CHAPTER XXXI

ECCENTRIC NEIGHBOURS

Mary Russell Mitford had strong likes and dislikes. Her American friend Mr. James T. Fields, who knew her well, remarks:[13] “She loathed mere dandies, and there were no epithets too hot for her contempt in that direction. Old beaux she heartily despised, and speaking of one whom she had known, I remember she quoted with a fine scorn this appropriate passage from Dickens: ‘Ancient, dandified men, those crippled _invalides_ from the campaign of vanity, where the only powder was hair-powder and the only bullets fancy balls.’”

[Footnote 13: See _Yesterdays with Authors_.]

In one of her stories we come upon such a character—Mr. Thompson as she calls him—a gentleman who had just arrived from London, and whom she met at the house of a friend.

“Mr. Thompson was a gentleman of about—Pshaw! nothing is so impolite as to go guessing how many years a man may have lived in this most excellent world, especially when it is perfectly clear from his dress and demeanour that the register of his birth is the last document relating to himself which he would care to see produced.

“Mr. Thompson then was a gentleman of no particular age, not quite so young as he had been, but still in very tolerable preservation, being pretty exactly that which is understood by the phrase an Old Beau.”

And then, after describing the very artificial appearance of his physiognomy, she goes on to say: “Altogether it was a head calculated to convey a very favourable impression of the different artists employed in getting it up.”

A very different personage to the Old Beau is described by Miss Mitford in a tale entitled _An Admiral on Shore_.

Admiral Floyd, for so she calls him, had recently come with his wife to reside in the neighbourhood, and it was when paying a call upon them in their new home—a fine old mansion standing in beautiful grounds, known as the White House at Hannonby—that she first made his acquaintance.

“I had been proceeding to call on our new neighbours,” writes Miss Mitford, “when a very unaccountable noise induced me to pause at the entrance; a moment’s observation explained the nature of the sound. The Admiral was shooting wasps with a pocket pistol.... There under the shade of tall elms sat the veteran, a little old withered man, very like a pocket pistol himself, brown, succinct, grave and fiery. He wore an old-fashioned naval uniform of blue, faced with white, which set off his mahogany countenance, drawn into a thousand deep wrinkles.... At his side stood a very tall, masculine, large-boned, middle-aged woman, something like a man in petticoats, whose face, in spite of a quantity of rouge and a small portion of modest assurance, might still be called handsome, and could never be mistaken for belonging to other than an Irish woman.... A younger lady was watching them at a little distance apparently as much amused as myself. On her advancing to meet me the pistol was put down and the Admiral joined us. We were acquainted in a moment, and before the end of my visit he had shown me all over his house and told me the whole history of his life and adventures.

“At twelve years old he was sent to sea, and had remained there ever since till now, when an unlucky promotion had sent him ashore and seemed likely to keep him there. I never saw a man so unaffectedly displeased with his own title.

“Being, however, on land, his first object was to make his residence as much like a man-of-war as possible, or rather as much like that beau-ideal of a habitation, his last frigate, the _Mermaiden_, in which he had by different prizes made above sixty thousand pounds. By that standard his calculations were regulated. All the furniture of the White House at Hannonby was adapted to the proportions of His Majesty’s ship the _Mermaiden_. The great drawing-room was fitted up exactly on the model of her cabin, and the whole of that spacious and commodious mansion made to resemble as much as possible that wonderfully inconvenient abode, the inside of a ship; everything crammed into the smallest possible compass, space most unnecessarily economized and contrivances devised for all those matters which need no contriving at all. He victualled the house as for an East India voyage, served out the provisions in rations, and swung the whole family in hammocks.

“It will easily be believed that these innovations in a small village in a Midland county, where nineteen-twentieths of the inhabitants had never seen a piece of water larger than Hannonby great pond, occasioned no small commotion. The poor Admiral had his own troubles; at first every living thing about the place rebelled—there was a general mutiny; the very cocks and hens, whom he had crammed up in coops in the poultry yard, screamed aloud for liberty; and the pigs, ducks and geese, equally prisoners, squeaked and gabbled for water; the cows lowed in their stall; the sheep bleated in their pens; the whole livestock of Hannonby was in durance.

“The most unmanageable of these complainers were, of course, the servants; with the men, after a little while, he got on tolerably, sternness and grog (the wind and sun of the fable) conquered them. His staunchest opponents were of the other sex, the whole tribe of housemaids and kitchenmaids abhorred him to a woman, and plagued and thwarted him every hour of the day. He, on his part, returned their aversion with interest; talked of female stupidity, female awkwardness and female dirt, and threatened to compound an household of the crew of the _Mermaiden_ that should shame all the twirlers of mops and brandishers of brooms in the county.

“Especially he used to vaunt the abilities of a certain Bill Jones as the best laundress, sempstress, cook and housemaid in the navy; him he was determined to procure to keep his refractory household in some order; accordingly he wrote to desire his presence, and Bill, unable to resist the summons of his old commander, arrived accordingly....

“The dreaded major-domo turned out to be a smart young sailor of four or five-and-twenty, with an arch smile, a bright, merry eye and a most knowing nod, by no means insensible to female objurgation or indifferent to female charms. The women of the house, particularly the pretty ones, soon perceived their power, and as the Admirable Crichton of His Majesty’s ship the _Mermaiden_ had amongst his other accomplishments the address completely to govern his master, all was soon in the smoothest track possible.... Under his wise direction and discreet patronage a peace was patched up between the Admiral and his rebellious handmaids.

“Soothed, guided and humoured by his trusty adherent, and influenced perhaps by the force of example and the effect of the land breeze which he had never breathed so long before, our worthy veteran soon began to show symptoms of a man of this world. He took to gardening and farming, for which Bill Jones had also a taste, set free his prisoners in the _basse-cour_ to the unutterable glorification and crowing of cock and hen and gabbling of goose and turkey, and enlarged his own walk from pacing backwards and forwards in the dining-room, followed by his old shipmates, a Newfoundland dog and a tame goat, into a stroll round his own grounds, to the great delight of those faithful attendants.

“... Amongst the country people he soon became popular. They liked the testy little gentleman, who dispensed his beer and grog so bountifully, and talked to them so freely. He would have his own way to be sure, but then he paid for it; besides, he entered into their tastes and amusements, promoted May-games, revels and other country sports, patronized dancing dogs and monkeys and bespoke plays in barns. Above all he had an exceeding partiality for vagrants, strollers, gipsies and such like persons, listened to their tales with a delightful simplicity of belief, pitied them, relieved them, fought their battles at the bench and the vestry, and got into two or three scrapes with constables and magistrates by the activity of his protection.

“Only one counterfeit sailor with a sham wooden leg he found out at a question and, by aid of Bill Jones, ducked in the horse-pond for an impostor, till the unlucky wretch, a thorough landlubber, was nearly drowned, an adventure which turned out the luckiest of his life, he having carried his case to an attorney, who forced the Admiral to pay fifty pounds for the exploit.

“Our good veteran was equally popular amongst the gentry of the neighbourhood. His own hospitality was irresistible, and his frankness and simplicity, mixed with a sort of petulant vivacity, combined to make him a most welcome relief to the dullness of a country dinner party. He enjoyed society extremely, and even had a spare bed erected for company, moved thereto by an accident which befell the fat rector of Kinton, who, having unfortunately consented to sleep at Hannonby one wet night, had alarmed the whole house, and nearly broken his own neck by a fall from his hammock.... His reading was none of the most extensive: _Robinson Crusoe_, the _Naval Chronicle_, Southey’s admirable _Life of Nelson_ and Smollett’s novels formed the greater part of his library, and for other books he cared little.

“For the rest he was a most kind and excellent person, although a little testy and not a little absolute, and a capital disciplinarian, although addicted to the reverse sins of making other people tipsy whilst he kept himself sober, and of sending forth oaths in volleys whilst he suffered none other to swear. He had besides a few prejudices incident to his condition—loved his country to the point of hating all the rest of the world, especially the French, and regarded his own profession with a pride which made him intolerant of every other. To the army he had an intense and growing hatred, much augmented since victory upon victory had deprived him of the comfortable feeling of scorn. The battle of Waterloo fairly posed him. ‘To be sure to have drubbed the French was a fine thing—a very fine thing—no denying that! but why not have fought out the quarrel by sea?’”

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