1.1. THE LAST MAN.
CHAPTER I.
I AM the native of a sea-surrounded nook, a
cloud-enshadowed land, which, when the surface of the
globe, with its shoreless ocean and trackless
continents, presents itself to my mind, appears only as
an inconsiderable speck in the immense whole; and yet,
when balanced in the scale of mental power, far
outweighed countries of larger extent and more numerous
population. So true it is, that man's mind alone was
the creator of all that was good or great to man, and
that
Nature herself was only his first minister. England,
seated far north in the turbid sea, now visits
my dreams in the semblance of a vast and well-manned
ship, which mastered the winds and rode proudly over
the waves. In my boyish days she was the universe to
me. When I stood on my native hills, and saw plain and
mountain stretch out to the utmost limits of my vision,
speckled by the dwellings of my countrymen, and subdued
to fertility by their labours, the earth's very centre
was fixed for me in that spot, and the rest of her orb
was as a fable, to have forgotten which would have
cost neither my imagination nor understanding an
effort.
My fortunes have been, from the beginning, an
exemplification of the power that mutability may
possess over the varied tenor of man's life. With
regard to myself, this came almost by inheritance. My
father was one of those men on whom nature had bestowed
to prodigality the envied gifts of wit and imagination,
and then left his bark of life to be impelled by these
winds, without adding reason as the rudder, or judgment
as the pilot for the voyage. His extraction was
obscure; but circumstances brought him early into
public notice, and his small paternal property was soon
dissipated in the splendid scene of fashion and luxury
in which he was an actor. During the short years of
thoughtless youth, he was adored by the high-bred
triflers of the day, nor least by the youthful
sovereign, who escaped from the intrigues of party,
and the arduous duties of kingly business, to find
never-failing amusement and exhilaration of spirit in
his society. My father's impulses, never under his own
controul, perpetually led him into difficulties from
which his ingenuity alone could extricate him; and the
accumulating pile of debts of honour and of trade,
which would have bent to earth any other, was supported
by him with a light spirit and tameless hilarity; while
his company was so necessary at the tables and
assemblies of the rich, that his derelictions were
considered venial,
and he himself received with
intoxicating flattery.
This kind of popularity, like every other, is
evanescent: and the difficulties of every kind with
which he had to contend,increased in a frightful ratio
compared with his small means of extricating himself.
At such times the king, in his enthusiasm for him,
would come to his relief, and then kindly take his
friend to task; my father gave the best promises for
amendment, but his social disposition, his craving for
the usual diet of admiration, and more than all, the
fiend of gambling, which fully possessed him, made his
good resolutions transient, his promises vain. With
the quick sensibility peculiar to his temperament, he
perceived his power in the brilliant circle to be on
the wane. The king married; and the haughty princess
of Austria, who became, as queen of England, the head
of fashion, looked with harsh eyes on his defects, and
with contempt on the affection her royal husband
entertained for him. My
father felt that his fall was near; but so far from profiting by this
last calm before the storm to save himself, he sought to forget
anticipated evil by making still greater sacrifices to
the deity of pleasure, deceitful and cruel arbiter of
his destiny.
The king, who was a man of excellent dispositions, but
easily led, had now become a willing disciple of his
imperious consort. He was induced to look with extreme
disapprobation, and at last with distaste, on my
father's imprudence and follies. It is true that his
presence dissipated these clouds; his warm-hearted
frankness, brilliant sallies, and confiding demeanour
were irresistible: it was only when at a distance,
while still renewed tales of his errors were poured
into his royal friend's ear, that he lost his
influence. The queen's dextrous management was
employed to prolong these absences, and gather together
accusations. At length the king was brought to see in
him a source of perpetual disquiet, knowing that he
should pay for
the short-lived pleasure of his society
by tedious homilies, and more painful narrations of
excesses, the truth of which he could not disprove. The
result was, that he would make one more attempt to
reclaim him, and in case of ill success, cast him off
for ever.
Such a scene must have been one of deepest interest and
high-wrought passion. A powerful king, conspicuous for
a goodness which had heretofore made him meek, and now
lofty in his admonitions, with alternate entreaty and
reproof, besought his friend to attend to his real
interests, resolutely to avoid those fascinations which
in fact were fast deserting him, and to spend his great
powers on a worthy field, in which he, his sovereign,
would be his prop, his stay, and his pioneer. My
father felt this kindness; for a moment ambitious
dreams floated before him; and he thought that it would
be well to exchange his present pursuits for nobler
duties. With sincerity and fervour he gave the
required promise: as a pledge of continued favour,
he received from his royal master a sum of money to defray
pressing debts, and enable him to enter under good
auspices his new career. That very night, while yet
full of gratitude and good resolves, this whole sum,
and its amount doubled, was lost at the gaming-table.
In his desire to repair his first losses, my father
risked double stakes, and thus incurred a debt of
honour he was wholly unable to pay. Ashamed to apply
again to the king, he turned his back upon London, its
false delights and clinging miseries; and, with poverty
for his sole companion, buried himself in solitude
among the hills and lakes of Cumberland. His wit, his
bon mots, the record of his personal attractions,
fascinating manners, and social talents, were long
remembered and repeated from mouth to mouth. Ask where
now was this favourite of fashion, this companion of
the noble, this excelling beam, which gilt with alien
splendour the assemblies of the courtly and the
gay—you heard that he was under a cloud, a lost man;
not one thought it belonged to him to repay pleasure by
real services, or that his long reign of brilliant wit
deserved a pension on retiring. The king lamented his
absence; he loved to repeat his sayings, relate the
adventures they had had together, and exalt his
talents—but here ended his reminiscence.
Meanwhile my father, forgotten, could not forget. He
repined for the loss of what was more necessary to him
than air or food—the excitements of pleasure, the
admiration of the noble, the luxurious and polished
living of the great. A nervous fever was the
consequence; during which he was nursed by the daughter
of a poor cottager, under whose roof he lodged. She was
lovely, gentle, and, above all, kind to him; nor can it
afford astonishment, that the late idol of high-bred
beauty should, even in a fallen state, appear a being
of an elevated and wondrous nature to the lowly
cottage-girl. The attachment between them led to the
ill-fated marriage, of which I was the offspring.
Notwithstanding the tenderness and sweetness of my
mother, her husband still deplored his degraded state.
Unaccustomed to industry, he knew not in what way to
contribute to the support of his increasing family.
Sometimes he thought of applying to the king; pride and
shame for a while withheld him; and, before his
necessities became so imperious as to compel him to
some kind of exertion, he died. For one brief interval
before this catastrophe, he looked forward to the
future, and contemplated with anguish the desolate
situation in which his wife and children would be left.
His last effort was a letter to the king, full of
touching eloquence, and of occasional flashes of that
brilliant spirit which was an integral part of him. He
bequeathed his widow and orphans to the friendship of
his royal master, and felt satisfied that, by this
means, their prosperity was better assured in his death
than in his life. This letter was enclosed to the care
of a nobleman, who, he did not
doubt, would perform the
last and inexpensive office of placing it in the king's
own hand.
He died in debt, and his little property was seized
immediately by his creditors. My mother, pennyless and
burthened with two children, waited week after week,
and month after month, in sickening expectation of a
reply, which never came. She had no experience beyond
her father's cottage; and the mansion of the lord of
the manor was the chiefest type of grandeur she could
conceive. During my father's life, she had been made
familiar with the name of royalty and the courtly
circle; but such things, ill according with her
personal experience, appeared, after the loss of him
who gave substance and reality to them, vague and
fantastical. If, under any circumstances, she could
have acquired sufficient courage to address the noble
persons mentioned by her husband, the ill success of
his own application caused her to banish the idea. She
saw therefore no escape from
dire penury: perpetual
care, joined to sorrow for the loss of the wondrous
being, whom she continued to contemplate with ardent
admiration, hard labour, and naturally delicate health,
at length released her from the sad continuity of want
and misery.
The condition of her orphan children was peculiarly
desolate. Her own father had been an emigrant from
another part of the country, and had died long since:
they had no one relation to take them by the hand; they
were outcasts, paupers, unfriended beings, to whom the
most scanty pittance was a matter of favour, and who
were treated merely as children of peasants, yet
poorer than the poorest, who, dying, had left them, a
thankless bequest, to the close-handed charity of the
land.
I, the elder of the two, was five years old when my
mother died. A remembrance of the discourses of my
parents, and the communications which my mother
endeavoured to impress upon me concerning my father's
friends, in slight
hope that I might one day derive
benefit from the knowledge, floated like an indistinct
dream through my brain. I conceived that I was
different and superior to my protectors and companions,
but I knew not how or wherefore. The sense of injury,
associated with the name of king and noble, clung to
me; but I could draw no conclusions from such feelings,
to serve as a guide to action. My first real knowledge
of myself was as an unprotected orphan among the
valleys and fells of Cumberland. I was in the service
of a farmer; and with crook in hand, my dog at my side,
I shepherded a numerous flock on the near uplands. I
cannot say much in praise of such a life; and its pains
far exceeded its pleasures. There was freedom in it, a
companionship with nature, and a reckless loneliness;
but these, romantic as they were, did not accord with
the love of action and desire of human sympathy,
characteristic of youth. Neither the care of my flock,
nor the change of seasons, were sufficient to tame my
eager spirit;
my out-door life and unemployed time were
the temptations that led me early into lawless habits.
I associated with others friendless like myself; I
formed them into a band, I was their chief and captain.
All shepherd-boys alike, while our flocks were spread
over the pastures, we schemed and executed many a
mischievous prank, which drew on us the anger and
revenge of the rustics. I was the leader and protector
of my comrades, and as I became distinguished among
them, their misdeeds were usually visited upon me. But
while I endured punishment and pain in their defence
with the spirit of an hero, I claimed as my reward
their praise and obedience.
In such a school my disposition became rugged, but
firm. The appetite for admiration and small capacity
for self-controul which I inherited from my father,
nursed by adversity, made me daring and reckless. I was
rough as the elements, and unlearned as the animals I
tended. I often compared myself to them, and
finding
that my chief superiority consisted in power, I soon
persuaded myself that it was in power only that I was
inferior to the chiefest potentates of the earth. Thus
untaught in refined philosophy, and pursued by a
restless feeling of degradation from my true station in
society, I wandered among the hills of civilized
England as uncouth a savage as the wolf-bred founder of
old Rome. I owned but one law, it was that of the
strongest, and my greatest deed of virtue was never to
submit.
Yet let me a little retract from this sentence I have
passed on myself. My mother, when dying, had, in
addition to her other half-forgotten and misapplied
lessons, committed, with solemn exhortation, her other
child to my fraternal guardianship; and this one duty I
performed to the best of my ability, with all the zeal
and affection of which my nature was capable. My
sister was three years younger than myself; I had
nursed her as an infant, and when the difference of our
sexes, by giving us
various occupations, in a great
measure divided us, yet she continued to be the object
of my careful love. Orphans, in the fullest sense of
the term, we were poorest among the poor, and despised
among the unhonoured. If my daring and courage
obtained for me a kind of respectful aversion, her
youth and sex, since they did not excite tenderness, by
proving her to be weak, were the causes of numberless
mortifications to her; and her own disposition was not
so constituted as to diminish the evil effects of her
lowly station.
She was a singular being, and, like me, inherited much
of the peculiar disposition of our father. Her
countenance was all expression; her eyes were not dark,
but impenetrably deep; you seemed to discover space
after space in their intellectual glance, and to feel
that the soul which was their soul, comprehended an
universe of thought in its ken. She was pale and fair,
and her golden hair clustered on her temples,
contrasting its rich hue with the living
marble beneath. Her coarse peasant-dress, little consonant
apparently with the refinement of feeling which her
face expressed, yet in a strange manner accorded with
it. She was like one of Guido's saints, with heaven in
her heart and in her look, so that when you saw her you
only thought of that within, and costume and even
feature were secondary to the mind that beamed in her
countenance.
Yet though lovely and full of noble feeling, my poor
Perdita (for this was the fanciful name my sister had
received from her dying parent), was not altogether
saintly in her disposition. Her manners were cold and
repulsive. If she had been nurtured by those who had
regarded her with affection, she might have been
different; but unloved and neglected, she repaid want
of kindness with distrust and silence. She was
submissive to those who held authority over her, but a
perpetual cloud dwelt on her brow; she looked as if
she expected enmity from every one who approached her,
and her actions were
instigated by the same feeling.
All the time she could command she spent in solitude.
She would ramble to the most unfrequented places, and
scale dangerous heights, that in those unvisited spots
she might wrap herself in loneliness. Often she passed
whole hours walking up and down the paths of the woods;
she wove garlands of flowers and ivy, or watched the
flickering of the shadows and glancing of the leaves;
sometimes she sat beside a stream, and as her thoughts
paused, threw flowers or pebbles into the waters,
watching how those swam and these sank; or she would
set afloat boats formed of bark of trees or leaves,
with a feather for a sail, and intensely watch the
navigation of her craft among the rapids and shallows
of the brook. Meanwhile her active fancy wove a
thousand combinations; she dreamt "of moving accidents
by flood and field"—she lost herself delightedly in
these self-created wanderings, and returned with
unwilling spirit to the dull detail of common life.
Poverty was the cloud that veiled her excellencies, and
all that was good in her seemed about to perish from
want of the genial dew of affection. She had not even
the same advantage as I in the recollection of her
parents; she clung to me, her brother, as her only
friend, but her alliance with me completed the distaste
that her protectors felt for her; and every error was
magnified by them into crimes. If she had been bred in
that sphere of life to which by inheritance the
delicate framework of her mind and person was adapted,
she would have been the object almost of adoration, for
her virtues were as eminent as her defects. All the
genius that ennobled the blood of her father
illustrated hers; a generous tide flowed in her veins;
artifice, envy, or meanness, were at the antipodes of
her nature; her countenance, when enlightened by
amiable feeling, might have belonged to a queen of
nations; her eyes were bright; her look fearless.
Although by our situation and dispositions
we were almost equally cut off from the usual forms of social
intercourse, we formed a strong contrast to each other.
I always required the stimulants of companionship and
applause. Perdita was all-sufficient to herself.
Notwithstanding my lawless habits, my disposition was
sociable, hers recluse. My life was spent among
tangible realities, hers was a dream. I might be said
even to love my enemies, since by exciting me they in a
sort bestowed happiness upon me; Perdita almost
disliked her friends, for they interfered with her
visionary moods. All my feelings, even of exultation
and triumph, were changed to bitterness, if
unparticipated; Perdita, even in joy, fled to
loneliness, and could go on from day to day, neither
expressing her emotions, nor seeking a fellow-feeling
in another mind. Nay, she could love and dwell with
tenderness on the look and voice of her friend, while
her demeanour expressed the coldest reserve. A
sensation with her became a sentiment, and she never
spoke until she had
mingled her perceptions of outward
objects with others which were the native growth of her
own mind. She was like a fruitful soil that imbibed
the airs and dews of heaven, and gave them forth again
to light in loveliest forms of fruits and flowers; but
then she was often dark and rugged as that soil, raked
up, and new sown with unseen seed.
She dwelt in a cottage whose trim grass-plat sloped
down to the waters of the lake of Ulswater; a beech
wood stretched up the hill behind, and a purling brook
gently falling from the acclivity ran through
poplar-shaded banks into the lake. I lived with a
farmer whose house was built higher up among the hills:
a dark crag rose behind it, and, exposed to the north,
the snow lay in its crevices the summer through. Before
dawn I led my flock to the sheep-walks, and guarded
them through the day. It was a life of toil; for rain
and cold were more frequent than sunshine; but it was
my pride to contemn the elements. My trusty
dog watched the sheep as I slipped away to the rendezvous
of my comrades, and thence to the accomplishment of our
schemes. At noon we met again, and we threw away in
contempt our peasant fare, as we built our fire-place
and kindled the cheering blaze destined to cook the
game stolen from the neighbouring preserves. Then came
the tale of hair-breadth escapes, combats with dogs,
ambush and flight, as gipsey-like we encompassed our
pot. The search after a stray lamb, or the devices by
which we elude or endeavoured to elude punishment,
filled up the hours of afternoon; in the evening my
flock went to its fold, and I to my sister.
It was seldom indeed that we escaped, to use an
old-fashioned phrase, scot free. Our dainty fare was
often exchanged for blows and imprisonment. Once, when
thirteen years of age, I was sent for a month to the
county jail. I came out, my morals unimproved, my
hatred to my oppressors encreased tenfold. Bread and
water did not tame my blood, nor solitary confinement
inspire me with gentle thoughts. I was angry,
impatient, miserable; my only happy hours were those
during which I devised schemes of revenge; these were
perfected in my forced solitude, so that during the
whole of the following season, and I was freed early in
September, I never failed to provide excellent and
plenteous fare for myself and my comrades. This was a
glorious winter. The sharp frost and heavy snows tamed
the animals, and kept the country gentlemen by their
firesides; we got more game than we could eat, and my
faithful dog grew sleek upon our refuse.
Thus years passed on; and years only added fresh love
of freedom, and contempt for all that was not as wild
and rude as myself. At the age of sixteen I had shot up
in appearance to man's estate; I was tall and athletic;
I was practised to feats of strength, and inured to the
inclemency of the elements. My skin was embrowned by
the sun; my step was firm with
conscious power. I feared no man, and loved none. In
after life I looked back with wonder to what I then was; how
utterly worthless I should have become if I had pursued my
lawless career. My life was like that of an animal,
and my mind was in danger of degenerating into that
which informs brute nature. Until now, my savage
habits had done me no radical mischief; my physical
powers had grown up and flourished under their
influence, and my mind, undergoing the same
discipline, was imbued with all the hardy virtues. But
now my boasted independence was daily instigating me to
acts of tyranny, and freedom was becoming
licentiousness. I stood on the brink of manhood;
passions, strong as the trees of a forest, had already
taken root within me, and were about to shadow with
their noxious overgrowth, my path of life.
I panted for enterprises beyond my childish exploits,
and formed distempered dreams of future action. I
avoided my ancient comrades,
and I soon lost them. They arrived at the age when they
were sent to fulfil their
destined situations in life; while I, an outcast, with
none to lead or drive me forward, paused. The old began
to point at me as an example, the young to wonder at me
as a being distinct from themselves; I hated them, and
began, last and worst degradation, to hate myself. I
clung to my ferocious habits, yet half despised them; I
continued my war against civilization, and yet
entertained a wish to belong to it.
I revolved again and again all that I remembered my
mother to have told me of my father's former life; I
contemplated the few relics I possessed belonging to
him, which spoke of greater refinement than could be
found among the mountain cottages; but nothing in all
this served as a guide to lead me to another and
pleasanter way of life. My father had been connected
with nobles, but all I knew of such connection was
subsequent neglect. The name of the king,—he to whom
my dying father had
addressed his latest prayers, and
who had barbarously slighted them, was associated only
with the ideas of unkindness, injustice, and consequent
resentment. I was born for something greater than I
was—and greater I would become; but greatness, at
least to my distorted perceptions, was no necessary
associate of goodness, and my wild thoughts were
unchecked by moral considerations when they rioted in
dreams of distinction. Thus I stood upon a pinnacle, a
sea of evil rolled at my feet; I was about to
precipitate myself into it, and rush like a torrent
over all obstructions to the object of my wishes—when
a stranger influence came over the current of my
fortunes, and changed their boisterous course to what
was in comparison like the gentle meanderings of a
meadow-encircling streamlet.