Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/538

 other English, whom Napoleon treated with a scandalous rigour. In return he taught them the economy of pit coal, and its use in that part, wood being so scarce as to be sold by the pound. He enjoyed himself so much and was so happy, that he protested his apothecary's bill during three years was but ten shillings. The "only canker" that disturbed him was the loss of his dear relatives at home; and rather touchingly, and even poetically, he complained how his friends "are in turn, at different hours of the night and day, present to my heartfelt remembrance, a new face or voice enchains the ideas of resemblance to one or other, and the momentary eve of a night's sleep transports me amongst you, and following dreams let me enjoy the momentary happiness of your visionary society." Still, when we think of his many years' absence, in a great degree voluntary, one is inclined to recal the rough cynic's answer, in Boswell, to the anxious father, who was mourfullymournfully [sic] bewailing the possible condition of his son at school: "Then why don't you take a post-chaise and go to him?"

At last, however, in the year 1814, and after the death, in a duel, of the faithful and affectionate Irish brother who had so long managed his affairs, the exile returned to his native land and to his estates, after an absence of nearly thirty years. He was a thorough foreigner, and some said a perfect French atheist. He had passed through a deal of privation and had borne some imprisonment. He was now re-established, and in 1818 was married and returned member for his county.

The surprise of meeting after that long interval approached the dramatic. The great Irish brothers—one was about six feet three in height, rude, rough, boisterous, noisy, trained in the wildest school of wild Irish manners—were ready to burst with laughter at the strange Frenchified relation who had returned to them. A small, dandified, perhaps "mincing" petit maître, that read French poetry, and was powdered à la mode. They came on him with quite the shock of a cold shower-bath. He shrank away from their noisy roysterings, which to him seemed "low," coarse, and even appalling, while they, with a good-natured contempt, determined to make something "like a man" of him, teach him to drink to his tenth tumbler, like other Irish gentlemen, to fight duels, pass through roaring elections, and the other agrémens of Irish life. These well-meant attempts succeeded only partially, and their rough education and rude jokes seemed to have had the effect only of inspiring him with a lasting horror and a rooted dislike.

The lady he selected for his wife was a woman of strong will and purpose, "of a haughty, irritable, and violent temper," "sometimes approaching to phrensy," "jealous of the slightest interference, disappointment, or control;" in short, precisely the sort of ambitious heroine who ought to figure in a will case. And here it may be noticed that a little consideration of will cases, and indeed causes of other descriptions, often discover an almost Sallustian tone of description, etching out characters, &c., in most unexpected quarters; witnesses and letter-writers frequently describing features of human character and human incidents with a graphic power and an unaffected force of language that many a professional writer might envy.

This heroine, then, who possessed great attractions, it was insisted, laid herself out from the day of the marriage for the one aim of being mistress of Tintern Abbey during her husband's life, as well as after his death. The game was rather a difficult one: there were innumerable relations to play against—squireens, clergymen, all watching and eager. To the future heir—a nephew—she had a special animosity; and there were, of course, the usual schemes to reach the well-watched testator—ambuscades with the assumption that he was under intimidation, and before her, dare not exhibit his feelings. Such a situation, from its very uncertainty, from the speculation as to the contents of the coming will, which, after all, their fond hopes led them to believe would be in their favour—a situation protracted through many long years—must be one painfully dramatic. But as time wore on, and he grew old, she took some measures of jealous precaution. He was not allowed to read one of his letters without her previous permission, and frequently, perusal. Some she burned. She gave him her orders haughtily, and, it was said, used to strengthen her behests by such bold language as, "By G—d it shall be done!" But this and much more duly sworn to, may have been an invention on the side of the inflamed relations, driven frantic by what was impending. Her favourite theme to him was a harsh disparagement of their merits, "frequently (but falsely) stating to him that they were swindlers, drunkards, and blackguards, in order to lower them in his estimation," the naïveté of which inuendo is highly characteristic. It was charged, too, that she commenced her nefarious plot by setting her husband against his mother, a poor old lady of ninety-seven, who was ordered out of his house in Molesworth-street, where she had long lived rent free, at the suggestion, it was said, of her imperious daughter-in-law.