FOREWORD

My sons and daughters have tried to persuade me to remodel these memoirs of my grandfather into a latter-day romance.  But I have thought it wiser to leave them as he wrote them.  Albeit they contain some details not of interest to the general public, to my notion it is such imperfections as these which lend to them the reality they bear.  Certain it is, when reading them, I live his life over again.

Needless to say, Mr. Richard Carvel never intended them for publication.  His first apology would be for his Scotch, and his only defence is that he was not a Scotchman.

The lively capital which once reflected the wit and fashion of Europe has fallen into decay.  The silent streets no more echo with the rumble of coaches and gay chariots, and grass grows where busy merchants trod.  Stately ball-rooms, where beauty once reigned, are cold and empty and mildewed, and halls, where laughter rang, are silent.  Time was when every wide-throated chimney poured forth its cloud of smoke, when every andiron held a generous log,—­andirons which are now gone to decorate Mr. Centennial’s home in New York or lie with a tag in the window of some curio shop.  The mantel, carved in delicate wreaths, is boarded up, and an unsightly stove mocks the gilded ceiling.  Children romp in that room with the silver door-knobs, where my master and his lady were wont to sit at cards in silk and brocade, while liveried blacks entered on tiptoe.  No marble Cupids or tall Dianas fill the niches in the staircase, and the mahogany board, round which has been gathered many a famous toast and wit, is gone from the dining room.

But Mr. Carvel’s town house in Annapolis stands to-day, with its neighbours, a mournful relic of a glory that is past.

Daniel Clapsaddle Carvel.

Calvert house, Pennsylvania,
December 21, 1876.

RICHARD CARVEL

CHAPTER I

LIONEL CARVEL, OF CARVEL HALL

Lionel Carvel, Esq., of Carvel Hall, in the county of Queen Anne, was no inconsiderable man in his Lordship’s province of Maryland, and indeed he was not unknown in the colonial capitals from Williamsburg to Boston.  When his ships arrived out, in May or June, they made a goodly showing at the wharves, and his captains were ever shrewd men of judgment who sniffed a Frenchman on the horizon, so that none of the Carvel tobacco ever went, in that way, to gladden a Gallic heart.  Mr. Carvel’s acres were both rich and broad, and his house wide for the stranger who might seek its shelter, as with God’s help so it ever shall be.  It has yet to be said of the Carvels that their guests are hurried away, or that one, by reason of his worldly goods or position, shall be more welcome than another.