The Buyers, It
May Be Mentioned, Were Always The Breeders For Shows, And They
Made A Splendid Profit Out Of It.
He carried on the fight for a good many years, becoming more
and more involved, until his creditors took possession of the
estate, sold off the stock, let the farms, and succeeded in
finding a tenant for the furnished house.
He went to a
cottage in the village and there passed his remaining years.
To the world he appeared unmoved by his reverses. The change
from mansion and park to a small thatched cottage, with a
labourer's wife for attendant, made no change in the man, nor
did he resign his seat on the Bench of Magistrates or any
other unpaid office he held. To the last he was what he had
always been, formal and ceremonious, more gracious to those
beneath him than to equals; strict in the performance of his
duties, living with extreme frugality and giving freely to
those in want, and very regular in his attendance at church,
where he would sit facing the tombs and memorials of his
ancestors, among the people but not of them - a man alone and
apart, respected by all but loved by none.
Finally he died and was buried with the others, and one more
memorial with the old name, which he bore last was placed on
the wall. That was the story as it was told me, and as it was
all about a man who was without charm and had no love interest
it did not greatly interest me, and I soon dismissed it from
my thoughts. Then one day coming through a grove in the park
and finding myself standing before the ancient, empty,
desolate house - for on the squire's death everything had been
sold and taken away - I remembered that the caretaker had
begged me to let him show me over the place. I had not felt
inclined to gratify him, as I had found him a young man of a
too active mind whose only desire was to capture some person
to talk to and unfold his original ideas and schemes, but now
having come to the house I thought I would suffer him, and
soon found him at work in the vast old walled garden. He
joyfully threw down his spade and let me in and then up to the
top floor, determined that I should see everything. By the
time we got down to the ground floor I was pretty tired of
empty rooms, oak panelled, and passages and oak staircases,
and of talk, and impatient to get away. But no, I had not
seen the housekeeper's room - I must see that! - and so into
another great vacant room I was dragged, and to keep me as
long as possible in that last room he began unlocking and
flinging open all the old oak cupboards and presses. Glancing
round at the long array of empty shelves, I noticed a small
brown-paper parcel, thick with dust, in a corner, and as it
was the only movable thing I had seen in that vacant house I
asked him what the parcel contained. Books, he replied - they
had been left as of no value when the house was cleared of
furniture. As I wished to see the books he undid the parcel;
it contained forty copies of a small quarto-shaped book of
sonnets, with the late squire's name as author on the title
page. I read a sonnet, and told him I should like to read
them all. "You can have a copy, of course," he exclaimed.
"Put it in your pocket and keep it." When I asked him if he
had any right to give one away he laughed and said that if any
one had thought the whole parcel worth twopence it would not
have been left behind. He was quite right; a cracked dinner
- plate or a saucepan with a hole in it or an earthenware
teapot with a broken spout would not have been left, but the
line was drawn at a book of sonnets by the late squire.
Nobody wanted it, and so without more qualms I put it in my
pocket, and have it before me now, opened at page 63, on which
appears, without a headline, the sonnet I first read, and
which I quote: -
How beautiful are birds, of God's sweet air
Free denizens; no ugly earthly spot
Their boundless happiness doth seem to blot.
The swallow, swiftly flying here and there,
Can it be true that dreary household care
Doth goad her to incessant flight?
If not How can it be that she doth cast her lot
Now there, now here, pursuing summer everywhere?
I sadly fear that shallow, tiny brain
Is not exempt from anxious cares and fears,
That mingled heritage of joy and pain
That for some reason everywhere appears;
And yet those birds, how beautiful they are!
Sure beauty is to happiness no bar.
This has a fault that doth offend the reader of modern verse,
and there are many of the eighty sonnets in the book which do
not equal it in merit. He was manifestly an amateur; he
sometimes writes with labour, and he not infrequently ends
with the unpardonable weak line. Nevertheless he had rightly
chosen this difficult form in which to express his inner self.
It suited his grave, concentrated thought, and each little
imperfect poem of fourteen lines gives us a glimpse into a
wise, beneficent mind. He had fought his fight and suffered
defeat, and had then withdrawn himself silently from the field
to die. But if he had been embittered he could have relieved
himself in this little book. There is no trace of such a
feeling. He only asks, in one sonnet, where can a balm be
found for the heart fretted and torn with eternal cares; when
we have thought and striven for some great and good purpose,
when all our striving has ended in disaster?
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