Bramleighs of Bishop's Folly

Charles James Lever

Description

pubOne.info present you this wonderfully illustrated edition. TO ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE, Esq. M. P. , ETC. , ETC.

Informations

• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 27 septembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9782819925118
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE BRAMLEIGHS OF BISHOP'S FOLLY
By Charles James Lever
With Illustrations By W. Cubitt Cooke, And E.J. Wheeler.
Boston:
Little, Brown, And Company.



TO ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE, Esq. M. P. , ETC. ,ETC.
My Dear Kinglake, — If you should ever turn overthese pages, I have no greater wish than that they might afford youa tithe of the pleasure I have derived from your own writings. ButI will not ask you to read me, but to believe that I am, in allsincerity your devoted admirer, for both your genius and yourcourage, and your attached friend,
CHARLES LEVER. Trieste, August 31, 1868.
List of Illustrations
124
298
372
438
532
THE BRAMLEIGHS OF BISHOP'S FOLLY.
CHAPTER I. THE BISHOP'S FOLLY
Towards the close of the last century there was avery remarkable man, Bishop of Down, in Ireland: a Liberal inpolitics, in an age when Liberalism lay close on the confines ofdisloyalty; splendidly hospitable, at a period when hospitalityverged on utter recklessness; he carried all his opinions toextremes. He had great taste, which had been cultivated by foreigntravel, and having an ample fortune, was able to indulge in manywhims and caprices, by which some were led to doubt of his sanity;but others, who judged him better, ascribed them to theself-indulgence of a man out of harmony with his time, andcomtemptuously indifferent to what the world might say of him.
He had passed many years in Italy, and had formed agreat attachment to that country. He liked the people and theirmode of life; he liked the old cities, so rich in art treasures andso teeming with associations of a picturesque past; and heespecially liked their villa architecture, which seemed soessentially suited to a grand and costly style of living. The greatreception-rooms, spacious and lofty; the ample antechambers, madefor crowds of attendants; and the stairs wide enough for evenequipages to ascend them. No more striking illustration of hiscapricious turn of mind need be given than the fact that it was hispleasure to build one of these magnificent edifices in an Irishcounty! — a costly whim, obliging him to bring over from Italy awhole troop of stucco-men and painters, men skilled in fresco-workand carving, — an extravagance on which he spent thousands. Nor didhe live to witness the completion of his splendid mansion.
After his death the building gradually fell intodecay. His heirs, not improbably, little caring for a project whichhad ingulfed so large a share of their fortune, made no efforts toarrest the destroying influences of time and climate, and “Bishop'sFolly”— for such was the name given to it by the country people—soon became a ruin. In some places the roof had fallen in, thedoors and windows had all been carried away by the peasants, and inmany a cabin or humble shealing in the county around slabs ofcolored marble or fragments of costly carving might be met with,over which the skill of a cunning workman had been bestowed fordays long. The mansion stood on the side of a mountain which slopedgradually to the sea. The demesne, well wooded, but with youngtimber, was beautifully varied in surface, one deep glen running,as it were, from the very base of the house to the beach, andshowing glimpses, through the trees, of a bright and rapid rivertumbling onward to the sea. Seen in its dilapidation and decay, theaspect of the place was dreary and depressing, and led many towonder how the bishop could ever have selected such a spot; for itwas not only placed in the midst of a wild mountain region, butmany miles away from anything that could be called a neighborhood.But the same haughty defiance he gave the world in other thingsurged him here to show that he cared little for the judgments whichmight be passed upon him, or even for the circumstances which wouldhave influenced other men. “When it is my pleasure to receivecompany, I shall have my house full no matter where I live, ” washis haughty speech, and certainly the whole character of his lifewent to confirm his words.
Some question of disputed title, after the bishop'sdeath, threw the estate into Chancery, and so it remained till, bythe operation of the new law touching incumbered property, itbecame marketable, and was purchased by a rich London banker, whohad declared his intention of coming to live upon it.
That any one rich enough to buy such a property,able to restore such a costly house, and maintain a style of livingproportionate to its pretensions, should come to reside in thesolitude and obscurity of an Irish county, seemed all butimpossible; and when the matter became assured by the visit of awell-known architect, and afterwards by the arrival of a troop ofworkmen, the puzzle then became to guess how it chanced that thegreat head of a rich banking firm, the chairman of this, thedirector of that, the promoter of Heaven, knows what scores ofindustrial schemes for fortune, should withdraw from the greatbustle of life to accept an existence of complete oblivion.
In the little village of Portshandon— whichstraggled along the beach, and where, with a few exceptions, nonebut fishermen and their families lived— this question was hotlydebated; an old half-pay lieutenant, who by courtesy was calledCaptain, being at the head of those who first denied thepossibility of the Bramleighs coming at all, and when that matterwas removed beyond a doubt, next taking his stand on the fact thatnothing short of some disaster in fortune, or some aspersion oncharacter, could ever have driven a man out of the great world tofinish his days in the exile of Ireland.
“I suppose you'll give in at last, Captain Craufurd,” said Mrs. Bayley, the postmistress of Portshandon, as she pointedto a pile of letters and newspapers all addressed to “Castello, ”and which more than quadrupled the other correspondence of thelocality.
“I did n't pretend they were not coming, Mrs.Bayley, ” said he, in the cracked and cantankerous tone heinvariably spoke in. “I simply observed that I 'd be thankful forany one telling me why they were coming. That's the puzzle, — whythey 're coming? ”
“I suppose because they like it, and they can affordit, ” said she, with a toss of her head.
“Like it! ” cried he, in derision. “Like it! Lookout of the window there beside you, Mrs. Bayley, and say, is n't ita lovely prospect, that beggarly village, and the old rotten boats,keel uppermost, with the dead fish and the oyster-shells, and thetorn nets, and the dirty children? Is n't it an elegant sight afterHyde Park and the Queen's palace? ”
“I never saw the Queen's palace nor the other placeyou talk of, but I think there's worse towns to live in thanPortshandon. ”
“And do they think they'll make it better by callingit Castello? ” said he, as with a contemptuous gesture he threwfrom him one of the newspapers with this address. “If they want tothink they 're in Italy they ought to come down here in Novemberwith the Channel fogs sweeping up through the mountains, and thewind beating the rain against the windows. I hope they'll thinkthey're in Naples. Why can't they call the place by the name we allknow it by? It was Bishop's Folly when I was a boy, and it will beBishop's Folly after I 'm dead. ”
“I suppose people can call their house whatever theylike? Nobody objects to your calling your place Craufurd's Lea.”
“I'd like to see them object to it, ” cried he,fiercely. “It's Craufurd's Lea in Digge's 'Survey of Down, ' 1714.It's Craufurd's Lea in the 'Anthologia Hibernica, ' and it's down,too, in Joyce's 'Irish Fisheries; ' and we were Craufurds ofCraufurd's Lea before one stone of that big barrack up there waslaid, and maybe we 'll be so after it's a ruin again. ”
“I hope it's not going to be a ruin any more,Captain Craufurd, all the same, ” said the postmistress, tartly,for she was not disposed to undervalue the increased importance theneighborhood was about to derive from the rich family coming tolive in it.
“Well, there's one thing I can tell you, Mrs.Bayley, ” said he, with his usual grin. “The devil a bit of Irelandthey 'd ever come to, if they could live in England. Mind my words,and see if they 'll not come true. It's either the bank is in a badway, or this or that company is going to smash, or it's his wifehas run away, or one of the daughters married the footman; —something or other has happened, you 'll see, or we would neverhave the honor of their distinguished company down here. ”
“It's a bad wind blows nobody good, ” said Mrs.Bayley. “It's luck for us, anyhow. ”
“I don't perceive the luck of it either, ma'am, ”said the Captain, with increased peevishness. “Chickens will beeighteenpence a couple, eggs a halfpenny apiece. I 'd like to knowwhat you'll pay for a codfish, such as I bought yesterday forfourpence? ”
“It's better for them that has to sell them. ”
“Ay, but I'm talking of them that has to buy them,ma'am, and I'm thinking how a born gentleman with a fixed income isto compete with one of these fellows that gets his gold fromCalifornia at market price, and makes more out of one morning'srobbery on the Stock Exchange, than a Lieutenant-General receivesafter thirty years' service. ”
A sharp tap at the window-pane interrupted thediscussion at this critical moment, and Mrs. Bayley perceived itwas Mr. Dorose, Colonel Bramleigh's valet, who had come for theletters for the great house.
“Only these, Mrs. Bayley? ” said he, halfcontemptuously.
“Well, indeed, sir; it's a good-sized bundle afterall. There's eleven letters, and about fifteen papers and twobooks. ”
“Send them all on to Brighton, Mrs. Bayley. We shallnot come down here till the end of the month. Just give me the'Times, ' however; ” and tearing open the cover, he turned to theCity article. “I hope you've nothing in Ecuadors, Mrs. Bayley; theylook shaky. I'm 'hit, ' too, in my Turks. I see no dividend thishalf. ” Here he leaned forward, so as to whisper in her ear, andsaid, “Whenever you want a snug thing, Mrs. B. , you're always safewith