 | CHAPTER II. The life and adventures of Arthur Clenning, in two volumes |  |
Ah! if the opulent, if those favoured by fortune
knew or could know the uses which they might
make of their surplus wealth; if they knew how
many people through honest and commendable
pride appear to be comfortable, and yet pine in
secret under the pressure of the most afflicting
wants; if they knew how much happiness money
rightly bestowed even in loans, may impart: such
acts as this would be more common, and would
not wear such an air of improbability from the
unfrequency of their occurrence. If they considered
they would not continue to squander in lavish
and useless expenditures, which gratify only the
insatiate cravings of fancy or pride, what might
thus make a virtuous fellow being in distress
happy. Let them imagine such a family as this
—and no doubt many such exist—and picture to
themselves the agony of parents seeing their children
suffer for want of clothing and bread, or
even from the existence of the immediate apprehension
of this suffering, and then consider, that
there are men who squander in a day what would
render such a family comfortable for a year.
Surely if men had hearts, and saw what kind of a
world this is to the poor and the unfortunate, they
could find higher pleasures, than those of the
gaming table, the horse race, the haunts of licentiousness,
or even the useless luxury of extravagant
parties, made only for cold-hearted display.
Little do the wealthy know, and less do they feel
the bitter character of real, stern, irresistible
want, involving in its pressure a beloved wife,
cherished babes, and every thing dear on the
earth.
We will not believe that there are many who
cannot imagine how Mr. Clenning's heart danced
for joy, during his progress home from the post
office. Imagine him then opening the letter, and
spreading the bills before his wife and Rescue,
who by this time understood but too well by the
slips of paper. She snapped her fingers, and
capered with an extra flourish. “Bad money,”
she said; “He good and bad. Want him, make
sorry too much. Get him, make glad too much.”
Mr. Clenning asked her if she did not now believe
that there were some good white people.
“Good!” said Rescue, “aye, he good. Me pray
God hard for him to-night!”
There can be no doubt that Mr. Clenning felt
a particular pride in repairing to the excellent
and noble-minded captain, and paying the passage
for his family in advance. At the same
time he related his good fortune. The captain
seemed even reluctant to take the money, informing
him that this unknown benefactor had deprived
him of the pleasure of the generous action
which he contemplated; but he added, that if
Mr. Clenning should resolve, as he had expressed
himself, to purchase a farm after his arrival in
the United States, he would add to what might
remain to him after the passage, the loan of a
sufficient sum to enable him to make his proposed
purchase.
Their farewell to London was one in which
pleasure and pain were mixed. They certainly
left their mean and dark apartment with pleasure.
Augusta felt no regret in leaving a city where
not a single relative or friend deigned to recognise
her, and where she had played the highest
were no pleasant associations to detain her. But
it was painful to leave those kind, though humble
friends, who really cherished them. It is
true, a tear dimmed the eye of Augusta, as she
looked in the direction of the princely mansion
of her father. She took an impressive leave of
her kind neighbours who accompanied her to the
ship. The parting for a voyage over the trackless
and dangerous deep, is always an affecting
spectacle. Mr. Clenning and his wife quietly
seated themselves on the deck, with Rescue
holding the hand of her little charge, close beside
them, and calmly watched the feverish and tumultuous
spectacle of leave-taking. As the ship
moved off, “Hail to my country,” said the husband.
“If I once set my foot on thy shores, I
will leave thee no more.” “Farewell England,”
said his wife; “and may God forgive those who
have forsaken me.”
Conspicuous among their fellow passengers,
were three or four English merchants, of a character
precisely similar to the greater portion of those
who visit our shores from that country. The
dandy witling of the town, critic, merchant, and
cockney, were all so blended in them, that it was
impossible to say where one ended, and the other
began. It excited alternate amusement and indignation
to hear these people describe the United
States. The country for which they were bound,
make their fortunes, was the constant theme of
their vilification, ridicule, and abuse. Their dialect
was as amusing as the matter of their conversation.
All the canons of criticism were, of course,
completely at their command; and if any one ventured
the slightest dissent, though it were in a
matter of taste and opinion, about which, it is
the common saw, there ought to be no dispute,
he was knocked down with the “Edinburgh or
the London Quarterlies.” Their estimates of
American taste were derived from the fourth of
July orations of twenty years past, and Mr. Barlow's
Columbiad; they being pleased to consider
these productions as fair samples of what had
been done, or could be done in the literary way.
Their standing theme of wit was the awkwardness
and ignorance of “Jonathan,” whom they
considered a thick-headed, timid sort of fellow,
whose fare, physical and intellectual, was exceeding
meagre; and touching whom, it was a
mystery that with such a muddy and uninstructed
brain, he should be able to manage his own
affairs, and make his way in the world as well as
he did.
The rank and beauty, along with the story of
Mrs. Clenning, as told with all the comments and
conjectures of fancy, inspired them, at first, with
a certain degree of respect for her. But they
gradually broke over their reserve, and began
absence of her husband. They soon learned
that she was disinherited, and yoked for life to a
plebcian yankee. From familiarity, their manners
gradually advanced to rudeness, and they
attempted to play the amiable, with an insolence
and confidence resulting from their ignorance
and vanity, which induced Mr. Clenning one
evening to announce to one of them, when no
person was present, save themselves and the
captain, that if ever he should have the audacity
to conduct in the same way towards Mrs. Clenning
a second time, he would have the honour
of administering the sea bath to him, by throwing
him overboard. His cheek blanched to the
paleness of death as he measured, with his eye,
the muscular form of the American, and saw, by
the flashing of his eye, that he was in sober
earnest. This suggestion had a most salutary
effect, and the Englishman observed a respectful
distance of manner towards them during the
remainder of the voyage.
There were also a couple of young gentlemen
on board, sons of wealthy merchants in the
United States. They were returning home from
the tour of Europe. They conversed together
as friends, though they were the strongest contrast
to each other in nature. One was a modest,
amiable, well informed young man, perfectly
affable in his manners, who had apparently made
his tour. He had stored his mind with an abundance
of that necessary information which travelling
only can supply. His conversation was
equally instructive and interesting, and his standard
of refinement and good manners was simplicity,
truth, and nature. With him Mr.
Clenning passed many pleasant hours on the
voyage, and thus contracted a friendship which
he afterwards found of essential service to him.
The other was a sample of that poor and
spoiled race of young men, of which our country
annually imports so many; who return from
abroad to annoy the inhabitants of the cities with
the intolerable garrulity of travelled coxcombs,
and to learn the people in the country how
trifling, vain, and contemptible a young man
may become, from the very circumstance of
having extended his sphere of observation.
There was no end to the wonders he had seen,
nor the artists, connoisseurs, and fashionable and
great men, with whom he had been familiarly
conversant. At one time, he instructed the
people at the breakfast table what kind of place
the “palais royale” was. At another, they
heard long dissertations about the Pantheon
and St. Peter's. There was no great man in
any line in Europe, with whom he had not
familiarly met. It was edifying to hear and see
with what a sapient air he could rote all the
Europe, in a most mysterious dialect of bad
French, bad Italian, and cockney English, that
almost needed an interpreter. This star, it is
true, sometimes became pale, when he came in
contact with the Londoners, who were birds of
the same feather, but sung a different tune.
They affected to regard the pretensions of the
travelled Yankee with ineffable disdain, and all
parties on board were delighted to hear them
lisp defiances, in point of pretension, towards
each other. This happy action and reaction
had the effect to neutralize the annoying forwardness
of both parties. They were mutually afraid
of each other, and out of their opposition grew
their peace. The orb of the one never rose
upon them, until that of the other was below the
horizon. This young travelled American sat
near Mrs. Clenning at table every day; but he
always affected not to know her; and though he
had been heard to pronounce her beauty “severe,”
he spoke of her as a poor undone thing,
who might have made her fortune out of her
face alone; and he was often seen to eye her,
half bent, with his quizzing glass, as though he
were taking a survey of her from a distant box
of the theatre.
They had also on board a young gentleman,
who had been in some way attached to a foreign
mission. He was a man of gravity, and never
To him the secrets of courts were
familiar. To him oracular diplomatists were
known. He had been closeted with men, who,
Atlas-like, helped to prop the world. He always
wore the close brow of the mighty political secret;
and to hear him, these great men of state were
not wrought upon by fashion, folly, and physic,
like other people. It was only for some one to
broach any question, touching the general politics
of Europe, and forth stalked the great men of
England and the continent, like drill soldiers on
parade. Every great man with whom he had
spoken, and every court that he had visited, had
added something of height to his stature.
In the society of the captain, and his young
travelled friend, Mr. Clenning lost sight for a
time of his anxieties. But, as it ought to be,
all his home and deep felt enjoyments were in
the privacy of his little state room, into which
the father and mother, the little Augusta and
Rescue, could just crowd. Here they talked of
their future plans of industry and comfort on
the little farm which they proposed to make.
They discussed the comparative advantages of
one place over another. Over the mountains
and on the waters of the Ohio, or the Mississipi,
their imaginations painted a rich country, fertile
and cheap land, an unbounded stretch of forest,
tranquillity, retirement, and repose, which they
the island. Mr. Clenning saw affection and
hope written in letters of gold on the polished
brow of his wife, and was satisfied that in love
for him, she was compensated for all the privations
which it had brought upon her. Augusta
grew in beauty, strength, and endearment.
Rescue cared for nothing, so that she saw her
master and mistress happy, and could talk about
the western woods. These delightful feelings of
confidence and affection wore away the time
pleasantly. It was little to them, whether the
rest of their fellow passengers regarded them
with respect or pity, which they sometimes affected
to feel for them, or whether they regarded
them at all.
In twenty-two days, they landed without accident,
at New York. Mr. Clenning had talked
so much of the glorious freedom and independence
of his country, and had drawn such delightful
contrasts in its favour, compared with
England, and they had so often meditated upon
its green fields, compared with the gloomy brick
walls and dark alleys of London, that when they
came in view of the delightful shores of Long
Island, and the beautiful environs of New York,
Mrs. Clenning viewed the scenery with unsated
admiration. As she surveyed from the deck the
great extent of this very considerable pattern of
London, she could not withhold the expression
that she had never seen any thing so beautiful
as the approaches to that city from the sea; and
she pronounced the aspect, so seen, when all the
environs were in the full splendour of summer
verdure, unrivalled.
While she was calmly surveying the scenery,
a very different order of sensations was passing
in the bosom of her husband. All his desires
were concentered in the single wish, to appear
well in the eyes of his wife. He often had flattered
himself, that he had subdued all the weak
or tormenting passions and inclinations of his
nature. But, like the crop of weeds in a fertile
garden in summer, as soon as one set was got
under, a new one sprung up that required a new
series of efforts to subdue them. He had imagined
that he was neither weak, vain nor proud,
like other men. But when the ship drew towards
the shore, he felt a host of torturing thoughts
spring up like fiends within him. The beauty
and rank of his wife, assumed a new aspect in
his eye. He seemed to see, for the first time,
from what sphere she had descended to connect
her destinies with his, and his heart inly pined
for some kind of notice or distinction, on the
shore of his own native country, that might
enable him to figure with some degree of consequence
in her eye. The little world of the respect,
as well as affection of his wife, was all the
would have been to Napoleon. But alas! they
landed in a great and crowded city, to which
they had all been looking forward with eager
anticipation, and which he had fondly and
proudly associated with the increasing splendour
and glory of his dear native land, and he felt a
painful humiliation in the thought, that amidst
the crowds of people, that thronged about them
and in the city, whence he had embarked to go
abroad, he found himself, and was seen of her,
entirely a stranger, unknown and without name,
estimation or place, as completely as amidst the
crowds of London, or Sidney Cove. To find
himself so entirely without a single person to
whom to speak, or with whom to claim recognition,
was sufficiently painful in itself. It was
doubly so, when contemplated by another whose
respect and affection were every thing to him.
Ah! thought he, before any one shall reproach
me for the folly of this kind of ambition, let
him be placed in my situation; let him have been
the cause of humiliation to one so dear; let him
return with a heart of unutterable affection to
the land of his birth; let him see the crowds
rushing about a landing ship; let him find himself
wholly unknown, overlooked, disregarded,
obliged to clear the way for strangers on this
side, only to jostle them on the other; and let
all this be seen by such a wife as Augusta Clenning;
is naturally an ambitious animal, he has more
meekness and philosophy, than I have. It was,
indeed, a sore evil under the sun. Acquaintances,
relatives, strangers, came like a torrent round
the ship. There was the New York great man,
making his joyful and proud recognition of his
London friend. There was the bluff and portly
merchant, for whom the crowd instinctively made
way, that he might look at his bales. There was
the honourable Mr. A. and Mr. alderman B.
and squire C; and there was shaking of hands,
and such hearty inquiries about the voyage, and
such laying out of dinner parties; and every one
but themselves, seeming to have some consequence,
that the whole taken together, could not
but force upon them a painful conviction of their
nothingness. The people whispered, indeed, as
they saw Augusta calmly sitting in the pride of
her beauty. The inaudible inquiry was followed
by a nod, which being interpreted, her husband
understood to mean O! poor woman! It is true,
some considerate visitor to the ship, brought
chesnuts and cakes to the little Augusta, attracted
by her sweet rosy face, and her blond locks
curling round her alabaster neck. A present of
this sort, and apples and oranges by another,
and being caressed and kissed by a third, made
the child as happy as she could be, and gave the
of heart of the American people.
Besides, circumstances soon convinced Mr.
Clenning, that all these painful feelings of obscurity
and neglect existed alone in his mind;
and that a very different train of thought from
that, which he had so gloomily imagined, had
been passing in hers. Perfectly secure in the
sense of his protection, and satisfied in the singleness
of her affection for him, her thoughts
had been expatiating in the new scene before
her, with all the eagerness of curiosity. Here,
there were no contemptuous relatives and connections
of former days, to neglect her. No
harrowing associations, to remind her of the
difference, between what she then was, and what
she had been. She thought with pride, that her
husband would see none more beautiful than
herself, among his fair country-women. She
was meditating with admiration on the beauty
of her little girl; or thinking of the pleasure of
journeying amidst new scenery; and not one of
those torturing thoughts, that had brought gloom
on the brow of her husband, had touched her
heart.
Her husband proposed a carriage to carry her
and his little one, and Rescue, to the hotel. But,
she kindly refused, saying, “that it was cheaper
to walk; and that she wished to explore the
and novel scene. Rescue bounded along with
little Augusta in her arms, exulting in the thought,
that in a few days more she should be in the
woods. How certain it is, that most of our
miseries are of our own creation! All this inward
torture of ambition and pining through want of
consequence, had been the single heritage of Mr.
Clenning, who imagined the while, that disinterested
feeling for another had originated the
whole.
The kind captain, true to all he had promised,
proffered endorsement to the amount of a thousand
dollars, of which Mr. Clenning assured him
he would thankfully avail himself, whenever he
could find in the country such a place as he
should like to purchase. The other passengers
made their cold congés, and were dispersing in
their coaches to the hotels, or their different residences.
Mr. Clenning and his wife, having
fixed upon the hotel where they proposed to
stay, were traversing the streets with that peculiar
kind of inspection, which always designates
strangers to citizens. The grace and foreign
air of Augusta were calculated to arrest attention.
Still more so were the hair, the outlandish
face, and the peculiar form of Rescue. The
knowing observers, who saw this singular group
passing along the streets, of course noted them
as persons afflicted with the sad disease of poverty,
interest to inquire farther.
In their way to the hotel, they most fortunately
stumbled upon the minister of Mr. Clenning's
native village. What a meeting was this! All
the feelings of home rushed upon his heart in a
moment. It was with inexpressible delight he
heard that his father's family were all in health.
The minister was a dignified and respectable
man. He was in the city, with two of his
church officers, in the discharge of his ecclesiastical
duties. Mr. Clenning had always been a
favourite with him, and he now enjoyed this
happy meeting from a variety of considerations.
Augusta saw, in a moment, that the minister was
a gentleman of amiable and polished manners,
while her grace and sweetness struck him in such
a way, as immediately to produce that winning
deference and respect, which are so pleasant
to those who have been born and reared in
good society. She saw, in a moment, that a
gentleman of such tact and manners could not
belong to a country so rude and barbarous as
she had thought the interior of the United States
to be. A mutual feeling of regard and good will
was the immediate result of this introduction.
The minister and his friends were exceedingly
anxious to hear the relation of his strange adventures,
and the circumstances of his union with
his wife. This would happily fill up the hours
their journey, which, they agreed, should also be
together, to Mr. Clenning's place of nativity.
They were thus immediately associated with
respectable people, who were the medium of
introducing them to other respectable people,
and Augusta soon observed, with visible satisfaction,
the greater equality of rank and condition,
and that the terms of admission to good society
were more simply founded on goodness of moral
character than in her own country. In company
with these acquaintances they made the circuit
of the town, and Augusta never ceased to express
her astonishment at the display of wealth, bustle,
and business, and appearances so very different
from all that she had expected to find in such a
young country.
| CHAPTER II. The life and adventures of Arthur Clenning, in two volumes | |