A poor relation—is the most irrelevant thing in nature,—a piece of
impertinent correspondency,—an odious approximation,—a haunting conscience,—a
preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of your prosperity,—an
unwelcome remembrancer,—a perpetually recurring mortification,—a drain on your
purse,—a more intolerable dun upon your pride,—a drawback upon success,—a
rebuke to your rising,—a stain in your blood,—a blot on your scutcheon,—a rent
in your garment,—a death’s head at your banquet,—Agathocles’ pot,—a Mordecai in
your gate,—a Lazarus at your door,—a lion in your path,—a frog in your
chamber,—a fly in your ointment,—a mote in your eye,—a triumph to your enemy,
an apology to your friends,—the one thing not needful,—the hail in harvest,—the
ounce of sour in a pound of sweet. He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth
you “That is Mr. ——.” A rap, between familiarity and respect; that demands,
and, at the same time, seems to despair of, entertainment. He entereth smiling,
and—embarrassed. He holdeth out his hand to you to shake, and—draweth it back
again. He casually looketh in about dinner time—when the table is full.
He offereth to go away, seeing you have company—but is induced to
stay. He filleth a chair, and your visitor’s two children are accommodated at a
side table. He never cometh upon open days, when your wife says with some
complacency, “My dear, perhaps Mr. ——will drop in to−day.” He remembereth
birth−days—and professeth he is fortunate to have stumbled upon one. He
declareth against fish, the turbot being small—yet suffereth himself to be importuned
into a slice against his first resolution. He sticketh by the port—yet will be
prevailed upon to empty the remainder glass of claret, if a stranger press it
upon him. He is a puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being too
obsequious, or not civil enough, to him. The guests think “they have seen him
before.” Every one speculateth upon his condition; and the most part take him
to be—a tide−waiter. He calleth you by your Christian name, to imply that his
other is the same with your own. He is too familiar by half, yet you wish he
had less diffidence. With half the familiarity he might pass for a casual
dependent; with more boldness he would be in no danger of being taken for what
he is. He is too humble for a friend, yet taketh on him more state than befits
a client. He is a worse guest than a country tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth up
no rent—yet ‘tis odds, from his garb and demeanour, that your guests take him
for one. He is asked to make one at the whist table; refuseth on the score of
poverty, and—resents being left out. When the company break up, he proffereth
to go for a coach—and lets the servant go. He recollects your grandfather; and
will thrust in some mean, and quite unimportant anecdote of—the family. He knew
it when it was not quite so flourishing as “he is blest in seeing it now.” He
reviveth past situations, to institute what he calleth—favourable comparisons.
With a reflecting sort of congratulation, he will inquire the price of your
furniture; and insults you with a special commendation of your window−curtains.
He is of opinion that the urn is the more elegant shape, but, after all, there
was something more comfortable about the old tea−kettle—which you must
remember. He dare say you must find a great convenience in having a carriage of
your own, and appealeth to your lady if it is not so. Inquireth if you have had
your arms done on vellum yet; and did not know till lately, that such−and−such
had been the crest of the family. His memory is unseasonable; his compliments
perverse; his talk a trouble; his stay pertinacious; and when he goeth away,
you dismiss his chair into a corner, as precipitately as possible, and feel
fairly rid of two nuisances. There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is—a
female Poor Relation. You may do something with the other; you may pass him off
tolerably well; but your indigent she−relative is hopeless. “He is an old
humourist,” you may say, “and affects to go threadbare. His circumstances are
better than folks would take them to be. You are fond of having a Character at
your table, and truly he is one.” But in the indications of female poverty
there can be no disguise. No woman dresses below herself from caprice. The
truth must out without shuffling. “She is plainly related to the L——s; or what
does she at their house?” She is, in all probability, your wife’s cousin.
Nine times out of ten, at least, this is the case. Her garb is
something between a gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the former evidently
predominates. She is most provokingly humble, and ostentatiously sensible to
her inferiority. He may require to be repressed sometimes— aliquando
sufflaminandus erat—but there is no raising her. You send her soup at dinner,
and she begs to be The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 106
helped—after the gentlemen. Mr. ——requests the honour of taking wine with her;
she hesitates between Port and Madeira, and chooses the former—because he does.
She calls the servant Sir; and insists on not troubling him to hold her plate.
The housekeeper patronizes her. The children’s governess takes upon her to
correct her, when she has mistaken the piano for a harpsichord. Richard Amlet,
Esq., in the play, is a notable instance of the disadvantages, to which this
chimerical notion of affinity constituting a claim to acquaintance, may subject
the spirit of a gentleman. A little foolish blood is all that is betwixt him
and a lady of great estate. His stars are perpetually crossed by the malignant
maternity of an old woman, who persists in calling him “her son Dick.” But she
has wherewithal in the end to recompense his indignities, and float him again
upon the brilliant surface, under which it had been her seeming business and
pleasure all along to sink him. All men, besides, are not of Dick’s
temperament. I knew an Amlet in real life, who, wanting Dick’s buoyancy, sank
indeed. Poor W—— was of my own standing at Christ’s, a fine classic, and a
youth of promise. If he had a blemish, it was too much pride; but its quality
was inoffensive; it was not of that sort which hardens the heart, and serves to
keep inferiors at a distance; it only sought to ward off derogation from
itself. It was the principle of self−respect carried as far as it could go,
without infringing upon that respect, which he would have every one else
equally maintain for himself. He would have you to think alike with him on this
topic. Many a quarrel have I had with him, when we were rather older boys, and
our tallness made us more obnoxious to observation in the blue clothes, because
I would not thread the alleys and blind ways of the town with him to elude
notice, when we have been out together on a holiday in the streets of this
sneering and prying metropolis. W——went, sore with these notions, to Oxford,
where the dignity and sweetness of a scholar’s life, meeting with the alloy of
a humble introduction, wrought in him a passionate devotion to the place, with
a profound aversion from the society. The servitor’s gown (worse than his
school array) clung to him with Nessian venom. He thought himself ridiculous in
a garb, under which Latimer must have walked erect; and in which Hooker, in his
young days, possibly flaunted in a vein of no discommendable vanity. In the
depth of college shades, or in his lonely chamber, the poor student shrunk from
observation. He found shelter among books, which insult not; and studies, that
ask no questions of a youth’s finances. He was lord of his library, and seldom
cared for looking out beyond his domains. The healing influence of studious
pursuits was upon him, to soothe and to abstract. He was almost a healthy man;
when the waywardness of his fate broke out against him with a second and worse
malignity. The father of W——had hitherto exercised the humble profession of
house−painter at N——, near Oxford. A supposed interest with some of the heads
of the colleges had now induced him to take up his abode in that city, with the
hope of being employed upon some public works which were talked of. From that
moment I read in the countenance of the young man, the determination which at
length tore him from academical pursuits for ever. To a person unacquainted
with our Universities, the distance between the gownsmen and the townsmen, as
they are called—the trading part of the latter especially—is carried to an
excess that would appear harsh and incredible. The temperament of W——‘s father
was diametrically the reverse of his own. Old W——was a little, busy, cringing
tradesman, who, with his son upon his arm, would stand bowing and scraping, cap
in hand, to any−thing that wore the semblance of a gown—insensible to the winks
and opener remonstrances of the young man, to whose chamber−fellow, or equal in
standing, perhaps, he was thus obsequiously and gratuitously ducking. Such a
state of things could not last. W——must change the air of Oxford or be
suffocated. He chose the former; and let the sturdy moralist, who strains the
point of the filial duties as high as they can bear, censure the dereliction;
he cannot estimate the struggle. I stood with W——, the last afternoon I ever
saw him, under the eaves of his paternal dwelling. It was in the fine lane
leading from the High−street to the back of ***** college, where W——kept his
rooms. He seemed thoughtful, and more reconciled. I ventured to rally
him—finding him in a better mood—upon a representation of the Artist
Evangelist, which the old man, whose affairs were beginning to flourish, had
caused to be set up in a splendid sort of frame over his really handsome shop,
either as a token of prosperity, or badge of gratitude to his saint. W——looked
up at the Luke, and, like Satan, “knew his mounted sign—and fled.” A letter on
his father’s table the next morning, announced that he had accepted a
commission in a regiment about to embark for Portugal. He was among the first
who perished before the walls of St. Sebastian. I do not know how, upon a
subject which I began with treating half seriously, I should have fallen upon a
recital so eminently painful; but this theme of poor relationship is replete
with so much matter for tragic as The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2
107 well as comic associations, that it is difficult to keep the account
distinct without blending. The earliest impressions which I received on this
matter, are certainly not attended with anything painful, or very humiliating,
in the recalling. At my father’s table (no very splendid one) was to be found,
every Saturday, the mysterious figure of an aged gentleman, clothed in neat
black, of a sad yet comely appearance. His deportment was of the essence of
gravity; his words few or none; and I was not to make a noise in his presence.
I had little inclination to have done so—for my cue was to admire
in silence. A particular elbow chair was appropriated to him, which was in no
case to be violated. A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, which appeared on no
other occasion, distinguished the days of his coming. I used to think him a
prodigiously rich man. All I could make out of him was, that he and my father
had been schoolfellows a world ago at Lincoln, and that he came from the Mint.
The Mint I knew to be a place where all the money was coined—and I thought he
was the owner of all that money. Awful ideas of the Tower twined themselves
about his presence. He seemed above human infirmities and passions. A sort of
melancholy grandeur invested him. From some inexplicable doom I fancied him
obliged to go about in an eternal suit of mourning; a captive—a stately being,
let out of the Tower on Saturdays. Often have I wondered at the temerity of my
father, who, in spite of an habitual general respect which we all in common
manifested towards him, would venture now and then to stand up against him in
some argument, touching their youthful days. The houses of the ancient city of
Lincoln are divided (as most of my readers know) between the dwellers on the
hill, and in the valley. This marked distinction formed an obvious division
between the boys who lived above (however brought together in a common school)
and the boys whose paternal residence was on the plain; a sufficient cause of
hostility in the code of these young Grotiuses. My father had been a leading
Mountaineer; and would still maintain the general superiority, in skill and
hardihood, of the Above Boys (his own faction) over the Below Boys (so were
they called), of which party his contemporary had been a chieftain. Many and
hot were the skirmishes on this topic—the only one upon which the old gentleman
was ever brought out—and bad blood bred; even sometimes almost to the
recommencement (so I expected) of actual hostilities. But my father, who
scorned to insist upon advantages, generally contrived to turn the conversation
upon some adroit by−commendation of the old Minster; in the general preference
of which, before all other cathedrals in the island, the dweller on the hill,
and the plain−born, could meet on a conciliating level, and lay down their less
important differences. Once only I saw the old gentleman really ruffled, and I
remembered with anguish the thought that came over me: “Perhaps he will never
come here again.” He had been pressed to take another plate of the viand, which
I have already mentioned as the indispensable concomitant of his visits. He had
refused, with a resistance amounting to rigour—when my aunt, an old Lincolnian,
but who had something of this, in common with my cousin Bridget, that she would
sometimes press civility out of season—uttered the following memorable
application—“Do take another slice, Mr. Billet, for you do not get pudding
every day.” The old gentleman said nothing at the time—but he took occasion in
the course of the evening, when some argument had intervened between them, to
utter with an emphasis which chilled the company, and which chills me now as I
write it—“Woman, you are superannuated.” John Billet did not survive long,
after the digesting of this affront; but he survived long enough to assure me
that peace was actually restored! And, if I remember aright, another pudding
was discreetly substituted in the place of that which had occasioned the
offence. He died at the Mint (Anno 1781) where he had long held, what he
accounted, a comfortable independence; and with five pounds, fourteen
shillings, and a penny, which were found in his escrutoire after his decease,
left the world, blessing God that he had enough to bury him, and that he had
never been obliged to any man for a sixpence. This was—a Poor Relation.