The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete
These exhibitions of extreme distress soon attracted the notice and
compassion of our company, and Melvil’s beauteous help-mate, accosting
this forlorn damsel with a pity-breathing aspect, asked the cause of
her disorder.
“Alas! dear lady,” cried the other, with all the emphasis of woe, “an
unhappy gentleman now breathes his last within this inhospitable hovel,
amidst such excess of misery as would melt the most flinty bosom. What
then must I feel, who am connected with him by the strongest ties of
love and conjugal affection?” “Who is the unfortunate object?” said the
physician. “He was once well known in the gay world,” replied the young
woman; “his name is Fathom.” Every individual of the company started at
mention of that detested name. Serafina began to tremble with emotion;
and Renaldo, after a short pause, declared he would go in, not with a
view to exult over his misery, but in order to contemplate the
catastrophe of such a wicked life, that the moral might be the more
deeply engraved on his remembrance. The young Countess, whose tender
heart could not bear the shock of such a spectacle, retired to the
coach with Madam Clement and the Jew, while Renaldo, accompanied by the
rest, entered a dismal apartment, altogether void of furniture and
convenience, where they beheld the wretched hero of these memoirs
stretched almost naked upon straw, insensible, convulsed, and seemingly
in the grasp of death. He was worn to the bone either by famine or
distemper; his face was overshadowed with hair and filth; his eyes were
sunk, glazed, and distorted; his nostrils dilated; his lips covered
with a black slough; and his complexion faded into a pale clay-colour,
tending to a yellow hue. In a word, the extremity of indigence,
squalor, and distress could not be more feelingly represented.
While Melvil perused this melancholy lesson, and groaning, cried,
“Behold the fate of man!” he perceived a letter in the right hand of
the unfortunate Fathom, which lay fast clenched across his breast.
Curious to know the contents of this paper, which the young woman said
he had kept in that position for several days, he drew nearer the
wretched couch, and was not a little surprised to see it addressed to
the Right Honourable Renaldo Count de Melvil, to the care of Mr. Joshua
Manesseh, merchant in London. When he attempted to disengage this
billet from the author’s hand, the sorrowing female fell upon her
knees, entreating him to desist, and telling him, she had promised,
upon oath, to communicate the contents to no person upon earth, but to
carry the letter, upon her husband’s decease, to the gentleman to whose
care it was directed.
Renaldo assured her, upon his honour, that he was the very Renaldo
Count de Melvil, for whom it was intended; and the young creature was
so much confounded at this information, that, before she could
recollect herself, Melvil had opened the billet, and read these words:
“If this paper should fall into the hands of the noble Renaldo, he will
understand, that Fathom was the most execrable traitor that ever
imposed upon unsuspecting benevolence, or attempted to betray a
generous benefactor. His whole life was a series of fraud, perfidy, and
the most abominable ingratitude. But, of all the crimes that lay heavy
upon his soul, his being accessory to the death of the incomparable
Serafina, whose father he had also robbed, was that for which he
despaired of Heaven’s forgiveness, notwithstanding the dreadful
compunction and remorse which have long preyed upon his heart, together
with the incredible misery and deplorable death which by this time he
hath undergone. Though these sufferings and sorrows cannot atone for
his enormous guilt, perhaps they will excite the compassion of the
humane Count de Melvil; at least, this confession, which my conscience
dictates under all the terrors of death and futurity, may be a warning
for him to avoid henceforth a smiling villain, like the execrable
Fathom, upon whose miserable soul Almighty God have mercy.”
Renaldo was deeply affected with the contents of this scroll, which
denoted such horror and despair. He saw there could be no dissimulation
or sinister design in this profession of penitence. He beheld the
condition of the writer, which put all his humane passions in
commotion; so that he remembered nothing of Fathom but his present
distress. He could scarce maintain those indications which might have
been justly deemed the effect of weakness and infirmity; and having
desired the physician and clergyman to contribute their assistance for
the benefit of that wretch’s soul and body, he ran to the coach, and
communicated the letter to the ladies; at the same time drawing a
picture of the object he had seen, which brought tears into the eyes of
the gentle Serafina, who earnestly entreated her lord to use his
endeavours for the relief and recovery of the unhappy man, that he
might, if possible, live to enjoy the benefit of mature repentance, and
not die in that dreadful despair which he manifested in the letter.
Renaldo, returning to the house, found the pious clergyman reading
prayers with great fervency, while Don Diego stood with his right hand
upon his breast, looking steadfastly upon the agonising Fathom, and the
young woman kneeled, with her streaming eyes lifted up to heaven, in an
ecstasy of grief and devotion. The physician had run to an apothecary’s
shop in the neighbourhood, from whence he soon returned with an
assistant, who applied a large blister to the back of the miserable
patient, while the female, by the doctor’s direction, moistened his
mouth with a cordial which he had prescribed.
These charitable steps being taken, Count de Melvil entreated the
apothecary’s servant to procure a tent-bed for the accommodation of the
sick person with all imaginable despatch; and, in less than an hour,
one was actually pitched, and Fathom lifted into it, after he had been
shifted, and in some measure purified from the dregs of his indigence.
During this transaction the ladies were conducted to a tavern not far
off, where dinner was bespoke, that they might be at hand to see the
effect of their charity, which was not confined to what we have already
described, but extended so far, that, in a little time, the apartment
was comfortably furnished, and the young creature provided with change
of apparel, and money to procure the necessaries of subsistence.
Notwithstanding all their care, the wretched Fathom still remained
insensible, and the doctor pronounced a very unfavourable prognostic,
while he ordered a pair of additional vesicatories to be laid upon his
arms, and other proper medicines to be administered. After dinner, the
ladies ventured to visit the place, and when Serafina crossed the
threshold, the weeping female fell at her feet, and, kissing her robe,
exclaimed, “Sure you are an angel from heaven.”
The alteration in her dress had made a very agreeable change in her
appearance, so that the Countess could now look upon her without
shuddering at her distress. And, as Fathom was not in a condition to be
disturbed, she took this opportunity of inquiring by what steps that
unfortunate wretch was conveyed from the prison, in which she knew he
had been confined, to the place where he now lay in such extremity; and
by what occurrence he had found a wife in such an abyss of misfortune.
Here the other’s tears began to flow afresh. “I am ashamed,” said she,
“to reveal my own folly; yet I dare not refuse a satisfaction of this
kind to a person who has laid me under such signal obligations.”
She then proceeded to relate her story, by which it appeared, she was
no other than the fair and unhappy Elenor, whom the artful Fathom had
debauched upon his first arrival in town, in the manner already
described in these memoirs. “Heaven,” continued she, “was pleased to
restore the use of my reason, which I had lost when I found myself
abandoned by the Count; but, all my connexion with my own family being
entirely cut off, and every door shut against a poor creature who could
procure no recommendation, except the certificate signed by the
physician of Bedlam, which, instead of introducing me to service, was
an insurmountable objection to my character, I found myself destitute
of all means of subsisting, unless I would condescend to live the
infamous and wretched life of a courtezan, an expedient rendered
palatable by the terrors of want, cooperating with the reflection of
the irretrievable loss I had already sustained. I ask pardon for
offending your chaste ears with this impure confession of my guilt,
which, Heaven knows, I then did, and now do look upon with abhorrence
and detestation. I had already forfeited my innocence, and wanted
resolution to encounter misery and death. Nevertheless, before I could
determine to embrace the condition of a prostitute, I was one day
accosted in the Park by an elderly gentleman who sat down by me upon a
bench, and, taking notice of the despondence which was evident in my
countenance, pressed me to make him acquainted with the nature of my
misfortune. So much sympathy and good sense appeared in his deportment
and conversation, that I gratified his request, and he, in return for
my confidence, saved me from the most horrible part of my prospect, by
taking me into his protection, and reserving me for his own appetite.
In this situation I lived a whole year, until I was deprived of my
keeper by an apoplectic fit, and turned out of doors by his relations,
who did not, however, strip me of the clothes and moveables which I
owed to his bounty. Far from being as yet reconciled to a vicious life,
I resolved to renounce the paths of shame, and, converting my effects
into ready money, hired a small shop, and furnished it with
haberdashery ware, intending to earn an honest livelihood by the sale
of these commodities, together with the plain work in which I hoped to
be employed so soon as my talents should be known. But this scheme did
not answer my expectation. The goods spoiled upon my hands, and, as I
was a stranger in the neighbourhood, nobody would intrust me with any
other business. So that, notwithstanding the most parsimonious economy,
I ran in debt to my landlord, who seized my effects; and an hosier,
from whom I had received some parcels upon credit, took out a writ
against me, by virtue of which I was arrested and imprisoned in the
Marshalsea, where I found my first seducer. Good Heaven! what did I
feel at this unexpected meeting, overwhelmed as I was before with my
own distress! I with a loud scream fainted away, and, when I recovered,
found myself in the arms of Mr. Fathom, who wept over me with great
affliction. All his prospects of gaiety had now vanished, and his heart
was softened by his own misfortunes, to a feeling of another’s woe, as
well as to a due sense of his own guilt. He expressed the deepest
sorrow for having been the occasion of my ruin, endeavoured to comfort
me with a promise of assistance, and indeed, by practising medicine
among the prisoners, made shift to keep us both from starving. But
surely no sinner underwent such severe remorse as that which he
suffered during his imprisonment. From the day of our meeting, I never
once saw him smile; a melancholy cloud continually overhung his
countenance. He numbered the minutes by his groans, he used to start
with horror from his sleep, and, striking his breast, would exclaim, ‘O
Elenor! I am the worst of villains!’ Sometimes he seemed disordered in
his brain, and raved about Renaldo and Monimia. In a word, his mind was
in a dreadful situation, and all his agonies were communicated to me,
whom by this time he had married, in order to make some atonement for
my wrongs. Wretched as he then was, I remembered the accomplished youth