Lavengro - George Borrow (nice books to read TXT) 📗

to go into the taproom, and perhaps collars him and kicks him out, provided he refuses to move.” With respect to the Quakers, it makes the young people like the young Jews, crazy after gentility diversions, worship, marriages or connections, and makes old Peas do what it makes Gorgiko Brown do, thrust himself into society which could well dispense with him, and out of which he is not kicked, because unlike the gypsy he is not poor. The writer would say much more on these points, but want of room prevents him; he must therefore request the reader to have patience until he can lay before the world a pamphlet, which he has been long meditating, to be entitled “Remarks on the Strikingly Similar Effects Which a Love for Gentility Has Produced, and Is Producing, Amongst Jews, Gypsies and Quakers.”

The priest in the book has much to say on the subject of this gentility-nonsense; no person can possibly despise it more thoroughly than that very remarkable individual seems to do, yet he hails its prevalence with pleasure, knowing the benefits which will result from it to the Church of which he is the sneering slave. “The English are mad after gentility,” says he; “well, all the better for us; their religion for a long time past has been a plain and simple one, and consequently by no means genteel; they’ll quit it for ours, which is the perfection of what they admire; with which Templars, Hospitalers, mitred abbots, Gothic abbeys, long-drawn aisles, golden censers, incense, et cetera, are connected; nothing, or next to nothing, of Christ, it is true, but weighed in the balance against gentility, where will Christianity be? why, kicking against the beam⁠—ho! ho!” And in connection with the gentility-nonsense, he expatiates largely, and with much contempt, on a species of literature by which the interests of his Church in England have been very much advanced⁠—all genuine priests have a thorough contempt for everything which tends to advance the interests of their Church⁠—this literature is made up of pseudo Jacobitism, Charlie o’er the waterism, or nonsense about Charlie o’er the water. And the writer will now take the liberty of saying a few words about it on his own account.

VI On Scotch Gentility Nonsense

Of the literature just alluded to Scott was the inventor. It is founded on the fortunes and misfortunes of the Stuart family, of which Scott was the zealous defender and apologist, doing all that in his power lay to represent the members of it as noble, chivalrous, high-minded, unfortunate princes; though, perhaps, of all the royal families that ever existed upon earth, this family was the worst. It was unfortunate enough, it is true; but it owed its misfortunes entirely to its crimes, viciousness, bad faith, and cowardice. Nothing will be said of it here until it made its appearance in England to occupy the English throne.

The first of the family which we have to do with, James, was a dirty, cowardly miscreant, of whom the less said the better. His son, Charles the First, was a tyrant⁠—exceedingly cruel and revengeful, but weak and dastardly; he caused a poor fellow to be hanged in London, who was not his subject, because he had heard that the unfortunate creature had once bit his own glove at Cadiz, in Spain, at the mention of his name; and he permitted his own bulldog, Strafford, to be executed by his own enemies, though the only crime of Strafford was, that he had barked furiously at those enemies, and had worried two or three of them, when Charles shouted, “Fetch ’em.” He was a bitter, but yet a despicable enemy, and the coldest and most worthless of friends; for though he always hoped to be able, some time or other, to hang his enemies, he was always ready to curry favour with them, more especially if he could do so at the expense of his friends. He was the haughtiest, yet meanest of mankind. He once caned a young nobleman for appearing before him in the drawing-room not dressed exactly according to the court etiquette; yet he condescended to flatter and compliment him who, from principle, was his bitterest enemy, namely Harrison, when the republican colonel was conducting him as a prisoner to London. His bad faith was notorious; it was from abhorrence of the first public instance which he gave of his bad faith, his breaking his word to the Infanta of Spain, that the poor Hiberno-Spaniard bit his glove at Cadiz; and it was his notorious bad faith which eventually cost him his head; for the Republicans would gladly have spared him, provided they could put the slightest confidence in any promise, however solemn, which he might have made to them. Of them, it would be difficult to say whether they most hated or despised him. Religion he had none. One day he favoured Popery; the next, on hearing certain clamours of the people, he sent his wife’s domestics back packing to France, because they were Papists. Papists, however, should make him a saint, for he was certainly the cause of the taking of Rochelle.

His son, Charles the Second, though he passed his youth in the school of adversity, learned no other lesson from it than the following one⁠—take care of yourself, and never do an action, either good or bad, which is likely to bring you into any great difficulty; and this maxim he acted up to as soon as he came to the throne. He was a Papist, but took especial care not to acknowledge his religion, at which he frequently scoffed, till just before his last gasp, when he knew that he could lose nothing, and hoped to gain everything by it. He was always in want of money, but took care not to tax the country beyond all endurable bounds; preferring to such a bold and dangerous course, to become the secret pensioner of Louis, to whom, in return for