The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
prodigiously fine woman and drove her own curricle.
The dinner-time passed away in this flow of innocent hilarity, and,
though the old hall may have resounded in its time with many a scene
of broader rout and revel, yet I doubt whether it ever witnessed more
honest and genuine enjoyment. How easy it is for one benevolent being to
diffuse pleasure around him! and how truly is a kind heart a fountain of
gladness, making everything in its vicinity to freshen into smiles! The
joyous disposition of the worthy squire was perfectly contagious; he was
happy himself, and disposed to make all the world happy, and the little
eccentricities of his humor did but season, in a manner, the sweetness
of his philanthropy.
When the ladies had retired, the conversation, as usual, became still
more animated; many good things were broached which had been thought
of during dinner, but which would not exactly do for a lady’s ear; and,
though I cannot positively affirm that there was much wit uttered, yet
I have certainly heard many contests of rare wit produce much less
laughter. Wit, after all, is a mighty tart, pungent ingredient, and much
too acid for some stomachs; but honest good-humor is the oil and wine
of a merry meeting, and there is no jovial companionship equal to that
where the jokes are rather small and the laughter abundant.
The squire told several long stories of early college pranks and
adventures, in some of which the parson had been a sharer, though in
looking at the latter it required some effort of imagination to figure
such a little dark anatomy of a man into the perpetrator of a madcap
gambol. Indeed, the two college chums presented pictures of what men
may be made by their different lots in life. The squire had left the
university to live lustily on his paternal domains in the vigorous
enjoyment of prosperity and sunshine, and had flourished on to a hearty
and florid old age; whilst the poor parson, on the contrary, had dried
and withered away among dusty tomes in the silence and shadows of his
study. Still, there seemed to be a spark of almost extinguished fire
feebly glimmering in the bottom of his soul; and as the squire hinted
at a sly story of the parson and a pretty milkmaid whom they once met
on the banks of the Isis, the old gentleman made an “alphabet of faces,”
which, as far as I could decipher his physiognomy, I verily believe was
indicative of laughter; indeed, I have rarely met with an old gentleman
that took absolute offence at the imputed gallantries of his youth.
I found the tide of wine and wassail fast gaining on the dry land of
sober judgment. The company grew merrier and louder as their jokes grew
duller. Master Simon was in as chirping a humor as a grasshopper filled
with dew; his old songs grew of a warmer complexion, and he began to
talk maudlin about the widow. He even gave a long song about the wooing
of a widow which he informed me he had gathered from an excellent
black-letter work entitled Cupid’s Solicitor for Love, containing store
of good advice for bachelors, and which he promised to lend me; the
first verse was to effect.
He that will woo a widow must not dally
He must make hay while the sun doth shine;
He must not stand with her, shall I, shall I,
But boldly say, Widow, thou must be mine.
This song inspired the fat-headed old gentleman, who made several
attempts to tell a rather broad story out of Joe Miller that was pat to
the purpose; but he always stuck in the middle, everybody recollecting
the latter part excepting himself. The parson, too, began to show the
effects of good cheer, having gradually settled down into a doze and his
wig sitting most suspiciously on one side. Just at this juncture we were
summoned to the drawing room, and I suspect, at the private instigation
of mine host, whose joviality seemed always tempered with a proper love
of decorum.
After the dinner-table was removed the hall was given up to the younger
members of the family, who, prompted to all kind of noisy mirth by the
Oxonian and Master Simon, made its old walls ring with their merriment
as they played at romping games. I delight in witnessing the gambols of
children, and particularly at this happy holiday season, and could not
help stealing out of the drawing-room on hearing one of their peals of
laughter. I found them at the game of blindman’s-buff. Master Simon, who
was the leader of their revels, and seemed on all occasions to fulfill
the office of that ancient potentate, the Lord of Misrule,* was blinded
in the midst of the hall. The little beings were as busy about him as
the mock fairies about Falstaff, pinching him, plucking at the skirts of
his coat, and tickling him with straws. One fine blue-eyed girl of about
thirteen, with her flaxen hair all in beautiful confusion, her frolic
face in a glow, her frock half torn off her shoulders, a complete
picture of a romp, was the chief tormentor; and, from the slyness with
which Master Simon avoided the smaller game and hemmed this wild little
nymph in corners, and obliged her to jump shrieking over chairs,
I suspected the rogue of being not a whit more blinded than was
convenient.
* At Christmasse there was in the Kinges house, wheresoever
hee was lodged, a lorde of misrule or mayster of merie
disportes, and the like had ye in the house of every
nobleman of honor, or good worshipper were he spirituall or
temporall.--STOW.
When I returned to the drawing-room I found the company seated round the
fire listening to the parson, who was deeply ensconced in a high-backed
oaken chair, the work of some cunning artificer of yore, which had been
brought from the library for his particular accommodation. From this
venerable piece of furniture, with which his shadowy figure and dark
weazen face so admirably accorded, he was dealing out strange accounts
of the popular superstitions and legends of the surrounding country,
with which he had become acquainted in the course of his antiquarian
researches. I am half inclined to think that the old gentleman was
himself somewhat tinctured with superstition, as men are very apt to
be who live a recluse and studious life in a sequestered part of the
country and pore over black-letter tracts, so often filled with the
marvelous and supernatural. He gave us several anecdotes of the fancies
of the neighboring peasantry concerning the effigy of the crusader which
lay on the tomb by the church altar. As it was the only monument of
the kind in that part of the country, it had always been regarded with
feelings of superstition by the good wives of the village. It was said
to get up from the tomb and walk the rounds of the churchyard in stormy
nights, particularly when it thundered; and one old woman, whose cottage
bordered on the churchyard, had seen it through the windows of the
church, when the moon shone, slowly pacing up and down the aisles.
It was the belief that some wrong had been left unredressed by the
deceased, or some treasure hidden, which kept the spirit in a state of
trouble and restlessness. Some talked of gold and jewels buried in the
tomb, over which the spectre kept watch; and there was a story current
of a sexton in old times who endeavored to break his way to the coffin
at night, but just as he reached it received a violent blow from
the marble hand of the effigy, which stretched him senseless on the
pavement. These tales were often laughed at by some of the sturdier
among the rustics, yet when night came on there were many of the
stoutest unbelievers that were shy of venturing alone in the footpath
that led across the churchyard.
From these and other anecdotes that followed the crusader appeared to be
the favorite hero of ghost-stories throughout the vicinity. His picture,
which hung up in the hall, was thought by the servants to have something
supernatural about it; for they remarked that in whatever part of the
hall you went the eyes of the warrior were still fixed on you. The old
porter’s wife, too, at the lodge, who had been born and brought up in
the family, and was a great gossip among the maid-servants, affirmed
that in her young days she had often heard say that on Midsummer Eve,
when it was well known all kinds of ghosts, goblins, and fairies become
visible and walk abroad, the crusader used to mount his horse, come down
from his picture, ride about the house, down the avenue, and so to the
church to visit the tomb; on which occasion the church-door most civilly
swung open of itself; not that he needed it, for he rode through closed
gates, and even stone walls, and had been seen by one of the dairymaids
to pass between two bars of the great park gate, making himself as thin
as a sheet of paper.
All these superstitions I found had been very much countenanced by the
squire, who, though not superstitious himself, was very fond of seeing
others so. He listened to every goblin tale of the neighboring gossips
with infinite gravity, and held the porter’s wife in high favor on
account of her talent for the marvellous. He was himself a great reader
of old legends and romances, and often lamented that he could not
believe in them; for a superstitious person, he thought, must live in a
kind of fairy-land.
Whilst we were all attention to the parson’s stories, our ears were
suddenly assailed by a burst of heterogeneous sounds from the hall, in
which were mingled something like the clang of rude minstrelsy with the
uproar of many small voices and girlish laughter. The door suddenly flew
open, and a train came trooping into the room that might almost
have been mistaken for the breaking up of the court of Faery. That
indefatigable spirit, Master Simon, in the faithful discharge of his
duties as lord of misrule, had conceived the idea of a Christmas mummery
or masking; and having called in to his assistance the Oxonian and the
young officer, who were equally ripe for anything that should occasion
romping and merriment, they had carried it into instant effect. The old
housekeeper had been consulted; the antique clothespresses and wardrobes
rummaged and made to yield up the relics of finery that had not seen the
light for several generations; the younger part of the company had been
privately convened from the parlor and hall, and the whole had been
bedizened out into a burlesque imitation of an antique mask.*
* Maskings or mummeries were favorite sports at Christmas in
old times, and the wardrobes at halls and manor-houses were
often laid under contribution to furnish dresses and
fantastic disguisings. I strongly suspect Master Simon to
have taken the idea of his from Ben Jonson’s “Masque of
Christmas.”
Master Simon led the van, as “Ancient Christmas,” quaintly apparelled in
a ruff, a short cloak, which had very much the aspect of one of the old
housekeeper’s petticoats, and a hat that might have served for a
village steeple, and must indubitably have figured in the days of the
Covenanters. From under this his nose curved boldly forth, flushed with
a frost-bitten bloom that seemed the very trophy of a December blast. He
was accompanied by the blue-eyed romp, dished up, as “Dame Mince Pie,”
in the venerable magnificence of a faded brocade, long stomacher, peaked
hat, and high-heeled shoes. The young officer appeared as Robin Hood, in
a sporting dress of Kendal green and a foraging cap with a gold tassel.
The costume, to be sure, did not bear testimony to deep research, and
there was an evident eye to the picturesque, natural to a young gallant
in the presence of his mistress. The fair Julia hung on his arm in a
pretty rustic dress as “Maid Marian.” The rest of the train had been
metamorphosed in various ways; the girls trussed up in the finery of the