Charlotte Smith- Collected Poetical Works

by Charlotte Smith

  Fortune, as if weary of the long persecutions the Somerive family had experienced, seemed now resolved to make them amends by showering her favours upon every branch of it. Warwick had hardly rejoiced a week in the good fortune of Orlando, when he received a summons to attend General Tracy; who, quite exhausted by infirmity, saw the end of his life approaching, and sacrificed his resentment, which time had already considerably weakened. He was not, however, yet able to see Isabella; but his pride had been alarmed by the accounts he had received of Warwick’s distressed circumstances, and above all, of his having a play coming forward at one of the theatres; which, though it was to pass as the work of an unknown young author, with a suppositious name, was well known to be, and publickly spoken of as his. That his nephew – that the nephew of an Earl should become an author and write for support, was so distressing to the haughty spirit of the old soldier, that though he saw many examples of the same thing in people of equal rank, he could not bear it; and the very means his brother’s family took to irritate him against Warwick by informing him of his circumstance, contributed more than any thing else to the resolution he formed of seeing his nephew, and restoring him to his favour. Warwick immediately agreed to withdraw his play. His uncle burnt the will by which he had been disinherited, and died about five months afterwards, bequeathing to his two boys by Isabella, all his landed estates, after their father, who was to enjoy them, together with his great personal property, for his life.

  In the mean time the happy Orlando had conducted his lovely wife, his mother and his sisters, to Rayland-Hall; where, without spoiling that look of venerable antiquity for which it was so remarkable, he collected within it every comfort and every elegance of modern life. With what grateful transports did he now walk with Monimia over the park, and talk with her of their early pleasures and of their severe subsequent sufferings! and how sensible did these retrospects render them both of their present happiness!

  Orlando was only a few weeks in undisputed possession of his estate, before he presented to each of his sisters five thousand pounds; and, to add to his power of gratifying his mother, it happened that very soon after his arrival at Rayland Hall Mr Stockton died, the victim of that intemperance which exorbitant wealth and very little understanding had led him into. As he had no children, his very large property was divided among distant relations, his joint-heirs; Carloraine Castle was sold, pulled down by the purchaser, and the park converted into farms; and in this division of property, the house and estate at West Wolverton, formerly belonging to the Somerive family, were to be sold also. This his paternal house had been inhabited by farmers, under tenants of Stockton, when Orlando’s last melancholy visit was paid to it. He now purchased it; and putting it as nearly as he could into the same state as it was at the death of his father, he presented it to his mother with the estate around it; and thither she went to reside with her two youngest daughters, though they all occasionally paid visits to the Hall, particularly Selina, of whom Orlando and his Monimia were equally fond.

  Incapable of ingratitude, or of forgetting for a moment those to whom he had once been obliged, Orlando was no sooner happy in his restored fortune, than he thought of the widow of his military friend Fleming. To Fleming himself he owed it, that he existed at all; – to his widow, that an existence so preserved, had not been rendered a curse by the estrangement or loss of Monimia.

  One of the first uses therefore that he made of his assured prosperity, was, to remove from this respectable protectress of his beloved Monimia, the mortifications and inconveniences of very narrow circumstances. He wrote to her, entreating to see her at the Hall with her children, and that she would stay there at least till after the accession of happiness he was to expect in the autumn. Towards the middle of September, Mrs Fleming and her younger children arrived; and in a few days afterwards Monimia’s gallant young friend the sailor, to whom she owed her providential introduction to Mrs Fleming, unexpectedly made his appearance. He returned from a very successful cruize; he was made a lieutenant, and had obtained leave of absence for ten days, to comfort with these tidings the heart of his widowed mother; when, not finding her at her usual habitation in the New Forest, he had followed her to Rayland Hall, where he was a most welcome guest.

  This young man, who was in disposition and in figure the exact representative of his father, could not long be insensible of the charms of the gentle Selina; and he spoke to Orlando of the affection he had conceived for her, with his natural sincerity. Orlando, who never felt the value of what he possessed, so much as when it enabled him to contribute to the happiness of his friends, seized with avidity an offer which seemed so likely to constitute that of his beloved sister; and he had the happiness in a few days of discovering that the old sea officer, Fleming’s relation and patron, was so well pleased with his gallant behaviour in the engagement he had lately been in, that he had determined to make him his heir, and most readily consented to make a settlement upon him more than adequate to the fortune Orlando had given his sister; and it was settled that Selina and Lieutenant Fleming should in a few months be united.

  Orlando was very soon after made completely happy by the birth of a son, to whom he gave his own name, and who seemed to render his charming mother yet more dear to all around her. Every subsequent hour of the lives of Orlando and his Monimia was marked by some act of beneficence; and happy in themselves and in their connections, their gratitude to Heaven for the extensive blessings they enjoyed, was shewn in contributing to the cheerfulness of all around them.

  In the number of those, who felt the sunshine of their prosperity, and prayed for its continuance, no individual was more sincere in his joy, or more fervent in repeated expressions of it, than the useful old military mendicant, whose singular services Orlando rewarded by making him the tenant for life of a neat and comfortable lodge in his park – an arrangement that gratified both the dependent and his protector. – Orlando never passed through his own gate without being agreeably reminded, by the grateful alacrity of this contented servant, of his past afflictions, and his present felicity.

  The Banished Man

  CONTENTS

  VOLUME I.

  PREFACE.

  CHAPTER I.

  CHAPTER II.

  CHAPTER III.

  CHAPTER IV.

  CHAPTER V.

  CHAPTER VI.

  CHAPTER VII.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  CHAPTER IX.

  CHAPTER X.

  CHAPTER XI.

  CHAPTER XII.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  CHAPTER XV.

  CHAPTER XVI.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  CHAPTER XIX.

  CHAPTER XX.

  CHAPTER XXI.

  CHAPTER XXII.

  VOLUME II.

  CHAPTER I.

  CHAPTER II.

  CHAPTER III.

  CHAPTER IV.

  CHAPTER V.

  CHAPTER VI.

  CHAPTER VII.

  CHAPTER VII.

  CHAPTER IX.

  CHAPTER X.

  CHAPTER XI.

  CHAPTER XII.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  CHAPTER XIV.

  CHAPTER XV.

  CHAPTER XVI.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  CHAPTER XIX.

  CHAPTER XX.

  CHAPTER XXI.

  CHAPTER XXII.

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  VOLUME I.

  “Et de vrai la nouvelleté couste si cher jusqu’a cette heure a ce

  pauvre Estat — (et je ne scay si nous en sommes a la derniere

  enchere) qu’en tout et partout j’en quitte le party.”

  MONTAIGNE.

  PREFACE.

  THE Work I now offer to the Public, has been written under great disadvantages — and, might I quote in my apology for the defects of so trifling a composition as a Novel, the expression used in regard to his great and labor
ious work by Dr. Johnson, I might justly plead in excuse for those defects, that it has been composed “amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow” — at a time when long anxiety has ruined my health, and long oppression broken my spirits — at the end of more than ten years (a very great portion of human life), during which I have been compelled to provide for the necessities of a numerous family, almost entirely by my own labour — and when I am yet to look forward to no other prospect for the future but a repetition of exertions on my part; of injustice and evasion on the part of those who have detained the property of my children from them, or even to greater inconvenience and distress for them, when, quite worn out by my sufferings, I shall no more be able to assist them.

  By my friends I have often been congratulated, on the power I have possessed of warding off, in a great measure, the shafts of adversity from my children; but whatever gratification that reflection may afford, it is embittered when I consider that I have toiled only that others might rob — and that the more struggles I have made for their support, the greater has been the facility with which their trustees have given up their property to be plundered by others.

  Had I known ten years since, that instead of rescuing them from the mismanagement, it was the purpose of these Trustees to expose them to more direct malversation — had I known that instead of disposing of the property as the will of their Grandfather directs, it was these gentlemens’ determination to let their agent put the produce into his own pocket from year to year, without question, and without account — could I have foreseen that the creditors of their Grandfather’s estate to a very great amount, would have defied, instead of paying them, I should have done wrong to have attempted raising such a family as a gentleman’s family — I should have been wiser to have descended at once into the inferior walks of life, and have humbled them and myself to our fortunes: — but, when I have been told, from year to year, that their property would be restored; when I have been conjured to have patience yet a little longer, on this, or on that pretence, of unavoidable delay — it has seemed a part of my duty to continue my efforts for them; till at length every evasion being exhausted, and their affairs being more embroiled than when their trustees engaged in them, I am sent to Chancery by the very men, who ten years since, undertook the trust for the express purpose of saving them from that expence; and who have been telling me repeatedly, that such an appeal would be ruinous to my hopes of a speedy settlement. I am now to wait the tardy justice of a Court, which to avoid, I have suffered ten years of poverty and deprivation.

  The insults I have endured, the inconveniencies I have been exposed to, are not to be described — but let it not be a matter of surprise or blame, if the impression made by them on my mind affects my writings. In the strictures on a late publication of mine, some Review (I do not now recollect which) objected to the too frequent allusion I made in it to my own circumstances — I might quote in favour of this practice, the example of two of the greatest of our poets; but I will make no other defence than that which is lent me by a sister art: — The History Painter, gives to his figures the cast of countenance he is accustomed to see around him — the Landscape Painter derives his predominant ideas from the country in which he has been accustomed to study — a novelist, from the same causes, makes his drawing to resemble the characters he has had occasion to meet with, Thus, some have drawn alehouse-keepers and their wives — others, artists and professors — and of late we have seen whole books full of dukes and duchesses, lords and ladies — I have “fallen among thieves,” and I have made only sketches of them, because it is very probable that I may yet be under the necessity of giving the portraits at full length, and of writing under those portraits the names of the weazles , wolves, and vultures they are meant to describe — nay, even to detail at length the unexampled conduct of these persons who have completed me, being

  “Perplexed in the extreme,”

  to have recourse to my pen for a subsistence, and at length “My downright violence and storm of fortune “To trumpet to the world—”

  “When a man owns himself to have been in an error,” says Pope, “he does but tell you that he is wiser than he was.” Thus, if I had been convinced I was in an error in regard to what I formerly wrote on the politics of France, I should without hesitation avow it. I still think, however, that no native of England could help then rejoicing at the probability there was that the French nation would obtain, with very little bloodshed, that degree of freedom which we have been taught to value so highly. But I think also, that Englishmen must execrate the abuse of the name of liberty which has followed; they must feel it to be injurious to the real existence of that first of blessings, and must contemplate with mingled horror and pity, a people driven by terror to commit enormities which in the course of a few months have been more destructive than the despotism of ages — a people who, in place of a mild and well-meaning monarch, have given themselves up to the tyranny of monsters, compared with whom, Nero and Caligula are hardly objects of abhorrence.

  For the rest, I have in the present work, aimed less at the wonderful and extraordinary, than at connecting by a chain of possible circumstances, events, some of which have happened, and all of which might have happened to an individual, under the exigencies of banishment and proscription; but I beg leave to add, that my hero resembles in nothing but in merit, the emigrant gentleman who now makes part of my family; and that though some of the adventures are real, the characters are for the most part merely imaginary.

  CHARLOTTE SMITH.July 30, 1794.

  CHAPTER I.

  To me, nae afer, day or nicht

  Can e’ir be sweet or fair

  But sune, beneath sum draping tree

  Cauld death fall end my care.

  HARDIKNUTE.

  IT was a gloomy evening of October, 1792, the storm which had never ceased the whole day continued to howl round the castle of Rosenheim; and the night approached with ten fold dreariness. The Baroness de Rosenheim and Madame D’Alberg her daughter, and their attendants and servants, tho’ wearied by anxiety dared not think yet of repose. All day they had been listening to the sound of cannon, which a strong wind brought from the French frontier, whence they were seventeen miles distant. In the course of the last twenty-four hours they had received undoubted information that the French army, were following the Austrian and Prussian troops in their retreat, and would soon be in the dominions of the Emperor. The Baron de Rosenheim, a general in the Imperial service, was at Vienna; and being detained there by his personal attendance on the Emperor, Madame de Rosenheim knew she had little reason to expect his return, whatever might be the danger to his private property. Unwilling however to spread alarm by her example, or to abandon the castle to the care of servants, yet equally unwilling to await the arrival of the army of the enemy, she had sent off a courier to her husband several days before, requesting his directions how to act. She now hourly expected the return of the messenger, which could hardly be delayed longer than the present evening, unless he had fallen into the hands of the French, which was far from being improbable. Time wore away, but no courier returned, and fear and dismay gained every moment on the inhabitants of the castle of Rosenheim, where, besides the usual number of domestics, as many peasants were admitted, as could be spared from their families in the village beneath. A regular guard was mounted within the walls; while as night approached, each questioned his comrade as to the probable events of the next day. Some affected a contempt of the danger which they were far from feeling; and others apologized for the fears they could not conceal, by relating the cruelties that according to their apprehension, would be exercised by the French on their prisoners. The castle, situated on an eminence, and once strongly fortified, could make a but a feeble resistance now against the troops that had compelled the armies of the emperor and the king of Prussia to retreat; and it was whispered by some of those who apparently had undertaken its defence, that if the French appeared before it, it could not be too s
oon surrendered.

  Madame de Rosenheim, a woman of strong sense, who had seen a great deal of the world, possessed unusual presence of mind; and was not moved by the variety of fears with which people around her perplexed her. She knew she had taken every precaution possible against the evil that threatened her; and having done so, she awaited the event with all the fortitude of an elevated mind. Her daughters, from different motives, listened with apparent composure to the terrors of her women, and the fears of the vassals and domestics. Her soul, absorbed by the idea of the danger of her husband, a Lieutenant Colonel in the retreating army; she was too wretched to be much affected by any alarm for her personal safety. The hope that he might be safe, and soon return, or that, as he passed thro; the country, she might at least hear he was living and well, had hitherto sustained her; but the last information gave her reason to fear that he was among those who had fallen victims to disease on the desolated plains of the Champaign. No letter arrived from him, tho’ she had fired a peasant who undertook to convey a letter to him wherever he was. The man, who had engaged to return many days before, had not yet been heard of; and the clamours of his wife and his mother, who were several times at the castle lamenting themselves in the course of the day, had quite overwhelmed the spirits of Madame D’Alberg. It was in vain that her mother, Madame de Rosenheim, endeavoured to direct her thoughts a moment from the father to fix them on the children. The more dear they were to her, the more she feared the loss of their protector. They were yet too young to be sensible of their situation; yet the innocent questions of the two little girls, who were twins, and almost three years old, had served to harrass harass and affect the spirits of their mother, thro’ the day. Her son, yet an infant at the breast, was a still dearer object; but even to the preservation of them all, she was unable to attend, and leaving it to the Baroness, she passed the time of this dreary and portentous evening, in walking from room to room. Now sitting down a moment near her sleeping children; now, at every interval when the storm admitted it, listening for the arrival of the storm admitted it, listening for the arrival of the courier her mother had dispatched to Vienna; but with infinitely more solicitude for the return of the peasant.