Peculiar People by Augustus Hare

Author:Augustus Hare
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 1995-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

X. ENGLISH PLEASURES AND ROMAN TRIALS

LE PUY

I WENT TO NORTH WALES to pay a visit to our cousinhood at Bodryddan, which had been the home of my grandmother’s only brother, the Dean of St Asaph. As an ecclesiastical dignitary, Dean Shipley would certainly be called to account in our days. He was devoted to hunting and shooting, and used to go up for weeks together to a little public-house in the hills above Bodryddan, where he gave himself up entirely to the society of his horses and dogs. He had led a very fast life before he took orders, and he had a natural daughter by a Mrs Hamilton, who became the second wife of our grandfather; but after his ordination there was no further stain upon his character.

As a father he was exceedingly severe. He never permitted his daughters to sit down in his presence, and he never allowed two of them to be in the room with him at once, because he could not endure the additional talking caused by their speaking to one another. His daughter Anna Maria had become engaged to Captain Dashwood, a very handsome young officer, but before the time came at which he was to claim her hand, he was completely paralysed, crippled, and almost imbecile. Then she flung herself upon her knees, imploring her father with tears not to insist upon her marriage with him; but the Dean sternly refused to relent, saying she had given her word, and must keep to it.

She nursed Captain Dashwood indefatigably till he died, and then she came back to Bodryddan and lived there with her aunt Mrs Yonge, finding it dreadfully dull, for she was a brilliant talker and adored society. At last she went abroad with her aunt Louisa Shipley, and at Corfu she met Sir Thomas Maitland, who gave her magnificent diamonds and asked her to marry him. But she insisted on coming home to ask her father’s consent, at which the Dean was quite furious. “Why could you not marry him at once?”—and indeed, before she could get back to her lover, he died!

After the death of Mrs Yonge, Mrs Dashwood lived at Cheltenham, a rich and clever widow, and had many proposals. To the disgust of her family, she insisted upon accepting Captain Jones, who had been a neighbour at Bodryddan, and was celebrated for his fearfully violent temper. The day before the wedding it was nearly all off, because, when he came to look at her luggage, he insisted on her having only one box, and stamped all her things down into it, spoiling all her new dresses. He made her go with him for a wedding tour all over Scotland in a pony-carriage, without a maid, and she hated it; but in a year he died.

Then she insisted on marrying the Rev G. Chetwode, who had had one wife before and had two afterwards—an old beau, who used to comb his hair with a leaden comb to efface the grey.

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