant. Here lay his fretful point. The aristocracy of rank, as
separate from the aristocracy of ancestry, was no aristocracy for
_him._ He was jealous of it; he hated it. Commoner though he was, he
considered himself the social superior of any man, from a baronet up
to a duke, whose family was less ancient than his own.
Among a host of instances of this peculiar pride of his which I could
cite, I remember one, characteristic enough to be taken as a sample of
all the rest. It happened when I was quite a child, and was told me by
one of my uncles now dead--who witnessed the circumstance himself, and
always made a good story of it to the end of his life.
A merchant of enormous wealth, who had recently been raised to the
peerage, was staying at one of our country houses. His daughter, my
uncle, and an Italian Abbe were the only guests besides. The merchant
was a portly, purple-faced man, who bore his new honours with a
curious mixture of assumed pomposity and natural good-humour. The Abbe
was dwarfish and deformed, lean, sallow, sharp-featured, with bright
bird-like eyes, and a low, liquid voice. He was a political refugee,
dependent for the bread he ate, on the money he received for teaching
languages. He might have been a beggar from the streets; and still my
father would have treated him as the principal guest in the house, for
this all-sufficient reason--he was a direct descendant of one of the
oldest of those famous Roman families whose names are part of the
history of the Civil Wars in Italy.
On the first day, the party assembled for dinner comprised the
merchant's daughter, my mother, an old lady who had once been her
governess, and had always lived with her since her marriage, the new
Lord, the Abbe, my father, and my uncle. When dinner was announced,
the peer advanced in new-blown dignity, to offer his arm as a matter
of course to my mother. My father's pale face flushed crimson in a
moment. He touched the magnificent merchant-lord on the arm, and
pointed significantly, with a low bow, towards the decrepit old lady
who had once been my mother's governess. Then walking to the other end
of the room, where the penniless Abbe was looking over a book in a
corner, he gravely and courteously led the little, deformed, limping
language-master, clad in a long, threadbare, black coat, up to my
mother (whose shoulder the Abbe's head hardly reached), held the door
open for them to pass out first, with his own hand; politely invited
the new nobleman, who stood half-paralysed between confusion and
astonishment, to follow with the tottering old lady on his arm; and
then returned to lead the peer's daughter down to dinner himself. He
only resumed his wonted expression and manner, when he had seen the
little Abbe--the squalid, half-starved representative of mighty barons
of the olden time--seated at the highest place of the table by my
mother's side.
It was by such accidental circumstances as these that you discovered
how far he was proud. He never boasted of his ancestors; he never even
spoke of them, except when he was questioned on the subject; but he
never forgot them. They were the very breath of his life; the deities
of his social worship: the family treasures to be held precious beyond
all lands and all wealth, all ambitions and all glories, by his
children and his children's children to the end of their race.
In home-life he performed his duties towards his family honourably,
delicately, and kindly. I believe in his own way he loved us all; but
we, his descendants, had to share his heart with his ancestors--we
were his household property as well as his children. Every fair
liberty was given to us; every fair indulgence was granted to us. He
never displayed any suspicion, or any undue severity. We were taught
by his direction, that to disgrace our family, either by word or
action, was the one fatal crime which could never be forgotten and
never be pardoned. We were formed, under his superintendence, in
principles of religion, honour, and industry; and the rest was left to
our own moral sense, to our own comprehension of the duties and
privileges of our station. There was no one point in his conduct
towards any of us that we could complain of; and yet there was
something always incomplete in our domestic relations.
It may seem incomprehensible, even ridiculous, to some persons, but it
is nevertheless true, that we were none of us ever on intimate terms
with him. I mean by this, that he was a father to us, but never a
companion. There was something in his manner, his quiet and unchanging
manner, which kept us almost unconsciously restrained. I never in my
life felt less at my ease--I knew not why at the time--than when I
occasionally dined alone with him. I never confided to him my schemes
for amusement as a boy, or mentioned more than generally my ambitious
hopes, as a young man. It was not that he would have received such
confidences with ridicule or severity, he was incapable of it; but
that he seemed above them, unfitted to enter into them, too far
removed by his own thoughts from such thoughts as ours. Thus, all
holiday councils were held with old servants; thus, my first pages of
manuscript, when I first tried authorship, were read by my sister, and
never penetrated into my father's study.
Again, his mode of testifying displeasure towards my brother or
myself, had something terrible in its calmness, something that we
never forgot, and always dreaded as the worst calamity that could
befall us.
Whenever, as boys, we committed some boyish fault, he never displayed
outwardly any irritation--he simply altered his manner towards us
altogether. We were not soundly lectured, or vehemently threatened, or
positively punished in anyway; but, when we came in contact with him,
we were treated with a cold, contemptuous politeness (especially if
our fault showed a tendency to anything mean or ungentlemanlike) which
cut us to the heart. On these occasions, we were not addressed by our
Christian names; if we accidentally met him out of doors, he was sure
to turn aside and avoid us; if we asked a question, it was answered in
the briefest possible manner, as if we had been strangers. His whole
course of conduct said, as though in so many words--You have rendered
yourselves unfit to associate with your father; and he is now making
you feel that unfitness as deeply as he does. We were left in this
domestic purgatory for days, sometimes for weeks together. To our
boyish feelings (to mine especially) there was no ignominy like it,
while it lasted.
I know not on what terms my father lived with my mother. Towards my
sister, his demeanour always exhibited something of the old-fashioned,
affectionate gallantry of a former age. He paid her the same attention
that he would have paid to the highest lady in the land. He led her
into the dining-room, when we were alone, exactly as he would have led
a duchess into a banqueting-hall. He would allow us, as boys, to quit
the breakfast-table before he had risen himself; but never before she
had left it. If a servant failed in duty towards _him,_ the servant
was often forgiven; if towards _her,_ the servant was sent away on the
spot. His daughter was in his eyes the representative of her mother:
the mistress of his house, as well as his child. It was curious to see
the mixture of high-bred courtesy and fatherly love in his manner, as
he just gently touched her forehead with his lips, when he first saw
her in the morning.
In person, my father was of not more than middle height. He was very
slenderly and delicately made; his head small, and well set on his
shoulders--his forehead more broad than lofty--his complexion
singularly pale, except in moments of agitation, when I have already
noticed its tendency to flush all over in an instant. His eyes, large
and gray, had something commanding in their look; they gave a certain
unchanging firmness and dignity to his expression, not often met with.
They betrayed his birth and breeding, his old ancestral prejudices,
his chivalrous sense of honour, in every glance. It required, indeed,
all the masculine energy of look about the upper part of his face, to
redeem the lower part from an appearance of effeminacy, so delicately
was it moulded in its fine Norman outline. His smile was remarkable
for its sweetness--it was almost like a woman's smile. In speaking,
too, his lips often trembled as women's do. If he ever laughed, as a
young man, his laugh must have been very clear and musical; but since
I can recollect him, I never heard it. In his happiest moments, in the
gayest society, I have only seen him smile.
There were other characteristics of my father's disposition and
manner, which I might mention; but they will appear to greater
advantage, perhaps, hereafter, connected with circumstances which
especially called them forth.