Camilla.
by f.a.n.n.y Burney.
TO THE
QUEEN
MADAM,
That Goodness inspires a confidence, which, by divesting respect of terror, excites attachment to Greatness, the presentation of this little Work to Your Majesty must truly, however humbly, evince; and though a public manifestation of duty and regard from an obscure Individual may betray a proud ambition, it is, I trust, but a venial--I am sure it is a natural one.
In those to whom Your Majesty is known but by exaltation of Rank, it may raise, perhaps, some surprise, that scenes, characters, and incidents, which have reference only to common life, should be brought into so august a presence; but the inhabitant of a retired cottage, who there receives the benign permission which at Your Majesty"s feet casts this humble offering, bears in mind recollections which must live there while "memory holds its seat," of a benevolence withheld from no condition, and delighting in all ways to speed the progress of Morality, through whatever channel it could flow, to whatever port it might steer. I blush at the inference I seem here to leave open of annexing undue importance to a production of apparently so light a kind--yet if my hope, my view--however fallacious they may eventually prove, extended not beyond whiling away an idle hour, should I dare seek such patronage?
With the deepest grat.i.tude, and most heart-felt respect, I am,
MADAM,
Your MAJESTY"S
Most obedient, most obliged,
And most dutiful servant,
F. d"ARBLAY.
BOOKHAM,
June 28, 1796
VOLUME I
BOOK I
The historian of human life finds less of difficulty and of intricacy to develop, in its accidents and adventures, than the investigator of the human heart in its feelings and its changes. In vain may Fortune wave her many-coloured banner, alternately regaling and dismaying, with hues that seem glowing with all the creation"s felicities, or with tints that appear stained with ingredients of unmixt horrors; her most rapid vicissitudes, her most una.s.similating eccentricities, are mocked, laughed at, and distanced by the wilder wonders of the Heart of man; that amazing a.s.semblage of all possible contrarieties, in which one thing alone is steady--the perverseness of spirit which grafts desire on what is denied. Its qualities are indefinable, its resources unfathomable, its weaknesses indefensible. In our neighbours we cannot judge, in ourselves we dare not trust it. We lose ere we learn to appreciate, and ere we can comprehend it we must be born again. Its capacity o"er-leaps all limit, while its futility includes every absurdity. It lives its own surprise--it ceases to beat--and the void is inscrutable! In one grand and general view, who can display such a portrait? Fairly, however faintly, to delineate some of its features, is the sole and discriminate province of the pen which would trace nature, yet blot out personality.
CHAPTER I
_A Family Scene_
Repose is not more welcome to the worn and to the aged, to the sick and to the unhappy, than danger, difficulty, and toil to the young and adventurous. Danger they encounter but as the forerunner of success; difficulty, as the spur of ingenuity; and toil, as the herald of honour.
The experience which teaches the lesson of truth, and the blessings of tranquillity, comes not in the shape of warning nor of wisdom; from such they turn aside, defying or disbelieving. "Tis in the bitterness of personal proof alone, in suffering and in feeling, in erring and in repenting, that experience comes home with conviction, or impresses to any use.
In the bosom of her respectable family resided Camilla. Nature, with a bounty the most profuse, had been lavish to her of attractions; Fortune, with a moderation yet kinder, had placed her between luxury and indigence. Her abode was in the parsonage-house of Etherington, beautifully situated in the unequal county of Hampshire, and in the vicinity of the varied landscapes of the New Forest. Her father, the rector, was the younger son of the house of Tyrold. The living, though not considerable, enabled its inc.u.mbent to attain every rational object of his modest and circ.u.mscribed wishes; to bestow upon a deserving wife whatever her own forbearance declined not; and to educate a lovely race of one son and three daughters, with that expansive propriety, which unites improvement for the future with present enjoyment.
In goodness of heart, and in principles of piety, this exemplary couple was bound to each other by the most perfect unison of character, though in their tempers there was a contrast which had scarce the gradation of a single shade to smooth off its abrupt dissimilitude. Mr. Tyrold, gentle with wisdom, and benign in virtue, saw with compa.s.sion all imperfections but his own, and there doubled the severity which to others he spared. Yet the mildness that urged him to pity blinded him not to approve; his equity was unerring, though his judgment was indulgent. His partner had a firmness of mind which nothing could shake: calamity found her resolute; even prosperity was powerless to lull her duties asleep. The exalted character of her husband was the pride of her existence, and the source of her happiness. He was not merely her standard of excellence, but of endurance, since her sense of his worth was the criterion for her opinion of all others. This instigated a spirit of comparison, which is almost always uncandid, and which here could rarely escape proving injurious. Such, at its very best, is the unskilfulness of our fallible nature, that even the n.o.ble principle which impels our love of right, misleads us but into new deviations, when its ambition presumes to point at perfection. In this instance, however, distinctness of disposition stifled not reciprocity of affection--that magnetic concentration of all marriage felicity;--Mr.
Tyrold revered while he softened the rigid virtues of his wife, who adored while she fortified the melting humanity of her husband.
Thus, in an interchange of happiness the most deserved, and of parental occupations the most promising, pa.s.sed the first married years of this blest and blessing pair. An event then came to pa.s.s extremely interesting at the moment, and yet more important in its consequences.
This was the receipt of a letter from the elder brother of Mr. Tyrold, containing information that he meant to remove into Hampshire.
Sir Hugh Tyrold was a baronet, who resided upon the hereditary estate of the family in Yorkshire. He was many years older than Mr. Tyrold, who had never seen him since his marriage; religious duties, prudence, and domestic affairs having from that period detained him at his benefice; while a pa.s.sion for field sports had, with equal constancy, kept his brother stationary.
The baronet began his letter with kind enquiries after the welfare of Mr. Tyrold and his family, and then entered upon the state of his own affairs, briefly narrating, that he had lost his health, and, not knowing what to do with himself, had resolved to change his habitation, and settle near his relations. The Cleves" estate, which he heard was just by Etherington, being then upon sale, he desired his brother to make the purchase for him out of hand; and then to prepare Mrs. Tyrold, with whom he was yet unacquainted, though he took it for granted she was a woman of great learning, to receive a mere poor country squire, who knew no more of hic, haec, hoc, than the baby unborn. He begged him to provide a proper apartment for their niece Indiana Lynmere, whom he should bring with him, and another for their nephew Clermont, who was to follow at the next holidays; and not to forget Mrs. Margland, Indiana"s governess, she being rather the most particular in point of pleasing amongst them.
Mr. Tyrold, extremely gratified by this unexpected renewal of fraternal intercourse, wrote the warmest thanks to his brother, and executed the commission with the utmost alacrity. A n.o.ble mansion, with an extensive pleasure-ground, scarce four miles distant from the parsonage-house of Etherington, was bought, fitted up, and made ready for his reception in the course of a few months. The baronet, impatient to take possession of his new territory, arrived speedily after, with his niece Indiana, and was welcomed at the gate of the park by Mr. Tyrold and his whole family.
Sir Hugh Tyrold inherited from his ancestors an uninc.u.mbered estate of .5000 per annum; which he enjoyed with ease and affluence to himself, and disseminated with a good will so generous, that he appeared to think his personal prosperity, and that of all who surrounded him, bestowed but to be shared in common, rather from general right, than through his own dispensing bounty. His temper was unalterably sweet, and every thought of his breast was laid open to the world with an almost infantine artlessness. But his talents bore no proportion to the goodness of his heart, an insuperable want of quickness, and of application in his early days, having left him, at a later period, wholly uncultivated, and singularly self-formed.
A dearth of all sedentary resources became, when his youth pa.s.sed away, his own constant reproach. Health failed him in the meridian of his life, from the consequences of a wound in his side, occasioned by a fall from his horse; exercise, therefore, and active diversions, were of necessity relinquished, and as these had hitherto occupied all his time, except that portion which he delighted to devote to hospitality and neighbourly offices, now equally beyond his strength, he found himself at once deprived of all employment, and dest.i.tute of all comfort. Nor did any plan occur to him to solace his misfortunes, till he accidentally read in the newspapers that the Cleves" estate was upon sale.
Indiana, the niece who accompanied him, a beautiful little girl, was the orphan daughter of a deceased sister, who, at the death of her parents, had, with Clermont, an only brother, been left to the guardianship of Sir Hugh; with the charge of a small estate for the son of scarce .200 a-year, and the sum of .1000 for the fortune of the daughter.
The meeting was a source of tender pleasure to Mr. Tyrold; and gave birth in his young family to that eager joy which is so naturally attached, by our happiest early prejudices, to the first sight of near relations. Mrs. Tyrold received Sir Hugh with the complacency due to the brother of her husband; who now rose higher than ever in her estimation, from a fraternal comparison to the unavoidable disadvantage of the baronet; though she was not insensible to the fair future prospects of her children, which seemed the probable result of his change of abode.
Sir Hugh himself, notwithstanding his best affections were all opened by the sight of so many claimants to their kindness, was the only dejected person of the group.
Though too good in his nature for envy, a severe self-upbraiding followed his view of the happiness of his brother; he regretted he had not married at the same age, that he might have owned as fine a family, and repined against the unfortunate privileges of his birth-right, which, by indulging him in his first youth with whatever he could covet, drove from his attention that modest foresight, which prepares for later years the consolation they are sure to require.
By degrees, however, the satisfaction spread around him found some place in his own breast, and he acknowledged himself sensibly revived by so endearing a reception; though he candidly avowed, that if he had not been at a loss what to do, he should never have had a thought of taking so long a journey. "But the not having made," cried he, "the proper proficiency in my youth for the filling up my time, has put me quite behind-hand."
He caressed all the children with great fondness, and was much struck with the beauty of his three nieces, particularly with that of Camilla, Mr. Tyrold"s second daughter; "yet she is not," he cried, "so pretty as her little sister Eugenia, nor much better than t"other sister Lavinia; and not one of the three is half so great a beauty as my little Indiana; so I can"t well make out what it is that"s so catching in her; but there"s something in her little mouth that quite wins me; though she looks as if she was half laughing at me too: which can"t very well be, neither; for I suppose, as yet, at least, she knows no more of books and studying than her uncle. And that"s little enough, G.o.d knows, for I never took to them in proper season; which I have been sorry enough for, upon coming to discretion."
Then addressing himself to the boy, he exhorted him to work hard while yet in his youth, and related sundry anecdotes of the industry and merit of his father when at the same age, though left quite to himself, as, to his great misfortune, he had been also, "which brought about," he continued, "my being this present _ignoramus_ that you see me; which would not have happened, if my good forefathers had been pleased to keep a sharper look out upon my education."
Lionel, the little boy, casting a comic glance at Camilla, begged to know what his uncle meant by a sharper look out?
"Mean, my dear? why correction, to be sure; for all that, they tell me, is to be done by the rod; so there, at least, I might have stood as good a chance as my neighbours."
"And pray, uncle," cried Lionel, pursing up his mouth to hide his laughter, "did you always like the thoughts of it so well?"
"Why no, my dear, I can"t pretend to that; at your age I had no more taste for it than you have: but there"s a proper season for every thing.
However, though I tell you this for a warning, perhaps you may do without it; for, by what I hear, the rising generation"s got to a much greater pitch since my time."
He then added, he must advise him, as a friend, to be upon his guard, as his Cousin, Clermont Lynmere, who was coming home from Eton school next Christmas for the holidays, would turn out the very mirror of scholarship; for he had given directions to have him study both night and day, except what might be taken off for eating and sleeping: "Because," he continued, "having proved the bad of knowing nothing in my own case, I have the more right to intermeddle with others. And he will thank me enough when once he has got over his cla.s.sics. And I hope, my dear little boy, you see it in the same light too; which, however, is what I can"t expect."
The house was now examined; the fair little Indiana took possession of her apartment; Miss Margland was satisfied with the attention that had been paid her; and Sir Hugh was rejoiced to find a room for Clermont that had no window but a skylight, by which means his studies, he observed, would receive no interruption from gaping and staring about him. And, when the night advanced, Mr. Tyrold had the happiness of leaving him with some prospect of recovering his spirits.