Edward Rochester

“ Rochester stands halfway between Syracuse and Buffalo and as we have already said, is different from both of them. One difference is apparent even to the man who does not alight from his through train. For no railroad has dared to thrust itself down a main business street in Rochester ”

“ ROCHESTER—AND HER NEIGHBORS The three great cities of western New York—Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo—are like jewels to the famous railroad along which they are strung, and effectively they serve to offset the great metropolitan district at the east end of the state. They have many things in common and yet they are not in the least alike. Their growth has been due to virtually a common cause; the development of transportation facilities across New York state; and yet their personality is as varied as that of three sisters ”

“ Rochester is a city of a little more than 300,000 persons. Two stations, anyway—two of the existing stations—and possibly but one—the excellent new station of the New York Central—would serve all the passenger needs of both her steam and her interurban electric railroads, and with no more than the slightest trackage rearrangement. And at an operating economy, as well as an economy to the purse and time of the average traveler who must cross the city from one road to another, that is not capable of quick estimate. ”

“ Your Rochesterian, rich and poor, dwells in a detached house on his own tract of land; the chances are that he has market-truck growing in his backyard, a real kitchen-garden. There are thousands of these little homes in the outlying sections of the town, with more pretentious ones lining East avenue and the other more elaborate streets. All of these taken together are the real regulators of the town. For the citizens of Rochester are less governed and themselves govern more than in most places of the size. ”

“ Edward?
Edw. (confused) . My lord Rochester—
Roch. Silence, you rogue! I am no lord here, no Rochester. I am a seaman—my name Tom Taffrel. The king, my messmate, is Jack Mizen.
Edw. The king with you!— (aside) . I see it all—he's after Mary—ah! I am lost.
Roch. Don't be alarmed, friend Georgini; none but the most innocent motives have brought us here—
Edw. Innocent motives bring you and the king, at night, to a tavern in Wapping, where there is a beautiful girl? Ah! my lord, my lord—
Roch. ”

“ I love you not at all, and never shall. 'Tis but your vanity that makes you believe so."
"Nay, I call all these trees to witness," cried Rochester, "of what you acknowledged half an hour ago."
"Oh, women will say what they do not mean," replied the Countess. "I hope no one but the trees did hear me; for I would not have too many witnesses to such a falsehood.--And so you showed the letter to Sir Thomas Overbury, and he it was, I suppose, who said I had written it?"
"No," replied Rochester, "he divined that you were the person spoken of; but he said that it was a man's hand." ”

“ A word about the Rochester family is here necessary. They inhabited the largest house in March Square—the large grey one at the corner by Lent Street—and yet it could not be said to be large enough for them. Mrs. Rochester was a black-haired woman with flaming cheeks and a most untidy appearance. Her mother had been a Spaniard, and her father an English artist, and she was very much the child of both of them. Her hair was always coming down, her dress unfastened, her shoes untied, her boots unbuttoned. ”

“ Weak and short-sighted as he was, Rochester experienced its influence at that moment. To be branded with the stain of foul ingratitude for coming times--to be marked out in the annals of the age as one who had betrayed and ruined his friend--to be held up for scorn and reprobation as a base and thankless villain, in the eyes of his children and his children's children, somewhat appalled him ”

“ The principal schools are the cathedral grammar-school or King's School, founded in 1544, and the Williamson mathematical school (1704) , formerly, for the sons of freemen, but now open to all. Rochester has an oyster fishery of some importance, and there is a considerable shipping trade, a quay and landing-place having been erected by the corporation. There is a large steam-engine manufactory. In Strood, which is a ward of the borough of Rochester, there are oil-mills, and brick and cement works. The dockyards and government works of Chatham employ many inhabitants of Rochester. ”

“ Rochester consists of little more than one long street, stretching away from the castle and the river toward neighboring Chatham, and edged with low brick houses, of intensely provincial aspect, most of which have some small, dull quaintness of gable or casement. Nearly opposite to the shop of the old lady with the dissentient husband is a little dwelling with an inscribed slab set into its face, which must often have provoked a smile in the great master of laughter. ”

“ For me she is ready to sacrifice everything----"
"She has sacrificed too much already," answered Overbury. But seeing by Rochester's angry look that he had gone much farther than was politic, and that nothing he could say would change his resolution, he added, after a moment's pause, "Well, Rochester, do me justice, and remember that I have but spoken for your good, as I believe it to be. I may be mistaken; probably am; but your happiness I wish sincerely."
"No man's happiness can be secured, but in his own way," replied Rochester. ”

“ CHAPTER XV ROCHESTER IS INDIGNANT Rochester accepted his wife’s offer of a lift in her victoria after the luncheon party in Cadogan Street.
“Mary,” he said, as soon as the horses had started, “I cannot imagine why you were so civil to that insufferable bounder Saton.”
She looked at him thoughtfully.
“Is he an insufferable bounder?” she asked.
“I find him so,” Rochester answered, deliberately. “He dresses like other men, he walks and moves like other men, he speaks like other men, and all the time I know that he is acting. He plays the game well, but it is a game. ”

“ Rochester's poetry is the poetry of wit combined with the love of pleasure, of thought with licentiousness. His extravagant heedless levity has a sort of passionate enthusiasm in it; his contempt for every thing that others respect, almost amounts to sublimity. His poem upon Nothing is itself no trifling work. ”

“ For this nobleman Rochester had long entertained a bitter animosity, which had arisen from rivalry, and had been intensified from the fact that Rochester, refusing to fight him, had been branded as a coward. Not daring to attack the peer, Rochester resolved to avenge himself upon the poet. In order to effect his humiliation, the earl at once bestowed his favour on Elkanah Settle, a playwright and poet of mean abilities. He had originally been master of a puppet-show, had written verses to order for city pageants, and produced a tragedy in heroic verse, entitled "Cambyses, King of Persia." ”

“ Mr. Rochester then turned to the spectators; he looked at them with a smile both acrid and desolate.
"That is my wife," said he. "Such is the sole conjugal embrace I am ever to know--such are the endearments which are to solace my leisure hours! And this is what I wished to have" (laying his hand on my shoulder) : "this young girl, who stands so grave and quiet at the mouth of hell, looking collectedly at the gambols of a demon. I wanted her just as a change, after that fierce ragoût. Wood and Briggs, look at the difference. ”

“ Rochester has a thoughtful nature and a very feeling heart; he is neither selfish nor self-indulgent; he is ill-educated, misguided; errs, when he does err, through rashness and inexperience: he lives for a time as too many other men live, but being radically better than most men, he does not like that degraded life, and is never happy in it. ”

“ But Rochester is a man of the best English society, courted by wealth and rank, a man of cultivated tastes, of wide experience and refined habits, and lastly of most generous and heroic impulses—and yet such a man swears at his people like a horse-dealer, teases and bullies his little governess, treats his adopted child like a dog, almost kicks his brother-in-law in his rages, plays shocking tricks with his governess at night, offers her marriage, and attempts to commit bigamy in his own parish with his living wife still under the same roof! ”

“ Lord Rochester was not more remarkable for the superiority of his parts, than the extraordinary debauchery of his life, and with his dissipations of pleasure, he suffered sometimes malevolent principles to govern him, and was equally odious for malice and envy, as for the boundless gratifications of his appetites. ”

“ Lord Rochester is, without contradiction, the most witty man in all England; but then he is likewise the most unprincipled, and devoid even of the least tincture of honour; he is dangerous to our sex alone; and that to such a degree that there is not a woman who gives ear to him three times, but she irretrievably loses her reputation. No woman can escape him, for he has her in his writings, though his other attacks be ineffectual; and in the age we live in, the one is as bad as the other in the eye of the public. ”

“ Despite his libertine exploits, Rochester succeeded in repairing his decaying fortune by a wealthy marriage. The king encouraged him to pay addresses to Elizabeth, daughter of John Malet of Enmere, Somerset, by Elizabeth, daughter of Francis, baron Hawley of Donamore. Pepys described her as ‘the great beauty and fortune of the north.’ Gramont called her a ‘melancholy heiress.’ Not unnaturally she rejected Rochester's suit, whereupon he resorted to violence. ”

“ I should think he is very likely to stay a week or more: when these fine, fashionable people get together, they are so surrounded by elegance and gaiety; so well provided with all that can please and entertain, they are in no hurry to separate. Gentlemen, especially, are often in request on such occasions; and Mr. Rochester is so talented and so lively in society, that I believe he is a general favourite: the ladies are very fond of him ”

“ The bibliography of Rochester's poems is difficult owing to the number of poems that are attributed to him in miscellaneous collections of verse of which he was probably not the author (cf. Poems on Affairs of State, passim; Examen Miscellaneum, 1702) . No complete critical collection of his works has been attempted. His ‘Satires against Mankind,’ his poem on ‘Nothing,’ and others of ‘his lewd and profane poems’ and libels appeared as penny broadsides in single folio sheets at the close of his life—in 1679 and 1680—doubtless surreptitiously. ”

“ John Rochester was one of these exceptions: he was neither vain nor stupid. In fact he was more than rather clever, especially at his own game, which was engineering. Brains and beauty were not his only advantages. He had brains, beauty, and brawn—an almost irresistible combination. That is the bright side of the shield. The black side is this: he was not so tall, by three inches, as he could have wished to be, he had very big ambitions, very little money, very much less parsimony, and a temper. ”

“ Having procured a gentleman to advise the King of my presence, I was rewarded by being beckoned to approach immediately. But when he had brought me there, he gave me no more than a smile, and, motioning me to stand by him, continued his conversation with my Lord Rochester and his caresses of the little dog on his lap.
"In defining it as the device by which the weak intimidate the strong," observed Rochester, "the philosopher declared the purpose of virtue rather than its effect. For the strong are not intimidated, while the weak, falling slaves to their own puppet, grow more helpless still." ”

“ There are many men in Rochester, now verging into the sixties, who were more familiar with it at that time than they have ever been since, and who remember distinctly its damp and earthy smell, its darkness and general air of neglect and decay. ”

“ Rochester?”
[Pg 184]
“I should say quite impossible,” replied Rochester firmly.
“You are awfully nice, you know,” she said; “you are nice enough even for Lady Helen. I do hope father will find the mine full up to the brim with gold. Such a lot of people will be happy then.”
“So they will,” replied Rochester.
“And darlingest mother can have the beautiful place. Hasn’t the new place got a lovely name—Silverbel?”
“It sounds very pretty, Sibyl.” ”

“ You men are so vehement and violent in all your passions, that the death of your adversary is the only thing you think of. I am not so bloodthirsty, nor do I speak from anger, Rochester. I could pardon him all that he has said of me, did it not show me that he is dangerous to you, and that, if he be not removed, his presence near the King will be the great stumbling-block which will throw down our hopes and wishes. ”

“ What a woman! and what a fate!
It was at this moment, whilst walking home to Carlton House Terrace, that the true character of Rochester appeared before him in a new and lurid light.
Up to this Rochester had appeared to him mad, tricky, irresponsible, but up to this he had not clearly seen the villainy of Rochester. The woman showed it. Rochester had picked up a stranger, because of the mutual likeness, and sent him home to play his part, hoping, no doubt, to have a ghastly hit at his family. What about his wife? ”

“ Rochester might have produced something good. His verses have more traces of poetry and humour than we should expect from a man who out of the thirty-four years of his life, was for five of them continually drunk. He nearly always attunes his harp to the old subject, so as to become hopelessly monotonous. Inconstancy has great charms for him, and he consequently imputes it also to the ladies—
"Womankind more joy discovers
Making fools, than keeping lovers." ”