The History of Henry Esmond eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 682 pages of information about The History of Henry Esmond.

The History of Henry Esmond eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 682 pages of information about The History of Henry Esmond.
to him by his old master, the Jesuit, than which he knew no other.  Mr. Bridge, the tutor, made him the object of clumsy jokes, in which he was fond of indulging.  The young man’s spirit was chafed, and his vanity mortified; and he found himself, for some time, as lonely in this place as ever he had been at Castlewood, whither he longed to return.  His birth was a source of shame to him, and he fancied a hundred slights and sneers from young and old, who, no doubt, had treated him better had he met them himself more frankly.  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. Harry chose to treat his senior with a great deal of superfluous disdain and absurd scorn, and would by no means part from his darling injuries, in which, very likely, no man believed but himself.  As for honest Doctor Bridge, the tutor found, after a few trials of wit with the pupil, that the young man was an ugly subject for wit, and that the laugh was often turned against him.  This did not make tutor and pupil any better friends; but had, so far, an advantage for Esmond, that Mr. Bridge was induced to leave him alone; and so long as he kept his chapels, and did the college exercises required of him, Bridge was content not to see Harry’s glum face in his class, and to leave him to read and sulk for himself in his own chamber.

A poem or two in Latin and English, which were pronounced to have some merit, and a Latin oration, (for Mr. Esmond could write that language better than pronounce it,) got him a little reputation both with the authorities of the University and amongst the young men, with whom he began to pass for more than he was worth.  A few victories over their common enemy, Mr. Bridge, made them incline towards him, and look upon him as the champion of their order against the seniors.  Such of the lads as he took into his confidence found him not so gloomy and haughty as his appearance led them to believe; and Don Dismallo, as he was called, became presently a person of some little importance in his college, and was, as he believes, set down by the seniors there as rather a dangerous character.

Don Dismallo was a staunch young Jacobite, like the rest of his family; gave himself many absurd airs of loyalty; used to invite young friends to Burgundy, and give the King’s health on King James’s birthday; wore black on the day of his abdication; fasted on the anniversary of King William’s coronation; and performed a thousand absurd antics, of which he smiles now to think.

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The History of Henry Esmond from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.