John Briggs

“ Briggs we’d think there was no such thing as home life in Washington.”
“Oh, there’s a lot of it,” Briggs asserted, jocularly. “Only they keep it dark.”
“It seems to me there’s nothing but wire-pulling, wire-pulling, everybody trying to get ahead of everybody else. It makes me sick. Still, I suppose I’m doing a little of that myself just now,” she went on, with a nervous laugh. “What do you suppose I come here for to-day, Mr. Briggs? I ought to be ashamed bothering your wife just when she’s going to have a big party. But I knew it would just break my girls’ hearts if they didn’t come to-night. ”

“ BRIGGS, JOHN JOSEPH (1819–1876) , naturalist and topographer, was born in the village of King's Newton, near Melbourne, Derbyshire, 6 March 1819. His father, John Briggs, who married his cousin, Mary Briggs, was born and resided for eighty-eight years on the same farm, at King's Newton, which had been the freehold of his ancestors for three centuries. John Joseph went, in 1828, to the boarding school of Mr. ”

“ Percy Briggs dwelt on it too much, he himself had dwelt too much on it. He wasn't sure that he hadn't been getting even a little morbid about it. Not every lovely flower is picked because it is lovely and then thrown wilting away again. John Willie had come to his senses. It had taken him some time, but he was all right again now. He wondered how those people at the inn below had been looking after his horse. They'd probably let him get fat and lazy. Well, he would give him a twisting on the way home. Too much inaction is good for neither horse nor man.... ”

“ These two persons were worthy men in their time; and yet the one, viz. Lord Marchiston, was a great lover of astrology, but Briggs the most satirical man against it that hath been known: but the reason hereof I conceive was, that Briggs was a severe Presbyterian, and wholly conversant with persons of that judgment; whereas the Lord Marchiston was a general scholar, and deeply read in all divine and human histories: it is {238} the same Marchiston who made that most serious and learned exposition upon the Revelation of St. John; which is the best that ever yet appeared in the world. ”

“ Two days later, while Douglas Briggs was smoking his after-dinner cigar in the library and chatting with Fanny Wallace, whose presence in the house greatly relieved the embarrassment of his strained relations with his wife, Michael entered and announced Mr. Farley. “There are two gentlemen with him, sir,” said Michael, “Mr. De Witt and Mr. Saunders.”
Briggs flushed. “Ah!” he said, as if the callers had suddenly assumed importance in his eyes. ”

“ Among so many triumphs of art and sportsmanship, it is difficult to say which of the many excellent examples is to be preferred; all are admirable, but I think the one I have chosen for illustration is my favourite. Mr. Briggs is deer-stalking, and though he occasionally suffers, even to prostration, from the heat of the weather, and the difficulties presented by hills, rocks, and heather, he really enjoys creeping and hiding with his gillies, until the royal hart, which the forester has seen through his glass, is well within rifle shot. He fires, misses ”

“ Then Briggs broke out: “He’s been fooled so often, he says I’m the only man in the world he can trust. I felt like a hypocrite, Helen. Honestly, I thought of asking him to go to you and to get you to tell him all about me. ”

“ With her fine sense of character, a sense he had never known to err except with regard to himself, she must long ago have learned to appreciate the journalist’s character. Briggs wondered if she suspected that he was trying to use Farley. Once the thought made him boldly accuse himself. But he found a vindication in the thought that he was fighting his way against odds toward an honorable goal. Once elected to Congress, he would do everything in his power to atone for the wrong he had done. His future life would be not merely an expiation, but a vindication. ”

“ Briggs,” Carrie Cora stammered, through her embarrassment. At that moment she looked pretty.
Briggs patted her hand. “My dear child, no man is worth half as much as a nice girl like you.”
“Now, don’t you go to spoilin’ my children, Mr. Briggs,” Mrs. Burrell exclaimed, rising. “Come on, father.”
Helen rose at the same moment. “But we’ll [Pg 255] see you again, of course. Come to dinner to-night, won’t you?”
The girls looked delighted. “Oh!” they exclaimed.
Mrs. Burrell assumed an expression of severity. ”

“ Briggs had taken his seat at the desk and had begun to work again. “Never mind,” he said. “It’ll keep. The drive’ll do you good.”
Guy hesitated between pleasure and duty. “Oh, well,” he said, glancing from his employer to his employer’s niece.
“You come with us, auntie,” Fanny urged, with an air that made Guy’s coming inevitable.
“No, I mustn’t,” Helen replied, decidedly. “I have too much to do this morning.”
As Fanny turned to the door Michael entered. “Mr. Burrell’s in the library, sir,” he said to Douglas Briggs. “He didn’t want to disturb you till he was sure you weren’t busy. ”

“ What a trim little maid brings in the top-boots which horrify Mrs. B! What a snug dressing-room he has, complete in all its appointments, and in which he appears trying on the delightful hunting-cap which Mrs. Briggs flings into the fire! How cosy all the Briggs party seem in their dining-room: Briggs reading a Treatise on Dog-breaking by a lamp; Mamma and Grannie with their respective needleworks; the children clustering round a great book of prints—a great book of prints such as this before us, which, at this season, must make thousands of children happy by as many firesides! ”

“ Michael tapped on the door and entered with the soft step of one bearing important news. “A boy just come in with this telegram, sir.”
“Open it, Guy,” said Briggs.
Guy tore the envelope. “These are the figures [Pg 330] Farley gave me,” he said. He passed the telegram to Briggs.
“It’s all up with me!” said Briggs, just as Helen appeared.
“But they haven’t heard yet from the Nineteenth District,” Guy interposed. “We can count on a two-hundred majority there.”
“No; West has spent more money there than anywhere else. I shall be surprised if—” Briggs stopped at the sound of the telephone bell. ”

“ Briggs’s roof. A noise enough to wake the dead has awoke Mr. Briggs at the unpleasant hour of five in the morning. Flower-pots and bricks fall past his dressing-room window. He finds “no time has been lost, and that the workpeople have already commenced putting the roof to rights.” The builder would not be true to his craft if he did not improve the occasion and show his employer how easy, now that the workpeople were about, it would be to make certain additions in the shape of a conservatory, etc., to the house. Briggs weakly listens to the voice of the charmer ”

“ You can’t. You women never can.”
She dried her eyes and was about to leave the room. “Since you are determined not to have him here,” her husband remarked, with a resumption of reproach in his tone, “I’ll not ask him to stay. I’ll offer some excuse.”
During the rest of the day they did not refer to West again. The next morning Briggs looked for a letter from him from Boston, but none came. Two days later he received a brief note that West had dictated to his stenographer in Washington. Pressing business had called him home; he had not even stopped over in New York. ”

“ In a number of admirably humorous drawings, Leech pictures Mr. Briggs, who comes to grief in all his attempts to emulate Mr. Rarey. He evidently does not possess the secret, and though we laugh over his failures, we respect the courage which led to them. "Mr. Briggs tries his shooting pony" is an inimitable drawing. Mr. B. has no [Pg 175] doubt been assured that the pony will take no more notice of a gun when fired from his back than "if you was to whistle a tune as you was riding of him." In perfect confidence in the truthfulness of the dealer's assurance, Mr. Briggs fires. ”

“ His son, Sir John Henry Briggs, chief clerk at the admiralty, was knighted on his retirement in 1870, after a service of forty-two years.
[Gent. Mag. 3rd ser. xviii. 305; obituary notice, Morning Post, 8 Feb. 1865, and of Lady Briggs. ib., 3 Jan. 1874; leading art. in Daily Telegraph, 6 Jan. 1874; information contributed by Sir J. H. Briggs.] ”

“ West remarked, in the soft voice of conscious politeness.
“True,” Briggs replied, bitterly. “But you must admit the payment has been rather hard.”
“Most people wouldn’t think so. When you came to me, five years ago, you were on the verge of bankruptcy, and you hadn’t even begun to make your reputation.” West looked at Briggs to observe the effect of his words. Then he continued, with a wave of his hand: “And now see what you are! You’ve made a big name. You’re a power. You have all the swells in Washington at your [Pg 66] parties. ”

“ Douglas Briggs sighed. Mrs. Burrell represented the type of woman before whom he had most difficulty in maintaining his air of confidential friendliness. For her husband, the shrewd old business man from Maine, who was serving his first term in Congress, he felt a genuine liking. His weariness at this moment prompted him to make one of his pleasant speeches. When most bored he always tried hardest to be agreeable. ”

“ Some of them were, of course, glad to be free and Briggs realized the commonplace thought with astonishment. There were some men who did not care for family-life, who were unfitted for it. It had become impossible for him to think of any other kind of life as endurable. Well, it was good that they could all, the happy and unhappy, come to a game of baseball and forget there was such a thing as care in the world. ”

“ Jack looked wistfully at the governess, a young woman with black hair, a bad complexion and a disappointed face, that always suggested to Briggs a baffled motherliness. He pitied all people over twenty-five who were not married. He valued [Pg 27] Miss Munroe, but he often told her that she had no business taking care of other people’s children; she ought to be taking care of her own.
“No, he hasn’t!” shouted Dorothy. “He broke his whip, and when Miss Munroe took it away from him he cried and kicked.” ”

“ The woman may be willing to share everything; but the man is willing mighty seldom. If he’s like a good many men, vain and conceited, he’ll only [Pg 191] want to share the good things, the pleasant things; he’ll keep the unpleasant to himself.”
“Well, that seems to me pretty fine,” cried Guy, shaking his head.
“Yes, it sounds so,” Briggs went on, “but it doesn’t work out right.” Then he checked himself, fearing that the boy would read a personal application in what he said. He changed the subject abruptly, as he sometimes did to Guy’s bewilderment. ”

“ Stone is moping in the drawing-room, sir,” said Guy, respectfully. “He looks as if he wanted to eat somebody’s head off.”
Briggs smiled and passed his hand over his face. “I don’t believe Stone enjoys parties. He feels more at home at his club. I suppose we ought to go, Helen.” He rose wearily and stretched out his arms. “What a bore it is!” he said. “I suppose we’ll have to stop and speak to some of those people in the ballroom,” he whispered, noticing a group that had just come downstairs.
As soon as they had left the conservatory Fanny turned to her companion. ”

“ Then she glanced at Guy. “Do you suppose he’ll be like that when he’s forty?”
“I’ve had a list of guests prepared for the newspaper people,” said Guy to Douglas Briggs. He liked to ignore Fanny’s jokes when they reflected on his personal appearance. “It’ll save a lot of time. And I’ve arranged to have them take supper in a room by themselves. They’ll like that better.”
Briggs, however, had turned to the servant, who had just come into the room. “Take the men up to the big room over the front door, Michael. That’ll be the best place,” he went on, to his wife. ”

“ Would she tell her husband? The answer to that question depended wholly on whether she believed the charge he had made against her husband’s integrity. West knew well enough that Mrs. Briggs [Pg 154] had an absolute belief in her husband, and this knowledge had often caused him a contemptuous bitterness. Why should a man like Briggs be allowed to deceive such a woman as that? If Mrs. Briggs still kept her faith in her husband, there was no reason why she should not reveal the episode of the previous night—none except the woman’s natural fear of creating a scandal. ”

“ With his habit of generalizing he instantly reflected that it must be a terrible thing for a man to live with an emotional woman.
That night it was arranged that the Burrell girls, instead of going home with their father and mother, should go to Mrs. Briggs for the Winter. Burrell insisted upon putting the matter on the most rigid business basis, and offered Helen Briggs a recompense in money that she considered wholly out of proportion to what was just. Briggs maintained in the discussion an air of jocular remoteness and, in spite of Helen’s objection, Burrell established his own conditions. ”

“ The only trouble with you, Briggs, is, you’re too easy. You don’t [Pg 97] seem to remember that we’re not in politics for our health. Those fellows think we ought to do all our work for glory. They’ve got plenty of money themselves, and they believe we ought to get along without any.”
“I suppose there’s some truth in that,” Briggs acknowledged.
“But don’t you let them fool you,” Stone went on. “They’re in the game for what they can make, just as you and I are. Bah, I know ’em. When they want anything from me they come and fawn and lick my boots, just as the dirtiest of my heelers do. ”