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CHAPTER I |
Nightmare Abbey, a venerable family-mansion, in a highly picturesque |
state of semi-dilapidation, pleasantly situated on a strip of dry land |
between the sea and the fens, at the verge of the county of Lincoln, |
had the honour to be the seat of Christopher Glowry, Esquire. This |
gentleman was naturally of an atrabilarious temperament, and much |
troubled with those phantoms of indigestion which are commonly called |
_blue devils_. He had been deceived in an early friendship: he had |
been crossed in love; and had offered his hand, from pique, to a lady, |
who accepted it from interest, and who, in so doing, violently tore |
asunder the bonds of a tried and youthful attachment. Her vanity was |
gratified by being the mistress of a very extensive, if not very |
lively, establishment; but all the springs of her sympathies were |
frozen. Riches she possessed, but that which enriches them, the |
participation of affection, was wanting. All that they could purchase |
for her became indifferent to her, because that which they could not |
purchase, and which was more valuable than themselves, she had, for |
their sake, thrown away. She discovered, when it was too late, that |
she had mistaken the means for the end--that riches, rightly used, are |
instruments of happiness, but are not in themselves happiness. In this |
wilful blight of her affections, she found them valueless as means: |
they had been the end to which she had immolated all her affections, |
and were now the only end that remained to her. She did not confess |
this to herself as a principle of action, but it operated through the |
medium of unconscious self-deception, and terminated in inveterate |
avarice. She laid on external things the blame of her mind's internal |
disorder, and thus became by degrees an accomplished scold. She often |
went her daily rounds through a series of deserted apartments, every |
creature in the house vanishing at the creak of her shoe, much more |
at the sound of her voice, to which the nature of things affords no |
simile; for, as far as the voice of woman, when attuned by gentleness |
and love, transcends all other sounds in harmony, so far does |
it surpass all others in discord, when stretched into unnatural |
shrillness by anger and impatience. |
Mr Glowry used to say that his house was no better than a spacious |
kennel, for every one in it led the life of a dog. Disappointed both |
in love and in friendship, and looking upon human learning as vanity, |
he had come to a conclusion that there was but one good thing in the |
world, _videlicet_, a good dinner; and this his parsimonious lady |
seldom suffered him to enjoy: but, one morning, like Sir Leoline in |
Christabel, 'he woke and found his lady dead,' and remained a very |
consolate widower, with one small child. |
This only son and heir Mr Glowry had christened Scythrop, from the |
name of a maternal ancestor, who had hanged himself one rainy day in a |
fit of _toedium vitae_, and had been eulogised by a coroner's jury in |
the comprehensive phrase of _felo de se_; on which account, Mr Glowry |
held his memory in high honour, and made a punchbowl of his skull. |
When Scythrop grew up, he was sent, as usual, to a public school, |
where a little learning was painfully beaten into him, and from thence |
to the university, where it was carefully taken out of him; and he was |
sent home like a well-threshed ear of corn, with nothing in his head: |
having finished his education to the high satisfaction of the |
master and fellows of his college, who had, in testimony of their |
approbation, presented him with a silver fish-slice, on which his name |
figured at the head of a laudatory inscription in some semi-barbarous |
dialect of Anglo-Saxonised Latin. |
His fellow-students, however, who drove tandem and random in great |
perfection, and were connoisseurs in good inns, had taught him to |
drink deep ere he departed. He had passed much of his time with these |
choice spirits, and had seen the rays of the midnight lamp tremble |
on many a lengthening file of empty bottles. He passed his vacations |
sometimes at Nightmare Abbey, sometimes in London, at the house of |
his uncle, Mr Hilary, a very cheerful and elastic gentleman, who had |
married the sister of the melancholy Mr Glowry. The company that |
frequented his house was the gayest of the gay. Scythrop danced with |
the ladies and drank with the gentlemen, and was pronounced by both a |
very accomplished charming fellow, and an honour to the university. |
At the house of Mr Hilary, Scythrop first saw the beautiful Miss Emily |
Girouette. He fell in love; which is nothing new. He was favourably |
received; which is nothing strange. Mr Glowry and Mr Girouette had |
a meeting on the occasion, and quarrelled about the terms of the |
bargain; which is neither new nor strange. The lovers were torn |
asunder, weeping and vowing everlasting constancy; and, in three weeks |
after this tragical event, the lady was led a smiling bride to the |
altar, by the Honourable Mr Lackwit; which is neither strange nor new. |
Scythrop received this intelligence at Nightmare Abbey, and was half |
distracted on the occasion. It was his first disappointment, and |
preyed deeply on his sensitive spirit. His father, to comfort him, |
read him a Commentary on Ecclesiastes, which he had himself composed, |
and which demonstrated incontrovertibly that all is vanity. He |
insisted particularly on the text, 'One man among a thousand have I |
found, but a woman amongst all those have I not found.' |
'How could he expect it,' said Scythrop, 'when the whole thousand were |
locked up in his seraglio? His experience is no precedent for a free |
state of society like that in which we live.' |
'Locked up or at large,' said Mr Glowry, 'the result is the same: |