Headlong Hall written by Thomas Love Peacock
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Thomas Love Peacock >> Headlong Hall
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7 HEADLONG HALL
by
Thomas Love Peacock
Contents
Preface
I. The Mail
II. The Squire--The Breakfast
III. The Arrivals
IV. The Grounds
V. The Dinner
VI. The Evening
VII. The Walk
VIII. The Tower
IX. The Sexton
X. The Skull
XI. The Anniversary
XII. The Lecture
XIII. The Ball
XIV. The Proposals
XV. The Conclusion
All philosophers, who find
Some favourite system to their mind,
In every point to make it fit,
Will force all nature to submit.
P R E F A C E
to
"Headlong Hall" and the three novels
published along with it in 1837.
--------
All these little publications appeared originally without prefaces. I
left them to speak for themselves; and I thought I might very fitly
preserve my own impersonality, having never intruded on the
personality of others, nor taken any liberties but with public conduct
and public opinions. But an old friend assures me, that to publish a
book without a preface is like entering a drawing-room without making
a bow. In deference to this opinion, though I am not quite clear of
its soundness, I make my prefatory bow at this eleventh hour.
"Headlong Hall" was written in 1815; "Nightmare Abbey" in 1817; "Maid
Marian", with the exception of the last three chapters, in 1818;
"Crotchet Castle" in 1830. I am desirous to note the intervals,
because, at each of those periods, things were true, in great matters
and in small, which are true no longer. "Headlong Hall" begins with
the Holyhead Mail, and "Crotchet Castle" ends with a rotten borough.
The Holyhead mail no longer keeps the same hours, nor stops at the
Capel Cerig Inn, which the progress of improvement has thrown out of
the road; and the rotten boroughs of 1830 have ceased to exist, though
there are some very pretty pocket properties, which are their worthy
successors. But the classes of tastes, feelings, and opinions, which
were successively brought into play in these little tales, remain
substantially the same. Perfectibilians, deteriorationists,
statu-quo-ites, phrenologists, transcendentalists, political
economists, theorists in all sciences, projectors in all arts, morbid
visionaries, romantic enthusiasts, lovers of music, lovers of the
picturesque, and lovers of good dinners, march, and will march for
ever, _pari passu_ with the march of mechanics, which some facetiously
call the march of the intellect. The fastidious in old wine are a race
that does not decay. Literary violators of the confidences of private
life still gain a disreputable livelihood and an unenviable notoriety.
Match-makers from interest, and the disappointed in love and in
friendship, are varieties of which specimens are extant. The great
principle of the Right of Might is as flourishing now as in the days
of Maid Marian: the array of false pretensions, moral, political, and
literary, is as imposing as ever: the rulers of the world still feel
things in their effects, and never foresee them in their causes: and
political mountebanks continue, and will continue, to puff nostrums
and practise legerdemain under the eyes of the multitude: following,
like the "learned friend" of Crotchet Castle, a course as tortuous as
that of a river, but in a reverse process; beginning by being dark and
deep, and ending by being transparent.
The Author of "Headlong Hall".
_March_ 4, 1837.
H E A D L O N G H A L L
---*---
CHAPTER I
The Mail
The ambiguous light of a December morning, peeping through the windows
of the Holyhead mail, dispelled the soft visions of the four insides,
who had slept, or seemed to sleep, through the first seventy miles of
the road, with as much comfort as may be supposed consistent with the
jolting of the vehicle, and an occasional admonition to _remember the
coachman_, thundered through the open door, accompanied by the gentle
breath of Boreas, into the ears of the drowsy traveller.
A lively remark, that _the day was none of the finest_, having
elicited a repartee of _quite the contrary_, the various knotty points
of meteorology, which usually form the exordium of an English
conversation, were successively discussed and exhausted; and, the ice
being thus broken, the colloquy rambled to other topics, in the course
of which it appeared, to the surprise of every one, that all four,
though perfect strangers to each other, were actually bound to the
same point, namely, Headlong Hall, the seat of the ancient and
honourable family of the Headlongs, of the vale of Llanberris, in
Caernarvonshire. This name may appear at first sight not to be truly
Cambrian, like those of the Rices, and Prices, and Morgans, and Owens,
and Williamses, and Evanses, and Parrys, and Joneses; but,
nevertheless, the Headlongs claim to be not less genuine derivatives
from the antique branch of Cadwallader than any of the last named
multiramified families. They claim, indeed, by one account, superior
antiquity to all of them, and even to Cadwallader himself, a tradition
having been handed down in Headlong Hall for some few thousand years,
that the founder of the family was preserved in the deluge on the
summit of Snowdon, and took the name of Rhaiader, which signifies a
_waterfall_, in consequence of his having accompanied the water in its
descent or diminution, till he found himself comfortably seated on the
rocks of Llanberris. But, in later days, when commercial bagmen began
to scour the country, the ambiguity of the sound induced his
descendants to drop the suspicious denomination of _Riders_, and
translate the word into English; when, not being well pleased with the
sound of the _thing_, they substituted that of the _quality_, and
accordingly adopted the name _Headlong_, the appropriate epithet of
waterfall.
I cannot tell how the truth may be:
I say the tale as 'twas said to me.
The present representative of this ancient and dignified house, Harry
Headlong, Esquire, was, like all other Welsh squires, fond of
shooting, hunting, racing, drinking, and other such innocent
amusements, _meizonos d' allou tinos_, as Menander expresses it. But,
unlike other Welsh squires, he had actually suffered certain
phenomena, called books, to find their way into his house; and, by
dint of lounging over them after dinner, on those occasions when he
was compelled to take his bottle alone, he became seized with a
violent passion to be thought a philosopher and a man of taste; and
accordingly set off on an expedition to Oxford, to inquire for other
varieties of the same genera, namely, men of taste and philosophers;
but, being assured by a learned professor that there were no such
things in the University, he proceeded to London, where, after beating
up in several booksellers' shops, theatres, exhibition-rooms, and
other resorts of literature and taste, he formed as extensive an
acquaintance with philosophers and dilettanti as his utmost ambition
could desire: and it now became his chief wish to have them all
together in Headlong Hall, arguing, over his old Port and Burgundy,
the various knotty points which had puzzled his pericranium. He had,
therefore, sent them invitations in due form to pass their Christmas
at Headlong Hall; which invitations the extensive fame of his kitchen
fire had induced the greater part of them to accept; and four of the
chosen guests had, from different parts of the metropolis, ensconced
themselves in the four corners of the Holyhead mail.
These four persons were, Mr Foster[1.1], the perfectibilian; Mr
Escot[1.2], the deteriorationist; Mr Jenkison[1.3], the statu-quo-ite;
and the Reverend Doctor Gaster[1.4], who, though of course neither a
philosopher nor a man of taste, had so won on the Squire's fancy, by a
learned dissertation on the art of stuffing a turkey, that he
concluded no Christmas party would be complete without him.
The conversation among these illuminati soon became animated; and Mr
Foster, who, we must observe, was a thin gentleman, about thirty years
of age, with an aquiline nose, black eyes, white teeth, and black
hair--took occasion to panegyrize the vehicle in which they were then
travelling, and observed what remarkable improvements had been made in
the means of facilitating intercourse between distant parts of the
kingdom: he held forth with great energy on the subject of roads and
railways, canals and tunnels, manufactures and machinery: "In short,"
said he, "every thing we look on attests the progress of mankind in
all the arts of life, and demonstrates their gradual advancement
towards a state of unlimited perfection."
Mr Escot, who was somewhat younger than Mr Foster, but rather more
pale and saturnine in his aspect, here took up the thread of the
discourse, observing, that the proposition just advanced seemed to him
perfectly contrary to the true state of the case: "for," said he,
"these improvements, as you call them, appear to me only so many links
in the great chain of corruption, which will soon fetter the whole
human race in irreparable slavery and incurable wretchedness: your
improvements proceed in a simple ratio, while the factitious wants and
unnatural appetites they engender proceed in a compound one; and thus
one generation acquires fifty wants, and fifty means of supplying them
are invented, which each in its turn engenders two new ones; so that
the next generation has a hundred, the next two hundred, the next four
hundred, till every human being becomes such a helpless compound of
perverted inclinations, that he is altogether at the mercy of external
circumstances, loses all independence and singleness of character, and
degenerates so rapidly from the primitive dignity of his sylvan
origin, that it is scarcely possible to indulge in any other
expectation, than that the whole species must at length be
exterminated by its own infinite imbecility and vileness."
"Your opinions," said Mr Jenkison, a round-faced little gentleman of
about forty-five, "seem to differ _toto coelo_. I have often debated
the matter in my own mind, _pro_ and _con_, and have at length arrived
at this conclusion,--that there is not in the human race a tendency
either to moral perfectibility or deterioration; but that the
quantities of each are so exactly balanced by their reciprocal
results, that the species, with respect to the sum of good and evil,
knowledge and ignorance, happiness and misery, remains exactly and
perpetually _in statu quo_."
"Surely," said Mr Foster, "you cannot maintain such a proposition in
the face of evidence so luminous. Look at the progress of all the arts
and sciences,--see chemistry, botany, astronomy----"
"Surely," said Mr Escot, "experience deposes against you. Look at the
rapid growth of corruption, luxury, selfishness----"
"Really, gentlemen," said the Reverend Doctor Gaster, after clearing
the husk in his throat with two or three hems, "this is a very
sceptical, and, I must say, atheistical conversation, and I should
have thought, out of respect to my cloth----"
Here the coach stopped, and the coachman, opening the door,
vociferated--"Breakfast, gentlemen;" a sound which so gladdened the
ears of the divine, that the alacrity with which he sprang from the
vehicle superinduced a distortion of his ankle, and he was obliged to
limp into the inn between Mr Escot and Mr Jenkison; the former
observing, that he ought to look for nothing but evil, and, therefore,
should not be surprised at this little accident; the latter remarking,
that the comfort of a good breakfast, and the pain of a sprained
ankle, pretty exactly balanced each other.
CHAPTER II
The Squire--The Breakfast
Squire Headlong, in the meanwhile, was quadripartite in his locality;
that is to say, he was superintending the operations in four scenes of
action--namely, the cellar, the library, the picture-gallery, and the
dining-room,--preparing for the reception of his philosophical and
dilettanti visitors. His myrmidon on this occasion was a little
red-nosed butler, whom nature seemed to have cast in the genuine mould
of an antique Silenus, and who waddled about the house after his
master, wiping his forehead and panting for breath, while the latter
bounced from room to room like a cracker, and was indefatigable in his
requisitions for the proximity of his vinous Achates, whose advice and
co-operation he deemed no less necessary in the library than in the
cellar. Multitudes of packages had arrived, by land and water, from
London, and Liverpool, and Chester, and Manchester, and Birmingham,
and various parts of the mountains: books, wine, cheese, globes,
mathematical instruments, turkeys, telescopes, hams, tongues,
microscopes, quadrants, sextants, fiddles, flutes, tea, sugar,
electrical machines, figs, spices, air-pumps, soda-water, chemical
apparatus, eggs, French-horns, drawing books, palettes, oils and
colours, bottled ale and porter, scenery for a private theatre,
pickles and fish-sauce, patent lamps and chandeliers, barrels of
oysters, sofas, chairs, tables, carpets, beds, looking-glasses,
pictures, fruits and confections, nuts, oranges, lemons, packages of
salt salmon, and jars of Portugal grapes. These, arriving with
infinite rapidity, and in inexhaustible succession, had been deposited
at random, as the convenience of the moment dictated,--sofas in the
cellar, chandeliers in the kitchen, hampers of ale in the
drawing-room, and fiddles and fish-sauce in the library. The servants,
unpacking all these in furious haste, and flying with them from place
to place, according to the tumultuous directions of Squire Headlong
and the little fat butler who fumed at his heels, chafed, and crossed,
and clashed, and tumbled over one another up stairs and down. All was
bustle, uproar, and confusion; yet nothing seemed to advance: while
the rage and impetuosity of the Squire continued fermenting to the
highest degree of exasperation, which he signified, from time to time,
by converting some newly unpacked article, such as a book, a bottle, a
ham, or a fiddle, into a missile against the head of some unfortunate
servant who did not seem to move in a ratio of velocity corresponding
to the intensity of his master's desires.
In this state of eager preparation we shall leave the happy
inhabitants of Headlong Hall, and return to the three philosophers and
the unfortunate divine, whom we left limping with a sprained ankle,
into the breakfast-room of the inn; where his two supporters deposited
him safely in a large arm-chair, with his wounded leg comfortably
stretched out on another. The morning being extremely cold, he
contrived to be seated as near the fire as was consistent with his
other object of having a perfect command of the table and its
apparatus; which consisted not only of the ordinary comforts of tea
and toast, but of a delicious supply of new-laid eggs, and a
magnificent round of beef; against which Mr Escot immediately pointed
all the artillery of his eloquence, declaring the use of animal food,
conjointly with that of fire, to be one of the principal causes of the
present degeneracy of mankind. "The natural and original man," said
he, "lived in the woods: the roots and fruits of the earth supplied
his simple nutriment: he had few desires, and no diseases. But, when
he began to sacrifice victims on the altar of superstition, to pursue
the goat and the deer, and, by the pernicious invention of fire, to
pervert their flesh into food, luxury, disease, and premature death,
were let loose upon the world. Such is clearly the correct
interpretation of the fable of Prometheus, which is the symbolical
portraiture of that disastrous epoch, when man first applied fire to
culinary purposes, and thereby surrendered his liver to the vulture of
disease. From that period the stature of mankind has been in a state
of gradual diminution, and I have not the least doubt that it will
continue to grow _small by degrees, and lamentably less_, till the
whole race will vanish imperceptibly from the face of the earth."
"I cannot agree," said Mr Foster, "in the consequences being so very
disastrous. I admit, that in some respects the use of animal food
retards, though it cannot materially inhibit, the perfectibility of
the species. But the use of fire was indispensably necessary, as
AEschylus and Virgil expressly assert, to give being to the various
arts of life, which, in their rapid and interminable progress, will
finally conduct every individual of the race to the philosophic
pinnacle of pure and perfect felicity."
"In the controversy concerning animal and vegetable food," said Mr
Jenkison, "there is much to be said on both sides; and, the question
being in equipoise, I content myself with a mixed diet, and make a
point of eating whatever is placed before me, provided it be good in
its kind."
In this opinion his two brother philosophers practically coincided,
though they both ran down the theory as highly detrimental to the best
interests of man.
"I am really astonished," said the Reverend Doctor Gaster, gracefully
picking off the supernal fragments of an egg he had just cracked, and
clearing away a space at the top for the reception of a small piece of
butter--"I am really astonished, gentlemen, at the very heterodox
opinions I have heard you deliver: since nothing can be more obvious
than that all animals were created solely and exclusively for the use
of man."
"Even the tiger that devours him?" said Mr Escot.
"Certainly," said Doctor Gaster.
"How do you prove it?" said Mr Escot.
"It requires no proof," said Doctor Gaster: "it is a point of
doctrine. It is written, therefore it is so."
"Nothing can be more logical," said Mr Jenkison. "It has been said,"
continued he, "that the ox was expressly made to be eaten by man: it
may be said, by a parity of reasoning, that man was expressly made to
be eaten by the tiger: but as wild oxen exist where there are no men,
and men where there are no tigers, it would seem that in these
instances they do not properly answer the ends of their creation."
"It is a mystery," said Doctor Gaster.
"Not to launch into the question of final causes," said Mr Escot,
helping himself at the same time to a slice of beef, "concerning which
I will candidly acknowledge I am as profoundly ignorant as the most
dogmatical theologian possibly can be, I just wish to observe, that
the pure and peaceful manners which Homer ascribes to the Lotophagi,
and which at this day characterise many nations (the Hindoos, for
example, who subsist exclusively on the fruits of the earth), depose
very strongly in favour of a vegetable regimen."
"It may be said, on the contrary," said Mr Foster, "that animal food
acts on the mind as manure does on flowers, forcing them into a degree
of expansion they would not otherwise have attained. If we can imagine
a philosophical auricula falling into a train of theoretical
meditation on its original and natural nutriment, till it should work
itself up into a profound abomination of bullock's blood,
sugar-baker's scum, and other _unnatural_ ingredients of that rich
composition of soil which had brought it to perfection[2.1], and
insist on being planted in common earth, it would have all the
advantage of natural theory on its side that the most strenuous
advocate of the vegetable system could desire; but it would soon
discover the practical error of its retrograde experiment by its
lamentable inferiority in strength and beauty to all the auriculas
around it. I am afraid, in some instances at least, this analogy holds
true with respect to mind. No one will make a comparison, in point of
mental power, between the Hindoos and the ancient Greeks."
"The anatomy of the human stomach," said Mr Escot, "and the formation
of the teeth, clearly place man in the class of frugivorous animals."
"Many anatomists," said Mr Foster, "are of a different opinion, and
agree in discerning the characteristics of the carnivorous classes."
"I am no anatomist," said Mr Jenkison, "and cannot decide where
doctors disagree; in the meantime, I conclude that man is omnivorous,
and on that conclusion I act."
"Your conclusion is truly orthodox," said the Reverend Doctor Gaster:
"indeed, the loaves and fishes are typical of a mixed diet; and the
practice of the Church in all ages shows----"
"That it never loses sight of the loaves and fishes," said Mr Escot.
"It never loses sight of any point of sound doctrine," said the
reverend doctor.
The coachman now informed them their time was elapsed; nor could all
the pathetic remonstrances of the reverend divine, who declared he had
not half breakfasted, succeed in gaining one minute from the
inexorable Jehu.
"You will allow," said Mr Foster, as soon as they were again in
motion, "that the wild man of the woods could not transport himself
over two hundred miles of forest, with as much facility as one of
these vehicles transports you and me through the heart of this
cultivated country."
"I am certain," said Mr Escot, "that a wild man can travel an immense
distance without fatigue; but what is the advantage of locomotion? The
wild man is happy in one spot, and there he remains: the civilised man
is wretched in every place he happens to be in, and then congratulates
himself on being accommodated with a machine, that will whirl him to
another, where he will be just as miserable as ever."
We shall now leave the mail-coach to find its way to Capel Cerig, the
nearest point of the Holyhead road to the dwelling of Squire Headlong.
CHAPTER III
The Arrivals
In the midst of that scene of confusion thrice confounded, in which we
left the inhabitants of Headlong Hall, arrived the lovely Caprioletta
Headlong, the Squire's sister (whom he had sent for, from the
residence of her maiden aunt at Caernarvon, to do the honours of his
house), beaming like light on chaos, to arrange disorder and harmonise
discord. The tempestuous spirit of her brother became instantaneously
as smooth as the surface of the lake of Llanberris; and the little fat
butler "plessed Cot, and St Tafit, and the peautiful tamsel," for
being permitted to move about the house in his natural pace. In less
than twenty-four hours after her arrival, everything was disposed in
its proper station, and the Squire began to be all impatience for the
appearance of his promised guests.
The first visitor with whom he had the felicity of shaking hands was
Marmaduke Milestone, Esquire, who arrived with a portfolio under his
arm. Mr Milestone[3.1] was a picturesque landscape gardener of the
first celebrity, who was not without hopes of persuading Squire
Headlong to put his romantic pleasure-grounds under a process of
improvement, promising himself a signal triumph for his incomparable
art in the difficult and, therefore, glorious achievement of polishing
and trimming the rocks of Llanberris.
Next arrived a post-chaise from the inn at Capel Cerig, containing the
Reverend Doctor Gaster. It appeared, that, when the mail-coach
deposited its valuable cargo, early on the second morning, at the inn
at Capel Cerig, there was only one post-chaise to be had; it was
therefore determined that the reverend Doctor and the luggage should
proceed in the chaise, and that the three philosophers should walk.
When the reverend gentleman first seated himself in the chaise, the
windows were down all round; but he allowed it to drive off under the
idea that he could easily pull them up. This task, however, he had
considerable difficulty in accomplishing, and when he had succeeded,
it availed him little; for the frames and glasses had long since
discontinued their ancient familiarity. He had, however, no
alternative but to proceed, and to comfort himself, as he went, with
some choice quotations from the book of Job. The road led along the
edges of tremendous chasms, with torrents dashing in the bottom; so
that, if his teeth had not chattered with cold, they would have done
so with fear. The Squire shook him heartily by the hand, and
congratulated him on his safe arrival at Headlong Hall. The Doctor
returned the squeeze, and assured him that the congratulation was by
no means misapplied.
Next came the three philosophers, highly delighted with their walk,
and full of rapturous exclamations on the sublime beauties of the
scenery.
The Doctor shrugged up his shoulders, and confessed he preferred the
scenery of Putney and Kew, where a man could go comfortably to sleep
in his chaise, without being in momentary terror of being hurled
headlong down a precipice.
Mr Milestone observed, that there were great capabilities in the
scenery, but it wanted shaving and polishing. If he could but have it
under his care for a single twelvemonth, he assured them no one would
be able to know it again.
Mr Jenkison thought the scenery was just what it ought to be, and
required no alteration.
Mr Foster thought it could be improved, but doubted if that effect
would be produced by the system of Mr Milestone.
Mr Escot did not think that any human being could improve it, but had
no doubt of its having changed very considerably for the worse, since
the days when the now barren rocks were covered with the immense
forest of Snowdon, which must have contained a very fine race of wild
men, not less than ten feet high.
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