Lady Castlewood

“ Castlewood is dreadfully dull, I am sure neither of my brothers do anything to make it amusing. He may be vulgar—no doubt, he is vulgar—but let us see the American. Such was Lady Maria's opinion. Lady Castlewood was neither for inviting nor for refusing him, but for delaying. “Wait till your aunt comes, children; perhaps the Baroness won't like to see the young man; at least, let us consult her before we ask him.” And so the hospitality to be offered by his nearest kinsfolk to poor Harry Warrington remained yet in abeyance. ”

“ It was only in after days that she told Harry Warrington a part of what she knew. At present he but saw that his kinsfolks received him not unkindly. Lady Castlewood was perfectly civil to him; the young ladies pleasant and pleased; my Lord Castlewood, a man of cold and haughty demeanour, was not more reserved towards Harry than to any of the rest of the family; Mr. William was ready to drink with him, to ride with him, to go to races with him, and to play cards with him. ”

“ As for Lady Castlewood, although she scarce spoke a word, 'twas easy to gather from her demeanour, and one or two hints she dropped, how deep her mortification was at finding the hero whom she had chosen to worship all her life (and whose restoration had formed almost the most sacred part of her prayers) , no more than a man, and not a good one. She thought misfortune might have chastened him; but that instructress had rather rendered him callous than humble. His devotion, which was quite real, kept him from no sin he had a mind to. His talk showed good-humour, gaiety, even wit enough ”

“ Lady Castlewood is perhaps ten years older than the boy Esmond, whom she first finds in her husband's house, and takes as a protégé; and from the moment in which she finds that he is in love with her own daughter, she does her best to bring about a marriage between them. Her husband is alive, and though he is a drunken brute,—after the manner of lords of that time,—she is thoroughly loyal to him. ”

“ There are some injuries which women never forgive one another; and Madam Francis Esmond, in marrying her cousin, had done one of those irretrievable wrongs to Lady Castlewood. But as she was now humiliated, and in misfortune, Madam Francis could allow a truce to her enmity, and could be kind for a while, at least, to her husband's discarded mistress. So the little Beatrix, her daughter, was permitted often to go and visit the imprisoned Viscountess, who, in so far as the child and its father were concerned, got to abate in her anger towards that branch of the Castlewood family. ”

“ But though Lady Castlewood would listen to no advice from her young dependant, and appeared indignantly to refuse it when offered, Harry had the satisfaction to find that she adopted the counsel which she professed to reject; for the next day she pleaded a headache, when my Lord Mohun would have had her drive out, and the next day the headache continued; and next day, in a laughing gay way she proposed that the children should take her place in his lordship's car, for they would be charmed with a ride of all things; and she must not have all the pleasure for herself. ”

“ They remained for some months at Castlewood, and Harry learned from them, from time to time, how Lady Isabella was being treated at Hexton Castle, and the particulars of her confinement there. King William was disposed to deal very leniently with the gentry who remained faithful to the old king's cause; and no Prince usurping a crown as his enemies said he did, ever caused less blood to be shed. As for women-conspirators, he kept spies on the least dangerous, and locked up the others. Lady Castlewood had the best rooms in Hexton Castle, and the gaoler's garden to walk in ”

“ He put his small hand into the Father's as he walked away from his first presentation to his mistress, and asked many questions in his artless childish way. “Who is that other woman?” he asked. “She is fat and round; she is more pretty than my Lady Castlewood.”
“She is Madame Tusher, the parson's wife of Castlewood. She has a son of your age, but bigger than you.”
“Why does she like so to kiss my lady's hand. It is not good to kiss.” ”

“ As usual, he is unjust to women; quite unjust. There is hardly any punishment he does not deserve for making Lady Castlewood peep through a keyhole, listen at a door, and be jealous of a boy and a milkmaid. ”

“ I say that humbug which I am performing is beautiful self-denial—that hypocrisy is true virtue. Oh, if every man spoke his mind what an intolerable society ours would be to live in!
As the young gentlemen are announced, Lady Castlewood advances towards them with perfect ease and good-humour. “We have heard, Harry,” she says, looking at the latter with a special friendliness, “of this most extraordinary circumstance. My Lord Castlewood said at breakfast that he should wait on you this very day, Mr. Warrington, and, cousin Harry, we intend not to love you any the less because you are poor.” ”

“ The book opens with one of the most exquisite scenes in all literature, where young Esmond, a [Pg 159] lad twelve years of age, who is supposed to be the illegitimate son of Thomas, Viscount Castlewood, and who has led a rather hard life as a page of the old viscountess, and been left alone in the great house after his father’s death, is now found in the yellow gallery by Lady Castlewood, the young and beautiful wife of the new viscount, when she comes with her husband to take possession of the property. ”

“ Baron Bernstein, who married Maria's Aunt Beatrix, Bishop Tusher's widow, was also a German, a Hanoverian nobleman, and relative of the first Lady Castlewood. If my Lady Maria was born under George I., and his Majesty George II. had been thirty years on the throne, how could she be seven-and-twenty, as she told Harry Warrington she was? “I am old, child,” she used to say. She used to call Harry “child” when they were alone. “I am a hundred years old. ”

“ Ah! who that has seen the world, has not admired that astonishing ease with which fine ladies drop you and pick you up again? Both the ladies now addressed themselves almost exclusively to the younger brother. They were quite civil to Mr. George: but with Mr. Harry they were fond, they were softly familiar, they were gently kind, they were affectionately reproachful. Why had Harry not been for days and days to see them?
“Better to have had a dish of tea and a game at piquet with them than with some other folks,” says Lady Castlewood. ”

“ To see a young couple loving each other is no wonder; but to see an old couple loving each other is the best sight of all. Harry Esmond became the confidant of one and the other—that is, my lord told the lad all his griefs and wrongs (which were indeed of Lord Castlewood's own making) , and Harry divined my lady's; his affection leading him easily to penetrate the hypocrisy under which Lady Castlewood generally chose to go disguised, and see her heart aching whilst her face wore a smile. 'Tis a hard task for women in life, that mask which the world bids them wear. ”

“ Unlike the Warrington family, Lord Castlewood was quite gracious when he was made acquainted with George's engagement to Miss Lambert; came to wait upon her parents; praised George to them and the young lady to George, and made himself so prodigiously agreeable in their company that these charitable folk forgot his bad reputation, and thought it must be a very wicked and scandalous world which maligned him. He said, indeed, that he was improved in their society, as every man must be who came into it. ”

“ She then with some prelude, began to warn him regarding his cousin, Lord Castlewood; on which he broke into a bitter laugh, and said the good-natured world had told him plenty about Lord Castlewood already. “To say of a man of his lordship's rank, or of any gentleman, 'Don't play with him,' is more than I like to do,” continued the lady; “but...”
“Oh, you may say on, aunt!” said Harry, with something like an imprecation on his lips. ”

“ Either Castlewood or Esmond could have broke him across their knee, and in half a minute's struggle put an end to him; and here he was insulting us both, and scarce deigning to hide from the two, whose honor it most concerned, the passion he felt for the young lady of our family. My Lord Castlewood replied to the Prince's tirade very nobly and simply.
“Sir,” says he, “your Royal Highness is pleased to forget that others risk their lives, and for your cause. Very few Englishmen, please God, would dare to lay hands on your sacred person, though none would ever think of respecting ours. ”

“ My lord gave them a drive with a very good grace, though, I dare say, with rage and disappointment inwardly—not that his heart was very seriously engaged in his designs upon this simple lady: but the life of such men is often one of intrigue, and they can no more go through the day without a woman to pursue, than a fox-hunter without his sport after breakfast.
Under an affected carelessness of demeanor, and though there was no outward demonstration of doubt upon his patron's part since the quarrel between the two lords, Harry yet saw that Lord Castlewood was watching his guest very narrowly ”

“ It could not be called love, that a lad of his age felt for his mistress: but it was worship. To catch her glance, to divine her errand and run on it before she had spoken it; to watch, follow, adore her, became the business of his life.
As for my Lord Castlewood, he was good-humoured, of a temper naturally easy, liking to joke, especially with his inferiors, and charmed to receive the tribute of their laughter. All exercises of the body he could perform to perfection—shooting at a mark, breaking horses, riding at the ring, pitching the quoit, playing at all games with great skill. ”

“ Nay, sir, you have ties which must render your life more than ever valuable and dear to you, and duties to which, I know, you must be anxious to betake yourself. In our present deplorable state of doubt and distress Castlewood can be a welcome place to no stranger, much less to you, and so I know, sir, you will be for leaving us ere long. And you will pardon me if the state of my own spirits obliges me for the most part to keep my chamber. But my friends here will bear you company as long as you favour us, whilst I nurse my poor Harry upstairs. ”

“ His father had taken the Parliament side in the quarrels, and so had been estranged from the chief of his house; and my Lord Castlewood was at first so much enraged to think that his title (albeit little more than an empty one now) should pass to a rascally Roundhead, that he would have married again, and indeed proposed to do so to a vintner's daughter at Bruges, to whom his lordship owed a score for lodging when the King was there, but for fear of the laughter of the Court, and the anger of his daughter, of whom he stood in awe ”

“ How was such a woman to support her [206] influence with such a man against the beauty and determined temper of Lady Castlemaine, a woman as dissolute and unprincipled as she was handsome? In her fits of passion she often threatened the king to tear their children to pieces, and set his palace on fire ”

“ His grandfather gave up this estate, this title, this very castle, that you and yours might profit by it. And the reward for all this is that you talk of marrying him to a silly elderly creature, who might be his mother. He shan't marry her."
So Madam Bernstein, having tired of Castlewood, decided that Maria must accompany her to Tunbridge Wells and Harry was invited to act as escort, and to stay a day or two at the Wells. At the end of the first day's travel, when they had just reached Farnham, poor Maria was ill, and her cheeks were yellow when she retired for the night. ”

“ In the first place, the present Lord Castlewood is, and always has been, an exemplary man, of great piety and true gentleness; in the next place, he is an invalid, who can not walk a mile with a crutch to help him, and so he has been for a great many years ”

“ But her ladyship for her part always averred that it was her husband's quarrel, and not her own, which occasioned the banishment of the two into the country; and the cruel ingratitude of the sovereign in giving away, out of the family, that place of Warden of [pg 027] the Butteries and Groom of the King's Posset, which the two last Lords Castlewood had held so honourably, and which was now conferred upon a fellow of yesterday, and a hanger-on of that odious Dorchester creature, my Lord Bergamot6 ”

“ Moreover, the evening clouds were darkening for a night of thunder, while the silver Thames looked nothing more than a leaden pipe down the valleys. Calm words fall at such times on quick temper like the drip of trees on people who have been dancing. I shivered, as my spirit fell, to think of my weak excitement, and poor petulance to a kind, wise friend, a man of many sorrows and perpetual affliction. And then I recalled what I had observed, but in my haste forgotten—Lord Castlewood was greatly changed even in the short time since I had left his house for Shoxford. ”

“ There was a very bad woman at the English court, named Lady Castlemaine, whose husband was living in France This woman had managed by her wicked intrigues to gain great influence over the king, and she was universally despised by everybody excepting his majesty. The queen-mother in Portugal had heard of this creature, and warned her daughter to have no communication with her whatever. Therefore, when Charles, most unreasonably, presented her name, at the head of the list of ladies whom he recommended for appointments in the royal household, the queen crossed it off. ”

“ North, when the ladies were out of hearing. "She is beautiful. I mean the lady in mourning: not the Sister."
"She is that, sir. It is Miss Castlemaine."
"Miss Castlemaine! Which Miss Castlemaine?"
"The late banker's daughter, sir. Niece to the Master of Greylands."
An hour later, the ladies went by again on their way homeward. John was outside his door still, but alone, with a white cap on his head. Miss Castlemaine accosted him.
"Who was that gentleman we saw here just now, Mr. Bent?"
"His name's North, madam: he is an artist." ”