Lost Sir Massingberd: A Romance of Real Life. v. 1/2

In a midland county, not as yet scarred by factories, there stands a village called Fairburn, which, at the time I knew it first--many, many years ago--had for its squire, its lord, its despot, one Sir Massingberd Heath. Its rector, at that date, was the Rev. Matthew Long; and at the Rectory, when my story commences, there was in pupilage to the said rector a youth, one Peter Meredith, who has since grown up to be the present writer. When we are small, all things seem vast to our young minds; good men are saints, and evil ones are demons. I loved Mr. Long, therefore, although he was my tutor; and oh, how I feared and hated Sir Massingberd! It was not, however, my boyhood alone that caused me to hold this man as a monster of iniquity; it was the opinion which the whole county entertained of him, more or less. The people of Fairburn trembled before him, as a ship's company before some cruel captain of fifteen years back--I mean, of fifteen years before the period of which I write. Press-gangs had not very long ceased to do their cruel mission; there were old men in our village who had served their time in His Majesty's ships, very much against their will; there were gaps in poor families still, which might or might not be filled up; empty chairs that had so stood for a score of years perhaps, waiting for still expected occupiers; fathers of families, or the props of families, in sons and brothers, had been spirited away from Fairburn (even a little while ago), and had not come back again yet. They had been poachers, or radicals, or sectaries (as Dissenters were then called), or something else distasteful to Sir Massingberd's father; and they had been carried off to sea at his command. Let not my young readers imagine that I am exaggerating matters; I write of a state of things of which they have not the remotest conception, but which I remember perfectly well. They have reason to thank Heaven that they did not live in those times, if they happen to belong to those unprosperous classes which were then termed collectively, "the mob;" there were no such things as "skilled workmen," or "respectable artisans," in those days. The "people" were "the Great Unwashed." To build a Crystal Palace for such as they were held to be, would have seemed to be the height of folly; they would have taken no other pleasure in it than to smash every pane with brickbats--for were they not "the dangerous classes"? Such opinions were beginning to die out, indeed, but they were held still by many great people, and Sir Massingberd Heath was one of them. Reared in a clergyman's family, and a clergyman myself, I have been a Conservative in politics all my life, and in that belief I shall die; but rank and power are no excuse with me for evil deeds. In the chamber of my nephew John, who "takes in everything," as the phrase goes, I once discovered a democratic magazine, edited by a gentleman whose surname I forget, but who had a great multitude of initials. All the poor people described in this work were pious and moral, and all the rich people were infidel and profligate; but for the noblemen--and there were a good many persons of high rank in the various stories--were reserved all the choicest invectives and most superlative abuse. Nothing, of course, can be more unfair than this treatment of a class of persons who, considering their temptations, are really more than respectable. As a general rule, the portraits were extravagantly malicious, but they had this attraction for me--they were all exceedingly like Sir Massingberd Heath. He was the very type of that bloated aristocracy that is held up in scarecrow fashion, by republican writers. There were not many living specimens to be met with even at the date of my tale, and the old baronet, perhaps himself perceiving that he was one of the last of them, determined that he should not be the least in infamy. Like the Unjust Judge, he neither feared God nor regarded man, and, worse than he, he would not perform a good action on account of the importunity of any person. She must have been a brave woman who importuned Sir Massingberd Heath, and could scarcely have been brought up in Fairburn.

Whether George IV. was king or not, at the period of which I write, it matters not, for his connection with our squire had terminated years before; but at one time they had been fast, very fast friends. When a king and a baronet run a race of extravagance, the king generally wins, and so it had been in this case; His Majesty, or rather His Royal Highness the Regent, had <i>distanced</i> Sir Massingberd, and they were not now upon even speaking terms. Friendships of this sort do not last when one of the parties has spent all his money. What was the use of a poor man at White's who could only look on while his old friends played whist for one hundred pound points, and five hundred pounds upon the rubber? What business--let alone pleasure--could one have in London, when Howard and Gribbs would not lend one fifty pounds even at fifty per cent.? Sir Massingberd had left that gay, wicked world for good, that is to say, for ever, and was obliged to live at his beautiful country-seat in spite of himself. He was irretrievably ruined, so far as his court prospects were concerned, for he had no ready money. He owned all Fairburn, and many hundreds of rich acres about it, beside the Park and the river; he had the great tithes of the place, and manorial rights (which he exercised, too) innumerable. Nobody quite knew--he did not know himself--what privileges he had or had not, what pathways he could close at pleasure, what heriots he could demand, or what precise property he had in Fairburn gravel-pits; but in all cases he gave himself the benefit of the doubt. It was a very foolish thing to leave any disputed point to the sense of justice, or the good feeling of our squire, and yet this was generally done. Where it was not done, where some honest fellow had ventured to oppose his high prerogative, even though he gained his end, he was always, as the village people said, "paid out" for it. I don't mean to say Sir Massingberd murdered him--although he would have done that, I am confident, without the slightest scruple, if it could have been effected with safety to himself--but he took his revenge of him, sooner or later, in a very simple way. He caught his children trespassing--having caused them to be enticed upon his land--and committed them to prison; or he broke down his fences, and spoiled his corn in the night; for he had dependents devoted to his wicked will, and upon whose false witness he could always rely.

And yet, with all this power, the baronet, as I have said, was a poor man; he had borrowed all the money he could, and was even said to have overreached the London Jews in these transactions; and it was all gone--absolutely all. It was seldom that this great lord of acres had a ten-pound note in his pocket, for his house and land were all entailed upon his nephew Marmaduke, and he had only a life-interest in anything. Poverty perhaps made him bitterer and more savage than he would otherwise have been; but, for my part, I cannot imagine him to have been agreeable under any circumstances. I have heard, however, that at Carlton House he was once the first favourite--after Brummell--and that, of course, made him sought after by many people. He had a wicked wit, which was doubtless acceptable in some circles, and his tongue, it may be, was not quite so coarse in those days of prosperity. He took a delight in his old age in retailing his infamous experiences, before women, if possible, and if not, before clergymen or boys. I remember to have heard of Mr. Long once venturing to reprove his squire upon an occasion of this very kind. The rector had been dining at the Hall--an exceptional occurrence, and under exceptional circumstances--when, after dinner, the host began one of his disgraceful reminiscences, whereupon my tutor rose and said, "Sir Massingberd, you should be ashamed to talk of such matters to me; but before this boy, it is infamous. I thank you for your hospitality; but I shall go home."