Thomas Sidney

“ Henry Sidney, Earl of Romney, who died in 1704, appointed his nephews, Thomas Pelham, Henry Pelham, and John Sidney, his executors; and, among other things, he bequeathed to Thomas Pelham his cabinets and his papers.
Thomas Pelham, who was the eldest son of Sir John Pelham, married, for his first wife, Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir William Jones. His second wife was Grace, the daughter of Gilbert, Earl of Clare, sister of John Holles, Duke of Newcastle, who died in 1700. Their eldest son was Thomas Pelham, Duke of Newcastle, the minister. ”

“ He has the mien of a man many a year older than he is, if age be counted by years.'
'Dear father!' Mary said, with a sigh. 'But now, watch Robert and Thomas. They are each leading a lady to the ballroom. Little Tom, as I must still call him, looks well. He is all agog to be off with Philip; he must tarry till the winter is over. Robert is of a stronger build, and can weather the frosts and bitter cold of the Low Countries.'
Lady Pembroke was now watching another couple who were passing on to the ballroom. ”

“ Sidney died in 1586, prematurely old, at fifty-seven years of age. In the British Museum a black letter pamphlet contains a funeral sermon by Thomas White, D.D., the founder of Sion College. The whole is interesting, more especially the following passage: ‘He consumed himself in yielding light to other men; besides his special gift of affability to poor and simple men, the very grace of all his greatness. It is no hard matter for a man to be humble in low estate, but to be lowly in greatness is not a common gift ”

“ A very slight attention to Sir Sidney's deportment in public revealed to me that he was morbidly afflicted with nervous sensibility and with mauvaise honte. He that had faced so cheerfully crowds of hostile and threatening eyes, could not support without trepidation those gentle eyes, beaming with gracious admiration, of his fair young countrywomen. By accident, at that moment Sir Sidney had no acquaintances in Bath, [4] a fact which is not at all to be wondered at. Living so much abroad and at sea, an English sailor, of whatever rank, has few opportunities for making friends at home. ”

“ King, who seemed to be in the best of spirits. “That's it; go on, Thomas!”
“When are they coming?” Polly found time to ask in the general jumble.
“In three weeks from to-morrow,” said Jasper. “And everything's all right, Polly! and the whole of them, Cherry and all, will be here then!”
“Oh!” said Polly.
“Here we are!” cried Van, jumping out almost before the carriage door was open. “Mamma; mamma,” he shouted to Mrs. Whitney in the doorway, “the Peppers are coming, and the little brown house too!—everything and everybody!”
“They are!” said Percy, as wild as his brother ”

“ Whenever we seek for an historical illustration of the gentleman, the figure of Sidney rises in company with that of Bayard, and claims distinction. He was born at Pennshurst in Kent, on the 29th of November, 1554. He was the nephew of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the chief favorite of the queen. Precocious in grace, dignity, and learning, Sidney was educated both at Oxford and Cambridge, and in his earliest manhood he was a prud' homme, handsome, elegant, learned, and chivalrous; a statesman, a diplomatist, a soldier, and a poet ”

“ I was much comforted when he looked up from the letter and grinned.
“Ben Sidney’s boy! Well, your father was the only critter on two legs in Levant, in the old days, who could stand in a barrel, like I could, and jump out without touching the sides. You look as if you have some of his spryness and grit!”
“I hope so, sir. I have always worked at what has come to my hands to do.”
“Dod says business is a mite slow in Levant and that you want a job.” ”

“ Mr. King pushed into the house with his burden. “Don't anybody know,” he burst out, puffing up the stairs, and scolding furiously at every step, “enough to take better care of this child, than to have such goings on!”
“What is the matter, father?” asked Mrs. Whitney, coming up the stairs, after him. “What has happened out of the way?”
“'TWAS A NAUGHTY HORSE!'”
“Out of the way!” roared the old gentleman, irascibly, “well, if you want Phronsie racing off to the Post Office by herself, and nearly getting killed, poor child! yes, Marian, I say nearly killed!” he continued. ”

“ Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother.
Death! ere thou hast slain another
Learned and fair and good as she,
Time shall throw a dart at thee."
Sir Philip Sidney was her brother, born at Penshurst in 1554. The estate came through various owners, until, in the reign of Henry II., it was granted to Sir William Sidney, who commanded a wing of the victorious English at Flodden. Sir Philip, we are told, would have been King of Poland had not Queen Elizabeth interposed, "lest she should lose the jewel of her times." Algernon Sidney, beheaded on Tower Hill, was his descendant. ”

“ In August 1670 he was again in Paris, and Arlington proposed that he should receive a pension from Louis; Charles II. agreed, but insisted that Sidney should return to Languedoc. In illustration of his austere principles it is related that, Louis having taken a fancy to a horse belonging to him and insisting on possessing it, Sidney shot the animal, which, he said, " was born a free creature, had served a free man, and should not be mastered by a king of slaves." His father was now very ill, and after much difficulty Sidney obtained leave to come to England in the autumn of 1677. ”

“ King said, "And you mean to say, Mrs.
Selwyn, that you really must move on to-morrow?"
"Yes; we really must," she said decidedly. "But oh," and her plain, quiet face changed swiftly, "you cannot know how sorry we shall be to leave your party."
"In that case, Mrs. Fisher,"—old Mr. King looked down the table-length to Mamsie,—"we must go too; for I don't intend to lose sight of these nice travelling companions until I am obliged to." Tom's face was one big smile. "Oh, goody!" exclaimed Polly, as if she were no older than Phronsie.
Jasper clapped Tom's back, instead of wasting words. ”

“ His English was too pretty for prose. His "Sidneian showers of sweet discourse" sowed every page of the Arcadia with those flowers of conceit, those sugared fancies which his contemporaries loved, but which the taste of a severer age finds insipid. This splendid vice of the Elizabethan writers appears in Sidney, chiefly in the form of an excessive personification. If he describes a field full of roses, he makes "the roses add such a ruddy show unto it, as though the field were bashful at his own beauty." ”

“ As Philip Sidney paced under the shadow of the beeches, the deep bronze of fallen leaves at his feet glowing here and there into living gold, as the low rays of the eastern sun shone through the branches, thinly veiled, as yet, with tender green, to any casual observer, he did not wear the appearance of a man whose heart knew any bitterness or was weighted with any burden. ”

“ The story among Sidney’s upper-class English tolerators was that his father had kept a low public house in New York or San Francisco, or “somewhere over there”—they were as ignorant of the geography of the United States as they were of the geography of Patagonia.
“So he’s to marry Dowie’s daughter?” continued [10] Sidney. “He was brakeman on a railway thirty years ago.”
“How you Americans do jump about!” said Evelyn, forgetting that Sidney prided himself on no longer being an American. “He must be clever.” ”

“ He set forth the condition of affairs in language that stripped truth of all dissembling, and implored her Majesty and her officers to let him do the work for which he had been sent. Like the king of the forest in the narrow confines of a cage, Sidney's fierce soul raged against the orders that kept his sword idle while the Spanish were wasting the land. [Pg 283] There is not a more pathetically tragic figure in history than that of the heroic Sidney in the power of the unworthy Queen of England and of the doubly unworthy Earl of Leicester. ”

“ In the meanwhile, can he ever pass Bedlam, without a tender feeling for the future destiny of his footmen and coachman?
Certain civic enthusiasts glorify Lord Sidney for the grandeur that seems to be intended as a fine defiance—like a gilt lion—of the Corporation Commission. The cause for which Sidney bleeds in his tailor's bill is, no doubt, a cause very dear to aldermen and councilmen; and it is expected that, emulating his Lordship, they will on the present ninth—as it may be the last show—die gloriously; dying like dolphins in surpassing colours. ”

“ While abroad, Sidney had been associated with "many men of many minds." He had learned to think and feel deeply on deep subjects, and had formed definite ideals as to a man's proper part in life. He came back to his native land with his young heart filled with hopes that were never to be realized—at least, not in the way that he had conceived. ”

“ A sharp altercation was going on between two of the servants, each wishing to have the honour of taking Lady Mary Sidney's youngest son on his pillion.
Presently the boy himself appeared in his black velvet riding suit, booted and spurred, his red-gold locks—the true Sidney badge—falling over his shoulders from under the stiff, pointed cap which shaded his forehead.
'I am to ride alongside of you, not on the pillion like a babe. Peace! I tell you, Mr Philip saith so. ”

“ King's writing-room, and that Grandpapa and he were already off down-town to buy a new blank book for the work. And at the end of it—oh, joy!—Joel was to have a crisp ten-dollar bill to replace the one he had lost.
XI RACHEL "Here she comes!" roared Mr. Tisbett. The townspeople, hurrying to
Badgertown depot to see the train bearing the new little girl sent on by
Mrs. Fisher to their parson's care, crowded up, Mr. and Mrs. Henderson
smilingly in the center of the biggest group.
"Oh, husband, I do pity her so!" breathed the parson's wife. "Poor thing, she will be so shy and distressed!" ”

“ Sidney at once handed it to the dying man with the famous words, ‘Thy necessity is yet greater than mine’ (Greville, p. 145; cf. Motley, ii. 50 seq., where the dates, given in the new style, are ten days later) .
From the camp Sidney was carried in Leicester's barge down the Yssel and the Rhine to Arnhem, and lodged in the house of a lady named Gruithuissens. His wife, although far advanced in pregnancy, hastened from Flushing to nurse him, and his brother Robert was a frequent visitor to the sick-chamber. The wound failed to heal, and ultimately mortified. ”

“ Anyone who had seen Philip Sidney as he threw himself on a settle when Fulke Greville and Edward Dyer had left him, and had watched the profound sadness of his face as he gave himself up to meditation on the sorrow which oppressed him, would have found it difficult to imagine how the graceful courtier, who that evening after the banquet at Whitehall led the Queen, as a mark of especial favour, through the mazes of the dance, could ever have so completely thrown off the melancholy mood for one of gaiety and apparent joyousness. ”

“ And Phronsie had the big cutting-out shears, and little Dick the smaller, little snipping-thread scissors.
"Hullo!" Mr. King called out, as the butler ushered into the hall two gentlemen, in dripping mackintoshes. "Now that's fine, Cabot and Alstyne, to drop in of this dismal evening."
"We've called to condole with you all," said both gentlemen, as they were divested of their wet garments, "but it doesn't seem as if our services were needed"—with a glance at Grandpapa and his group.
"Oh, my family gets over any little disappointment such as bad weather," observed the old gentleman, with pride. ”

“ CHAPTER VIII. POLLY LOOKS OUT FOR CHARLOTTE. "Second floor—Room No. 3," said Buttons, then stood like an automaton to watch the tall young man scale the stair.
"He did 'em beautifully," he confided afterward to another bell-boy.
"Mr. King himself can't get over them stairs better."
"Come in!" cried Jasper, in response to the rap.
"Halloo, old fellow!" cried Pickering Dodge, rushing in tumultuously. "Well, well, so this is your den," looking around the small room in surprise.
"Yes. Now this is good to see you!" exclaimed Jasper, joyfully leaping from his chair to seize Pickering's hand. ”

“ Then the farmer leaned forward and stared ahead down the road.
“Ef you ain’t goin’ to git out an’ pick up that child, I am, John Brown. Sech a mortal slow man I never see,” snorted his wife scornfully.
“An’ sech a flutter-budget as you be, no man ever saw,” Mr. Brown found time to say as he got slowly down over the wheel.
“Somebody’s got to flutter-budget in this world,” said his wife after him, as he walked slowly over to the small pink heap, “or everybody’d go to sleep. Bring her to me, John.— Oh, do hurry! Bring her to me!”
“I want Mamsie,” said Phronsie, as Mr. Brown leaned over her. ”

“ King cheerfully, coming in and sitting down in his favorite chair. "I'm sure it speaks well for the young man's powers of self-defense, if he gives Jasper a good tweak."
"Father!" cried Jasper in pretended astonishment. "Well, King-Fisher, as popular opinion is against me, I'll set you down again, and nurse my poor scalp," and down went the white bundle again to the floor, Phronsie going back to her post as nurse.
"There's been a terrible scheme worked up since you were out, sir," announced Joel to the old gentleman.
"Hey—what's that?" demanded Mr. King, staring at Polly. ”