第56章

I forgot to say the house is in full view all the way--except when intercepted by the trees on the miserable island in the lake--an enormous red-brick mansion, square, vast, and dingy.It is flanked by four stone towers with weathercocks.In the midst of the grand facade is a huge Ionic portico, approached by a vast, lonely, ghastly staircase.Rows of black windows, framed in stone, stretch on either side, right and left--three storeys and eighteen windows of a row.You may see a picture of the palace and staircase, in the 'Views of England and Wales,' with four carved and gilt carriages waiting at the gravel walk, and several parties of ladies and gentlemen in wigs and hoops, dotting the fatiguing lines of stairs.

But these stairs are made in great houses for people NOTto ascend.The first Lady Carabas (they are but eighty years in the peerage), if she got out of her gilt coach in a shower, would be wet to the skin before she got half-way to the carved Ionic portico, where four dreary statues of Peace, Plenty, Piety and Patriotism, are the only sentinels.You enter these palaces by back-doors.

'That was the way the Carabases got their peerage,' the misanthropic Ponto said after dinner.

Well--I rang the bell at a little low side-door; it clanged and jingled and echoed for a long, long while, till at length a face, as of a housekeeper, peered through the door, and, as she saw my hand in my waistcoat pocket, opened it.Unhappy, lonely housekeeper, Ithought.Is Miss Crusoe in her island more solitary?

The door clapped to, and I was in Castle Carabas.

'The side entrance and All,' says the housekeeper.'The halligator hover the mantelpiece was brought home by Hadmiral St.Michaels, when a Capting with Lord Hanson.

The harms on the cheers is the harms of the Carabas family.' The hall was rather comfortable.We went clapping up a clean stone backstair, and then into a back passage cheerfully decorated with ragged light-green Kidderminster, and issued upon'THE GREAT ALL.

'The great all is seventy-two feet in lenth, fifty-six in breath, and thirty-eight feet 'igh.The carvings of the chimlies, representing the buth of Venus, and Ercules, and Eyelash, is by Van Chislum, the most famous sculpture of his hage and country.The ceiling, by Calimanco, represents Painting, Harchitecture and Music (the naked female figure with the barrel horgan) introducing George, fust Lord Carabas, to the Temple of the Muses.The winder ornaments is by Vanderputty.The floor is Patagonian marble; and the chandelier in the centre was presented to Lionel, second Marquis, by Lewy the Sixteenth, whose 'ead was cut hoff in the French Revelation.We now henterTHE SOUTH GALLERY.

'One 'undred and forty-eight in lenth by thirty-two in breath; it is profusely hornaminted by the choicest works of Hart.Sir Andrew Katz, founder of the Carabas family and banker of the Prince of Horange, Kneller.Her present Ladyship, by Lawrence.Lord St.Michaels, by the same--he is represented sittin' on a rock in velvit pantaloons.Moses in the bullrushes--the bull very fine, by Paul Potter.The toilet of Venus, Fantaski.Flemish Bores drinking, Van Ginnums.Jupiter and Europia, de Horn.The Grandjunction Canal, Venis, by Candleetty; and Italian Bandix, by Slavata Rosa.'--And so this worthy woman went on, from one room into another, from the blue room to the green, and the green to the grand saloon, and the grand saloon to the tapestry closet, cackling her list of pictures and wonders: and furtively turning up a corner of brown holland to show the colour of the old, faded, seedy, mouldy, dismal hangings.

At last we came to her Ladyship's bed-room.In the centre of this dreary apartment there is a bed about the size of one of those whizgig temples in which the Genius appears in a pantomime.The huge gilt edifice is approached by steps, and so tall, that it might be let off in floors, for sleeping-rooms for all the Carabas family.An awful bed! A murder might be done at one end of that bed, and people sleeping at the other end be ignorant of it.Gracious powers! fancy little Lord Carabas in a nightcap ascending those steps after putting out the candle!

The sight of that seedy and solitary splendour was too much for me.I should go mad were I that lonely housekeeper--in those enormous galleries--in that lonely library, filled up with ghastly folios that nobody dares read, with an inkstand on the centre table like the coffin of a baby, and sad portraits staring at you from the bleak walls with their solemn Mouldy eyes.No wonder that Carabas does not come down here often.

It would require two thousand footmen to make the place cheerful.No wonder the coachman resigned his wig, that the masters are insolvent, and the servants perish in this huge dreary out-at-elbow place.

A single family has no more right to build itself a temple of that sort than to erect a Tower of Babel.Such a habitation is not decent for a mere mortal man.But, after all, I suppose poor Carabas had no choice.Fate put him there as it sent Napoleon to St.Helena.Suppose it had been decreed by Nature that you and I should be Marquises? We wouldn't refuse, I suppose, but take Castle Carabas and all, with debts, duns, and mean makeshifts, and shabby pride, and swindling magnificence.

Next season, when I read of Lady Carabas's splendid entertainments in the MORNING POST, and see the poor old insolvent cantering through the Park--I shall have a much tenderer interest in these great people than I have had heretofore.Poor old shabby Snob! Ride on and fancy the world is still on its knees before the house of Carabas!

Give yourself airs, poor old bankrupt Magnifico, who are under money-obligations to your flunkeys; and must stoop so as to swindle poor tradesmen! And for us, O my brother Snobs, oughtn't we to feel happy if our walk through life is more even, and that we are out of the reach of that surprising arrogance and that astounding meanness to which this wretched old victim is obliged to mount and descend.