The Last Man
in opulence and luxury, were reduced to beggary. The very state of
peace in which we gloried was injurious; there were no means of
employing the idle, or of sending any overplus of population out of the
country. Even the source of colonies was dried up, for in New Holland,
Van Diemen’s Land, and the Cape of Good Hope, plague raged. O, for some
medicinal vial to purge unwholesome nature, and bring back the earth to
its accustomed health!
Ryland was a man of strong intellects and quick and sound decision in
the usual course of things, but he stood aghast at the multitude of
evils that gathered round us. Must he tax the landed interest to assist
our commercial population? To do this, he must gain the favour of the
chief land-holders, the nobility of the country; and these were his
vowed enemies—he must conciliate them by abandoning his favourite
scheme of equalization; he must confirm them in their manorial rights;
he must sell his cherished plans for the permanent good of his country,
for temporary relief. He must aim no more at the dear object of his
ambition; throwing his arms aside, he must for present ends give up the
ultimate object of his endeavours. He came to Windsor to consult with
us. Every day added to his difficulties; the arrival of fresh vessels
with emigrants, the total cessation of commerce, the starving multitude
that thronged around the palace of the Protectorate, were circumstances
not to be tampered with. The blow was struck; the aristocracy obtained
all they wished, and they subscribed to a twelvemonths’ bill, which
levied twenty per cent on all the rent-rolls of the country. Calm was
now restored to the metropolis, and to the populous cities, before
driven to desperation; and we returned to the consideration of distant
calamities, wondering if the future would bring any alleviation to
their excess. It was August; so there could be small hope of relief
during the heats. On the contrary, the disease gained virulence, while
starvation did its accustomed work. Thousands died unlamented; for
beside the yet warm corpse the mourner was stretched, made mute by
death.
On the eighteenth of this month news arrived in London that the plague
was in France and Italy. These tidings were at first whispered about
town; but no one dared express aloud the soul-quailing intelligence.
When any one met a friend in the street, he only cried as he hurried
on, “You know!”— while the other, with an ejaculation of fear and
horror, would answer,— “What will become of us?” At length it was
mentioned in the newspapers. The paragraph was inserted in an obscure
part: “We regret to state that there can be no longer a doubt of the
plague having been introduced at Leghorn, Genoa, and Marseilles.” No
word of comment followed; each reader made his own fearful one. We were
as a man who hears that his house is burning, and yet hurries through
the streets, borne along by a lurking hope of a mistake, till he turns
the corner, and sees his sheltering roof enveloped in a flame. Before
it had been a rumour; but now in words uneraseable, in definite and
undeniable print, the knowledge went forth. Its obscurity of situation
rendered it the more conspicuous: the diminutive letters grew gigantic
to the bewildered eye of fear: they seemed graven with a pen of iron,
impressed by fire, woven in the clouds, stamped on the very front of
the universe.
The English, whether travellers or residents, came pouring in one great
revulsive stream, back on their own country; and with them crowds of
Italians and Spaniards. Our little island was filled even to bursting.
At first an unusual quantity of specie made its appearance with the
emigrants; but these people had no means of receiving back into their
hands what they spent among us. With the advance of summer, and the
increase of the distemper, rents were unpaid, and their remittances
failed them. It was impossible to see these crowds of wretched,
perishing creatures, late nurslings of luxury, and not stretch out a
hand to save them. As at the conclusion of the eighteenth century, the
English unlocked their hospitable store, for the relief of those driven
from their homes by political revolution; so now they were not backward
in affording aid to the victims of a more wide-spreading calamity. We
had many foreign friends whom we eagerly sought out, and relieved from
dreadful penury. Our Castle became an asylum for the unhappy. A little
population occupied its halls. The revenue of its possessor, which had
always found a mode of expenditure congenial to his generous nature,
was now attended to more parsimoniously, that it might embrace a wider
portion of utility. It was not however money, except partially, but the
necessaries of life, that became scarce. It was difficult to find an
immediate remedy. The usual one of imports was entirely cut off. In
this emergency, to feed the very people to whom we had given refuge, we
were obliged to yield to the plough and the mattock our
pleasure-grounds and parks. Live stock diminished sensibly in the
country, from the effects of the great demand in the market. Even the
poor deer, our antlered proteges, were obliged to fall for the sake of
worthier pensioners. The labour necessary to bring the lands to this
sort of culture, employed and fed the offcasts of the diminished
manufactories.
Adrian did not rest only with the exertions he could make with regard
to his own possessions. He addressed himself to the wealthy of the
land; he made proposals in parliament little adapted to please the
rich; but his earnest pleadings and benevolent eloquence were
irresistible. To give up their pleasure-grounds to the agriculturist,
to diminish sensibly the number of horses kept for the purposes of
luxury throughout the country, were means obvious, but unpleasing. Yet,
to the honour of the English be it recorded, that, although natural
disinclination made them delay awhile, yet when the misery of their
fellow-creatures became glaring, an enthusiastic generosity inspired
their decrees. The most luxurious were often the first to part with
their indulgencies. As is common in communities, a fashion was set. The
high-born ladies of the country would have deemed themselves disgraced
if they had now enjoyed, what they before called a necessary, the ease
of a carriage. Chairs, as in olden time, and Indian palanquins were
introduced for the infirm; but else it was nothing singular to see
females of rank going on foot to places of fashionable resort. It was
more common, for all who possessed landed property to secede to their
estates, attended by whole troops of the indigent, to cut down their
woods to erect temporary dwellings, and to portion out their parks,
parterres and flower-gardens, to necessitous families. Many of these,
of high rank in their own countries, now, with hoe in hand, turned up
the soil. It was found necessary at last to check the spirit of
sacrifice, and to remind those whose generosity proceeded to lavish
waste, that, until the present state of things became permanent, of
which there was no likelihood, it was wrong to carry change so far as
to make a reaction difficult. Experience demonstrated that in a year or
two pestilence would cease; it were well that in the mean time we
should not have destroyed our fine breeds of horses, or have utterly
changed the face of the ornamented portion of the country.
It may be imagined that things were in a bad state indeed, before this
spirit of benevolence could have struck such deep roots. The infection
had now spread in the southern provinces of France. But that country
had so many resources in the way of agriculture, that the rush of
population from one part of it to another, and its increase through
foreign emigration, was less felt than with us. The panic struck
appeared of more injury, than disease and its natural concomitants.
Winter was hailed, a general and never-failing physician. The
embrowning woods, and swollen rivers, the evening mists, and morning
frosts, were welcomed with gratitude. The effects of purifying cold
were immediately felt; and the lists of mortality abroad were curtailed
each week. Many of our visitors left us: those whose homes were far in
the south, fled delightedly from our northern winter, and sought their
native land, secure of plenty even after their fearful visitation. We
breathed again. What the coming summer would bring, we knew not; but
the present months were our own, and our hopes of a cessation of
pestilence were high.
[6]Elton’s translation of Hesiod’s Works.
CHAPTER VI.
I have lingered thus long on the extreme bank, the wasting shoal that
stretched into the stream of life, dallying with the shadow of death.
Thus long, I have cradled my heart in retrospection of past happiness,
when hope was. Why not for ever thus? I am not immortal; and the thread
of my history might be spun out to the limits of my existence. But the
same sentiment that first led me to pourtray scenes replete with tender
recollections, now bids me hurry on. The same yearning of this warm,
panting heart, that has made me in written words record my vagabond
youth, my serene manhood, and the passions of my soul, makes me now
recoil from further delay. I must complete my work.
Here then I stand, as I said, beside the fleet waters of the flowing
years, and now away! Spread the sail, and strain with oar, hurrying by
dark impending crags, adown steep rapids, even to the sea of desolation
I have reached. Yet one moment, one brief interval before I put from
shore— once, once again let me fancy myself as I was in 2094 in my
abode at Windsor, let me close my eyes, and imagine that the
immeasurable boughs of its oaks still shadow me, its castle walls
anear. Let fancy pourtray the joyous scene of the twentieth of June,
such as even now my aching heart recalls it.
Circumstances had called me to London; here I heard talk that symptoms
of the plague had occurred in hospitals of that city. I returned to
Windsor; my brow was clouded, my heart heavy; I entered the Little
Park, as was my custom, at the Frogmore gate, on my way to the Castle.
A great part of these grounds had been given to cultivation, and strips
of potatoe-land and corn were scattered here and there. The rooks cawed
loudly in the trees above; mixed with their hoarse cries I heard a
lively strain of music. It was Alfred’s birthday. The young people, the
Etonians, and children of the neighbouring gentry, held a mock fair, to
which all the country people were invited. The park was speckled by
tents, whose flaunting colours and gaudy flags, waving in the sunshine,
added to the gaiety of the scene. On a platform erected beneath the
terrace, a number of the younger part of the assembly were dancing. I
leaned against a tree to observe them. The band played the wild eastern
air of Weber introduced in Abon Hassan; its volatile notes gave wings
to the feet of the dancers, while the lookers-on unconsciously beat
time. At first the tripping measure lifted my spirit with it, and for a
moment my eyes gladly followed the mazes of the dance. The revulsion of
thought passed like keen steel to my heart. Ye are all going to die, I
thought; already your tomb is built up around you. Awhile, because you
are gifted with agility and strength, you fancy that you live: but
frail is the “bower of flesh” that encaskets life; dissoluble the
silver cord that binds you to it. The joyous soul, charioted from
pleasure to pleasure by the graceful mechanism of well-formed limbs,
will suddenly feel the axle-tree give way, and spring and wheel
dissolve in dust. Not one of you, O! fated crowd, can escape—not one!
not my own ones! not my Idris and her babes! Horror and misery! Already
the gay dance vanished, the green sward was strewn with corpses, the