The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., a Colonel in the Service of Her Majesty Queen Anne

by William Makepeace Thackeray

  CHAPTER X.

  I GO TO CAMBRIDGE, AND DO BUT LITTLE GOOD THERE.

  Mr 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 Harrystay a few days to show him the pleasures of the town before he enteredupon his university studies, and whilst here Harry's patron conductedthe young man to my Lady Dowager's house at Chelsey near London:the kind lady at Castlewood having specially ordered that the younggentleman and the old should 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.Harry laughed at recognizing in the parlor the well-remembered oldpiece of Sir Peter Lely, wherein his father's widow was represented asa virgin huntress, armed with a gilt bow-and-arrow, and encumbered onlywith that small quantity of drapery which it would seem the virgins inKing Charles'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 favor 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 satisfactionat finding that Mr. Esmond could speak fluently in that language. "'Twasthe only 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 hiskinswoman's behavior. He said he remembered the time when she couldspeak English fast enough, and joked in his jolly way at the loss he hadhad of such a lovely 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 andturned red; but the Dowager, in speaking of the disfigurement of theyoung lady, turned to her looking-glass and examined her old wrinkledcountenance in it with such a grin of satisfaction, that it was all herguests could do to 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 oldDr. Tusher vacated it, she did not seem to show any particular anger atthe notion of Harry's becoming a Church of England clergyman, nay, wasrather glad than otherwise, that the youth should be so provided for.She bade Mr. Esmond not to forget to pay her a visit whenever he passedthrough London, and carried her graciousness so far as to send a pursewith twenty guineas for him, to the tavern at which my lord put up (the"Greyhound," in Charing Cross); and, along with this welcome gift forher kinsman, she sent a little doll for a present to my lord's littledaughter Beatrix, who was growing beyond the age of dolls by this time,and was as tall almost as 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 asingle day; however, the road was pleasant and short enough to HarryEsmond, and he always gratefully remembered that happy holiday which hiskind patron gave him.

  Mr. Esmond was entered a pensioner of Trinity College in Cambridge,to which famous college my lord had also in his youth belonged. Dr.Montague was master at this time, and received my Lord Viscount withgreat politeness: so did Mr. Bridge, who was appointed to be Harry'stutor. Tom Tusher, who was of Emanuel College, and was by this timea junior soph, came to wait upon my lord, and to take Harry under hisprotection; and comfortable rooms being provided for him in the greatcourt close by the gate, and near to the famous Mr. Newton's lodgings,Harry's patron took leave of him with many kind words and blessings,and an admonition to him to behave better at the University than my lordhimself had ever done.

  'Tis needless in these memoirs to go at any length into the particularsof Harry 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 acouple of years than most of his fellow-students; and by his previoussolitary mode of bringing up, the circumstances of his life, and thepeculiar thoughtfulness and melancholy that had naturally engendered, hewas, in a great measure, cut off from the society of comrades who weremuch younger and higher-spirited than he. His tutor, who had boweddown to the ground, as he walked my lord over the college grass-plats,changed his behavior as soon as the nobleman's back was turned, andwas--at least Harry thought so--harsh and overbearing. When the ladsused to assemble in their greges in hall, Harry found himself alone inthe midst of that little flock of boys; they raised a great laugh athim when he was set on to read Latin, which he did with the foreignpronunciation taught to him by his old master, the Jesuit, than whichhe knew no other. Mr. Bridge, the tutor, made him the object of clumsyjokes, in which he was fond of indulging. The young man's spirit waschafed, and his vanity mortified; and he found himself, for some time,as lonely in this place as ever he had been at Castlewood, whither helonged to return. His birth was a source of shame to him, and he fancieda hundred slights and sneers from young and old, who, no doubt, hadtreated him better had he met them himself more frankly. And as he looksback, in calmer days, upon this period of his life, which he thought sounhappy, he can see that his own pride and vanity caused no small partof the mortifications which he attributed to other's ill will. The worlddeals good-naturedly with good-natured people, and I never knew a sulkymisanthropist who quarrelled with it, but it was he, and not it, thatwas in the wrong. Tom Tusher gave Harry plenty of good advice on thissubject, for Tom had both good sense and good humor; but Mr. Harry choseto treat his senior with a great deal of superfluous disdain and absurdscorn, and would by no means part from his darling injuries, in which,very likely, no man believed but himself. As for honest Doctor Bridge,the tutor found, after a few trials of wit with the pupil, that theyoung man was an ugly subject for wit, and that the laugh was oftenturned against him. This did not make tutor and pupil any betterfriends; but had, so far, an advantage for Esmond, that Mr. Bridge wasinduced to leave him alone; and so long as he kept his chapels, and didthe 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 uponhim as the champion of their order against the seniors. Such of the ladsas he took into his confidence found him not so gloomy and haughty ashis appearance led them to believe; and Don Dismallo, as he was called,became presently a person of some little importance in his college, andwas, as he believes, set down by the seniors there as rather a dangerouscharacter.

  Don Dismallo was a staunch young Jacobite, like the rest of his family;gave himself many absurd airs of loyalty; used to invite young friendsto Burgundy, and give the King's health on King James's birthday; woreblack on the day of his abdication; fasted on the anniversary of KingWilliam's coronation; and performed a thousand absurd antics, of whichhe smiles now to think.

  These follies caused many remonstrances on Tom Tusher's part, whowas always a friend to the powers that be, as Esmond was always inopposition to them. Tom was a Whig, while Esmond was a Tory. Tom nevermissed a lecture, and capped the proctor with
the profoundest of bows.No wonder he sighed over Harry's insubordinate courses, and was angrywhen the others laughed at him. But that Harry was known to have myLord Viscount's protection, Tom no doubt would have broken with himaltogether. But honest Tom never gave up a comrade as long as he was thefriend of a great man. This was not out of scheming on Tom's part, buta natural inclination towards the great. 'Twas no hypocrisy in himto flatter, but the bent of his mind, which was always perfectlygood-humored, obliging, and servile.

  Harry had very liberal allowances, for his dear mistress of Castlewoodnot only regularly supplied him, but the Dowager of Chelsey made herdonation annual, and received Esmond at her house near London everyChristmas; but, in spite of these benefactions, Esmond was constantlypoor; whilst 'twas a wonder with how small a stipend from his father TomTusher contrived to make a good figure. 'Tis true that Harry both spent,gave, and lent his money very freely, which Thomas never did. I think hewas like the famous Duke of Marlborough in this instance, who, gettinga present of fifty pieces, when a young man, from some foolish womanwho fell in love with his good looks, showed the money to Cadogan in adrawer scores of years after, where it had lain ever since he had soldhis beardless honor to procure it. I do not mean to say that Tom everlet out his good looks so profitably, for nature had not endowed himwith any particular charms of person, and he ever was a pattern of moralbehavior, losing no opportunity of giving the very best advice to hisyounger comrade; with which article, to do him justice, he parted veryfreely. Not but that he was a merry fellow, too, in his way; he loved ajoke, if by good fortune he understood it, and took his share generouslyof a bottle if another paid for it, and especially if there was a younglord in company to drink it. In these cases there was not a harderdrinker in the University than Mr. Tusher could be; and it was edifyingto behold him, fresh shaved and with smug face, singing out "Amen!"at early chapel in the morning. In his reading, poor Harry permittedhimself to go a-gadding after all the Nine Muses, and so very likely hadbut little favor from any one of them; whereas Tom Tusher, who hadno more turn for poetry than a ploughboy, nevertheless, by a doggedperseverance and obsequiousness in courting the divine Calliope, gothimself a prize, and some credit in the University, and a fellowshipat his college, as a reward for his scholarship. In this time of Mr.Esmond's life, he got the little reading which he ever could boast of,and passed a good part of his days greedily devouring all the books onwhich he could lay hand. In this desultory way the works of most of theEnglish, 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 courseof his 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, withHobbes 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 thismatter, and disorderly thoughts and conversation, so shocked andafflicted his senior, that there grew up a coldness and estrangementbetween them, so that they became scarce more than mere acquaintances,from having been intimate friends when they came to college first.Politics ran high, too, at the University; and here, also, the youngmen were at variance. Tom professed himself, albeit a high-churchman,a strong King William's-man; whereas Harry brought his family Torypolitics to college with him, to which he must add a dangerousadmiration for Oliver Cromwell, whose side, or King James's by turns,he often chose to take in the disputes which the young gentlemen usedto hold in each other's rooms, where they debated on the state of thenation, crowned and deposed kings, and toasted past and present heroesand 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 withthe mere pleasures and boyish frolics of the students, who were, forthe most part, two or three years younger than he. He fancied that thegentlemen of the common-room of his college slighted him on account ofhis birth, and hence kept aloof from their society. It may be thathe made the ill will, which he imagined came from them, by his ownbehavior, which, as he looks back on it in after life, he now seeswas morose and haughty. At any rate, he was as tenderly grateful forkindness as he was susceptible of slight and wrong; and, lonely ashe was generally, yet had one or two very warm friendships for hiscompanions of those days.

  One of these was a queer gentleman that resided in the University,though he 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 thetime of the Protestant persecutions there, and who came to Cambridge,where he taught the science of the small-sword, and set up asaloon-of-arms. Though he declared himself a Protestant, 'twas saidMr. Moreau was a Jesuit in disguise; indeed, he brought very strongrecommendations to the Tory party, which was pretty strong in thatUniversity, and very likely was one of the many agents whom King Jameshad in this country. Esmond found this gentleman's conversation verymuch more agreeable and to his taste than the talk of the collegedivines in the common-room; he never wearied of Moreau's stories ofthe wars of Turenne and Conde, in which he had borne a part; and beingfamiliar with the French tongue from his youth, and in a place wherebut few spoke it, his company became very agreeable to the brave oldprofessor of arms, whose favorite pupil he was, and who made Mr. Esmonda 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 anda fellow 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 hisown calling was in no way to the pulpit. But as he was bound, beforeall things in the world, to his dear mistress at home, and knew that arefusal on his part would grieve her, he determined to give her nohint of his unwillingness to the clerical office: and it was in thisunsatisfactory mood of mind that he went to spend the last vacation heshould have at Castlewood before he took orders.