The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater | Page 9

and Carnarvonshire, I took lodgings in a small neat house in B-. Here I
might have stayed with great comfort for many weeks, for provisions
were cheap at B-, from the scarcity of other markets for the surplus

produce of a wide agricultural district. An accident, however, in which
perhaps no offence was designed, drove me out to wander again. I
know not whether my reader may have remarked, but I have often
remarked, that the proudest class of people in England (or at any rate
the class whose pride is most apparent) are the families of bishops.
Noblemen and their children carry about with them, in their very titles,
a sufficient notification of their rank. Nay, their very names (and this
applies also to the children of many untitled houses) are often, to the
English ear, adequate exponents of high birth or descent. Sackville,
Manners, Fitzroy, Paulet, Cavendish, and scores of others, tell their
own tale. Such persons, therefore, find everywhere a due sense of their
claims already established, except among those who are ignorant of the
world by virtue of their own obscurity: "Not to know THEM, argues
one's self unknown." Their manners take a suitable tone and colouring,
and for once they find it necessary to impress a sense of their
consequence upon others, they meet with a thousand occasions for
moderating and tempering this sense by acts of courteous
condescension. With the families of bishops it is otherwise: with them,
it is all uphill work to make known their pretensions; for the proportion
of the episcopal bench taken from noble families is not at any time very
large, and the succession to these dignities is so rapid that the public ear
seldom has time to become familiar with them, unless where they are
connected with some literary reputation. Hence it is that the children of
bishops carry about with them an austere and repulsive air, indicative
of claims not generally acknowledged, a sort of noli me tangere manner,
nervously apprehensive of too familiar approach, and shrinking with
the sensitiveness of a gouty man from all contact with the [Greek text].
Doubtless, a powerful understanding, or unusual goodness of nature,
will preserve a man from such weakness, but in general the truth of my
representation will be acknowledged; pride, if not of deeper root in
such families, appears at least more upon the surface of their manners.
This spirit of manners naturally communicates itself to their domestics
and other dependants. Now, my landlady had been a lady's maid or a
nurse in the family of the Bishop of -, and had but lately married away
and "settled" (as such people express it) for life. In a little town like B-,
merely to have lived in the bishop's family conferred some distinction;
and my good landlady had rather more than her share of the pride I

have noticed on that score. What "my lord" said and what "my lord" did,
how useful he was in Parliament and how indispensable at Oxford,
formed the daily burden of her talk. All this I bore very well, for I was
too good-natured to laugh in anybody's face, and I could make an
ample allowance for the garrulity of an old servant. Of necessity,
however, I must have appeared in her eyes very inadequately impressed
with the bishop's importance, and, perhaps to punish me for my
indifference, or possibly by accident, she one day repeated to me a
conversation in which I was indirectly a party concerned. She had been
to the palace to pay her respects to the family, and, dinner being over,
was summoned into the dining-room. In giving an account of her
household economy she happened to mention that she had let her
apartments. Thereupon the good bishop (it seemed) had taken occasion
to caution her as to her selection of inmates, "for," said he, "you must
recollect, Betty, that this place is in the high road to the Head; so that
multitudes of Irish swindlers running away from their debts into
England, and of English swindlers running away from their debts to the
Isle of Man, are likely to take this place in their route." This advice
certainly was not without reasonable grounds, but rather fitted to be
stored up for Mrs. Betty's private meditations than specially reported to
me. What followed, however, was somewhat worse. "Oh, my lord,"
answered my landlady (according to her own representation of the
matter), "I really don't think this young gentleman is a swindler,
because--" "You don't THINK me a swindler?" said I, interrupting her,
in a tumult of indignation: "for the future I shall spare you the trouble
of thinking about it." And without delay I prepared for my departure.
Some concessions the good woman seemed disposed to make; but a
harsh and