Agony Point; or, the Groans of 'Gentility.'

Front matter

REGENT STREET, W. Now ready, a Fourth and Cheaper Edition of TWENTY YEARS IN THE CHURCH. By REV. JAMES PYCR0FT, B.A. AUTHOR OF "RECOLLECTIONS OF COLLEGE DAY'S," ETC 1 vol. crown 8vo. price 2s. 6<i. " The book is easy, natural, good-humoured, yet shrewd ; tells of common things in a familiar way, and pleases partly from telling what everybody knows, partly from telling what is not always known concerning well-known things." — Dublin University Magazine, March. " Twenty Years in the Church, lately published, is one of the best expositions of the Church system in its merits and defects which has appeared for years." — Daily News, Nov. 1. 11 Twenty Years in the Church is written on a subject that appeals to the multitude, and treated by Mr. Pycroft in an honest, manly manner, and is quite as good a novel as Tom Brown's School-Days, and we shall be greatly surprised if it does not become as popular." — The Leader, Aug. 27.

" Mr. Pycroft has much to say, and he says it well." — Post, Sept. 6. " Since the day when the Rev. Sydney Smith lashed the follies and vices of the period which he so brilliantly adorned, we have not met with so poignant and truth-telling a writer as the author of Twenty Years in the Church." — Reading Mercury, Aug. 13. " Under the above title we have another of those life-like pic tures of men and things as they are, which are fast succeeding the ideal personages and fictitious events of the once popular Romance.'' — Leicester Mercury, Oct. 22. "We rarely meet with a volume to engage and gratify our at tention so well as this has done, at once by high literary qualities and the solid interest of its subjects." — Daily News, Nov. 3. "The illustrative anecdotes are capital in themselves, and en tirely to the point." — Globe.

"A gifted writer, like Mr. Pycroft, is under a moral obligation to exercise his talents for the benefit of society ; and we are happy to see him so often come forward to acquit himself of this obliga tion." — Bath and Cheltenham Gazette, Aug. 24. " We can recommend the work as one of deep interest, and worthy of the most extensive circulation." — Brighton Gazette. " The loss of the artistic effects which give interest to a novel, is more than compensated by the naturalness of the characters and scenes portrayed." — The Press, Aug. 20. Second Thousand. Now ready, price 10s. 6d. ELKERTON RECTORY; BEING PART THE SECOND OF "TWENTY YEARS IN THE CHURCH." By THE REV. JAMES PYCROFT, B.A. " The refined drollery and quiet satire that run through the narrative reminds one of Sydney Smith." — St. James's Chronicle, June 7th.

Preface

. Dr. Johnson once exhorted a young man beginning life to regard debt not as an inconvenience, but as a calamity — as that which made all vir tues difficult, and some impossible. Lord Burleigh said, that a man should always calculate his income at only two-thirds of its actual value. No doubt he foresaw that the remaining third would spend itself composedly and gracefully — it would enable us to meet claims on our generosity without starving our feelings — it would take the sting out of many an accident or emergency, without ruffling our tempers or adding to the list of our real mis fortune.

PREFACE.

. VI The following story may be regarded as a series of sun-pictures : some of the most striking incidents claim to be literally " untouched photo graphs." The Author is aware that his own strong feelings, on a subject which is the crying evil of the present day, may burst forth, as stirring truths that will out, at many a pause in the nar rative. Still, he trusts that the reader will have no cause to complain that a book which pre tends to all the diversion and entertainment of a novel is only a lecture or sermon in disguise. PAGE I 44 CONTENTS. Chapter I. Tom Langley — His Birth, Parentage, and Education Chapter II. Tom Langley having become quite his own Master, sees a little of London Life — The Reader also sees a little of his Doings these . . .13 Chapter III. Tom Langley sees a little more of London Life — Indeed, he sees almost too much of it Chapter IV.

He witnesses a fashionable Experiment for Improving on the Ways of Providence : but it does not work as well as was expected . . . . .62 Chapter V. As all the World was going out of Town, Tom Langley goes too — He meets with a remarkable Adventure . • . • • • .77 CONTENTS. Chapter VI. PAGE Tom is now " the great Card " of Shrimpton ; and a certain young Lady is accused of unfair Play, which suggests the Theory of " Fast young Ladies" 97 Chapter VII. Miss Charlotte Mildmay now appears ; and, while Tom is quite in the Clouds, something occurs to bring him down to Earth . . . .118 Chapter VIII. Tom suspects a deep Female Stratagem, but is talked back into his usual Equanimity, doing exactly what he is told, with a full Impression of having all his own Way ...... 127 Chapter IX. How, after many emphatic Warnings and stern Resolutions, Tom Langley does the very Tkincr he determined not to do . . . . .143 Chapter X. How the Coarse of true Love begins to run a little smooth . . . . . . . .155 CONTENTS.

IX PAGE 171 182 228 252 Chapter XI. How the happy Pair are married, and how much / Little People know of the Secrets of the Great . Chapter XII. How they settle down like proper Married People, and study the Habits of the Natives — The Parson's Wife seems rather worldly Chapter XIII. How Tom Langley undergoes a little wholesome Discipline of the mildest Form . . . 217 Chapter XIV. How they give their first Country Dinner-party, and find it quite a serious Undertaking . Chapter XV. How this Life has greater Trials than even stupid Servants and a country Dinner-party Chapter XVI. How some great People come to Grief, aud how some little People take an Inventory of their Defects X CONTENTS. Chapter XVII. PAGE How People may keep on talking one Way while they keep on going the other . . . .265 Chapter XVIII.

How Tom Langley finds that nothing is so expensive as " Appearances," and how he becomes quite an altered Character . . . .276 Chapter XIX. How Tom shows considerable Knowledge of Human Nature, and grows quite a Family Man

Chapter I. Tom Langley

— HIS BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND EDUCATION. " In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread" is a law written, not only in the word of God, but on every page of the book of life. Yes, with the rich man or the poor man, with the peer or the ploughman, it is all the same ; though, perhaps, in some cases the one makes trouble, while the other finds it : or, as a very wise man once said, " The difference is often only this : the rich man labours to get an appetite for his dinner, the poor man to get a dinner for his appetite." Yet, some persons suppose that the doom of labour is virtually cancelled in these days of entailed estates and the Three per Cents. Some VOL. I. b suppose that the great use of fathers and fore fathers is to do all the drudgery of life for us, and to send us into the world as a happy swarm, more like drones than bees, to five out a joyous span of dreamy, sunny days, on the honey hived for our " gentility."

But this is a very narrow view of things. We may as well plod our weary way up a furrow, as lounge and doze away the slowly-pacing hours on silk and satin. Whether it be the toil of the hands or the head, or the sternly-exacted labour of the sinking heart — whether it be the drop that glistens on the brow of the sun-burnt reaper, while " the valleys laugh and sing" with the yellowwaving of the ripened harvest — or whether it be the drop of agony, wrung from the racking brain of the man of pleasure, when the fiendish venture of dice or debauchery has gone against him, it is all the same — each is equally an instance of the one mighty ordinance and man's primeval doom. In this way we were reasoning lately with a friend, and even went so far as to challenge him to name one single creature of whose daily life we knew enough to speak with confidence, to whom this law of labour did not in some form most manifestly apply.

" Well, then," said he, " we will take this A DOMINEERING MISTRESS. 3 law in its widest sense. — that all you enjoy vou must, in some sort, work for. If you do no labour, you can enjoy no leisure; or, as the retired counsellor once replied, while walking in Westminster Hall, if he had no term-time, then he had no vacation : but, what will you say of the easy and luxurious life of Mrs. Langley, of Langley Hall ? " Mrs. Langley is as much a slave as any abigail in her whole establishment. Eor, whether a real or an ideal mistress holds the whip and reins, it little matters ; nay, the idea] tyrant is often the more searching and the more dreaded of the two." " No one knows how intensely vivid and how real are our delusions," said a lady from an asylum. And powerful, indeed, is the delu sion — awful, indeed, is the spectre — that reigns in Langley Hall.

Her name is Mrs. Fashion ; own sister to Mrs. Etiquette. She is ever moving from room to room ; more rigidly scru tinising than any mistress or any housekeeper, and allows my lady anything but the semblance of a will or way of her own. Yes, Mrs. Fashion it is who claims to arrange the old furniture, or capriciously calls for new, however much the old may suit my lady better. Mrs. Fashion orders the carriage, and determines the drives that they shall take, or the calls to be made: though oftentimes my lady, when she comes home, is heard to rejoice, — " We found them all so nice, and out." Mrs. Fashion also orders the dinners, and the balls, and decides the very guests to be invited — who shall come, and who shall not, albeit my lady would often, in her heart, prefer a quiet evening with some old, yet excluded friend, to all the diamonds and gay dresses that are to do her credit in the Morning Post.

Thus does Mrs. Fashion cruelly domineer all through the winter in my lady's country house ; but now the days have lengthened, and now the crocus, the primrose, and the violet, and many a swelling bud, on many a favourite plant, morning after morning tempt my lady to beguile some hours in her garden, or her con servatory. Already she sees a vision — some few weeks quickly fled — of clustering roses, flaming plots of verbena, or of geraniums — amidst velvet lawns and verdant groves. But soon the hard-hearted Mrs. Fashion once more steps in, and reminds her that, just as at a morning pantomime daylight gives way to gas, so, in the farce and falsetto of this world's drama, the balmy air of spring must yield to city smoke - — the singing of birds to the dull, ceaseless sound of rolling wheels — and the happy, the MRS. FASHION AND HER VOTARIES. 5 cheering, the enjoyable hours of day seem to serve only as an intrusion that defers the fancied pleasures of the night.

Arrived in London, once more my lady en counters the same arbitrary mistress. Arbitrary? Why, my lady's waiting-maid had long since given warning rather than submit to such petty and persevering interference with all her little favourite ways and fancies. So, at this daily and hourly tyrant's bidding, she submits to join " the maddening crowd's ignoble strife" — strife and emulation in caps, and gowns, and trinkets — strife and emulation in equipage and liveries, in china, glass, and new French dishes — besides squeezing at the door or the landing-place of suffocating drawing-rooms : for which melting and squeezing the faintest sentiment of the ton can often be the only possible reward. Surely some unsophisticated reader will ask, And what is the fearful penalty under which the lady of so much wealth and independence is bound to obey this despotic Mrs. Fashion?

The penalty is, that of the poor Hindoo — there is a certain mysterious idol, all jewels without and all hollow within, that she must fall clown and worship — certain forbidden things and per sons she must not touch, handle, or approach, all through fear of loss of caste! Let us not be supposed to deny that there is an order of society in which the said Mrs. Fashion is the handmaid, not the mistress. There are those of natural grace, with whom all is ease and composure — whose taste and in tuitions are their only law, and who do simply as they please : but we are not speaking of the serener altitudes, but of the region next below ; being well assured that there can be no affectation where all is genuine and nothing to affect. It is wonderful how happiness is qualified in this world. The ancient Greeks had an idea that there was a certain Nemesis, a certain in vidious deity, ever ready to dash down mortal man from the giddy height of his prosperity, or to mix some bitters into his choicest cup.

This myth was no doubt founded partly on an in stinctive feeling akin to humility. Perhaps it was also founded on long experience of the fact, so well expressed by that great writer, who said, " Wherever there is Pleasure, we may be sure that Pain is not far off." Indeed, happiness in man is something like perfect tune in an instrument. A happy man is a man in tune, with his feelings and affections all in tune; to say nothing of his health and spirits, and all that complexity of the nervous system, so delicate, that the strings of ten thou- WHEN AGE BEGINS TO TELL. 7 sand pianofortes, all in one, are as nothing in comparison. But, added to the fact, that the more capable of pleasure, the more sensitive of pain, it seems as if Providence designs that, in the race of this life, certain persons, otherwise calculated to bear every prize away, should carry so much dead weight.

Accordingly, Lady Langley had a very quietly-disposed husband, who was some twenty years older than herself. He was a good kind of man, and she had no cause to complain ; only, a lady of fifty with a gentleman of seventy na turally finds that " only twenty years," a difference so little felt some twenty years before, be comes a serious hindrance, when the lady is still too young to see the reasonableness of early hours, and find her chief resources in her home. They also viewed things differently — when her ladyship's visions wrere most gorgeous, the gentleman's matter-of-fact comment would re duce them to thin air. Oftentimes he would breathe a cold current, that would most effectually lower the rising temperature of her sanguine feelings; while Hope, Romance, and Imagina tion in vain would purple the landscape of the future : for, by some cold and joyless observa tion, he would ruthlessly reduce it to the bleak and blank reality of the past.

However, one advantage that accrued to the lady from this May-and-December alliance was, that when the gentleman's nerves were at their weakest, the lady's energies still remained at their strongest : and, just as the hardiest sailor, said a traveller, could not be induced to stand a second shock of the electric eel, so to renew a marital contest which is felt to jar on the whole nervous system, this Mr. Langley — like many another man, bold enough at any fair trial of his courage or endurance — dreaded above all mortal things. On such occasions he would put his hand to his ear, and say " Hush — I can't stand it :" and so, gradually, he settled all his power and opinions upon the lady, and contented himself with a running commentary of half-audible grumbling, most ominous of dire results, always ending with "But it is no use for me to speak — so, anything for a quiet life !"

One of the chief points in which Mr. Lang ley differed from his wife was, the education of his son Tom. We say nothing about so ordinary a question as, Classical compared with English education : for as to Latin and Greek, the father believed in it religiously, as he did in Church and State, and many other things on which he, and nine out of ten of his neighbours, happened to be THE RISING GENERATION. 9 right, though for reasons that happened to be wrong. No, it was not the teaching but the training — it was the bringing up, or the spoiling of the boy, as he maintained : it was all that was indi cative of the future of Master Tom, and " the notions that the mother and sisters were putting into his head," to which Mr. Langley was wise enough to take exception, most clearly seeing, as he did, that this must be one day all unlearnt, and that too amidst the smarts and sorrows, " the whips and scorns " of that great school, where even bullying and fagging are allowed — that cruel school of hard lessons and many classes, and where all are on the alert, profiting by our blunders and snapping at our places — yclept " The wide, wide World !"

" If," Mr. Langley would say, " if the boy cannot keep a penny in his pocket now — if he is never to say ' No ' to himself or others — if in the flexible days of youth it is to be all self-in dulgence and no self-denial — if the whole aim of the girls is to spoil the boys — what, in the name of common sense, will become of him ? That * iron sinew,' the unruly will, no more will bend in later life when habits are stereotyped, and when affections try the better part, and passions try the worse, and when perhaps he has a wife and children, like mine, to cajole and worry him into folly, by fretting at his very heartstrings and availing themselves of every weakness, to betray the strength and prudence of the man !" In this way Mr. Langley used to reason -. and after thus wisely expatiating, and entering this very sensible protest in volumes of thin air, he would hand over the disputed pocket-money for his wife to send to school, and enjoy the report of the boy's fun and frolic and the happi ness of youth, which, he then said, it were cruelty to spoil — just as much as if he knew no better.

All this will be enough to show, that Tom Langley was brought up much like other boys — that in Mr. Langley's family the son was everything, the daughters nothing — indeed, it seemed taken for granted as a thing of course, in Mr. Langley's family, that it is quite happiness enough for the girls to enjoy the reflected sun shine of the boys : who are to grow up basking in ease and luxury, evincing their amability chiefly in uniting the offices of Solicitor-General and Receiver-General in their own pampered and greedy persons. So, if Tom was selfish as a boy — if he grew up like most other boys, expecting that all the world would take him at the family valuation, and deem his will and pleasure of the same su- KILLING BY KINDNESS. preme importance — all this crop of errors — like so many nettles in his side and briers in bis path — was the natural produce of the seed his mother and sisters conspired to sow.

But was not this corrected at school? Un fortunately our hero had not the benefit of a public school, and he lived at a date at which the present humanitarian system of sparing the rod and spoiling the child had already been established. Public opinion had already decided, that no master who would not risk being placarded as a brute in the local newspaper, by giving a supposed cut too much, and positively ruined by a character for severity, can safely resort to that alternative, without the fear of which (as the Duke said of flogging in the army), no secondary punishment, and therefore no discipline, can pos sibly be enforced. Consequently, at Tom's school, intellec tually, instead of being whipped up to the master's pace, all the boys went their own : while morally, the master only sighed and shut his eyes when great offences were committed, painfully conscious that it was better to be supposed not to recognise than to be known not to punish, as their evil deeds deserved.

This — which is the hard fate of nearly all the youths of England, apart from the public schools, was a severe loss to Tom, because at a school like Eton the inexorable law that compels " a fellow " to quicken his paces, to mind his " absences," and be ready with his lessons — all this, implying a several act of self-denial in the zest of boating or of cricket, and a several act of self-command to bend the divided mind to a task the more unpalatable, the more improving, nine or ten times a-day — of this we may truly say, that this is a state truly favourable to the self-control and command required at every turn in the road of life.

Chapter II. Tom Langley Having Become Quite His Own Master, Sees

A LITTLE OF LONDON LIFE — THE READER ALSO SEES A LITTLE OF HIS DOINGS THERE. We must now in our biography, as we must do very commonly in life, be satisfied to lose sight of the boy for nine or ten years, and to break in upon him once more in his chambers in the Albany — his father and mother dead, and himself possessed of 800/. a-year, and ar rived at the critical age of twenty and six years. The occasion to which my memory more vividly recurs was an early breakfast on the Derby day. The party consisted of four or five young men, enjoying, or rather too much ex hausted and "used up" to enjoy, the London season. This was evident from their pale looks, their drooping eyelashes, and the general apathy of their expression. Indeed, to be moved by nothing— to be excited by nothing — and to be interested or highly delighted by nothing — but rather to vote everything slow, everything a bore, and everything a weakness in the healthy mind that happens to be able to enjoy it; this is the fashion of London life : for, just as the fox that left his brush in the trap, wanted all other foxes to part with their honours too, so the many fa shionable people who have exhausted all spirits to enjoy, expect all other persons to affect the same listless exhaustion and apathy as themselves.

But, there was also one gentleman present at the breakfast party, with green coat and brass buttons, white cords, top-boots, and a fancy blue-and-yellow tie — in point of age, we should say, a very young man for forty — who seemed to be at the very height of happiness ; so much so, indeed, that, as he carried on a running fire with all the youngsters aforesaid, he gradually made them sparkle up and effervesce with some of his own happy buoyancy of spirits. This gentleman proved to be Mr. Frederic Audrey, who Avas Mr. Langley's family solicitor — a keen man of business, with a keen relish for pleasure ; a man who boasted of having a good hunter in his stable, and a trood mana<nn<r clerk in his office — neither being of much use to him, were it not for the service of the other. Fred Audrey's history is soon told.

His father FRED AUDREY DESCRIBED. had given up to him a very small business, and he had made it a very large one ; which business, in deed — though a shrewd and respectable man was Fred Audrey — had been made not by virtue of brilliant talents, or of heroic honesty; because, though we fully allow that, all the world over, a clear head and conscience are beyond all price, still it must not be forgotten, that while one of these qualities proves most repulsive to the fools and the other most forbidding to the knaves, they form a very questionable stock in trade, for a rapid rise at least, in any small town in Eng land. More — far more — is done by a good humoured countenance and cheerful tone of voice — by something imposing in the manner, and positive in the opinion — than by qualities of more sterling kind.

In business, body helps sometimes as much as brains, and we really doubt whether, taking the world as it is, a jolly fellow or a genius would have the better chance of customers or clients. At all events, as regards our friend, it was quite as much by his looks as his learning that he had become the agent of half the estates around, with the reputation of keeping an office into which every man who went in a flurry or a passion came out feeling as if he were the better for some sedative or cooling emulsion. Fred Audrey knew that people go to lawyers as they do to doctors or father-confessors — from an inclination to relieve their minds and to ease their fears, and sometimes to be assisted in their resentment. Why, there was old Chilham, a lawyer in the same town : he had no chance at all against Audrey, being afflicted with an ominous face like a dooms-man, in which men could read strange matters — a nervous client had been known to walk up and down, like a boy with a toothache, three or four minutes before he had the courage to go iu, and after all to come out worse.

Tom had himself said, when once in a scrape, that he could as soon unbosom to the old Governor himself as to old Chilham, who always showed his knowledge of the law by parading all the pains and penalties he could think of, saying as the very first thing, " I am very sorry, sir, but do you know what you are liable to?" Not so Fred Audrey : nature made him happy to start with, and his happy looks gave him that prosperity which made him happy again. He worked hard and rode hard, and sometimes, though short of excess, he drank hard; and since a happy face in a party, with a merry-ringing, cheerful voice, and a laugh for everything and everybody, makes all the difference of plenty of THE HARDEST WORK IS DOING NOTHING. 17 light and a blazing fire at a winter's dinner party, Fred Audrey was a general favourite; and Tom very naturally, at the winding up of his late father's affairs, made this man of business pro mise to come up to his chambers and join a party with a four-in-hand drag for the ensuing Derby.

Such was Fred Audrey. The young fellows wanted no introduction. Nothing recommends a middle-aged man more to the young than when he combines with the good sense and experience of age what is most rare, a thorough interest and sympathy for youth. " I begin to think the business-men are right, after all," said Captain Kitson of the Guards. " When they have a holiday, it is a holiday indeed. Bless me, sir! to you this seems like breaking-up day to a boy." " Certainly, sir ; holidays must be fairly and honestly earned, or they can never be thoroughly and heartily enjoyed." " And then, if you spend money to-day you can lay on some more six-and-eightpences to morrow; but with us — eh?" "All going out and nothing coming in, gentle men ! Well, that makes a difference — touching capital whenever at a loss.

Yes, it is rarely a man replaces the stock, and rarely he finds money to redeem his mortgage. I have no doubt," vol. I. c he said slily, " some of you gentlemen will ad mit the probability of this?" More than one, by a quiet laugh, pleaded guilty to the very weakness that the lawyer had so significantly hinted. " And what the end of all this will be I don't know," said one of the party. "It is indeed so true that everything does keep on going out, and nothing does keep on coming in again." " Don't know, you say, sir ; but I do," said Audrey. " I see the working of it every day that I live. My opinion is, that the world nowadays is too genteel by half. It is Men-of-labour versus Men-of-leisure ; and it is very plain which side must win. The bees are driving out the drones. Estates are daily coming to the hammer, and some Manchester spinner, with a pocket full of money, walks coolly into the auction-room and outbids all the county !