People :
Author : William Godwin
Text :
My affairs being thus far adjusted, I took leave of my late habitation, and set off with my wife and children the same afternoon. In the evening we arrived at Basle, where we were permitted to remain that night; and the next morning were conducted in form out at the north gate of the city, where our attendants quitted us, with a fresh prohibition under the severest penalties, if we were found within the ensuing twelve months in any of the territories of the Helvetic republic.
Marguerite and myself had already formed our plan. We began with dismissing both our servants. An attendant was no longer necessary to me, nor a nurse for the infant. The suggestion of this measure originated in myself. My temper at this time, as I have already said, underwent a striking change. I was resolved to be happy; I was resolved to be active. It was hard to part with persons so long familiar to us, and who appeared rather in the character of humble friends than domestics; but an imperious necessity demanded it. “Let us,” said I to Marguerite, “increase and secure our happiness by diminishing our wants. I will be your husbandman and your laborer; you may depend upon my perseverance. My education has fitted me to endure hardship and fatigue, though the hardships then thought of were of a different nature. You have ever delighted in active usefulness; and will not, I know, repine at this accumulation of employment. Let us accommodate ourselves to our circumstances. Our children, I perceive, are fated to be peasants, and will therefore be eminently benefited by the example of patience and independence we shall set before them.”
The next object of our plan related to the choice of our future place of residence. This originated with Marguerite. She had heard much of the beauty and richness of the country bordering on the lake of Constance, and she thought that, while we denied ourselves expensive pleasures, or rather while they were placed out of our reach, there would be a propriety in our procuring for ourselves a stock of those pleasures which would cost us nothing. This was a refinement beyond me, and serves to evince the superiority which Marguerite’s virtue and force of mind still retained over mine. The virtue I had so recently adopted was a strenuous effort. I rather resolved to be happy, than could strictly be said to be happy. I loved my children indeed with an unfeigned affection. It was with sincerity that I professed to prefer them to all earthly possessions. But vanity and ostentation were habits wrought into my soul, and might be said to form part of its essence. I could not, but by the force of constant recollection, keep them out of my wishes and hopes for the future. I could not, like Marguerite, suffer my thoughts, as it were, to riot and wanton in the pleasures of poverty. I could only reconcile myself to my fate by a sort of gloomy firmness. The tranquility I seemed to have attained, was an unnatural state of my soul, to which it was necessary that I should resolutely hold myself down, and from which my thoughts appeared ever upon the alert to escape. Bitter experience had at length taught me a hard lesson; and that lesson I was determined to practice, whatever pangs my resignation might cost me.
We proceeded without hesitation in the direction we had resolved to pursue. Our whole journey exceeded the space of forty leagues in extent, and the expense necessarily attendant upon it (our family, even after its reduction, consisting of no less than six persons), drained our purse of a great part of the money which had been supplied to us by the benevolent senator. But he had agreed to undertake the disposing of the property we were obliged to leave behind us, and in the mean time, if any considerable interval occurred before that was accomplished, to furnish us with the sums that should be necessary for our subsistence. We placed the utmost reliance upon his fidelity, and dismissed from our minds all anxiety respecting the interval which our banishment had interposed between us and the resources necessary for our future settlement.
Upon our arrival at Constance, we found a letter from our friend; and though he transmitted to us no fresh supply, the complexion of his communication was upon the whole so encouraging, as to determine us, with no other delay than that of four days’ rest from our journey, to pass to the other side of the lake, and explore for ourselves a situation suitable to our design. The western bank of the lake, with the exception only of the city of Constance, was part of the pays conquis of the United Cantons; the eastern bank was a territory dependent on the government of that city. It was in this territory that we purposed fixing our residence; and we trusted, that our affairs would shortly be put in a train to enable us to take possession of the spot we should select.
Thus driven once more into flight by the pressure of misfortune, and compelled to exchange for a land unknown the scenes which familiarity might have endeared, or tender recollections have made interesting, we did not sink under the weight of our adversity. This removal was not like our last. Switzerland was to none of us endeared like the vales of St. Leon. I was not now goaded and tormented by conscious guilt in the degree I had then been; Marguerite was not afflicted by the spectacle of my misery. Our present change, though it might be denominated a fall, was light in comparison with the former. The composure I had gained was new to me, and had to my own mind all the gloss of novelty. To my companions it proved contagious; they were astonished at my serenity, and drew from it an unwonted lightness of heart.
Thus circumstanced, our tour had its charms for us all; and there are few passages of my life that I have felt more agreeably. The lake itself is uncommonly beautiful, and its environs are fertile and interesting. It is surrounded with an abundance of towns, villages, country seats, and monasteries, sufficient to adorn and diversify the view, but not to exclude the sweetness of a rural scenery, or the grand features of nature. We coasted a considerable part of the lake, that we might judge in some degree, previously to our landing, which part of the shore promised best to yield us the object we sought. The autumn was now commencing; the air was liquid and sweet; the foliage was rich and varied; and the vine-covered hills exhibited a warmth and luxuriance of coloring, that no other object of nature or art is able to cope with. Surrounded with these objects, I sat in my boat in the midst of my children; and, as I was but just awakened to an observation of their worth and my own happiness, I viewed them with a transport that would be ill illustrated by being compared with the transport of a miser over his new-recovered treasure from the bowels of the deep.
O poverty! exclaimed I, with elevated and unconquerable emotion, if these are the delights that attend thee, willingly will I resign the pomp of palaces and the splendor of rank to whoever shall deem them worth his acceptance! Henceforth I desire only to dedicate myself to the simplicity of nature and the genuine sentiments of the heart. I will enjoy the beauty of scenes cultivated by other hands than mine, or that are spread out before me by the Author of the universe. I will sit in the midst of my children, and revel in the luxury of domestic affections; pleasures these, that may be encumbered, but cannot be heightened, by all that wealth has in its power to bestow! Wealth serves no other purpose than to deprave the soul, and adulterate the fountains of genuine delight.
Such was the spirit of exultation with which my mind was at this time filled. I am sensible that it was only calculated to be transitory. I might learn to be contented; I was not formed to be satisfied in obscurity and a low estate.
Thus happy, and thus amused, we spent two days in coasting the lake, landing frequently for the purposes either of variety or inquiry, and regularly passing the night on shore. On the evening of the second day we were struck with the neat appearance and pleasing situation of a cottage, which we discovered in our rambles, about a mile and a half from the lake. We found that it was to be sold, and it seemed precisely to correspond with the wishes we had formed. It was at a considerable distance from any populous neighborhood, the nearest town being that of Merspurg, the usual residence of the bishops of Constance, which was distant from this spot not less than three leagues.
The cottage was situated in a valley; the hills being for the most part crowned with rich and verdant foliage, their sides covered with vineyards and corn, and a clear transparent rivulet murmuring along from east to west. In the distance a few similar cottages discovered themselves, and in front there was an opening between the hills, just wide enough to show us a few sails as they floated along the now even surface of the lake. We approached the cottage, and found in it only one person, an interesting girl of nineteen, who had resided there from her birth, and had been employed for the last four years in attendance upon the closing scene of her mother. Her mother had been dead only a few weeks, and she was upon the point of removing, as she told us, to the house of a brother, the best creature in the world, who was already married, and had a family of children. While we were talking with her, we perceived a fine boy of about eleven years of age skipping along the meadow. He proved to be her nephew, and hastened to say that his father and Mr. Henry were just behind, and would be with her in a few minutes. We waited their arrival; and it was easy to see that Mr. Henry was by no means an indifferent object in the eyes of the beautiful orphan: she had probably conditioned that he should permit her to remain single as long as she could be of any use to her mother. The lovers were well satisfied that the girl’s brother should be taken aside, that I might talk over with him the affair of the cottage. We made a tour of the fields that were part of the property of the deceased, and the terms of our intended purchase were easily adjusted.
Though we had now accomplished the immediate purpose of our expedition, yet, as we had found unusual exhilaration and sweetness in the objects it presented to us, we came to a resolution of continuing it still further, and completing the circuit of the lake. We were aware that it would be vain as yet to expect to receive the money requisite for completing our purchase; and as no pleasure, merely in the way of relaxation, could be more delightful than that we were now enjoying, so was it impossible that we could fill up our time in a more frugal manner than in this little voyage. Our gratification was not less, but more perfect, because it consisted of simple, inartificial, unbought amusements. The scenes around us were refreshing and invigorating; they were calculated, temporarily at least, to inspire gaiety and youth into decrepitude itself. Amid these scenes we forgot our sorrows; they were a kind of stream, in which weariness and dejection plunged their limbs, and came forth untired and alert. They awakened in the mind all its most pleasing associations. Having already, as we believed, chosen the place of our future residence, we busied ourselves in imagining all the accompaniments that would grow out of it. We determined that poverty with health would not fail to be attended with its portion of pleasures. The scenes of nature were all our own; nor could wealth give them a more perfect, or a firmer, appropriation. The affections and charities of habitude and consanguinity we trusted we should feel uninterrupted; unincumbered with the ceremonies and trappings of life, and in that rural plainness which is their genial soil.
After a leisurely and delightful voyage of six days, we returned to Constance. We expected to have found on our return some further intelligence from the beneficent senator, but in this we were disappointed. The imagination however easily suggested to us a variety of circumstances that might have delayed the business he had undertaken; and it was no forced inference to suppose that he deferred writing, because he had nothing important to communicate. At first therefore we suffered little uneasiness from the delay; but as time proceeded, and the silence of our protector continued, the affair began to assume a more serious aspect. The little stock we had brought with us in our exile was in a rapid progress of decay. We had managed it with frugality; though not at first with that anxious solicitude, the necessity of which we now began to apprehend. We had procured for ourselves two small and inconvenient apartments in an obscure alley of the city of Constance. We were in the act of meditating what steps it would be necessary to take in this unfortunate emergency, when intelligence was brought us of the sudden decease of the person upon whose kindness and exertions we depended.
He was succeeded in his estate by his nephew, a man of whom we had heard something during our residence in the neighborhood, and whose habits we understood to be diametrically the reverse of his predecessor’s. In short, he had been represented to us as illiberal, morose, selfish, and litigious; a man who, having suffered in one part of his life the hardships of poverty, scrupled no means, honorable or otherwise, of removing it to the greatest practicable distance. He had already reaped the succession some weeks, when we heard of the event that put him in possession of it; and the letters which I had more than once addressed to our protector had probably fallen into his hands. These circumstances afforded no favorable augury of the treatment we might expect from him. The first thing which seemed proper was to write to him, which I accordingly did. I acquainted him with the nature of the transaction between myself and his uncle, and signified how necessary it was that we should come to a conclusion as speedily as possible. I represented to him pathetically the condition to which I was born, and the opulence in which I had passed many years of my life, together with the contrast afforded by the present reduced and urgent circumstances of my family. I entreated him to exert his generosity and justice in behalf of an unfortunate exile, whom untoward events had deprived of the power of doing justice to himself.
To this letter I received no answer. Uncertain as to the cause of my correspondent’s silence, or even whether my letter had been received, I wrote again. My heart was wrung with this new adversity. I was forbidden, under pain of perpetual imprisonment, to return to the territories of the republic, and I had no friend to solicit in my behalf. In Constance I was utterly a stranger. In Switzerland, my unfortunate habits of life, the depression and solitude in which I had been merged, deprived me of the opportunity of forming connections. The deceased was the only person who had been disposed to interfere for me. It was too probable that the silence of his successor was an indication of the hostility of his views. I saw nothing before me but the prospect of my family perishing with want, deprived of their last resource, exiles and pennyless. Thus destitute and forlorn, what could we do? to what plan could we have recourse? We had not so much as the means of providing ourselves with the implements of the humblest labor. If we had, could I, under my circumstances, resolve upon this? Could I give up the last slender pittance of my children while there was a chance of recovering it; and, by surrendering them to the slavery of perpetual labor, devote them to the lowest degree of ignorance and degradation? No; I still clung to this final hope, and was resolved to undertake any thing, however desperate, rather than part with it. Such were my feelings; and, in the new letter which I now dispatched, I poured out all the anguish of my soul.
A reply to this letter was at length vouchsafed. The heir of my protector informed me, that he knew nothing of the business to which I alluded; that he had come into possession of the lands I described, together with the other property of his late uncle, and regarded himself as holding them by the same tenure; that he found in the accounts of the estate a sum of money advanced to me, which he might with the strictest justice regard as a debt, and pursue me for it accordingly. He should be liberal enough however so far to give credit to my story, and to consider the sum in question as advanced upon a pledge of land: in that case, I might regard myself as sufficiently fortunate in having obtained even that amount at a time when, but for the humanity or weakness of his uncle, my estate would not have sold for a farthing. Meanwhile, the forbearance which he proffered would, he observed, depend upon my conduct, and be retracted if I afforded him cause for resentment. He added, that he despised my menaces and commands, and that, if I took a single step against him, I should find it terminate in my utter ruin.
Nothing could be more profligate than the style of his letter. But its impotence was equal to its wickedness. It was absurd to threaten to inflict ruin on a man whom ruin had already overtaken. Before the letter arrived, I had disbursed the whole sum I brought with me from Switzerland. This entire annihilation of my resources seemed to steal on me unperceived. Finding that all reply to my importunity was either refused, or deferred to an uncertain period, I would willingly at all risks have sought the villain who thus obdurately devoted me and my family to destruction, and have endeavored to obtain justice in person. But it was now too late. Before I felt the case thus desperate, my finances were so far reduced as to make it impracticable for me to leave my wife and children enough to support them in my absence, even if I had determined myself to set out upon this perilous expedition pennyless. I resolved that, if we did perish, we would perish together.
Penury was now advancing upon us with such rapid strides, that the lowest and most scanty resources no longer admitted of neglect. Had a case thus desperate been encountered with timely attention, it is not improbable that some of the various talents I had acquired in the course of my education would have furnished me with a means of subsistence not altogether plebeian or incompetent. But, with the uncertainty of my situation, and totally unaccustomed as I was to regard my person or mind as a machine fitted for productive labor, I had not looked to this question, till the urgency of the case deprived me of every advantage I might otherwise have seized. I was glad therefore to have recourse to menial occupation, and sought employment under the gardener of the episcopal palace, for whose service I was sufficiently qualified by my ten years’ retreat in the Bordelois. That I might better adapt myself to the painful necessity of my situation, I previously exchanged some of my own clothes for garments more suitable to the business I now solicited. It was not till I had arrived within a very few days to the end of my resources; that even this expedient, by a sort of accident, recurred to my mind. Marguerite, though fully aware of the urgency of the case, had, as she afterwards told me, imposed on herself a compulsory silence, fearing for the inflamed and irritated frame of my mind, and aware that the course of events would ultimately lead me to a point with which she dreaded to intermeddle. This was for her a trying moment; my lately recovered insanity obliging her to contemplate in silence our growing distress, and to wait the attack of hunger and want that threatened to destroy us, with an apparent tranquility and cheerfulness.
For me, so entire a revolution had taken place in my sentiments, that I spurned with contempt, so far as related to myself, that pride of rank and romantic gallantry of honor, which had formerly been my idols. I submitted with a sort of gloomy contentment to the situation upon which my destiny drove me. I regarded it as the natural result of my former misconduct; and derived a sentiment of ease and relief from thus expiating, as it were, with the sweat of my brow, the temptations to which I had yielded. Had I been myself only reduced thus low, or had the produce of my labor been sufficient to purchase competence for my wife and the means of instruction for my family, I can safely affirm that I should have found no consequence so direct from my own degradation as the means of silencing the reproaches of conscience and reconciling me to myself. But when I returned in the evening with the earnings of my day’s labor, and found it incompetent to the procuring for those who depended on me the simplest means of subsistence, then indeed my sensations were different. My heart died within me. I did not return after the fatigues of the day, which, to me who had not been accustomed to unremitted labor, and who now began to feel that I was not so young as I had been at the siege of Pavia, were extremely trying,—I did not return, I say, to a night of repose. I became a very woman when I looked forward, and endeavored to picture to myself the future situation of my family. I watered my pillow with my tears. Often, when I imagined that my whole family were asleep, I gave vent to my perturbated and distracted mind in groans: Marguerite would sometimes overhear me; and with the gentlest suggestions of her admirable mind would endeavor to soothe my thoughts to peace. For the present, as I have said, my earnings were incompetent, and we found it necessary to supply the deficiency by the sale of the few garments, not in immediate use, that we still possessed. What then would be the case when these were gone, and when, in addition to this, it would be necessary to purchase not only food to eat, and a roof to shelter, but also clothes to cover us?
From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.
Chronology :
January 05, 2021 : Chapter 9 -- Added.
January 17, 2022 : Chapter 9 -- Updated.
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