Читать книгу The Land of Bondage - John Bloundelle-Burton - Страница 8

And this was the end of it. To be buried at the public expense!

To be buried at the public expense, although a Viscount in the Peerage of Ireland and the heir to a Marquisate in the Peerage of England.

The pity of it, the pity that it should come to this!

A few years before, viz., in the fourth year of the reign of our late Queen Anne, and the year of Our Lord, 1706, no one who had then known Gerald, Lord Viscount St. Amande, would have ventured to foretell so evil an ending for him, since he and life were well at evens with each other. Ever to have his purse fairly well filled with crowns if not guineas had been his lot in those days, as it had also been to have good credit at the fashioners, to be able to treat his friends to a fine turtle or a turbot at the coffee-houses he used, to take a hand at ombra or at whisk, to play at pass-dice or at billiards, and to be always carefully bedeck't in the best of satins and velvets and laces, and to eat and drink of the best. For to eat and drink well was ever his delight, as it was to frequent port clubs and Locketts or Rummers, to empty his glass as soon as it was filled, to toss down beaker after beaker, while, meantime, he would sing jovial chaunts and songs of none too delicate a nature, fling a handful of loose silver to the servers and waitresses, and ogle each of the latter who was comely or buxom.

Yet now he was being buried at the public expense!

How had it come about? I must set it down so that you shall understand. During this period of wassailing and carousing, of ridottos at St. James's and dances at lower parts of the town, for he affected even the haunts at Rotherhithe in his search for pleasure, as he did those in the common parts of Dublin when he was in that, his native, city--and during the time when he varied his pursuits by sometimes frequenting the playhouses where he would regard fondly the ladies at one moment and amuse himself by kicking a shop-boy or poor clerk, or scrivener, at another, and by sometimes retiring into the country for shooting, or hunting, or fighting a main, his heart had become entendered towards a young and beautiful girl, one Louise Sheffield.

He had met her in the best class of company which he frequented, for, although bearing no rank herself, she was of the best blood and race, being indeed a niece to the Duke of Walton. Later on you shall see this girl, grown into a woman, full of sorrows and vexations and despite, and judge of her for yourself by that which I narrate. Suffice it, therefore, if I write down the fact that she repaid his love with hers in return and that, although she knew this handsome gallant, Gerald, Lord St. Amande to be no better than a wastrel, a tosspot and a gamer, she was willing to become his wife and to endow him with a small but comfortable fortune that she possessed. Alas! that she should ever have done so, for from that marriage arose all the calamities, the sufferings and the heartaches that are to be chronicled in this narrative.

From the commencement all went awry. George, Marquis of Amesbury, to whom this giddy, unthinking Lord St. Amande was kinsman and heir, did hate with a most fervent hatred John, Duke of Walton, they having quarrelled at the succession of the Queen, when the Marquis espoused the cause of her Majesty, while the Duke was all for proclaiming the Pretender; and thus the whole of Lord St. Amande's family was against the match. The ladies, especially his mother and sister, threw their most bitter rancour into the scales against the bride, they endeavoured to poison his mind against her by insinuating evil conduct on her part previous to her marriage, and they persuaded the Marquis to threaten my lord with a total withdrawal of his favour, as well as a handsome allowance that he made annually to his heir, if he did not part from her.

At first he would not listen to one word against her--he had not owned his bride long enough to tire of her; also some of her fortune was not yet wasted. Yet gradually, as he continued in his evil courses, becoming still fonder of his glass and rioting, and as her fortune declined at the same time that he felt bitterly the pinch occasioned by the withdrawal of the Marquis's allowance, he did begin to hearken to the reports spread broadcast against his young wife.

She had borne him a child, dead, during his absence in Ireland, and it was after this period that he began to give credence to the hints against her; and thus it was that while he was still in that country he sent to his mother a power of attorney, authorising her to sue to the Lords for a divorce, as his representative. This petition, however, their Lordships refused, dismissing the plea with costs against him, saying that there was no truth in his allegations, and stigmatising them as scandalous.

And then he learnt that he had indeed wronged her most bitterly and, turning upon his mother and sister, went over to England where, upon his knees, he besought his wife for her pardon, weeping many tears of contrition as he did so, while she, loving him ever in spite of all, forgave him as a woman will forgive. Then they passed back to Ireland where, she being again about to become a mother, he cherished her with great care and tenderness, and watched over her until she had presented him with a son.

Yet, such was this man's sometime evil temper and brutality of nature that, on the Duke of Walton refusing to add more money to the gift he had already made her--the original fortune being now quite dissipated--he banished her from his house and she, flying to England, was forced to take refuge with the Duke and, worse still, to leave her child behind.

Now, therefore, you shall see how it befell that, at last, he owed even his coffin and his grave to charity.

When she was gone from him, he, loving the child in his strange way, proclaimed it as his heir, put it to nurse in the neighbourhood, and invariably spoke of it as the future Lord St. Amande and Marquis of Amesbury. But, unfortunately for this poor offspring of his now dead love, he became enamoured of a horrid woman, a German queen, who had come over to England at the time of the succession of King George--for over twenty years had now passed since his marriage with the Duke of Walton's niece--a woman who had set up in Dublin as a court fashioner, lace merchant and milliner. But she had no thought for him, being in truth much smitten with his younger brother, Robert, and she persuaded him that to relieve himself of the dire poverty into which he had fallen, it would be best that he should give out that his son was dead and secrete him, so that he and Robert, who would then be regarded by all men as the heir, could proceed to dispose of the estate. And my lord's intellects being now bemused with much drink and other disordered methods of life, besides that he was in bitter poverty, agreed to do this and gave out that the son was dead and that he and his brother were about to break the entail.

And even this villainy, which might have seemed likely to ward off his penury for at least some years, did nothing of the sort, but, indeed, only brought him nearer to the pauper's grave to which he was hurrying. So greedy was he for money--as also was his brother, who, knowing that while the boy lived he could never succeed to the estates, was naturally very willing to dispose of them at any price--that large properties were in very truth sold for not more than, and indeed rarely exceeded, half a year's purchase! How long was it to be imagined that the half of such sums would last this poor spendthrift who no sooner felt his purse heavy with the guineas in it than he made haste to lighten it by odious debaucheries and wassailings and carousings? His clothes, his laces, nay, even his wigs, his swords, and his general wearing apparel had long since gone to the brokers, so that, at the time of selling the properties, he was to be seen going about Dublin with a rusty cutbob upon his once handsome head, a miserable ragged coat that had once been blue but had turned to green with wear, ornamented with Brandenburgh buttons, upon his back, and a common spadroon reposing on his thigh and sticking half a foot out of its worn-out sheath, instead of the jewel-hilted swords he had once used to carry.

To conclude, he fell sick about this time--sick of his debauches, sick, it may be, from recollections of the evil he had done his innocent wife and child, and sick, perhaps, from the remembrance of how he had wasted his life and impaired the prospects of his rightful heir. Ill and sick unto death, with not one loving hand to minister to him, no loving voice to say a word of comfort to him, and dying in a garret, to pay for which the woman who rented it to him had now taken his last coat. His wife was in England, sick herself and living on a small trifle left her by her uncle, now dead; his son, sixteen years of age, had escaped from the custody of a ruffian named O'Rourke, by whom he had been kept closely confined and reported dead, and, of all men, most avoided his unnatural father. What time his brother Robert would not have given him a crust to prolong his life and was indeed looking forward to his death with glee and eager anticipation.

So he died, with none by his pallet but the hag who owned the garret and who was waiting for the breath to be out of his body to send that body to the parish mortuary. So he died, sometimes fancying that he was back in the bagnios he had found so pleasant, sometimes weeping for a sight of his child and for the wrongs he had done that child, sometimes, in his delirium, bellowing forth the profligate songs that such creatures as D'Urfey and Shadwell had made popular amongst the depraved. And sometimes, also, moaning for his Louise to come back and pity him, and forgive him once again in memory of the sweetness of their early love.

Now, therefore, you see how this once handsome lordling--and handsome as Apollo he was in his younger days, I have heard his wife say, though wicked as Satan--was brought so low that, from ruffling it with the best, he came to dying in a filthy garret and being buried at the public expense. Alas, alas! who can help but weep and wring their hands when they think on such a thing, and when they reflect on all the evil that Gerald, Lord St. Amande, wrought in his life and the bitter heritage of woe he left behind to those whom he should, instead, have loved and cherished, and made good provision for.

'Twas a dull November day, in the year of our Lord, 1727, and the first of the reign of our present King George II., that the funeral procession--if so poor and mean an interment as this may be so termed--passed over Essex Bridge on its way to the burying ground where the body was to be deposited. Yet how think you a future peer of the realm should be taken to his last home, how think you one of his rank should be taken farewell of? This man had once held the King's commission, he having carried the colours of his regiment at Donauwerth and been present as a lieutenant at Tirlemont, at both of which the great Marlborough had commanded--therefore upon his coffin there should have been a sword and a sash at least, with, perhaps, a flag. He stood near unto a marquisate, therefore his coffin should have been covered with purple velvet and the plate upon it should have been of silver. Yet there were no such things. His swords, you know by now, were pawned; his sashes had gone the way of his laces, apparel and handsome wigs. The bier on which he was drawn was, therefore, but a common thing on which the bodies of beggars, of Liffey watermen and of coach-drivers were often also drawn; the coffin was a poor, deal encasement with, nailed roughly on it, some black cloth; the name-plate bearing the description of his rank and standing--oh, hollow mockery!--was of tin.

And yet even this was obtained but at the public expense!

A dull November day, with, rolling in from the Channel, great masses of sea fog, damp and wet, that made the dogs in the street creep closer to the house doors for shelter and warmth, and the swine in the streets to huddle themselves together for greater comfort. A day on which those who had no call to be out of doors warmed themselves over fires, or gathered round tavern tables and drank drams of nantz and usquebaugh; a day which no man would care to think should resemble the day on which he would himself be put away into the earth for ever. But the melancholy of the elements and the weather were the only part of the wretched funeral of this man for which he had not been responsible. The gloom and the fog and the damp he could not help, since none, whether king or pauper, can fix the date of their death, or choose to die and go to their last home amidst the shining of the sun and the singing of the birds and the blooming of the flowers, in preference to the miseries of the winter. But all else he might have avoided had he so chosen.

For he might have been borne--not to a beggar's grave, but to the tomb of his own illustrious family in England--amidst pomp and honour had he so willed it; the pomp and honour of a Marquis's heir, the pomp and honour of a gallant officer who had fought under the greatest general that England had ever known, and for his mourners he might have had a loving wife and child weeping for his loss.

Only he would not, and so there was not one that day to shed a tear for him.