Headlong Hall | Page 2

strangers to
each other, were actually bound to the same point, namely, Headlong
Hall, the seat of the ancient and honourable family of the Headlongs, of
the vale of Llanberris, in Caernarvonshire. This name may appear at
first sight not to be truly Cambrian, like those of the Rices, and Prices,
and Morgans, and Owens, and Williamses, and Evanses, and Parrys,
and Joneses; but, nevertheless, the Headlongs claim to be not less
genuine derivatives from the antique branch of Cadwallader than any of
the last named multiramified families. They claim, indeed, by one
account, superior antiquity to all of them, and even to Cadwallader
himself, a tradition having been handed down in Headlong Hall for
some few thousand years, that the founder of the family was preserved
in the deluge on the summit of Snowdon, and took the name of
Rhaiader, which signifies a waterfall, in consequence of his having
accompanied the water in its descent or diminution, till he found
himself comfortably seated on the rocks of Llanberris. But, in later
days, when commercial bagmen began to scour the country, the
ambiguity of the sound induced his descendants to drop the suspicious
denomination of Riders, and translate the word into English; when, not
being well pleased with the sound of the thing, they substituted that of
the quality, and accordingly adopted the name Headlong, the

appropriate epithet of waterfall.
I cannot tell how the truth may be: I say the tale as 'twas said to me.
The present representative of this ancient and dignified house, Harry
Headlong, Esquire, was, like all other Welsh squires, fond of shooting,
hunting, racing, drinking, and other such innocent amusements,
meizonos d' allou tinos, as Menander expresses it. But, unlike other
Welsh squires, he had actually suffered certain phenomena, called
books, to find their way into his house; and, by dint of lounging over
them after dinner, on those occasions when he was compelled to take
his bottle alone, he became seized with a violent passion to be thought
a philosopher and a man of taste; and accordingly set off on an
expedition to Oxford, to inquire for other varieties of the same genera,
namely, men of taste and philosophers; but, being assured by a learned
professor that there were no such things in the University, he proceeded
to London, where, after beating up in several booksellers' shops,
theatres, exhibition-rooms, and other resorts of literature and taste, he
formed as extensive an acquaintance with philosophers and dilettanti as
his utmost ambition could desire: and it now became his chief wish to
have them all together in Headlong Hall, arguing, over his old Port and
Burgundy, the various knotty points which had puzzled his pericranium.
He had, therefore, sent them invitations in due form to pass their
Christmas at Headlong Hall; which invitations the extensive fame of
his kitchen fire had induced the greater part of them to accept; and four
of the chosen guests had, from different parts of the metropolis,
ensconced themselves in the four corners of the Holyhead mail.
These four persons were, Mr Foster[1.1], the perfectibilian; Mr
Escot[1.2], the deteriorationist; Mr Jenkison[1.3], the statu-quo-ite; and
the Reverend Doctor Gaster[1.4], who, though of course neither a
philosopher nor a man of taste, had so won on the Squire's fancy, by a
learned dissertation on the art of stuffing a turkey, that he concluded no
Christmas party would be complete without him.
The conversation among these illuminati soon became animated; and
Mr Foster, who, we must observe, was a thin gentleman, about thirty
years of age, with an aquiline nose, black eyes, white teeth, and black

hair--took occasion to panegyrize the vehicle in which they were then
travelling, and observed what remarkable improvements had been made
in the means of facilitating intercourse between distant parts of the
kingdom: he held forth with great energy on the subject of roads and
railways, canals and tunnels, manufactures and machinery: "In short,"
said he, "every thing we look on attests the progress of mankind in all
the arts of life, and demonstrates their gradual advancement towards a
state of unlimited perfection."
Mr Escot, who was somewhat younger than Mr Foster, but rather more
pale and saturnine in his aspect, here took up the thread of the discourse,
observing, that the proposition just advanced seemed to him perfectly
contrary to the true state of the case: "for," said he, "these
improvements, as you call them, appear to me only so many links in the
great chain of corruption, which will soon fetter the whole human race
in irreparable slavery and incurable wretchedness: your improvements
proceed in a simple ratio, while the factitious wants and unnatural
appetites they engender proceed in a compound one; and thus one
generation acquires fifty wants, and fifty means of supplying them are
invented, which