Richard Carvel | Page 3

Gray's Elegy pleased him
best. He would laugh over Swift's gall and wormwood, and would
never be brought by my mother to acknowledge the defects in the
Dean's character. Why? He had once met the Dean in a London
drawing- room, when my grandfather was a young spark at Christ
Church, Oxford. He never tired of relating that interview. The hostess
was a very great lady indeed, and actually stood waiting for a word
with his Reverence, whose whim it was rather to talk to the young
provincial. He was a forbidding figure, in his black gown and periwig,
so my grandfather said, with a piercing blue eye and shaggy brow. He
made the mighty to come to him, while young Carvel stood between
laughter and fear of the great lady's displeasure.
"I knew of your father," said the Dean, "before he went to the colonies.
He had done better at home, sir. He was a man of parts."
"He has done indifferently well in Maryland, sir," said Mr. Carvel,
making his bow.
"He hath gained wealth, forsooth," says the Dean, wrathfully, "and
might have had both wealth and fame had his love for King James not

turned his head. I have heard much of the colonies, and have read that
doggerel 'Sot Weed Factor' which tells of the gluttonous life of ease
you lead in your own province. You can have no men of mark from
such conditions, Mr. Carvel. Tell me," he adds contemptuously, "is
genius honoured among you?"
"Faith, it is honoured, your Reverence," said my grandfather, "but
never encouraged."
This answer so pleased the Dean that he bade Mr. Carvel dine with him
next day at Button's Coffee House, where they drank mulled wine and
old sack, for which young Mr. Carvel paid. On which occasion his
Reverence endeavoured to persuade the young man to remain in
England, and even went so far as to promise his influence to obtain him
preferment. But Mr. Carvel chose rather (wisely or not, who can judge?)
to come back to Carvel Hall and to the lands of which he was to be
master, and to play the country squire and provincial magnate rather
than follow the varying fortunes of a political party at home. And he
was a man much looked up to in the province before the Revolution,
and sat at the council board of his Excellency the Governor, as his
father had done before him, and represented the crown in more matters
than one when the French and savages were upon our frontiers.
Although a lover of good cheer, Mr. Carvel was never intemperate. To
the end of his days he enjoyed his bottle after dinner, nay, could scarce
get along without it; and mixed a punch or a posset as well as any in
our colony. He chose a good London-brewed ale or porter, and his
ships brought Madeira from that island by the pipe, and sack from
Spain and Portugal, and red wine from France when there was peace.
And puncheons of rum from Jamaica and the Indies for his people,
holding that no gentleman ever drank rum in the raw, though fairly
supportable as punch.
Mr. Carvel's house stands in Marlborough Street, a dreary mansion
enough. Praised be Heaven that those who inherit it are not obliged to
live there on the memory of what was in days gone by. The heavy
green shutters are closed; the high steps, though stoutly built, are shaky
after these years of disuse; the host of faithful servants who kept its

state are nearly all laid side by side at Carvel Hall. Harvey and Chess
and Scipio are no more. The kitchen, whither a boyish hunger oft
directed my eyes at twilight, shines not with the welcoming gleam of
yore. Chess no longer prepares the dainties which astonished Mr.
Carvel's guests, and which he alone could cook. The coach still stands
in the stables where Harvey left it, a lumbering relic of those lumbering
times when methinks there was more of goodwill and less of haste in
the world. The great brass knocker, once resplendent from Scipio's
careful hand, no longer fantastically reflects the guest as he beats his
tattoo, and Mr. Peale's portrait of my grandfather is gone from the
dining-room wall, adorning, as you know, our own drawing-room at
Calvert House.
I shut my eyes, and there comes to me unbidden that dining-room in
Marlborough Street of a gray winter's afternoon, when I was but a lad. I
see my dear grandfather in his wig and silver-laced waistcoat and his
blue velvet coat, seated at the head of the table, and the precise Scipio
has put down the dumb-waiter filled with shining cut-glass at his left
hand, and his wine chest at his right, and with solemn pomp