In such a controversy, lightened by perpetually polished
poems, by a fair amount of modern literature, select college
friendships, and methodical habits, Edmund Kendal would have been in
his congenial element, lived and died, and had his portrait hung up
as one of the glories of his college.
But he had been carried off from school, before he had done more than
prove his unusual capacity. All his connexions were Indian, and his
father, who had not seen him since his earliest childhood, offered
him no choice but an appointment in the civil service. He had one
stimulus; he had seen Lucy Meadows in the radiant glory of girlish
beauty, and had fastened on her all a poet's dreams, deepening and
becoming more fervid in the recesses of a reserved heart, which did
not easily admit new sensations. That stimulus carried him out
cheerfully to India, and quickened his abilities, so that he exerted
himself sufficiently to obtain a lucrative situation early in life.
He married, and his household must have been on the German system,
all the learning on one side, all the domestic cares on the other.
The understanding and refinement wanting in his wife, he believed to
be wanting in all women. As resident at a small remote native court
in India, he saw no female society such as could undeceive him; and
subsequently his Bayford life had not raised his standard of
womankind. A perfect gentleman, his superiority was his own work,
rather than that of station or education, and so he had never missed
intercourse with really ladylike or cultivated, female minds,
expected little from wife, or daughters, or neighbours; had a few
learned friends, but lived within himself.
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