The Chainbearer: or, The Littlepage Manuscripts

"That I will; and get you in at the Nest house, in the bargain," cried Opportunity, pocketing the pencil without further parley.

In the meantime my uncle selected a very neat seal, the handsomest he had, being of pure metal, and having a real topaz in it, and offered it to Mary Warren, with his best bow. I watched the clergyman's daughter with anxiety, as I witnessed the progress of this galanterie, doubting and hoping at each change of the ingenuous and beautiful countenance of her to whom the offering was made. Mary colored, smiled, seemed embarrassed, and, as I feared, for a single moment doubting; but I must have been mistaken, as she drew back, and, in the sweetest manner possible, declined to accept the present. I saw that Opportunity's having just adopted a different course added very much to her embarrassment, as otherwise she might have said something to lessen the seeming ungraciousness of the refusal. Luckily for herself, however, she had a gentleman to deal with, instead of one in the station that my uncle Ro had voluntarily assumed. When this offering was made, the pretended pedler was ignorant altogether of the true characters of the clergyman and his daughter, not even knowing that he saw the rector of St. Andrew's, Ravensnest. But the manner of Mary at once disabused him of an error into which he had fallen through her association with Opportunity, and he now drew back himself with perfect tact, bowing and apologizing in a way that I thought must certainly betray his disguise. It did not, however; for Mr. Warren, with a smile that denoted equally satisfaction at his daughter's conduct and a grateful sense of the other's intended liberality, but with a simplicity that was of proof, turned to me and begged a tune on the flute, which I had drawn from my pocket and was holding in my hand, as expecting some such invitation.

If I have any accomplishment, it is connected with music; and particularly with the management of the flute. On this occasion I was not at all backward about showing off, and I executed two or three airs, from the best masters, with as much care as if I had been playing to a salon in one of the best quarters of Paris. I could see that Mary and her father were both surprised at the execution, and that the first was delighted. We had a most agreeable quarter of an hour together; and might have had two, had not Opportunity – who was certainly well named, being apropos of everything – begun of her own accord to sing, though not without inviting Mary to join her. As the latter declined this public exhibition, as well as my uncle Ro's offering, Seneca's sister had it all to herself; and she sang no less than three songs, in quick succession, and altogether unasked. I shall not stop to characterize the music or the words of these songs, any further than to say they were all, more or less, of the Jim Crow school, and executed in a way that did them ample justice.

As it was understood that we were all to travel in the same train, the interview lasted until we were ready to proceed; nor did it absolutely terminate then. As Mary and Opportunity sat together, Mr. Warren asked me to share his seat, regardless of the hurdy-gurdy; though my attire, in addition to its being perfectly new and neat, was by no means of the mean character that it is usual to see adorning street-music in general. On the whole, so long as the instrument was not en evidence, I might not have seemed very much out of place seated at Mr. Warren's side. In this manner we proceeded to Saratoga, my uncle keeping up a private discourse the whole way, with Seneca, on matters connected with the rent movement.

As for the divine and myself, we had also much interesting talk together. I was questioned about Europe in general, and Germany in particular; and had reason to think my answers gave surprise as well as satisfaction. It was not an easy matter to preserve the Doric of my assumed dialect, though practice and fear contributed their share to render me content to resort to it. I made many mistakes, of course, but my listeners were not the persons to discover them. I say my listeners, for I soon ascertained that Mary Warren, who sat on the seat directly before us, was a profoundly attentive listener to all that passed. This circumstance did not render me the less communicative, though it did increase the desire I felt to render what I said worthy of such a listener. As for Opportunity, she read a newspaper a little while, munched an apple a very little while, and slept the rest of the way. But the journey between modern Troy and Saratoga is not a long one, and was soon accomplished.

CHAPTER VII

"I will tell you;
If you'll bestow a small (of what you have little),
Patience, a while, you'll hear the belly's answer."

    – Menenius Agrippa.
At the springs we parted, Mr. Warren and his friends finding a conveyance, with their own horses, in readiness to carry them the remainder of the distance. As for my uncle and myself, it was understood that we were to get on in the best manner we could, it being expected that we should reach Ravensnest in the course of a day or two. According to the theory of our new business, we ought to travel on foot, but we had a reservation in petto that promised us also the relief of a comfortable wagon of some sort or other.

"Well," said my uncle, the moment we had got far enough from our new acquaintance to be out of ear-shot, "I must say one thing in behalf of Mr. Seneky, as he calls himself, or Sen, as his elegant sister calls him, and that is, that I believe him to be one of the biggest scoundrels the State holds."

"This is not drawing his character en beau," I answered, laughing. "But why do you come out so decidedly upon him at this particular moment?"

"Because this particular moment happens to be the first in which I have had an opportunity to say anything since I have known the rascal. You must have remarked that the fellow held me in discourse from the time we left Troy until we stopped here."

"Certainly; I could see that his tongue was in motion unceasingly; what he said, I have to conjecture."

"He said enough to lay bare his whole character. Our subject was anti-rent, which he commenced with a view to explain it to a foreigner; but I managed to lead him on, step by step, until he let me into all his notions and expectations on the subject. Why, Hugh, the villain actually proposed that you and I should enlist, and turn ourselves into two of the rascally mock redskins."

"Enlist! Do they still persevere so far as to keep up that organization, in the very teeth of the late law?"

"The law! What do two or three thousand voters care for any penal law, in a country like this? Who is to enforce the law against them? Did they commit murder, and were they even convicted, as might happen under the excitement of such a crime, they very well know nobody would be hanged. Honesty is always too passive in matters that do not immediately press on its direct interests. It is for the interest of every honest man in the State to set his face against this anti-rent movement, and to do all he can, by his vote and influence, to put it down into the dirt, out of which it sprang, and into which it should be crushed; but not one in a hundred, even of those who condemn it toto cœlo, will go a foot out of their way even to impede its progress. All depends on those who have the power; and they will exert that power so as to conciliate the active rogue, rather than protect the honest man. You are to remember that the laws are executed here on the principle that 'what is everybody's business is nobody's business.'"

"You surely do not believe that the authorities will wink at an open violation of the laws!"

"That will depend on the characters of individuals; most will, but some will not. You and I would be punished soon enough, were there a chance, but the mass would escape. Oh! we have had some precious disclosures in our corner of the car! The two or three men who joined Newcome are from anti-rent districts, and, seeing me with their friend, little reserve has been practised. One of those men is an anti-rent lecturer; and, being somewhat didactic, he favored me with some of his arguments, seriatim."

"How! Have they got to lectures? I should have supposed the newspapers would have been the means of circulating their ideas."

"Oh, the newspapers, like hogs swimming too freely, have cut their own throats; and it seems to be fashionable, just at this moment, not to believe them. Lecturing is the great moral lever of the nation at present."

"But a man can lie in a lecture, as well as in a newspaper."

"Out of all question; and if many of the lecturers are of the school of this Mr. Holmes – 'Lecturer Holmes,' as Seneca called him – but, if many are of his school, a pretty set of liberty-takers with the truth must they be."

"You detected him, then, in some of these liberties?"

"In a hundred: nothing was easier than for a man in my situation to do that; knowing, as I did, so much of the history of the land-titles of the State. One of his arguments partakes so largely of the weak side of our system, that I must give it to you. He spoke of the gravity of the disturbances – of the importance to the peace and character of the State of putting an end to them; and then, by way of corollary to his proposition, produced a scheme for changing the titles, IN ORDER TO SATISFY THE PEOPLE!"

"The people, of course, meaning the tenants; the landlords and their rights passing for nothing."

"That is one beautiful feature of the morality – an eye, or a cheek, if you will – but here is the nose, and highly Roman it is. A certain portion of the community wish to get rid of the obligations of their contracts; and finding it cannot be done by law, they resort to means that are opposed to all law in order to effect their purposes. Public law-breakers, violators of the public peace, they make use of their own wrong as an argument for perpetuating another that can be perpetuated in no other way. I have been looking over some of the papers containing proclamations, etc., and find that both law-makers and law-breakers are of one mind as to this charming policy. Without a single manly effort to put down the atrocious wrong that is meditated, the existence of the wrong itself is made an argument for meeting it with concessions, and thus sustaining it. Instead of using the means the institutions have provided for putting down all such unjust and illegal combinations, the combinations are a sufficient reason of themselves why the laws should be altered, and wrong be done to a few, in order that many may be propitiated, and their votes secured."

"This is reasoning that can be used only where real grievances exist. But there are no real grievances in the case of the tenants. They may mystify weak heads in the instance of the manor leases, with their quarter-sales, fat hens, loads of wood, and days' works; but my leases are all on three lives, with rent payable in money, and with none of the conditions that are called feudal, though no more feudal than any other bargain to pay articles in kind. One might just as well call a bargain made by a butcher, to deliver pork for a series of years, feudal. However, feudal or not, my leases, and those of most other landlords, are running on lives; and yet, by what I can learn, the discontent is general; and the men who have solemnly bargained to give up their farms at the expiration of their lives are just as warm for the 'down rent' and titles in fee as the manor tenants themselves! They say that the obligations given for actual purchases are beginning to be discredited."

"You are quite right; and there is one of the frauds practised on the world at large. In the public documents only the manor leases, with their pretended feudal covenants, and their perpetuity, are kept in view, while the combination goes to all leases, or nearly all, and certainly to all sorts of leases, where the estates are of sufficient extent to allow of the tenants to make head against the landlords. I dare say there are hundreds of tenants, even on the property of the Rensselaers, who are honest enough to be willing to comply with their contracts if the conspirators would let them; but the rapacious spirit is abroad among the occupants of other lands, as well as among the occupants of theirs, and the government considers its existence a proof that concessions should be made. The discontented must be appeased, right or not!"

"Did Seneca say anything on the subject of his own interests?"

"He did; not so much in conversation with me as in the discourse he held with 'Lecturer Holmes.' I listened attentively, happening to be familiar, through tradition and through personal knowledge, with all the leading facts of the case. As you will soon be called on to act in that matter for yourself, I may as well relate them to you. They will serve, also, as guides to the moral merits of the occupation of half the farms on your estate. These are things, moreover, you would never know by public statements, since all the good bargains are smothered in silence, while those that may possibly have been a little unfavorable to the tenant are proclaimed far and near. It is quite possible that, among the many thousands of leased farms that are to be found in the State, some bad bargains may have been made by the tenants; but what sort of a government is that which should undertake to redress evils of this nature? If either of the Rensselaers, or you yourself, were to venture to send a memorial to the Legislature setting forth the grievances you labor under in connection with this very 'mill-lot' – and serious losses do they bring to you, let me tell you, though grievances, in the proper sense of the term, they are not – you and your memorial would be met with a general and merited shout of ridicule and derision. One man has no rights, as opposed to a dozen."

"So much difference is there between 'de la Rochefoucauld et de la Rochefoucauld.'"

"All the difference in the world; but let me give you the facts, for they will serve as a rule by which to judge of many others. In the first place, my great-grandfather Mordaunt, the 'patentee,' as he was called, first let the mill-lot to the grandfather of this Seneca, the tenant then being quite a young man. In order to obtain settlers, in that early day, it was necessary to give them great advantages, for there was vastly more land than there were people to work it. The first lease, therefore, was granted on highly advantageous terms to that Jason Newcome, whom I can just remember. He had two characters; the one, and the true, which set him down as a covetous, envious, narrow-minded provincial, who was full of cant and roguery. Some traditions exist among us of his having been detected in stealing timber, and in various other frauds. In public he is one of those virtuous and hard-working pioneers who have transmitted to their descendants all their claims, those that are supposed to be moral, as well as those that are known to be legal. This flummery may do for elderly ladies, who affect snuff and bohea, and for some men who have minds of the same calibre, but they are not circumstances to influence such legislators and executives as are fit to be legislators and executives. Not a great while before my father's marriage, the said Jason still living and in possession, the lease expired, and a new one was granted for three lives, or twenty-one years certain, of which one of the lives is still running. That lease was granted, on terms highly favorable to the tenant, sixty years since; old Newcome, luckily for himself and his posterity, having named this long-lived son as one of his three lives. Now Seneky, God bless him! is known to lease a few of the lots that have fallen to his share of the property for more money than is required to meet all your rent on the whole. Such, in effect, has been the fact with that mill-lot for the last thirty years, or even longer; and the circumstance of the great length of time so excellent a bargain has existed, is used as an argument why the Newcomes ought to have a deed of the property for a nominal price; or, indeed, for no price at all, if the tenants could have their wishes."

"I am afraid there is nothing unnatural in thus perverting principles; half mankind appear to me really to get a great many of their notions dessus dessous."

"Half is a small proportion; as you will find, my boy, when you grow older. But was it not an impudent proposal of Seneca, when he wished you and me to join the corps of 'Injins?'"

"What answer did you make? Though I suppose it would hardly do for us to go disguised and armed, now that the law makes it a felony, even while our motive at the bottom might be to aid the law."

"Catch me at that act of folly! Why, Hugh, could they prove such a crime on either of us, or any one connected with an old landed family, we should be the certain victims. No governor would dare pardon us. No, no; clemency is a word reserved for the obvious and confirmed rogues."

"We might get a little favor on the score of belonging to a very powerful body of offenders."

"True, I forgot that circumstance. The more numerous the crimes and the criminals, the greater the probability of impunity; and this, too, not on the general principle that power cannot be resisted, but on the particular principle that a thousand or two votes are of vast importance, where three thousand can turn an election. God only knows where this thing is to end!"

We now approached one of the humbler taverns of the place, where it was necessary for those of our apparent pretensions to seek lodgings, and the discourse was dropped. It was several weeks too early in the season for the springs to be frequented, and we found only a few of those in the place who drank the waters because they really required them. My uncle had been an old stager at Saratoga – a beau of the "purest water," as he laughingly described himself – and he was enabled to explain all that was necessary for me to know. An American watering-place, however, is so very much inferior to most of those in Europe, as to furnish very little, in their best moments, beyond the human beings they contain, to attract the attention of the traveller.

In the course of the afternoon we availed ourselves of the opportunity of a return vehicle to go as far as Sandy Hill, where we passed the night. The next morning, bright and early, we got into a hired wagon and drove across the country until near night, when we paid for our passage, sent the vehicle back, and sought a tavern. At this house, where we passed the night, we heard a good deal of the "Injins" having made their appearance on the Littlepage lands, and many conjectures as to the probable result. We were in a township, or rather on a property, that was called Mooseridge, and which had once belonged to us, but which, having been sold, and in a great measure paid for by the occupants, no one thought of impairing the force of the covenants under which the parties held. The most trivial observer will soon discover that it is only when something is to be gained that the aggrieved citizen wishes to disturb a covenant. Now, I never heard anyone say a syllable against either of the covenants of his lease under which he held his farm, let him be ever so loud against those which would shortly compel him to give it up! Had I complained of the fact – and such facts abounded – that my predecessors had incautiously let farms at such low prices that the lessees had been enabled to pay the rents for half a century by subletting small portions of them, as my uncle Ro had intimated, I should be pointed at as a fool. "Stick to your bond" would have been the cry, and "Shylock" would have been forgotten. I do not say that there is not a vast difference between the means of acquiring intelligence, the cultivation, the manners, the social conditions, and, in some senses, the social obligations of an affluent landlord and a really hard-working, honest, well-intentioned husbandman, his tenant – differences that should dispose the liberal and cultivated gentleman to bear in mind the advantages he has perhaps inherited, and not acquired by his own means, in such a way as to render him, in a certain degree, the repository of the interests of those who hold him; but, while I admit all this, and say that the community which does not possess such a class of men is to be pitied, as it loses one of the most certain means of liberalizing and enlarging its notions, and of improving its civilization, I am far from thinking that the men of this class are to have their real superiority of position, with its consequences, thrown into their faces only when they are expected to give, while they are grudgingly denied it on all other occasions! There is nothing so likely to advance the habits, opinions, and true interests of a rural population, as to have them all directed by the intelligence and combined interests that ought to mark the connection between landlord and tenant. It may do for one class of political economists to prate about a state of things which supposes every husbandman a freeholder, and rich enough to maintain his level among the other freeholders of the State. But we all know that as many minute gradations in means must and do exist in a community, as there exist gradations in characters. A majority soon will, in the nature of things, be below the level of the freeholder, and by destroying the system of having landlords and tenants two great evils are created – the one preventing men of large fortunes from investing in lands, as no man will place his money where it will be insecure or profitless, thereby cutting off real estate generally from the benefits that might be and would be conferred by their capital, as well as cutting it off from the benefits of the increased price which arise from having such buyers in the market; and the other is, to prevent any man from being a husbandman who has not the money necessary to purchase a farm. But they who want farms now, and they who will want votes next November, do not look quite so far ahead as that; while shouting "equal rights," they are, in fact, for preventing the poor husbandman from being anything but a day-laborer.

We obtained tolerably decent lodging at our inn, though the profoundest patriot America possesses, if he know anything of other countries, or of the best materials of his own, cannot say much in favor of the sleeping arrangements of an ordinary country inn. The same money and the same trouble would render that which is now the very beau ideal of discomfort, at least tolerable, and in many instances good. But who is to produce this reform? According to the opinions circulated among us, the humblest hamlet we have has already attained the highest point of civilization; and as for the people, without distinction of classes, it is universally admitted that they are the best educated, the acutest, and the most intelligent in Christendom; – no, I must correct myself; they are all this, except when they are in the act of leasing lands, and then the innocent and illiterate husbandmen are the victims of the arts of designing landlords, the wretches![21 - Mr. Hugh Littlepage writes a little sharply, but there is truth in all he says, at the bottom. His tone is probably produced by the fact that there is so serious an attempt to deprive him of his old paternal estate, an attempt which is receiving support in high quarters. In addition to this provocation, the Littlepages, as the manuscript shows farther on, are traduced, as one means of effecting the objects of the anti-renters; no man, in any community in which it is necessary to work on public sentiment in order to accomplish such a purpose, ever being wronged without being calumniated. As respects the inns, truth compels me, as an old traveller, to say that Mr. Littlepage has much reason for what he says. I have met with a better bed in the lowest French tavern I ever was compelled to use, and in one instance I slept in an inn frequented by carters, than in the best purely country inn in America. In the way of neatness, however, more is usually to be found in our New York village taverns than in the public hotels of Paris itself. As for the hit touching the intelligence of the people, it is merited; for I have myself heard subtle distinctions drawn to show that the "people" of a former generation were not as knowing as the "people" of this, and imputing the covenants of the older leases to that circumstance, instead of imputing them to their true cause, the opinions and practices of the times. Half a century's experience would induce me to say that the "people" were never particularly dull in making a bargain. – Editor.]

We passed an hour on the piazza, after eating our supper, and there being a collection of men assembled there, inhabitants of the hamlet, we had an opportunity to get into communication with them. My uncle sold a watch, and I played on the hurdy-gurdy, by way of making myself popular. After this beginning, the discourse turned on the engrossing subject of the day, anti-rentism. The principal speaker was a young man about six-and-twenty, of a sort of shabby-genteel air and appearance, whom I soon discovered to be the attorney of the neighborhood. His name was Hubbard, while that of the other principal speaker was Hall. The last was a mechanic, as I ascertained, and was a plain-looking working-man of middle age. Each of these persons seated himself on a common "kitchen chair," leaning back against the side of the house, and, of course, resting on the two hind-legs of the rickety support, while he placed his own feet on the rounds in front. The attitudes were neither graceful nor picturesque, but they were so entirely common as to excite no surprise. As for Hall, he appeared perfectly contented with his situation, after fidgeting a little to get the two supporting legs of his chair just where he wanted them; but Hubbard's eye was restless, uneasy, and even menacing, for more than a minute. He drew a knife from his pocket – a small, neat penknife only, it is true – gazed a little wildly about him, and just as I thought he intended to abandon his nicely poised chair, and to make an assault on one of the pillars that upheld the roof of the piazza, the innkeeper advanced, holding in his hand several narrow slips of pine board, one of which he offered at once to 'Squire Hubbard. This relieved the attorney, who took the wood, and was soon deeply plunged in, to me, the unknown delights of whittling. I cannot explain the mysterious pleasure that so many find in whittling, though the prevalence of the custom is so well known. But I cannot explain the pleasure so many find in chewing tobacco, or in smoking. The precaution of the landlord was far from being unnecessary, and appeared to be taken in good part by all to whom he offered "whittling-pieces," some six or eight in the whole. The state of the piazza, indeed, proved that the precaution was absolutely indispensable, if he did not wish to see the house come tumbling down about his head. In order that those who have never seen such things may understand their use, I will go a little out of the way to explain.

The inn was of wood, a hemlock frame with a "siding" of clapboards. In this there was nothing remarkable, many countries of Europe, even, still building principally of wood. Houses of lath and plaster were quite common, until within a few years, even in large towns. I remember to have seen some of these constructions while in London, in close connection with the justly celebrated Westminster Hall; and of such materials is the much-talked of miniature castle of Horace Walpole, at Strawberry Hill. But the inn of Mooseridge had some pretensions to architecture, besides being three or four times larger than any other house in the place. A piazza it enjoyed, of course; it must be a pitiful village inn that does not; and building, accessories and all, rejoiced in several coats of a spurious white lead. The columns of this piazza, as well as the clapboards of the house itself, however, exhibited the proofs of the danger of abandoning your true whittler to his own instincts. Spread-eagles, five-points, American flags, huzzas for Polk! the initials of names, and names at full length, with various other similar conceits, records, and ebullitions of patriotic or party-otic feelings, were scattered up and down with an affluence that said volumes in favor of the mint in which they had been coined. But the most remarkable memorial of the industry of the guests was to be found on one of the columns; and it was one at a corner, too, and consequently of double importance to the superstructure – unless, indeed, the house were built on that well-known principle of American architecture of the last century, which made the architrave uphold the pillar, instead of the pillar the architrave. The column in question was of white pine, as usual – though latterly, in brick edifices, bricks and stucco are much resorted to – and, at a convenient height for the whittlers, it was literally cut two-thirds in two. The gash was very neatly made – that much must be said for it – indicating skill and attention; and the surfaces of the wound were smoothed in a manner to prove that appearances were not neglected.

"Vat do das?" I asked of the landlord, pointing to this gaping wound in the main column of his piazza.

"That! Oh! That's only the whittlers," answered the host, with a good-natured smile.

Assuredly the Americans are the best-natured people on earth! Here was a man whose house was nearly tumbling down about his ears – always bating the principle in architecture just named – and he could smile as Nero may be supposed to have done when fiddling over the conflagration of Rome.

"But vhy might de vhittler vhittle down your house?"

"Oh! this is a free country, you know, and folks do pretty much as they like in it," returned the still smiling host. "I let 'em cut away as long as I dared, but it was high time to get out 'whittling-pieces,' I believe you must own. It's best always to keep a ruff (roof) over a man's head, to be ready for bad weather. A week longer would have had the column in two."

"Vell, I dinks I might not bear dat! Vhat ist mein house ist mein house, ant dey shall not so moch vittles."

"By letting 'em so much vittles there, they so much vittles in the kitchen; so you see there is policy in having your underpinnin' knocked away sometimes, if it's done by the right sort of folks."