English Pictures Drawn with Pen and Pencil — John Shaqi
English Pictures Drawn with Pen and PencilManning, Samuel
History
English Pictures Drawn with Pen and Pencil
Manning, Samuel
England -- Description and travel
Divided from Waverley by a winding lane, whose high banks and profuse
undergrowth remind us of Devonshire, lies Moor Park. Hither Sir William
Temple retired from the toils of State, to occupy his leisure by
gardening, planting, and in writing memoirs. A trim garden, with
stiff-clipped hedges, and watered by a straight canal which runs through
it, is doubtless a reminiscence of Temple's residence as our ambassador
at the Hague. "But," says Lord Macaulay, "there were other inmates of
Moor Park to whom a higher interest belongs. An eccentric, uncouth,
disagreeable young Irishman, who had narrowly escaped plucking at
Dublin, attended Sir William as an amanuensis for board and twenty
pounds a year; dined at the second table, wrote bad verses in praise of
his employer, and made love to a very pretty dark-eyed young girl,
who waited on Lady Giffard. Little did Temple imagine that the coarse
exterior of his dependant concealed a genius equally suited to politics
and to letters, a genius destined to shake great kingdoms, to stir the
laughter and the rage of millions, and to leave to posterity memorials
which can only perish with the English language. Little did he think
that the flirtation in his servants' hall, which he, perhaps, scarcely
deigned to make the subject of a jest, was the beginning of a long,
unprosperous love, which was to be as widely famed as the passion of
Petrarch or Abelard. Sir William's secretary was Jonathan Swift. Lady
Giffard's waiting-maid was poor Stella."
Just outside the lodge gate, at the end of the park furthest from the
mansion, is a small house covered with roses and evergreens. It is known
to the peasantry as Dame Swift's cottage. Our rustic guide pointed it
out by this name, but who Dame Swift was he did not know. He had never
heard of Stella and her sad history. An object of far greater interest
to him was a large fox-earth, a couple of hundred yards away, in which
some years ago "a miser" had lived and died. A whole crop of legends
have already sprung up about the mysterious inmate of the cave. He was
a nobleman, so said our informant, who had been crossed in love: he
had made a vow that no human being should see his face, and accordingly
never came out till after nightfall, even then being closely wrapped up
in his cloak. After his death a party of ladies and gentlemen came
down from London in a post-chaise and four; and having buried the body
carried away "a cartload of golden guineas and fine dresses, which he
had hid in the cave."
[Illustration: 0059]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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