John Ridd

“ Even while he announced his purpose the sweat poured out on his forehead. He rose and paced noiselessly up and down the bare room, his black robe catching around the long, bony legs. Father Anthony drew a great breath. At last Jean Paul Victor could speak again.
"In all the history of our order, there is hardly one man who will go out armed like Pierre Ryder. He is young, he is strong, he is fearless, he is pure of heart and single of mind. He has never tasted wine; he has never looked wrongly on a woman." ”

“ They always galloped at this time from this fear of assassination, which had become an obsession to him. I must say that I was glad when he had gone.
“One of his two negroes, the one with the knife, said, ‘He ride the White horse; that show the Whites he ride them. He ride with spur, too: you see.’ ”
Bill Ridden was an English gentleman who comes a little into this story. In his youth he spent some years in Santa Barbara, where he made a good deal of money in the copper boom at Matoche. He was a very good friend to the Piranhas at this time (and later in the copper crisis) . ”

“ Mantalini, in Dickens's last novel, 'become a body, a demnition moist unpleasant body.'"
"What old wreck is it?" inquired Young, looking at the scarcely perceptible craft that was sinking near them.
"It is the remains of the old canoe made by Thomas Ridgeley, in his day, I think," said Jonah.
"Nothing of the sort," said Bart; "it is the remains of old Bullock's 'gundalow,' that has been sinking and swimming, like old John Adams in the Revolution, these five years past. Don't let me think to-night, Uncle Jonah, that anything from my father's hand came to take me into the depths of this pond." ”

“ After the failure of Sheridan, Ryder remained under his successor, Brown, supporting Mrs. Abington as Sir Harry in ‘High Life below Stairs’ and in other parts. Under Henry Mossop [q. v.] he played at the same house in 1764 Tressel in ‘King Richard III,’ Scapin, Lord Aimworth in ‘Maid of the Mill,’ and Rimenes in the opera of ‘Artaxerxes.’ During five years Ryder then conducted a company through Kilkenny, Waterford, Sligo, Galway, Derry, and Belfast, reopening at Smock Alley Theatre as Sir John Restless in ‘All in the Wrong,’ and temporarily bringing back prosperity to the management. ”

“ Ryder had returned from the play and gone to bed, serenely oblivious of the drama in real life that had been enacted at home, the servants locked the house up for the night and still John Burkett Ryder walked the floor of his sanctum, and late into the small hours of the morning the watchman going his lonely rounds, saw a light in the library and the restless figure of his employer sharply silhouetted against the white blinds.
For the first time in his life John Ryder realized that there was something in the world beyond Self. ”

“ Poor John! At the risk of life and limb, he became a thorough sport to please his wife, and then found that, having established herself as smart, she was looking on life with a cynical eye and becoming clever. Lord Algernon is clever, she says. He has been spending a week with us at the Westbury place, and will be here until after the wedding. Mrs. Radigan laid hands on him at the Bumpschus breakfast and simply would not let him go back to England until he had given us some of his valuable time, so down he came, with all his six feet four, his sad, drooping mustache, his monocle, and his "Aw." ”

“ Riley, solemnly, as though she were uttering an anathema.
“She will be content, I suppose, when she finds she has driven John out of the country,” added Miss Riley.
“I wonder,” began a young lady who had not hitherto spoken, “whether, after all, there is nothing to be said in Grace’s favour. I wonder if any of us except John really liked her—whether it was not her money we were all so fond of.”
“Lucy, you are wicked to talk on solemn subjects in that sort of manner,” said Mrs. Riley. ”

“ And now she was a child no longer, no longer a girl, quite a young woman, who but for her exceeding beauty would already have been called an old maid, and the pleasant days were over, and John, having made a mistake in loving Grace Moffat, was in India; and Grace Moffat in Ireland was thinking how, if she loved Bayview so much, John would endure the idea of losing Woodbrook, which was not merely a residence, but an estate, a place any nobleman might have liked to own and beautify!
Of late a word has become fashionable in leaders and novels which appears to me frequently used without just cause ”

“ Let monarchs rule, while we shall sing,
And journey on together.
[Pg 201] WILLIAM B. C. RIDDELL.
A youth of remarkable promise, William Brown Clark Riddell, was the youngest son of Mr Henry Scott Riddell. [12] He was born at Flexhouse, near Hawick, Roxburghshire, on the 16th December 1835. In his seventh year he was admitted a pupil in John Watson's Institution, Edinburgh, where he remained till 1850, when, procuring a bursary from the governors of Heriot's Hospital, he entered the University of Edinburgh. During three sessions he prosecuted his studies with extraordinary ardour and success. ”

“ With a nod here and there Ryder took his place in the chairman's seat and rapped for order. Then at a sign from the chair the dapper little secretary began in a monotonous voice to read the minutes of the previous meeting. No one listened, a few directors yawned. Others had their eyes riveted on Ryder's face, trying to read there if he had devised some plan to offset the crushing blow of this adverse decision, which meant a serious loss to them all. He, the master mind, had served them in many a like crisis in the past. Could he do so again? But John Ryder gave no sign. ”

“ RYDER, JOHN, D.D. (1697?–1775) , archbishop of Tuam, son of Dudley Ryder, haberdasher, was born at Nuneaton, Warwickshire, about 1697. His grandfather was Dudley Ryder (d. 1683) the ejected rector of Bedworth. He was educated at Queens' College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. 1715, M.A. 1719, D.D. 1741. In 1721 he became vicar of Nuneaton, and held the living till his appointment to the see of Killaloe by patent of 30 Jan. ”

“ Riddle was elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, to whose ‘Transactions’ he contributed several valuable papers, and from 1825 to 1851 was an active member of the council. He died from paralysis at Greenwich on 31 March 1854. His son John (1816–1862) was headmaster of Greenwich Hospital schools, and examiner in navigation to the science and art department. ”

“ His mother was Anne, eldest daughter of John Glassford of Dougalston, by Anne, daughter of Sir John Nisbet of Dean. Educated for the law, Riddell was called to the Scottish bar in 1807. He made genealogy and Scottish peerage law his special study, and rose to pre-eminence in that branch of the profession. ”

“ You’ve no notion how it picks a fellow up. Quite my own notion, too. Come, and I’ll give you a dose.”
“Don’t mind the governor.” said Richard; “he will have his joke. Did you ever read the Talisman, Tilly?—jolly story!—all about yours truly. You can get it for 4 pence ha’penny. I say, what’s to be done with this chap, Johnny? He’s a little like Arthur of Brittany, isn’t he? Suppose, just to keep your hand in—”
Here John turned very red, and got into a towering rage, and threatened to tear up the Magna Charta to spite them all. Whereat they all laughed. ”

“ Not much of an ear could John Riley boast, yet he loved to listen to Grace’s singing, and hearkened with something between a pang and a hope to the little thrills of melody into which she would break—just as a bird breaks into a vocal ecstasy—while they walked through the rose-laden gardens, or floated, oars uplifted, over the moonlit sea, the water diamonds dripping from them, making an accompaniment to the last soft notes of the duet sung by his sister and Grace. ”

“ In 1738 he was designed as successor to Sir Joseph Jekyll [q. v.] , master of the rolls, but the appointment, though actually announced, did not take place, owing mainly to Ryder's disinclination to accept it. As first law officer he was a frequent speaker in the House of Commons, but usually confined himself to legal questions. He never engaged in political intrigues. Ryder's first important parliamentary duty was to take charge of the bill of pains and penalties against the city of Edinburgh which followed the murder of Captain John Porteous [q. v.] ”

“ Radigan must have noted it, but I think she could not have understood, for she went right on.
"It is always better form not to seem ostentatious. That's what Mr. Lite told me, but I had a hard time driving it into John's head. John likes show. But I just put my foot down and said that now we were in, we must have a conservative spell, a quiet period, so people would get used to us. I have made up my mind to have one or two little things that will be very, very exclusive. For instance, I have decided on a donkey-dinner, for one." ”

“ Somerford the same measure she had meted to him. Grace, as was natural, felt very indignant about the matter, but it never occurred to her that it had been rather nice of John Riley not to feel anger against her in the days that could never come back.
It was not a pleasant experience, but I am very certain that she was the better for it; that the heiress, who found her money could not buy everything for her, could no more prevent slights being put upon her than if she were a girl without a sixpence, was much improved by the discovery. ”

“ The countryside was a poor one, even before the black famine of the closing years of the eighteenth century, and while the quartern loaf stood at 2s. John had some sharp straits to live through, the details of which supply some truly pathetic passages in his ‘Autobiography.’ He soon surpassed any poacher of the day in his knowledge of fur and feather, but, above all, he became an unrivalled angler. When things began to mend he married (9 Aug. 1811) Agnes Riddle, and settled at St. Boswells, some three miles from Longnewton, as the village shoemaker. ”

“ RYDER, JOHN (1814–1885) , actor, born in the Isle of Thanet on 5 April 1814, had obtained in the country some recognition in the so-called ‘legitimate drama’ when he was engaged by Macready for Drury Lane Theatre, at which house he appeared as the Duke Frederick in ‘As you like it’ on 1 Oct. ”

“ He died on 30 March 1785, leaving a widow, Hannah Rider, who received an allowance from the Mercers' Company until her death in 1809; a son, John Rider, who was a printer in Little Britain, died on 1 April 1800. ”

“ My master was in the White Lion, my mistress was at Kingston, the house without Temple Bar was in the custody of Timothy Ryder; there was warrant against me for assaulting a Queen’s officer; if I went to Richmond there was a dungeon for me there; if I went home my mother could ill afford to keep me; if I went to the Stationers’ Company I was too old now to apprentice to anybody. I was in a bad plight, and what was worst of all, it seemed as if no one cared much what I did or what became of me. ”

“ How shall I sleep if no tidings come of her to-night?”
“Surely there will,” said Grace softly.
“Surely there will not,” considered Mrs. Hartley; and so the pair parted, Miss Moffat with the hope that although Nettie might have “gone off” with somebody she would repent by the way and turn back, Mrs. Hartley wondering who in the world that “somebody” might be with whom the young lady had chosen to elope.
Could it be Mr. John Riley; that same John to whom Grace Moffat had, by popular consent, 45been long assigned? Grace was young, but young people grow older in a judicious course of years. ”

“ Alfred submitted to the motherly embrace, and then, seated on a chest of drawers in the stuffy, varnish-scented arch, prepared for the game of bargaining. He had never in the old days had to deal with Mother Fayres; Ladd had done all that, and Ladd had always complained of her as a bitter handful to deal with. But then, Ladd had complained of everybody. ”

“ Grace Moffat was wont to say, a little contemptuously, that “any man could ride.” Had her sight been a little more impartial, she would have acknowledged that few men, even in Ireland, could ride like John Riley. But Miss Grace had her own ideal of what a male human being should be, and the lover popular rumour assigned to her did not, in the least degree, fulfil that ideal. ”

“ But, my dear reader, a muff like Riddell was the captain of a school; and what’s more he didn’t give it up even after the day’s adventures just described.
Riddell was not perfect. I know it is an unheard-of thing for a good boy in a story-book not to be perfect, and that is one reason which convinces me this story of mine must be an impossible one. Riddell was not perfect. He had a fault. Can you believe it—he had many faults? He even had a besetting sin, and that besetting sin was pride. Not the sort of pride that makes you consider yourself better than your neighbours. ”

“ I only wish Nettie and he could have liked each other, and made a match. Perhaps in time she would have grown good enough for him.”
“You think John Riley a very good man, then?”
“Yes, too good and rare—” began the girl, when her companion interrupted her with—
“You little simpleton, run home, and to-night when you say your prayers, entreat that if you ever marry, you may have just such a good and rare (though foolish and capable of improvement) husband as John Riley. In all human probability you never will be anything 44more to each other than you are now ”

“ Thanks to the blindness, or folly, or design of Grace Moffat, the young man had been afforded ample opportunities of contemplating Nettie’s 53pink cheeks, and blue eyes, and golden curls, in the old-fashioned garden at Bayview.
She had counted there as nobody, no doubt, the demure little chit. She had been still and proper, Mrs. Hartley could well understand. At a very early period of her young life, Nettie was taught in a bitter enough school the truth, that speech is silver, but silence gold.
Nevertheless, young men have eyes, and John Riley was at least as likely as Mrs. ”