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

by William Makepeace Thackeray

  CHAPTER XIII.

  I MEET AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE IN FLANDERS, AND FIND MY MOTHER'S GRAVE ANDMY OWN CRADLE THERE.

  Being one day in the Church of St. Gudule, at Brussels, admiring theantique splendor of the architecture (and always entertaining a greattenderness and reverence for the Mother Church, that hath been aswickedly persecuted in England as ever she herself persecuted in thedays of her prosperity), Esmond saw kneeling at a side altar an officerin a green uniform coat, very deeply engaged in devotion. Somethingfamiliar in the figure and posture of the kneeling man struck CaptainEsmond, even before he saw the officer's face. As he rose up, puttingaway into his pocket a little black breviary, such as priests use,Esmond beheld a countenance so like that of his friend and tutor ofearly days, Father Holt, that he broke out into an exclamation ofastonishment and advanced a step towards the gentleman, who was makinghis way out of church. The German officer too looked surprised when hesaw Esmond, and his face from being pale grew suddenly red. By this markof recognition, the Englishman knew that he could not be mistaken; andthough the other did not stop, but on the contrary rather hastily walkedaway towards the door, Esmond pursued him and faced him once more, asthe officer, helping himself to holy water, turned mechanically towardsthe altar, to bow to it ere he quitted the sacred edifice.

  "My Father!" says Esmond in English.

  "Silence! I do not understand. I do not speak English," says the otherin Latin.

  Esmond smiled at this sign of confusion, and replied in the samelanguage--"I should know my Father in any garment, black or white,shaven or bearded;" for the Austrian officer was habited quite in themilitary manner, and had as warlike a mustachio as any Pandour.

  He laughed--we were on the church steps by this time, passing throughthe crowd of beggars that usually is there holding up little trinketsfor sale and whining for alms. "You speak Latin," says he, "in theEnglish way, Harry Esmond; you have forsaken the old true Roman tongueyou once knew." His tone was very frank, and friendly quite; the kindvoice of fifteen years back; he gave Esmond his hand as he spoke.

  "Others have changed their coats too, my Father," says Esmond, glancingat his friend's military decoration.

  "Hush! I am Mr. or Captain von Holtz, in the Bavarian Elector's service,and on a mission to his Highness the Prince of Savoy. You can keep asecret I know from old times."

  "Captain von Holtz," says Esmond, "I am your very humble servant."

  "And you, too, have changed your coat," continues the other in hislaughing way; "I have heard of you at Cambridge and afterwards: we havefriends everywhere; and I am told that Mr. Esmond at Cambridge was asgood a fencer as he was a bad theologian." (So, thinks Esmond, my oldmaitre d'armes was a Jesuit, as they said.)

  "Perhaps you are right," says the other, reading his thoughts quite ashe used to do in old days; "you were all but killed at Hochstedt of awound in the left side. You were before that at Vigo, aide-de-camp tothe Duke of Ormonde. You got your company the other day after Ramillies;your general and the Prince-Duke are not friends; he is of the Webbs ofLydiard Tregoze, in the county of York, a relation of my Lord St. John.Your cousin, M. de Castlewood, served his first campaign this year inthe Guard; yes, I do know a few things, as you see."

  Captain Esmond laughed in his turn. "You have indeed a curiousknowledge," he says. A foible of Mr. Holt's, who did know more aboutbooks and men than, perhaps, almost any person Esmond had ever met,was omniscience; thus in every point he here professed to know, he wasnearly right, but not quite. Esmond's wound was in the right side, notthe left; his first general was General Lumley; Mr. Webb came out ofWiltshire, not out of Yorkshire; and so forth. Esmond did not think fitto correct his old master in these trifling blunders, but they servedto give him a knowledge of the other's character, and he smiled to thinkthat this was his oracle of early days; only now no longer infallible ordivine.

  "Yes," continues Father Holt, or Captain von Holtz, "for a man who hasnot been in England these eight years, I know what goes on in Londonvery well. The old Dean is dead, my Lady Castlewood's father. Do youknow that your recusant bishops wanted to consecrate him Bishopof Southampton, and that Collier is Bishop of Thetford by the sameimposition? The Princess Anne has the gout and eats too much; when theKing returns, Collier will be an archbishop."

  "Amen!" says Esmond, laughing; "and I hope to see your Eminence nolonger in jack-boots, but red stockings, at Whitehall."

  "You are always with us--I know that--I heard of that when you were atCambridge; so was the late lord; so is the young viscount."

  "And so was my father before me," said Mr. Esmond, looking calmly at theother, who did not, however, show the least sign of intelligence in hisimpenetrable gray eyes--how well Harry remembered them and their look!only crows' feet were wrinkled round them--marks of black old Time hadsettled there.

  Esmond's face chose to show no more sign of meaning than the Father's.There may have been on the one side and the other just the faintestglitter of recognition, as you see a bayonet shining out of an ambush;but each party fell back, when everything was again dark.

  "And you, mon capitaine, where have you been?" says Esmond, turningaway the conversation from this dangerous ground, where neither chose toengage.

  "I may have been in Pekin," says he, "or I may have been inParaguay--who knows where? I am now Captain von Holtz, in the service ofhis Electoral Highness, come to negotiate exchange of prisoners with hisHighness of Savoy."

  'Twas well known that very many officers in our army were well-affectedtowards the young king at St. Germains, whose right to the throne wasundeniable, and whose accession to it, at the death of his sister, byfar the greater part of the English people would have preferred, tothe having a petty German prince for a sovereign, about whose cruelty,rapacity, boorish manners, and odious foreign ways, a thousand storieswere current. It wounded our English pride to think that a shabbyHigh-Dutch duke, whose revenues were not a tithe as great as those ofmany of the princes of our ancient English nobility, who could not speaka word of our language, and whom we chose to represent as a sortof German boor, feeding on train-oil and sour-crout, with a bevy ofmistresses in a barn, should come to reign over the proudest and mostpolished people in the world. Were we, the conquerors of the GrandMonarch, to submit to that ignoble domination? What did the Hanoverian'sProtestantism matter to us? Was it not notorious (we were told and ledto believe so) that one of the daughters of this Protestant hero wasbeing bred up with no religion at all, as yet, and ready to be madeLutheran or Roman, according as the husband might be whom her parentsshould find for her? This talk, very idle and abusive much of it was,went on at a hundred mess-tables in the army; there was scarce an ensignthat did not hear it, or join in it, and everybody knew, or affected toknow, that the Commander-in-Chief himself had relations with his nephew,the Duke of Berwick ('twas by an Englishman, thank God, that we werebeaten at Almanza), and that his Grace was most anxious to restore theroyal race of his benefactors, and to repair his former treason.

  This is certain, that for a considerable period no officer in theDuke's army lost favor with the Commander-in-Chief for entertaining orproclaiming his loyalty towards the exiled family. When the Chevalier deSt. George, as the King of England called himself, came with the dukesof the French blood royal, to join the French army under Vendosme,hundreds of ours saw him and cheered him, and we all said he was likehis father in this, who, seeing the action of La Hogue fought betweenthe French ships and ours, was on the side of his native country duringthe battle. But this, at least the Chevalier knew, and every one knew,that, however well our troops and their general might be inclinedtowards the prince personally, in the face of the enemy there was noquestion at all. Wherever my Lord Duke found a French army, he wouldfight and beat it, as he did at Oudenarde, two years after Ramillies,where his Grace achieved another of his transcendent victories; and thenoble young prince, who charged gallantly along with the magnificentMaison-du-Roy, sent to compliment his conquerors after the action.

  In this ba
ttle, where the young Electoral Prince of Hanover behavedhimself very gallantly, fighting on our side, Esmond's dear GeneralWebb distinguished himself prodigiously, exhibiting consummate skilland coolness as a general, and fighting with the personal bravery ofa common soldier. Esmond's good-luck again attended him; he escapedwithout a hurt, although more than a third of his regiment was killed,had again the honor to be favorably mentioned in his commander's report,and was advanced to the rank of major. But of this action there islittle need to speak, as it hath been related in every Gazette, andtalked of in every hamlet in this country. To return from it to thewriter's private affairs, which here, in his old age, and at a distance,he narrates for his children who come after him. Before Oudenarde, afterthat chance rencontre with Captain von Holtz at Brussels, a space ofmore than a year elapsed, during which the captain of Jesuits and thecaptain of Webb's Fusileers were thrown very much together. Esmond hadno difficulty in finding out (indeed, the other made no secret of itto him, being assured from old times of his pupil's fidelity), thatthe negotiator of prisoners was an agent from St. Germains, and that hecarried intelligence between great personages in our camp and that ofthe French. "My business," said he--"and I tell you, both because I cantrust you and your keen eyes have already discovered it--is between theKing of England and his subjects here engaged in fighting the Frenchking. As between you and them, all the Jesuits in the world will notprevent your quarrelling: fight it out, gentlemen. St. George forEngland, I say--and you know who says so, wherever he may be."

  I think Holt loved to make a parade of mystery, as it were, and wouldappear and disappear at our quarters as suddenly as he used to returnand vanish in the old days at Castlewood. He had passes between botharmies, and seemed to know (but with that inaccuracy which belonged tothe good Father's omniscience) equally well what passed in the Frenchcamp and in ours. One day he would give Esmond news of a great festethat took place in the French quarters, of a supper of Monsieur deRohan's, where there was play and violins, and then dancing and masques;the King drove thither in Marshal Villars' own guinguette. Another dayhe had the news of his Majesty's ague: the King had not had a fit theseten days, and might be said to be well. Captain Holtz made a visit toEngland during this time, so eager was he about negotiating prisoners;and 'twas on returning from this voyage that he began to open himselfmore to Esmond, and to make him, as occasion served, at their variousmeetings, several of those confidences which are here set down alltogether.

  The reason of his increased confidence was this: upon going to London,the old director of Esmond's aunt, the dowager, paid her ladyship avisit at Chelsey, and there learnt from her that Captain Esmond wasacquainted with the secret of his family, and was determined never todivulge it. The knowledge of this fact raised Esmond in his old tutor'seyes, so Holt was pleased to say, and he admired Harry very much for hisabnegation.

  "The family at Castlewood have done far more for me than my own everdid," Esmond said. "I would give my life for them. Why should I grudgethe only benefit that 'tis in my power to confer on them?" The goodFather's eyes filled with tears at this speech, which to the otherseemed very simple: he embraced Esmond, and broke out into many admiringexpressions; he said he was a noble coeur, that he was proud of him, andfond of him as his pupil and friend--regretted more than ever that hehad lost him, and been forced to leave him in those early times, whenhe might have had an influence over him, have brought him into thatonly true church to which the Father belonged, and enlisted him in thenoblest army in which a man ever engaged--meaning his own society ofJesus, which numbers (says he) in its troops the greatest heroes theworld ever knew;--warriors brave enough to dare or endure anything, toencounter any odds, to die any death--soldiers that have won triumphs athousand times more brilliant than those of the greatest general; thathave brought nations on their knees to their sacred banner, the Cross;that have achieved glories and palms incomparably brighter than thoseawarded to the most splendid earthly conquerors--crowns of immortallight, and seats in the high places of heaven.

  Esmond was thankful for his old friend's good opinion, however littlehe might share the Jesuit-father's enthusiasm. "I have thought ofthat question, too," says he, "dear Father," and he took the other'shand--"thought it out for myself, as all men must, and contrive to dothe right, and trust to heaven as devoutly in my way as you in yours.Another six months of you as a child, and I had desired no better. Iused to weep upon my pillow at Castlewood as I thought of you, and Imight have been a brother of your order; and who knows," Esmond added,with a smile, "a priest in full orders, and with a pair of mustachios,and a Bavarian uniform?"

  "My son," says Father Holt, turning red, "in the cause of religion andloyalty all disguises are fair."

  "Yes," broke in Esmond, "all disguises are fair, you say; and alluniforms, say I, black or red,--a black cockade or a white one--or alaced hat, or a sombrero, with a tonsure under it. I cannot believe thatSt. Francis Xavier sailed over the sea in a cloak, or raised the dead--Itried, and very nearly did once, but cannot. Suffer me to do the right,and to hope for the best in my own way."

  Esmond wished to cut short the good Father's theology, and succeeded;and the other, sighing over his pupil's invincible ignorance, did notwithdraw his affection from him, but gave him his utmost confidence--asmuch, that is to say, as a priest can give: more than most do; for hewas naturally garrulous, and too eager to speak.

  Holt's friendship encouraged Captain Esmond to ask, what he long wishedto know, and none could tell him, some history of the poor motherwhom he had often imagined in his dreams, and whom he never knew. Hedescribed to Holt those circumstances which are already put down in thefirst part of this story--the promise he had made to his dear lord, andthat dying friend's confession; and he besought Mr. Holt to tell himwhat he knew regarding the poor woman from whom he had been taken.

  "She was of this very town," Holt said, and took Esmond to see thestreet where her father lived, and where, as he believed, she was born."In 1676, when your father came hither in the retinue of the late king,then Duke of York, and banished hither in disgrace, Captain ThomasEsmond became acquainted with your mother, pursued her, and made avictim of her; he hath told me in many subsequent conversations, whichI felt bound to keep private then, that she was a woman of great virtueand tenderness, and in all respects a most fond, faithful creature. Hecalled himself Captain Thomas, having good reason to be ashamed ofhis conduct towards her, and hath spoken to me many times with sincereremorse for that, as with fond love for her many amiable qualities, heowned to having treated her very ill: and that at this time his life wasone of profligacy, gambling, and poverty. She became with child ofyou; was cursed by her own parents at that discovery; though she neverupbraided, except by her involuntary tears, and the misery depicted onher countenance, the author of her wretchedness and ruin.

  "Thomas Esmond--Captain Thomas, as he was called--became engaged in agaming-house brawl, of which the consequence was a duel, and a wound sosevere that he never--his surgeon said--could outlive it. Thinking hisdeath certain, and touched with remorse, he sent for a priest of thevery Church of St. Gudule where I met you; and on the same day, afterhis making submission to our Church, was married to your mother a fewweeks before you were born. My Lord Viscount Castlewood, Marquis ofEsmond, by King James's patent, which I myself took to your father, yourlordship was christened at St. Gudule by the same cure who married yourparents, and by the name of Henry Thomas, son of E. Thomas, officierAnglois, and Gertrude Maes. You see you belong to us from your birth,and why I did not christen you when you became my dear little pupil atCastlewood.

  "Your father's wound took a favorable turn--perhaps his conscience waseased by the right he had done--and to the surprise of the doctorshe recovered. But as his health came back, his wicked nature, too,returned. He was tired of the poor girl, whom he had ruined; andreceiving some remittance from his uncle, my lord the old viscount, thenin England, he pretended business, promised return, and never saw yourpoor mother more.

  "He
owned to me, in confession first, but afterwards in talk before youraunt, his wife, else I never could have disclosed what I now tell you,that on coming to London he writ a pretended confession to poor GertrudeMaes--Gertrude Esmond--of his having been married in England previously,before uniting himself with her; said that his name was not Thomas;that he was about to quit Europe for the Virginian plantations, where,indeed, your family had a grant of land from King Charles the First;sent her a supply of money, the half of the last hundred guineas he had,entreated her pardon, and bade her farewell.

  "Poor Gertrude never thought that the news in this letter might beuntrue as the rest of your father's conduct to her. But though a youngman of her own degree, who knew her history, and whom she liked beforeshe saw the English gentleman who was the cause of all her misery,offered to marry her, and to adopt you as his own child, and give youhis name, she refused him. This refusal only angered her father, who hadtaken her home; she never held up her head there, being the subjectof constant unkindness after her fall; and some devout ladies of heracquaintance offering to pay a little pension for her, she went into aconvent, and you were put out to nurse.

  "A sister of the young fellow who would have adopted you as his sonwas the person who took charge of you. Your mother and this person werecousins. She had just lost a child of her own, which you replaced, yourown mother being too sick and feeble to feed you; and presently yournurse grew so fond of you, that she even grudged letting you visit theconvent where your mother was, and where the nuns petted the littleinfant, as they pitied and loved its unhappy parent. Her vocation becamestronger every day, and at the end of two years she was received as asister of the house.

  "Your nurse's family were silk-weavers out of France, whither theyreturned to Arras in French Flanders, shortly before your mother tookher vows, carrying you with them, then a child of three years old. 'Twasa town, before the late vigorous measures of the French king, full ofProtestants, and here your nurse's father, old Pastoureau, he withwhom you afterwards lived at Ealing, adopted the reformed doctrines,perverting all his house with him. They were expelled thence by theedict of his most Christian Majesty, and came to London, and set uptheir looms in Spittlefields. The old man brought a little money withhim, and carried on his trade, but in a poor way. He was a widower; bythis time his daughter, a widow too, kept house for him, and his sonand he labored together at their vocation. Meanwhile your father hadpublicly owned his conversion just before King Charles's death (in whomour Church had much such another convert), was reconciled to my LordViscount Castlewood, and married, as you know, to his daughter.

  "It chanced that the younger Pastoureau, going with a piece of brocadeto the mercer who employed him, on Ludgate Hill, met his old rivalcoming out of an ordinary there. Pastoureau knew your father at once,seized him by the collar, and upbraided him as a villain, who hadseduced his mistress, and afterwards deserted her and her son. Mr.Thomas Esmond also recognized Pastoureau at once, besought him to calmhis indignation, and not to bring a crowd round about them; and badehim to enter into the tavern, out of which he had just stepped, whenhe would give him any explanation. Pastoureau entered, and heard thelandlord order the drawer to show Captain Thomas to a room; it was byhis Christian name that your father was familiarly called at his tavernhaunts, which, to say the truth, were none of the most reputable.

  "I must tell you that Captain Thomas, or my Lord Viscount afterwards,was never at a loss for a story, and could cajole a woman or a dun witha volubility, and an air of simplicity at the same time, of which manya creditor of his has been the dupe. His tales used to gatherverisimilitude as he went on with them. He strung together fact afterfact with a wonderful rapidity and coherence. It required, saving yourpresence, a very long habit of acquaintance with your father to knowwhen his lordship was l----,--telling the truth or no.

  "He told me with rueful remorse when he was ill--for the fear of deathset him instantly repenting, and with shrieks of laughter when he waswell, his lordship having a very great sense of humor--how in a half anhour's time, and before a bottle was drunk, he had completely succeededin biting poor Pastoureau. The seduction he owned to: that he could nothelp: he was quite ready with tears at a moment's warning, and shed themprofusely to melt his credulous listener. He wept for your mother evenmore than Pastoureau did, who cried very heartily, poor fellow, as mylord informed me; he swore upon his honor that he had twice sent moneyto Brussels, and mentioned the name of the merchant with whom it waslying for poor Gertrude's use. He did not even know whether she hada child or no, or whether she was alive or dead; but got these factseasily out of honest Pastoureau's answers to him. When he heard thatshe was in a convent, he said he hoped to end his days in one himself,should he survive his wife, whom he hated, and had been forced by acruel father to marry; and when he was told that Gertrude's son wasalive, and actually in London, 'I started,' says he; 'for then, damme,my wife was expecting to lie in, and I thought should this old Put, myfather-in-law, run rusty, here would be a good chance to frighten him.'

  "He expressed the deepest gratitude to the Pastoureau family for thecare of the infant: you were now near six years old; and on Pastoureaubluntly telling him, when he proposed to go that instant and see thedarling child, that they never wished to see his ill-omened face againwithin their doors; that he might have the boy, though they should allbe very sorry to lose him; and that they would take his money, theybeing poor, if he gave it; or bring him up, by God's help, as they hadhitherto done, without: he acquiesced in this at once, with a sigh,said, 'Well, 'twas better that the dear child should remain withfriends who had been so admirably kind to him;' and in his talk tome afterwards, honestly praised and admired the weaver's conduct andspirit; owned that the Frenchman was a right fellow, and he, the Lordhave mercy upon him, a sad villain.

  "Your father," Mr. Holt went on to say, "was good-natured with his moneywhen he had it; and having that day received a supply from his uncle,gave the weaver ten pieces with perfect freedom, and promised himfurther remittances. He took down eagerly Pastoureau's name and place ofabode in his table-book, and when the other asked him for his own,gave, with the utmost readiness, his name as Captain Thomas, New Lodge,Penzance, Cornwall; he said he was in London for a few days only onbusiness connected with his wife's property; described her as a shrew,though a woman of kind disposition; and depicted his father as a Cornishsquire, in an infirm state of health, at whose death he hoped forsomething handsome, when he promised richly to reward the admirableprotector of his child, and to provide for the boy. 'And by Gad, sir,'he said to me in his strange laughing way, 'I ordered a piece of brocadeof the very same pattern as that which the fellow was carrying, andpresented it to my wife for a morning wrapper, to receive company aftershe lay in of our little boy.'

  "Your little pension was paid regularly enough; and when your fatherbecame Viscount Castlewood on his uncle's demise, I was employed to keepa watch over you, and 'twas at my instance that you were brought home.Your foster-mother was dead; her father made acquaintance with a womanwhom he married, who quarrelled with his son. The faithful creature cameback to Brussels to be near the woman he loved, and died, too, a fewmonths before her. Will you see her cross in the convent cemetery? TheSuperior is an old penitent of mine, and remembers Soeur Marie Madeleinefondly still."

  Esmond came to this spot in one sunny evening of spring, and saw,amidst a thousand black crosses, casting their shadows across the grassymounds, that particular one which marked his mother's resting-place.Many more of those poor creatures that lay there had adopted that samename, with which sorrow had rebaptized her, and which fondly seemed tohint their individual story of love and grief. He fancied her in tearsand darkness, kneeling at the foot of her cross, under which her careswere buried. Surely he knelt down, and said his own prayer there, notin sorrow so much as in awe (for even his memory had no recollection ofher), and in pity for the pangs which the gentle soul in life hadbeen made to suffer. To this cross she brought them; for this heavenlybridegroom she exchange
d the husband who had wooed her, the traitorwho had left her. A thousand such hillocks lay round about, the gentledaisies springing out of the grass over them, and each bearing itscross and requiescat. A nun, veiled in black, was kneeling hard by, at asleeping sister's bedside (so fresh made, that the spring had scarcehad time to spin a coverlid for it); beyond the cemetery walls you hadglimpses of life and the world, and the spires and gables of the city. Abird came down from a roof opposite, and lit first on a cross, and thenon the grass below it, whence it flew away presently with a leaf in itsmouth: then came a sound as of chanting, from the chapel of thesisters hard by; others had long since filled the place which poor MaryMagdeleine once had there, were kneeling at the same stall, and hearingthe same hymns and prayers in which her stricken heart had foundconsolation. Might she sleep in peace--might she sleep in peace; and we,too, when our struggles and pains are over! But the earth is the Lord'sas the heaven is; we are alike his creatures here and yonder. I took alittle flower off the hillock and kissed it, and went my way, likethe bird that had just lighted on the cross by me, back into the worldagain. Silent receptacle of death; tranquil depth of calm, out of reachof tempest and trouble! I felt as one who had been walking below thesea, and treading amidst the bones of shipwrecks.