The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly

The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly
Charles Lever

Charles James Lever

The Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly

CHAPTER I. THE BISHOP’S FOLLY

Towards the close of the last century there was a very remarkable man, Bishop of Down, in Ireland: a Liberal in politics, in an age when Liberalism lay close on the confines of disloyalty; splendidly hospitable, at a period when hospitality verged on utter recklessness; he carried all his opinions to extremes. He had great taste, which had been cultivated by foreign travel, and having an ample fortune, was able to indulge in many whims and caprices, by which some were led to doubt of his sanity; but others, who judged him better, ascribed them to the self-indulgence of a man out of harmony with his time, and comtemptuously indifferent to what the world might say of him.

He had passed many years in Italy, and had formed a great attachment to that country. He liked the people and their mode of life; he liked the old cities, so rich in art treasures and so teeming with associations of a picturesque past; and he especially liked their villa architecture, which seemed so essentially suited to a grand and costly style of living. The great reception-rooms, spacious and lofty; the ample antechambers, made for crowds of attendants; and the stairs wide enough for even equipages to ascend them. No more striking illustration of his capricious turn of mind need be given than the fact that it was his pleasure to build one of these magnificent edifices in an Irish county! – a costly whim, obliging him to bring over from Italy a whole troop of stucco-men and painters, men skilled in fresco-work and carving, – an extravagance on which he spent thousands. Nor did he live to witness the completion of his splendid mansion.

After his death the building gradually fell into decay. His heirs, not improbably, little caring for a project which had ingulfed so large a share of their fortune, made no efforts to arrest the destroying influences of time and climate, and “Bishop’s Folly” – for such was the name given to it by the country people – soon became a ruin. In some places the roof had fallen in, the doors and windows had all been carried away by the peasants, and in many a cabin or humble shealing in the county around slabs of colored marble or fragments of costly carving might be met with, over which the skill of a cunning workman had been bestowed for days long. The mansion stood on the side of a mountain which sloped gradually to the sea. The demesne, well wooded, but with young timber, was beautifully varied in surface, one deep glen running, as it were, from the very base of the house to the beach, and showing glimpses, through the trees, of a bright and rapid river tumbling onward to the sea. Seen in its dilapidation and decay, the aspect of the place was dreary and depressing, and led many to wonder how the bishop could ever have selected such a spot; for it was not only placed in the midst of a wild mountain region, but many miles away from anything that could be called a neighborhood. But the same haughty defiance he gave the world in other things urged him here to show that he cared little for the judgments which might be passed upon him, or even for the circumstances which would have influenced other men. “When it is my pleasure to receive company, I shall have my house full no matter where I live,” was his haughty speech, and certainly the whole character of his life went to confirm his words.

Some question of disputed title, after the bishop’s death, threw the estate into Chancery, and so it remained till, by the operation of the new law touching incumbered property, it became marketable, and was purchased by a rich London banker, who had declared his intention of coming to live upon it.

That any one rich enough to buy such a property, able to restore such a costly house, and maintain a style of living proportionate to its pretensions, should come to reside in the solitude and obscurity of an Irish county, seemed all but impossible; and when the matter became assured by the visit of a well-known architect, and afterwards by the arrival of a troop of workmen, the puzzle then became to guess how it chanced that the great head of a rich banking firm, the chairman of this, the director of that, the promoter of Heaven knows what scores of industrial schemes for fortune, should withdraw from the great bustle of life to accept an existence of complete oblivion.

In the little village of Portshandon – which straggled along the beach, and where, with a few exceptions, none but fishermen and their families lived – this question was hotly debated; an old half-pay lieutenant, who by courtesy was called Captain, being at the head of those who first denied the possibility of the Bramleighs coming at all, and when that matter was removed beyond a doubt, next taking his stand on the fact that nothing short of some disaster in fortune, or some aspersion on character, could ever have driven a man out of the great world to finish his days in the exile of Ireland.

“I suppose you’ll give in at last, Captain Craufurd,” said Mrs. Bayley, the postmistress of Portshandon, as she pointed to a pile of letters and newspapers all addressed to “Castello,” and which more than quadrupled the other correspondence of the locality.

“I did n’t pretend they were not coming, Mrs. Bayley,” said he, in the cracked and cantankerous tone he invariably spoke in. “I simply observed that I ‘d be thankful for any one telling me why they were coming. That’s the puzzle, – why they ‘re coming?”

“I suppose because they like it, and they can afford it,” said she, with a toss of her head.

“Like it!” cried he, in derision. “Like it! Look out of the window there beside you, Mrs. Bayley, and say, is n’t it a lovely prospect, that beggarly village, and the old rotten boats, keel uppermost, with the dead fish and the oyster-shells, and the torn nets, and the dirty children? Is n’t it an elegant sight after Hyde Park and the Queen’s palace?”

“I never saw the Queen’s palace nor the other place you talk of, but I think there’s worse towns to live in than Portshandon.”

“And do they think they’ll make it better by calling it Castello?” said he, as with a contemptuous gesture he threw from him one of the newspapers with this address. “If they want to think they ‘re in Italy they ought to come down here in November with the Channel fogs sweeping up through the mountains, and the wind beating the rain against the windows. I hope they’ll think they’re in Naples. Why can’t they call the place by the name we all know it by? It was Bishop’s Folly when I was a boy, and it will be Bishop’s Folly after I ‘m dead.”

“I suppose people can call their house whatever they like? Nobody objects to your calling your place Craufurd’s Lea.”

“I’d like to see them object to it,” cried he, fiercely. “It’s Craufurd’s Lea in Digge’s ‘Survey of Down,’ 1714. It’s Craufurd’s Lea in the ‘Anthologia Hibernica,’ and it’s down, too, in Joyce’s ‘Irish Fisheries;’ and we were Craufurds of Craufurd’s Lea before one stone of that big barrack up there was laid, and maybe we ‘ll be so after it’s a ruin again.”

“I hope it’s not going to be a ruin any more, Captain Craufurd, all the same,” said the postmistress, tartly, for she was not disposed to undervalue the increased importance the neighborhood was about to derive from the rich family coming to live in it.

“Well, there’s one thing I can tell you, Mrs. Bayley,” said he, with his usual grin. “The devil a bit of Ireland they ‘d ever come to, if they could live in England. Mind my words, and see if they ‘ll not come true. It’s either the bank is in a bad way, or this or that company is going to smash, or it’s his wife has run away, or one of the daughters married the footman; – something or other has happened, you ‘ll see, or we would never have the honor of their distinguished company down here.”

“It’s a bad wind blows nobody good,” said Mrs. Bayley. “It’s luck for us, anyhow.”

“I don’t perceive the luck of it either, ma’am,” said the Captain, with increased peevishness. “Chickens will be eighteenpence a couple, eggs a halfpenny apiece. I ‘d like to know what you’ll pay for a codfish, such as I bought yesterday for fourpence?”

“It’s better for them that has to sell them.”

“Ay, but I’m talking of them that has to buy them, ma’am, and I’m thinking how a born gentleman with a fixed income is to compete with one of these fellows that gets his gold from California at market price, and makes more out of one morning’s robbery on the Stock Exchange, than a Lieutenant-General receives after thirty years’ service.”

A sharp tap at the window-pane interrupted the discussion at this critical moment, and Mrs. Bayley perceived it was Mr. Dorose, Colonel Bramleigh’s valet, who had come for the letters for the great house.

“Only these, Mrs. Bayley?” said he, half contemptuously.

“Well, indeed, sir; it’s a good-sized bundle after all. There’s eleven letters, and about fifteen papers and two books.”

“Send them all on to Brighton, Mrs. Bayley. We shall not come down here till the end of the month. Just give me the ‘Times,’ however;” and tearing open the cover, he turned to the City article. “I hope you’ve nothing in Ecuadors, Mrs. Bayley; they look shaky. I’m ‘hit,’ too, in my Turks. I see no dividend this half.” Here he leaned forward, so as to whisper in her ear, and said, “Whenever you want a snug thing, Mrs. B., you’re always safe with Brazilians;” and with this he moved off, leaving the postmistress in a flurry of shame and confusion as to what precise character of transaction his counsel applied.

“Upon my conscience, we ‘re come to a pretty pass!” exclaimed the Captain, as, buttoning his coat, he issued forth into the street; nor was his temper much improved by finding the way blocked up by a string of carts and drays, slowly proceeding towards the great house, all loaded with furniture and kitchen utensils, and the other details of a large household. A bystander remarked that four saddle-horses had passed through at daybreak, and one of the grooms had said, “It was nothing to what was coming in a few days.”

Two days after this, and quite unexpectedly by all, the village awoke to see a large flag waving from the flagstaff over the chief tower of Castello; and the tidings were speedily circulated that the great people had arrived. A few sceptics, determining to decide the point for themselves, set out to go up to the house; but the lodge-gate was closed and the gatekeeper answered them from behind it, saying that no visitors were to be admitted; a small incident, in its way, but, after all, it is by small incidents that men speculate on the tastes and tempers of a new dynasty.

CHAPTER II. LADY AUGUSTA’S LETTER

It will save some time, both to writer and reader, while it will also serve to explain certain particulars about those we are interested in, if I give in this place a letter which was written by Lady Augusta Bramleigh, the Colonel’s young wife, to a married sister at Rome. It ran thus:

Hanover Square, Nov. 10, 18 – .

Dearest Dorothy, —

Here we are back in town, at a season, too, when we find ourselves the only people left; and if I wanted to make a long story of how it happens, there is the material; but it is precisely what I desire to avoid, and at the risk of being barely intelligible, I will be brief. We have left Earlshope, and, indeed, Herefordshire, for good. Our campaign there was a social failure, but just such a failure as I predicted it would and must be; and although, possibly, I might have liked to have been spared some of the mortifications we met with, I am too much pleased with the results to quarrel over the means.

You are already in possession of what we intended by the purchase of Earlshope – how we meant to become county magnates, marry our sons and daughters to neighboring magnates, and live as though we had been rooted to the soil for centuries. I say “we,” my dear, because I am too good a wife to separate myself from Col. B. in all these projects; but I am fain to own that as I only saw defeat in the plan, I opposed it from the first. Here, in town, money will do anything; at least, anything that one has any right to do. There may be a set or a clique to which it will not give admission; but who wants them, who needs them?

There’s always a wonderful Van Eyck or a Memling in a Dutch town, to obtain the sight of which you have to petition the authorities, or implore the Stadtholder; but I never knew any one admit that success repaid the trouble; and the chances are that you come away from the sight fully convinced that you have seen scores of old pictures exactly like it, and that all that could be said was, it was as brown, and as dusky, and as generally disappointing, as its fellows. So it is with these small exclusive societies. It may be a great triumph of ingenuity to pick the lock; but there ‘s nothing in the coffer to reward it. I repeat, then, with money – and we had money – London was open to us. All the more, too, that for some years back society has taken a speculative turn; and it is nothing derogatory to find people “to go in,” as it is called, for a good thing, in “Turks” or “Brazilians,” in patent fuel, or a new loan to the children of Egypt. To these, and such like, your City man and banker is esteemed a safe pilot; and you would be amused at the amount of attention Col. B. was accustomed to meet with from men who regarded themselves as immeasurably above him, and who, all question of profit apart, would have hesitated at admitting him to their acquaintance.

I tell you all these very commonplace truths, my dear Dorothy, because they may not, indeed cannot, be such truisms to you – you, who live in a grand old city, with noble traditions, and the refinements that come transmitted from centuries of high habits; and I feel, as I write, how puzzled you will often be to follow me. London was, as I have twice said, our home; but for that very reason we could not be content with it. Earlshope, by ill luck, was for sale, and we bought it. I am afraid to tell you the height of our castle-building; but, as we were all engaged, the work went on briskly, every day adding at least a story to the edifice. We were to start as high sheriff, then represent the county. I am not quite clear, I think we never settled the point as to the lord-lieutenancy; but I know the exact way, and the very time, in which we demanded our peerage. How we threatened to sulk, and did sulk; how we actually sat a whole night on the back benches; and how we made our eldest son dance twice with a daughter of the “Opposition,” – menaces that no intelligent Cabinet or conscientious “Whip” could for a moment misunderstand. And oh! my dear Dora, as I write these things, how forcibly I feel the prudence of that step which once we all were so ready to condemn you for having taken. You were indeed right to marry a foreigner. That an English girl should address herself to the married life of England, the first condition is she should never have left England, not even for that holiday-trip to Paris and Switzerland, which people now do, as once they were wont to “do Margate.” The whole game of existence is such a scramble with us: we scramble for social rank, for place, for influence, for Court favor, for patronage; and all these call for so much intrigue and plotting, that I vow to you I ‘d as soon be a Carbonara or a Sanfedista as the wife of an aspiring middle-class Englishman.

But to return. The county would not have us – we were rich, and we were City folk, and they deemed it an unpardonable pretension in us to come down amongst them. They refused our invitations, and sent us none of their own. We split with them, contested the election against them, and got beaten. We spent unheard-of moneys, and bribed everybody that had not a vote for ten miles round. With universal suffrage, which I believe we promised them, we should have been at the head of the poll; but the freeholders were to a man opposed to us.

I am told that our opponents behaved ungenerously and unjustly – perhaps they did; at all events, the end of the contest left us without a single acquaintance, and we stood alone in our glory of beaten candidateship, after three months of unheard-of fatigue, and more meanness than I care to mention. The end of all was, to shake the dust off our feet at Herefordshire, and advertise Earlshope for sale. Meanwhile we returned to town; just as shipwrecked men clamber up the first rock in sight, not feeling in their danger what desolation is before them. I take it that the generals of a beaten army talk very little over their late defeat. At all events we observed a most scrupulous reserve, and I don’t think that a word was dropped amongst us for a month that could have led a stranger to believe that we had just been beaten in an election, and hunted out of the county.

I was just beginning to feel that our lesson, a severe one, it is true, might redound to our future benefit, when our eldest-born – I call them all mine, Dora, though not one of them will say mamma to me – discovered that there was an Irish estate to be sold, with a fine house and fine grounds, and that if we could n’t be great folk in the grander kingdom, there was no saying what we might not be in the smaller one. This was too much for me. I accepted the Herefordshire expedition because it smacked of active service. I knew well we should be defeated, and I knew there would be a battle, but I could not consent to banishment. What had I done, I asked myself over and over, that I should be sent to live in Ireland?

I tried to get up a party against the project, and failed. Augustus Bramleigh – our heir – was in its favor, indeed its chief promoter. Temple, the second son, who is a secretary of embassy, and the most insufferable of puppies, thought it a “nice place for us,” and certain to save us money; and John, – Jack they call him, – who is in the navy, thinks land to be land, besides that, he was once stationed at Cork, and thought it a paradise. If I could do little with the young men, I did less with the girls. Marion, the eldest, who deems her papa a sort of divine-right head of a family, would not discuss the scheme; and Eleanor, who goes in for nature and spontaneous feeling, replied that she was overjoyed at the thought of Ireland, and even half gave me to understand that she was only sorry it was not Africa. I was thus driven to a last resource. I sent for our old friend, Doctor Bartlet, and told him frankly that he must order me abroad to a dry warm climate, where there were few changes of temperature, and nothing depressing in the air. He did the thing to perfection; he called in Forbes to consult with him. The case was very serious, he said. The lung was not yet attacked, but the bronchial tubes were affected. Oh, how grateful I felt to my dear bronchial tubes, for they have sent me to Italy! Yes, Dolly dearest, I am off on Wednesday, and hope within a week after this reaches you to be at your side, pouring out all my sorrows, and asking for that consolation you never yet refused me. And now, to be eminently practical, can you obtain for me that beautiful little villa that overlooked the Borghese Gardens? – it was called the Villino Altieri. The old Prince Giuseppe Altieri, who used to be an adorer of mine, if he be alive may like to resume his ancient passion, and accept me for a tenant; all the more that I can afford to be liberal. Col. B. behaves well always where money enters. I shall want servants, as I only mean to take from this, Rose and my groom. You know the sort of creatures I like; but, for my sake, be particular about the cook, – I can’t eat “Romanesque,” – and if there be a stray Frenchman wandering about, secure him. Do you remember dear old Paoletti, Dolly, who used to serve up those delicious little macaroni suppers long ago in our own room? – cheating us into gourmandism by the trick of deceit! Oh, what would I give to be as young again! To be soaring up to heaven, as I listened with closed eyes to the chant in the Sistine Chapel, or ascending to another elysium of delight, as I gazed at the “noble guard” of the Pope, who, while his black charger was caracoling, and he was holding on by the mane, yet managed to dart towards me such a look of love and devotion I and you remember, Dolly, we lived “secondo piano,” at the time, and it was plucky of the man, considering how badly he rode. I yearn to go back there. I yearn for those sunsets from the Pincian, and those long rambling rides over the Campagna, leading to nothing but an everlasting dreaminess, and an intense desire that one could go on day after day in the same delicious life of unreality; for it is so, Dolly. Your Roman existence is as much a trance as anything ever was – not a sight nor sound to shock it. The swell of the organ and the odor of the incense follow you even to your pleasures, and, just as the light streams in through the painted windows with its radiance of gold and amber and rose, so does the Church tinge with its mellow lustre all that goes on within its shadow. And how sweet and soothing it all is! I don’t know, I cannot know, if it lead to heaven, but it certainly goes in that direction, so far as peace of mind is concerned. What has become of Carlo Lambruschini? Is he married? How good-looking he was, and how he sung! I never heard Mario without thinking of him. How is it that our people never have that velvety softness in their tenor voices; there is no richness, no latent depth of tone, and consequently no power of expression? Will his Eminence of the Palazzo Antinori know me again? I was only a child when he saw me last, and used to give me his “benedizione.” Be sure you bespeak for me the same condescending favor again, heretic though I be. Don’t be shocked, dearest Dora, but I mean to be half converted, that is to have a sort of serious flirtation with the Church; something that is to touch my affections, and yet not wound my principles; something that will surround me with all the fervor of the faith, and yet not ask me to sign the ordinances. I hope I can do this. I eagerly hope it, for it will supply a void in my heart which certainly neither the money article, nor the share list, nor even the details of a county contest, have sufficed to fill. Where is poor little Santa Rosa and his guitar? I want them, Dolly – I want them both. His little tinkling barcarolles were as pleasant as the drip of a fountain on a sultry night; and am I not a highly imaginative creature, who can write of a sultry night in this land of fog, east wind, gust, and gaslight? How my heart bounds to think how soon I shall leave it! How I could travesty the refrain, and cry, “Rendez-moi mon passeport, ou laissez-moi mourir.” And now, Dolly darling, I have done. Secure me the villa, engage my people. Tanti saluti to the dear cardinal, – as many loves to all who are kind enough to remember me. Send me a lascia-passare for my luggage – it is voluminous – to the care of the consul at Civita Vecchia, and tell him to look out for me by the arrival of the French boat, somewhere about the 20th or 21st; he can be useful with the custom-house creatures, and obtain me a carriage all to myself in the train.

It is always more “carino” to talk of a husband at the last line of a letter, and so I say, give dear Tino all my loves, quite apart and distinct from my other legacies of the like nature. Tell him, I am more tolerant than I used to be, – he will know my meaning, – that I make paper cigarettes just as well, and occasionally, when in high good-humor, even condescend to smoke one too. Say also, that I have a little chestnut cob, quiet enough for his riding, which shall be always at his orders; that he may dine with me every Sunday, and have one dish – I know well what it will be, I smell the garlic of it even now – of his own dictating; and if these be not enough, add that he may make love to me during the whole of Lent; and with this, believe me

Your own doting sister,

Augusta Bramleigh.

After much thought and many misgivings I deemed it advisable to offer to take one of the girls with me, leaving it open, to mark my indifference, as to which it should be. They both however refused, and, to my intense relief, declared that they did not care to come abroad; Augustus also protesting that it was a plan he could not approve of. The diplomatist alone opined that the project had anything to recommend it; but as his authority, like my own, in the family, carries little weight, we were happily outvoted. I have, therefore, the supreme satisfaction – and is it not such? – of knowing that I have done the right thing, and it has cost me nothing; like those excellent people who throw very devout looks towards heaven, without the remotest desire to be there.

CHAPTER III. “THE EVENING AFTER A HARD RUN.”

It was between eight and nine o’clock of a wintry evening near Christmas; a cold drizzle of rain was falling, which on the mountains might have been snow, as Mr. Drayton, the butler at the great house, as Castello was called in the village, stood austerely with his back to the fire in the dining-room, and, as he surveyed the table, wondered within himself what could possibly have detained the young gentlemen so late. The hounds had met that day about eight miles off, and Colonel Bramleigh had actually put off dinner half an hour for them, but to no avail; and now Mr. Drayton, whose whole personal arrangements for the evening had been so thoughtlessly interfered with, stood there musing over the wayward nature of youth, and inwardly longing for the time when, retiring from active service, he should enjoy the ease and indulgence his long life of fatigue and hardship had earned.

“They’re coming now, Mr. Drayton,” said a livery-servant, entering hastily. “George saw the light of their cigars as they came up the avenue.”

“Bring in the soup, then, at once, and send George here with another log for the fire. There’ll be no dressing for dinner to-day, I ‘ll be bound;” and imparting a sort of sarcastic bitterness to his speech, he filled himself a glass of sherry at the sideboard and tossed it off, – only just in time, for the door opened, and a very noisy, merry party of four entered the room, and made for the fire.