(he was in daily receipt of more than he could attend to,) he flung this one unread into the fire; and only learnt his mistake through the congratulations of his family.
The Prince Consort happened about this time to be in quest of a suitable country seat for his present Majesty; and Sandringham, through the adroit negotiations of Lord Palmerston, became the property of the Prince of Wales. The soul of the ‘Turkey merchant,’ we cannot doubt, will repose in peace.
The worthy rector of Warham St. Mary’s was an oddity deserving of passing notice. Outwardly he was no Adonis. His plain features and shock head of foxy hair, his antiquated and neglected garb, his copious jabot—much affected by the clergy of those days—were becoming investitures of the inward man. His temper was inflammatory, sometimes leading to excesses, which I am sure he rued in mental sackcloth and ashes. But visitors at Holkham (unaware of the excellent motives and moral courage which inspired his conduct) were not a little amazed at the austerity with which he obeyed the dictates of his conscience.
For example, one Sunday evening after dinner, when the drawing-room was filled with guests, who more or less preserved the decorum which etiquette demands in the presence of royalty, (the Duke of Sussex was of the party,) Charles Fox and Lady Anson, great-grandmother of the present Lord Lichfield, happened to be playing at chess. When the irascible dominie beheld them he pushed his way through the bystanders, swept the pieces from the board, and, with rigorous impartiality, denounced these impious desecrators of the Sabbath eve.
As an example of his fidelity as a librarian, Mr. Panizzi used to relate with much glee how, whenever he was at Holkham, Mr. Collyer dogged him like a detective. One day, not wishing to detain the reverend gentleman while he himself spent the forenoon in the manuscript library, (where not only the ancient manuscripts, but the most valuable of the printed books, are kept under lock and key,) he considerately begged Mr. Collyer to leave him to his researches. The dominie replied ‘that he knew his duty, and did not mean to neglect it.’ He did not lose sight of Mr. Panizzi.
The notion that he—the great custodian of the nation’s literary treasures—would snip out and pocket the title-page of the folio edition of Shakespeare, or of the Coverdale Bible, tickled Mr. Panizzi’s fancy vastly.
In spite, however, of our rector’s fiery temperament, or perhaps in consequence of it, he was remarkably susceptible to the charms of beauty. We were constantly invited to dinner and garden parties in the neighbourhood; nor was the good rector slow to return the compliment. It must be confessed that the pupil shared to the full the impressibility of the tutor; and, as it happened, unknown to both, the two were in one case rivals.
As the young lady afterwards occupied a very distinguished position in Oxford society, it can only be said that she was celebrated for her many attractions. She was then sixteen, and the younger of her suitors but two years older. As far as age was concerned, nothing could be more compatible. Nor in the matter of mutual inclination was there any disparity whatever. What, then, was the pupil’s dismay when, after a dinner party at the rectory, and the company had left, the tutor, in a frantic state of excitement, seized the pupil by both hands, and exclaimed: ‘She has accepted me!’
‘Accepted you?’ I asked. ‘Who has accepted you?’
‘Who? Why, Miss—, of course! Who else do you suppose would accept me?’
‘No one,’ said I, with doleful sincerity. ‘But did you propose to her? Did she understand what you said to her? Did she deliberately and seriously say “Yes?” ’
‘Yes, yes, yes,’ and his disordered jabot and touzled hair echoed the fatal word.
‘O Smintheus of the silver bow!’ I groaned. ‘It is the woman’s part to create delusions, and—destroy them! To think of it! after all that has passed between us these—these three weeks, next Monday! “Once and for ever.” Did ever woman use such words before? And I—believed them!’ ‘Did you speak to the mother?’ I asked in a fit of desperation.
‘There was no time for that. Mrs. — was in the carriage, and I didn’t pop [the odious word!] till I was helping her on with her cloak. The cloak, you see, made it less awkward. My offer was a sort of obiter dictum—a by-the-way, as it were.’
‘To the carriage, yes. But wasn’t she taken by surprise?’
‘Not a bit of it. Bless you! they always know. She pretended not to understand, but that’s a way they have.’
‘And when you explained?’
‘There wasn’t time for more. She laughed, and sprang into the carriage.’
‘And that was all?’
‘All! would you have had her spring into my arms?’
‘God forbid! You will have to face the mother to-morrow,’ said I, recovering rapidly from my despondency.
‘Face? Well, I shall have to call upon Mrs. —, if that’s what you mean. A mere matter of form. I shall go over after lunch. But it needn’t interfere with your work. You can go on with the “Anabasis” till I come back. And remember—Neaniskos is not a proper name, ha! ha! ha! The quadratics will keep till the evening.’ He was merry over his prospects, and I was not altogether otherwise.
But there was no Xenophon, no algebra, that day! Dire was the distress of my poor dominie when he found the mother as much bewildered as the daughter was frightened, by the mistake. ‘She,’ the daughter, ‘had never for a moment imagined, &c., &c.’
My tutor was not long disheartened by such caprices—so he deemed them, as Miss Jemima’s (she had a prettier name, you may be sure), and I did my best (it cost me little now) to encourage his fondest hopes. I proposed that we should drink the health of the future mistress of Warham in tea, which he cheerfully acceded to, all the more readily, that it gave him an opportunity to vent one of his old college jokes. ‘Yes, yes,’ said he, with a laugh, ‘there’s nothing like tea. Te veniente die, te decedente canebam.’ Such sallies of innocent playfulness often smoothed his path in life. He took a genuine pleasure in his own jokes. Some men do. One day I dropped a pot of marmalade on a new carpet, and should certainly have been reprimanded for carelessness, had it not occurred to him to exclaim: ‘Jam satis terris!’ and then laugh immoderately at his wit.
That there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, was a maxim he acted upon, if he never heard it. Within a month of the above incident he proposed to another lady upon the sole grounds that, when playing a game of chess, an exchange of pieces being contemplated, she innocently, but incautiously, observed, ‘If you take me, I will take you.’ He referred the matter next day to my ripe judgment. As I had no partiality for the lady in question, I strongly advised him to accept so obvious a challenge, and go down on his knees to her at once. I laid stress on the knees, as the accepted form of declaration, both in novels and on the stage.
In this case the beloved object, who was not embarrassed by excess of amiability, promptly desired him, when he urged his suit, ‘not to make a fool of himself.’
My tutor’s peculiarities, however, were not confined to his endeavours to meet with a lady rectoress. He sometimes surprised his hearers with the originality of his abstruse theories. One morning he called me into the stable yard to join in consultation with his gardener as to the advisability of killing a pig. There were two, and it was not easy to decide which was the fitter for the butcher. The rector selected one, I the other, and the gardener, who had nurtured both from their tenderest age, pleaded that they should be allowed to ‘put on another
