Chapter Chapter 2 · WAVERLEY-HONOUR—A RETROSPECT

. WAVERLEY-HONOUR—A RETROSPECT

It is, then, sixty years since Edward Waverley, the hero of the

following pages, took leave of his family, to join the regiment of

dragoons in which he had lately obtained a commission. It was a

melancholy day at Waverley-Honour when the young officer parted with

Sir Everard, the affectionate old uncle to whose title and estate he

was presumptive heir.

A difference in political opinions had early separated the Baronet from

his younger brother Richard Waverley, the father of our hero. Sir

Everard had inherited from his sires the whole train of Tory or

High-Church predilections and prejudices which had distinguished the

house of Waverley since the Great Civil War. Richard, on the contrary,

who was ten years younger, beheld himself born to the fortune of a

second brother, and anticipated neither dignity nor entertainment in

sustaining the character of Will Wimble. He saw early that, to succeed

in the race of life, it was necessary he should carry as little weight

as possible. Painters talk of the difficulty of expressing the

existence of compound passions in the same features at the same moment;

it would be no less difficult for the moralist to analyse the mixed

motives which unite to form the impulse of our actions. Richard

Waverley read and satisfied himself from history and sound argument

that, in the words of the old song,

Passive obedience was a jest,

And pshaw! was non-resistance;

yet reason would have probably been unable to combat and remove

hereditary prejudice could Richard have anticipated that his elder

brother, Sir Everard, taking to heart an early disappointment, would

have remained a bachelor at seventy-two. The prospect of succession,

however remote, might in that case have led him to endure dragging

through the greater part of his life as “Master Richard at the Hall,

the Baronet’s brother,” in the hope that ere its conclusion he should

be distinguished as Sir Richard Waverley of Waverley-Honour, successor

to a princely estate, and to extended political connections as head of

the county interest in the shire where it lay.

But this was a consummation of things not to be expected at Richard’s

outset, when Sir Everard was in the prime of life, and certain to be an

acceptable suitor in almost any family, whether wealth or beauty should

be the object of his pursuit, and when, indeed, his speedy marriage was

a report which regularly amused the neighbourhood once a year. His

younger brother saw no practicable road to independence save that of

relying upon his own exertions, and adopting a political creed more

consonant both to reason and his own interest than the hereditary faith

of Sir Everard in High-Church and in the house of Stuart. He therefore

read his recantation at the beginning of his career, and entered life

as an avowed Whig and friend of the Hanover succession.

The ministry of George the First’s time were prudently anxious to

diminish the phalanx of opposition. The Tory nobility, depending for

their reflected lustre upon the sunshine of a court, had for some time

been gradually reconciling themselves to the new dynasty. But the

wealthy country gentlemen of England, a rank which retained, with much

of ancient manners and primitive integrity, a great proportion of

obstinate and unyielding prejudice, stood aloof in haughty and sullen

opposition, and cast many a look of mingled regret and hope to Bois le

Due, Avignon, and Italy.[*] The accession of the near relation of one

of those steady and inflexible opponents was considered as a means of

bringing over more converts, and therefore Richard Waverley met with a

share of ministerial favour more than proportioned to his talents or

his political importance. It was, however, discovered that he had

respectable talents for public business, and the first admittance to

the minister’s levee being negotiated, his success became rapid. Sir

Everard learned from the public News-Letter, first that Richard

Waverley, Esquire, was returned for the ministerial borough of

Barterfaith; next, that Richard Waverley, Esquire, had taken a

distinguished part in the debate upon the Excise Bill in the support of

government; and, lastly, that Richard Waverley, Esquire, had been

honoured with a seat at one of those boards where the pleasure of

serving the country is combined with other important gratifications,

which, to render them the more acceptable, occur regularly once a

quarter.

[* Where the Chevalier St. George, or, as he was termed, the Old

Pretender, held his exiled court, as his situation compelled him to

shift his place of residence.]

Although these events followed each other so closely that the sagacity

of the editor of a modern newspaper would have presaged the two last

even while he announced the first, yet they came upon Sir Everard

gradually, and drop by drop, as it were, distilled through the cool and

procrastinating alembic of “Dyer’s Weekly Letter.”[1] For it may be

observed in passing, that instead of those mail-coaches, by means of

which every mechanic at his six-penny club, may nightly learn from

twenty contradictory channels the yesterday’s news of the capital, a

weekly post brought, in those days, to Waverley-Honour, a Weekly

Intelligencer, which, after it had gratified Sir Everard’s curiosity,

his sister’s, and that of his aged butler, was regularly transferred

from the Hall to the Rectory, from the Rectory to Squire Stubbs’s at

the Grange, from the Squire to the Baronet’s steward at his neat white

house on the heath, from the steward to the bailiff, and from him

through a huge circle of honest dames and gaffers, by whose hard and

horny hands it was generally worn to pieces in about a month after its

arrival.

This slow succession of intelligence was of some advantage to Richard

Waverley in the case before us; for, had the sum total of his

enormities reached the ears of Sir Everard at once, there can be no

doubt that the new commissioner would have had little reason to pique

himself on the success of his politics. The Baronet, although the

mildest of human beings, was not without sensitive points in his

character; his brother’s conduct had wounded these deeply; the Waverley

estate was fettered by no entail (for it had never entered into the

head of any of its former possessors that one of their progeny could be

guilty of the atrocities laid by “Dyer’s Letter” to the door of

Richard), and if it had, the marriage of the proprietor might have been

fatal to a collateral heir. These various ideas floated through the

brain of Sir Everard without, however, producing any determined

conclusion.

He examined the tree of his genealogy, which, emblazoned with many an

emblematic mark of honour and heroic achievement, hung upon the

well-varnished wainscot of his hall. The nearest descendants of Sir

Hildebrand Waverley, failing those of his eldest son Wilfred, of whom

Sir Everard and his brother were the only representatives, were, as

this honoured register informed him (and, indeed, as he himself well

knew), the Waverleys of Highley Park, com. Hants; with whom the main

branch, or rather stock, of the house had renounced all connection

since the great law-suit in 1670.

This degenerate scion had committed a farther offence against the head

and source of their gentility, by the intermarriage of their

representative with Judith, heiress of Oliver Bradshawe, of Highley

Park, whose arms, the same with those of Bradshawe the regicide, they

had quartered with the ancient coat of Waverley. These offences,

however, had vanished from Sir Everard’s recollection in the heat of

his resentment; and had Lawyer Clippurse, for whom his groom was

despatched express, arrived but an hour earlier, he might have had the

benefit of drawing a new settlement of the lordship and manor of

Waverley-Honour, with all its dependencies. But an hour of cool

reflection is a great matter when employed in weighing the comparative

evil of two measures to neither of which we are internally partial.

Lawyer Clippurse found his patron involved in a deep study, which he

was too respectful to disturb, otherwise than by producing his paper

and leathern ink-case, as prepared to minute his honour’s commands.

Even this slight manœuvre was embarrassing to Sir Everard, who felt it

as a reproach to his indecision. He looked at the attorney with some

desire to issue his fiat, when the sun, emerging from behind a cloud,

poured at once its chequered light through the stained window of the

gloomy cabinet in which they were seated. The Baronet’s eye, as he

raised it to the splendour, fell right upon the central scutcheon,

inpressed with the same device which his ancestor was said to have

borne in the field of Hastings,—three ermines passant, argent, in a

field azure, with its appropriate motto, _sans tache_. “May our name

rather perish,” exclaimed Sir Everard, “than that ancient and loyal

symbol should be blended with the dishonoured insignia of a traitorous

Roundhead!”

All this was the effect of the glimpse of a sunbeam, just sufficient to

light Lawyer Clippurse to mend his pen. The pen was mended in vain. The

attorney was dismissed, with directions to hold himself in readiness on

the first summons.

The apparition of Lawyer Clippurse at the Hall occasioned much

speculation in that portion of the world to which Waverley-Honour

formed the centre. But the more judicious politicians of this microcosm

augured yet worse consequences to Richard Waverley from a movement

which shortly followed his apostasy. This was no less than an excursion

of the Baronet in his coach-and-six, with four attendants in rich

liveries, to make a visit of some duration to a noble peer on the

confines of the shire, of untainted descent, steady Tory principles,

and the happy father of six unmarried and accomplished daughters.

Sir Everard’s reception in this family was, as it may be easily

conceived, sufficiently favourable; but of the six young ladies, his

taste unfortunately determined him in favour of Lady Emily, the

youngest, who received his attentions with an embarrassment which

showed at once that she durst not decline them, and that they afforded

her anything but pleasure.

Sir Everard could not but perceive something uncommon in the restrained

emotions which the young lady testified at the advances he hazarded;

but, assured by the prudent Countess that they were the natural effects

of a retired