The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green | Page 3

day, who were nearly beggared by the bursting of the Mississippi Scheme and South-Sea Bubble; and these, in their turn, were duly represented by their successors. And thus the family character was handed down with the family nose, until they both re-appeared (according to the veracious chronicle of Burke, to which we have referred) in "VERDANT GREEN, of the Manor Green, Co. Warwick, Gent., who married Mary, only surviving child of Samuel Sappey, Esq., of Sapcot Hall, Co. Salop; by whom he has issue, one son, and three daughters: Mary,-VERDANT,-Helen,-Fanny."
Mr. Burke is unfeeling enough to give the dates when this bunch of Greens first made their appearance in the world; but these dates we withhold, from a delicate regard to personal feelings, which will be duly appreciated by those who have felt the sacredness of their domestic hearth to be tampered with by the obtrusive impertinences of a census-paper.
It is sufficient for our purpose to say, that our hero, Mr. Verdant Green, junior, was born much in the same way as other folk. And although pronounced by Mrs. Toosypegs his nurse, when yet in the first crimson blush of his existence, to be "a perfect progidy, mum, which I ought to be able to pronounce, 'avin nuss'd a many parties through their trouble, and being aweer of what is doo to a Hinfant," - yet we are not aware that his ~debut~ on the stage of life, although thus applauded
[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 9]
by such a ~clacqueur~ as the indiscriminating Toosypegs, was announced to the world at large by any other means than the notices in the county papers, and the six-shilling advertisement in the ~Times~.
"Progidy" though he was, even as a baby, yet Mr. Verdant Green's nativity seems to have been chronicled merely in this everyday manner, and does not appear to have been accompanied by any of those more monstrous phenomena, which in earlier ages attended the production of a ~genuine~ prodigy. We are not aware that Mrs. Green's favourite Alderney spoke on that occasion, or conducted itself otherwise than as unaccustomed to public speaking as usual. Neither can we verify the assertion of the intelligent Mr. Mole the gardener, that the plaster Apollo in the Long Walk was observed to be bathed in a profuse perspiration, either from its feeling compelled to keep up the good old classical custom, or because the weather was damp. Neither are we bold enough to entertain an opinion that the chickens in the poultry-yard refused their customary food; or that the horses in the stable shook with trembling fear; or that any thing, or any body, saving and excepting Mrs. Toosypegs, betrayed any consciousness that a real and genuine prodigy had been given to the world.
However, during the first two years of his life, which were passed chiefly in drinking, crying, and sleeping, Mr. Verdant Green met with as much attention, and received as fair a share of approbation, as usually falls to the lot of the most favoured of infants. Then Mrs. Toosypegs again took up her position in the house, and his reign was over. Faithful to her mission, she pronounced the new baby to be ~the~ "progidy," and she was believed. But thus it is all through life; the new baby displaces the old; the second love supplants the first; we find fresh friends to shut out the memories of former ones; and in nearly everything we discover that there is a Number 2 which can put out of joint the nose of Number 1.
Once more the shadow of Mrs. Toosypegs fell upon the walls of Manor Green; and then her mission being accomplished, she passed away for ever; and our hero was left to be the sole son and heir, and the prop and pride of the house of Green.
And if it be true that the external forms of nature exert a hidden but powerful sway over the dawning perceptions of the mind, and shape its thoughts to harmony with the things around, then most certainly ought Mr. Verdant Green to have been born a poet; for he grew up amid those scenes whose immortality is, that they inspired the soul of Shakespeare with his deathless fancies!
The Manor Green was situated in one of the loveliest spots in all Warwickshire; a county so rich in all that constitutes the
[10 ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN]
picturesqueness of a true English landscape. Looking from the drawing-room windows of the house, you saw in the near foreground the pretty French garden, with its fantastic particoloured beds, and its broad gravelled walks and terrace; proudly promenading which, or perched on the stone balustrade might be seen perchance a peacock flaunting his beauties in the sun. Then came the carefully kept gardens, bounded on the one side by the Long Walk and a grove