The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., a Colonel in the Service of Her Majesty Queen AnneThackeray, William Makepeace
History
The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., a Colonel in the Service of Her Majesty Queen Anne
Thackeray, William Makepeace
Great Britain -- History -- Anne, 1702-1714 -- Fiction; Historical fiction
As for the young lord, his university career had ended rather abruptly.
Honest Tusher, his governor, had found my young gentleman quite
ungovernable. My lord worried his life away with tricks; and broke out,
as home-bred lads will, into a hundred youthful extravagances, so that
Dr. Bentley, the new master of Trinity, thought fit to write to the
Viscountess Castlewood, my lord's mother, and beg her to remove the
young nobleman from a college where he declined to learn, and where he
only did harm by his riotous example. Indeed, I believe he nearly set
fire to Nevil's Court, that beautiful new quadrangle of our college,
which Sir Christopher Wren had lately built. He knocked down a
proctor's man that wanted to arrest him in a midnight prank; he gave
a dinner-party on the Prince of Wales's birthday, which was within
a fortnight of his own, and the twenty young gentlemen then present
sallied out after their wine, having toasted King James's health with
open windows, and sung cavalier songs, and shouted “God save the
King!” in the great court, so that the master came out of his lodge at
midnight, and dissipated the riotous assembly.
This was my lord's crowning freak, and the Rev. Thomas Tusher, domestic
chaplain to the Right Honorable the Lord Viscount Castlewood, finding
his prayers and sermons of no earthly avail to his lordship, gave up his
duties of governor; went and married his brewer's widow at Southampton,
and took her and her money to his parsonage house at Castlewood.
My lady could not be angry with her son for drinking King James's
health, being herself a loyal Tory, as all the Castlewood family were,
and acquiesced with a sigh, knowing, perhaps, that her refusal would be
of no avail to the young lord's desire for a military life. She would
have liked him to be in Mr. Esmond's regiment, hoping that Harry might
act as a guardian and adviser to his wayward young kinsman; but my young
lord would hear of nothing but the Guards, and a commission was got for
him in the Duke of Ormond's regiment; so Esmond found my lord, ensign
and lieutenant, when he returned from Germany after the Blenheim
campaign.
The effect produced by both Lady Castlewood's children when they
appeared in public was extraordinary, and the whole town speedily rang
with their fame: such a beautiful couple, it was declared, never had
been seen; the young maid of honor was toasted at every table and
tavern, and as for my young lord, his good looks were even more admired
than his sister's. A hundred songs were written about the pair, and
as the fashion of that day was, my young lord was praised in these
Anacreontics as warmly as Bathyllus. You may be sure that he accepted
very complacently the town's opinion of him, and acquiesced with that
frankness and charming good-humor he always showed in the idea that he
was the prettiest fellow in all London.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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