The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
young officer and a ward of the squire’s, a beautiful blushing girl of
seventeen. From several shy glances which I had noticed in the course of
the evening I suspected there was a little kindness growing up between
them; and indeed the young soldier was just the hero to captivate a
romantic girl. He was tall, slender, and handsome, and, like most
young British officers of late years, had picked up various small
accomplishments on the Continent: he could talk French and Italian, draw
landscapes, sing very tolerably, dance divinely, but, above all, he had
been wounded at Waterloo. What girl of seventeen, well read in poetry
and romance, could resist such a mirror of chivalry and perfection?
The moment the dance was over he caught up a guitar, and, lolling
against the old marble fireplace in an attitude which I am half inclined
to suspect was studied, began the little French air of the Troubadour.
The squire, however, exclaimed against having anything on Christmas Eve
but good old English; upon which the young minstrel, casting up his eye
for a moment as if in an effort of memory, struck into another strain,
and with a charming air of gallantry gave Herrick’s “Night-Piece to
Julia:”
Her eyes the glow-worm lend thee,
The shooting stars attend thee,
And the elves also,
Whose little eyes glow
Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee.
No Will-o’-the-Wisp mislight thee;
Nor snake nor slow-worm bite thee;
But on thy way,
Not making a stay,
Since ghost there is none to affright thee,
Then let not the dark thee cumber;
What though the moon does slumber,
The stars of the night
Will lend thee their light,
Like tapers clear without number.
Then, Julia, let me woo thee,
Thus, thus to come unto me,
And when I shall meet
Thy silvery feet,
My soul I’ll pour into thee.
The song might or might not have been intended in compliment to the
fair Julia, for so I found his partner was called; she, however, was
certainly unconscious of any such application, for she never looked
at the singer, but kept her eyes cast upon the floor. Her face was
suffused, it is true, with a beautiful blush, and there was a gentle
heaving of the bosom, but all that was doubtless caused by the exercise
of the dance; indeed, so great was her indifference that she amused
herself with plucking to pieces a choice bouquet of hot-house flowers,
and by the time the song was concluded the nosegay lay in ruins on the
floor.
The party now broke up for the night with the kind-hearted old custom of
shaking hands. As I passed through the hall on my way to my chamber, the
dying embers of the Yule-clog still sent forth a dusky glow, and had it
not been the season when “no spirit dares stir abroad,” I should have
been half tempted to steal from my room at midnight and peep whether the
fairies might not be at their revels about the hearth.
My chamber was in the old part of the mansion, the ponderous furniture
of which might have been fabricated in the days of the giants. The room
was panelled, with cornices of heavy carved work, in which flowers and
grotesque faces were strangely intermingled, and a row of black-looking
portraits stared mournfully at me from the walls. The bed was of rich
though faded damask, with a lofty tester, and stood in a niche opposite
a bow window. I had scarcely got into bed when a strain of music seemed
to break forth in the air just below the window. I listened, and found
it proceeded from a band which I concluded to be the Waits from some
neighboring village. They went round the house, playing under the
windows. I drew aside the curtains to hear them more distinctly.
The moonbeams fell through the upper part of the casement; partially
lighting up the antiquated apartment. The sounds, as they receded,
became more soft and aerial, and seemed to accord with the quiet and
moonlight. I listened and listened--they became more and more tender and
remote, and, as they gradually died away, my head sunk upon the pillow
and I fell asleep.
CHRISTMAS DAY.
Dark and dull night, flie hence away,
And give the honor to this day
That sees December turn’d to May.
. . . . . . .
Why does the chilling winter’s morne
Smile like a field beset with corn?
Or smell like to a meade new-shorne,
Thus on the sudden?--come and see
The cause why things thus fragrant be.
HERRICK.
WHEN I woke the next morning it seemed as if all the events of the
preceding evening had been a dream, and nothing but the identity of the
ancient chamber convinced me of their reality. While I lay musing on my
pillow I heard the sound of little feet pattering outside of the door,
and a whispering consultation. Presently a choir of small voices chanted
forth an old Christmas carol, the burden of which was--
Rejoice, our Saviour he was born
On Christmas Day in the morning.
I rose softly, slipt on my clothes, opened the door suddenly, and beheld
one of the most beautiful little fairy groups that a painter could
imagine. It consisted of a boy and two girls, the eldest not more than
six, and lovely as seraphs. They were going the rounds of the house and
singing at every chamber door, but my sudden appearance frightened them
into mute bashfulness. They remained for a moment playing on their lips
with their fingers, and now and then stealing a shy glance from under
their eyebrows, until, as if by one impulse, they scampered away, and as
they turned an angle of the gallery I heard them laughing in triumph at
their escape.
Everything conspired to produce kind and happy feelings in this
stronghold of old-fashioned hospitality. The window of my chamber looked
out upon what in summer would have been a beautiful landscape. There was
a sloping lawn, a fine stream winding at the foot of it, and a tract of
park beyond, with noble clumps of trees and herds of deer. At a distance
was a neat hamlet, with the smoke from the cottage chimneys hanging over
it, and a church with its dark spire in strong relief against the clear
cold sky. The house was surrounded with evergreens, according to the
English custom, which would have given almost an appearance of summer;
but the morning was extremely frosty; the light vapor of the preceding
evening had been precipitated by the cold, and covered all the trees and
every blade of grass with its fine crystalizations. The rays of a bright
morning sun had a dazzling effect among the glittering foliage. A robin,
perched upon the top of a mountain-ash that hung its clusters of red
berries just before my window, was basking himself in the sunshine
and piping a few querulous notes, and a peacock was displaying all
the glories of his train and strutting with the pride and gravity of a
Spanish grandee on the terrace walk below.
I had scarcely dressed myself when a servant appeared to invite me to
family prayers. He showed me the way to a small chapel in the old wing
of the house, where I found the principal part of the family already
assembled in a kind of gallery furnished with cushions, hassocks, and
large prayer-books; the servants were seated on benches below. The old
gentleman read prayers from a desk in front of the gallery, and Master
Simon acted as clerk and made the responses; and I must do him the
justice to say that he acquitted himself with great gravity and decorum.
The service was followed by a Christmas carol, which Mr. Bracebridge
himself had constructed from a poem of his favorite author, Herrick, and
it had been adapted to an old church melody by Master Simon. As there
were several good voices among the household, the effect was extremely
pleasing, but I was particularly gratified by the exaltation of heart
and sudden sally of grateful feeling with which the worthy squire
delivered one stanza, his eye glistening and his voice rambling out of
all the bounds of time and tune:
“‘Tis Thou that crown’st my glittering hearth
With guiltless mirth,
And givest me Wassaile bowles to drink
Spiced to the brink;
Lord, ‘tis Thy plenty-dropping hand
That soiles my land:
And giv’st me for my bushell sowne,
Twice ten for one.”
I afterwards understood that early morning service was read on every
Sunday and saint’s day throughout the year, either by Mr. Bracebridge or
by some member of the family. It was once almost universally the case
at the seats of the nobility and gentry of England, and it is much to
be regretted that the custom is falling into neglect; for the dullest
observer must be sensible of the order and serenity prevalent in those
households where the occasional exercise of a beautiful form of worship
in the morning gives, as it were, the keynote to every temper for the
day and attunes every spirit to harmony.
Our breakfast consisted of what the squire denominated true old English
fare. He indulged in some bitter lamentations over modern breakfasts
of tea and toast, which he censured as among the causes of modern
effeminacy and weak nerves and the decline of old English heartiness;
and, though he admitted them to his table to suit the palates of his
guests, yet there was a brave display of cold meats, wine, and ale on
the sideboard.
After breakfast I walked about the grounds with Frank Bracebridge
and Master Simon, or Mr. Simon, as he was called by everybody but the
squire. We were escorted by a number of gentlemanlike dogs, that seemed
loungers about the establishment, from the frisking spaniel to the
steady old stag-hound, the last of which was of a race that had been
in the family time out of mind; they were all obedient to a dog-whistle
which hung to Master Simon’s buttonhole, and in the midst of their
gambols would glance an eye occasionally upon a small switch he carried
in his hand.
The old mansion had a still more venerable look in the yellow sunshine
than by pale moonlight; and I could not but feel the force of the
squire’s idea that the formal terraces, heavily moulded balustrades, and
clipped yew trees carried with them an air of proud aristocracy. There
appeared to be an unusual number of peacocks about the place, and I was
making some remarks upon what I termed a flock of them that were basking
under a sunny wall, when I was gently corrected in my phraseology
by Master Simon, who told me that according to the most ancient and
approved treatise on hunting I must say a muster of peacocks. “In the
same way,” added he, with a slight air of pedantry, “we say a flight
of doves or swallows, a bevy of quails, a herd of deer, of wrens, or
cranes, a skulk of foxes, or a building of rooks.” He went on to inform
me that, according to Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, we ought to ascribe to
this bird “both understanding and glory; for, being praised, he will
presently set up his tail, chiefly against the sun, to the intent you
may the better behold the beauty thereof. But at the fall of the leaf,
when his tail falleth, he will mourn and hide himself in corners till
his tail come again as it was.”
I could not help smiling at this display of small erudition on so
whimsical a subject; but I found that the peacocks were birds of some
consequence at the hall, for Frank Bracebridge informed me that they
were great favorites with his father, who was extremely careful to keep
up the breed; partly because they belonged to chivalry, and were in
great request at the stately banquets of the olden time, and partly
because they had a pomp and magnificence about them highly becoming an
old family mansion. Nothing, he was accustomed to say, had an air of
greater state and dignity than a peacock perched upon an antique stone
balustrade.