Paul Gosslett's Confessions in Love, Law, and The Civil Service

CONFESSION THE LAST

AS TO LAW

I do not exactly know why I sit down to make this my last confession. I can scarcely be a guide to any one. I even doubt if I can be a warning, for when a man is as miserably unlucky as I have proved myself, the natural inference is to regard him as the exception to the ordinary lot of mortals, – a craft fated to founder ere it was launched. It’s all very well to deny the existence of such a thing as luck. It sounds splendidly wise in the Latin moralist to say, “Non numen habes fortuna si sit prudentia,” which is the old story of putting the salt on the bird’s tail over again, since, I say, we can always assume the “prudentia” where there is the “fortuna,” and in the same way declare that the unlucky man failed because he was deficient in that same gift of foresight.

Few men knew life so thoroughly in every condition, and under every aspect, as the first Napoleon, and he invariably asked, when inquiring into the fitness of a man for a great command, “Is he lucky?” To my own thinking, it would be as truthful to declare that there was no element of luck in whist, as to say there was no such thing as luck in life. Now, all the “prudentia” in the world will not give a man four by honors; and though a good player may make a better fight with a bad hand than an indifferent performer, there is that amount of badness occasionally dealt out that no skill can compensate; and do what he may, he must lose the game.

Now, I am by no means about to set up as a model of prudence, industry, or perseverance; as little can I lay claim to anything like natural ability or cleverness. I am essentially common-place, – one of those men taken “ex medio acervo” of humanity, whose best boast is that they form the staple of the race, and are the majority in all nations.

There is a very pleasant passage in Lockhart’s Life of Scott. I cannot lay my hand on it, and may spoil it in the attempt to quote, but the purport is, that one day when Lockhart had used the word “vulgar” in criticising the manners of some people they had been discussing, Sir Walter rebuked him for the mistaken sense he had ascribed to the expression. Vulgar, said he, is only common, and common means general; and what is the general habit and usage of mankind has its base and foundation in a feeling and sentiment that we must not lightly censure. It is, at all events, human.

I wish I could give the text of the passage, for I see how lamentably I have rendered it, but this was the meaning it conveyed to me, and I own I have very often thought over it with comfort and with gratitude.

If the great thinkers – the men of lofty intellects and high-soaring faculties – were but to know how, in vindicating the claims of every-day people to respect and regard, in shielding them from the sneers of smart men and the quips of witty men, they were doing a great and noble work, for which millions of people like myself would bless them, I am certain we should find many more such kindly utterances as that of the great Sir Walter.

I ask pardon for my digression, so selfish as it is, and return to my narrative.

After that famous “fiasco” I made in Ireland, I – as the cant phrase has it – got dark for some time. My temper, which at first sustained me under any amount of banter and ridicule, had begun to give way, and I avoided my relations, who certainly never took any peculiar pains to treat me with delicacy, or had the slightest hesitation in making me a butt for very coarse jokes and very contemptible drollery.

I tried a number of things, – that is, I begun them. I begun to read for the law; I begun a novel; I begun to attend divinity lectures; I got a clerkship in a public office, as supernumerary; I was employed as traveller to a house in the wooden-clock trade; I was secretary to an Association for the Protection of Domestic Cats, and wrote the prospectus for the “Cats’ Home:” but it’s no use entering into details. I failed in all; and to such an extent of notoriety had my ill-fortune now attained, that the very mention of my name in connection with a new project would have sentenced it at once to ruin.

Over and over again have I heard my “friends,” when whispering together over some new scheme, mutter, “Of course Paul is to have nothing to do with it,” “Take care that Paul Gosslett is n’t in it,” and such-like intimations, that gave me the sensation of being a sort of moral leper, whose mere presence was a calamity. The sense of being deemed universally an unlucky fellow is one of the most depressing things imaginable, – to feel that your presence is accounted an evil agency, – and that your co-operation foreshadows failure, – goes a considerable way towards accomplishing the prediction announced.

Though my uncle’s stereotyped recommendation to become a coal-heaver was not exactly to my taste, I had serious thoughts of buying a sack, and by a little private practice discovering whether the profession might not in the end become endurable. I was fairly at my wits’-end for a livelihood; and the depression and misery my presence occasioned wherever I went reacted on myself, and almost drove me to desperation.

I was actually so afraid of an evil temptation that I gave up my little lodging that I was so fond of, near Putney, and went to live at Hampstead, where there was no water deep enough to drown a rat. I also forewent shaving, that I might banish my razors, and in all respects set myself steadily to meet the accidents of life with as near an approach to jollity as I could muster.

The simple pleasures of nature – the enjoyment of the fields and the wild flowers; the calm contemplation of the rising or setting sun; the varied forms of insect life; the many-tinted lichens; the ferns; the mosses that clothe the banks of shady alleys; the limpid pools, starred and broken by the dragon-fly, so full of their own especial charm for the weary voluptuary sick of pampered pleasures and exotic luxuries – do not appeal to the senses of the poor man with that wonderful force of contrast which gives them all their excellence. I have seen an alderman express himself in ecstasies over a roast potato, which certainly would not have called forth the same show of appreciation from an Irish peasant. We like what awakens a new sensation in us, what withdraws us even in imagination from the routine of our daily lives. There is a great self-esteem gratified when we say how simple we can be, how happy in humility, how easily satisfied, and how little dependent on mere luxury or wealth.

The postman who passed my window every morning had long ceased to be an object of interest or anxiety to me; for others he brought tidings, good or ill as it might be, but to me, forgotten and ignored of the world, no news ever came; when one day, to my intense surprise, at first to my perfect incredulity, I saw him draw forth a letter, and make a sign to me to come down and take it. Yes, there it was, “Paul Gosslett, Esq., The Flaggers, Putney,” with “Try Sandpit Cottages, Hampstead,” in another hand, in the corner. It was from my aunt, and ran thus: —

“The Briars, Rochester.

“Dear Paul, – I am rejoiced to say there is a good chance of a situation for you with handsome pay and most agreeable duty. You are to come down here at once, and see your uncle, but on no account let it be known that I have mentioned to you the prospect of employment.

“Your affectionate aunt,

“Jane Morse.”

I took the morning train, and arrived at Rochester by nine o’clock, remembering, not without pain, my last experiences of my uncle’s hospitality. I breakfasted at the inn, and only arrived at the house when he had finished his morning meal, and was smoking his pipe in the garden.

“What wind blows you down here, lad?” cried he. “Where are you bound for now?”

“You forget, my dear,” said my aunt, “you told me, the other evening, you would be glad to see Paul.”

“Humph!” said he, with a grunt. “I ‘ve been a-think-ing over it since, and I suspect it would n’t do. He ‘d be making a mess of it, the way he does of everything; that blessed luck of his never leaves him, eh?”

Seeing that this was meant as an interrogation, I replied faintly: “You ‘re quite right, uncle. If I am to depend on my good fortune, it will be a bad look-out for me.”

“Not that I value what is called luck a rush,” cried he, with energy. “I have had luck, but I had energy, industry, thrift, and perseverance. If I had waited for luck, I ‘d have lived pretty much like yourself, and I don’t know anything to be very proud of in that, eh?”

“I am certainly not proud of my position, sir.”

“I don’t understand what you mean by your position; but I know I ‘d have been a coal-heaver rather than live on my relations. I ‘d have sold sulphur matches, I ‘d have been a porter!”

“Well, sir, I suppose I may come to something of that kind yet; a little more of the courteous language I am now listening to will make the step less difficult.”

“Eh? – What! I don’t comprehend. Do you mean anything offensive?”

“No, dear, he does not,” broke in my aunt; “he only says he ‘d do anything rather than be a burden to his family, and I ‘m sure he would; he seems very sorry about all the trouble he has cost them.”

My uncle smoked on for several minutes without a word; at last he came to the end of his pipe, and, having emptied the ashes, and gazed ruefully at the bowl, he said: “There ‘s no more in the fellow than in that pipe! Not a bit. I say,” cried he, aloud, and turning to me, “you’ve had to my own knowledge as good as a dozen chances, and you’ve never succeeded in one of them.”

“It’s all true,” said I, sorrowfully.

“Owing to luck, of course,” said he, scornfully; “luck makes a man lazy, keeps him in bed when he ought to be up and at work; luck makes him idle, and gets him plucked for his examinations. I tell you this, sir: I ‘d rather a man would give me a fillip on the nose than talk to me about luck. If there’s a word in the language I detest and hate, it is luck.”

“I’m not in love with it myself, sir,” said I, trying to smile.

“Did you ever hear of luck mending a man’s shoes or paying his washerwoman? Did luck ever buy a beefsteak, eh?”

“That might admit of discussion.”

“Then let me have no discussion. I like work, and I dislike wrangling. Listen to me, and mend now, sir. I want an honest, sober, fixed determination, – no caprice, no passing fancy. Do you believe you are capable of turning over a new leaf, and sitting down steadily to the business of life, like a patient, industrious, respectable man who desires to earn his own bread, and not live on the earnings of others?”

“I hope so.” “Don’t tell me of hope, sir. Say you will, or you will not”

“I will,” said I, resolutely.

“You will work hard, rise early, live frugally, give up dreaming about this, that, or the other chance, and set to like a fellow that wants to do his own work with his own hands?”

“I promise it all.”

My uncle was neither an agreeable nor a very clear exponent of his views, and I shall save my reader and myself some time and unpleasantness if I reduce the statement he made to me to a few words. A company had been formed to start an hydropathic establishment on a small river, a tributary of the Rhine, – the Lahn. They had acquired, at a very cheap rate of purchase, an old feudal castle and its surrounding grounds, and had converted the building into a most complete and commodious residence, and the part which bordered the river into a beautiful pleasure-ground. The tinted drawings which represented various views of the castle and the terraced gardens, were something little short of fairyland in captivation. Nor was the pictorial effect lessened by the fact that figures on horseback and on foot, disporting in boats or driving in carriages, gave a life and movement to the scene, and imparted to it the animation and enjoyment of actual existence. The place of director was vacant, and I was to be appointed to it. My salary was to be three hundred a year, but my table, my horses, my servants, – in fact, all my household, were to be maintained for me on a liberal scale; and my duties were to be pretty much what I pleased to make them. My small smattering of two or three languages – exalted by my uncle into the reputation of a polyglot – had recommended me to the “Direction;” and as my chief function was to entertain a certain number of people twice or thrice a week at dinner, and suggest amusements to fill up their time, it was believed that my faculties were up to the level of such small requirements.

From the doctor down to the humblest menial all were to be under my sway; and as the establishment numbered above a hundred officials, the command was extensive, if not very dignified. I will own, frankly, I was out of myself with joy at the prospect; nor could all the lowering suggestions of my uncle, and the vulgar cautions he instilled, prevent my feeling delighted with my good fortune. I need not say what resolves I made; what oaths I registered in my own heart to be a good and faithful steward, and while enjoying to the full the happiness of my fortunate existence, to neglect no item of the interests confided to me.

All that I had imagined or dreamed of the place itself was as nothing to the reality; nor shall I ever forget the sense of overwhelming delight in which I stood on the crest of the hill that looked down over the wooded glen and winding river, the deep-bosomed woods, the wandering paths of lawn or of moss, the gently flowing stream in which the castle, with its tall towers, was tremblingly reflected, seemed to me like a princely possession, and, for once, I thought that Paul Gosslett had become the favorite child of fortune, and asked myself what had I done to deserve such luck as this?

If habit and daily use deaden the pangs of suffering, and enable us to bear with more of patience the sorrows of adverse fortune, they, on the other hand, serve to dull the generous warmth of that gratitude we first feel for benefits, and render us comparatively indifferent to enjoyments which, when first tasted, seemed the very ecstasy of bliss. I am sorry to make this confession; sorry to admit that after some months at “Lahneck,” I was, although very happy and satisfied, by no means so much struck by the beauty of the place and the loveliness of the scenery as on my first arrival, and listened to the raptures of the newcomers with a sort of compassionate astonishment. Not but I was proud of the pretentious edifice, proud of its lofty towers and battlemented terraces, its immense proportion, and splendid extent. It was, besides, a complete success as an enterprise. We were always full; applications for rooms poured in incessantly, and when persons vacated their quarters, any change of mind made restitution impossible. I believed I liked the despotism I exercised; it was a small, commonplace sort of sovereignty over bath-men and kitchen-folk, it is true; but in the extent of my command I discovered a kind of dignity, and in the implicit obedience and deference I felt something like princely sway.

As the host, too, I received a very flattering amount of homage; foreigners always yield a willing respect to anything in authority, and my own countrymen soon caught up the habit, as though it implied a knowledge of life and the world. I had not the slightest suspicion that my general manners or bearing were becoming affected by these deferences, till I accidentally overheard a Cockney observe to his wife, “I think he’s pompious,” a censure that made me very unhappy, and led me to much self-examination and reflection.

Had I really grown what the worthy citizen called “pom-pious,” – had I become puffed up by prosperity, and over-exalted in self-conceit? If so, it were time to look to this at once.

The directors, generally, were well pleased with me. Very gratifying testimonials of their approval reached me; and it was only my uncle’s opposition prevented my salary being augmented. “Don’t spoil the fellow,” he said; “you’ll have him betting on the Derby, or keeping a yacht at Cowes, if you don’t look out sharp. I ‘d rather cut him down a hundred than advance him fifty.” This fiat from my own flesh and blood decided the matter. I sulked on this. I had grown prosperous enough to feel indignant, and I resolved to afford myself the well-to-do luxury of discontent. I was, therefore, discontented. I professed that to maintain my position – whatever that meant – I was obliged to draw upon my own private resources; and I went so far as to intimate to the visitors that if I had n’t been a man of some fortune the place would be my ruin! Of course my hint got bruited about, and the people commonly said, “If Gosslett goes, the whole concern will break up. They ‘ll not easily find a man of good private fortune, willing to spend his money here, like Gosslett,” and such like, till I vow and declare I began to believe my own fiction, and regard it as an indelible fact. If my letter was not on record, I would not now believe the fact; but the document exists, and I have seen it, where I actually threaten to send my resignation if something – I forget what – is not speedily conceded to my demands; and it was only on receiving an admonition in the mild vein peculiar to my uncle that I awoke to a sense of my peril, and of what became me.

I know that there are critics who, pronouncing upon this part of my career, will opine that the Cockney was right, and that I had really lost my head in my prosperity. I am not disposed to say now that there might not have been some truth in this judgment. Things are generally going on tolerably well with a man’s material interests when he has time to be dyspeptic. Doctors assure us that savage nations, amidst whom the wants of life call for daily, hourly efforts, amidst whom all is exigency, activity, and resource, have no dyspepsia. If, then, I had reasoned on my condition, – which I did not, – I should have seen that the world went too smoothly with me, and that, in consequence, my health suffered. Just as the fish swallow stones to aid the digestion, we need the accidents and frictions of life to triturate our moral pabulum, and render it more easily assimilable to our constitutions. With dyspepsia I grew dull, dispirited, and dissatisfied. I ceased to take pleasure in all that formerly had interested me. I neglected duty, and regarded my occupation with dislike. My house dinners, which once I took an especial pride in, seeking not only that the wines and the cookery should be excellent, but that their success as social gatherings should attract notoriety, I now regarded with apathy. I took no pains about either company or cookery, and, in consequence, contrarieties and bad contrasts now prevailed, where, before, all had been in perfect keeping and true artistic shading. My indolence and indifference extended to those beneath me. Where all had once been order, discipline, and propriety, there now grew up carelessness, disorder, and neglect. The complaints of the visitors were incessant. My mornings were passed in reading. I rarely replied to the representations and demands of outraged guests. At last the public press became the channel of these complaints; and “Publicola,” and “One who had Suffered,” and a number of similarly named patriots declared that the hydropathic establishment at Lahneck was a delusion and a sham; that it was a camp of confusion and mismanagement; and that though a certain P. Gosslett was the nominal director, yet that visitors of three months’ standing averred they had never seen him, and the popular belief was that he was a nervous invalid who accepted a nominal duty in recompense for the benefit of air and climate to himself. “How,” wrote one indignant correspondent of the Times, – “how the company who instituted this enterprise, and started it on a scale of really great proportions, can find it to their advantage to continue this Mr. Gosslett in a post he so inadequately fills, is matter of daily astonishment to those who have repaired to Lahneck for healthful exercise and amusement, and only found there indifferent attendance and universal inattention.”

From the day this appeared I was peppered at every post with letters from the secretary, demanding explanations, reports, returns, what not. The phrase, “The Managing Committee, who are hourly less and less satisfied with Mr. Gosslett’s conduct,” used to pass through all my dreams.

As for my uncle, his remarks were less measured. One of his epistles – I have it still by me – runs thus: “What do you mean? Are you only an idiot, or is there some deeper rascality under all this misconduct? Before I resigned my place at the Board, yesterday, I gave it as my deliberate opinion that a warrant should be issued against you for fraud and malversation, and that I would hail your conviction as the only solace this nefarious concern could afford me. Never dare to address me again. I have forbidden your aunt to utter your name in my presence.”

I don’t know how it was, but I read this with as much unconcern as though it had been an advertisement about the Sydenham trousers or Glenfield starch. There must be a great dignity in a deranged digestion, for it certainly raises one above all the smaller excitements and conditions of passing events; and when, on the same morning that this epistle arrived, the steward came to inform me that of three hundred and twenty-four rooms twelve only were occupied, though this was what would be called the height of the season, I blandly remarked, “Let us not be impatient, Mr. Deechworth, they’ll come yet.” This was in June; by July the twelve diminished to eight. No new arrival came; and as August drew to a close we had three! All September, – and the place was then in full beauty, – the mountains glowing with purple and scarlet heath, the cactus plants on the terrace in blossom, the Virginian acanthus hanging in tangled masses of gorgeous flowers from every tree, the river ever plashing with the leaping trout, – we had not one stranger within our gates. My morning report ran, “Arrivals, none; departures, none; present in house, none;” and when I put “Paul Gosslett” at the bottom of this, I only wonder why I did not take a header into the Lahn!

As we had at this period eighty-four servants in the house, sixteen horses in the stables, and a staff of thirty-two gardeners and boatmen, not to speak of runners, commissionaires, and general loungers, I was not amazed when a telegram came, in these words: “Close the house, place Deechworth in charge, and come over to London.” To this I replied, “Telegram received; compliance most undesirable. Autumn season just opening. Place in full beauty. – P. G.” I will not weary the reader with a mere commercial wrangle, – how the Committee reproached me, and how I rejoined; how they called names, and I hinted at defamation; how they issued an order for my dismissal, and I demurred, and demanded due notice. We abused each other all September, and opened October in full cry of mutual attack and defence. By this time, too, we were at law. They applied for a “mandamus” to get rid of me, and my counsel argued that I was without the four seas of the realm, and could not be attacked. They tried to reach me by the statute of frauds; but there was no treaty with Nassau, and I could not be touched. All this contention and quarrelling was like sulphate of quinine to me, – I grew robust and strong under the excitement, and discovered a lightness of heart and a buoyancy of nature I had believed had long left me forever; and though they stopped my salary and dishonored my drafts, I lived on fruit and vegetables, and put the garrison on the same diet, with a liberal allowance of wine, which more than reconciled them to the system.

So matters went on till the ninth of October, – a memorable day to me, which I am not like to forget. It was near sunset, and I sat on the terrace, enjoying the delicious softness of the evening air, and watching the varying tints on the river, as the golden and green light came slanting through the trees and fell upon the water, when I heard the sound of wheels approaching. There had been a time when such sounds would have awakened no attention, when arrivals poured in incessantly, and the coming or the departing guest evoked nothing beyond the courtesy of a greeting. Now, however, a visitor was an event; and as the post-horses swept round the angle of the wood, and disappeared behind a wing of the castle, I felt a strange sensation through my heart, and a soft voice seemed to say, “Paul, Fate is dealing with you now.” I fell into a revery, however, and soon forgot all about the arrival, till Mr. Deech-worth came up with a card in his hand. “Do you know this name, sir, – Mrs. Pultney Dacre? She has only her maid with her, but seems a person of condition.” I shook my head in ignorance of the name, and he went on: “She wants rooms on the ground floor, where she can walk out into the garden; and I have thought of No. 4.”

“No. 4, Deechworth? that apartment costs sixty francs a day.”

“Well, sir, as there are few people now in the house,” – this was an euphemism for none, – “I have said she might have the rooms for forty.”

“It may be done for one week,” said I, “but take care to caution her not to mention it to her friends. We have trouble enough with those tiresome people in London without this. What is she like?”

“A very handsome figure, sir; evidently young; but had a double veil down, and I could n’t see her face.”

“How long does she talk of staying?”

“A month, sir. A husband is expected back from India early in November, and she is to wait for him here.”

“So,” said I, thoughtfully, and I am sure I cannot say why thoughtfully, “she is waiting for her husband’s arrival.”

“Those young women whose husbands are in India are always pretty; haven’t you remarked that, sir?”

“I can’t say that I have, Deechworth. These are speculations of a kind that do not occur to me. Let her have No. 4;” and with the air of one who dismissed the theme, I waved my hand, and sent him away.

No. 4 – for so the occupant was called, her name being entirely merged in her number – never appeared in the grounds, nor showed in any way. The small garden which belonged to her apartment had a separate enclosure of its own, and within this she walked every evening. How she passed her days I know not. I was told that she sang like an angel, but I never heard her. She was, however, a most persistent bather. There was not a douche in the establishment she did not try, and possibly, by way of pastime, she was constantly experimenting on new modes and fashions of bathing.

When the establishment had been crowded and in full work, I had my time so completely occupied that I had little difficulty in keeping my mind estranged from the gossip and tittle-tattle which beset such places; but now, when the roof sheltered a single guest, it was wonderful how, in spite of all my determination on the subject, I became perversely uneasy to hear about her; to know whether she read or wrote; whether she got letters or answered them; what she thought of the place; whether she was or was not pleased with it; did she praise the camellias? What did she think of the cook? She was evidently “gourmet,” and the little dinners she ordered were remarkable for a taste and piquancy that stimulated my curiosity; for there is something very significant in this phase of the feminine nature; and when I heard she liked her ortolans “au beurre d’anchois,” I confess I wanted much to see her.