The History of Henry Esmond quotes

… never quite opened himself to me—since I knew the value and splendor of that affection which he bestowed upon me, that I have come to understand and pardon what, I own, used to anger me in my mother’s lifetime, her jealousy respecting her husband’s love.

’Twas a gift so precious, that no wonder she who had it was for keeping it all, and could part with none of it, even to her daughter.

Though I never heard my father use a rough word, ’twas extraordinary with how much awe his people regarded him;

Paul’s, and faces the coaches struggling up Ludgate Hill.

She was neither better bred nor wiser than you and me, though we knelt to hand her a letter or a wash-hand basin.

Why shall History go on kneeling to the end of time? I am for having her rise up off her knees, and take a natural posture:

Paul’s, and faces the coaches struggling up Ludgate Hill. She was neither better bred nor wiser than you and me, though we knelt to hand her a letter or a wash-hand basin. Why shall History go on kneeling to the end of time?

I am for having her rise up off her knees, and take a natural posture

: not to be forever performing cringes and congees like a court-chamberlain, and shuffling backwards out of doors in the presence of the sovereign. In a word, I would have History familiar rather than heroic: and think that Mr. Hogarth and Mr.

I am for having her rise up off her knees, and take a natural posture: not to be forever performing cringes and congees like a court-chamberlain, and shuffling backwards out of doors in the presence of the sovereign.

In a word, I would have History familiar rather than heroic

: and think that Mr. Hogarth and Mr. Fielding will give our children a much better idea of the manners of the present age in England, than the Court Gazette and the newspapers which we get thence.

Is it the Lord Mayor going in state to mince-pies and the Mansion House? Is it poor Jack of Newgate’s procession, with the sheriff and javelin-men, conducting him on his last journey to Tyburn?

I look into my heart and think that I sin as good as my Lord Mayor, and know I am as bad as Tyburn Jack.

Give me a chain and red gown and a pudding before me, and I could play the part of Alderman very well, and sentence Jack after dinner.

and my lord burst out into another great laugh at this, and kinsman Henry looked very silly. He invented a half-dozen of speeches in reply, but ’twas months afterwards when he thought of this adventure: as it was, he had never a word in answer.

“Le pauvre enfant, il n’a que nous,”

says the lady, looking to her lord; and the boy, who understood her, though doubtless she thought otherwise, thanked her with all his heart for her kind speech.

and in the great Mogul’s dominions people fling themselves by hundreds under the cars of the idols annually, and the widows burn themselves on their husbands’ bodies, as ’tis well known.

’Tis not the dying for a faith that’s so hard, Master Harry⁠—every man of every nation has done that⁠—’tis the living up to it that is difficult, as I know to my cost,

” he added with a sigh. “And ah!”

What preparation before his return! The fond creature had his armchair at the chimney-side—delighting to put the children in it, and look at them there. Nobody took his place at the table; but his silver tankard stood there as when my lord was present.

A pretty sight it was to see, during my lord’s absence, or on those many mornings when sleep or headache kept him abed, this fair young lady of Castlewood

, her little daughter at her knee, and her domestics gathered round her, reading the Morning Prayer of the English Church.

You have had a different nurture, and I trust these things will change as you grow older; not that any fault attaches to my lord, who is one of the best and most religious men in this kingdom.” And very likely she believed so.

’Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.

And as Esmond has taken truth for his motto, it must be owned, even with regard to that other angel, his mistress, that she had a fault of character which flawed her perfections.

“Will my lord think so when he comes back?” the lady asked with a sigh, and another look at her Venice glass. “Suppose he should think as you do, sir, that I am hideous—yes, you said hideous—he will cease to care for me.

’Tis all men care for in women, our little beauty. Why did he select me from among my sisters?

’Twas only for that. We reign but for a day or two: and be sure that Vashti knew Esther was coming.”

not without shame to remember how bad the verses were, and how good he thought them; how false the grief, and yet how he was rather proud of it. ’Tis an error, surely, to talk of the simplicity of youth.

I think no persons are more hypocritical, and have a more affected behavior to one another, than the young.

They deceive themselves and each other with artifices that do not impose upon men of the world; and so we get to understand truth better, and grow simpler as we grow older.

Indeed, she would have chopped up the Dean, her old father, in order to bring her husband back again.

But her beautiful Jason was gone, as beautiful Jasons will go, and the poor enchantress had never a spell to keep him.

My lord was only sulky as long as his wife’s anxious face or behavior seemed to upbraid him.

… of her griefs and cares, as will happen I think when these trials fall upon a kindly heart, and are not too unbearable, grew up a number of thoughts and excellences which had never come into existence, had not her sorrow and misfortunes engendered them.

Sure, occasion is the father of most that is good in us.

As you have seen the awkward fingers and clumsy tools of a prisoner cut and fashion the most delicate little pieces of carved work; or achieve the most prodigious underground labors, and cut through walls of masonry, and saw iron bars and fetters;

It was this lady’s disposition to think kindnesses, and devise silent bounties and to scheme benevolence, for those about her.

We take such goodness, for the most part, as if it was our due; the Marys who bring ointment for our feet get but little thanks.

Some of us never feel this devotion at all, or are moved by it to gratitude or acknowledgment;

And as he looks back, in calmer days, upon this period of his life, which he thought so unhappy, he can see that his own pride and vanity caused no small part of the mortifications which he attributed to other’s ill will.

The world deals good-naturedly with good-natured people, and I never knew a sulky misanthropist who quarrelled with it, but it was he, and not it, that was in the wrong.

Tom Tusher gave Harry plenty of good advice on this subject, for Tom had both good sense and good humor; but Mr.

’Twas this, no doubt, that accounted for the sadness in Lady Castlewood’s eyes, and the plaintive vibrations of her voice.

Who does not know of eyes, lighted by love once, where the flame shines no more?⁠—of lamps extinguished, once properly trimmed and tended?

Every man has such in his house. Such mementoes make our splendidest chambers look blank and sad; such faces seen in a day cast a gloom upon our sunshine.

The pair were not happy; nor indeed was it happy to be with them. Alas that youthful love and truth should end in bitterness and bankruptcy!

To see a young couple loving each other is no wonder; but to see an old couple loving each other is the best sight of all.

Harry Esmond became the confidant of one and the other—that is, my lord told the lad all his griefs and wrongs (which were indeed of Lord Castlewood’s own making), and Harry divined my lady’s;

My Lady Esmond (for her part) said she could never pardon the King, first, for ousting his father-in-law from his throne, and secondly, for not being constant to his wife, the Princess Mary.

Indeed, I think if Nero were to rise again, and be king of England, and a good family man, the ladies would pardon him.

My lord laughed at his wife’s objections—the standard of virtue did not fit him much.

But my lord flung away with one of his oaths, and a jeer; he said that Parson Harry was a good fellow; but that as for women, all women were alike—all jades and heartless.

So a man dashes a fine vase down, and despises it for being broken. It may be worthless⁠—true: but who had the keeping of it, and who shattered it?

Harry, who would have given his life to make his benefactress and her husband happy, bethought him, now that he saw what my lord’s state of mind was, and that he really had a great deal of that love left in his heart, and ready …

and even in the parliaments in the servants’ hall or the stables, Harry, who had an early observant turn, could see which were my lord’s adherents and which my lady’s, and conjecture pretty shrewdly how their unlucky quarrel was debated.

Our lackeys sit in judgment on us.

My lord’s intrigues may be ever so stealthily conducted, but his valet knows them; and my lady’s woman carries her mistress’s private history to the servants’ scandal market, and exchanges it against the secrets of other abigails.

and, though she had to wait for ten years before her son was old enough to compass it, declared she would have revenge of her husband’s murderer. So much and suddenly had grief, anger, and misfortune appeared to change her.

But fortune, good or ill, as I take it, does not change men and women. It but develops their characters.

As there are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write, so the heart is a secret even to him (or her) who has it in his own breast.

As I have seen men waking and running to arms at a sudden trumpet, before emergency a manly heart leaps up resolute; meets the threatening danger with undaunted countenance; and, whether conquered or conquering, faces it always.

Ah! no man knows his strength or his weakness, till occasion proves them.

If there be some thoughts and actions of his life from the memory of which a man shrinks with shame, sure there are some which he may be proud to own and remember; forgiven injuries, conquered temptations (now and then) and difficulties vanquished by endurance.

He felt as if the ocean separated him from his past care, and welcomed the new era of life which was dawning for him.

Wounds heal rapidly in a heart of two-and-twenty; hopes revive daily; and courage rallies in spite of a man.

Perhaps, as Esmond thought of his late despondency and melancholy, and how irremediable it had seemed to him, as he lay in his prison a few months back, he was almost mortified in his secret mind at finding himself so cheerful.

Perhaps, as Esmond thought of his late despondency and melancholy, and how irremediable it had seemed to him, as he lay in his prison a few months back, he was almost mortified in his secret mind at finding himself so cheerful.

To see with one’s own eyes men and countries, is better than reading all the books of travel in the world:

and it was with extreme delight and exultation that the young man found himself actually on his grand tour, and in the view of people and cities which he had read about as a boy.

Jack and Tom, born of the same family and to the same fortune, live very cordially together, not until Jack is ruined when Tom deserts him, but until Tom makes a sudden rise in prosperity, which Jack can’t forgive.

Ten times to one ’tis the unprosperous man that is angry, not the other who is in fault.

’Tis Mrs. Jack, who can only afford a chair, that sickens at Mrs. Tom’s new coach-and-sick, cries out against her sister’s airs, and sets her husband against his brother.

and to be offered the delightful privilege of her acquaintance, was a pleasure the very idea of which set the young lieutenant’s heart on fire. A man cannot live with comrades under the tents without finding out that he too is five-and-twenty.

A young fellow cannot be cast down by grief and misfortune ever so severe but some night he begins to sleep sound, and some day when dinnertime comes to feel hungry for a beefsteak.

Time, youth and good health, new scenes and the excitement of action and a campaign, had pretty well brought Esmond’s mourning to an end; and his comrades said that Don Dismal, as they called him, was Don Dismal no more.

and by thought, by suffering, and that experience it brings, was older now than she; but more fondly cherished as woman perhaps than ever she had been adored as divinity.

What is it? Where lies it? the secret which makes one little hand the dearest of all?

Whoever can unriddle that mystery? Here she was, her son by his side, his dear boy. Here she was, weeping and happy. She took his hand in both hers; he felt her tears. It was a rapture of reconciliation.

Indeed, with respect to this young one, it was impossible not to love him, so frank and winning were his manners, his beauty, his gayety, the ring of his laughter, and the delightful tone of his voice.

Wherever he went, he charmed and domineered.

I think his old grandfather the Dean, and the grim old housekeeper, Mrs. Pincot, were as much his slaves as his mother was:

his eyes lighted up; he rushed hither and thither, raging; he shrieked curses and encouragement, yelling and harking his bloody war-dogs on, and himself always at the first of the hunt.

Our duke was as calm at the mouth of the cannon as at the door of a drawing-room.

Perhaps he could not have been the great man he was, had he had a heart either for love or hatred, or pity or fear, or regret or remorse.

our troops entering the enemy’s territory, and putting all around them to fire and sword; burning farms, wasted fields, shrieking women, slaughtered sons and fathers, and drunken soldiery, cursing and carousing in the midst of tears, terror, and murder.

Why does the stately Muse of History, that delights in describing the valor of heroes and the grandeur of conquest, leave out these scenes, so brutal, mean, and degrading, that yet form by far the greater part of the drama of war?

You, gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease, and compliment yourselves in the songs of triumph with which our chieftains are bepraised—you pretty maidens, that come tumbling down the stairs when the fife and drum call you, and huzzah for the British Grenadiers—do …

and instead of a satire, which his pen cannot help writing, who knows but that the humble historian might have taken the other side of panegyric?

We have but to change the point of view, and the greatest action looks mean; as we turn the perspective-glass, and a giant appears a pygmy.

You may describe, but who can tell whether your sight is clear or not, or your means of information accurate?

but there was a kindness about him, and a sweet playful fancy, that seemed to Esmond far more charming than the pointed talk of the brightest wits, with their elaborate repartees and affected severities.

I think Steele shone rather than sparkled.

Those famous beaux-esprits of the coffeehouses (Mr.

What is the meaning of fidelity in love, and whence the birth of it? ’Tis a state of mind that men fall into, and depending on the man rather than the woman.

We love being in love, that’s the truth on’t.

If we had not met Joan, we should have met Kate, and adored her. We know our mistresses are no better than many other women, nor no prettier, nor no wiser, nor no wittier.

Beatrix is so wilful, that what I would urge on her, she would be sure to resist. The man who would marry her, will not be happy with her, unless he be a great person, and can put her in a great position.

Beatrix loves admiration more than love; and longs, beyond all things, for command.

Why should a mother speak so of her child? You are my son, too, Harry. You should know the truth about your sister. I thought you might cure yourself of your passion,” my lady added, fondly.

“Why,” says he, “should she hear me? She knows what I would say. Far or near, she knows I’m her slave. I have sold myself for nothing, it may be. Well, ’tis the price I choose to take.

I am worth nothing, or I am worth all.

”

But for my promise to her father, I might have my rank and my mistress too.”

I suppose a man’s vanity is stronger than any other passion in him; for I blush, even now, as I recall the humiliation of those distant days, the memory of which still smarts, though the fever of balked desire has passed away more than a score of years ago.

When the writer’s descendants come to read this memoir, I wonder will they have lived to experience a similar defeat and shame?

His lordship was a widower, having married, in 1698, Elizabeth, daughter of Digby Lord Gerard, by which marriage great estates came into the Hamilton family; and out of these estates came, in part, that tragic quarrel which ended the Duke’s career.

From the loss of a tooth to that of a mistress there’s no pang that is not bearable.

The apprehension is much more cruel than the certainty; and we make up our mind to the misfortune when ’tis irremediable, part with the tormentor, and mumble our crust on t’other side of the jaws.

As you have seen the nymph in the opera-machine go up to the clouds at the end of the piece where

Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, and all the divine company of Olympians are seated, and quaver out her last song as a goddess

: so when this portentous elevation was accomplished in the Esmond family, I am not sure that every one of us did not treat the divine Beatrix with special honors;

The Whigs, on the other hand, who professed attachment to religion and liberty too, were compelled to send to Holland or Hanover for a monarch around whom they could rally.

A strange series of compromises is that English History; compromise of principle, compromise of party, compromise of worship!

The lovers of English freedom and independence submitted their religious consciences to an Act of Parliament; could not consolidate their liberty without sending to Zell or the Hague for a king to live under;

one fellow was jilted by his mistress and took the shilling in despair; another jilted the girl, and fled from her and the parish to the tents where the law could not disturb him. Why go on particularizing?

What can the sons of Adam and Eve expect, but to continue in that course of love and trouble their father and mother set out on?

Oh, my grandson! I am drawing nigh to the end of that period of my history, when I was acquainted with the great world of England and Europe;

just as the wound I had at Blenheim, and of which I wear the scar, hath become part of my frame and influenced my whole body, nay, spirit subsequently, though ’twas got and healed forty years ago.

Parting and forgetting! What faithful heart can do these?

Our great thoughts, our great affections, the Truths of our life, never leave us. Surely, they cannot separate from our consciousness; shall follow it whithersoever that shall go; and are of their nature divine and immortal.

The world was going to its business again, although dukes lay dead and ladies mourned for them; and kings, very likely, lost their chances.

So night and day pass away, and tomorrow comes, and our place knows us not.

Esmond thought of the courier, now galloping on the North road to inform him, who was Earl of Arran yesterday, that he was Duke of Hamilton today, and of a thousand great schemes, hopes, ambitions, that were alive in the gallant heart, beating a few …

Not that we should judge proud spirits otherwise than charitably. ’Tis nature hath fashioned some for ambition and dominion, as it hath formed others for obedience and gentle submission.

The leopard follows his nature as the lamb does, and acts after leopard law; she can neither help her beauty, nor her courage, nor her cruelty; nor a single spot on her shining coat; nor the conquering spirit which impels her; nor the shot which brings her down.

During that well-founded panic the Whigs had, lest the Queen should forsake their Hanoverian Prince, bound by oaths and treaties as she was to him, and recall her brother, who was allied to her by yet stronger ties of nature and duty;

all these were before us, along with a thousand beautiful memories of our youth, beautiful and sad, but as real and vivid in our minds as that fair and always-remembered scene our eyes beheld once more.

We forget nothing. The memory sleeps, but wakens again; I often think how it shall be when, after the last sleep of death, the reveillee shall arouse us forever, and the past in one flash of self-consciousness rush back, like the soul revivified.

The house would not be up for some hours yet, (it was July, and the dawn was only just awake,) and here Esmond opened himself to his mistress, of the business he had in hand, and what part Frank was to play in it.

the eagerness with which they looked forward to its completion; the reverence which they paid the minister who initiated them into that secret Truth, now known only to a few, but presently to reign over the world.

Sure there is no bound to the trustingness of women.

Look at Arria worshipping the drunken clodpate of a husband who beats her; look at Cornelia treasuring as a jewel in her maternal heart the oaf her son; I have known a woman preach Jesuit’s bark, and afterwards Dr.

Being reminded, however, he shouldered the little portmanteau, and carried it up the stair, Esmond preceding him, and a servant with lighted tapers. He flung down his burden sulkily in the bedchamber:—“

A Prince that will wear a crown must wear a mask,

” says Mr. Esmond in French.

you shall drink to the Pretender if you like, and I will drink my liquor my own way: I have had enough of good liquor?—no, never!

There is no such word as enough as a stopper for good wine.

Thou wilt not come? Come any day, come soon.

… time, or any historian be inclined to follow it, ’twill be discovered, I have little doubt, that not one of the great personages about the Queen had a defined scheme of policy, independent of that private and selfish interest which each was bent on pursuing:

St. John was for St. John, and Harley for Oxford, and Marlborough for John Churchill, always

; and according as they could get help from St. Germains or Hanover, they sent over proffers of allegiance to the Princes there, or betrayed one to the other:

Have you been upon your message of coach-caller, my Lord Marquis? Will you send your valet to see that I do not run away?”

We were right, yet, by her manner, she had put us all in the wrong; we were conquerors, yet the honors of the day seemed to be with the poor oppressed girl.

That luckless box containing the stones had first been ornamented with a baron’s coronet, when Beatrix was engaged to the young gentleman from whom she parted, and afterwards the gilt crown of a duchess figured on the cover, which also poor Beatrix was destined never …

her ladyship only cast her eyes down, and said quietly, Beatrix could not be of the supper that night; nor did she show the least sign of confusion, whereas Castlewood turned red, and Esmond was no less embarrassed.

I think women have an instinct of dissimulation; they know by nature how to disguise their emotions far better than the most consummate male courtiers can do.

Is not the better part of the life of many of them spent in hiding their feelings, in cajoling their tyrants, in masking over with fond smiles and artful gayety, their doubt, or their grief, or their terror?