The Last Man Read online

  CHAPTER I.

  I AM the native of a sea-surrounded nook, a cloud-enshadowed land, which,when the surface of the globe, with its shoreless ocean and tracklesscontinents, presents itself to my mind, appears only as an inconsiderablespeck in the immense whole; and yet, when balanced in the scale of mentalpower, far outweighed countries of larger extent and more numerouspopulation. So true it is, that man's mind alone was the creator of allthat was good or great to man, and that Nature herself was only his firstminister. England, seated far north in the turbid sea, now visits my dreamsin the semblance of a vast and well-manned ship, which mastered the windsand rode proudly over the waves. In my boyish days she was the universe tome. When I stood on my native hills, and saw plain and mountain stretch outto the utmost limits of my vision, speckled by the dwellings of mycountrymen, and subdued to fertility by their labours, the earth's verycentre was fixed for me in that spot, and the rest of her orb was as afable, to have forgotten which would have cost neither my imagination norunderstanding an effort.

  My fortunes have been, from the beginning, an exemplification of the powerthat mutability may possess over the varied tenor of man's life. Withregard to myself, this came almost by inheritance. My father was one ofthose men on whom nature had bestowed to prodigality the envied gifts ofwit and imagination, and then left his bark of life to be impelled by thesewinds, without adding reason as the rudder, or judgment as the pilot forthe voyage. His extraction was obscure; but circumstances brought him earlyinto public notice, and his small paternal property was soon dissipated inthe splendid scene of fashion and luxury in which he was an actor. Duringthe short years of thoughtless youth, he was adored by the high-bredtriflers of the day, nor least by the youthful sovereign, who escaped fromthe intrigues of party, and the arduous duties of kingly business, to findnever-failing amusement and exhilaration of spirit in his society. Myfather's impulses, never under his own controul, perpetually led him intodifficulties from which his ingenuity alone could extricate him; and theaccumulating pile of debts of honour and of trade, which would have bent toearth any other, was supported by him with a light spirit and tamelesshilarity; while his company was so necessary at the tables and assembliesof the rich, that his derelictions were considered venial, and he himselfreceived with intoxicating flattery.

  This kind of popularity, like every other, is evanescent: and thedifficulties of every kind with which he had to contend, increased in afrightful ratio compared with his small means of extricating himself. Atsuch times the king, in his enthusiasm for him, would come to his relief,and then kindly take his friend to task; my father gave the best promisesfor amendment, but his social disposition, his craving for the usual dietof admiration, and more than all, the fiend of gambling, which fullypossessed him, made his good resolutions transient, his promises vain. Withthe quick sensibility peculiar to his temperament, he perceived his powerin the brilliant circle to be on the wane. The king married; and thehaughty princess of Austria, who became, as queen of England, the head offashion, looked with harsh eyes on his defects, and with contempt on theaffection her royal husband entertained for him. My father felt that hisfall was near; but so far from profiting by this last calm before the stormto save himself, he sought to forget anticipated evil by making stillgreater sacrifices to the deity of pleasure, deceitful and cruel arbiter ofhis destiny.

  The king, who was a man of excellent dispositions, but easily led, had nowbecome a willing disciple of his imperious consort. He was induced to lookwith extreme disapprobation, and at last with distaste, on my father'simprudence and follies. It is true that his presence dissipated theseclouds; his warm-hearted frankness, brilliant sallies, and confidingdemeanour were irresistible: it was only when at a distance, while stillrenewed tales of his errors were poured into his royal friend's ear, thathe lost his influence. The queen's dextrous management was employed toprolong these absences, and gather together accusations. At length the kingwas brought to see in him a source of perpetual disquiet, knowing that heshould pay for the short-lived pleasure of his society by tedious homilies,and more painful narrations of excesses, the truth of which he could notdisprove. The result was, that he would make one more attempt to reclaimhim, and in case of ill success, cast him off for ever.

  Such a scene must have been one of deepest interest and high-wroughtpassion. A powerful king, conspicuous for a goodness which had heretoforemade him meek, and now lofty in his admonitions, with alternate entreatyand reproof, besought his friend to attend to his real interests,resolutely to avoid those fascinations which in fact were fast desertinghim, and to spend his great powers on a worthy field, in which he, hissovereign, would be his prop, his stay, and his pioneer. My father feltthis kindness; for a moment ambitious dreams floated before him; and hethought that it would be well to exchange his present pursuits for noblerduties. With sincerity and fervour he gave the required promise: as apledge of continued favour, he received from his royal master a sum ofmoney to defray pressing debts, and enable him to enter under good auspiceshis new career. That very night, while yet full of gratitude and goodresolves, this whole sum, and its amount doubled, was lost at thegaming-table. In his desire to repair his first losses, my father riskeddouble stakes, and thus incurred a debt of honour he was wholly unable topay. Ashamed to apply again to the king, he turned his back upon London,its false delights and clinging miseries; and, with poverty for his solecompanion, buried himself in solitude among the hills and lakes ofCumberland. His wit, his bon mots, the record of his personal attractions,fascinating manners, and social talents, were long remembered and repeatedfrom mouth to mouth. Ask where now was this favourite of fashion, thiscompanion of the noble, this excelling beam, which gilt with aliensplendour the assemblies of the courtly and the gay--you heard that hewas under a cloud, a lost man; not one thought it belonged to him to repaypleasure by real services, or that his long reign of brilliant wit deserveda pension on retiring. The king lamented his absence; he loved to repeathis sayings, relate the adventures they had had together, and exalt histalents--but here ended his reminiscence.

  Meanwhile my father, forgotten, could not forget. He repined for the lossof what was more necessary to him than air or food--the excitements ofpleasure, the admiration of the noble, the luxurious and polished living ofthe great. A nervous fever was the consequence; during which he was nursedby the daughter of a poor cottager, under whose roof he lodged. She waslovely, gentle, and, above all, kind to him; nor can it affordastonishment, that the late idol of high-bred beauty should, even in afallen state, appear a being of an elevated and wondrous nature to thelowly cottage-girl. The attachment between them led to the ill-fatedmarriage, of which I was the offspring. Notwithstanding the tenderness andsweetness of my mother, her husband still deplored his degraded state.Unaccustomed to industry, he knew not in what way to contribute to thesupport of his increasing family. Sometimes he thought of applying to theking; pride and shame for a while withheld him; and, before his necessitiesbecame so imperious as to compel him to some kind of exertion, he died. Forone brief interval before this catastrophe, he looked forward to thefuture, and contemplated with anguish the desolate situation in which hiswife and children would be left. His last effort was a letter to the king,full of touching eloquence, and of occasional flashes of that brilliantspirit which was an integral part of him. He bequeathed his widow andorphans to the friendship of his royal master, and felt satisfied that, bythis means, their prosperity was better assured in his death than in hislife. This letter was enclosed to the care of a nobleman, who, he did notdoubt, would perform the last and inexpensive office of placing it in theking's own hand.

  He died in debt, and his little property was seized immediately by hiscreditors. My mother, pennyless and burthened with two children, waitedweek after week, and month after month, in sickening expectation of areply, which never came. She had no experience beyond her father's cottage;and the mansion of the lord of the manor was the chiefest type of grandeurshe could conceive. During my father's life, she ha
d been made familiarwith the name of royalty and the courtly circle; but such things, illaccording with her personal experience, appeared, after the loss of him whogave substance and reality to them, vague and fantastical. If, under anycircumstances, she could have acquired sufficient courage to address thenoble persons mentioned by her husband, the ill success of his ownapplication caused her to banish the idea. She saw therefore no escape fromdire penury: perpetual care, joined to sorrow for the loss of the wondrousbeing, whom she continued to contemplate with ardent admiration, hardlabour, and naturally delicate health, at length released her from the sadcontinuity of want and misery.

  The condition of her orphan children was peculiarly desolate. Her ownfather had been an emigrant from another part of the country, and had diedlong since: they had no one relation to take them by the hand; they wereoutcasts, paupers, unfriended beings, to whom the most scanty pittance wasa matter of favour, and who were treated merely as children of peasants,yet poorer than the poorest, who, dying, had left them, a thanklessbequest, to the close-handed charity of the land.

  I, the elder of the two, was five years old when my mother died. Aremembrance of the discourses of my parents, and the communications whichmy mother endeavoured to impress upon me concerning my father's friends, inslight hope that I might one day derive benefit from the knowledge, floatedlike an indistinct dream through my brain. I conceived that I was differentand superior to my protectors and companions, but I knew not how orwherefore. The sense of injury, associated with the name of king and noble,clung to me; but I could draw no conclusions from such feelings, to serveas a guide to action. My first real knowledge of myself was as anunprotected orphan among the valleys and fells of Cumberland. I was in theservice of a farmer; and with crook in hand, my dog at my side, Ishepherded a numerous flock on the near uplands. I cannot say much inpraise of such a life; and its pains far exceeded its pleasures. There wasfreedom in it, a companionship with nature, and a reckless loneliness; butthese, romantic as they were, did not accord with the love of action anddesire of human sympathy, characteristic of youth. Neither the care of myflock, nor the change of seasons, were sufficient to tame my eager spirit;my out-door life and unemployed time were the temptations that led me earlyinto lawless habits. I associated with others friendless like myself; Iformed them into a band, I was their chief and captain. All shepherd-boysalike, while our flocks were spread over the pastures, we schemed andexecuted many a mischievous prank, which drew on us the anger and revengeof the rustics. I was the leader and protector of my comrades, and as Ibecame distinguished among them, their misdeeds were usually visited uponme. But while I endured punishment and pain in their defence with thespirit of an hero, I claimed as my reward their praise and obedience.

  In such a school my disposition became rugged, but firm. The appetite foradmiration and small capacity for self-controul which I inherited from myfather, nursed by adversity, made me daring and reckless. I was rough asthe elements, and unlearned as the animals I tended. I often comparedmyself to them, and finding that my chief superiority consisted in power, Isoon persuaded myself that it was in power only that I was inferior to thechiefest potentates of the earth. Thus untaught in refined philosophy, andpursued by a restless feeling of degradation from my true station insociety, I wandered among the hills of civilized England as uncouth asavage as the wolf-bred founder of old Rome. I owned but one law, it wasthat of the strongest, and my greatest deed of virtue was never to submit.

  Yet let me a little retract from this sentence I have passed on myself. Mymother, when dying, had, in addition to her other half-forgotten andmisapplied lessons, committed, with solemn exhortation, her other child tomy fraternal guardianship; and this one duty I performed to the best of myability, with all the zeal and affection of which my nature was capable. Mysister was three years younger than myself; I had nursed her as an infant,and when the difference of our sexes, by giving us various occupations, ina great measure divided us, yet she continued to be the object of mycareful love. Orphans, in the fullest sense of the term, we were poorestamong the poor, and despised among the unhonoured. If my daring and courageobtained for me a kind of respectful aversion, her youth and sex, sincethey did not excite tenderness, by proving her to be weak, were the causesof numberless mortifications to her; and her own disposition was not soconstituted as to diminish the evil effects of her lowly station.

  She was a singular being, and, like me, inherited much of the peculiardisposition of our father. Her countenance was all expression; her eyeswere not dark, but impenetrably deep; you seemed to discover space afterspace in their intellectual glance, and to feel that the soul which wastheir soul, comprehended an universe of thought in its ken. She was paleand fair, and her golden hair clustered on her temples, contrasting itsrich hue with the living marble beneath. Her coarse peasant-dress, littleconsonant apparently with the refinement of feeling which her faceexpressed, yet in a strange manner accorded with it. She was like one ofGuido's saints, with heaven in her heart and in her look, so that when yousaw her you only thought of that within, and costume and even feature weresecondary to the mind that beamed in her countenance.

  Yet though lovely and full of noble feeling, my poor Perdita (for this wasthe fanciful name my sister had received from her dying parent), was notaltogether saintly in her disposition. Her manners were cold and repulsive.If she had been nurtured by those who had regarded her with affection, shemight have been different; but unloved and neglected, she repaid want ofkindness with distrust and silence. She was submissive to those who heldauthority over her, but a perpetual cloud dwelt on her brow; she looked asif she expected enmity from every one who approached her, and her actionswere instigated by the same feeling. All the time she could command shespent in solitude. She would ramble to the most unfrequented places, andscale dangerous heights, that in those unvisited spots she might wrapherself in loneliness. Often she passed whole hours walking up and down thepaths of the woods; she wove garlands of flowers and ivy, or watched theflickering of the shadows and glancing of the leaves; sometimes she satbeside a stream, and as her thoughts paused, threw flowers or pebbles intothe waters, watching how those swam and these sank; or she would set afloatboats formed of bark of trees or leaves, with a feather for a sail, andintensely watch the navigation of her craft among the rapids and shallowsof the brook. Meanwhile her active fancy wove a thousand combinations; shedreamt "of moving accidents by flood and field"--she lost herselfdelightedly in these self-created wanderings, and returned with unwillingspirit to the dull detail of common life. Poverty was the cloud that veiledher excellencies, and all that was good in her seemed about to perish fromwant of the genial dew of affection. She had not even the same advantage asI in the recollection of her parents; she clung to me, her brother, as heronly friend, but her alliance with me completed the distaste that herprotectors felt for her; and every error was magnified by them into crimes.If she had been bred in that sphere of life to which by inheritance thedelicate framework of her mind and person was adapted, she would have beenthe object almost of adoration, for her virtues were as eminent as herdefects. All the genius that ennobled the blood of her father illustratedhers; a generous tide flowed in her veins; artifice, envy, or meanness,were at the antipodes of her nature; her countenance, when enlightened byamiable feeling, might have belonged to a queen of nations; her eyes werebright; her look fearless.

  Although by our situation and dispositions we were almost equally cut offfrom the usual forms of social intercourse, we formed a strong contrast toeach other. I always required the stimulants of companionship and applause.Perdita was all-sufficient to herself. Notwithstanding my lawless habits,my disposition was sociable, hers recluse. My life was spent among tangiblerealities, hers was a dream. I might be said even to love my enemies, sinceby exciting me they in a sort bestowed happiness upon me; Perdita almostdisliked her friends, for they interfered with her visionary moods. All myfeelings, even of exultation and triumph, were changed to bitterness, ifunparticipated; Perdita, ev
en in joy, fled to loneliness, and could go onfrom day to day, neither expressing her emotions, nor seeking afellow-feeling in another mind. Nay, she could love and dwell withtenderness on the look and voice of her friend, while her demeanourexpressed the coldest reserve. A sensation with her became a sentiment, andshe never spoke until she had mingled her perceptions of outward objectswith others which were the native growth of her own mind. She was like afruitful soil that imbibed the airs and dews of heaven, and gave them forthagain to light in loveliest forms of fruits and flowers; but then she wasoften dark and rugged as that soil, raked up, and new sown with unseenseed.

  She dwelt in a cottage whose trim grass-plat sloped down to the waters ofthe lake of Ulswater; a beech wood stretched up the hill behind, and apurling brook gently falling from the acclivity ran through poplar-shadedbanks into the lake. I lived with a farmer whose house was built higher upamong the hills: a dark crag rose behind it, and, exposed to the north, thesnow lay in its crevices the summer through. Before dawn I led my flock tothe sheep-walks, and guarded them through the day. It was a life of toil;for rain and cold were more frequent than sunshine; but it was my pride tocontemn the elements. My trusty dog watched the sheep as I slipped away tothe rendezvous of my comrades, and thence to the accomplishment of ourschemes. At noon we met again, and we threw away in contempt our peasantfare, as we built our fire-place and kindled the cheering blaze destined tocook the game stolen from the neighbouring preserves. Then came the tale ofhair-breadth escapes, combats with dogs, ambush and flight, as gipsey-likewe encompassed our pot. The search after a stray lamb, or the devices bywhich we elude or endeavoured to elude punishment, filled up the hours ofafternoon; in the evening my flock went to its fold, and I to my sister.

  It was seldom indeed that we escaped, to use an old-fashioned phrase, scotfree. Our dainty fare was often exchanged for blows and imprisonment. Once,when thirteen years of age, I was sent for a month to the county jail. Icame out, my morals unimproved, my hatred to my oppressors encreasedtenfold. Bread and water did not tame my blood, nor solitary confinementinspire me with gentle thoughts. I was angry, impatient, miserable; my onlyhappy hours were those during which I devised schemes of revenge; thesewere perfected in my forced solitude, so that during the whole of thefollowing season, and I was freed early in September, I never failed toprovide excellent and plenteous fare for myself and my comrades. This was aglorious winter. The sharp frost and heavy snows tamed the animals, andkept the country gentlemen by their firesides; we got more game than wecould eat, and my faithful dog grew sleek upon our refuse.

  Thus years passed on; and years only added fresh love of freedom, andcontempt for all that was not as wild and rude as myself. At the age ofsixteen I had shot up in appearance to man's estate; I was tall andathletic; I was practised to feats of strength, and inured to theinclemency of the elements. My skin was embrowned by the sun; my step wasfirm with conscious power. I feared no man, and loved none. In after life Ilooked back with wonder to what I then was; how utterly worthless I shouldhave become if I had pursued my lawless career. My life was like that of ananimal, and my mind was in danger of degenerating into that which informsbrute nature. Until now, my savage habits had done me no radical mischief;my physical powers had grown up and flourished under their influence, andmy mind, undergoing the same discipline, was imbued with all the hardyvirtues. But now my boasted independence was daily instigating me to actsof tyranny, and freedom was becoming licentiousness. I stood on the brinkof manhood; passions, strong as the trees of a forest, had already takenroot within me, and were about to shadow with their noxious overgrowth, mypath of life.

  I panted for enterprises beyond my childish exploits, and formeddistempered dreams of future action. I avoided my ancient comrades, and Isoon lost them. They arrived at the age when they were sent to fulfil theirdestined situations in life; while I, an outcast, with none to lead ordrive me forward, paused. The old began to point at me as an example, theyoung to wonder at me as a being distinct from themselves; I hated them,and began, last and worst degradation, to hate myself. I clung to myferocious habits, yet half despised them; I continued my war againstcivilization, and yet entertained a wish to belong to it.

  I revolved again and again all that I remembered my mother to have told meof my father's former life; I contemplated the few relics I possessedbelonging to him, which spoke of greater refinement than could be foundamong the mountain cottages; but nothing in all this served as a guide tolead me to another and pleasanter way of life. My father had been connectedwith nobles, but all I knew of such connection was subsequent neglect. Thename of the king,--he to whom my dying father had addressed his latestprayers, and who had barbarously slighted them, was associated only withthe ideas of unkindness, injustice, and consequent resentment. I was bornfor something greater than I was--and greater I would become; butgreatness, at least to my distorted perceptions, was no necessary associateof goodness, and my wild thoughts were unchecked by moral considerationswhen they rioted in dreams of distinction. Thus I stood upon a pinnacle, asea of evil rolled at my feet; I was about to precipitate myself into it,and rush like a torrent over all obstructions to the object of my wishes--when a stranger influence came over the current of my fortunes, and changedtheir boisterous course to what was in comparison like the gentlemeanderings of a meadow-encircling streamlet.