The History of Henry Esmond | Page 7

I saw Queen Anne at the
latter place tearing down the Park slopes, after her stag-hounds, and
driving her one-horse chaise--a hot, red-faced woman, not in the least
resembling that statue of her which turns its stone back upon St. Paul's,
and faces the coaches struggling up Ludgate Hill. She was neither
better bred nor wiser than you and me, though we knelt to hand her a
letter or a wash-hand basin. Why shall History go on kneeling to the
end of time? I am for having her rise up off her knees, and take a
natural posture: not to be for ever performing cringes and congees like

a court-chamberlain, and shuffling backwards out of doors in the
presence of the sovereign. In a word, I would have History familiar
rather than heroic: and think that Mr. Hogarth and Mr. Fielding will
give our children a much better idea of the manners of the present age
in England, than the Court Gazette and the newspapers which we get
thence.
There was a German officer of Webb's, with whom we used to joke,
and of whom a story (whereof I myself was the author) was got to be
believed in the army, that he was eldest son of the hereditary Grand
Bootjack of the Empire, and the heir to that honor of which his
ancestors had been very proud, having been kicked for twenty
generations by one imperial foot, as they drew the boot from the other.
I have heard that the old Lord Castlewood, of part of whose family
these present volumes are a chronicle, though he came of quite as good
blood as the Stuarts whom he served (and who as regards mere lineage
are no better than a dozen English and Scottish houses I could name),
was prouder of his post about the Court than of his ancestral honors,
and valued his dignity (as Lord of the Butteries and Groom of the
King's Posset) so highly, that he cheerfully ruined himself for the
thankless and thriftless race who bestowed it. He pawned his plate for
King Charles the First, mortgaged his property for the same cause, and
lost the greater part of it by fines and sequestration: stood a siege of his
castle by Ireton, where his brother Thomas capitulated (afterward
making terms with the Commonwealth, for which the elder brother
never forgave him), and where his second brother Edward, who had
embraced the ecclesiastical profession, was slain on Castlewood Tower,
being engaged there both as preacher and artilleryman. This resolute
old loyalist, who was with the King whilst his house was thus being
battered down, escaped abroad with his only son, then a boy, to return
and take a part in Worcester fight. On that fatal field Eustace Esmond
was killed, and Castlewood fled from it once more into exile, and
henceforward, and after the Restoration, never was away from the
Court of the monarch (for whose return we offer thanks in the
Prayer-Book) who sold his country and who took bribes of the French
king.
What spectacle is more august than that of a great king in exile? Who is
more worthy of respect than a brave man in misfortune? Mr. Addison

has painted such a figure in his noble piece of Cato. But suppose
fugitive Cato fuddling himself at a tavern with a wench on each knee, a
dozen faithful and tipsy companions of defeat, and a landlord calling
out for his bill; and the dignity of misfortune is straightway lost. The
Historical Muse turns away shamefaced from the vulgar scene, and
closes the door--on which the exile's unpaid drink is scored up--upon
him and his pots and his pipes, and the tavern-chorus which he and his
friends are singing. Such a man as Charles should have had an Ostade
or Mieris to paint him. Your Knellers and Le Bruns only deal in clumsy
and impossible allegories: and it hath always seemed to me blasphemy
to claim Olympus for such a wine-drabbled divinity as that.
About the King's follower, the Viscount Castlewood--orphan of his son,
ruined by his fidelity, bearing many wounds and marks of bravery, old
and in exile--his kinsmen I suppose should be silent; nor if this
patriarch fell down in his cups, call fie upon him, and fetch passers-by
to laugh at his red face and white hairs. What! does a stream rush out of
a mountain free and pure, to roll through fair pastures, to feed and
throw out bright tributaries, and to end in a village gutter? Lives that
have noble commencements have often no better endings; it is not
without a kind of awe and reverence that an observer should speculate
upon such careers as he traces the course of them. I have seen too much
of success in life to