Thus began the Christmas, which we kept with such royal state. It has been stated that this was a political meeting. Nothing could be farther from the truth. There was not, during the whole time, one word spoken concerning politics. It is true that my lord treated Tom as a private and especial friend, and showed him a very singular kindness throughout. It is also true that no two gentlemen could be more unlike each other than these two; for, while one was well read and loved books, the other knew little save what he had been taught, and read nothing but Quincy’s ‘Dispensatory,’ and his book on ‘Farriery.’ Also, one loved the society of ladies, and the other did not; one cared nothing for drinking, which to the other was his chief delight; one loved poetry and music, which to the other gave little or no pleasure. One went habited with due regard to his rank, having a valet to dress him; the other was careless of his dress, generally going about, on his shooting and other business, in great boots and a plain plush coat, stained with wine and weather.
‘Friendship,’ said Mr. Hilyard, ‘commonly with young men, goes by opposites. If Jonathan resembled his father, he had nothing of David’s disposition in him; yet were they friends in youth. The great Coligny and his malignant enemy, Guise, were once close friends, each admiring points of unlikeness. Perhaps my lord and Mr. Forster admire also, each in the other, points of unlikeness.’
Although the party consisted both of Catholics and Protestants, there were no discussions on that account; for, in Northumberland, so many families still belong to the old religion that we can meet each other without quarrelling. It must not, therefore, be thrown in Tom’s face that he was a secret friend of Papists. This has been said of him with injustice. In truth there was never a stouter Protestant, though his lawful Sovereign belongs, unhappily, to the opposite faith. Yet so tolerant withal. ‘Each,’ he would say, ‘for his own religion. Live and let live. But not to meddle with the endowments of the Church or to suffer Papists and Nonconformists to enter into the Universities.’
On the evening of Christmas Day there was performed for our pleasure the old play of ‘Alexander and the Egyptian King,’ by village mummers from Hexham and Dilston. The mummers were dressed up with ribbons and finery in rags and tatters; on their heads they wore gilt-paper crowns; they carried swords, and had a fiddler with them who played lustily all the time, whether the speakers were delivering their words or not.
First came the great King Alexander —— he was a blacksmith by trade, and a very big and lusty fellow, who wore a splendid crown of gilt paper and a rusty breastplate; he flourished a sword and marched valiantly, strutting like a game-cock after a fight. Then he pronounced his verses, and brave verses they were, though afterwards he quite forgot that he had promised to produce for us Dives and a Doctor. The Doctor came in due course, but we looked in vain for Dives, and a great moral lesson was lost. Everybody would like to be rich, yet few know the danger of riches or their own weakness in temptation. After him came the King of Egypt and his son Prince George; the King was stricken in years, and somewhat bent by rheumatism and his trade, that of shoemending; but the Prince was a lad whom I knew for as famous a hand with cudgel or quarterstaff as one may hope to see at a country fair. There was no reason why he should wish to fight Alexander, yet it seemed natural that they should, immediately on meeting, hurl words of reproach at each other and fly to arms. A most terrible and bloody fight it was which followed, the combatants thwacking and hacking at each other in such earnest as made one tremble, save for the thought that the swords were but stout ash-twigs painted blue, fitter to raise great weals than make deep cuts. The fiddler, meantime, ran round the pair, shouting while he played; and the King, so far from feeling terror for his son, clapped his hands and applauded, as we all did. It was arranged that Prince George was to be killed, but such was his stubborn nature that he refused to lie down until the great conqueror, a much heavier man than he, had first covered him from top to toe with blows and bruises. When at length he lay down, the Doctor was called in. This learned man, who was the clerk of the parish, impudently asserted his ability to cure all diseases, and, in proof, restored the Prince to life. Then there was another duello between the King and the conqueror: the reason of which I did not understand, save that it enabled the cobbler to show under what unhappy conditions one bent with his trade has to fight. It needs not to say that the cobbler, too, fell beneath great Alexander’s sword. They bore away his body, and all was over.
‘But where is Dives?’ cried my lord. ‘You promised Dives.’
The actors looked at one another, and presently the blacksmith plucked up courage to explain that there never was any Dives in the piece at all, though it was true that he was regularly promised in the prologue or opening verses.
‘Well,’ said my lord, ‘we will excuse the Dives for this once; and thank you, actors all, for a merry tragical piece, in which I know not whether most to admire the skill of Alexander or the courage of the King who dared to meet him. Stand aside, good fellows, and let us go on to the next show.’
Then followed the singers and choristers of Hexham, who were ordered to sing none but true North-country songs, of which we have many, and our people sing them prettily and in tune, sometimes one taking treble, and another a second, and a third tenor or bass, and all with justness, according to time and tune very melodiously, the like of which, I think, will not be found elsewhere, save in cathedrals, such as Durham and other places, where anthems are sung. My lord confessed that he had never heard anything like this rustic singing in France, where the peasants sing on holidays; but not, as our people sing, with gravity and earnestness. First they sang the song of ‘The Knight and the Lady:’
‘There was a lady of the North Countrie (Lay the bent to the bonny broom), And she had lovely daughters three (Lay the bent to the bony broom).’
After that they sang the ‘Battle of Otterbourne;’ then the ‘Fair Flower of Northumberland;’ and then the ballad of ‘Jock o’ the Side;’ and, last, the ‘Jolly Huntsman’s Garland,’ beginning:
‘I walked o’er the mountains, Where shepherds feed their flocks; I spy’d a troop of gallants A hunting of the fox. With clamour and with hollow They made the woods to ring; The hounds they bravely follow, Making a merry din.’
All the gentlemen in the company applauded this song loudly, and with a ‘Whoop!’ and ‘View hollow!’—— no talk of fox-hunting, or song in its praise, is complete without. They knew every verse out of the thirty or forty, and the histories, some of which were entertaining, of the gentlemen in honour of whom the song was written. Nothing is more delightful to one fox-hunter than to talk or hear of another.
There were other songs, and then all were regaled with a present in money and a plentiful supper of what they most love at Christmastide —— namely, a mighty dish of lobscouse, which is a mess of beef, potatoes, and onions, strong of smell and of taste, and therefore grateful to coarse feeders. After the lobscouse they had plum-porridge and shrid-pies, with as much strong ale as they could carry, and more. Yet most of them could carry a great deal: Alexander the Great went away with a barrel or so within him, a mere cask of ale; and the King of Egypt was carried from this field of honour as from the other.
One thing I must relate in my lord’s honour. Among the singers was a plain man (yet he had a sweet, rich voice), who was pointed out to him as a Percy by descent. He was but a stone-cutter, yet a descendant in the direct line from Jocelyn, the fourth Earl; and I know not how his forefathers fell so low. Lord Derwentwater waited until the singing was over, and then stepped forward and offered his hand to this man as to a gentleman, and sent for a bottle of wine which he gave him, with a purse of five guineas, saying that the Percies and the Radeliffes were cousins. The good man was much abashed at first, but presently lifted his head, and carried off his bottle and his purse with resolution and pride. This circumstance, simple as it may seem, greatly raised the character of his lordship; for the common people, many of whom are descendants —— even though bye-blows —— of the gentlefolk, highly regard and are extremely jealous of descent; so that at Hexham it is a great thing to be a Radcliffe, as in Redesdale it is a great thing to be a Hall, and as at Bamborough one would be a Forster if one could, and at Alnwick a Percy. To give a poor man a present because he is of noble descent is a small thing, certainly; yet it was done with so great an ease and kindness that it touched all hearts.
If, on Christmas Day, we amused ourselves after the manner of the people and were happy in their way, we were promised, a few days later, a performance of a quite different and more fashionable kind. It was through Mr. Hilyard, who always knew everything that was going on in the neighbourhood —— how, one knows not, save that he was ever talking with carriers, postboys, and gipsies, and always had a kind word and a crust or a groat for a vagrant, nor cared to inquire if he were honest or not, but helped him, he said, because he was a man, and therefore stamped, like his unworthy self, with the Divine effigies. He reported that there was a company of players at Newcastle, who could doubtless be persuaded, in the manner usually found effective among such people, to journey as far as Dilston Hall. And he sent off without delay a messenger who was to run the whole way, twenty miles, with a letter from himself, to bring them, bag and baggage. It was the same company, though this he told us not (but I remembered their faces), as that among whom we had seen him, for the first time, play Merry Andrew; but the younger actresses were changed, as is, I am told, a very common occurrence, their beauty and their cleverness getting them rapid promotion, and, in some cases, good husbands. Why, Lord Derwentwater’s grandmother was herself but an actress, though she made a King fall in love with her.
These strollers were so poor —— for the profits of each night’s performance are but a few shillings to be divided among all —— that they joyfully acceded to the invitation, and jumped at an offer which was to them nothing short of beef and beer and lodging for a month to come, so generous was my lord.
He had never seen an English play. Nor had I myself, or Tom, or any of the young gentlemen; though I had often heard my father speak of Drury Lane and the little theatre in the Haymarket, the amusements of which he often enjoyed when in London on his Parliament business.
‘I have witnessed the playing,’ said my lord, ‘at the Comédie Fran?aise, where they play very finely the tragedies of the great Racine and Corneille and the comedies of Molière. I have also attended a performance of Madame de Maintenon’s sacred plays with which she amuses His Majesty; and I have seen the Italian troupe, who are full of tricks and merriment, and have a thousand ingenious arts to divert their company. The play is truly a most polite form of entertainment, and would be more delightful if the parterre could be by any means induced to remain quiet, and if the actors could have the stage to themselves, without the three rows of gentlemen who interrupt the performance by loud talking, and encumber the movements of the actors. Mr. Hilyard, I beg that you will allow no seats upon our stage. We will all sit in front.’
At Dilston, as everywhere, Mr. Hilyard was entrusted with the management of our amusements.
‘I appoint you, sir,’ said my lord, ‘if I may, our Master of the Revels; and I require but one thing of you —— that you please Miss Dorothy.’
I was so much pleased that never since have I lost the memory of that fortnight, and dwell upon it with such delight in the recollection as I cannot express in words. Oh! sad it is (if we do not apply the thought to our spiritual advantage) that youth and beauty must fade, that love cannot always follow a smooth and easy course, and that the things we most desire should so often be snatched from our grasp just as we think them within our reach! To meditate upon the fleeting and momentary nature of earthly happiness is now my lot. The thought of the past would be too much for me, were it not for the heavenly blessing and divinely given hope that there is another and a more lasting youth before us. Why, what is it to pass through a few years of old age and solitary decay, when there awaits us another life in which I shall meet again my lord, with that same noble face which I remember so well, and those kindly eyes which, like the eyes in a portrait on the wall, follow me still, though they are long since closed in death! The face and the eyes will be the same, but oh! glorified, and in the living image of God. And as for me, my poor beauty that I loved so well, yet lost without a sigh when my friends were gone, that, too, will be given back to me and more, with such heavenly graces as are vouchsafed to those who believe. There will be no marrying nor giving in marriage; but a pure and innocent love will flow from one soul to another, so that my lord will meet me again with such a look in his sweet eyes as he wore in those old days at Dilston Hall. Therefore weep no more, poor Dorothy; but patience, and tell thy story.
The play which Mr. Hilyard chose for us was Congreve’s ‘Mourning Bride.’ He had read it to me more than once; but although the situation, even to one who reads or listens to the poem, is full of horror, and the unravelling of the plot keeps the mind agreeably on the stretch of expectation, I was not prepared for the emotions caused by the actual representation of the piece before my eyes. Mr. Hilyard arranged for the performance in the great hall, providing a curtain and footlights as in a real theatre, with scenery to help the imagination. Thus the scene in the temple or church was an awful representation of aisles and columns which one was easily persuaded to regard as real, though they were nothing in the world but rolls of canvas or linen daubed with grey paint. And thus (but I ought to have expected something from Mr. Hilyard’s vast importance) a most agreeable surprise awaited us. Not only did our Master of the Revels himself pronounce a prologue, beginning ——
‘Far from the London boards we’ve travelled here, B............