THE PETTIBONE LINEAGE
BY JAMES T. FIELDS
My name is Esek Pettibone, and I wish to affirm in the outset that it
is a good thing to be well-born. In thus connecting the mention of my
name with a positive statement, I am not aware that a catastrophe lies
coiled up in the juxtaposition. But I can not help writing plainly that
I am still in favor of a distinguished family-tree. ESTO PERPETUA! To
have had somebody for a great-grandfather that was somebody is exciting.
To be able to look back on long lines of ancestry that were rich, but
respectable, seems decorous and all right. The present Earl of Warwick,
I think, must have an idea that strict justice has been done him in
the way of being launched properly into the world. I saw the Duke of
Newcastle once, and as the farmer in Conway described Mount Washington,
I thought the Duke felt a propensity to "hunch up some." Somehow it is
pleasant to look down on the crowd and have a conscious right to do so.
Left an orphan at the tender age of four years, having no brothers
or sisters to prop me round with young affections and sympathies, I
fell into three pairs of hands, excellent in their way, but peculiar.
Patience, Eunice, and Mary Ann Pettibone were my aunts on my father's
side. All my mother's relations kept shady when the lonely orphan
looked about for protection; but Patience Pettibone, in her stately
way, said,--"The boy belongs to a good family, and he shall never
want while his three aunts can support him." So I went to live with
my plain, but benignant protectors, in the state of New Hampshire.
During my boyhood the best-drilled lesson that fell to my keeping
was this: "Respect yourself. We come of more than ordinary parentage.
Superior blood was probably concerned in getting up the Pettibones.
Hold your head erect, and some day you shall have proof of your
high lineage."
I remember once, on being told that I must not share my juvenile
sports with the butcher's three little beings, I begged to know why
not. Aunt Eunice looked at Patience, and Mary Ann knew what she
meant.
"My child," slowly murmured the eldest sister, "our family, no doubt,
came of a very old stock; perhaps we belong to the nobility. Our
ancestors, it is thought, came over laden with honors, and no doubt
were embarrassed with riches, though the latter importation has
dwindled in the lapse of years. Respect yourself, and when you grow
up you will not regret that your old and careful aunt did not wish
you to play with the butcher's offspring."
I felt mortified that I ever had a desire to "knuckle up" with any
but kings' sons, or sultans' little boys. I longed to be among my
equals in the urchin line, and fly my kite with only high-born
youngsters.
Thus I lived in a constant scene of self-enchantment on the part
of the sisters, who assumed all the port and feeling that properly
belonged to ladies of quality. Patrimonial splendor to come danced
before their dim eyes; and handsome settlements, gay equipages, and
a general grandeur of some sort loomed up in the future for the
American branch of the House of Pettibone.
It was a life of opulent self-delusion, which my aunts were never
tired of nursing; and I was too young to doubt the reality of it.
All the members of our little household held up their heads, as if
each said, in so many words, "There is no original sin in our
composition, whatever of that commodity there may be mixed up with
the common clay of Snowborough."
Aunt Patience was a star, and dwelt apart. Aunt Eunice looked at her
through a determined pair of spectacles, and worshiped while she gazed.
The youngest sister lived in a dreamy state of honors to come, and had
constant zooelogical visions of lions, griffins, and unicorns, drawn
and quartered in every possible style known to the Heralds' College.
The Reverend Hebrew Bullet, who used to drop in quite often and drink
several compulsory glasses of home-made wine, encouraged his three
parishoners in their aristocratic notions, and extolled them for what
he called their "stooping-down to every-day life." He differed with the
ladies of our house only on one point. He contended that the unicorn of
the Bible and the rhinoceros of to-day were one and the same animal. My
aunts held a different opinion.
In the sleeping-room of my Aunt Patience reposed a trunk. Often during
my childish years I longed to lift the lid and spy among its contents
the treasures my young fancy conjured up as lying there in state. I
dared not ask to have the cover raised for my gratification, as I had
often been told I was "too little" to estimate aright what that armorial
box contained. "When you grow up, you shall see the inside of it," Aunt
Mary used to say to me; and so I wondered, and wished, but all in vain.
I must have the virtue of years before I could view the treasures
of past magnificence so long entombed in that wooden sarcophagus. Once
I saw the faded sisters bending over the trunk together, and, as I
thought, embalming something in camphor. Curiosity impelled me to
linger, but, under some pretext, I was nodded out of the room.
Although my kinswomen's means were far from ample, they determined
that Swiftmouth College should have the distinction of calling me one
of her sons, and accordingly I was in due time sent for preparation
to a neighboring academy. Years of study and hard fare in country
boarding-houses told upon my self-importance as the descendant of a
great Englishman, notwithstanding all my letters from the honored
three came with counsel to "respect myself and keep up the dignity
of the family." Growing-up man forgets good counsel. The Arcadia of
respectability is apt to give place to the levity of football and
other low-toned accomplishments. The book of life, at that period,
opens readily at fun and frolic, and the insignia of greatness give
the school-boy no envious pangs.
I was nineteen when I entered the hoary halls of Swiftmouth. I call
them hoary, because they had been built more than fifty years. To me
they seemed uncommonly hoary, and I snuffed antiquity in the dusty
purlieus. I now began to study, in good earnest, the wisdom of the
past. I saw clearly the value of dead men and mouldy precepts,
especially if the former had been entombed a thousand years, and
if the latter were well done in sounding Greek and Latin. I began
to reverence royal lines of deceased monarchs, and longed to connect
my own name, now growing into college popularity, with some far-off
mighty one who had ruled in pomp and luxury his obsequious people.
The trunk in Snowborough troubled my dreams. In that receptacle
still slept the proof of our family distinction. "I will go," quoth
I, "to the home of my aunts next vacation and there learn how we
became mighty, and discover precisely why we don't practice to-day
our inherited claims to glory."
I went to Snowborough. Aunt Patience was now anxious to lay before
her impatient nephew the proof he burned to behold. But first she
must explain. All the old family documents and letters were, no
doubt, destroyed in the great fire of '98, as nothing in the shape
of parchment or paper implying nobility had ever been discovered
in Snowborough, or elsewhere. But there had been preserved, for
many years, a suit of imperial clothes that had been worn, by their
great-grandfather in England, and, no doubt, in the New World also.
These garments had been carefully watched and guarded, for were
they not the proof that their owner belonged to a station in life
second, if second at all, to the royal court of King George itself?
Precious casket, into which I was soon to have the privilege of
gazing! Through how many long years these fond, foolish virgins
had lighted their unflickering lamps of expectation and hope at
this cherished old shrine!
I was now on my way to the family repository of all our greatness.
I went up stairs "on the jump." We all knelt down before the
well-preserved box; and my proud Aunt Patience, in a somewhat
reverent manner, turned the key. My heart,--I am not ashamed to
confess it now, although it is forty years since the quartet,
in search of family honors, were on their knees that summer
afternoon in Snowborough,--my heart beat high. I was about to
look on that which might be a duke's or an earl's regalia. And
I was descended from the owner in a direct line! I had lately
been reading Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus; and I remembered,
there before the trunk, the lines:
"O sacred receptacle of my joys,
Sweet cell of virtue and nobility!"
The lid went up, and the sisters began to unroll the precious
garments, which seemed all enshrined in aromatic gums and spices.
The odor of that interior lives with me to this day; and I grow
faint with the memory of that hour. With pious precision the
clothes were uncovered, and at last the whole suit was laid
before my expectant eyes.
Reader! I am an old man now, and have not long to walk this planet.
But whatever dreadful shock may be in reserve for my declining
years, I am certain I can bear it; for I went through that scene
at Snowborough, and still live!
When the garments were fully displayed, all the aunts looked at
me. I had been to college; I had studied Burke's Peerage; I had
been once to New York. Perhaps I could immediately name the exact
station in noble British life to which that suit of clothes belonged.
I could; I saw it all at a glance. I grew flustered and pale. I
dared not look my poor deluded female relatives in the face.
"What rank in the peerage do these gold-laced garments and big
buttons betoken?" cried all three.
"It is a suit of servant's livery!" gasped I, and fell back with
a shudder.
That evening, after the sun had gone down, we buried those hateful
garments in a ditch at the bottom of the garden. Rest there
perturbed body-coat, yellow trousers, brown gaiters, and all!
"Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye!"
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