EARLY MARRIAGES.

Notwithstanding his illustrious descent, Simon Harcourt raised himself to the woolsack by his own exertions, and was in no degree indebted to powerful relatives for his elevation. The son of a knight, whose loyalty to the House of Stuart had impoverished his estate, he spent his student-days at Pembroke, Oxford, and the Inner Temple, in resolute labor, and with few indulgences. His father could make him but a slender allowance; and when he assumed the gown of a barrister, the future Chancellor, like Erskine in after years, was spurred to industry by the voices of his wife and children. Whilst he was still an undergraduate of the university, he fell in love with Rebecca Clark, daughter of a pious man, of whose vocation the modern peerages are ashamed. Sir Philip Harcourt (the Chancellor's father) in spite of his loyalty quarrelled with the Established Church, and joined the Presbyterians: and Thomas Clark was his Presbyterian chaplain, secretary, and confidential servant. Great was Sir Philip's wrath on learning that his boy had not only fallen in love with Rebecca Clark, but had married her privately. It is probable that the event lowered the worthy knight's esteem for the Presbyterian system; but as anger could not cut the nuptial bond, the father relented—gave the young people all the assistance he could, and hoped that they would live long without repenting their folly. The match turned out far better than the old knight feared. Taking his humble bride to modest chambers, young Harcourt applied sedulously to the study of the law; and his industry was rewarded by success, and by the gratitude of a dutiful wife. In unbroken happiness they lived together for a succession of years, and their union was fruitful of children.

Harcourt fared better with his love-match than Sergeant Hill with his heiress, Miss Medlycott of Cottingham, Northamptonshire. On the morning of his wedding the eccentric sergeant, having altogether forgotten his most important engagement for the day, received his clients in chambers after his usual practice, and remained busy with professional cares until a band of devoted friends forcibly carried him to the church, where his bride had been waiting for him more than an hour. The ceremony having been duly performed, he hastened back to his chambers, to be present at a consultation. Notwithstanding her sincere affection for him, the lady proved but an indifferent wife to the black-letter lawyer. Empowered by Act of Parliament to retain her maiden-name after marriage, she showed her disesteem for her husband's patronymic by her mode of exercising the privilege secured to her by special law; and many a time the sergeant indignantly insisted that she should use his name in her signatures. "My name is Hill, madam; my father's name was Hill, madam; all the Hills have been named Hill, madam; Hill is a good name—and by ——, madam, you shall use it." On other matters he was more compliant—humoring her old-maidish fancies in a most docile and conciliating manner. Curiously neat and orderly, Mrs. Medlycott took great pride in the faultlessness of her domestic arrangements, so far as cleanliness and precise order were concerned. To maintain the whiteness of the pipe-clayed steps before the front door of her Bedford Square mansion was a chief object of her existence; and to gratify her in this particular, Sergeant Hill use daily to leave his premises by the kitchen steps. Having outlived the lady, Hill observed to a friend who was condoling with him on his recent bereavement, "Ay, my poor wife is gone! She was a good sort of woman—in her way a very good sort of woman. I do honestly declare my belief that in her way she had no equal. But—but—I'll tell you something in confidence. If ever I marry again, I won't marry merely for money." The learned sergeant died in his ninety-third year without having made a second marriage.

Like Harcourt, John Scott married under circumstances that called forth many warm expressions of censure; and like Harcourt, he, in after life, reflected on his imprudent marriage as one of the most fortunate steps of his earlier career. The romance of the law contains few more pleasant episodes than the story of handsome Jack Scott's elopement with Bessie Surtees. There is no need to tell in detail how the comely Oxford scholar danced with the banker's daughter at the Newcastle assemblies; how his suit was at first recognised by the girl's parents, although the Scotts were but rich 'fitters,' whereas Aubone Surtees, Esquire, was a banker and gentleman of honorable descent; how, on the appearance of an aged and patrician suitor for Bessie's hand, papa and mamma told Jack Scott not to presume on their condescension, and counseled Bessie to throw her lover over and become the lady of Sir William Blackett; how Bessie was faithful, and Jack was urgent; how they had secret interviews on Tyne-side and in London, meeting clandestinely on horseback and on foot, corresponding privately by letters and confidential messengers; how, eventually, the lovers, to the consternation of 'good society' in Newcastle, were made husband and wife at Blackshiels, North Britain. Who is ignorant of the story? Does not every visitor to Newcastle pause before an old house in Sandhill, and look up at the blue pane which marks the window from which Bessie descended into her lover's arms?

Jack and Bessie were not punished with even that brief period of suffering and uncertainty which conscientious novelists are accustomed, for the sake of social morals, to assign to run-away lovers before the merciful guardian or tender parent promises forgiveness and a liberal allowance, paid in quarterly installments. In his old age Eldon used to maintain that their plight was very pitiable on the third morning after their rash union. "Our funds were exhausted: we had not a home to go to, and we knew not whether our friends would ever speak to us again." In this strain ran the veteran's story, which, like all other anecdotes from the same source, must be received with caution. But even the old peer, ever ready to exaggerate his early difficulties, had not enough effrontery to represent that their dejection lasted more than three days. The fathers of the bride and bridegroom soon met and came to terms, and with the beginning of the new year Bessie Scott was living in New Inn Hall, Oxford, whilst her husband read Vinerian Lectures, and presided over that scholastic house. The position of Scott at this time was very singular. He was acting as substitute for Sir Robert Chambers, the principal of New Inn Hall and Vinerian Professor of Law, who contrived to hold his university preferments, whilst he discharged the duties of a judge in India. To give an honest color to this indefensible arrangement, it was provided that the lectures read from the Vinerian Chair should actually be written by the Professor, although they were delivered by deputy. Scott, therefore, as the Professor's mouth-piece, on a salary of £60 a year, with free quarters in the Principal's house, was merely required to read a series of treatises sent to him by the absent teacher. "The law-professor," the ex-Chancellor used to relate with true Eldonian humor and fancy—"sent me the first lecture, which I had to read immediately to the students, and which I began without knowing a single word that was in it. It was upon the statute (4 and 5 P. and M. c. 8), 'of young men running away with maidens.' Fancy me reading, with about 140 boys and young men all giggling at the Professor! Such a tittering audience no one ever had." If this incident really occurred on the occasion of his 'first reading,' the laughter must have been inextinguishable; for, of course, Jack Scott's run-away marriage had made much gossip in Oxford Common Rooms, and the singular loveliness of his girlish wife (described by an eye-witness as being "so very young as to give the impression of childhood,") stirred the heart of every undergraduate who met her in High Street.

There is no harm done by laughter at the old Chancellor's romantic fictions about the poverty which he and his Bessie encountered, hand in hand, at the outset of life; for the laughter blinds no one to the genuine affection and wholesome honesty of the young husband and wife. One has reason to wish that marriages such as theirs were more frequent amongst lawyers in these ostentatious days. At present the young barrister, who marries before he has a clear fifteen hundred a year, is charged with reckless imprudence; and unless his wife is a woman of fortune, or he is able to settle a heavy sum of money upon her, his anxious friends terrify him with pictures of want and sorrow stored up for him in the future. Society will not let him live after the fashion of 'juniors' eighty or a hundred years since. He must maintain two establishments—his chambers for business, his house in the west-end of town for his wife. Moreover, the lady must have a brougham and liberal pin money, or four or five domestic servants and a drawing-room well furnished with works of art and costly decorations. They must give state dinners and three or four routs every season; and in all other matters their mode of life must be, or seem to be, that of the upper ten thousand. Either they must live in this style, or be pushed aside and forgotten. The choice for them lies between very expensive society or none at all—that is to say, none at all amongst the rising members of the legal profession, and the sort of people with whom young barristers, from prudential motives, wish to form acquaintance. Doubtless many a fair reader of this page is already smiling at the writer's simplicity, and is saying to herself, "Here is one of the advocates of marriage on three hundred a year."

But this writer is not going to advocate marriage on that or any other particular sum. From personal experience he knows what comfort a married man may have for an outlay of three or four hundred per annum; and from personal observation he knows what privations and ignominious poverty are endured by unmarried men who spend twice the larger of those sums on chamber-and-club life. He knows that there are men who shiver at the bare thought of losing caste by marriage with a portionless girl, whilst they are complacently leading the life which, in nine cases out of ten, terminates in the worst form of social degradation—matrimony where the husband blushes for his wife's early history, and dares not tell his own children the date of his marriage certificate. If it were his pleasure he could speak sad truths about the bachelor of modest income, who is rich enough to keep his name on the books of two fashionable clubs, to live in a good quarter of London, and to visit annually continental capitals, but far too poor to think of incurring the responsibilities of marriage. It could be demonstrated that in a great majority of instances this wary, prudent, selfish gentleman, instead of being the social success which many simple people believe him, is a signal and most miserable failure; that instead of pursuing a career of various enjoyments and keen excitements, he is a martyr to ennui, bored by the monotony of an objectless existence, utterly weary of the splendid clubs, in which he is presumed by unsophisticated admirers to find an ample compensation for want of household comfort and domestic affection: that as soon as he has numbered forty years, he finds the roll of his friends and cordial acquaintances diminish, and is compelled to retire before younger men, who snatch from his grasp the prizes of social rivalry; and that, as each succeeding lustre passes, he finds the chain of his secret disappointments and embarrassments more galling and heavy.

It is not a question of marriage on three hundred a year without prospects, but a marriage on five or six hundred a year with good expectations. In the Inns of Court there are, at the present time, scores of clever, industrious fine-hearted gentlemen who have sure incomes of three or four hundred pounds per annum. In Tyburnia and Kensington there is an equal number of young gentlewomen with incomes varying between £150 and £300 a year. These men and women see each other at balls and dinners, in the parks and at theatres; the ladies would not dislike to be wives, the men are longing to be husbands. But that hideous tyrant, social opinion, bids them avoid marriage.

In Lord Eldon's time the case was otherwise. Society saw nothing singular or reprehensible in his conduct when he brought Bessie to live in the little house in Cursitor Street. No one sneered at the young law-student, whose home was a little den in a dingy thoroughfare. At a later date, the rising junior, whose wife lived over his business chambers in Carey Street, was the object of no unkind criticism because his domestic arrangements were inexpensive, and almost frugal. Had his success been tardy instead of quick and decisive, and had circumstances compelled him to live under the shadow of Lincoln's Inn wall for thirty years on a narrow income, he would not on that account have suffered from a single disparaging criticism. Amongst his neighbors in adjacent streets, and within the boundaries of his Inn, he would have found society for himself and wife, and playmates for his children. Good fortune coming in full strong flood, he was not compelled to greatly change his plan of existence. Even in those days, when costly ostentation characterized aristocratic society—he was permitted to live modestly—and lay the foundation of that great property which he transmitted to his ennobled descendants.

When satire has done its worst with the miserly propensities of the great lawyer and his wife, their long familiar intercourse exhibits a wealth of fine human affection and genuine poetry which sarcasm cannot touch. Often as he had occasion to regret Lady Eldon's peculiarities—the stinginess which made her grudge the money paid for a fish or a basket of fruit; the nervous repugnance to society, which greatly diminished his popularity; and the taste for solitude and silence which marked her painfully towards the close of her life—the Chancellor never even hinted to her his dissatisfaction. When their eldest daughter, following her mother's example, married without the permission of her parents, it was suggested to Lord Eldon that her ladyship ought to take better care of her younger daughter, Lady Frances, and entering society should play the part of a vigilant chaperon. The counsel was judicious; but the Chancellor declined to act upon it, saying,—"When she was young and beautiful, she gave up everything for me. What she is, I have made her; and I cannot now bring myself to compel her inclinations. Our marriage prevented her mixing in society when it afforded her pleasure; it appears to give pain now, and why should I interpose?" In his old age, when she was dead, he visited his estate in Durham, but could not find heart to cross the Tyne bridge and look at the old house from which he took her in the bloom and tenderness of her girlhood. An urgent invitation to visit Newcastle drew from him the reply—"I know my fellow-townsmen complain of my not coming to see them; but how can I pass that bridge?" After a pause, he added, "Poor Bessie! if ever there was an angel on earth she was one. The only reparation which one man can make to another for running away with his daughter, is to be exemplary in his conduct towards her."

In pecuniary affairs not less prudent than his brother, Lord Stowell in matters of sentiment was capable of indiscretion. In the long list of legal loves there are not many episodes more truly ridiculous than the story of the older Scott's second marriage. On April 10, 1813, the decorous Sir William Scott, and Louisa Catharine, widow of John, Marquis of Sligo, and daughter of Admiral Lord Howe, were united in the bonds of holy wedlock, to the infinite amusement of the world of fashion, and to the speedy humiliation of the bridegroom. So incensed was Lord Eldon at his brother's folly, that he refused to appear at the wedding; and certainly the Chancellor's displeasure was not without reason, for the notorious absurdity of the affair brought ridicule on the whole of the Scott family connexion. The happy couple met for the first time in the Old Bailey, when Sir William Scott and Lord Ellenborough presided at the trial of the marchioness's son, the young Marquis of Sligo, who had incurred the anger of the law by luring into his yacht, in Mediterranean waters, two of the king's seamen. Throughout the hearing of that cause cÉlÈbre, the marchioness sat in the fetid court of the Old Bailey, in the hope that her presence might rouse amongst the jury or in the bench feelings favorable to her son. This hope was disappointed. The verdict having been given against the young peer, he was ordered to pay a fine of £5000, and undergo four months' incarceration in Newgate, and—worse than fine and imprisonment—was compelled to listen to a parental address from Sir William Scott on the duties and responsibilities of men of high station. Either under the influence of sincere admiration for the judge, or impelled by desire for vengeance on the man who had presumed to lecture her son in a court of justice, the marchioness wrote a few hasty words of thanks to Sir William Scott for his salutary exhortation to her boy. She even went so far as to say that she wished the erring marquis could always have so wise a counsellor at his side. This communication was made upon a slip of paper, which the writer sent to the judge by an usher of the court. Sir William read the note as he sat on the bench, and having looked towards the fair scribe, he received from her a glance and smile that were fruitful of much misery to him. Within four months the courteous Sir William Scott was tied fast to a beautiful, shrill, voluble termagant, who exercised marvellous ingenuity in rendering him wretched and contemptible. Reared in a stately school of old-world politeness, the unhappy man was a model of decorum and urbanity. He took reasonable pride in the perfection of his tone and manner; and the marchioness—whose malice did not lack cleverness—was never more happy than when she was gravely expostulating with him, in the presence of numerous auditors, on his lamentable want of style, tact, and gentlemanlike bearing. It is said that, like Coke and Holt under similar circumstances, Sir William preferred the quietude of his chambers to the society of an unruly wife, and that in the cellar of his Inn he sought compensation for the indignities and sufferings which he endured at home. Fifty years since the crusted port of the Middle Temple could soothe the heart at night, without paining the head in the morning.