A MAD WEDDING
Half-a-crown ticket-holders alone admitted. We shilling people
remain without. It is as well. The scene in the chapel cannot be
edifying, considering who they are that press in, fox-hunting, dog-fighting, cocking, country gentry, some already half-tipsy, Lewis Falcon wholly so; the parson a man of indifferent character; the marriage the result of a fight.
Stourton Castle, once the favourite residence of King John, and possessing a venerable history, built originally of red sandstone, had been given a rakish modern aspect by a proprietor who conceived that what was old must be bad, and whose taste was at the service of the fashion of the day. He had delivered over this ancient structure to an architect to modernise at the period when taste was at the lowest ebb in England.
At one time the Castle had been surrounded by an extensive
deer park, in which were stately oaks of the growth of centuries. Card-playing, dicing, toping, law-suits, had reduced the Squires of Stourton to the cutting down of their oaks, and the selling them so as to pay with the proceeds their debts of honour and of dishonour.
The second half of last century was a period when something
more than artistic taste had reached its lowest depth. Common
morality and the sense of decency were equally depraved. At the
close of the seventeenth century, moral corruption had been open
and flagrant in high quarters, but a religious leaven was in the
land, and there was a sturdy substance and inner core of virtue
to be found among the middle and lower classes, an hereditary, traditional respect for what was good and true and honest.
But with the expulsion of the Non-jurors, those who were
respectable in life and learning were driven from the pulpits of
the Church, and their places were occupied by time-servers, by
men of inferior moral, mental, and social position. The relics of
Puritanism had been too narrow, too sour to influence the mass of
mankind. Dissociating themselves from all amusements, however
harmless, condemning them as evil, holding together in small
acrid clusters, the Saints had done nothing to check and moderate
what was boisterous, and their very extravagance of strictness
made of their sons the most debauched and shameless when freed
from parental control. The decay which had begun at the head
under the last Stuarts worked slowly yet steadily downwards: it
attacked the heart of the community, and then sent rottenness to
the very roots, in the time of the last Georges.
In few parts of England was there more hard drinking, hard
swearing, law-breaking, and licentious living than in that
portion of the Midlands where the scene of our tale lies. There, as already intimated, the convergence and dislocation at point of contact of three counties afforded every opportunity for making light of the law.
Often a fat living rewarded a complaisant tutor who would
marry the discarded mistress of his patron; as often the best way
to preferment in the Church was for the clerk in orders to be a
fellow-sot with the man who presented to the cure of souls where
spread his acres.
Had Parson Toogood lived near Lichfield, he would have been
respectable in conduct, and only forfeited his dignity by
cringing and spittle-licking to the Bishop, but as Lichfield was
a long way off he toadied his squire.
"Here they come!"
The crowd became agitated, compacted itself closer, broke out
into jocosity, and was broad in its mirth, noisy in its
ejaculations.
Out through the doorway burst a couple of gentlemen in
top-boots, one Squire Stourton of Stourton Castle, and he in a
claret coat, cracking a whip, and shouting:
"Clear a road for the happy pair! Clear the way, or I'll cut
you across your faces."
"Clear the course, or be—to you all!" shouted George, commonly designated Captain Stracey, who was armed with a silver-headed walking-cane, with which he belaboured such as stood in the way.
"Come along to Stewponey and drink to their healths and
happiness!" roared the Squire.
Then forth issued Luke Francis and Bladys.