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THE CAXTONS
(Complete)
A FAMILY PICTURE
By Edward Bulwer Lytton
(Lord Lytton)
PREFACE.
If it be the good fortune of this work to possess any interest for the
Novel reader, that interest, perhaps, will be but little derived from
the customary elements of fiction. The plot is extremely slight, the
incidents are few, and with the exception of those which involve the
fate of Vivian, such as may be found in the records of ordinary life.
Regarded as a Novel, this attempt is an experiment somewhat apart from
the previous works of the author. It is the first of his writings in
which Humor has been employed, less for the purpose of satire than in
illustration of amiable characters; it is the first, too, in which man
has been viewed, less in his active relations with the world, than in
his repose at his own hearth,--in a word, the greater part of the canvas
has been devoted to the completion of a simple Family Picture. And
thus, in any appeal to the sympathies of the human heart, the common
household affections occupy the place of those livelier or larger
passions which usually (and not unjustly) arrogate the foreground in
Romantic composition.
In the Hero whose autobiography connects the different characters and
events of the work, it has been the Author's intention to imply the
influences of Home upon the conduct and career of youth; and in the
ambition which estranges Pisistratus for a time from the sedentary
occupations in which the man of civilized life must usually serve his
apprenticeship to Fortune or to Fame, it is not designed to describe the
fever of Genius conscious of superior powers and aspiring to high
destinies, but the natural tendencies of a fresh and buoyant mind,
rather vigorous than contemplative, and in which the desire of action is
but the symptom of health.
Pisistratus in this respect (as he himself feels and implies) becomes
the specimen or type of a class the numbers of which are daily
increasing in the inevitable progress of modern civilization. He is one
too many in the midst of the crowd; he is the representative of the
exuberant energies of youth, turning, as with the instinct of nature for
space and development, from the Old World to the New. That which may be
called the interior meaning of the whole is sought to be completed by
the inference that, whatever our wanderings, our happiness will always
be found within a narrow compass, and amidst the objects more
immediately within our reach, but that we are seldom sensible of this
truth (hackneyed though it be in the Schools of all Philosophies) till
our researches have spread over a wider area. To insure the blessing of
repose, we require a brisker excitement than a few turns up and down our
room. Content is like that humor in the crystal, on which Claudian has
lavished the wonder of a child and the fancies of a Poet,--
"Vivis gemma tumescit aquis."
E. B. L.
October, 1849.
THE CAXTONS.
PART I.
CHAPTER I.
"Sir--sir, it is a boy!"
"A boy," said my father, looking up from his book, and evidently much
puzzled: "what is a boy?"
Now my father did not mean by that interrogatory to challenge
philosophical inquiry, nor to demand of the honest but unenlightened
woman who had just rushed into his study, a solution of that mystery,
physiological and psychological, which has puzzled so many curious
sages, and lies still involved in the question, "What is man?" For as
we need not look further than Dr. Johnson's Dictionary to know that a
boy is "a male child,"--i.e., the male young of man,--so he who would go
to the depth of things, and know scientifically what is a boy, must be
able to ascertain "what is a man." But for aught I know, my father may
have been satisfied with Buffon on that score, or he may have sided with
Monboddo. He may have agreed with Bishop Berkeley; he may have
contented himself with Professor Combe; he may have regarded the genus
spiritually, like Zeno, or materially, like Epicurus. Grant that boy is
the male young of man, and he would have had plenty of definitions to
choose from. He might have said, "Man is a stomach,--ergo, boy a male
young stomach. Man is a brain,--boy a male young brain. Man is a
bundle of habits,--boy a male young bundle of habits. Man is a
machine,--boy a male young machine. Man is a tail-less monkey,--boy a
male young tail-less monkey. Man is a combination of gases,--boy a male
young combination of gases. Man is an appearance,--boy a male young
appearance," etc., etc., and etcetera, ad infinitum! And if none of
these definitions had entirely satisfied my father, I am perfectly
persuaded that he would never have come to Mrs. Primmins for a new one.
But it so happened that my father was at that moment engaged in the
important consideration whether the Iliad was written by one Homer, or
was rather a collection of sundry ballads, done into Greek by divers
hands, and finally selected, compiled, and reduced into a whole by a
Committee of Taste, under that elegant old tyrant Pisistratus; and the
sudden affirmation, "It is a boy," did not seem to him pertinent to the
thread of the discussion. Therefore he asked, "What is a boy?" vaguely,
and, as it were, taken by surprise.
"Lord, sir!" said Mrs. Primmins, "what is a boy? Why, the baby!"
"The baby!" repeated my father, rising. "What, you don't mean to say
that Mrs. Caxton is--eh?"
"Yes, I do," said Mrs. Primmins, dropping a courtesy; "and as fine a
little rogue as ever I set eyes upon."
"Poor dear woman," said my father, with great compassion. "So soon,
too--so rapidly," he resumed, in a tone of musing surprise. "Why, it is
but the other day we were married!"
"Bless my heart, sir," said Mrs. Primmins, much scandalized, "it is ten
months and more."
"Ten months!" said my father with a sigh. "Ten months! and I have not
finished fifty pages of my refutation of Wolfe's monstrous theory! In
ten months a child! and I'll be bound complete,--hands, feet, eyes,
ears, and nose!--and not like this poor Infant of Mind," and my father
pathetically placed his hand on the treatise, "of which nothing is
formed and shaped, not even the first joint of the little finger! Why,
my wife is a precious woman! Well, keep her quiet. Heaven preserve
her, and send me strength--to support this blessing!"
"But your honor will look at the baby? Come, sir!" and Mrs. Primmins
laid hold of my father's sleeve coaxingly.
"Look at it,--to be sure," said my father, kindly; "look at it,
certainly: it is but fair to poor Mrs. Caxton, after taking so much
trouble, dear soul!"
Therewith my father, drawing his dressing-robe round him in more stately
folds, followed Mrs. Primmins upstairs into a room very carefully
darkened.
"How are you, my dear?" said my father, with compassionate tenderness,
as he groped his way to the bed.
A faint voice muttered: "Better now, and so happy!" And at the same
moment Mrs. Primmins pulled my father away, lifted a coverlid from a
small cradle, and holding a candle within an inch of an undeveloped
nose, cried emphatically, "There--bless it!"
"Of course, ma'am, I bless it," said my father, rather peevishly. "It
is my duty to bless it--Bless It! And this, then, is the way we come
into the world!--red, very red,--blushing for all the follies we are
destined to commit."
My father sat down on the nurse's chair, the women grouped round him.
He continued to gaze on the contents of the cradle, and at length said,
musingly, "And Homer was once like this!"
At this moment--and no wonder, considering the propinquity of the candle
to his visual organs--Homer's infant likeness commenced the first
untutored melodies of nature.
"Homer improved greatly in singing as he grew older," observed Mr.
Squills, the accoucheur, who was engaged in some mysteries in a corner
of the room.
My father stopped his ears. "Little things can make a great noise,"
said he, philosophically; "and the smaller the thing; the greater noise
it can make."
So saying, he crept on tiptoe to the bed, and clasping the pale hand
held out to him, whispered some words that no doubt charmed and soothed
the ear that heard them, for that pale hand was suddenly drawn from his
own and thrown tenderly round his neck. The sound of a gentle kiss was
heard through the stillness.
"Mr. Caxton, sir," cried Mr. Squills, in rebuke, "you agitate my
patient; you must retire."
My father raised his mild face, looked round apologetically, brushed his
eyes with the back of his hand, stole to the door, and vanished.
"I think," said a kind gossip seated at the other side of my mother's
bed, "I think, my dear, that Mr. Caxton might have shown more joy,--more
natural feeling, I may say,--at the sight of the baby: and Such a baby!
But all men are just the same, my dear,--brutes,--all brutes, depend
upon it!"
"Poor Austin!" sighed my mother, feebly; "how little you understand
him!"
"And now I shall clear the room," said Mr. Squills. "Go to sleep, Mrs.
Caxton."
"Mr. Squills," exclaimed my mother, and the bed-curtains trembled, "pray
see that Mr. Caxton does not set himself on fire. And, Mr. Squills,
tell him not to be vexed and miss me,--I shall be down very soon,--sha'
n't I?"
"If you keep yourself easy, you will, ma'am."
"Pray, say so. And, Primmins--"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Every one, I fear, is neglecting your master. Be sure," and my
mother's lips approached close to Mrs. Primmins' ear, "be sure that you-
-air his nightcap yourself."
"Tender creatures those women," soliloquized Mr. Squills as, after
clearing the room of all present save Mrs. Primmins and the nurse, he
took his way towards my father's study. Encountering the footman in the
passage, "John," said he, "take supper into your master's room, and make
us some punch, will you,--stiffish!"
CHAPTER II.
"Mr. Caxton, how on earth did you ever come to marry?" asked Mr.
Squills, abruptly, with his feet on the hob, while stirring up his
punch.
That was a home question, which many men might reasonably resent; but my
father scarcely knew what resentment was.
"Squills," said he, turning round from his books, and laying one finger
on the surgeon's arm confidentially,--"Squills," said he, "I myself
should be glad to know how I came to be married."
Mr. Squills was a jovial, good-hearted man,--stout, fat, and with fine
teeth, that made his laugh pleasant to look at as well as to hear. Mr.
Squills, moreover, was a bit of a philosopher in his way,--studied human
nature in curing its diseases; and was accustomed to say that Mr. Caxton
was a better book in himself than all he had in his library. Mr.
Squills laughed, and rubbed his hands.
My father resumed thoughtfully, and in the tone of one who moralizes:--
"There are three great events in life, sir,--birth, marriage, and death.
None know how they are born, few know how they die; but I suspect that
many can account for the intermediate phenomenon--I cannot."
"It was not for money, it must have been for love," observed Mr.
Squills; "and your young wife is as pretty as she is good."
"Ha!" said my father, "I remember."
"Do you, sir?" exclaimed Squills, highly amused. "How was it?"
My father, as was often the case with him, protracted his reply, and
then seemed rather to commune with himself than to answer Mr. Squills.
"The kindest, the best of men," he murmured,--"Abyssus Eruditionis. And
to think that he bestowed on me the only fortune he had to leave,
instead of to his own flesh and blood, Jack and Kitty,--all, at least,
that I could grasp, deficiente manu, of his Latin, his Greek, his
Orientals. What do I not owe to him?"
"To whom?" asked Squills. "Good Lord! what's the man talking about?"
"Yes, sir," said my father, rousing himself, "such was Giles Tibbets, M.
A., Sol Scientiarum, tutor to the humble scholar you address, and father
to poor Kitty. He left me his Elzevirs; he left me also his orphan
daughter."
"Oh! as a wife--"
"No, as a ward. So she came to live in my house. I am sure there was
no harm in it. But my neighbors said there was, and the widow Weltraum
told me the girl's character would suffer. What could I do?--Oh, yes, I
recollect all now! I married her, that my old friend's child might have
a roof to her head, and come to no harm. You see I was forced to do her
that injury; for, after all, poor young creature, it was a sad lot for
her. A dull bookworm like me,--cochlea vitam agens, Mr. Squills,--
leading the life of a snail! But my shell was all I could offer to my
poor friend's orphan."
"Mr. Caxton, I honor you," said Squills, emphatically, jumping up, and
spilling half a tumblerful of scalding punch over my father's legs.
"You have a heart, sir; and I understand why your wife loves you. You
seem a cold man, but you have tears in your eyes at this moment."
"I dare say I have," said my father, rubbing his shins; "it was
boiling!"
"And your son will be a comfort to you both," said Mr. Squills,
reseating himself, and, in his friendly emotion, wholly abstracted from
all consciousness of the suffering he had inflicted; "he will be a dove
of peace to your ark."
"I don't doubt it," said my father, ruefully; "only those doves, when
they are small, are a very noisy sort of birds--non talium avium cantos
somnum reducent. However, it might have been worse. Leda had twins."
"So had Mrs. Barnabas last week," rejoined the accoucheur. "Who knows
what may be in store for you yet? Here's a health to Master Caxton, and
lots of brothers and sisters to him."
"Brothers and sisters! I am sure Mrs. Caxton will never think of such a
thing, sir," said my father, almost indignantly; "she's much too good a
wife to behave so. Once in a way it is all very well; but twice--and as
it is, not a paper in its place, nor a pen mended the last three days:
I, too, who can only write cuspide duriuscula,--and the baker coming
twice to me for his bill, too! The Ilithyiae, are troublesome deities,
Mr. Squills."
"Who are the Ilithyiae?" asked the accoucheur.
"You ought to know," answered my father, smiling,--"the female daemons
who presided over the Neogilos, or New-born. They take the name from
Juno. See Homer, Book XI. By the by, will my Neogilos be brought up
like Hector, or Astyanax--videlicet, nourished by its mother, or by a
nurse?"
"Which do you prefer, Mr. Caxton?" asked Mr. Squills, breaking the sugar
in his tumbler. "In this I always deem it my duty to consult the wishes
of the gentleman."
"A nurse by all means, then," said my father. "And let her carry him
upo kolpo, next to her bosom. I know all that has been said about
mothers nursing their own infants, Mr. Squills; but poor Kitty is so
sensitive that I think a stout, healthy peasant woman will be the best
for the boy's future nerves, and his mother's nerves, present and future
too. Heigh-ho! I shall miss the dear woman very much. When will she
be up, Mr. Squills?"
"Oh, in less than a fortnight!"
"And then the Neogilos shall go to school,--upo kolpo,--the nurse with
him, and all will be right again," said my father, with a look of sly,
mysterious humor which was peculiar to him.
"School! when he's just born?"
"Can't begin too soon," said my father, positively; "that's Helvetius'
opinion, and it is mine too!"
CHAPTER III.
That I was a very wonderful child, I take for granted; but nevertheless
it was not of my own knowledge that I came into possession of the
circumstances set down in my former chapters. But my father's conduct
on the occasion of my birth made a notable impression upon all who
witnessed it; and Mr. Squills and Mrs. Primmins have related the facts
to me sufficiently often to make me as well acquainted with them as
those worthy witnesses themselves. I fancy I see my father before me,
in his dark-gray dressing-gown, and with his odd, half-sly, half-
innocent twitch of the mouth, and peculiar puzzling look, from two
quiet, abstracted, indolently handsome eyes, at the moment he agreed
with Helvetius on the propriety of sending me to school as soon as I was
born. Nobody knew exactly what to make of my father,--his wife
excepted. The people of Abdera sent for Hippocrates to cure the
supposed insanity of Democritus, "who at that time," saith Hippocrates,
dryly, "was seriously engaged in philosophy." That same people of
Abdera would certainly have found very alarming symptoms of madness in
my poor father; for, like Democritus, "he esteemed as nothing the
things, great or small, in which the rest of the world were employed."
Accordingly, some set him down as a sage, some as a fool. The
neighboring clergy respected him as a scholar, "breathing libraries;"
the ladies despised him as an absent pedant who had no more gallantry
than a stock or a stone. The poor loved him for his charities, but
laughed at him as a weak sort of man, easily taken in. Yet the squires
and farmers found that, in their own matters of rural business, he had
always a fund of curious information to impart; and whoever, young or
old, gentle or simple, learned or ignorant, asked his advice, it was
given with not more humility than wisdom. In the common affairs of life
he seemed incapable of acting for himself; he left all to my mother; or,
if taken unawares, was pretty sure to be the dupe. But in those very
affairs, if another consulted him, his eye brightened, his brow cleared,
the desire of serving made him a new being,--cautious, profound,
practical. Too lazy or too languid where only his own interests were at
stake, touch his benevolence, and all the wheels of the clock-work felt
the impetus of the master-spring. No wonder that, to others, the nut of
such a character was hard to crack! But in the eyes of my poor mother,
Augustine (familiarly Austin) Caxton was the best and the greatest of
human beings; and she ought to have known him well, for she studied him
with her whole heart, knew every trick of his face, and, nine times out
of ten, divined what he was going to say before he opened his lips. Yet
certainly there were deeps in his nature which the plummet of her tender
woman's wit had never sounded; and certainly it sometimes happened that,
even in his most domestic colloquialisms, my mother was in doubt whether
he was the simple, straightforward person he was mostly taken for.
There was, indeed, a kind of suppressed, subtle irony about him, too
unsubstantial to be popularly called humor, but dimly implying some sort
of jest, which he kept all to himself; and this was only noticeable when
he said something that sounded very grave, or appeared to the grave very
silly and irrational.
That I did not go to school--at least to what Mr. Squills understood by
the word "school"--quite so soon as intended, I need scarcely observe.
In fact, my mother managed so well--my nursery, by means of double
doors, was so placed out of hearing--that my father, for the most part,
was privileged, if he pleased, to forget my existence. He was once
vaguely recalled to it on the occasion of my christening. Now, my
father was a shy man, and he particularly hated all ceremonies and
public spectacles. He became uneasily aware that a great ceremony, in
which he might be called upon to play a prominent part, was at hand.
Abstracted as he was, and conveniently deaf at times, he had heard such
significant whispers about "taking advantage of the bishop's being in
the neighborhood," and "twelve new jelly-glasses being absolutely
wanted," as to assure him that some deadly festivity was in the wind.
And when the question of godmother and godfather was fairly put to hire,
coupled with the remark that this was a fine opportunity to return the
civilities of the neighborhood, he felt that a strong effort at escape
was the only thing left. Accordingly, having, seemingly without
listening, heard the clay fixed and seen, as they thought, without
observing, the chintz chairs in the best drawing-room uncovered (my dear
mother was the tidiest woman in the world), my father suddenly
discovered that there was to be a great book-sale, twenty miles off,
which would last four days, and attend it he must. My mother sighed;
but she never contradicted my father, even when he was wrong, as he
certainly was in this case. She only dropped a timid intimation that
she feared "it would look odd, and the world might misconstrue my
father's absence,--had not she better put off the christening?"
"My dear," answered my father, "it will be my duty, by and by, to
christen the boy,--a duty not done in a day. At present, I have no
doubt that the bishop will do very well without me. Let the day stand,
or if you put it off, upon my word and honor I believe that the wicked
auctioneer will put off the book-sale also. Of one thing I am quite
sure, that the sale and the christening will take place at the same
time." There was no getting over this; but I am certain my dear mother
had much less heart than before in uncovering the chintz chairs in the
best drawing-room. Five years later this would not have happened. My
mother would have kissed my father and said, "Stay," and he would have
stayed. But she was then very young and timid; and he, wild man, not of
the woods, but the cloisters, not yet civilized into the tractabilities
of home. In short, the post-chaise was ordered and the carpetbag
packed.
"My love," said my mother, the night before this Hegira, looking up from
her work, "my love, there is one thing you have quite forgot to settle,-
-I beg pardon for disturbing you, but it is important!--baby's name:
sha' n't we call him Augustine?"
"Augustine," said my father, dreamily,--"why that name's mine."
"And you would like your boy's to be the same?"
"No," said my father, rousing himself. "Nobody would know which was
which. I should catch myself learning the Latin accidence, or playing
at marbles. I should never know my own identity, and Mrs. Primmins
would be giving me pap."
My mother smiled; and putting her hand, which was a very pretty one, on
my father's shoulder, and looking at him tenderly, she said: "There's no
fear of mistaking you for any other, even your son, dearest. Still, if
you prefer another name, what shall it be?"
"Samuel," said my father. "Dr. Parr's name is Samuel."
"La, my love! Samuel is the ugliest name--"
My father did not hear the exclamation; he was again deep in his books.
Presently he started up: "Barnes says Homer is Solomon. Read Omeros
backward, in the Hebrew manner--"
"Yes, my love," interrupted my mother. "But baby's Christian name?"
"Omeros--Soreino--Solemo--Solomo!"
"Solomo,--shocking!" said my mother.
"Shocking indeed," echoed my father; "an outrage to common-sense."
Then, after glancing again over his books, he broke out musingly: "But,
after all, it is nonsense to suppose that Homer was not settled till his
time."
"Whose?" asked my mother, mechanically. My father lifted up his finger.
My mother continued, after a short pause., "Arthur is a pretty name.
Then there 's William--Henry--Charles Robert. What shall it be, love?"
"Pisistratus!" said my father (who had hung fire till then), in a tone
of contempt,--"Pisistratus, indeed!"
"Pisistratus! a very fine name," said my mother, joyfully,--"Pisistratus
Caxton. Thank you, my love: Pisistratus it shall be."
"Do you contradict me? Do you side with Wolfe and Heyne and that
pragmatical fellow Vico? Do you mean to say that the Rhapsodists--"
"No, indeed," interrupted my mother. "My dear, you frighten me."
My father sighed, and threw himself back in his chair. My mother took
courage and resumed.
"Pisistratus is a long name too! Still, one could call him Sisty."
"Siste, Viator," muttered my father; "that's trite!"
"No, Sisty by itself--short. Thank you, my dear."
Four days afterwards, on his return from the book-sale, to my father's
inexpressible bewilderment, he was informed that Pisistratus was
growing the very image of him."
When at length the good man was made thoroughly aware of the fact that
his son and heir boasted a name so memorable in history as that borne by
the enslaver of Athens and the disputed arranger of Homer,--and it was
asserted to be a name that he himself had suggested,--he was as angry as
so mild a man could be. "But it is infamous!" he exclaimed.
"Pisistratus christened! Pisistratus, who lived six hundred years
before Christ was born! Good heavens, madam! you have made me the
father of an Anachronism."
My mother burst into tears. But the evil was irremediable. An
anachronism I was, and an anachronism I must continue to the end of the
chapter.
CHAPTER IV.
"Of course, sir, you will begin soon to educate your son yourself?" said
Mr. Squills.
"Of course, sir," said my father, "you have read Martinus Scriblerus?"
"I don't understand you, Mr. Caxton."
"Then you have not read Aiartinus Scriblerus, Mr. Squills!"
"Consider that I have read it; and what then?"
"Why, then, Squills," said my father, familiarly, "you son would know
that though a scholar is often a fool, he is never a fool so supreme, so
superlative, as when he is defacing the first unsullied page of the
human history by entering into it the commonplaces of his own pedantry.
A scholar, sir,--at least one like me,--is of all persons the most unfit
to teach young children. A mother, sir,--a simple, natural, loving
mother,--is the infant's true guide to knowledge."
"Egad! Mr. Caxton,--in spite of Helvetius, whom you quoted the night the
boy was born,--egad! I believe you are right."
"I am sure of it," said my father,--"at least as sure as a poor mortal
can be of anything. I agree with Helvetius, the child should be
educated from its birth; but how? There is the rub: send him to school
forthwith! Certainly, he is at school already with the two great
teachers,--Nature and Love. Observe, that childhood and genius have the
same master-organ in common,--inquisitiveness. Let childhood have its
way, and as it began where genius begins, it may find what genius finds.
A certain Greek writer tells us of some man who, in order to save his
bees a troublesome flight to Hymettus, cut their wings, and placed
before them the finest flowers he could select. The poor bees made no
honey. Now, sir, if I were to teach my boy, I should be cutting his
wings and giving him the flowers he should find himself. Let us leave
Nature alone for the present, and Nature's loving proxy, the watchful
mother."
Therewith my father pointed to his heir sprawling on the grass and
plucking daisies on the lawn, while the young mother's voice rose
merrily, laughing at the child's glee.
"I shall make but a poor bill out of your nursery, I see," said Mr.
Squills.
Agreeably to these doctrines, strange in so learned a father, I thrived
and flourished, and learned to spell, and make pot-hooks, under the
joint care of my mother and Dame Primmins. This last was one of an old
race fast dying away,--the race of old, faithful servants; the race of
old, tale-telling nurses. She had reared my mother before me; but her
affection put out new flowers for the new generation. She was a
Devonshire woman; and Devonshire women, especially those who have passed
their youth near the sea-coast, are generally superstitious. She had a
wonderful budget of fables. Before I was six years old, I was erudite
in that primitive literature in which the legends of all nations are
traced to a common fountain,--Puss in Boots, Tom Thumb, Fortunio,
Fortunatus, Jack the Giant-Killer; tales, like proverbs, equally
familiar, under different versions, to the infant worshippers of Budh
and the hardier children of Thor. I may say, without vanity, that in an
examination in those venerable classics I could have taken honors!
My dear mother had some little misgivings as to the solid benefit to be
derived from such fantastic erudition, and timidly consulted my father
thereon.
"My love," answered my father, in that tone of voice which always
puzzled even my mother to be sure whether he was in jest or earnest, "in
all these fables certain philosophers could easily discover symbolic
significations of the highest morality. I have myself written a
treatise to prove that Puss in Boots is an allegory upon the progress of
the human understanding, having its origin in the mystical schools of
the Egyptian priests, and evidently an illustration of the worship
rendered at Thebes and Memphis to those feline quadrupeds of which they
make both religious symbols and elaborate mummies."
"My dear Austin," said my mother, opening her blue eyes, "you don't
think that Sisty will discover all those fine things in Puss in Boots!"
"My dear Kitty," answered my father, "you don't think, when you were
good enough to take up with me, that you found in me all the fine things
I have learned from books. You knew me only as a harmless creature who
was happy enough to please your fancy. By and by you discovered that I
was no worse for all the quartos that have transmigrated into ideas
within me,--ideas that are mysteries even to myself. If Sisty, as you
call the child (plague on that unlucky anachronism! which you do well to
abbreviate into a dissyllable),--if Sisty can't discover all the wisdom
of Egypt in Puss in Boots, what then? Puss in Boots is harmless, and it
pleases his fancy. All that wakes curiosity is wisdom, if innocent; all
that pleases the fancy now, turns hereafter to love or to knowledge.
And so, my dear, go back to the nursery."
But I should wrong thee, O best of fathers! if I suffered the reader to
suppose that because thou didst seem so indifferent to my birth, and so
careless as to my early teaching, therefore thou wert, at heart,
indifferent to thy troublesome Neogilos. As I grew older, I became more
sensibly aware that a father's eye was upon me. I distinctly remember
one incident, that seems to me, in looking back, a crisis in my infant
life, as the first tangible link between my own heart and that calm
great soul.
My father was seated on the lawn before the house, his straw hat over
his eyes (it was summer), and his book on his lap. Suddenly a beautiful
delf blue-and-white flower-pot, which had been set on the window-sill of
an upper story, fell to the ground with a crash, and the fragments
spluttered up round my father's legs. Sublime in his studies as
Archimedes in the siege, he continued to read,--Impavidum ferient
ruince!
"Dear, dear!" cried my mother, who was at work in the porch, "my poor
flower-pot that I prized so much! Who could have done this? Primmins,
Primmins!"
Mrs. Primmins popped her head out of the fatal window, nodded to the
summons, and came down in a trice, pale and breathless.
"Oh!" said my mother, Mournfully, "I would rather have lost all the
plants in the greenhouse in the great blight last May,--I would rather
the best tea-set were broken! The poor geranium I reared myself, and
the dear, dear flower-pot which Mr. Caxton bought for me my last
birthday! That naughty child must have done this!"
Mrs. Primmins was dreadfully afraid of my father,--why, I know not,
except that very talkative social persons are usually afraid of very
silent shy ones. She cast a hasty glance at her master, who was
beginning to evince signs of attention, and cried promptly, "No, ma'am,
it was not the dear boy, bless his flesh, it was I!"
"You? How could you be so careless? and you knew how I prized them
both. Oh, Primmins!" Primmins began to sob.
"Don't tell fibs, nursey," said a small, shrill voice; and Master Sisty,
coming out of the house as bold as brass, continued rapidly--"don't
scold Primmins, mamma: it was I who pushed out the flower-pot."
"Hush!" said nurse, more frightened than ever, and looking aghast
towards my father, who had very deliberately taken off his hat, and was
regarding the scene with serious eyes wide awake. "Hush! And if he did
break it, ma'am, it was quite an accident; he was standing so, and he
never meant it. Did you, Master Sisty? Speak!" this in a whisper, "or
Pa will be so angry."
"Well," said my mother, "I suppose it was an accident; take care in
future, my child. You are sorry, I see, to have grieved me. There's a
kiss; don't fret."
"No, mamma, you must not kiss me; I don't deserve it. I pushed out the
flower-pot on purpose."
"Ha! and why?" said my father, walking up.
Mrs. Primmins trembled like a leaf.
"For fun!" said I, hanging my head,--"just to see how you'd look, papa;
and that's the truth of it. Now beat me, do beat me!"
My father threw his book fifty yards off, stooped down, and caught me to
his breast. "Boy," he said, "you have done wrong: you shall repair it
by remembering all your life that your father blessed God for giving him
a son who spoke truth in spite of fear! Oh! Mrs. Primmins, the next
fable of this kind you try to teach him, and we part forever!"
From that time I first date the hour when I felt that I loved my father,
and knew that he loved me; from that time, too, he began to converse
with me. He would no longer, if he met me in the garden, pass by with a
smile and nod; he would stop, put his book in his pocket, and though his
talk was often above my comprehension, still somehow I felt happier and
better, and less of an infant, when I thought over it, and tried to
puzzle out the meaning; for he had away of suggesting, not teaching,
putting things into my head, and then leaving them to work out their own
problems. I remember a special instance with respect to that same
flower-pot and geranium. Mr. Squills, who was a bachelor, and well-to-
do in the world, often made me little presents. Not long after the
event I have narrated, he gave me one far exceeding in value those
usually bestowed on children,--it was a beautiful large domino-box in
cut ivory, painted and gilt. This domino-box was my delight. I was
never weary of playing, at dominos with Mrs. Primmins, and I slept with
the box under my pillow.
"Ah!" said my father one day, when he found me ranging the ivory
parallelograms in the parlor, "ah! you like that better than all your
playthings, eh?"
"Oh, yes, papa!"
"You would be very sorry if your mamma were to throw that box out of the
window and break it for fun." I looked beseechingly at my father, and
made no answer.
"But perhaps you would be very glad," he resumed, "if suddenly one of
those good fairies you read of could change the domino-box into a
beautiful geranium in a beautiful blue-and-white flower-pot, and you
could have the pleasure of putting it on your mamma's window-sill."
"Indeed I would!" said I, half-crying.
"My dear boy, I believe you; but good wishes don't mend bad actions:
good actions mend bad actions."
So saying, he shut the door and went out. I cannot tell you how puzzled
I was to make out what my father meant by his aphorism. But I know that
I played at dominos no more that day. The next morning my father found
me seated by myself under a tree in the garden; he paused, and looked at
me with his grave bright eyes very steadily.
"My boy," said he, "I am going to walk to--,"a town about two miles off:
"will you come? And, by the by, fetch your domino-box. I should like
to show it to a person there." I ran in for the box, and, not a little
proud of walking with my father upon the high-road, we set out.
"Papa," said I by the way, "there are no fairies now."
"What then, my child?"
"Why, how then can my domino-box be changed into a geranium and a blue-
and-white flower-pot?"
"My dear," said my father, leaning his hand on my shoulder, "everybody
who is in earnest to be good, carries two fairies about with him,--one
here," and he touched my heart, "and one here," and he touched my
forehead.
"I don't understand, papa."
"I can wait till you do, Pisistratus. What a name!"
My father stopped at a nursery gardener's, and after looking over the
flowers, paused before a large double geranium. "Ah! this is finer than
that which your mamma was so fond of. What is the cost, sir?"
"Only 7s. 6d.," said the gardener.
My father buttoned up his pocket. "I can't afford it to-day," said he,
gently, and we walked out.
On entering the town, we stopped again at a china warehouse. "Have you
a flower-pot like that I bought some months ago? Ah! here is one,
marked 3s. 6d. Yes, that is the price. Well; when your mamma's
birthday comes again, we must buy her another. That is some months to
wait. And we can wait, Master Sisty. For truth, that blooms all the
year round, is better than a poor geranium; and a word that is never
broken, is better than a piece of delf."
My head, which had drooped before, rose again; but the rush of joy at my
heart almost stifled me.
"I have called to pay your little bill," said my father, entering the
shop of one of those fancy stationers common in country towns, and who
sell all kinds of pretty toys and knick-knacks. "And by the way," he
added, as the smiling shopman looked over his books for the entry, "I
think my little boy here can show you a much handsomer specimen of
French workmanship than that work-box which you enticed Mrs. Caxton into
raffling for, last winter. Show your domino-box, my dear."
I produced my treasure, and the shopman was liberal in his
commendations. "It is always well, my boy, to know what a thing is
worth, in case one wishes to part with it. If my young gentleman gets
tired of his plaything, what will you give him for it?"
"Why, sir," said the shopman, "I fear we could not afford to give more
than eighteen shillings for it, unless the young gentleman took some of
these pretty things in exchange."
"Eighteen shillings!" said my father; "you would give that sum! Well,
my boy, whenever you do grow tired of your box, you have my leave to
sell it."
My father paid his bill and went out. I lingered behind a few moments,
and joined him at the end of the street.
"Papa, papa," I cried, clapping my hands, "we can buy the geranium; we
can buy the flower-pot." And I pulled a handful of silver from my
pockets.
"Did I not say right?" said my father, passing his handkerchief over his
eyes. "You have found the two fairies!"
Oh! how proud, how overjoyed I was when, after placing vase and flower
on the window-sill, I plucked my mother by the gown and made her follow
me to the spot.
"It is his doing and his money!" said my father; "good actions have
mended the bad."
"What!" cried my mother, when she had learned all; "and your poor
domino-box that you were so fond of! We will go back to-morrow and buy
it back, if it costs us double."
"Shall we buy it back, Pisistratus?" asked my father.
"Oh, no--no--no! It would spoil all," I cried, burying my face on my
father's breast.
"My wife," said my father, solemnly, "this is my first lesson to our
child,--the sanctity and the happiness of self-sacrifice; undo not what
it should teach to his dying day."
CHAPTER V.
When I was between my seventh and my eighth year, a change came over me,
which may perhaps be familiar to the notice of those parents who boast
the anxious blessing of an only child. The ordinary vivacity of
childhood forsook me; I became quiet, sedate, and thoughtful. The
absence of play-fellows of my own age, the companionship of mature
minds, alternated only by complete solitude, gave something precocious,
whether to my imagination or my reason. The wild fables muttered to me
by the old nurse in the summer twilight or over the winter's hearth,--
the effort made by my struggling intellect to comprehend the grave,
sweet wisdom of my father's suggested lessons,--tended to feed a passion
for revery, in which all my faculties strained and struggled, as in the
dreams that come when sleep is nearest waking. I had learned to read
with ease, and to write with some fluency, and I already began to
imitate, to reproduce. Strange tales akin to those I had gleaned from
fairy-land, rude songs modelled from such verse-books as fell into my
hands, began to mar the contents of marble-covered pages designed for
the less ambitious purposes of round text and multiplication. My mind
was yet more disturbed by the intensity of my home affections. My love
for both my parents had in it something morbid and painful. I often
wept to think how little I could do for those I loved so well. My
fondest fancies built up imaginary difficulties for them, which my arm
was to smooth. These feelings, thus cherished, made my nerves over-
susceptible and acute. Nature began to affect me powerfully; and, from
that affection rose a restless curiosity to analyze the charms that so
mysteriously moved me to joy or awe, to smiles or tears. I got my
father to explain to me the elements of astronomy; I extracted from
Squills, who was an ardent botanist, some of the mysteries in the life
of flowers. But music became my darling passion. My mother (though the
daughter of a great scholar,--a scholar at whose name my father raised
his hat if it happened to be on his head) possessed, I must own it
fairly, less book-learning than many a humble tradesman's daughter can
boast in this more enlightened generation; but she had some natural
gifts which had ripened, Heaven knows how! into womanly accomplishments.
She drew with some elegance, and painted flowers to exquisite
perfection. She played on more than one instrument with more than
boarding-school skill; and though she sang in no language but her own,
few could hear her sweet voice without being deeply touched. Her music,
her songs, had a wondrous effect on me. Thus, altogether, a kind of
dreamy yet delightful melancholy seized upon my whole being; and this
was the more remarkable because contrary to my early temperament, which
was bold, active, and hilarious. The change in my character began to
act upon my form. From a robust and vigorous infant, I grew into a pale
and slender boy. I began to ail and mope. Mr. Squills was called in.
"Tonics!" said Mr. Squills; "and don't let him sit over his book. Send
him out in the air; make him play. Come here, my boy: these organs are
growing too large;" and Mr. Squills, who was a phrenologist, placed his
hand on my forehead. "Gad, sir, here's an ideality for you; and, bless
my soul, what a, constructiveness!"
My father pushed aside his papers, and walked to and fro the room with
his hands behind him; but he did not say a word till Mr. Squills was
gone.
"My dear," then said he to my mother, on whose breast I was leaning my
aching ideality--"my dear, Pisistratus must go to school in good
earnest."
"Bless me, Austin!--at his age?"
"He is nearly eight years old."
"But he is so forward."
"It is for that reason he must go to school."
"I don't quite understand you, my love. I know he is getting past me;
but you who are so clever--"
My father took my mother's hand: "We can teach him nothing now, Kitty.
We send him to school to be taught--"
"By some schoolmaster who knows much less than you do--"
"By little schoolboys, who will make him a boy again," said my father,
almost sadly. "My dear, you remember that when our Kentish gardener
planted those filbert-trees, and when they were in their third year, and
you began to calculate on what they would bring in, you went out one
morning, and found he had cut them down to the ground. You were vexed,
and asked why. What did the gardener say? 'To prevent their bearing
too soon.' There is no want of fruitfulness here: put back the hour of
produce, that the plant may last."
"Let me go to school," said I, lifting my languid head and smiling on my
father. I understood him at once, and it was as if the voice of my life
itself answered him.
CHAPTER VI.
A year after the resolution thus come to, I was at home for the
holidays.
"I hope," said my mother, "that they are doing Sisty justice. I do
think he is not nearly so quick a child as he was before he went to
school. I wish you would examine him, Austin."
"I have examined him, my dear. It is just as I expected; and I am quite
satisfied."
"What! you really think he has come on?" said my mother, joyfully.
"He does not care a button for botany now," said Mr. Squills.
"And he used to be so fond of music, dear boy!" observed my mother, with
a sigh. "Good gracious, what noise is that?"
"Your son's pop-gun against the window," said my father. "It is lucky
it is only the window; it would have made a less deafening noise,
though, if it had been Mr. Squills's head, as it was yesterday morning."
"The left ear," observed Squills; "and a very sharp blow it was too.
Yet you are satisfied, Mr. Caxton?"
"Yes; I think the boy is now as great a blockhead as most boys of his
age are," observed my father with great complacency.
"Dear me, Austin,--a great blockhead?"
"What else did he go to school for?" asked my father.
And observing a certain dismay in the face of his female audience, and a
certain surprise in that of his male, he rose and stood on the hearth,
with one hand in his waistcoat, as was his wont when about to
philosophize in more detail than was usual to him.
"Mr. Squills," said he, "you have had great experience in families."
"As good a practice as any in the county," said Mr. Squills, proudly;
"more than I can manage. I shall advertise for a partner."
"And," resumed my father, "you must have observed almost invariably that
in every family there is what father, mother, uncle, and aunt pronounce
to be one wonderful child."
"One at least," said Mr. Squills, smiling.
"It is easy," continued my father, "to say this is parental partiality;
but it is not so. Examine that child as a stranger, and it will startle
yourself. You stand amazed at its eager curiosity, its quick
comprehension, its ready wit, its delicate perception. Often, too, you
will find some faculty strikingly developed. The child will have a turn
for mechanics, perhaps, and make you a model of a steamboat; or it will
have an ear tuned to verse, and will write you a poem like that it has
got by heart from 'The Speaker;' or it will take to botany (like
Pisistratus), with the old maid its aunt; or it will play a march on its
sister's pianoforte. In short, even you, Squills, will declare that it
is really a wonderful child."
"Upon my word," said Mr. Squills, thoughtfully, "there's a great deal of
truth in what you say. Little Tom Dobbs is a wonderful child; so is
Frank Stepington--and as for Johnny Styles, I must bring him here for
you to hear him prattle on Natural History, and see how well he handles
his pretty little microscope."
"Heaven forbid!" said my father. "And now let me proceed. These
thaumata, or wonders, last till when, Mr. Squills?--last till the boy
goes to school; and then, somehow or other, the thaumata vanish into
thin air, like ghosts at the cockcrow. A year after the prodigy has
been at the academy, father and mother, uncle and aunt, plague you no
more with his doings and sayings: the extraordinary infant has become a
very ordinary little boy. Is it not so, Mr. Squills?"
"Indeed you are right, sir. How did you come to be so observant? You
never seem to--"
"Hush!" interrupted my father; and then, looking fondly at my mother's
anxious face, he said soothingly: "Be comforted; this is wisely
ordained, and it is for the best."
"It must be the fault of the school," said my mother, shaking her head.
"It is the necessity of the school, and its virtue, my Kate. Let any
one of these wonderful children--wonderful as you thought Sisty himself-
-stay at home, and you will see its head grow bigger and bigger, and its
body thinner and thinner--eh, Mr. Squills?--till the mind take all
nourishment from the frame, and the frame, in turn, stint or make sickly
the mind. You see that noble oak from the window. If the Chinese had
brought it up, it would have been a tree in miniature at five years old,
and at a hundred, you would have set it in a flowerpot on your table, no
bigger than it was at five,--a curiosity for its maturity at one age; a
show for its diminutiveness at the other. No! the ordeal for talent is
school; restore the stunted mannikin to the growing child, and then let
the child, if it can, healthily, hardily, naturally, work its slow way
up into greatness. If greatness be denied it, it will at least be a
man; and that is better than to be a little Johnny Styles all its life,-
-an oak in a pill-box."
At that moment I rushed into the room, glowing and panting, health on my
cheek, vigor in my limbs, all childhood at my heart. "Oh, mamma, I have
got up the kite--so high Come and see. Do come, papa!"
"Certainly," said my father; "only don't cry so loud,--kites make no
noise in rising; yet, you see how they soar above the world. Come,
Kate. Where is my hat? Ah!--thank you, my boy."
"Kitty," said my father, looking at the kite, which, attached by its
string to the peg I had stuck into the ground, rested calm in the sky,
"never fear but what our kite shall fly as high; only, the human soul
has stronger instincts to mount upward than a few sheets of paper on a
framework of lath. But observe that to prevent its being lost in the
freedom of space,--we must attach it lightly to earth; and observe
again, my dear, that the higher it soars, the more string we must give
it."
PART II.
CHAPTER I.
When I had reached the age of twelve, I had got to the head of the
preparatory school to which I had been sent. And having thus exhausted
all the oxygen of learning in that little receiver, my parents looked
out for a wider range for my inspirations. During the last two years in
which I had been at school, my love for study had returned; but it was a
vigorous, wakeful, undreamy love, stimulated by competition, and
animated by the practical desire to excel.
My father no longer sought to curb my intellectual aspirings. He had
too great a reverence for scholarship not to wish me to become a scholar
if possible; though he more than once said to me somewhat sadly, "Master
books, but do not let them master you. Read to live, not live to read.
One slave of the lamp is enough for a household; my servitude must not
be a hereditary bondage."
My father looked round for a suitable academy; and the fame of Dr.
Herman's "Philhellenic Institute" came to his ears.
Now, this Dr. Herman was the son of a German music-master who had
settled in England. He had completed his own education at the
University of Bonn; but finding learning too common a drug in that
market to bring the high price at which he valued his own, and having
some theories as to political freedom which attached him to England, he
resolved upon setting up a school, which he designed as an "Era in the
History of the Human Mind." Dr. Herman was one of the earliest of those
new-fashioned authorities in education who have, more lately, spread
pretty numerously amongst us, and would have given, perhaps, a dangerous
shake to the foundations of our great classical seminaries, if those
last had not very wisely, though very cautiously, borrowed some of the
more sensible principles which lay mixed and adulterated amongst the
crotchets and chimeras of their innovating rivals and assailants.
Dr. Herman had written a great many learned works against every pre-
existing method of instruction; that which had made the greatest noise
was upon the infamous fiction of Spelling-Books: "A more lying,
roundabout, puzzle-headed delusion than that by which we Confuse the
clear instincts of truth in our accursed systems of spelling, was never
concocted by the father of falsehood." Such was the exordium of this
famous treatise. "For instance, take the monosyllable Cat. What a
brazen forehead you must have when you say to an infant, c, a, t,--spell
Cat: that is, three sounds, forming a totally opposite compound,--
opposite in every detail, opposite in the whole,--compose a poor little
monosyllable which, if you would but say the simple truth, the child
will learn to spell merely by looking at it! How can three sounds,
which run thus to the ear, see-eh-tee, compose the sound cat? Don't
they rather compose the sound see-eh-te, or ceaty? How can a system of
education flourish that begins by so monstrous a falsehood, which the
sense of hearing suffices to contradict? No wonder that the horn-book
is the despair of mothers! "From this instance the reader will perceive
that Dr. Herman, in his theory of education, began at the beginning,--he
took the bull fairly by the horns. As for the rest, upon a broad
principle of eclecticism, he had combined together every new patent
invention for youthful idea-shooting. He had taken his trigger from
Hofwyl; he had bought his wadding from Hamilton; he had got his copper-
caps from Bell and Lancaster. The youthful idea,--he had rammed it
tight! he had rammed it loose! he had rammed it with pictorial
illustrations! he had rammed it with the monitorial system! he had
rammed it in every conceivable way, and with every imaginable ramrod!
but I have mournful doubts whether he shot the youthful idea an inch
farther than it did under the old mechanism of flint and steel!
Nevertheless, as Dr. Herman really did teach a great many things too
much neglected at schools; as, besides Latin and Greek, he taught a vast
variety in that vague infinite nowadays called "useful knowledge;" as he
engaged lecturers on chemistry, engineering, and natural history; as
arithmetic and the elements of physical science were enforced with zeal
and care; as all sorts of gymnastics were intermingled with the sports
of the playground,--so the youthful idea, if it did not go farther,
spread its shots in a wider direction, and a boy could not stay there
five years without learning something: which is more than can be said of
all schools! He learned at least to use his eyes and his ears and his
limbs; order, cleanliness, exercise, grew into habits; and the school
pleased the ladies and satisfied the gentlemen,--in a word, it thrived;
and Dr. Herman, at the time I speak of, numbered more than one hundred
pupils. Now, when the worthy man first commenced the task of tuition,
he had proclaimed the humanest abhorrence to the barbarous system of
corporal punishment. But alas! as his school increased in numbers, he
had proportionately recanted these honorable and anti-birchen ideas. He
had--reluctantly, perhaps, honestly, no doubt; but with full
determination--come to the conclusion that there are secret springs
which can only be detected by the twigs of the divining-rod; and having
discovered with what comparative ease the whole mechanism of his little
government could be carried on by the admission of the birch-regulator,
so, as he grew richer and lazier and fatter, the Philhellenic Institute
spun along as glibly as a top kept in vivacious movement by the
perpetual application of the lash.
I believe that the school did not suffer in reputation from this sad
apostasy on the part of the head-master; on the contrary, it seemed more
natural and English,--less outlandish and heretical. And it was at the
zenith of its renown when, one bright morning, with all my clothes
nicely mended, and a large plum-cake in my box, I was deposited at its
hospitable gates.
Amongst Dr. Herman's various whimsicalities there was one to which he
had adhered with more fidelity than to the anti-corporal punishment
articles of his creed; and, in fact, it was upon this that he had caused
those imposing words, "Philhellenic Institute," to blaze in gilt
capitals in front of his academy. He belonged to that illustrious class
of scholars who are now waging war on our popular mythologies, and
upsetting all the associations which the Etonians and Harrovians connect
with the household names of ancient history. In a word, he sought to
restore to scholastic purity the mutilated orthography of Greek
appellatives. He was extremely indignant that little boys should be
brought up to confound Zeus with Jupiter, Ares with Mars, Artemis with
Diana,--the Greek deities with the Roman; and so rigidly did he
inculcate the doctrine that these two sets of personages were to be kept
constantly contradistinguished from each other, that his cross-
examinations kept us in eternal confusion.
"Vat," he would exclaim to some new boy fresh from some grammar-school
on the Etonian system--"Vat do you mean by dranslating Zeus Jupiter? Is
dat amatory, irascible, cloud-compelling god of Olympus, vid his eagle
and his aegis, in the smallest degree resembling de grave, formal, moral
Jupiter Optimus Maximus of the Roman Capitol?--a god, Master Simpkins,
who would have been perfectly shocked at the idea of running after
innocent Fraulein dressed up as a swan or a bull! I put dat question to
you vonce for all, Master Simpkins." Master Simpkins took care to agree
with the Doctor. "And how could you," resumed Dr. Herman majestically,
turning to some other criminal alumnus,--"how could you presume to
dranslate de Ares of Homer, sir, by the audacious vulgarism Mars?---
Ares, Master Jones, who roared as loud as ten thousand men when he was
hurt; or as you vill roar if I catch you calling him Mars again?---Ares,
who covered seven plectra of ground? Confound Ares, the manslayer, with
the Mars or Mavors whom de Romans stole from de Sabines!--Mars, de
solemn and calm protector of Rome! Master Jones, Master Jones, you
ought to be ashamed of yourself!" And then waxing enthusiastic, and
warming more and more into German gutturals and pronunciation, the good
Doctor would lift up his hands, with two great rings on his thumbs, and
exclaim: "Und Du! and dou, Aphrodite,--dou, whose bert de seasons vel-
coined! dou, who didst put Atonis into a coffer, and den tid durn him
into an anemone! dou to be called Venus by dat snivel-nosed little
Master Budderfield!--Venus, who presided over Baumgartens and funerals
and nasty tinking sewers!---Venus Cloacina, O mein Gott! Come here,
Master Budderfield: I must flog you for dat; I must indeed, liddle boy!"
As our Philhellenic preceptor carried his archaeological purism into all
Greek proper names, it was not likely that my unhappy baptismal would
escape. The first time I signed my exercise I wrote "Pisistratus
Caxton" in my best round-hand. "And dey call your baba a scholar!" said
the Doctor, contemptuously. "Your name, sir, is Greek; and, as Greek,
you vill be dood enough to write it, vith vat you call an e and an o,--
P,e,i,s,i,s,t,r,a,t,o,s. Vat can you expect for to come to, Master
Caxton, if you don't pay de care dat is proper to your own dood name,--
de e, and de o? Ach? let me see no more of your vile corruptions! Mein
Gott! Pi! ven de name is Pei!"
The next time I wrote home to my father, modestly implying that I was
short of cash, that a trap-bat would be acceptable, and that the
favorite goddess amongst the boys (whether Greek or Roman was very
immaterial) was Diva Moneta, I felt a glow of classical pride in signing
myself "your affectionate Peisistratos." The next post brought a sad
damper to my scholastic exultation. The letter ran thus:--
My Dear Son,--I prefer my old acquaintances Thucydides and
Pisistratus to Thoukudides and Peisistratos. Horace is familiar to
me, but Horatius is only known to me as Cocles. Pisistratus can
play at trap-ball; but I find no authority in pure Greek to allow
me to suppose that that game was known to Peisistratos. I should
be too happy to send you a drachma or so, but I have no coins in my
possession current at Athens at the time when Pisistratus was spelt
Peisistratos.--Your affectionate father,
A. CAXTON.
Verily, here indeed was the first practical embarrassment produced by
that melancholy anachronism which my father had so prophetically
deplored. However, nothing like experience to prove the value of
compromise in this world. Peisistratos continued to write exercises,
and a second letter from Pisistratus was followed by the trap-bat.
CHAPTER II.
I was somewhere about sixteen when, on going home for the holidays, I
found my mother's brother settled among the household Lares. Uncle
Jack, as he was familiarly called, was a light-hearted, plausible,
enthusiastic, talkative fellow, who had spent three small fortunes in
trying to make a large one.
Uncle Jack was a great speculator; but in all his speculations he never
affected to think of himself,--it was always the good of his fellow-
creatures that he had at heart, and in this ungrateful world fellow-
creatures are not to be relied upon! On coining of age, he inherited
L6,000, from his maternal grandfather. It seemed to him then that his
fellow-creatures were sadly imposed upon by their tailors. Those ninth
parts of humanity notoriously eked out their fractional existence by
asking nine times too much for the clothing which civilization, and
perhaps a change of climate, render more necessary to us than to our
predecessors, the Picts. Out of pure philanthropy, Uncle Jack started
a "Grand National Benevolent Clothing Company," which undertook to
supply the public with inexpressibles of the best Saxon cloth at 7s. 6d.
a pair; coats, superfine, L1 18s.; and waistcoats at so much per dozen,
--they were all to be worked off by steam. Thus the rascally tailors
were to be put down, humanity clad, and the philanthropists rewarded
(but that was a secondary consideration) with a clear return of thirty
per cent. In spite of the evident charitableness of this Christian
design, and the irrefragable calculations upon which it was based, this
company died a victim to the ignorance and unthankfulness of our fellow-
creatures; and all that remained of Jack's L6,000, was a fifty-fourth
share in a small steam-engine, a large assortment of ready-made
pantaloons, and the liabilities of the directors.
Uncle Jack disappeared, and went on his travels. The same spirit of
philanthropy which characterized the speculations of his purse attended
the risks of his person. Uncle Jack had a natural leaning towards all
distressed communities: if any tribe, race, or nation was down in the
world, Uncle Jack threw himself plump into the scale to redress the
balance. Poles, Greeks (the last were then fighting the Turks),
Mexicans, Spaniards,--Uncle Jack thrust his nose into all their
squabbles! Heaven forbid I should mock thee, poor Uncle Jack! for those
generous predilections towards the unfortunate; only, whenever a nation
is in a misfortune, there is always a job going on! The Polish cause,
the Greek cause, the Alexican cause, and the Spanish cause are
necessarily mixed up with loans and subscriptions. These Continental
patriots, when they take up the sword with one hand, generally contrive
to thrust their other hand deep into their neighbor's breeches' pockets.
Uncle Jack went to Greece, thence he went to Spain, thence to Mexico.
No doubt he was of great service to those afflicted populations, for he
came back with unanswerable proof of their gratitude in the shape of
L3,000. Shortly after this appeared a prospectus of the "New, Grand,
National, Benevolent Insurance Company, for the Industrial Classes."
This invaluable document, after setting forth the immense benefits to
society arising from habits of providence and the introduction of
insurance companies,--proving the infamous rate of premiums exacted by
the existent offices, and their inapplicability to the wants of the
honest artisan, and declaring that nothing but the purest intentions of
benefiting their fellow-creatures, and raising the moral tone of
society, had led the directors to institute a new society, founded on
the noblest principles and the most moderate calculations,--proceeded to
demonstrate that twenty-four and a half per cent was the smallest
possible return the shareholders could anticipate. The company began
under the fairest auspices; an archbishop was caught as president, on
the condition always that he should give nothing but his name to the
society. Uncle Jack--more euphoniously designated as "the celebrated
philanthropist, John Jones Tibbets, Esquire"--was honorary secretary,
and the capital stated at two millions. But such was the obtuseness of
the industrial classes, so little did they perceive the benefits of
subscribing one-and-ninepence a-week from the age of twenty-one to
fifty, in order to secure at the latter age the annuity of L18, that the
company dissolved into thin air, and with it dissolved also Uncle Jack's
L3,000. Nothing more was then seen or heard of him for three years. So
obscure was his existence that on the death of an aunt, who left him a
small farm in Cornwall, it was necessary to advertise that "If John
Jones Tibbets, Esq., would apply to Messrs. Blunt & Tin, Lothbury,
between the hours of ten and four, he would hear of something to his
advantage." But even as a conjurer declares that he will call the ace
of spades, and the ace of spades, that you thought you had safely under
your foot, turns up on the table,--so with this advertisement suddenly
turned up Uncle Jack. With inconceivable satisfaction did the new
landowner settle himself in his comfortable homestead. The farm, which
was about two hundred acres, was in the best possible condition, and
saving one or two chemical preparations, which cost Uncle Jack, upon the
most scientific principles, thirty acres of buckwheat, the ears of which
came up, poor things, all spotted and speckled as if they had been
inoculated with the small-pox, Uncle Jack for the first two years was a
thriving man. Unluckily, however, one day Uncle Jack discovered a coal-
mine in a beautiful field of Swedish turnips; in another week the house
was full of engineers and naturalists, and in another month appeared; in
my uncle's best style, much improved by practice, a prospectus of the
"Grand National Anti-Monopoly Coal Company, instituted on behalf of the
poor householders of London, and against the Monster Monopoly of the
London Coal Wharves.
"A vein of the finest coal has been discovered on the estates of the
celebrated philanthropist, John Jones Tibbets, Esq. This new mine, the
Molly Wheel, having been satisfactorily tested by that eminent engineer,
Giles Compass, Esq., promises an inexhaustible field to the energies of
the benevolent and the wealth of the capitalist. It is calculated that
the best coals may be delivered, screened, at the mouth of the Thames
for 18s. per load, yielding a profit of not less than forty-eight per
cent to the shareholders. Shares L50, to be paid in five instalments.
Capital to be subscribed, one million. For shares, early application
must be made to Messrs. Blunt & Tin, solicitors, Lothbury."
Here, then, was something tangible for fellow-creatures to go on: there
was land, there was a mine, there was coal, and there actually came
shareholders and capital. Uncle Jack was so persuaded that his fortune
was now to be made, and had, moreover, so great a desire to share the
glory of ruining the monster monopoly of the London wharves, that he
refused a very large offer to dispose of the property altogether,
remained chief shareholder, and removed to London, where he set up his
carriage and gave dinners to his fellow-directors. For no less than
three years did this company flourish, having submitted the entire
direction and working of the mines to that eminent engineer, Giles
Compass. Twenty per cent was paid regularly by that gentleman to the
shareholders, and the shares were at more than cent per cent, when one
bright morning Giles Compass, Esq., unexpectedly removed himself to that
wider field for genius like his, the United States; and it was
discovered that the mine had for more than a year run itself into a
great pit of water, and that Mr. Compass had been paying the
shareholders out of their own capital. My uncle had the satisfaction
this time of being ruined in very good company; three doctors of
divinity, two county members, a Scotch lord, and an East India director
were all in the same boat,--that boat which went down with the coal-mine
into the great water-pit!
It was just after this event that Uncle Jack, sanguine and light-hearted
as ever, suddenly recollected his sister, Mrs. Caxton, and not knowing
where else to dine, thought he would repose his limbs under my father's
trabes citrea, which the ingenious W. S. Landor opines should be
translated "mahogany." You never saw a more charming man than Uncle
Jack.
All plump people are more popular than thin people. There is something
jovial and pleasant in the sight of a round face! What conspiracy could
succeed when its head was a lean and hungry-looking fellow, like
Cassius? If the Roman patriots had had Uncle Jack amongst them, perhaps
they would never have furnished a tragedy to Shakspeare. Uncle Jack was
as plump as a partridge,--not unwieldy, not corpulent, not obese, not
vastus, which Cicero objects to in an orator, but every crevice
comfortably filled up. Like the ocean, "time wrote no wrinkles on his
glassy [or brassy] brow." His natural lines were all upward curves, his
smile most ingratiating, his eye so frank, even his trick of rubbing his
clean, well-feel, English-looking hands, had something about it coaxing
and debonnaire, something that actually decoyed you into trusting your
money into hands so prepossessing. Indeed, to him might be fully
applied the expression--Sedem animce in extremis digitis habet,--"He had
his soul's seat in his finger-ends." The critics observe that few men
have ever united in equal perfection the imaginative with the scientific
faculties. "Happy he," exclaims Schiller, "who combines the
enthusiast's warmth with the worldly man's light:" light and warmth,
Uncle Jack had them both. He was a perfect symphony of bewitching
enthusiasm and convincing calculation. Dicaeopolis in the
"Aeharnenses," in presenting a gentleman called Nicharchus to the
audience, observes: "He is small, I confess, but, there is nothing lost
in him: all is knave that is not fool." Parodying the equivocal
compliment, I may say that though Uncle Jack was no giant, there was
nothing lost in him. Whatever was not philanthropy was arithmetic, and
whatever was not arithmetic was philanthropy. He would have been
equally dear to Howard and to Cocker. Uncle Jack was comely too,--
clear-skinned and florid, had a little mouth, with good teeth, wore no
whiskers, shaved his beard as close as if it were one of his grand
national companies; his hair, once somewhat sandy, was now rather
grayish, which increased the respectability of his appearance; and he
wore it flat at the sides and raised in a peak at the top; his organs of
constructiveness and ideality were pronounced by Mr. Squills to be
prodigious, and those freely developed bumps gave great breadth to his
forehead. Well-shaped, too, was Uncle Jack, about five feet eight,--the
proper height for an active man of business. He wore a black coat; but
to make the nap look the fresher, he had given it the relief of gilt
buttons, on--which were wrought a small crown and anchor; at a distance
this button looked like the king's button, and gave him the air of one
who has a place about Court. He always wore a white neckcloth without
starch, a frill, and a diamond pin, which last furnished him with
observations upon certain mines of Mexico, which he had a great, but
hitherto unsatisfied, desire of seeing worked by a grand National United
Britons Company. His waistcoat of a morning was pale buff--of an
evening, embroidered velvet; wherewith were connected sundry schemes of
an "association for the improvement of native manufactures." His
trousers, matutinally, were of the color vulgarly called "blotting-
paper;" and he never wore boots,--which, he said, unfitted a man for
exercise,--but short drab gaiters and square-toed shoes. His watch-
chain was garnished with a vast number of seals; each seal, indeed,
represented the device of some defunct company, and they might be said
to resemble the scalps of the slain worn by the aboriginal Iroquois,--
concerning whom, indeed, he had once entertained philanthropic designs,
compounded of conversion to Christianity on the principles of the
English Episcopal Church, and of an advantageous exchange of beaver-
skins for Bibles, brandy, and gunpowder.
That Uncle Jack should win my heart was no wonder; my mother's he had
always won, from her earliest recollection of his having persuaded her
to let her great doll (a present from her godmother) be put up to a
raffle for the benefit of the chimney-sweepers. "So like him,--so
good!" she would often say pensively. "They paid sixpence apiece for
the raffle,--twenty tickets,--and the doll cost L2. Nobody was taken
in, and the doll, poor thing (it had such blue eyes!) went for a quarter
of its value. But Jack said nobody could guess what good the ten
shillings did to the chimney-sweepers." Naturally enough, I say, my
mother liked Uncle Jack; but my father liked him quite as well,--and
that was a strong proof of my uncle's powers of captivation. However,
it is noticeable that when some retired scholar is once interested in an
active man of the world, he is more inclined to admire him than others
are. Sympathy with such a companion gratifies at once his curiosity and
his indolence; he can travel with him, scheme with him, fight with him,
go with him through all the adventures of which his own books speak so
eloquently, and all the time never stir from his easy-chair. My father
said "that it was like listening to Ulysses to hear Uncle Jack!" Uncle
Jack, too, had been in Greece and Asia Minor, gone over the site of the
siege of Troy, eaten figs at Marathon, shot hares in the Peloponnesus,
and drunk three pints of brown stout at the top of the Great Pyramid.
Therefore, Uncle Jack was like a book of reference to my father. Verily
at times he looked on him as a book, and took him down after dinner as
he would a volume of Dodwell or Pausanias. In fact, I believe that
scholars who never move from their cells are not the less an eminently
curious, bustling, active race, rightly understood. Even as old Burton
saith of himself--"Though I live a collegiate student, and lead a
monastic life, sequestered from those tumults and troubles of the world,
I hear and see what is done abroad, how others run, ride, turmoil, and
macerate themselves in town and country,"--which citation sufficeth to
show that scholars are naturally the most active men of the world; only
that while their heads plot with Augustus, fight with Julius, sail with
Columbus, and change the face of the globe with Alexander, Attila, or
Mahomet, there is a certain mysterious attraction, which our improved
knowledge of mesmerism will doubtless soon explain to the satisfaction
of science, between that extremer and antipodal part of the human frame,
called in the vulgate "the seat of honor," and the stuffed leather of an
armed chair. Learning somehow or other sinks down to that part into
which it was first driven, and produces therein a leaden heaviness and
weight, which counteract those lively emotions of the brain that might
otherwise render students too mercurial and agile for the safety of
established order. I leave this conjecture to the consideration of
experimentalists in the physics.
I was still more delighted than my father with Uncle Jack. He was full
of amusing tricks, could conjure wonderfully, make a bunch of keys dance
a hornpipe, and if ever you gave him half-a-crown, he was sure to turn
it into a halfpenny.
He was only unsuccessful in turning my halfpennies into half-crowns.
We took long walks together, and in the midst of his most diverting
conversation my uncle was always an observer. He would stop to examine
the nature of the soil, fill my pockets (not his own) with great lumps
of clay, stones, and rubbish, to analyze when he got home, by the help
of some chemical apparatus he had borrowed from Mr. Squills. He would
stand an hour at a cottage door, admiring the little girls who were
straw-platting, and then walk into the nearest farmhouses, to suggest
the feasibility of "a national straw-plat association." All this
fertility of intellect was, alas! wasted in that ingrata terra into
which Uncle Jack had fallen. No squire could be persuaded into the
belief that his mother-stone was pregnant with minerals; no farmer
talked into weaving straw-plat into a proprietary association. So, even
as an ogre, having devastated the surrounding country, begins to cast a
hungry eye on his own little ones, Uncle Jack's mouth, long defrauded of
juicier and more legitimate morsels, began to water for a bite of my
innocent father.
CHAPTER III.
At this time we were living in what may be called a very respectable
style for people who made no pretence to ostentation. On the skirts of
a large village stood a square red-brick house, about the date of Queen
Anne. Upon the top of the house was a balustrade,--why, Heaven knows,
for nobody, except our great tom-cat, Ralph, ever walked upon the leads;
but so it was, and so it often is in houses from the time of Elizabeth,
yea, even to that of Victoria. This balustrade was divided by low
piers, on each of which was placed a round ball. The centre of the
house was distinguishable by an architrave in the shape of a triangle,
under which was a niche,--probably meant for a figure; but the figure
was not forthcoming. Below this was the window (encased with carved
pilasters) of my dear mother's little sitting-room; and lower still,
raised on a flight of six steps, was a very handsome-looking door, with
a projecting porch. All the windows, with smallish panes and largish
frames, were relieved with stone copings; so that the house had an air
of solidity and well-to-do-ness about it,--nothing tricky on the one
hand, nothing decayed on the other. The house stood a little back from
the garden gates, which were large, and set between two piers surmounted
with vases. Many might object that in wet weather you had to walk some
way to your carriage; but we obviated that objection by not keeping a
carriage. To the right of the house the enclosure contained a little
lawn, a laurel hermitage, a square pond, a modest greenhouse, and half-
a-dozen plots of mignonette, heliotrope, roses, pinks, sweet-William,
etc. To the left spread the kitchen-garden, lying screened by espaliers
yielding the finest apples in the neighborhood, and divided by three
winding gravel-walks, of which the extremest was backed by a wall,
whereon, as it lay full south, peaches, pears, and nectarines sunned
themselves early into well-remembered flavor. This walk was
appropriated to my father. Book in hand, he would, on fine days, pace
to and fro, often stopping, dear man, to jot down a pencil-note,
gesticulate, or soliloquize. And there, when not in his study, my
mother would be sure to find him. In these deambulations, as he called
them, he had generally a companion so extraordinary that I expect to be
met with a hillalu of incredulous contempt when I specify it.
Nevertheless I vow and protest that it is strictly true, and no
invention of an exaggerating romancer. It happened one day that my
mother had coaxed Mr. Caxton to walk with her to market. By the way
they passed a sward of green, on which sundry little boys were engaged
upon the lapidation of a lame duck. It seemed that the duck was to have
been taken to market, when it was discovered not only to be lame, but
dyspeptic,--perhaps some weed had disagreed with its ganglionic
apparatus, poor thing. However that be, the good-wife had declared that
the duck was good for nothing; and upon the petition of her children, it
had been consigned to them for a little innocent amusement, and to keep
them out of harm's way. My mother declared that she never before saw
her lord and master roused to such animation. He dispersed the urchins,
released the duck, carried it home, kept it in a basket by the fire, fed
it and physicked it till it recovered; and then it was consigned to the
square pond. But lo! the duck knew its benefactor; and whenever my
father appeared outside his door, it would catch sight of him, flap from
the pond, gain the lawn, and hobble after him (for it never quite
recovered the use of its left leg) till it reached the walk by the
peaches; and there sometimes it would sit, gravely watching its master's
deambulations, sometimes stroll by his side, and, at all events, never
leave him till, at his return home, he fed it with his own hands; and,
quacking her peaceful adieus, the nymph then retired to her natural
element.
With the exception of my mother's favorite morning-room, the principal
sitting-rooms--that is, the study, the diningroom, and what was
emphatically called "the best drawing-room," which was only occupied on
great occasions--looked south. Tall beeches, firs, poplars, and a few
oaks backed the house, and indeed surrounded it on all sides but the
south; so that it was well sheltered from the winter cold and the summer
heat. Our principal domestic, in dignity and station, was Mrs.
Primmins, who was waiting gentlewoman, housekeeper, and tyrannical
dictatrix of the whole establishment. Two other maids, a gardener, and
a footman, composed the rest of the serving household. Save a few
pasture-fields, which he let, my father was not troubled with land. His
income was derived from the interest of about L15,000, partly in the
Three per Cents, partly on mortgage; and what with my mother and Mrs.
Primmins, this income always yielded enough to satisfy my father's
single hobby for books, pay for my education, and entertain our
neighbors, rarely indeed at dinner, but very often at tea. My dear
mother boasted that our society was very select. It consisted chiefly
of the clergyman and his family; two old maids who gave themselves great
airs; a gentleman who had been in the East India service, and who lived
in a large white house at the top of the hill; some half-a-dozen squires
and their wives and children; Mr. Squills, still a bachelor; and once a
year cards were exchanged--and dinners too--with certain aristocrats who
inspired my mother with a great deal of unnecessary awe, since she
declared they were the most good-natured, easy people in the world, and
always stuck their cards in the most conspicuous part of the looking-
glass frame over the chimney-piece of the best drawing-room. Thus you
perceive that our natural position was one highly creditable to us,
proving the soundness of our finances and the gentility of our
pedigree,--of which last more hereafter. At present I content myself
with saying on that head that even the proudest of the neighboring
squirearchs always spoke of us as a very ancient family. But all my
father ever said, to evince pride of ancestry, was in honor of William
Caxton, citizen and printer in the reign of Edward IV.,--Clarum et
venerabile nomen! an ancestor a man of letters might be justly vain of.
"Heus," said my father, stopping short, and lifting his eyes from the
Colloquies of Erasmus, "salve multum, jucundissime."
Uncle Jack was not much of a scholar, but he knew enough Latin to
answer, "Salve tantundem, mi frater."
My father smiled approvingly. "I see you comprehend true urbanity, or
politeness, as we phrase it. There is an elegance in addressing the
husband of your sister as brother. Erasmus commends it in his opening
chapter, under the head of Salutandi formuloe. And indeed," added my
father, thoughtfully, "there is no great difference between politeness
and affection. My author here observes that it is polite to express
salutation in certain minor distresses of nature. One should salute a
gentleman in yawning, salute him in hiccuping, salute him in sneezing,
salute him in coughing,--and that evidently because of your interest in
his health; for he may dislocate his jaw in yawning, and the hiccup is
often a symptom of grave disorder, and sneezing is perilous to the small
blood-vessels of the head, and coughing is either a tracheal, bronchial,
pulmonary, or ganglionic affection."
"Very true. The Turks always salute in sneezing, and they are a
remarkably polite people," said Uncle Jack. "But, my dear brother, I
was just looking with admiration at these apple-trees of yours. I never
saw finer. I am a great judge of apples. I find, in talking with my
sister, that you make very little profit by them. That's a pity. One
might establish a cider orchard in this county. You can take your own
fields in hand; you can hire more, so as to make the whole, say a
hundred acres. You can plant a very extensive apple-orchard on a grand
scale. I have just run through the calculations; they are quite
startling. Take 40 trees per acre--that's the proper average--at 1s.
6d. per tree; 4,000 trees for 100 acres, L300; labor of digging,
trenching, say L10 an acre,--total for 100 acres, L1,000. Pave the
bottoms of the holes to prevent the tap-root striking down into the bad
soil,--oh! I am very close and careful you see, in all minutiae; always
was,--pave 'em with rubbish and stones, 6d. a hole; that for 4,000
trees the 100 acres is L100. Add the rent of the land, at 30s. an
acre,--L150. And how stands the total?" Here Uncle Jack proceeded
rapidly ticking off the items with his fingers:--
"Trees ........... 300
Labor ........... 1,000
Paving holes .... 100
Rent ............ 150
____
Total ....... L1,550
"That's your expense. Mark! Now to the profit. Orchards in Kent realize
L100 an acre, some even L150; but let's be moderate, say only L50 an
acre, and your gross profit per year, from a capital of L1,550, will be
L5,000,--L5,000 a-year. Think of that, brother Caxton! Deduct 10 per
cent, or L500 a-year, for gardeners' wages, manure, etc., and the net
product is L4,500. Your fortune's made, man,--it is made; I wish you
joy!" And Uncle Jack rubbed his hands.
"Bless me, father," said eagerly the young Pisistratus, who had
swallowed with ravished ears every syllable and figure of this inviting
calculation, "why, we should be as rich as Squire Rollick; and then, you
know, sir, you could keep a pack of fox-hounds."
"And buy a large library," added Uncle Jack, with more subtle knowledge
of human nature as to its appropriate temptations. "There's my friend
the archbishop's collection to be sold."
Slowly recovering his breath, my father gently turned his eyes from one
to the other; and then, laying his left hand on my head, while with the
right he held up Erasmus rebukingly to Uncle Jack, said,--
"See how easily you can sow covetousness and avidity in the youthful
mind. Ah, brother!"
"You are too severe, sir. See how the dear boy hangs his head! Fie!
natural enthusiasm of his years,--'gay hope by fancy fed,' as the poet
says. Why, for that fine boy's sake you ought not to lose so certain an
occasion of wealth, I may say, untold. For observe, you will form a
nursery of crabs; each year you go on grafting and enlarging your
plantation, renting,--nay, why not buying, more land? Gad, sir! in
twenty years you might cover half the county; but say you stop short at
2,000 acres, why the net profit is L90,000 a-year. A duke's income,--a
duke's; and going a-begging, as I may say."
"But stop," said I, modestly; "the trees don't grow in a year. I know
when our last apple-tree was planted--it is five years ago--it was then
three years old, and it only bore one half-bushel last autumn."
"What an intelligent lad it is! Good head there. Oh, he'll do credit
to his great fortune, brother," said Uncle Jack, approvingly. "True, my
boy. But in the mean while we could fill the ground, as they do in
Kent, with gooseberries and currants, or onions and cabbages.
Nevertheless, considering we are not great capitalists, I am afraid we
must give up a share of our profits to diminish our outlay. So harkye,
Pisistratus--look at him, brother, simple as he stands there, I think he
is born with a silver spoon in his mouth--harkye, now to the mysteries
of speculation. Your father shall quietly buy the land, and then,
presto! we will issue a prospectus and start a company. Associations
can wait five years for a return. Every year, meanwhile, increases the
value of the shares. Your father takes, we say, fifty shares at L50
each, paying only an instalment of L2 a share. He sells 35 shares at
cent per cent. He keeps the remaining 15, and his fortune's made all
the same; only it is not quite so large as if he had kept the whole
concern in his own hands. What say you now, brother Caxton? Visne
edere pomum? as we used to say at school."
"I don't want a shilling more than I have got," said my father,
resolutely. "My wife would not love me better; my food would not
nourish me more; my boy would not, in all probability, be half so hardy,
or a tenth part so industrious; and--"
"But," interrupted Uncle Jack, pertinaciously, and reserving his grand
argument for the last, "the good you would confer on the community; the
progress given to the natural productions of your country; the wholesome
beverage of cider brought within cheap reach of the laboring classes.
If it was only for your sake, should I have urged this question? Should
I now? Is it in my character? But for the sake of the public! mankind!
of our fellow-creatures! Why, sir, England could not get on if
gentlemen like you had not a little philanthropy and speculation."
"Papoe!" exclaimed my father; "to think that England can't get on
without turning Austin Caxton into an apple-merchant! My dear Jack,
listen. You remind me of a colloquy in this book,--wait a bit, here it
is, 'Pamphagus and Cocles.' Cocles recognizes his friend, who had been
absent for many years, by his eminent and remarkable nose. Pamphagus
says, rather irritably, that he is not ashamed of his nose. 'Ashamed of
it! no, indeed,' says Cocles; 'I never saw a nose that could be put to
so many uses!' 'Ha!' says Pamphagus (whose curiosity is aroused),
'uses! what uses?' Whereon (lepidissime frater!) Cocles, with eloquence
as rapid as yours, runs on with a countless list of the uses to which so
vast a development of the organ can be applied. 'If the cellar was
deep, it could sniff up the wine like an elephant's trunk; if the
bellows were missing, it could blow the fire; if the lamp was too
glaring, it could suffice for a shade; it would serve as a speaking-
trumpet to a herald; it could sound a signal of battle in the field; it
would do for a wedge in wood-cutting, a spade for digging, a scythe for
mowing, an anchor in sailing,'--till Painphagus cries out, 'Lucky dog
that I am! and I never knew before what a useful piece of furniture I
carried about with me.'" My father paused and strove to whistle; but
that effort of harmony failed him, and he added, smiling, "So much for
my apple-trees, brother John. Leave them to their natural destination
of filling tarts and dumplings."
Uncle Jack looked a little discomposed for a moment; but he then laughed
with his usual heartiness, and saw that he had not yet got to my
father's blind side. I confess that my revered parent rose in my
estimation after that conference; and I began to see that a man may not
be quite without common sense, though he is a scholar. Indeed, whether
it was that Uncle Jack's visit acted as a gentle stimulant to his
relaxed faculties, or that I, now grown older and wiser, began to see
his character more clearly, I date from those summer holidays the
commencement of that familiar and endearing intimacy which ever after
existed between my father and myself. Often I deserted the more
extensive rambles of Uncle Jack, or the greater allurements of a
cricket-match in the village, or a day's fishing in Squire Rollick's
preserves, for a quiet stroll with my father by the old peach wall,--
sometimes silent, indeed, and already musing over the future, while he
was busy with the past, but amply rewarded when, suspending his lecture,
he would pour forth hoards of varied learning, rendered amusing by his
quaint comments, and that Socratic satire which only fell short of wit
because it never passed into malice. At some moments, indeed, the vein
ran into eloquence; and with some fine heroic sentiment in his old
books, his stooping form rose erect, his eye flashed, and you saw that
he had not been originally formed and wholly meant for the obscure
seclusion in which his harmless days now wore contentedly away.
CHAPTER IV.
"Egad, sir, the county is going to the dogs! Our sentiments are not
represented in parliament or out of it. The 'County Mercury' has
ratted, and be hanged to it! and now we have not one newspaper in the
whole shire to express the sentiments of the respectable part of the
community!"
This speech was made on the occasion of one of the rare dinners given by
Mr. and Mrs. Caxton to the grandees of the neighborhood, and uttered by
no less a person than Squire Rollick, of Rollick Hall, chairman of the
quarter-sessions.
I confess that I (for I was permitted on that first occasion not only to
dine with the guests, but to outstay the ladies, in virtue of my growing
years and my promise to abstain from the decanters),--I confess, I say,
that I, poor innocent, was puzzled to conjecture what sudden interest in
the county newspaper could cause Uncle Jack to prick up his ears like a
warhorse at the sound of the drum and rush so incontinently across the
interval between Squire Rollick and himself. But the mind of that deep
and truly knowing man was not to be plumbed by a chit of my age. You
could not fish for the shy salmon in that pool with a crooked pin and a
bobbin, as you would for minnows; or, to indulge in a more worthy
illustration, you could not say of him, as Saint Gregory saith of the
streams of Jordan, "A lamb could wade easily through that ford."
"Not a county newspaper to advocate the rights of--" here my uncle
stopped, as if at a loss, and whispered in my ear; "What are his
politics?" "Don't know," answered I. Uncle Jack intuitively took down
from his memory the phrase most readily at hand, and added, with a nasal
intonation, "the rights of our distressed fellow-creatures!"
My father scratched his eyebrow with his fore-finger, as he was apt to
do when doubtful; the rest of the company--a silent set-looked up.
"Fellow-creatures!" said Mr. Rollick,--"fellow-fiddlesticks!"
Uncle Jack was clearly in the wrong box. He drew out of it cautiously,
--"I mean," said he, "our respectable fellow-creatures;" and then
suddenly it occurred to him that a "County Mercury" would naturally
represent the agricultural interest, and that if Mr. Rollick said that
the "'County Mercury' ought to be hanged," he was one of those
politicians who had already begun to call the agricultural interest "a
Vampire." Flushed with that fancied discovery, Uncle Jack rushed on,
intending to bear along with the stream, thus fortunately directed, all
the "rubbish" (1) subsequently shot into Covent Garden and Hall of
Commerce.
"Yes, respectable fellow-creatures, men of capital and enterprise! For
what are these country squires compared to our wealthy merchants? What
is this agricultural interest that professes to be the prop of the
land?"
"Professes!" cried Squire Rollick,--"it is the prop of the land; and as
for those manufacturing fellows who have bought up the 'Mercury'--"
"Bought up the 'Mercury,' have they, the villains?" cried Uncle Jack,
interrupting the Squire, and now bursting into full scent. "Depend upon
it, sir, it is a part of a diabolical system of buying up,--which must
be exposed manfully. Yes, as I was saying, what is that agricultural
interest which they desire to ruin; which they declare to be so bloated;
which they call 'a Vampire!'--they the true blood-suckers, the venomous
millocrats? Fellow-creatures, Sir! I may well call distressed fellow-
creatures the members of that much-suffering class of which you yourself
are an ornament. What can be more deserving of our best efforts for
relief than a country gentleman like yourself, we'll say,--of a nominal
L5,000 a-year,--compelled to keep up an establishment, pay for his fox-
hounds, support the whole population by contributions to the poor-rates,
support the whole church by tithes; all justice, jails, and prosecutions
of the county-rates; all thoroughfares by the highway-rates; ground down
by mortgages, Jews, or jointures; having to provide for younger
children; enormous expenses for cutting his woods, manuring his model
farm, and fattening huge oxen till every pound of flesh costs him five
pounds sterling in oil-cake; and then the lawsuits necessary to protect
his rights,--plundered on all hands by poachers, sheep-stealers, dog-
stealers, churchwardens, overseers, gardeners, gamekeepers, and that
necessary rascal, his steward. If ever there was a distressed fellow-
creature in the world, it is a country gentleman with a great estate."
My father evidently thought this an exquisite piece of banter, for by
the corner of his mouth I saw that he chuckled inly.
Squire Rollick, who had interrupted the speech by sundry approving
exclamations, particularly at the mention of poor-rates, tithes, county-
rates, mortgages, and poachers, here pushed the bottle to Uncle Jack,
and said, civilly: "There's a great deal of truth in what you say, Mr.
Tibbets. The agricultural interest is going to ruin; and when it does,
I would not give that for Old England!" and Mr. Rollick snapped his
finger and thumb. "But what is to be done,--done for the county?
There's the rub."
"I was just coming to that," quoth Uncle Jack. "You say that you have
not a county paper that upholds your cause and denounces your enemies."
"Not since the Whigs bought the '--shire Mercury.'"
"Why, good heavens! Mr. Rollick, how can you suppose that you will have
justice done you if at this time of day you neglect the Press? The
Press, sir--there it is--air we breathe! What you want is a great
national--no, not a national--A Provincial proprietary weekly journal,
supported liberally and steadily by that mighty party whose very
existence is at stake. Without such a paper you are gone, you are
dead,--extinct, defunct, buried alive; with such a paper,--well
conducted, well edited by a man of the world, of education, of practical
experience in agriculture and human nature, mines, corn, manure,
insurances, Acts of Parliament, cattle-shows, the state of parties, and
the best interests of society,--with such a man and such a paper, you
will carry all before you. But it must be done by subscription, by
association, by co-operation,--by a Grand Provincial Benevolent
Agricultural Anti-innovating Society."
"Egad, sir, you are right!" said Mr. Rollick, slapping his thigh; "and
I'll ride over to our Lord-Lieutenant to-morrow. His eldest son ought
to carry the county."
"And he will, if you encourage the Press and set up a journal," said
Uncle Jack, rubbing his hands, and then gently stretching them out and
drawing them gradually together, as if he were already enclosing in that
airy circle the unsuspecting guineas of the unborn association.
All happiness dwells more in the hope than the possession; and at that
moment I dare be sworn that Uncle Jack felt a livelier rapture circum
proecordia, warming his entrails, and diffusing throughout his whole
frame of five feet eight the prophetic glow of the Magna Diva Moneta,
than if he had enjoyed for ten years the actual possession of King
Croesus's privy purse.
"I thought Uncle Jack was not a Tory," said I to my father the next day.
My father, who cared nothing for politics, opened his eyes. "Are you a
Tory or a Whig, papa?"
"Um!" said my father, "there's a great deal to be said on both sides of
the question. You see, my boy, that Mrs. Primmins has a great many
moulds for our butter-pats: sometimes they come up with a crown on them,
sometimes with the more popular impress of a cow. It is all very well
for those who dish up the butter to print it according to their taste or
in proof of their abilities; it is enough for us to butter our bread,
say grace, and pay for the dairy. Do you understand?"
"Not a bit, sir."
"Your namesake Pisistratus was wiser than you, then," said my father.
"And now let us feed the duck. Where's your uncle?"
"He has borrowed Mr. Squills's mare, sir, and gone with Squire Rollick
to the great lord they were talking of."
"Oho!" said my father; "brother Jack is going to print his butter!"
And indeed Uncle Jack played his cards so well on this occasion, and set
before the Lord-Lieutenant, with whom he had a personal interview, so
fine a prospectus and so nice a calculation that before my holidays were
over, he was installed in a very handsome office in the county town,
with private apartments over it, and a salary of L500 a-year, for
advocating the cause of his distressed fellow-creatures, including
noblemen, squires, yeomanry, farmers, and all yearly subscribers in the
New Proprietary Agricultural Anti-Innovating-Shire Weekly Gazette. At
the head of his newspaper Uncle Jack caused to be engraved a crown,
supported by a flail and a crook, with the motto, "Pro rege et grege."
And that was the way in which Uncle Jack printed his pats of butter.
(1) "We talked sad rubbish when we first began," says Mr. Cobden, in
one of his speeches.
CHAPTER V.
I seemed to myself to have made a leap in life when I returned to
school. I no longer felt as a boy. Uncle Jack, out of his own purse,
had presented me with my first pair of Wellington boots; my mother had
been coaxed into allowing me a small tail to jackets hitherto tail-less;
my collars, which had been wont, spaniel-like, to flap and fall about my
neck, now, terrier-wise, stood erect and rampant, encompassed with a
circumvallation of whalebone, buckram, and black silk. I was, in truth,
nearly seventeen, and I gave myself the airs of a man. Now, be it
observed that that crisis in adolescent existence wherein we first pass
from Master Sisty into Mr. Pisistratus, or Pisistratus Caxton, Esq.;
wherein we arrogate, and with tacit concession from our elders, the
long-envied title of young man,--always seems a sudden and imprompt
upshooting and elevation. We do not mark the gradual preparations
thereto; we remember only one distinct period, in which all the signs
and symptoms burst and effloresced together,--Wellington boots, coat-
tail, cravat, down on the upper lip, thoughts on razors, reveries on
young ladies, and a new kind of sense of poetry.
I began now to read steadily, to understand what I did read, and to cast
some anxious looks towards the future, with vague notions that I had a
place to win in the world, and that nothing is to be won without
perseverance and labor; and so I went on till I was seventeen and at the
head of the school, when I received the two letters I subjoin.
1.--FROM AUGUSTINE CAXTON, Esq.
My Dear Son,--I have informed Dr. Herman that you will not return
to him after the approaching holidays. You are old enough now to
look forward to the embraces of our beloved Alma Mater, and I think
studious enough to hope for the honors she bestows on her worthier
sons. You are already entered at Trinity,--and in fancy I see my
youth return to me in your image. I see you wandering where the
Cam steals its way through those noble gardens; and, confusing you
with myself, I recall the old dreams that haunted me when the
chiming bells swung over the placid waters. Verum secretumque
Mouseion, quam multa dictatis, quam multa invenitis! There at that
illustrious college, unless the race has indeed degenerated, you
will measure yourself with young giants. You will see those who,
in the Law, the Church, the State, or the still cloisters of
Learning, are destined to become the eminent leaders of your age.
To rank amongst them you are not forbidden to aspire; he who in
youth "can scorn delights, and love laborious days," should pitch
high his ambition.
Your Uncle Jack says he has done wonders with his newspaper; though
Mr. Rollick grumbles, and declares that it is full of theories, and
that it puzzles the farmers. Uncle Jack, in reply, contends that
he creates an audience, not addresses one, and sighs that his
genius is thrown away in a provincial town. In fact, he really is
a very clever man, and might do much in London, I dare say. He
often comes over to dine and sleep, returning the next morning.
His energy is wonderful--and contagious. Can you imagine that he
has actually stirred up the flame of my vanity, by constantly
poking at the bars? Metaphor apart, I find myself collecting all
my notes and commonplaces, and wondering to see how easily they
fall into method, and take shape in chapters and books. I cannot
help smiling when I add, that I fancy I am going to become an
author; and smiling more when I think that your Uncle Jack should
have provoked me into so egregious an ambition. However, I have
read some passages of my book to your mother, and she says, "it is
vastly fine," which is encouraging. Your mother has great good
sense, though I don't mean to say that she has much learning,--
which is a wonder, considering that Pic de la Mirandola was nothing
to her father. Yet he died, dear great man, and never printed a
line; while I--positively I blush to think of my temerity! Adieu,
my son; make the best of the time that remains with you at the
Philhellenic. A full mind is the true Pantheism, plena Jovis. It
is only in some corner of the brain which we leave empty that Vice
can obtain a lodging. When she knocks at your door, my son, be
able to say, "No room for your ladyship; pass on." Your
affectionate father,
A. CAXTON.
2.--FROM Mrs. CAXTON.
My Dearest Sisty,--You are coming home! My heart is so full of
that thought that it seems to me as if I could not write anything
else. Dear child, you are coming home; you have done with school,
you have done with strangers,--you are our own, all our own son
again! You are mine again, as you were in the cradle, the nursery,
and the garden, Sisty, when we used to throw daisies at each other!
You will laugh at me so when I tell you that as soon as I heard you
were coming home for good, I crept away from the room, and went to
my drawer where I keep, you know, all my treasures. There was your
little cap that I worked myself, and your poor little nankeen
jacket that you were so proud to throw off--oh! and many other
relies of you when you were little Sisty, and I was not the cold,
formal "Mother" you call me now, but dear "Mamma." I kissed them,
Sisty, and said, "My little child is coming back to me again!" So
foolish was I, I forgot all the long years that have passed, and
fancied I could carry you again in my arms, and that I should again
coax you to say "God bless papa." Well, well! I write now between
laughing and crying. You cannot be what you were, but you are
still my own dear son,--your father's son; dearer to me than all
the world,--except that father.
I am so glad, too, that you will come so soon,--come while your
father is really warm with his book, and while you can encourage
and keep him to it. For why should be not be great and famous?
Why should not all admire him as we do? You know how proud of him
I always was; but I do so long to let the world know why I was so
proud. And yet, after all, it is not only because he is so wise
and learned, but because he is so good, and has such a large, noble
heart. But the heart must appear in the book too, as well as the
learning. For though it is full of things I don't understand,
every now and then there is something I do understand,--that seems
as if that heart spoke out to all the world.
Your uncle has undertaken to get it published, and your father is
going up to town with him about it, as soon as the first volume is
finished.
All are quite well except poor Mrs. Jones, who has the ague very
bad indeed; Primmins has made her wear a charm for it, and Mrs.
Jones actually declares she is already much better. One can't deny
that there may be a great deal in such things, though it seems
quite against the reason. Indeed your father says, "Why not? A
charm must be accompanied by a strong wish on the part of the
charmer that it may succeed,--and what is magnetism but a wish?" I
don't quite comprehend this; but, like all your father says, it has
more than meets the eye, I am quite sure.
Only three weeks to the holidays, and then no more school, Sisty,--
no more school! I shall have your room all done, freshly, and made
so pretty; they are coming about it to-morrow.
The duck is quite well, and I really don't think it is quite as
lame as it was.
God bless you, dear, dear child. Your affectionate happy mother.
K.C.
The interval between these letters and the morning on which I was to
return home seemed to me like one of those long, restless, yet half-
dreamy days which in some infant malady I had passed in a sick-bed. I
went through my task-work mechanically, composed a Greek ode in farewell
to the Philhellenic, which Dr. Herman pronounced a chef d'oeuvre, and my
father, to whom I sent it in triumph, returned a letter of false English
with it, that parodied all my Hellenic barbarisms by imitating them in
my mother-tongue. However, I swallowed the leek, and consoled myself
with the pleasing recollection that, after spending six years in
learning to write bad Greek, I should never have any further occasion to
avail myself of so precious an accomplishment.
And so came the last day. Then alone, and in a kind of delighted
melancholy, I revisited each of the old haunts,--the robbers' cave we
had dug one winter, and maintained, six of us, against all the police of
the little kingdom; the place near the pales where I had fought my first
battle; the old beech-stump on which I sat to read letters from home!
With my knife, rich in six blades (besides a cork-screw, a pen-picker,
and a button-hook), I carved my name in large capitals over my desk.
Then night came, and the bell rang, and we went to our rooms. And I
opened the window and looked out. I saw all the stars, and wondered
which was mine,--which should light to fame and fortune the manhood
about to commence. Hope and Ambition were high within me; and yet,
behind them stood Melancholy. Ah! who amongst you, readers, can now
summon back all those thoughts, sweet and sad,--all that untold, half-
conscious regret for the past,--all those vague longings for the future,
which made a poet of the dullest on the last night before leaving
boyhood and school forever?
PART III.
CHAPTER I.
It was a beautiful summer afternoon when the coach set me down at my
father's gate. Mrs. Primmins herself ran out to welcome me; and I had
scarcely escaped from the warm clasp of her friendly hand before I was
in the arms of my mother.
As soon as that tenderest of parents was convinced that I was not
famished, seeing that I had dined two hours ago at Dr. Herman's, she led
me gently across the garden towards the arbor. "You will find your
father so cheerful," said she, wiping away a tear. "His brother is with
him."
I stopped. His brother! Will the reader believe it? I had never heard
that he had a brother, so little were family affairs ever discussed in
my hearing.
"His brother!" said I. "Have I then an Uncle Caxton as well as an Uncle
Jack?"
"Yes, my love," said my mother. And then she added, "Your father and he
were not such good friends as they ought to have been, and the Captain
has been abroad. However, thank Heaven! they are now quite reconciled."
We had time for no more,--we were in the arbor. There, a table was
spread with wine and fruit,--the gentlemen were at their dessert; and
those gentlemen were my father, Uncle Jack, Mr. Squills, and--tall,
lean, buttoned-to-the-chin--an erect, martial, majestic, and imposing
personage, who seemed worthy of a place in my great ancestor's "Boke of
Chivalrie."
All rose as I entered; but my poor father, who was always slow in his
movements, had the last of me. Uncle Jack had left the very powerful
impression of his great seal-ring on my fingers; Mr. Squills had patted
me on the shoulder and pronounced me "wonderfully grown;" my new-found
relative had with great dignity said, "Nephew, your hand, sir,--I am
Captain de Caxton;" and even the tame duck had taken her beak from her
wing and rubbed it gently between my legs, which was her usual mode of
salutation, before my father placed his pale hand on my forehead, and
looking at me for a moment with unutterable sweetness, said, "More and
more like your mother,--God bless you!"
A chair had been kept vacant for me between my father and his brother.
I sat down in haste, and with a tingling color on my cheeks and a rising
at my throat, so much had the unusual kindness of my father's greeting
affected me; and then there came over me a sense of my new position. I
was no longer a schoolboy at home for his brief holiday: I had returned
to the shelter of the roof-tree to become myself one of its supports. I
was at last a man, privileged to aid or solace those dear ones who had
ministered, as yet without return, to me. That is a very strange crisis
in our life when we come home for good. Home seems a different thing;
before, one has been but a sort of guest after all, only welcomed and
indulged, and little festivities held in honor of the released and happy
child. But to come home for good,--to have done with school and
boyhood,--is to be a guest, a child no more. It is to share the
everyday life of cares and duties; it is to enter into the confidences
of home. Is it not so? I could have buried my face in my hands and
wept!
My father, with all his abstraction and all his simplicity, had a knack
now and then of penetrating at once to the heart. I verily believe he
read all that was passing in mine as easily as if it had been Greek. He
stole his arm gently round my waist and whispered, "Hush!" Then,
lifting his voice, he cried aloud, "Brother Roland, you must not let
Jack have the best of the argument."
"Brother Austin," replied the Captain, very formally, "Mr. Jack, if I
may take the liberty so to call him--"
"You may indeed," cried Uncle Jack.
"Sir," said the Captain, bowing, "it is a familiarity that does me
honor. I was about to say that Mr. Jack has retired from the field."
"Far from it," said Squills, dropping an effervescing powder into a
chemical mixture which he had been preparing with great attention,
composed of sherry and lemon-juice--"far from it. Mr. Tibbets--whose
organ of combativeness is finely developed, by the by--was saying--"
"That it is a rank sin and shame in the nineteenth century," quoth Uncle
Jack, "that a man like my friend Captain Caxton--"
"De Caxton, sir--Mr. Jack."
"De Caxton,--of the highest military talents, of the most illustrious
descent,--a hero sprung from heroes,--should have served so many years,
and with such distinction, in his Majesty's service, and should now be
only a captain on half-pay. This, I say, comes of the infamous system
of purchase, which sets up the highest honors for sale, as they did in
the Roman empire--"
My father pricked up his ears; but Uncle jack pushed on before my father
could get ready the forces of his meditated interruption.
"A system which a little effort, a little union, can so easily
terminate. Yes, sir," and Uncle Jack thumped the table, and two
cherries bobbed up and smote Captain de Caxton on the nose, "yes, sir, I
will undertake to say that I could put the army upon a very different
footing. If the poorer and more meritorious gentlemen, like Captain de
Caxton, would, as I was just observing, but unite in a grand anti-
aristocratic association, each paying a small sum quarterly, we could
realize a capital sufficient to out-purchase all these undeserving
individuals, and every man of merit should have his fair chance of
promotion."
"Egad! sir," said Squills, "there is something grand in that, eh,
Captain?"
"No, sir," replied the Captain, quite seriously; "there is in monarchies
but one fountain of honor. It would be an interference with a soldier's
first duty,--his respect for his sovereign."
"On the contrary," said Mr. Squills, "it would still be to the
sovereigns that one would owe the promotion."
"Honor," pursued the Captain, coloring up, and unheeding this witty
interruption, "is the reward of a soldier. What do I care that a young
jackanapes buys his colonelcy over my head? Sir, he does not buy from
me my wounds and my services. Sir, he does not buy from me the medal I
won at Waterloo. He is a rich man, and I am a poor man; he is called--
colonel, because he paid money for the name. That pleases him; well and
good. It would not please me; I had rather remain a captain, and feel
my dignity, not in my title, but in the services by which it has been
won. A beggarly, rascally association of stock-brokers, for aught I
know, buy me a company! I don't want to be uncivil, or I would say damn
'em--Mr.--sir--Jack!"
A sort of thrill ran through the Captain's audience; even Uncle Jack
seemed touched, for he stared very hard at the grim veteran, and said
nothing. The pause was awkward; Mr. Squills broke it. "I should like,"
quoth he, "to see your Waterloo medal,--you have it not about you?"
"Mr. Squills," answered the Captain, "it lies next to my heart while I
live. It shall be buried in my coffin, and I shall rise with it, at the
word of command, on the day of the Grand Review!" So saying, the
Captain leisurely unbuttoned his coat, and detaching from a piece of
striped ribbon as ugly a specimen of the art of the silversmith (begging
its pardon) as ever rewarded merit at the expense of taste, placed the
medal on the table.
The medal passed round, without a word, from hand to hand.
"It is strange," at last said my father, "how such trifles can be made
of such value,--how in one age a man sells his life for what in the next
age he would not give a button! A Greek esteemed beyond price a few
leaves of olive twisted into a circular shape and set upon his head,--a
very ridiculous head-gear we should now call it. An American Indian
prefers a decoration of human scalps, which, I apprehend, we should all
agree (save and except Mr. Squills, who is accustomed to such things) to
be a very disgusting addition to one's personal attractions; and my
brother values this piece of silver, which may be worth about five
shillings, more than Jack does a gold mine, or I do the library of the
London Museum. A time will come when people will think that as idle a
decoration as leaves and scalps."
"Brother," said the Captain, "there is nothing strange in the matter.
It is as plain as a pike-staff to a man who understands the principles
of honor."
"Possibly," said my father, mildly. "I should like to hear what you
have to say upon honor. I am sure it would very much edify us all."
CHAPTER II.
"Gentlemen," began the Captain, at the distinct appeal thus made to
him,--"Gentlemen, God made the earth, but man made the garden. God made
man, but man re-creates himself."
"True, by knowledge," said my father.
"By industry," said Uncle Jack.
"By the physical conditions of his body," said Mr. Squills. He could
not have made himself other than he was at first in the woods and wilds
if he had fins like a fish, or could only chatter gibberish like a
monkey. Hands and a tongue, sir,--these are the instruments of
progress."
"Mr. Squills," said my father, nodding, "Anaxagoras said very much the
same thing before you, touching the hands."
"I cannot help that," answered Mr. Squills; "one could not open one's
lips, if one were bound to say what nobody else had said. But after
all, our superiority is less in our hands than the greatness, of our
thumbs."
"Albinus, 'De Sceleto,' and our own learned William Lawrence, have made
a similar remark," again put in my father. "Hang it, sir!" exclaimed
Squills, "what business have you to know everything?"
"Everything! No; but thumbs furnish subjects of investigation to the
simplest understanding," said my father, modestly.
"Gentlemen," re-commenced my Uncle Roland, "thumbs and hands are given
to an Esquimaux, as well as to scholars and surgeons,--and what the
deuce are they the wiser for them? Sirs, you cannot reduce us thus into
mechanism. Look within. Man, I say, re-creates himself. How? By The
Principle Of Honor. His first desire is to excel some one else; his
first impulse is distinction above his fellows. Heaven places in his
soul, as if it were a compass, a needle that always points to one end;
namely, to honor in that which those around him consider honorable.
Therefore, as man at first is exposed to all dangers from wild beasts,
and from men as savage as himself, Courage becomes the first quality
mankind must honor: therefore the savage is courageous; therefore he
covets the praise for courage; therefore he decorates himself with the
skins of the beasts he has subdued, or the the scalps of the foes he has
slain. Sirs, don't tell me that the skins and the scalps are only hide
and leather: they are trophies of honor. Don't tell me that they are
ridiculous and disgusting: they become glorious as proofs that the
savage has emerged out of the first brute-like egotism, and attached
price to the praise which men never give except for works that secure or
advance their welfare. By and by, sirs, our savages discover that they
cannot live in safety amongst themselves unless they agree to speak the
truth to each other: therefore Truth becomes valued, and grows into a
principle of honor; so brother Austin will tell us that in the primitive
times truth was always the attribute of a hero."
"Right," said my father; "Homer emphatically assigns it to Achilles."
"Out of truth comes the necessity for some kind of rude justice and law.
Therefore men, after courage in the warrior, and truth in all, begin to
attach honor to the elder, whom they intrust with preserving justice
amongst them. So, sirs, Law is born--"
"But the first lawgivers were priests," quoth my father.
"Sirs, I am coming to that. Whence arises the desire of honor, but from
man's necessity of excelling,--in other words, of improving his
faculties for the benefit of others; though, unconscious of that
consequence, man only strives for their praise? But that desire for
honor is unextinguishable, and man is naturally anxious to carry its
rewards beyond the grave. Therefore he who has slain most lions or
enemies, is naturally prone to believe that he shall have the best
hunting fields in the country beyond, and take the best place at the
banquet. Nature, in all its operations, impresses man with the idea of
an invisible Power; and the principle of honorthat is, the desire of
praise and reward-snakes him anxious for the approval which that Power
can bestow. Thence comes the first rude idea of Religion; and in the
death-hymn at the stake, the savage chants songs prophetic of the
distinctions he is about to receive. Society goes on; hamlets are
built; property is established. He who has more than another has more
power than another. Power is honored. Alan covets the honor attached
to the power which is attached to possession. Thus the soil is
cultivated; thus the rafts are constructed; thus tribe trades with
tribe; thus Commerce is founded, and Civilization commenced. Sirs, all
that seems least connected with honor, as we approach the vulgar days of
the present, has its origin in honor, and is but an abuse of its
principles. If men nowadays are hucksters and traders, if even military
honors are purchased, and a rogue buys his way to a peerage, still all
arises from the desire for honor, which society, as it grows old, gives
to the outward signs of titles and gold, instead of, as once, to its
inward essentials,--courage, truth, justice, enterprise. Therefore I
say, sirs, that honor is the foundation of all improvement in mankind."
"You have argued like a sclioolman, brother," said Mr. Caxton,
admiringly; "but still, as to this round piece of silver, don't we go
back to the most barbarous ages in estimating so highly such things as
have no real value in themselves,--as could not give us one opportunity
for instructing our minds?"
"Could not pay for a pair of boots," added Uncle Jack.
"Or," said Mr. Squills, "save you one twinge of the cursed rheumatism
you have got for life from that night's bivouac in the Portuguese
marshes,--to say nothing of the bullet in your cranium, and that cork-
leg, which must much diminish the salutary effects of your
constitutional walk."
"Gentlemen," resumed the Captain, nothing abashed, "in going back to
those barbarous ages, I go back to the true principles of honor. It is
precisely because this round piece of silver has no value in the market
that it is priceless, for thus it is only a proof of desert. Where
would be the sense of service in this medal, if it could buy back my
leg, or if I could bargain it away for forty thousand a year? No, sirs,
its value is this,--that when I wear it on my breast, men shall say,
'That formal old fellow is not so useless as he seems. He was one of
those who saved England and freed Europe.' And even when I conceal it
here," and, devoutly kissing the medal, Uncle Roland restored it to its
ribbon and its resting-place, "and no eye sees it, its value is yet
greater in the thought that my country has not degraded the old and true
principles of honor, by paying the soldier who fought for her in the
same coin as that in which you, Mr. Jack, sir, pay your bootmaker's
bill. No, no, gentlemen. As courage was the first virtue that honor
called forth, the first virtue from which all safety and civilization
proceed, so we do right to keep that one virtue at least clear and
unsullied from all the money-making, mercenary, pay-me-in-cash
abominations which are the vices, not the virtues, of the civilization
it has produced."
My Uncle Roland here came to a full stop; and, filling his glass, rose
and said solemnly: "A last bumper, gentlemen,--'To the dead who died for
England!'"
CHAPTER III.
"Indeed, my dear, you must take it. You certainly have caught cold; you
sneezed three times together."
"Yes, ma'am, because I would take a pinch of Uncle Roland's snuff, just
to say that I had taken a pinch out of his box,--the honor of the thing,
you know."
"Ah, my dear! what was that very clever remark you made at the same
time, which so pleased your father,--something about Jews and the
college?"
"Jews and--oh! pulverem Olgmpicum collegisse juvat, my dear mother,--
which means that it is a pleasure to take a pinch out of a brave man's
snuff-box. I say, mother, put down the posset. Yes, I'll take it; I
will, indeed. Now, then, sit here,--that's right,--and tell me all you
know about this famous old Captain. Imprimis, he is older than my
father?"
"To be sure!" exclaimed my mother, indignantly. "He looks twenty years
older; but there is only five years' real difference. Your father must
always look young."
"And why does Uncle Roland put that absurd French de before his name;
and why were my father and he not good friends; and is he married; and
has he any children?"
Scene of this conference: my own little room, new papered on purpose for
my return for good,--trellis-work paper, flowers and birds, all so fresh
and so new and so clean and so gay, with my books ranged in neat
shelves, and a writing-table by the window; and, without the window,
shines the still summer moon. The window is a little open: you scent
the flowers and the new-mown hay. Past eleven; and the boy and his dear
mother are all alone.
"My dear, my dear, you ask so many questions at once!"
"Don't answer them, then. Begin at the beginning, as Nurse Primmins
does with her fairy tales, 'Once on a time.'
"Once on a time, then," said my mother, kissing me between the eyes,--
"once on a time, my love, there was a certain clergyman in Cumberland
who had two sons; he had but a small living, and the boys were to make
their own way in the world. But close to the parsonage, on the brow of
a hill, rose an old ruin with one tower left, and this, with half the
country round it, had once belonged to the clergyman's family; but all
had been sold,--all gone piece by piece, you see, my dear, except the
presentation to the living (what they call the advowson was sold too),
which had been secured to the last of the family. The elder of these
sons was your Uncle Roland; the younger was your father. Now I believe
the first quarrel arose from the absurdist thing possible, as your
father says; but Roland was exceedingly touchy on all things connected
with his ancestors. He was always poring over the old pedigree, or
wandering amongst the ruins, or reading books of knight-errantry. Well,
where this pedigree began, I know not, but it seems that King Henry II.
gave some lands in Cumberland to one Sir Adam de Caxton; and from that
time, you see, the pedigree went regularly from father to son till Henry
V. Then, apparently from the disorders produced, as your father says,
by the Wars of the Roses, there was a sad blank left,--only one or two
names, without dates or marriages, till the time of Henry VIL, except
that in the reign of Edward IV. there was one insertion of a William
Caxton (named in a deed). Now in the village church there was a
beautiful brass monument to one Sir William de Caxton, who had been
killed at the battle of Bosworth, fighting for that wicked king Richard
III. And about the same time there lived, as you know, the great
printer, William Caxton. Well, your father, happening to be in town on
a visit to his aunt, took great trouble in hunting up all the old papers
he could find at the Heralds' College; and, sure enough, he was
overjoyed to satisfy himself that he was descended, not from that poor
Sir William who had been killed in so bad a cause, but from the great
printer, who was from a younger branch of the same family, and to whose
descendants the estate came in the reign of Henry VIII. It was upon
this that your Uncle Roland quarrelled with him,--and, indeed, I tremble
to think that they may touch on that matter again."
"Then, my dear mother, I must say my uncle was wrong there so far as
common-sense is concerned; but still, somehow or other, I can understand
it. Surely, this was not the only cause of estrangement?"
My mother looked down, and moved one hand gently over the other, which
was her way when embarrassed. "What was it, my own mother?" said I,
coaxingly.
"I believe--that is, I--I think that they were both attached to the same
young lady."
"How! you don't mean to say that my father was ever in love with any one
but you?"
"Yes, Sisty,--yes, and deeply! And," added my mother, after a slight
pause, and with a very low sigh, "he never was in love with me; and what
is more, he had the frankness to tell me so!"
"And yet you--"
"Married him--yes!" said my mother, raising the softest and purest eyes
that ever lover could have wished to read his fate in; "yes, for the old
love was hopeless. I knew that I could make him happy. I knew that he
would love me at last, and he does so! My son, your father loves me!"
As she spoke, there came a blush, as innocent as virgin ever knew, to my
mother's smooth cheek; and she looked so fair, so good, and still so
young all the while that you would have said that either Dusius, the
Teuton fiend, or Nock, the Scandinavian sea-imp, from whom the learned
assure us we derive our modern Daimones, "The Deuce," and Old Nick, had
possessed my father, if he had not learned to love such a creature.
I pressed her hand to my lips; but my heart was too full tot speak for a
moment or so, and then I partially changed the subject.
"Well, and this rivalry estranged them more? And who was the lady?"
"Your father never told me, and I never asked," said my mother, simply.
But she was very different from me, I know. Very accomplished, very
beautiful, very highborn."
"For all that, my father was a lucky man to escape her. Pass on. What
did the Captain do?"
"Why, about that time your grandfather died; and shortly after an aunt,
on the mother's side, who was rich and saving, died, and unexpectedly
left each sixteen thousand pounds. Your uncle, with his share, bought
back, at an enormous price, the old castle and some land round it, which
they say does not bring him in three hundred a year. With the little
that remained, he purchased a commission in the army; and the brothers
met no more till last week, when Roland suddenly arrived."
"He did not marry this accomplished young lady?" "No! but he married
another, and is a widower."
"Why, he was as inconstant as my father, and I am sure without so good
an excuse. How was that?"
"I don't know. He says nothing about it."
"Has he any children?"
"Two, a son--By the by, you must never speak about him. Your uncle
briefly said, when I asked him what was his family, 'A girl, ma'am. I
had a son, but--'
"'He is dead,' cried your father, in his kind, pitying voice."
"'Dead to me, brother; and you will never mention his name!' You should
have seen how stern your uncle looked. I was terrified."
"But the girl,--why did not he bring her here?"
"She is still in France, but he talks of going over for her; and we have
half promised to visit them both in Cumberland. But, bless me! is that
twelve? and the posset quite cold!"
"One word more, dearest mother,--one word. My father's book,--is he
still going on with it?"
"Oh yes, indeed!" cried my mother, clasping her hands; "and he must read
it to you, as he does to me,--you will understand it so well. I have
always been so anxious that the world should know him, and be proud of
him as we are,--so--so anxious! For perhaps, Sisty, if he had married
that great lady, he would have roused himself, been more ambitious,--and
I could only make him happy, I could not make him great!"
"So he has listened to you at last?"
"To me?" said my mother, shaking her head and smiling gently. "No,
rather to your Uncle Jack, who, I am happy to say, has at length got a
proper hold over him."
"A proper hold, my dear mother! Pray beware of Uncle Jack, or we shall
all be swept into a coal-mine, or explode with a grand national company
for making gunpowder out of tea-leaves!"
"Wicked child!" said my mother, laughing; and then, as she took up her
candle and lingered a moment while I wound my watch, she said, musingly:
"Yet Jack is very, very clever; and if for your sake we could make a
fortune, Sisty!"
"You frighten me out of my wits, mother! You are not in earnest?"
"And if my brother could be the means of raising him in the world--"
"Your brother would be enough to sink all the ships in the Channel,
ma'am," said I, quite irreverently. I was shocked before the words were
well out of my mouth; and throwing my arms round my mother's neck, I
kissed away the pain I had inflicted.
When I was left alone and in my own little crib, in which my slumber had
ever been so soft and easy, I might as well have been lying upon cut
straw. I tossed to and fro; I could not sleep. I rose, threw on my
dressing-gown, lighted my candle, and sat down by the table near the
window. First I thought of the unfinished outline of my father's youth,
so suddenly sketched before me. I filled up the missing colors, and
fancied the picture explained all that had often perplexed my
conjectures. I comprehended, I suppose by some secret sympathy in my
own nature (for experience in mankind could have taught me little
enough), how an ardent, serious, inquiring mind, struggling into passion
under the load of knowledge, had, with that stimulus sadly and abruptly
withdrawn, sunk into the quiet of passive, aimless study. I
comprehended how, in the indolence of a happy but unimpassioned
marriage, with a companion so gentle, so provident and watchful, yet so
little formed to rouse and task and fire an intellect naturally calm and
meditative, years upon years had crept away in the learned idleness of a
solitary scholar. I comprehended, too, how gradually and slowly, as my
father entered that stage of middle life when all men are most prone to
ambition, the long-silenced whispers were heard again, and the mind, at
last escaping from the listless weight which a baffled and disappointed
heart had laid upon it, saw once more, fair as in youth, the only true
mistress of Genius,--Fame.
Oh! how I sympathized, too, in my mother's gentle triumph. Looking over
the past, I could see, year after year, how she had stolen more and more
into my father's heart of hearts; how what had been kindness had grown
into love; how custom and habit, and the countless links in the sweet
charities of home, had supplied that sympathy with the genial man which
had been missed at first by the lonely scholar.
Next I thought of the gray, eagle-eyed old soldier, with his ruined
tower and barren acres, and saw before me his proud, prejudiced,
chivalrous boyhood, gliding through the ruins or poring over the mouldy
pedigree. And this son, so disowned,--for what dark offence? An awe
crept over me. And this girl,--his ewe-lamb, his all,--was she fair?
had she blue eyes like my mother, or a high Roman nose and beetle brows
like Captain Roland? I mused and mused and mused; and the candle went
out, and the moonlight grew broader and stiller; till at last I was
sailing in a balloon with Uncle Jack, and had just tumbled into the Red
Sea, when the well-known voice of Nurse Primmins restored me to life
with a "God bless my heart! the boy has not been in bed all this 'varsal
night!"
CHAPTER IV.
As soon as I was dressed I hastened downstairs, for I longed to revisit
my old haunts,--the little plot of garden I had sown with anemones and
tresses; the walk by the peach wall; the pond wherein I had angled for
roach and perch.
Entering the hall, I discovered my Uncle Roland in a great state of
embarrassment. The maid-servant was scrubbing the stones at the hall-
door; she was naturally plump,--and it is astonishing how much more
plump a female becomes when she is on all-fours! The maid-servant,
then, was scrubbing the stones, her face turned from the Captain; and
the Captain, evidently meditating a sortie, stood ruefully gazing at the
obstacle before him and hemming aloud. Alas, the maidservant was deaf!
I stopped, curious to see how Uncle Roland would extricate himself from
the dilemma.
Finding that his hems were in vain, my uncle made himself as small as he
could, and glided close to the left of the wall; at that instant the
maid turned abruptly round towards the right, and completely obstructed,
by this manoeuvre, the slight crevice through which hope had dawned on
her captive. My uncle stood stock-still,--and, to say the truth, he
could not have stirred an inch without coming into personal contact with
the rounded charms which blockaded his movements. My uncle took off his
hat and scratched his forehead in great perplexity. Presently, by a
slight turn of the flanks, the opposing party, while leaving him an
opportunity of return, entirely precluded all chance of egress in that
quarter. My uncle retreated in haste, and now presented himself to the
right wing of the enemy. He had scarcely done so, when, without looking
behind her, the blockading party shoved aside the pail that crippled the
range of her operations, and so placed it that it formed a formidable
barricade, which my uncle's cork leg had no chance of surmounting.
Therewith Captain Roland lifted his eyes appealingly to Heaven, and I
heard him distinctly ejaculate--
"Would to Heaven she were a creature in breeches!"
But happily at this moment the maid-servant turned her head sharply
round, and seeing the Captain, rose in an instant, moved away the pail,
and dropped a frightened courtesy.
My uncle Roland touched his hat. "I beg you a thousand pardons, my good
girl," said he; and, with a half bow, he slid into the open air.
"You have a soldier's politeness, uncle," said I, tucking my arm into
Captain Roland's.
"Tush, my boy," said he, smiling seriously, and coloring up to the
temples; "tush, say a gentleman's! To us, sir, every woman is a lady,
in right of her sex."
Now, I had often occasion later to recall that aphorism of my uncle's;
and it served to explain to me how a man, so prejudiced on the score of
family pride, never seemed to consider it an offence in my father to
have married a woman whose pedigree was as brief as my dear mother's.
Had she been a Montmorenci, my uncle could not have been more respectful
and gallant than he was to that meek descendant of the Tibbetses. He
held, indeed, which I never knew any other man, vain of family, approve
or support,--a doctrine deduced from the following syllogisms: First,
that birth was not valuable in itself, but as a transmission of certain
qualities which descent from a race of warriors should perpetuate;
namely, truth, courage, honor; secondly, that whereas from the woman's
side we derive our more intellectual faculties, from the man's we derive
our moral: a clever and witty man generally has a clever and witty
mother; a brave and honorable man, a brave and honorable father.
Therefore all the qualities which attention to race should perpetuate
are the manly qualities, traceable only from the father's side. Again,
he held that while the aristocracy have higher and more chivalrous
notions, the people generally have shrewder and livelier ideas.
Therefore, to prevent gentlemen from degenerating into complete
dunderheads, an admixture with the people, provided always it was on the
female side, was not only excusable, but expedient; and, finally, my
uncle held that whereas a man is a rude, coarse, sensual animal, and
requires all manner of associations to dignify and refine him, women are
so naturally susceptible of everything beautiful in sentiment and
generous in purpose that she who is a true woman is a fit peer for a
king. Odd and preposterous notions, no doubt, and capable of much
controversy, so far as the doctrine of race (if that be any way tenable)
is concerned; but then the plain fact is that my Uncle Roland was as
eccentric and contradictory a gentleman--as--as--why, as you and I are,
if we once venture to think for ourselves.
"Well, sir, and what profession are you meant for?" asked my uncle.
"Not the army, I fear?"
"I have never thought of the subject, uncle."
"Thank Heaven," said Captain Roland, "we have never yet had a lawyer in
the family, nor a stockbroker, nor a tradesman--ahem!"
I saw that my great ancestor the printer suddenly rose up in that hem.
"Why, uncle, there are honorable men in all callings."
"Certainly, sir. But in all callings honor is not the first principle
of action."
"But it may be, sir, if a man of honor pursue it! There are some
soldiers who have been great rascals!"
My uncle looked posed, and his black brows met thoughtfully. "You are
right, boy, I dare say," he answered, somewhat mildly. "But do you
think that it ought to give me as much pleasure to look on my old ruined
tower if I knew it had been bought by some herring-dealer, like the
first ancestor of the Poles, as I do now, when I know it was given to a
knight and gentleman (who traced his descent from an Anglo-Dane in the
time of King Alfred) for services done in Aquitaine and Gascony, by
Henry the Plantagenet? And do you mean to tell me that I should have
been the same man if I had not from a boy associated that old tower with
all ideas of what its owners were, and should be, as knights and
gentlemen? Sir, you would have made a different being of me if at the
head of my pedigree you had clapped a herring-dealer,--though, I dare
say, the herring-dealer might have been as good a man as ever the Anglo-
Dane was, God rest him!"
"And for the same reason I suppose, sir, that you think my father never
would have been quite the same being he is if he had not made that
notable discovery touching our descent from the great William Caxton,
the printer."
My uncle bounded as if he had been shot,--bounded so incautiously,
considering the materials of which one leg was composed, that he would
have fallen into a strawberry-bed if I had not caught him by the arm.
"Why, you--you--you young jackanapes!" cried the Captain, shaking me off
as soon as he had regained his equilibrium. "You do not mean to inherit
that infamous crotchet my brother has got into his head? You do not
mean to exchange Sir William de Caxton, who fought and fell at Bosworth,
for the mechanic who sold black-letter pamphlets in the Sanctuary at
Westminster?"
"That depends on the evidence, uncle!"
"No, sir; like all noble truths, it depends upon faith. Men, nowadays,"
continued my uncle, with a look of ineffable disgust, "actually require
that truths should be proved."
"It is a sad conceit on their part, no doubt, my dear uncle; but till a
truth is proved, how can we know that it is a truth?"
I thought that in that very sagacious question I had effectually caught
my uncle. Not I. He slipped through it like an eel.
"Sir," said he, "whatever in Truth makes a man's heart warmer and his
soul purer, is a belief, not a knowledge. Proof, sir, is a handcuff;
belief is a wing! Want proof as to an ancestor in the reign of King
Richard? Sir, you cannot even prove to the satisfaction of a logician
that you are the son of your own father. Sir, a religious man does not
want to reason about his religion; religion is not mathematics.
Religion is to be felt, not proved. There are a great many things in
the religion of a good man which are not in the catechism. Proof!"
continued my uncle, growing violent--"Proof, sir, is a low, vulgar,
levelling, rascally Jacobin; Belief is a loyal, generous, chivalrous
gentleman! No, no; prove what you please, you shall never rob me of one
belief that has made me--"
"The finest-hearted creature that ever talked nonsense," said my father,
who came up, like Horace's deity, at the right moment. "What is it you
must believe in, brother, no matter what the proof against you?"
My uncle was silent, and with great energy dug the point of his cane
into the gravel.
"He will not believe in our great ancestor the printer," said I,
maliciously.
My father's calm brow was overcast in a moment. "Brother," said the
Captain, loftily, "you have a right to your own ideas; but you should
take care how they contaminate your child."
"Contaminate!" said my father, and for the first time I saw an angry
sparkle flash from his eyes; but he checked himself on the instant.
"Change the word, my dear brother."
"No, sir, I will not change it! To belie the records of the family!"
"Records! A brass plate in a village church against all the books of
the College of Arms!"
"To renounce your ancestor, a knight who died in the field!"
"For the worst cause that man ever fought for!"
"On behalf of his king!"
"Who had murdered his nephews!"
"A knight! with our crest on his helmet."
"And no brains underneath it, or he would never have had them knocked
out for so bloody a villain!"
"A rascally, drudging, money-making printer!"
"The wise and glorious introducer of the art that has enlightened a
world. Prefer for an ancestor, to one whom scholar and sage never name
but in homage, a worthless, obscure, jolter-headed booby in mail, whose
only record to men is a brass plate in a church in a village!"
My uncle turned round perfectly livid. "Enough, sir! enough! I am
insulted sufficiently. I ought to have expected it. I wish you and
your son a very good day."
My father stood aghast. The Captain was hobbling off to the iron gate;
in another moment he would have been out of our precincts. I ran up and
hung upon him. "Uncle, it is all my fault. Between you and me, I am
quite of your side; pray forgive us both. What could I have been
thinking of, to vex you so? And my father, whom your visit has made so
happy!" My uncle paused, feeling for the latch of the gate. My father
had now come up, and caught his hand. "What are all the printers that
ever lived, and all the books they ever printed, to one wrong to thy
fine heart, brother Roland? Shame on me! A bookman's weak point, you
know! It is very true, I should never have taught the boy one thing to
give you pain, brother Roland,--though I don't remember," continued my
father, with a perplexed look, "that I ever did teach it him, either!
Pisistratus, as you value my blessing, respect as your ancestor Sir
William de Caxton, the hero of Bosworth. Come, come, brother!"
"I am an old fool," said Uncle Roland, "whichever way we look at it.
Ah, you young dog, you are laughing at us both!"
"I have ordered breakfast on the lawn," said my mother, coming out from
the porch, with her cheerful smile on her lips; "and I think the devil
will be done to your liking to-day, brother Roland."
"We have had enough of the devil already, my love," said my father,
wiping his forehead.
So, while the birds sang overhead or hopped familiarly across the sward
for the crumbs thrown forth to them, while the sun was still cool in the
east, and the leaves yet rustled with the sweet air of morning, we all
sat down to our table, with hearts as reconciled to each other, and as
peaceably disposed to thank God for the fair world around us, as if the
river had never run red through the field of Bosworth, and that
excellent Mr. Caxton had never set all mankind by the ears with an
irritating invention a thousand times more provocative of our combative
tendencies than the blast of the trumpet and the gleam of the banner!
CHAPTER V.
"Brother," said Mr. Caxton, "will walk with you to the Roman
encampment."
The Captain felt that this proposal was meant as the greatest peace-
offering my father could think of; for, first, it was a very long walk,
and my father detested long walks; secondly, it was the sacrifice of a
whole day's labor at the Great Work. And yet, with that quick
sensibility which only the generous possess, Uncle Roland accepted at
once the proposal. If he had not done so, my father would have had a
heavier heart for a month to come. And how could the Great Work have
got on while the author was every now and then disturbed by a twinge of
remorse?
Half an hour after breakfast, the brothers set off arm-inarm; and I
followed, a little apart, admiring how sturdily the old soldier got over
the ground, in spite of the cork leg. It was pleasant enough to listen
to their conversation, and notice the contrasts between these two
eccentric stamps from Dame Nature's ever-variable mould,--Nature, who
casts nothing in stereotype; for I do believe that not even two fleas
can be found identically the same.
My father was not a quick or minute observer of rural beauties. He had
so little of the organ of locality that I suspect he could have lost his
way in his own garden. But the Captain was exquisitely alive to
external impressions,--not a feature in the landscape escaped him. At
every fantastic gnarled pollard he halted to gaze; his eye followed the
lark soaring up from his feet; when a fresher air came from the hill-top
his nostrils dilated, as if voluptuously to inhale its delight. My
father, with all his learning, and though his study had been in the
stores of all language, was very rarely eloquent. The Captain had a
glow and a passion in his words which, what with his deep, tremulous
voice and animated gestures, gave something poetic to half of what he
uttered. In every sentence of Roland's, in every tone of his voice and
every play of his face, there was some outbreak of pride; but unless you
set him on his hobby of that great ancestor the printer, my father had
not as much pride as a homeeopathist could have put into a globule. He
was not proud even of not being proud. Chafe all his feathers, and
still you could rouse but the dove. My father was slow and mild, my
uncle quick and fiery; my father reasoned, my uncle imagined; my father
was very seldom wrong, my uncle never quite in the right; but, as my
father once said of him, "Roland beats about the bush till he sends out
the very bird that we went to search for. He is never in the wrong
without suggesting to us what is the right." All in my uncle was stern,
rough, and angular; all in my father was sweet, polished, and rounded
into a natural grace. My uncle's character cast out a multiplicity of
shadows, like a Gothic pile in a northern sky. My father stood serene
in the light, like a Greek temple at mid-day in a southern clime. Their
persons corresponded with their natures. My uncle's high, aquiline
features, bronzed hue, rapid fire of eye, and upper lip that always
quivered, were a notable contrast to my father's delicate profile,
quiet, abstracted gaze, and the steady sweetness that rested on his
musing smile. Roland's forehead was singularly high, and rose to a peak
in the summit where phrenologists place the organ of veneration; but it
was narrow, and deeply furrowed. Augustine's might be as high, but then
soft, silky hair waved carelessly over it, concealing its height, but
not its vast breadth, on which not a wrinkle was visible. And yet,
withal, there was a great family likeness between the two brothers.
When some softer sentiment subdued him, Roland caught the very look of
Augustine; when some high emotion animated my father, you might have
taken him for Roland. I have often thought since, in the greater
experience of mankind which life has afforded me, that if, in early
years, their destinies had been exchanged,--if Roland had taken to
literature, and my father had been forced into action,--each would have
had greater worldly success. For Roland's passion and energy would have
given immediate and forcible effect to study; he might have been a
historian or a poet. It is not study alone that produces a writer, it
is intensity. In the mind, as in yonder chimney, to make the fire burn
hot and quick, you must narrow the draught. Whereas, had my father been
forced into the practical world, his calm depth of comprehension, his
clearness of reason, his general accuracy in such notions as he once
entertained and pondered over, joined to a temper that crosses and
losses could never ruffle, and utter freedom from vanity and self-love,
from prejudice and passion, might have made him a very wise and
enlightened counsellor in the great affairs of life,--a lawyer, a
diplomatist, a statesman, for what I know, even a great general, if his
tender humanity had not stood in the way of his military mathematics.
But as it was,--with his slow pulse never stimulated by action, and too
little stirred by even scholarly ambition,--my father's mind went on
widening and widening till the circle was lost in the great ocean of
contemplation; and Roland's passionate energy, fretted into fever by
every let and hindrance in the struggle with his kind, and narrowed more
and more as it was curbed within the channels of active discipline and
duty, missed its due career altogether, and what might have been the
poet, contracted into the humorist.
Yet who that had ever known ye, could have wished you other than ye
were, ye guileless, affectionate, honest, simple creatures?---simple
both, in spite of all the learning of the one, all the prejudices,
whims, irritabilities, and crotchets of the other. There you are,
seated on the height of the old Roman camp, with a volume of the
Stratagems of Polyaenus (or is it Frontinus?) open on my father's lap;
the sheep grazing in the furrows of the circumvallations; the curious
steer gazing at you where it halts in the space whence the Roman cohorts
glittered forth; and your boy-biographer standing behind you with folded
arms, and--as the scholar read, or the soldier pointed his cane to each
fancied post in the war--filling up the pastoral landscape with the
eagles of Agricola and the scythed cars of Boadicea!
CHAPTER VI.
"It is never the same two hours together in this country," said my Uncle
Roland, as, after dinner, or rather after dessert, we joined my mother
in the drawing-room.
Indeed, a cold, drizzling rain had come on within the last two hours,
and though it was July, it was as chilly as if it had been October. My
mother whispered to me, and I went out; in ten minutes more, the logs
(for we live in a wooded country) blazed merrily in the grate. Why
could not my mother have rung the bell and ordered the servant to light
a fire? My dear reader, Captain Roland was poor, and he made a capital
virtue of economy!
The two brothers drew their chairs near to the hearth, my father at the
left, my uncle at the right; and I and my mother sat down to "Fox and
Geese."
Coffee came in,--one cup for the Captain, for the rest of the party
avoided that exciting beverage. And on that cup was a picture of--His
Grace the Duke of Wellington!
During our visit to the Roman camp my mother had borrowed Mr. Squills's
chaise and driven over to our market-town, for the express purpose of
greeting the Captain's eyes with the face of his old chief.
My uncle changed color, rose, lifted my mother's hand to his lips, and
sat himself down again in silence.
"I have heard," said the Captain after a pause, "that the Marquis of
Hastings, who is every inch a soldier and a gentleman,--and that is
saying not a little, for he measures seventyfive inches from the crown
to the sole,--when he received Louis XVIII. (then an exile) at
Donnington, fitted up his apartments exactly like those his Majesty had
occupied at the Tuileries. It was a kingly attention (my Lord Hastings,
you know, is sprung from the Plantagenets),--a kingly attention to a
king. It cost some money and made some noise. A woman can show the
same royal delicacy of heart in this bit of porcelain, and so quietly
that we men all think it a matter of course, brother Austin."
"You are such a worshipper of women, Roland, that it is melancholy to
see you single. You must marry again!"
My uncle first smiled, then frowned, and lastly sighed somewhat heavily.
"Your time will pass slowly in your old tower, poor brother," continued
my father, "with only your little girl for a companion."
"And the past!" said my uncle; "the past, that mighty world--"
"Do you still read your old books of chivalry,--Froissart and the
Chronicles, Palmerin of England, and Amadis of Gaul?"
"Why," said my uncle, reddening, "I have tried to improve myself with
studies a little more substantial. And," he added with a sly smile,
"there will be your great book for many a long winter to come."
"Um!" said my father, bashfully.
"Do you know," quoth my uncle, "that Dame Primmins is a very intelligent
woman,--full of fancy, and a capital story-teller?"
"Is not she, uncle?" cried I, leaving my fox in the corner. "Oh, if you
could hear her tell the tale of King Arthur and the Enchanted Lake, or
the Grim White Woman!"
"I have already heard her tell both," said my uncle.
"The deuce you have, brother! My dear, we must look to this. These
captains are dangerous gentlemen in an orderly household. Pray, where
could you have had the opportunity of such private communications with
Mrs. Primmins?"
"Once," said my uncle, readily, "when I went into her room, while she
mended my stock; and once--" He stopped short, and looked down.
"Once when? Out with it."
"When she was warming my bed," said my uncle, in a half-whisper.
"Dear!" said my mother, innocently, "that's how the sheets came by that
bad hole in the middle. I thought it was the warming-pan."
"I am quite shocked!" faltered my uncle.
"You well may be," said my father. "A woman who has been heretofore
above all suspicion! But come," he said, seeing that my uncle looked
sad, and was no doubt casting up the probable price of twice six yards
of holland, "but come, you were always a famous rhapsodist or tale-
teller yourself. Come, Roland, let us have some story of your own,--
something which your experience has left strong in your impressions."
"Let us first have the candles," said my mother.
The candles were brought, the curtains let down; we all drew our chairs
to the hearth. But in the interval my uncle had sunk into a gloomy
revery; and when we called upon him to begin, he seemed to shake off
with effort some recollections of pain.
"You ask me," he said, "to tell you some tale which my own experience
has left deeply marked in my impressions,--I will tell you one, apart
from my own life, but which has often haunted me. It is sad and
strange, ma'am."
"Ma'am, brother?" said my mother, reproachfully, letting her small hand
drop upon that which, large and sunburnt, the Captain waved towards her
as he spoke.
"Austin, you have married an angel!" said my uncle; and he was, I
believe, the only brother-in-law who ever made so hazardous an
assertion.
CHAPTER VII.
MY UNCLE ROLAND'S TALE.
"It was in Spain--no matter where or how--that it was my fortune to take
prisoner a French officer of the same rank that I then held,--a
lieutenant; and there was so much similarity in our sentiments that we
became intimate friends,--the most intimate friend I ever had, sister,
out of this dear circle. He was a rough soldier, whom the world had not
well treated; but he never railed at the world, and maintained that he
had had his deserts. Honor was his idol, and the sense of honor paid
him for the loss of all else.
"We were both at that time volunteers in a foreign service,--in that
worst of service, civil war,--he on one side, I the other, both,
perhaps, disappointed in the cause we had severally espoused. There was
something similar, too, in our domestic relationships. He had a son--a
boy--who was all in life to him, next to his country and his duty. I
too had then such a son, though of fewer years." (The Captain paused an
instant; we exchanged glances, and a stifling sensation of pain and
suspense was felt by all his listeners.) "We were accustomed, brother,
to talk of these children, to picture their future, to compare our hopes
and dreams. We hoped and dreamed alike. A short time sufficed to
establish this confidence. My prisoner was sent to head-quarters, and
soon afterwards exchanged.
"We met no more till last year. Being then at Paris, I inquired for my
old friend, and learned that he was living at R--, a few miles from the
capital. I went to visit him. I found his house empty and deserted.
That very day he had been led to prison, charged with a terrible crime.
I saw him in that prison, and from his own lips learned his story. His
son had been brought up, as he fondly believed, in the habits and
principles of honorable men, and having finished his education, came to
reside with him at R--. The young man was accustomed to go frequently
to Paris. A young Frenchman loves pleasure, sister; and pleasure is
found at Paris. The father thought it natural, and stripped his age of
some comforts to supply luxuries to the son's youth.
"Shortly after the young man's arrival, my friend perceived that he was
robbed. Moneys kept in his bureau were abstracted, he knew not how, nor
could guess by whom. It must be done in the night. He concealed
himself and watched. He saw a stealthy figure glide in, he saw a false
key applied to the lock; he started forward, seized the felon, and
recognized his son. What should the father have done? I do not ask
you, sister! I ask these men: son and father, I ask you."
"Expelled him the house," cried I.
"Done his duty, and reformed the unhappy wretch," said my father. "Nemo
repente turpissinus semper fait,--No man is wholly bad all at once."
"The father did as you would have advised, brother. He kept the youth;
he remonstrated with him: he did more,--he gave him the key of the
bureau. 'Take what I have to give,' said he; 'I would rather be a
beggar than know my son a thief.'"
"Right! And the youth repented, and became a good man?" exclaimed my
father.
Captain Roland shook his head. "The youth promised amendment, and
seemed penitent. He spoke of the temptations of Paris, the gaming-
table, and what not. He gave up his daily visits to the capital. He
seemed to apply to study. Shortly after this, the neighborhood was
alarmed by reports of night robberies on the road. Men, masked and
armed, plundered travellers, and even broke into houses.
"The police were on the alert. One night an old brother officer knocked
at my friend's door. It was late; the veteran (he was a cripple, by the
way, like myself,--strange coincidence!) was in bed. He came down in
haste, when his servant woke, and told him that his old friend, wounded
and bleeding, sought an asylum under his roof. The wound, however, was
slight. The guest had been attacked and robbed on the road. The next
morning the proper authority of the town was sent for. The plundered
man described his loss,--some billets of five hundred francs in a
pocketbook, on which was embroidered his name and coronet (he was a
vicomte). The guest stayed to dinner. Late in the forenoon, the son
looked in. The guest started to see him; my friend noticed his
paleness. Shortly after, on pretence of faintness, the guest retired to
his room, and sent for his host. 'My friend,' said he, 'can you do me a
favor? Go to the magistrate and recall the evidence I have given.'
"'Impossible,' said the host. 'What crotchet is this?'
"The guest shuddered. 'Peste!' said he, 'I do not wish in my old age to
be hard on others. Who knows how the robber may have been tempted, and
who knows what relations he may have,--honest men, whom his crime would
degrade forever! Good heavens! if detected, it is the galleys, the
galleys!'
"And what then? The robber knew what he braved. 'But did his father
know it?' cried the guest.
"A light broke upon my unhappy comrade in arms; he caught his friend by
the hand: 'You turned pale at my son's sight,--where did you ever see
him before? Speak!'
"'Last night on the road to Paris. The mask slipped aside. Call back my
evidence!'
"'You are mistaken,' said my friend, calmly. 'I saw my son in his bed,
and blessed him, before I went to my own.'
"'I will believe you,' said the guest; 'and never shall my hasty
suspicion pass my lips,--but call back the evidence.'
"The guest returned to Paris before dusk. The father conversed with his
son on the subject of his studies; he followed him to his room, waited
till he was in bed, and was then about to retire, when the youth said,
'Father, you have forgotten your blessing.'
"The father went back, laid his hand on the boy's head and prayed. He
was credulous--fathers are so! He was persuaded that his friend had
been deceived. He retired to rest, and fell asleep. He woke suddenly
in the middle of the night, and felt (I here quote his words)--'I felt,'
said he, 'as if a voice had awakened me,--a voice that said, "Rise and
search." I rose at once, struck a light, and went to my son's room.
The door was locked. I knocked once, twice, thrice no answer. I dared
not call aloud, lest I should rouse the servants. I went down the
stairs, I opened the back-door, I passed to the stables. My own horse
was there, not my son's. My horse neighed; it was old, like myself,--my
old charger at Mont St. Jean. I stole back, I crept into the shadow of
the wall by my son's door, and extinguished my light. I felt as if I
were a thief myself.'"
"Brother," interrupted my mother, under her breath; "speak in your own
words, not in this wretched father's. I know not why, but it would
shock me less."
The Captain nodded.
"Before daybreak, my friend heard the back-door open gently; a foot
ascended the stair, a key grated in the door of the room close at hand:
the father glided through the dark into that chamber behind his unseen
son.
"He heard the clink of the tinder-box; a light was struck; it spread
over the room, but he had time to place himself behind the window-
curtain which was close at hand. The figure before him stood a moment
or so motionless, and seemed to listen, for it turned to the right, to
the left, its visage covered with the black, hideous mask which is worn
in carnivals. Slowly the mask was removed. Could that be his son's
face,--the son of a brave man? It was pale and ghastly with scoundrel
fears; the base drops stood on the brow; the eye was haggard and
bloodshot. He looked as a coward looks when death stands before him.
"The youth walked, or rather skulked, to the secretaire, unlocked it,
opened a secret drawer, placed within it the contents of his pockets and
his frightful mask; the father approached softly, looked over his
shoulder, and saw in the drawer the pocketbook embroidered with his
friend's name. Meanwhile, the son took out his pistols, uncocked them
cautiously, and was about also to secrete them, when his father arrested
his arm. 'Robber, the use of these is yet to come!'
"The son's knees knocked together, an exclamation for mercy burst from
his lips; but when, recovering the mere shock of his dastard nerves, he
perceived it was not the gripe of some hireling of the law, but a
father's hand that had clutched his arm, the vile audacity which knows
fear only from a bodily cause, none from the awe of shame, returned to
him.
"Tush, sir!' he said, 'waste not time in reproaches, for, I fear, the
gendarmes are on my track. It is well that you are here; you can swear
that I have spent the night at home. Unhand me, old man; I have these
witnesses still to secrete,' and he pointed to the garments wet and
dabbled with the mud of the roads. He had scarcely spoken when the
walls shook; there was the heavy clatter of hoofs on the ringing
pavement without.
"'They come!' cried the son. 'Off, dotard! save your son from the
galleys.'
"'The galleys, the galleys!' said the father, staggering back; 'it is
true; he said--"the galleys!"'
"There was a loud knocking at the gate. The gendarmes surrounded the
house. 'Open, in the name of the law!' No answer came, no door was
opened. Some of the gendarmes rode to the rear of the house, in which
was placed the stable yard. From the window of the son's room the
father saw the sudden blaze of torches, the shadowy forms of the men-
hunters. He heard the clatter of arms as they swung themselves from
their horses. He heard a voice cry, 'Yes, this is the robber's gray
horse,--see, it still reeks with sweat!' And behind and in front, at
either door, again came the knocking, and again the shout, 'Open, in the
name of the law!'
"Then lights began to gleam from the casements of the neighboring
houses; then the space filled rapidly with curious wonderers startled
from their sleep: the world was astir, and the crowd came round to know
what crime or what shame had entered the old soldier's home.
"Suddenly, within, there was heard the report of a fire-arm; and a minute
or so afterwards the front door was opened, and the soldier appeared.
"'Enter,' he said to the gendarmes: 'what would you?'
"'We seek a robber who is within your walls.'
"I know it; mount and find him: I will lead the way.'
"He ascended the stairs; he threw open his son's room: the officers of
justice poured in, and on the floor lay the robber's corpse.
"They looked at each other in amazement. 'Take what is left you,' said
the father. 'Take the dead man rescued from the galleys; take the
living man on whose hands rests the dead man's blood!'
"I was present at my friend's trial. The facts had become known
beforehand. He stood there with his gray hair, and his mutilated limbs,
and the deep scar on his visage, and the Cross of the Legion of Honor on
his breast; and when he had told his tale, he ended with these words: 'I
have saved the son whom I reared for France from a doom that would have
spared the life to brand it with disgrace. Is this a crime? I give you
my life in exchange for my son's disgrace. Does my country need a
victim? I have lived for my country's glory, and I can die contented to
satisfy its laws, sure that, if you blame me, you will not despise; sure
that the hands that give me to the headsman will scatter flowers over my
grave. Thus I confess all. I, a soldier, look round amongst a nation
of soldiers; and in the name of the star which glitters on my breast I
dare the fathers of France to condemn me!'
"They acquitted the soldier,--at least they gave a verdict answering to
what in our courts is called 'justifiable homicide.' A shout rose in the
court which no ceremonial voice could still; the crowd would have borne
him in triumph to his house, but his look repelled such vanities. To
his house he returned indeed; and the day afterwards they found him
dead, beside the cradle in which his first prayer had been breathed over
his sinless child. Now, father and son, I ask you, do you condemn that
man?"
CHAPTER VIII.
My father took three strides up and down the room, and then, halting on
his hearth, and facing his brother, he thus spoke: "I condemn his deed,
Roland! At best he was but a haughty egotist. I understand why Brutus
should slay his sons. By that sacrifice he saved his country! What did
this poor dupe of an exaggeration save? Nothing but his own name. He
could not lift the crime from his son's soul, nor the dishonor from his
son's memory. He could but gratify his own vain pride; and insensibly
to himself, his act was whispered to him by the fiend that ever whispers
to the heart of man, 'Dread men's opinions more than God's law!' Oh, my
dear brother! what minds like yours should guard against the most is not
the meanness of evil,--it is the evil that takes false nobility, by
garbing itself in the royal magnificence of good." My uncle walked to
the window, opened it, looked out a moment, as if to draw in fresh air,
closed it gently, and came back again to his seat; but during the short
time the window had been left open, a moth flew in.
"Tales like these," renewed my father, pityingly,--"whether told by some
great tragedian, or in thy simple style, my brother,--tales like these
have their uses: they penetrate the heart to make it wiser; but all
wisdom is meek, my Roland. They invite us to put the question to
ourselves that thou hast asked, 'Can we condemn this man?' and reason
answers as I have answered, 'We pity the man, we condemn the deed.'
We--take care, my love! that moth will be in the candle. We--whisk!
whisk!" and my father stopped to drive away the moth. My uncle turned,
and taking his handkerchief from the lower part of his face, of which he
had wished to conceal the workings, he flapped away the moth from the
flame. My mother moved the candles from the moth.
I tried to catch the moth in my father's straw-hat. The deuce was in
the moth! it baffled us all, now circling against the ceiling, now
sweeping down at the fatal lights. As if by a simultaneous impulse, my
father approached one candle, my uncle approached the other; and just as
the moth was wheeling round and round, irresolute which to choose for
its funeral pyre, both candles were put out. The fire had burned down
low in the grate, and in the sudden dimness my father's soft, sweet
voice came forth, as if from an invisible being: "We leave ourselves in
the dark to save a moth from the flame, brother! Shall we do less for
our fellow-men? Extinguish, oh! humanely extinguish, the light of our
reason when the darkness more favors our mercy." Before the lights were
relit, my uncle had left the room; his brother followed him. My mother
and I drew near to each other and talked in whispers.
PART IV.
CHAPTER I.
I was always an early riser. Happy the man who is! Every morning, day
comes to him with a virgin's love, full of bloom and purity and
freshness. The youth of Nature is contagious, like the gladness of a
happy child. I doubt if any man can be called "old" so long as he is an
early riser and an early walker. And oh, youth!--take my word of it--
youth in dressing-gown and slippers, dawdling over breakfast at noon, is
a very decrepit, ghastly image of that youth which sees the sun blush
over the mountains, and the dews sparkle upon blossoming hedgerows.
Passing by my father's study, I was surprised to see the windows
unclosed; surprised more, on looking in, to see him bending over his
books,--for I had never before known him study till after the morning
meal. Students are not usually early risers, for students, alas!
whatever their age, are rarely young. Yes, the Great Book must be
getting on in serious earnest. It was no longer dalliance with
learning; this was work.
I passed through the gates into the road. A few of the cottages were
giving signs of returning life, but it was not yet the hour for labor,
and no "Good morning, sir," greeted me on the road. Suddenly at a turn,
which an over-hanging beech-tree had before concealed, I came full upon
my Uncle Roland.
"What! you, sir? So early? Hark, the clock is striking five!"
"Not later! I have walked well for a lame man. It must be more than
four miles to--and back."
"You have been to--? Not on business? No soul would be up."
"Yes, at inns there is always some one up. Hostlers never sleep! I
have been to order my humble chaise and pair. I leave you today,
nephew."
"Ah, uncle, we have offended you! It was my folly, that cursed print--"
"Pooh!" said my uncle, quickly. "Offended me, boy? I defy you!" and he
pressed my hand roughly.
"Yet this sudden determination! It was but yesterday, at the Roman
Camp, that you planned an excursion with my father, to C------ Castle."
"Never depend upon a whimsical man. I must be in London tonight."
"And return to-morrow?"
"I know not when," said my uncle, gloomily; and he was silent for some
moments. At length, leaning less lightly on my arm, he continued:
"Young man, you have pleased me. I love that open, saucy brow of yours,
on which Nature has written 'Trust me.' I love those clear eyes, that
look one manfully in the face. I must know more of you--much of you.
You must come and see me some day or other in your ancestors' ruined
keep."
"Come! that I will. And you shall show me the old tower--"
"And the traces of the outworks!" cried my uncle, flourishing his stick.
"And the pedigree--"
"Ay, and your great-great-grandfather's armor, which he wore at Marston
Moor--"
"Yes, and the brass plate in the church, uncle."
"The deuce is in the boy! Come here, come here: I've three minds to
break your head, sir!"
"It is a pity somebody had not broken the rascally printer's, before he
had the impudence to disgrace us by having a family, uncle."
Captain Roland tried hard to frown, but he could not. "Pshaw!" said he,
stopping, and taking snuff. "The world of the dead is wide; why should
the ghosts jostle us?"
"We can never escape the ghosts, uncle. They haunt us always. We
cannot think or act, but the soul of some man, who has lived before,
points the way. The dead never die, especially since--"
"Since what, boy? You speak well."
"Since our great ancestor introduced printing," said I, majestically.
My uncle whistled "Malbrouk s'en va-t-en guerre."
I had not the heart to plague him further.
"Peace!" said I, creeping cautiously within the circle of the stick.
"No! I forewarn you--"
"Peace! and describe to me my little cousin, your pretty daughter,--for
pretty I am sure she is."
"Peace," said my uncle, smiling. "But you must come and judge for
yourself."
CHAPTER II.
Uncle Roland was gone. Before he went, he was closeted for an hour with
my father, who then accompanied him to the gate; and we all crowded
round him as he stepped into his chaise. When the Captain was gone, I
tried to sound my father as to the cause of so sudden a departure. But
my father was impenetrable in all that related to his brother's secrets.
Whether or not the Captain had ever confided to him the cause of his
displeasure with his son,--a mystery which much haunted me,--my father
was mute on that score both to my mother and myself. For two or three
days, however, Mr. Caxton was evidently unsettled. He did not even take
to his Great Work, but walked much alone, or accompanied only by the
duck, and without even a book in his hand. But by degrees the scholarly
habits returned to him; my mother mended his pens, and the work went on.
For my part, left much to myself, especially in the mornings, I began to
muse restlessly over the future. Ungrateful. that I was, the happiness
of home ceased to content me. I heard afar the roar of the great world,
and roved impatient by the shore.
At length, one evening, my father, with some modest hums and ha's, and
an unaffected blush on his fair forehead, gratified a prayer frequently
urged on him, and read me some portions of the Great Work. I cannot
express the feelings this lecture created,--they were something akin to
awe. For the design of this book was so immense, and towards its
execution a learning so vast and various had administered, that it
seemed to me as if a spirit had opened to me a new world, which had
always been before my feet, but which my own human blindness had
hitherto concealed from me. The unspeakable patience with which all
these materials had been collected, year after year; the ease with which
now, by the calm power of genius, they seemed of themselves to fall into
harmony and system; the unconscious humility with which the scholar
exposed the stores of a laborious life,---all combined to rebuke my own
restlessness and ambition, while they filled me with a pride in my
father which saved my wounded egotism from a pang. Here, indeed, was
one of those books which embrace an existence; like the Dictionary of
Bayle, or the History of Gibbon, or the "Fasti Hellenici" of Clinton, it
was a book to which thousands of books had contributed, only to make the
originality of the single mind more bold and clear. Into the furnace
all vessels of gold, of all ages, had been cast; but from the mould came
the new coin, with its single stamp. And, happily, the subject of the
work did not forbid to the writer the indulgence of his naive, peculiar
irony of humor, so quiet, yet so profound. My father's book was the
"History of Human Error." It was, therefore, the moral history of
mankind, told with truth and earnestness, yet with an arch, unmalignant
smile. Sometimes, indeed, the smile drew tears. But in all true humor
lies its germ, pathos. Oh! by the goddess Moria, or Folly, but he was
at home in his theme. He viewed man first in the savage state,
preferring in this the positive accounts of voyagers and travellers to
the vague myths of antiquity and the dreams of speculators on our
pristine state. From Australia and Abyssinia he drew pictures of
mortality unadorned, as lively as if he had lived amongst Bushmen and
savages all his life. Then he crossed over the Atlantic, and brought
before you the American Indian, with his noble nature, struggling into
the dawn of civilization, when Friend Penn cheated him out of his
birthright, and the Anglo-Saxon drove him back into darkness. He showed
both analogy and contrast between this specimen of our kind and others
equally apart from the extremes of the savage state and the cultured,--
the Arab in his tent, the Teuton in his forests, the Greenlander in his
boat, the Finn in his reindeer car. Up sprang the rude gods of the
North and the resuscitated Druidism, passing from its earliest
templeless belief into the later corruptions of crommell and idol. Up
sprang, by their side, the Saturn of the Phoenicians, the mystic Budh of
India, the elementary deities of the Pelasgian, the Naith and Serapis of
Egypt, the Ormuzd of Persia, the Bel of Babylon, the winged genii of the
graceful Etruria. How nature and life shaped the religion; how the
religion shaped the manners; how, and by what influences, some tribes
were formed for progress; how others were destined to remain stationary,
or be swallowed up in war and slavery by their brethren,--was told with
a precision clear and strong as the voice of Fate. Not only an
antiquarian and philologist, but an anatomist and philosopher, my father
brought to bear on all these grave points the various speculations
involved in the distinction of races. He showed how race in perfection
is produced, up to a certain point, by admixture; how all mixed races
have been the most intelligent; how, in proportion as local circumstance
and religious faith permitted the early fusion of different tribes,
races improved and quickened into the refinements of civilization. He
tracked the progress and dispersion of the Hellenes from their mythical
cradle in Thessaly, and showed how those who settled near the sea-
shores, and were compelled into commerce and intercourse with strangers,
gave to Greece her marvellous accomplishments in arts and letters,--the
flowers of the ancient world. How others, like the Spartans; dwelling
evermore in a camp, on guard against their neighbors, and rigidly
preserving their Dorian purity of extraction, contributed neither
artists, nor poets, nor philosophers to the golden treasure-house of
mind. He took the old race of the Celts, Cimry, or Cimmerians. He
compared the Celt who, as in Wales, the Scotch Highlands, in Bretagne,
and in uncomprehended Ireland, retains his old characteristics and
purity of breed, with the Celt whose blood, mixed by a thousand
channels, dictates from Paris the manners and revolutions of the world.
He compared the Norman, in his ancient Scandinavian home, with that
wonder of intelligence and chivalry into which he grew, fused
imperceptibly with the Frank, the Goth, and the Anglo-Saxon. He
compared the Saxon, stationary in the land of Horsa, with the colonist
and civilizes of the globe as he becomes when he knows not through what
channels--French, Flemish, Danish, Welsh, Scotch, and Irish--he draws
his sanguine blood. And out from all these speculations, to which I do
such hurried and scanty justice, he drew the blessed truth, that carries
hope to the land of the Caffre, the but of the Bushman,--that there is
nothing in the flattened skull and the ebon aspect that rejects God's
law, improvement; that by the same principle which raises the dog, the
lowest of the animals in its savage state, to the highest after man--
viz., admixture of race--you can elevate into nations of majesty and
power the outcasts of humanity, now your compassion or your scorn. But
when my father got into the marrow of his theme; when, quitting these
preliminary discussions, he fell pounce amongst the would-be wisdom of
the wise; when he dealt with civilization itself, its schools, and
porticos, and academies; when he bared the absurdities couched beneath
the colleges of the Egyptians and the Symposia of the Greeks; when he
showed that, even in their own favorite pursuit of metaphysics, the
Greeks were children, and in their own more practical region of
politics, the Romans were visionaries and bunglers; when, following the
stream of error through the Middle Ages, he quoted the puerilities of
Agrippa, the crudities of Cardan, and passed, with his calin smile, into
the salons of the chattering wits of Paris in the eighteenth century,--
oh! then his irony was that of Lucian, sweetened by the gentle spirit of
Erasmus. For not even here was my father's satire of the cheerless and
Mephistophelian school. From this record of error he drew forth the
granderas of truth. He showed how earnest men never think in vain,
though their thoughts may be errors. He proved how, in vast cycles, age
after age, the human mind marches on, like the ocean, receding here, but
there advancing; how from the speculations of the Greek sprang all true
philosophy; how from the institutions of the Roman rose all durable
systems of government; how from the robust follies of the North came the
glory of chivalry, and the modern delicacies of honor, and the sweet,
harmonizing influences of woman. He tracked the ancestry of our Sidneys
and Bayards from the Hengists, Genserics, and Attilas. Full of all
curious and quaint anecdote, of original illustration, of those niceties
of learning which spring from a taste cultivated to the last exquisite
polish, the book amused and allured and charmed; and erudition lost its
pedantry, now in the simplicity of Montaigne, now in the penetration of
La Bruyere. He lived in each time of which he wrote, and the time lived
again in him. Ah! what a writer of romances he would have been if--if
what? If he had had as sad an experience of men's passions as he had
the happy intuition into their humors. But he who would see the mirror
of the shore must look where it is cast on the river, not the ocean.
The narrow stream reflects the gnarled tree and the pausing herd and the
village spire and the romance of the landscape. But the sea reflects
only the vast outline of the headland and the lights of the eternal
heaven.
CHAPTER III.
"It is Lombard Street to a China orange," quoth Uncle Jack.
"Are the odds in favor of fame against failure so great? You do not
speak, I fear, from experience, brother Jack," answered my father, as he
stooped down to tickle the duck under the left ear.
"But Jack Tibbets is not Augustine Caxton. Jack Tibbets is not a
scholar, a genius, a wond--"
"Stop!" cried my father.
"After all," said Mr. Squills, "though I am no flatterer, Mr. Tibbets is
not so far out. That part of your book which compares the crania or
skulls of the different races is superb. Lawrence or Dr. Prichard could
not have done the thing more neatly. Such a book must not be lost to
the world; and I agree with Mr. Tibbets that you should publish as soon
as possible."
"It is one thing to write, and another to publish," said my father,
irresolutely. "When one considers all the great men who have published;
when one thinks one is going to intrude one's self audaciously into the
company of Aristotle and Bacon, of Locke, of Herder, of all the grave
philosophers who bend over Nature with brows weighty with thought,--one
may well pause and-"
"Pooh!" interrupted Uncle Jack, "science is not a club, it is an ocean;
it is open to the cock-boat as the frigate. One man carries across it a
freightage of ingots, another may fish there for herrings. Who can
exhaust the sea, who say to Intellect, 'The deeps of philosophy are
preoccupied'?"
"Admirable!" cried Squills.
"So it is really your advice, my friends," said my father, who seemed
struck by Uncle Jack's eloquent illustrations, "that I should desert my
household gods, remove to London, since my own library ceases to supply
my wants, take lodgings near the British Museum, and finish off one
volume, at least, incontinently."
"It is a duty you owe to your country," said Uncle Jack, solemnly.
"And to yourself," urged Squills. "One must attend to the natural
evacuations of the brain. Ah! you may smile, sir, but I have observed
that if a man has much in his head, he must give it vent, or it
oppresses him; the whole system goes wrong. From being abstracted, he
grows stupefied. The weight of the pressure affects the nerves. I
would not even guarantee you from a stroke of paralysis."
"Oh, Austin!" cried my mother tenderly, and throwing her arms round my
father's neck.
"Come, sir, you are conquered," said I.
"And what is to become of you, Sisty?" asked my father. "Do you go with
us, and unsettle your mind for the university?"
"My uncle has invited me to his castle; and in the mean while I will
stay here, fag hard, and take care of the duck."
"All alone?" said my mother.
"No. All alone! Why, Uncle Jack will come here as often as ever, I
hope."
Uncle Jack shook his head.
"No, my boy, I must go to town with your father. You don't understand
these things. I shall see the booksellers for him. I know how these
gentlemen are to be dealt with. I shall prepare the literary circles
for the appearance of the book. In short, it is a sacrifice of
interest, I know; my Journal will suffer. But friendship and my
country's good before all things."
"Dear Jack!" said my mother, affectionately.
"I cannot suffer it," cried my father. "You are making a good income.
Yon are doing well where you are, and as to seeing the booksellers,--
why, when the work is ready, you can come to town for a week, and settle
that affair."
"Poor dear Austin," said Uncle Jack, with an air of superiority and
compassion. "A week! Sir, the advent of a book that is to succeed
requires the preparation of months. Pshaw! I am no genius, but I am a
practical man. I know what's what. Leave me alone."
But my father continued obstinate, and Uncle Jack at last ceased to urge
the matter. The journey to fame and London was now settled, but my
father would not hear of my staying behind.
No, Pisistratus must needs go also to town and see the world; the duck
would take care of itself.
CHAPTER IV.
We had taken the precaution to send, the day before, to secure our due
complement of places--four in all, including one for Mrs. Primmins--in,
or upon, the fast family coach called the "Sun," which had lately been
set up for the special convenience of the neighborhood.
This luminary, rising in a town about seven miles distant from us,
described at first a very erratic orbit amidst the contiguous villages
before it finally struck into the high-road of enlightenment, and thence
performed its journey, in the full eyes of man, at the majestic pace of
six miles and a half an hour. My father with his pockets full of books,
and a quarto of "Gebelin on the Primitive World," for light reading,
under his arm; my mother with a little basket containing sandwiches, and
biscuits of her own baking; Mrs. Primmins, with a new umbrella purchased
for the occasion, and a bird-cage containing a canary endeared to her
not more by song than age and a severe pip through which she had
successfully nursed it; and I myself,--waited at the gates to welcome
the celestial visitor. The gardener, with a wheel-barrow full of boxes
and portmanteaus, stood a little in the van; and the footman, who was to
follow when lodgings had been found, had gone to a rising eminence to
watch the dawning of the expected "Sun," and apprise us of its approach
by the concerted signal of a handkerchief fixed to a stick.
The quaint old house looked at us mournfully from all its deserted
windows. The litter before its threshold and in its open hall; wisps of
straw or hay that had been used for packing; baskets and boxes that had
been examined and rejected; others, corded and piled, reserved to follow
with the footman; and the two heated and hurried serving-women left
behind, standing halfway between house and garden-gate, whispering to
each other, and looking as if they had not slept for weeks,--gave to a
scene, usually so trim and orderly, an aspect of pathetic abandonment
and desolation. The Genius of the place seemed to reproach us. I felt
the omens were against us, and turned my earnest gaze from the haunts
behind with a sigh, as the coach now drew up with all its grandeur. An
important personage, who, despite the heat of the day, was enveloped in
a vast superfluity of belcher, in the midst of which galloped a gilt
fox, and who rejoiced in the name of "guard," descended to inform us
politely that only three places, two inside and one out, were at our
disposal, the rest having been pre-engaged a fortnight before our orders
were received.
Now, as I knew that Mrs. Primmins was indispensable to the comforts of
my honored parents (the more so as she had once lived in London, and
knew all its ways), I suggested that she should take the outside seat,
and that I should perform the journey on foot,--a primitive mode of
transport which has its charms to a young man with stout limbs and gay
spirits. The guard's outstretched arm left my mother little time to
oppose this proposition, to which my father assented with a silent
squeeze of the hand. And having promised to join them at a family hotel
near the Strand, to which Mr. Squills had recommended them as peculiarly
genteel and quiet, and waved my last farewell to my poor mother, who
continued to stretch her meek face out of the window till the coach was
whirled off in a cloud like one of the Homeric heroes, I turned within,
to put up a few necessary articles in a small knapsack which I
remembered to have seen in the lumber-room, and which had appertained to
my maternal grandfather; and with that on my shoulder, and a strong
staff in my hand, I set off towards the great city at as brisk a pace as
if I were only bound to the next village. Accordingly, about noon I was
both tired and hungry; and seeing by the wayside one of those pretty
inns yet peculiar to England, but which, thanks to the railways, will
soon be amongst the things before the Flood, I sat down at a table under
some clipped limes, unbuckled my knapsack, and ordered my simple fare
with the dignity of one who, for the first time in his life, bespeaks
his own dinner and pays for it out of his own pocket.
While engaged on a rasher of bacon and a tankard of what the landlord
called "No mistake," two pedestrians, passing the same road which I had
traversed, paused, cast a simultaneous look at my occupation, and
induced no doubt by its allurements, seated themselves under the same
lime-trees, though at the farther end of the table. I surveyed the new-
comers with the curiosity natural to my years.
The elder of the two might have attained the age of thirty, though
sundry deep lines, and hues formerly florid and now faded, speaking of
fatigue, care, or dissipation, might have made him look somewhat older
than he was. There was nothing very prepossessing in his appearance.
He was dressed with a pretension ill suited to the costume appropriate
to a foot-traveller. His coat was pinched and padded; two enormous
pins, connected by a chain, decorated a very stiff stock of blue satin
dotted with yellow stars; his hands were cased in very dingy gloves
which had once been straw-colored, and the said hands played with a
whalebone cane surmounted by a formidable knob, which gave it the
appearance of a "life-pre server." As he took off a white napless hat,
which he wiped with great care and affection with the sleeve of his
right arm, a profusion of stiff curls instantly betrayed the art of man.
Like my landlord's ale, in that wig there was "no mistake;" it was
brought (after the fashion of the wigs we see in the popular effigies of
George IV. in his youth), low over his fore-head, and was raised at the
top. The wig had been oiled, and the oil had imbibed no small quantity
of dust; oil and dust had alike left their impression on the forehead
and cheeks of the wig's proprietor. For the rest, the expression of his
face was somewhat impudent and reckless, but not without a certain
drollery in the corners of his eyes.
The younger man was apparently about my own age,--a year or two older,
perhaps, judging rather from his set and sinewy frame than his boyish
countenance. And this last, boyish as it was, could not fail to command
the attention even of the most careless observer. It had not only the
darkness, but the character of the gipsy face, with large, brilliant
eyes, raven hair, long and wavy, but not curling; the features were
aquiline, but delicate, and when he spoke he showed teeth dazzling as
pearls. It was impossible not to admire the singular beauty of the
countenance; and yet it had that expression, at once stealthy and
fierce, which war with society has stamped upon the lineaments of the
race of which it reminded me. But, withal, there was somewhat of the
air of a gentleman in this young wayfarer. His dress consisted of a
black velveteen shooting-jacket, or rather short frock, with a broad
leathern strap at the waist, loose white trousers, and a foraging cap,
which he threw carelessly on the table as he wiped his brow. Turning
round impatiently, and with some haughtiness, from his companion, he
surveyed me with a quick, observant flash of his piercing eyes, and then
stretched himself at length on the bench, and appeared either to dose or
muse, till, in obedience to his companion's orders, the board was spread
with all the cold meats the larder could supply.
"Beef!" said his companion, screwing a pinchbeck glass into his right
eye. "Beef,--mottled, covey; humph! Lamb,--oldish, ravish, muttony;
humph! Pie,--stalish. Veal?--no, pork. Ah! what will you have?"
"Help yourself," replied the young man peevishly, as he sat up, looked
disdainfully at the viands, and, after a long pause, tasted first one,
then the other, with many shrugs of the shoulders and muttered
exclamations of discontent. Suddenly he looked up, and called for
brandy; and to my surprise, and I fear admiration, he drank nearly half
a tumblerful of that poison undiluted, with a composure that spoke of
habitual use.
"Wrong!" said his companion, drawing the bottle to himself, and mixing
the alcohol in careful proportions with water. "Wrong! coats of
stomach soon wear out with that kind of clothes-brush. Better stick to
the 'yeasty foam,' as sweet Will says. That young gentleman sets you a
good example," and therewith the speaker nodded at me familiarly.
Inexperienced as I was, I surmised at once that it was his intention to
make acquaintance with the neighbor thus saluted. I was not deceived.
"Anything to tempt you, sir?" asked this social personage after a short
pause, and describing a semicircle with the point of his knife.
"I thank you, sir, but I have dined."
"What then? 'Break out into a second course of mischief,' as the Swan
recommends,--Swan of Avon, sir! No? 'Well, then, I charge you with
this cup of sack.' Are you going far, if I may take the liberty to
ask?"
"To London."
"Oh!" said the traveller, while his young companion lifted his eyes; and
I was again struck with their remarkable penetration and brilliancy.
"London is the best place in the world for a lad of spirit. See life
there,--'glass of fashion and mould of form.' Fond of the play, sir?"
"I never saw one."
"Possible!" cried the gentleman, dropping the handle of his knife, and
bringing up the point horizontally; "then, young man," he added
solemnly, "you have,--but I won't say what you have to see. I won't
say,--no, not if you could cover this table with golden guineas, and
exclaim, with the generous ardor so engaging in youth, 'Mr. Peacock,
these are yours if you will only say what I have to see!'"
I laughed outright. May I be forgiven for the boast, but I had the
reputation at school of a pleasant laugh. The young man's face grew
dark at the sound; he pushed back his plate and sighed.
"Why," continued his friend, "my companion here, who, I suppose, is
about your own age, he could tell you what a play is,--he could tell you
what life is. He has viewed the mantiers of the town; 'perused the
traders,' as the Swan poetically remarks. Have you not, my lad, eh?"
Thus directly appealed to, the boy looked up with a smile of scorn on
his lips,--
"Yes, I know what life is, and I say that life, like poverty, has
strange bed-fellows. Ask me what life is now, and I say a melodrama;
ask me what it is twenty years hence, and I shall say--"
"A farce?" put in his comrade.
"No, a tragedy,--or comedy as Moliere wrote it."
"And how is that?" I asked, interested and somewhat surprised at the
tone of my contemporary.
"Where the play ends in the triumph of the wittiest rogue. My friend
here has no chance!"
"'Praise from Sir Hubert Stanley,' hem--yes, Hal Peacock may be witty,
but he is no rogue."
"This was not exactly my meaning," said the boy, dryly.
"'A fico for your meaning,' as the Swan says.--Hallo, you sir! Bully
Host, clear the table--fresh tumblers--hot water--sugar--lemon--and--The
bottle's out! Smoke, sir?" and Mr. Peacock offered me a cigar.
Upon my refusal, he carefully twirled round a very uninviting specimen
of some fabulous havanna, moistened it all over, as a boa-constrictor
may do the ox he prepares for deglutition, bit off one end, and lighting
the other from a little machine for that purpose which he drew from his
pocket, he was soon absorbed in a vigorous effort (which the damp
inherent in the weed long resisted) to poison the surrounding
atmosphere. Therewith the young gentleman, either from emulation or in
self-defence, extracted from his own pouch a cigar-case of notable
elegance,--being of velvet, embroidered apparently by some fair hand,
for "From Juliet" was very legibly worked thereon,--selected a cigar of
better appearance than that in favor with his comrade, and seemed quite
as familiar with the tobacco as he had been with the brandy.
"Fast, sir, fast lad that," quoth Mr. Peacock, in the short gasps which
his resolute struggle with his uninviting victim alone permitted;
"nothing but [puff, puff] your true [suck, suck] syl--syl--sylva--does
for him. Out, by the Lord! the jaws of darkness have devoured it up;'"
and again Mr. Peacock applied to his phosphoric machine. This time
patience and perseverance succeeded, and the heart of the cigar
responded by a dull red spark (leaving the sides wholly untouched) to
the indefatigable ardor of its wooer.
This feat accomplished, Mr. Peacock exclaimed triumphantly: "And now,
what say you, my lads, to a game at cards? Three of us,--whist and a
dummy; nothing better, eh?" As he spoke, he produced from his coat-
pocket a red silk handkerchief, a bunch of keys, a nightcap, a tooth-
brush, a piece of shaving-soap, four lumps of sugar, the remains of a
bun, a razor, and a pack of cards. Selecting the last, and returning
its motley accompaniments to the abyss whence they had emerged, he
turned up, with a jerk of his thumb and finger, the knave of clubs, and
placing it on the top of the rest, slapped the cards emphatically on the
table.
"You are very good, but I don't know whist," said I.
"Not know whist--not been to a play--not smoke! Then pray tell me,
young man," said he majestically, and with a frown, "what on earth you
do know."
Much consternated by this direct appeal, and greatly ashamed of my
ignorance of the cardinal points of erudition in Mr. Peacock's
estimation, I hung my head and looked down.
"That is right," renewed Mr. Peacock, more benignly; "you have the
ingenuous shame of youth. It is promising, sir; 'lowliness is young
ambition's ladder,' as the Swan says. Mount the first step, and learn
whist,--sixpenny points to begin with."
Notwithstanding any newness in actual life, I had had the good fortune
to learn a little of the way before me, by those much-slandered guides
called novels,--works which are often to the inner world what maps are
to the outer; and sundry recollections of "Gil Blas" and the "Vicar of
Wakefield" came athwart me. I had no wish to emulate the worthy Moses,
and felt that I might not have even the shagreen spectacles to boast of
in my negotiations with this new Mr. Jenkinson. Accordingly, shaking my
head, I called for my bill. As I took out my purse,--knit by my
mother,--with one gold piece in one corner, and sundry silver ones in
the other, I saw that the eyes of Mr. Peacock twinkled.
"Poor spirit, sir! poor spirit, young man! 'This avarice sticks deep,'
as the Swan beautifully observes. 'Nothing venture, nothing have.'"
"Nothing have, nothing venture," I returned, plucking up spirit.
"Nothing have! Young sir, do you doubt my solidity--my capital--my
'golden joys'?"
"Sir, I spoke of myself. I am not rich enough to gamble."
"Gamble!" exclaimed Mr. Peacock, in virtuous indignation--" gamble!
what do you mean, sir? You insult me!" and he rose threateningly, and
slapped his white hat on his wig. "Pshaw! let him alone, Hal," said
the boy, contemptuously. "Sir, if he is impertinent, thrash him."
(This was to me.) "Impertinent! thrash!" exclaimed Mr. Peacock, waxing
very red; but catching the sneer on his companion's lip, he sat down,
and subsided into sullen silence.
Meanwhile I paid my bill. This duty--rarely a cheerful one--performed,
I looked round for my knapsack, and perceived that it was in the boy's
hands. He was very coolly reading the address, which, in case of
accidents, I prudently placed on it: "Pisistratus Caxton, Esq.,--
Hotel,--Street, Strand."
I took my knapsack from him, more surprised at such a breach of good
manners in a young gentleman who knew life so well, than I should have
been at a similar error on the part of Mr. Peacock. He made no apology,
but nodded farewell, and stretched himself at full length on the bench.
Mr. Peacock, now absorbed in a game of patience, vouchsafed no return to
my parting salutation, and in another moment I was alone on the high-
road. My thoughts turned long upon the young man I had left; mixed with
a sort of instinctive compassionate foreboding of an ill future for one
with such habits and in such companionship, I felt an involuntary
admiration, less even for his good looks than his ease, audacity, and
the careless superiority he assumed over a comrade so much older than
himself.
The day twas far gone when I saw the spires of a town at which I
intended to rest for the night. The horn of a coach behind made me turn
my head, and as the vehicle passed me, I saw on the outside Mr. Peacock,
still struggling with a cigar,--it could scarcely be the same,--and his
young friend stretched on the roof amongst the luggage, leaning his
handsome head on his hand, and apparently unobservant both of me and
every one else.
CHAPTER V.
I am apt--judging egotistically, perhaps, from my own experience-to
measure a young man's chance of what is termed practical success in life
by what may seem at first two very vulgar qualities; viz., his
inquisitiveness and his animal vivacity. A curiosity which springs
forward to examine everything new to his information; a nervous
activity, approaching to restlessness, which rarely allows bodily
fatigue to interfere with some object in view,--constitute, in my mind,
very profitable stock-in-hand to begin the world with.
Tired as I was, after I had performed my ablutions and refreshed myself
in the little coffee-room of the inn at which I put up, with the
pedestrian's best beverage, familiar and oft calumniated tea, I could
not resist the temptation of the broad, bustling street, which, lighted
with gas, shone on me through the dim windows of the coffee-room. I had
never before seen a large town, and the contrast of lamp-lit, busy night
in the streets, with sober, deserted night in the lanes and fields,
struck me forcibly.
I sauntered out, therefore, jostling and jostled, now gazing at the
windows, now hurried along the tide of life, till I found myself before
a cookshop, round which clustered a small knot of housewives, citizens,
and hungry-looking children. While contemplating this group, and
marvelling how it comes to pass that the staple business of earth's
majority is how, when, and where to eat, my ear was struck with "'In
Troy there lies the scene,' as the illustrious Will remarks."
Looking round, I perceived Mr. Peacock pointing his stick towards an
open doorway next to the cookshop, the hall beyond which was lighted
with gas, while painted in black letters on a pane of glass over the
door was the word "Billiards."
Suiting the action to the word, the speaker plunged at once into the
aperture, and vanished. The boy-companion was following more slowly,
when his eye caught mine. A slight blush came over his dark cheek; he
stopped, and leaning against the door-jambs, gazed on me hard and long
before he said: "Well met again, sir! You find it hard to amuse
yourself in this dull place; the nights are long out of London."
"Oh!" said I, ingenuously, "everything here amuses me,--the lights, the
shops, the crowd; but, then, to me everything is new."
The youth came from his lounging-place and moved on, as if inviting me
to walk; while he answered, rather with bitter sullenness than the
melancholy his words expressed,--
"One thing, at least, cannot be new to you,--it is an old truth with us
before we leave the nursery: 'Whatever is worth having must be bought;'
ergo, he who cannot buy, has nothing worth having."
"I don't think," said I, wisely, "that the things best worth having can
be bought at all. You see that poor dropsical jeweller standing before
his shop-door: his shop is the finest in the street, and I dare say he
would be very glad to give it to you or me in return for our good health
and strong legs. Oh, no! I think with my father: 'All that are worth
having are given to all,'--that is, Nature and labor."
"Your father says that; and you go by what your father says? Of course,
all fathers have preached that, and many other good doctrines, since
Adam preached to Cain; but I don't see that the fathers have found their
sons very credulous listeners."
"So much the worse for the sons," said I, bluntly. "Nature," continued
my new acquaintance, without attending to my ejaculation,--"Nature
indeed does give us much, and Nature also orders each of us how to use
her gifts. If Nature give you the propensity to drudge, you will
drudge; if she give me the ambition to rise, and the contempt for work,
I may rise,--but I certainly shall not work."
"Oh," said I, "you agree with Squills, I suppose, and fancy we are all
guided by the bumps on our foreheads?"
"And the blood in our veins, and our mothers' milk. We inherit other
things besides gout and consumption. So you always do as your father
tells you! Good boy!"
I was piqued. Why we should be ashamed of being taunted for goodness, I
never could understand; but certainly I felt humbled. However, I
answered sturdily: "If you had as good a father as I have, you would not
think it so very extraordinary to do as he tells you."
"Ah! so he is a very good father, is he? He must have a great trust in
your sobriety and steadiness to let you wander about the world as he
does."
"I am going to join him in London."
"In London! Oh, does he live there?"
"He is going to live there for some time."
"Then perhaps we may meet. I too am going to town."
"Oh, we shall be sure to meet there!" said I, with frank gladness; for
my interest in the young man was not diminished by his conversation,
however much I disliked the sentiments it expressed.
The lad laughed, and his laugh was peculiar,--it was low, musical, but
hollow and artificial.
"Sure to meet! London is a large place: where shall you be found?"
I gave him, without scruple, the address of the hotel at which I
expected to find my father, although his deliberate inspection of my
knapsack must already have apprised him of that address. He listened
attentively, and repeated it twice over, as if to impress it on his
memory; and we both walked on in silence, till, turning up a small
passage, we suddenly found ourselves in a large churchyard,--a flagged
path stretched diagonally across it towards the market-place, on which
it bordered. In this churchyard, upon a gravestone, sat a young
Savoyard; his hurdy-gurdy, or whatever else his instrument might be
called, was on his lap; and he was gnawing his crust and feeding some
poor little white mice (standing on their hind legs on the hurdy-gurdy)
as merrily as if he had chosen the gayest resting-place in the world.
We both stopped. The Savoyard, seeing us, put his arch head on one
side, showed all his white teeth in that happy smile so peculiar to his
race, and in which poverty seems to beg so blithely, and gave the handle
of his instrument a turn. "Poor child!" said I.
"Aha, you pity him! but why? According to your rule, Mr. Caxton, he is
not so much to be pitied; the dropsical jeweller would give him as much
for his limbs and health as for ours! How is it--answer me, son of so
wise a father--that no one pities the dropsical jeweller, and all pity
the healthy Savoyard? It is, sir, because there is a stern truth which
is stronger than all Spartan lessons,--Poverty is the master-ill of the
world. Look round. Does poverty leave its signs over the graves? Look
at that large tomb fenced round; read that long inscription: 'Virtue'--
'best of husbands'--'affectionate father'--'inconsolable grief'-'sleeps
in the joyful hope,' etc. Do you suppose these stoneless mounds hide no
dust of what were men just as good? But no epitaph tells their virtues,
bespeaks their wifes' grief, or promises joyful hope to them!"
"Does it matter? Does God care for the epitaph and tombstone?"
"Datemi qualche cosa!" said the Savoyard, in his touching patois, still
smiling, and holding out his little hand; therein I dropped a small
coin. The boy evinced his gratitude by a new turn of the hurdy-gurdy.
"That is not labor," said my companion; "and had you found him at work,
you had given him nothing. I, too, have my instrument to play upon, and
my mice to see after. Adieu!"
He waved his hand, and strode irreverently over the graves back in the
direction we had come.
I stood before the fine tomb with its fine epitaph: the Savoyard looked
at me wistfully.
CHAPTER VI.
The Savoyard looked at me wistfully. I wished to enter into
conversation with him. That was not easy. However, I began.
Pisistratus.--"You must be often hungry enough, my poor boy. Do the
mice feed you?"
Savoyard puts his head on one side, shakes it, and strokes his mice.
Pisistratus.-"You are very fond of the mice; they are your only friends,
I fear."
Savoyard evidently understanding Pisistratus, rubs his face gently
against the mice, then puts them softly down on a grave, and gives a
turn to the hurdy-gurdy. The mice play unconcernedly over the grave.
Pisistratus, pointing first to the beasts, then to the instrument.--
"Which do you like best, the mice or the hurdygurdy?"
Savoyard shows his teeth--considers--stretches himself on the grass-
plays with the mice--and answers volubly. Pisistratus, by the help of
Latin comprehending that the Savoyard says that the mice are alive, and
the hurdy-gurdy is not.--"Yes, a live friend is better than a dead one.
Mortua est hurdy-gurda!"
Savoyard shakes his head vehemently.--"No--no, Eccellenza, non e morta!"
and strikes up a lively air on the slandered instrument. The Savoyard's
face brightens-he looks happy; the mice run from the grave into his
bosom. Pisistratus, affected, and putting the question in Latin.--"Have
you a father?"
Savoyard with his face overcast.--"No, Eccellenza!" then pausing a
little, he says briskly, "Si, si!" and plays a solemn air on the hurdy-
gurdy--stops--rests one hand on the instrument, and raises the other to
heaven.
Pisistratus understands: the father is like the hurdygurdy, at once dead
and living. The mere form is a dead thing, but the music lives.
Pisistratus drops another small piece of silver on the ground, and turns
away.
God help and God bless thee, Savoyard! Thou hast done Pisistratus all
the good in the world. Thou hast corrected the hard wisdom of the young
gentleman in the velveteen jacket; Pisistratus is a better lad for
having stopped to listen to thee.
I regained the entrance to the churchyard, I looked back; there sat the
Savoyard still amidst men's graves, but under God's sky. He was still
looking at me wistfully; and when he caught my eye, he pressed his hand
to his heart and smiled. God help and God bless thee, young Savoyard!
PART V.
CHAPTER I.
In setting off the next morning, the Boots, whose heart I had won by an
extra sixpence for calling me betimes, good-naturedly informed me that I
might save a mile of the journey, and have a very pleasant walk into the
bargain, if I took the footpath through a gentleman's park, the lodge of
which I should see about seven miles from the town.
"And the grounds are showed too," said the Boots, "if so be you has a
mind to stay and see 'em. But don't you go to the gardener,--he'll want
half a crown; there's an old 'Oman at the lodge who will show you all
that's worth seeing--the walks and the big cascade--for a tizzy. You
may make use of my name," he added proudly,--"Bob, boots at the 'Lion.'
She be a haunt o' mine, and she minds them that come from me
perticklerly."
Not doubting that the purest philanthropy actuated these counsels, I
thanked my shock-headed friend, and asked carelessly to whom the park
belonged.
"To Muster Trevanion, the great parliament man," answered the Boots.
"You has heard o' him, I guess, sir?"
I shook my head, surprised every hour more and more to find how very
little there was in it.
"They takes in the 'Moderate Man's Journal' at the 'Lamb:' and they say
in the tap there that he's one of the cleverest chaps in the House o'
Commons," continued the Boots, in a confidential whisper. "But we takes
in the 'People's Thunderbolt' at the 'Lion,' and we knows better this
Muster Trevanion: he is but a trimmer,--milk and water,--no horator,--
not the right sort; you understand?" Perfectly satisfied that I
understood nothing about it, I smiled, and said, "Oh, yes!" and slipping
on my knapsack, commenced my adventures, the Boots bawling after me,
"Mind, sir, you tells haunt I sent you!"
The town was only languidly putting forth symptoms of returning life as
I strode through the streets; a pale, sickly, unwholesome look on the
face of the slothful Phoebus had succeeded the feverish hectic of the
past night; the artisans whom I met glided by me haggard and dejected; a
few early shops were alone open; one or two drunken men, emerging from
the lanes, sallied homeward with broken pipes in their mouths; bills,
with large capitals, calling attention to "Best family teas at 4s. a
pound;" "The arrival of Mr. Sloinan's caravan of wild beasts;" and Dr.
Do'em's "Paracelsian Pills of Immortality," stared out dull and
uncheering from the walls of tenantless, dilapidated houses in that
chill sunrise which favors no illusion. I was glad when I had left the
town behind me, and saw the reapers in the corn-fields, and heard the
chirp of the birds. I arrived at the lodge of which the Boots had
spoken,--a pretty rustic building half-concealed by a belt of
plantations, with two large iron gates for the owner's friends, and a
small turn-stile for the public, who, by some strange neglect on his
part, or sad want of interest with the neighboring magistrates, had
still preserved a right to cross the rich man's domains and look on his
grandeur, limited to compliance with a reasonable request, mildly stated
on the notice-board, "to keep to the paths." As it was not yet eight
o'clock, I had plenty of time before me to see the grounds; and
profiting by the economical hint of the Boots, I entered the lodge and
inquired for the old lady who was haunt to Mr. Bob. A young woman, who
was busied in preparing breakfast, nodded with great civility to this
request, and hastening to a bundle of clothes which I then perceived in
the corner, she cried, "Grandmother, here's a gentleman to see the
cascade."
The bundle of clothes then turned round and exhibited a human
countenance, which lighted up with great intelligence as the
granddaughter, turning to me, said with simplicity. "She's old, honest
cretur, but she still likes to earn a sixpence, sir;" and taking a
crutch-staff in her hand, while her granddaughter put a neat bonnet on
her head, this industrious gentlewoman sallied out at a pace which
surprised me.
I attempted to enter into conversation with my guide; but she did not
seem much inclined to be sociable, and the beauty of the glades and
groves which now spread before my eyes reconciled me to silence.
I have seen many fine places since then, but I do not remember to have
seen a landscape more beautiful in its peculiar English character than
that which I now gazed on. It had none of the feudal characteristics of
ancient parks, with giant oaks, fantastic pollards, glens covered with
fern, and deer grouped upon the slopes; on the contrary, in spite of
some fine trees, chiefly beech, the impression conveyed was, that it was
a new place,--a made place. You might see ridges on the lawns which
showed where hedges had been removed; the pastures were parcelled out in
divisions by new wire fences; young plantations, planned with exquisite
taste, but without the venerable formality of avenues and quin-cunxes,
by which you know the parks that date from Elizabeth and James,
diversified the rich extent of verdure; instead of deer, were short-
horned cattle of the finest breed, sheep that would have won the prize
at an agricultural show. Everywhere there was the evidence of
improvement, energy, capital, but capital clearly not employed for the
mere purpose of return. The ornamental was too conspicuously
predominant amidst the lucrative not to say eloquently: "The owner is
willing to make the most of his land, but not the most of his money."
But the old woman's eagerness to earn sixpence had impressed me
unfavorably as to the character of the master. "Here," thought I, "are
all the signs of riches; and yet this poor old woman, living on the very
threshold of opulence, is in want of a sixpence."
These surmises, in the indulgence of which I piqued myself on my
penetration, were strengthened into convictions by the few sentences
which I succeeded at last in eliciting from the old woman.
"Mr. Trevanion must be a rich man?" said I. "Oh, ay, rich eno'!"
grumbled my guide.
"And," said I, surveying the extent of shrubbery or dressed ground
through which our way wound, now emerging into lawns and glades, now
belted by rare garden-trees, now (as every inequality of the ground was
turned to advantage in the landscape) sinking into the dell, now
climbing up the slopes, and now confining the view to some object of
graceful art or enchanting Nature,--"and," said I, "he must employ many
hands here: plenty of work, eh?"
"Ay, ay! I don't say that he don't find work for those who want it. But
it ain't the same place it wor in my day."
"You remember it in other hands, then?"
"Ay, ay! When the Hogtons had it, honest folk! My good man was the
gardener,--none of those set-Lip fine gentlemen who can't put hand to a
spade."
Poor faithful old woman!
I began to hate the unknown proprietor. Here clearly was some mushroom
usurper who had bought out the old simple, hospitable family, neglected
its ancient servants, left them to earn tizzies by showing waterfalls,
and insulted their eyes by his selfish wealth.
"There's the water all spilt,--it warn't so in my day," said the guide.
A rivulet, whose murmur I had long heard, now stole suddenly into view,
and gave to the scene the crowning charm. As, relapsing into silence,
we tracked its sylvan course, under dripping chestnuts and shady limes,
the house itself emerged on the opposite side,--a modern building of
white stone, with the noblest Corinthian portico I ever saw in this
country.
"A fine house indeed," said I. "Is Mr. Trevanion here much?"
"Ay, ay! I don't mean to say that he goes away altogether, but it ain't
as it wor in my day, when the Hogtons lived here all the year round in
their warm house,--not that one."
Good old woman, and these poor banished Hogtons, thought I,--hateful
parvenu! I was pleased when a curve in the shrubberies shut out the
house from view, though in reality bringing us nearer to it. And the
boasted cascade, whose roar I had heard for some moments, came in sight.
Amidst the Alps, such a waterfall would have been insignificant, but
contrasting ground highly dressed, with no other bold features, its
effect was striking, and even grand. The banks were here narrowed and
compressed; rocks, partly natural, partly no doubt artificial, gave a
rough aspect to the margin; and the cascade fell from a considerable
height into rapid waters, which my guide mumbled out were "mortal deep."
"There wor a madman leapt over where you be standing," said the old
woman, "two years ago last June."
"A madman! why," said I, observing, with an eye practised in the
gymnasium of the Hellenic Institute, the narrow space of the banks over
the gulf,--"why, my good lady, it need not be a madman to perform that
leap."
And so saying, with one of those sudden impulses which it would be wrong
to ascribe to the noble quality of courage, I drew back a few steps, and
cleared the abyss. But when from the other side I looked back at what I
had done, and saw that failure had been death, a sickness came over me,
and I felt as if I would not have releapt the gulf to become lord of the
domain.
"And how am I to get back?" said I, in a forlorn voice to the old woman,
who stood staring at me on the other side. "Ah! I see there is a
bridge below."
"But you can't go over the bridge, there's a gate on it; master keeps
the key himself. You are in the private grounds now. Dear, dear! the
squire would be so angry if he knew. You must go back; and they'll see
you from the house! Dear me! dear, dear! What shall I do? Can't you
leap back again?"
Moved by these piteous exclamations, and not wishing to subject the poor
old lady to the wrath of a master evidently an unfeeling tyrant, I
resolved to pluck up courage and releap the dangerous abyss.
"Oh, yes, never fear," said I, therefore. "What's been done once ought
to be done twice, if needful. Just get out of my way, will you?"
And I receded several paces over a ground much too rough to favor my run
for a spring. But my heart knocked against my ribs. I felt that
impulse can do wonders where preparation fails.
"You had best be quick, then," said the old woman.
Horrid old woman! I began to esteem her less. I set my teeth, and was
about to rush on, when a voice close beside me said,--
"Stay, young man; I will let you through the gate."
I turned round sharply, and saw close by my side, in great wonder that I
had not seen him before, a man, whose homely (but not working) dress
seemed to intimate his station as that of the head-gardener, of whom my
guide had spoken. He was seated on a stone under a chestnut-tree, with
an ugly cur at his feet, who snarled at me as I turned.
"Thank you, my man," said I, joyfully. "I confess frankly that I was
very much afraid of that leap."
"Ho! Yet you said, what can be done once can be done twice."
"I did not say it could be done, but ought to be done."
"Humph! That's better put."
Here the man rose; the dog came and smelt my legs, and then, as if
satisfied with my respectability, wagged the stump of his tail.
I looked across the waterfall for the old woman, and to my surprise saw
her hobbling back as fast as she could. "Ah!" said I, laughing, "the
poor old thing is afraid you'll tell her master,--for you're the head
gardener, I suppose? But I am the only person to blame. Pray say that,
if you mention the circumstance at all!" and I drew out half a crown,
which I proffered to my new conductor.
He put back the money with a low "Humph! not amiss." Then, in a louder
voice, "No occasion to bribe me, young man; I saw it all."
"I fear your master is rather hard to the poor Hogtons' old servants."
"Is he? Oh! humph! my master. Mr. Trevanion you mean?"
"Yes."
"Well, I dare say people say so. This is the way." And he led me down
a little glen away from the fall. Everybody must have observed that
after he has incurred or escaped a great danger, his spirits rise
wonderfully; he is in a state of pleasing excitement. So it was with
me. I talked to the gardener a coeur ouvert, as the French say; and I
did not observe that his short monosyllables in rejoinder all served to
draw out my little history,--my journey, its destination, my schooling
under Dr. Herman, and my father's Great Book. I was only made somewhat
suddenly aware of the familiarity that had sprung up between us when,
just as, having performed a circuitous meander, we regained the stream
and stood before an iron gate set in an arch of rock-work, my companion
said simply: "And your name, young gentleman? What's your name?"
I hesitated a moment; but having heard that such communications were
usually made by the visitors of show places, I answered: "Oh! a very
venerable one, if your master is what they call a bibliomaniac--Caxton."
"Caxton!" cried the gardener, with some vivacity; "there is a Cumberland
family of that name--"
"That's mine; and my Uncle Roland is the head of that family."
"And you are the son of Augustine Caxton?"
"I am. You have heard of my dear father, then?"
"We will not pass by the gate now. Follow me,--this way;" and my guide,
turning abruptly round, strode up a narrow path, and the house stood a
hundred yards before me ere I recovered my surprise.
"Pardon me," said I, "but where are we going, my good friend?"
"Good friend, good friend! Well said, sir. You are going amongst good
friends. I was at college with your father; I loved him well. I knew a
little of your uncle too. My name is Trevanion."
Blind young fool that I was! The moment my guide told his name, I was
struck with amazement at my unaccountable mistake. The small,
insignificant figure took instant dignity; the homely dress, of rough
dark broadcloth, was the natural and becoming dishabille of a country
gentleman in his own demesnes. Even the ugly cur became a Scotch
terrier of the rarest breed.
My guide smiled good-naturedly at my stupor; and patting me on the
shoulder, said,--
"It is the gardener you must apologize to, not me. He is a very
handsome fellow, six feet high."
I had not found my tongue before we had ascended a broad flight of
stairs under the portico, passed a spacious hall adorned with statues
and fragrant with large orange-trees, and, entering a small room hung
with pictures, in which were arranged all the appliances for breakfast,
my companion said to a lady, who rose from behind the tea-urn: "My dear
Ellinor, I introduce to you the son of our old friend Augustine Caxton.
Make him stay with us as long as he can. Young gentleman, in Lady
Ellinor Trevanion think that you see one whom you ought to know well;
family friendships should descend."
My host said these last words in an imposing tone, and then pounced on a
letter-bag on the table, drew forth an immense heap of letters and
newspapers, threw himself into an armchair, and seemed perfectly
forgetful of my existence.
The lady stood a moment in mute surprise, and I saw that she changed
color from pale to red, and red to pale, before she came forward with
the enchanting grace of unaffected kindness, took me by the hand, drew
me to a seat next to her own, and asked so cordially after my father, my
uncle, my whole family, that in five minutes I felt myself at home.
Lady Ellinor listened with a smile (though with moistened eyes, which
she wiped every now and then) to my artless details. At length she
said,--
"Have you never heard your father speak of me,--I mean of us; of the
Trevanions?"
"Never," said I, bluntly; "and that would puzzle me, only my dear
father, you know, is not a great talker."
"Indeed! he was very animated when I knew him," said Lady Ellinor; and
she turned her head and sighed.
At this moment there entered a young lady so fresh, so blooming, so
lovely that every other thought vanished out of my head at once. She
came in singing, as gay as a bird, and seeming to my adoring sight quite
as native to the skies.
"Fanny," said Lady Ellinor, "shake hands with Mr. Caxton, the son of one
whom I have not seen since I was little older than you, but whom I
remember as if it were but yesterday."
Miss Fanny blushed and smiled, and held out her hand with an easy
frankness which I in vain endeavored to imitate. During breakfast, Mr.
Trevanion continued to read his letters and glance over the papers, with
an occasional ejaculation of "Pish!" "Stuff!" between the intervals in
which he mechanically swallowed his tea, or some small morsels of dry
toast. Then rising with a suddenness which characterized his movements,
he stood on his hearth for a few moments buried in thought; and now that
a large-brimmed hat was removed from his brow, and the abruptness of his
first movement, with the sedateness of his after pause, arrested my
curious attention, I was more than ever ashamed of my mistake. It was a
careworn, eager, and yet musing countenance, hollow-eyed and with deep
lines; but it was one of those faces which take dignity and refinement
from that mental cultivation which distinguishes the true aristocrat,
namely, the highly educated, acutely intelligent man. Very handsome
might that face have been in youth, for the features, though small, were
exquisitely defined; the brow, partially bald, was noble and massive,
and there was almost feminine delicacy in the curve of the lip. The
whole expression of the face was commanding, but sad. Often, as my
experience of life increased, have I thought to trace upon that
expressive visage the history of energetic ambition curbed by a
fastidious philosophy and a scrupulous conscience; but then all that I
could see was a vague, dissatisfied melancholy, which dejected me I knew
not why.
Presently Trevanion returned to the table, collected his letters, moved
slowly towards the door, and vanished.
His wife's eyes followed him tenderly. Those eyes reminded me of my
mother's, as I verily believe did all eyes that expressed affection. I
crept nearer to her, and longed to press the white hand that lay so
listless before me.
"Will you walk out with us?" said Miss Trevanion, turning to me. I
bowed, and in a few minutes I found myself alone. While the ladies left
me, for their shawls and bonnets, I took up the newspapers which Mr.
Trevanion had thrown on the table, by way of something to do. My eye
was caught by his own name; it occurred often, and in all the papers.
There was contemptuous abuse in one, high eulogy in another; but one
passage in a journal that seemed to aim at impartiality, struck me so
much as to remain in my memory; and I am sure that I can still quote the
sense, though not the exact words. The paragraph ran somewhat thus:--
"In the present state of parties, our contemporaries have not
unnaturally devoted much space to the claims or demerits of Mr.
Trevanion. It is a name that stands unquestionably high in the House of
Commons; but, as unquestionably, it commands little sympathy in the
country. Mr. Trevanion is essentially and emphatically a member of
parliament. He is a close and ready debater; he is an admirable
chairman in committees. Though never in office, his long experience of
public life, his gratuitous attention to public business, have ranked
him high among those practical politicians from whom ministers are
selected. A man of spotless character and excellent intentions, no
doubt, he must be considered; and in him any cabinet would gain an
honest and a useful member. There ends all we can say in his praise.
As a speaker, he wants the fire and enthusiasm which engage the popular
sympathies. He has the ear of the House, not the heart of the country.
An oracle on subjects of mere business, in the great questions of policy
he is comparatively a failure. He never embraces any party heartily; he
never espouses any question as if wholly in earnest. The moderation on
which he is said to pique himself often exhibits itself in fastidious
crotchets and an attempt at philosophical originality of candor which
has long obtained him, with his enemies, the reputation of a trimmer.
Such a man circumstances may throw into temporary power; but can he
command lasting influence? No. Let Mr. Trevanion remain in what Nature
and position assign as his proper post,--that of an upright,
independent, able member of parliament; conciliating sensible men on
both sides, when party runs into extremes. He is undone as a cabinet
minister. His scruples would break up any government; and his want of
decision--when, as in all human affairs, some errors must be conceded to
obtain a great good--would shipwreck his own fame."
I had just got to the end of this paragraph when the ladies returned.
My hostess observed the newspaper in my hand, and said, with a
constrained smile, "Some attack on Mr. Trevanion, I suppose?"
"No," said I, awkwardly; for perhaps the paragraph that appeared to me
so impartial, was the most galling attack of all,--"No, not exactly."
"I never read the papers now,--at least what are called the leading
articles; it is too painful. And once they gave me so much pleasure,--
that was when the career began, and before the fame was made."
Here Lady Ellinor opened the window which admitted on the lawn, and in a
few moments we were in that part of the pleasure-grounds which the
family reserved from the public curiosity. We passed by rare shrubs and
strange flowers, long ranges of conservatories, in which bloomed and
lived all the marvellous vegetation of Africa and the Indies.
"Mr. Trevanion is fond of flowers?" said I.
The fair Fanny laughed. "I don't think he knows one from another."
"Nor I either," said I,--"that is, when I fairly lose sight of a rose or
a hollyhock."
"The farm will interest you more," said Lady Ellinor.
We came to farm buildings recently erected, and no doubt on the most
improved principle. Lady Ellinor pointed out to me machines and
contrivances of the newest fashion for abridging labor and perfecting
the mechanical operations of agriculture.
"Ah! then Mr. Trevanion is fond of farming?" The pretty Fanny laughed
again.
"My father is one of the great oracles in agriculture, one of the great
patrons of all its improvements; but as for being fond of farming, I
doubt if he knows his own fields when he rides through them."
We returned to the house; and Miss Trevanion, whose frank kindness had
already made too deep an impression upon the youthful heart of
Pisistratus the Second, offered to show me the picture-gallery. The
collection was confined to the works of English artists; and Miss
Trevanion pointed out to me the main attractions of the gallery.
"Well, at least Mr. Trevanion is fond of pictures?"
"Wrong again," said Fanny, shaking her arched head. "My father is said
to be an admirable judge; but he only buys pictures from a sense of
duty,--to encourage our own painters. A picture once bought, I am not
sure that he ever looks at it again."
"What does he then--" I stopped short, for I felt my meditated question
was ill-bred.
"What does he like then? you were about to say. Why, I have known him,
of course, since I could know anything; but I have never yet discovered
what my father does like. No,--not even politics; though he lives for
politics alone. You look puzzled; you will know him better some day, I
hope; but you will never solve the mystery--what Mr. Trevanion likes."
"You are wrong," said Lady Ellinor, who had followed us into the room,
unheard by us. "I can tell you what your father does more than like,--
what he loves and serves every hour of his noble life,--justice,
beneficence, honor, and his country. A man who loves these may be
excused for indifference to the last geranium or the newest plough, or
even (though that offends you more, Fanny) the freshest masterpiece by
Lanseer, or the latest fashion honored by Miss Trevanion."
"Mamma!" said Fanny, and the tears sprang to her eyes. But Lady Ellinor
looked to me sublime as she spoke, her eyes kindled, her breast heaved.
The wife taking the husband's part against the child, and comprehending
so well what the child felt not, despite its experience of every day,
and what the world would never know, despite all the vigilance of its
praise and its blame, was a picture, to my taste, finer than any in the
collection.
Her face softened as she saw the tears in Fanny's bright hazel eyes; she
held out her hand, which her child kissed tenderly; and whispering, "'T
is not the giddy word you must go by, mamma, or there will be something
to forgive every minute," Miss Trevanion glided from the room.
"Have you a sister?" asked Lady Ellinor.
"No."
"And Trevanion has no son," she said, mournfully. The blood rushed to
my cheeks. Oh, young fool again! We were both silent, when the door
opened, and Mr. Trevanion entered. "Humph!" said he, smiling as he saw
me,--and his smile was charming, though rare. "Humph, young sir, I came
to seek for you,--I have been rude, I fear; pardon it. That thought has
only just occurred to me, so I left my Blue Books, and my amanuensis
hard at work on them, to ask you to come out for half an hour,--just
half an hour, it is all I can give you: a deputation at one! You dine
and sleep here, of course?"
"Ah, sir, my mother will be so uneasy if I am not in town to-night!"
"Pooh!" said the member; "I'll send an express."
"Oh, no indeed; thank you."
"Why not?"
I hesitated. "You see, sir, that my father and mother are both new to
London; and though I am new too, yet they may want me,--I may be of
use." Lady Ellinor put her hand on my head and sleeked down my hair as
I spoke.
"Right, young man, right; you will do in the world, wrong as that is. I
don't mean that you'll succeed, as the rogues say,--that's another
question; but if you don't rise, you'll not fall. Now put on your hat
and come with me; we'll walk to the lodge,--you will be in time for a
coach."
I took my leave of Lady Ellinor, and longed to say something about
"compliments to Miss Fanny;" but the words stuck in my throat, and my
host seemed impatient.
"We must see you soon again," said Lady Ellinor, kindly, as she followed
us to the door.
Mr. Trevanion walked on briskly and in silence, one hand in his bosom,
the other swinging carelessly a thick walkingstick.
"But I must go round by the bridge," said I, "for I forgot my knapsack.
I threw it off when I made my leap, and the old lady certainly never
took charge of it."
"Come, then, this way. How old are you?"
"Seventeen and a half."
"You know Latin and Greek as they know them at schools, I suppose?"
"I think I know them pretty well, sir."
"Does your father say so?"
"Why, my father is fastidious; however, he owns that he is satisfied on
the whole."
"So am I, then. Mathematics?"
"A little."
"Good."
Here the conversation dropped for some time. I had found and restrapped
the knapsack, and we were near the lodge, when Mr. Trevanion said
abruptly, "Talk, my young friend, talk; I like to hear you talk,--it
refreshes me. Nobody has talked naturally to me these last ten years."
The request was a complete damper to my ingenuous eloquence; I could not
have talked naturally now for the life of me.
"I made a mistake, I see," said my companion, good-humoredly, noticing
my embarrassment. "Here we are at the lodge. The coach will be by in
five minutes: you can spend that time in hearing the old woman praise
the Hogtons and abuse me. And hark you, sir, never care three straws
for praise or blame,--leather and prunella! Praise and blame are here!"
and he struck his hand upon his breast with almost passionate emphasis.
"Take a specimen. These Hogtons were the bane of the place,--uneducated
and miserly; their land a wilderness, their village a pig-sty. I come,
with capital and intelligence; I redeem the soil, I banish pauperism, I
civilize all around me: no merit in me, I am but a type of capital
guided by education,--a machine. And yet the old woman is not the only
one who will hint to you that the Hogtons were angels, and myself the
usual antithesis to angels. And what is more, sir, because that old
woman, who has ten shillings a week from me, sets her heart upon earning
her sixpences,--and I give her that privileged luxury,--every visitor
she talks to goes away with the idea that I, the rich Mr. Trevanion, let
her starve on what she can pick up from the sightseers. Now, does that
signify a jot? Good-by! Tell your father his old friend must see him,
--profit by his calm wisdom; his old friend is a fool sometimes, and sad
at heart. When you are settled, send me a line to St. James's Square,
to say where you are. Humph! that's enough."
Mr. Trevanion wrung my hand, and strode off.
I did not wait for the coach, but proceeded towards the turn-stile,
where the old woman (who had either seen, or scented from a distance
that tizzy of which I was the impersonation),--
"Hushed in grim repose, did wait her morning prey."
My opinions as to her sufferings and the virtues of the departed Ho-tons
somewhat modified, I contented myself with dropping into her open palm
the exact sum virtually agreed on. But that palm still remained open,
and the fingers of the other clawed hold of me as I stood, impounded in
the curve of the turn-stile, like a cork in a patent corkscrew.
"And threepence for nephy Bob," said the old lady.
"Threepence for nephew Bob, and why?"
"It is his parquisites when he recommends a gentleman. You would not
have me pay out of my own earnings; for he will have it, or he'll ruin
my bizziness. Poor folk must be paid for their trouble."
Obdurate to this appeal, and mentally consigning Bob to a master whose
feet would be all the handsomer for boots, I threaded the stile and
escaped.
Towards evening I reached London. Who ever saw London for the first
time and was not disappointed? Those long suburbs melting indefinably
away into the capital forbid all surprise. The gradual is a great
disenchanter. I thought it prudent to take a hackney-coach, and so
jolted my way to the Hotel, the door of which was in a small street
out of the Strand, though the greater part of the building faced that
noisy thoroughfare. I found my father in a state of great discomfort
in a little room, which he paced up and down like a lion new caught
in his cage. My poor mother was full of complaints: for the first
time in her life, I found her indisputably crossish. It was an ill
time to relate my adventures.
I had enough to do to listen. They had all day been hunting for
lodgings in vain. My father's pocket had been picked of a new India
handkerchief. Primmins, who ought to know London so well, knew nothing
about it, and declared it was turned topsy-turvy, and all the streets
had changed names. The new silk umbrella, left for five minutes
unguarded in the hall, had been exchanged for an old gingham with three
holes in it.
It was not till my mother remembered that if she did not see herself
that my bed was well aired I should certainly lose the use of my limbs,
and therefore disappeared with Primmins and a pert chambermaid, who
seemed to think we gave more trouble than we were worth, that I told my
father of my new acquaintance with Mr. Trevanion.
He did not seem to listen to me till I got to the name "Trevanion." He
then became very pale, and sat down quietly. "Go on," said he,
observing I stopped to look at him.
When I had told all, and given him the kind messages with which I had
been charged by husband and wife, he smiled faintly; and then, shading
his face with his hand, he seemed to muse, not cheerfully, perhaps, for
I heard him sigh once or twice.
"And Ellinor," said he at last, without looking up,--"Lady Ellinor, I
mean; she is very--very--"
"Very what, sir?"
"Very handsome still?"
"Handsome! Yes, handsome, certainly; but I thought more of her manner
than her face. And then Fanny, Miss Fanny, is so young!"
"Ah!" said my father, murmuring in Greek the celebrated lines of which
Pope's translation is familiar to all,--
"'Like leaves on trees, the race of man is found, Now green in
youth, now withering on the ground.'
"Well, so they wish to see me. Did Ellinor--Lady Ellinor--say that, or
her--her husband?"
"Her husband, certainly; Lady Ellinor rather implied than said it."
"We shall see," said my father. "Open the window; this room is
stifling."
I opened the window, which looked on the Strand. The noise, the voices,
the trampling feet, the rolling wheels, became loudly audible. My
father leaned out for some moments, and I stood by his side. He turned
to me with a serene face. "Every ant on the hill," said he, "carries
its load, and its home is but made by the burden that it bears. How
happy am I! how I should bless God! How light my burden! how secure my
home!"
My mother came in as he ceased. He went up to her, put his arm round
her waist and kissed her. Such caresses with him had not lost their
tender charm by custom: my mother's brow, before somewhat ruffled, grew
smooth on the instant. Yet she lifted her eyes to his in soft surprise.
"I was but thinking," said my father, apologetically, "how much I owed
you, and how much I love you!"
CHAPTER II.
And now behold us, three days after my arrival, settled in all the state
and grandeur of our own house in Russell Street, Bloomsbury, the library
of the Museum close at hand. My father spends his mornings in those
lata silentia, as Virgil calls the world beyond the grave. And a world
beyond the grave we may well call that land of the ghosts,--a book
collection.
"Pisistratus," said my father one evening, as he arranged his notes
before him and rubbed his spectacles, "Pisistratus, a great library is
an awful place! There, are interred all the remains of men since the
Flood."
"It is a burial-place!" quoth my Uncle Roland, who had that day found us
out.
"Please, not such hard words," said the Captain, shaking his head.
"Heraclea was the city of necromancers, in which they raised the dead.
Do want to speak to Cicero?---I invoke him. Do I want to chat in the
Athenian market-place, and hear news two thousand years old?---I write
down my charm on a slip of paper, and a grave magician calls me up
Aristophanes. And we owe all this to our ancest--"
"Ancestors who wrote books; thank you."
Here Roland offered his snuff-box to my father, who, abhorring snuff,
benignly imbibed a pinch, and sneezed five times in consequence,--an
excuse for Uncle Roland to say, which he did five times, with great
unction, "God bless you, brother Austin!"
As soon as my father had recovered himself, he proceeded, with tears in
his eyes, but calm as before the interruption--for he was of the
philosophy of the Stoics,--
"But it is not that which is awful. It is the presuming to vie with
these `spirits elect;' to say to them, 'Make way,--I too claim place
with the chosen. I too would confer with the living, centuries after
the death that consumes my dust. I too--' Ah, Pisistratus! I wish
Uncle Jack had been at Jericho before he had brought me up to London and
placed me in the midst of those rulers of the world!"
I was busy, while my father spoke, in making some pendent shelves for
these "spirits elect;" for my mother, always provident where my father's
comforts were concerned, had foreseen the necessity of some such
accommodation in a hired lodging-house, and had not only carefully
brought up to town my little box of tools, but gone out herself that
morning to buy the raw materials. Checking the plane in its progress
over the smooth deal, "My dear father," said I, "if at the Philhellenic
Institute I had looked with as much awe as you do on the big fellows
that had gone before me, I should have stayed, to all eternity, the lag
of the Infant Division."
"Pisistratus, you are as great an agitator as your namesake," cried my
father, smiling. "And so, a fig for the big fellows!"
And now my mother entered in her pretty evening cap, all smiles and good
humor, having just arranged a room for Uncle Roland, concluded
advantageous negotiations with the laundress, held high council with
Mrs. Primmins on the best mode of defeating the extortions of London
tradesmen, and, pleased with herself and all the world, she kissed my
father's forehead as it bent over his notes, and came to the tea-table,
which only waited its presiding deity. My Uncle Roland, with his usual
gallantry, started up, kettle in hand (our own urn--for we had one--not
being yet unpacked), and having performed with soldier-like method the
chivalrous office thus volunteered, he joined me at my employment, and
said,--
"There is a better steel for the hands of a well-born lad than a
carpenter's plane."
"Aha! Uncle--that depends--"
"Depends! What on?"
"On the use one makes of it. Peter the Great was better employed in
making ships than Charles XII. in cutting throats."
"Poor Charles XII.!" said my uncle, sighing pathetically; "a very brave
fellow!"
"Pity he did not like the ladies a little better!"
"No man is perfect!" said my uncle, sententiously. "But, seriously, you
are now the male hope of the family; you are now-" My uncle stopped,
and his face darkened. I saw that he thought of his son,--that
mysterious son! And looking at him tenderly, I observed that his deep
lines had grown deeper, his iron-gray hair more gray. There was the
trace of recent suffering on his face; and though he had not spoken to
us a word of the business on which he had left us, it required no
penetration to perceive that it had come to no successful issue.
My uncle resumed: "Time out of mind, every generation of our house has
given one soldier to his country. I look round now: only one branch is
budding yet on the old tree; and--"
"Ah! uncle. But what would they say? Do you think I should not like to
be a soldier? Don't tempt me!"
My uncle had recourse to his snuff-box; and at that moment--
unfortunately, perhaps, for the laurels that might otherwise have
wreathed the brows of Pisistratus of England--private conversation was
stopped by the sudden and noisy entrance of Uncle Jack. No apparition
could have been more unexpected.
"Here I am, my dear friends. How d'ye do; how are you all? Captain de
Caxton, yours heartily. Yes, I am released, thank Heaven! I have given
up the drudgery of that pitiful provincial paper. I was not made for
it. An ocean in a tea cup! I was indeed! Little, sordid, narrow
interests; and I, whose heart embraces all humanity,--you might as well
turn a circle into an isolated triangle."
"Isosceles!" said my father, sighing as he pushed aside his notes, and
very slowly becoming aware of the eloquence that destroyed all chance of
further progress that night in the Great Book. "'Isosceles' triangle,
Jack Tibbets, not 'isolated."'
"'Isosceles' or 'isolated,' it is all one," said Uncle Jack, as he
rapidly performed three evolutions, by no means consistent with his
favorite theory of "the greatest happiness of the greatest number,"--
first, he emptied into the cup which he took from my mother's hands half
the thrifty contents of a London cream-jug; secondly, he reduced the
circle of a muffin, by the abstraction of three triangles, to as nearly
an isosceles as possible; and thirdly, striding towards the fire,
lighted in consideration of Captain de Caxton, and hooking his coat-
tails under his arms while he sipped his tea, he permitted another
circle peculiar to humanity wholly to eclipse the luminary it
approached.
"'Isolated' or 'isosceles,' it is all the same thing. Alan is
made for his fellow-creatures. I had long been disgusted with the
interference of those selfish Squirearchs. Your departure decided me.
I have concluded negotiations with a London firm of spirit and capital
and extended views of philanthropy. On Saturday last I retired from the
service of the oligarchy.
"I am now in my true capacity of protector of the million. My prospectus
is printed,--here it is in my pocket. Another cup of tea, sister; a
little more cream, and another muffin. Shall I ring?" Having
disembarrassed himself of his cup and saucer, Uncle Jack then drew forth
from his pocket a damp sheet of printed paper. In large capitals stood
out "The Anti-Monopoly Gazette; or Popular Champion." He waved it
triumphantly before my father's eyes.
"Pisistratus," said my father, "look here. This is the way your Uncle
Jack now prints his pats of butter,--a cap of liberty growing out of an
open book! Good, Jack! good! good!"
"It is Jacobinical!" exclaimed the Captain.
"Very likely," said my father; "but knowledge and freedom are the best
devices in the world to print upon pats of butter intended for the
market."
"Pats of butter! I don't understand," said Uncle Jack. "The less you
understand, the better will the butter sell, Jack," said my father,
settling back to his notes.
CHAPTER III.
Uncle Jack had made up his mind to lodge with us, and my mother found
some difficulty in inducing him to comprehend that there was no bed to
spare.
"That's unlucky," said he. "I had no sooner arrived in town than I was
pestered with invitations; but I refused them all, and kept myself for
you."
"So kind in you, so like you!" said my mother; "but you see--"
"Well, then, I must be off and find a room. Don't fret; you know I can
breakfast and dine with you all the same,--that is, when my other
friends will let me. I shall be dreadfully persecuted." So saying,
Uncle Jack repocketed his prospectus and wished us good-night.
The clock had struck eleven, my mother had retired, when my father
looked up from his books and returned his spectacles to their case. I
had finished my work, and was seated over the fire, thinking now of
Fanny Trevanion's hazel eyes, now, with a heart that beat as high at the
thought, of campaigns, battle-fields, laurels, and glory; while, with
his arms folded on his breast and his head drooping, Uncle Roland gazed
into the low clear embers. My father cast his eyes round the room, and
after surveying his brother for some moments he said, almost in a
whisper,--
"My son has seen the Trevanions. They remember us, Roland."
The Captain sprang to his feet and began whistling,--a habit with him
when he was much disturbed.
"And Trevanion wishes to see us. Pisistratus promised to give him our
address: shall he do so, Roland?"
"If you like it," answered the Captain, in a military attitude, and
drawing himself up till he looked seven feet high.
"I should like it," said my father, mildly. "Twenty years since we
met."
"More than twenty," said my uncle, with a stern smile; "and the season
was--the fall of the leaf!"
"Man renews the fibre and material of his body every seven years," said
my father; "in three times seven years he has time to renew the inner
man. Can two passengers in yonder street be more unlike each other than
the soul is to the soul after an interval of twenty years? Brother, the
plough does not pass over the soil in vain, nor care over the human
heart. New crops change the character of the land; and the plough must
go deep indeed before it stirs up the mother stone."
"Let us see Trevanion," cried my uncle; then, turning to me, he said
abruptly, "What family has he?"
"One daughter."
"No son?"
"No."
"That must vex the poor, foolish, ambitious man. Oho! you admire this
Mr. Trevanion much, eh? Yes, that fire of manner, his fine words, and
bold thoughts, were made to dazzle youth."
"Fine words, my dear uncle,--fire! I should have said, in hearing Mr.
Trevanion, that his style of conversation was so homely you would wonder
how he could have won such fame as a public speaker."
"Indeed!"
"The plough has passed there," said my father.
"But not the plough of care: rich, famous, Ellinor his wife, and no
son!"
"It is because his heart is sometimes sad that he would see us."
Roland stared first at my father, next at me. "Then," quoth my uncle,
heartily, "in God's name, let him come. I can shake him by the hand, as
I would a brother soldier. Poor Trevanion! Write to him at once,
Sisty."
I sat down and obeyed. When I had sealed my letter, I looked up, and
saw that Roland was lighting his bed-candle at my father's table; and my
father, taking his hand, said something to him in a low voice. I
guessed it related to his son, for he shook his head, and answered in a
stern, hollow voice, "Renew grief if you please; not shame. On that
subject--silence!"
CHAPTER IV.
Left to myself in the earlier part of the day, I wandered, wistful and
lonely, through the vast wilderness of London. By degrees I
familiarized myself with that populous solitude; I ceased to pine for
the green fields. That active energy all around, at first saddening,
became soon exhilarating, and at last contagious. To an industrious
mind, nothing is so catching as industry. I began to grow weary of my
golden holiday of unlaborious childhood, to sigh for toil, to look
around me for a career. The University, which I had before anticipated
with pleasure, seemed now to fade into a dull monastic prospect; after
having trod the streets of London, to wander through cloisters was to go
back in life. Day by day, my mind grew sensibly within me; it came out
from the rosy twilight of boyhood,--it felt the doom of Cain under the
broad sun of man.
Uncle Jack soon became absorbed in his new speculation for the good of
the human race, and, except at meals (whereat, to do him justice, he was
punctual enough, though he did not keep us in ignorance of the
sacrifices he made, and the invitations he refused, for our sake), we
seldom saw him. The Captain, too, generally vanished after breakfast,
seldom dined with us, and it was often late before he returned. He had
the latch-key of the house, and let himself in when he pleased.
Sometimes (for his chamber was next to mine) his step on the stairs
awoke me; and sometimes I heard him pace his room with perturbed
strides, or fancied that I caught a low groan. He became every day more
care-worn in appearance, and every day the hair seemed more gray. Yet
he talked to us all easily and cheerfully; and I thought that I was the
only one in the house who perceived the gnawing pangs over which the
stout old Spartan drew the decorous cloak.
Pity, blended with admiration, made me curious to learn how these absent
days, that brought night so disturbed, were consumed. I felt that, if I
could master the Captain's secret, I might win the right both to comfort
and to aid.
I resolved at length, after many conscientious scruples, to endeavor to
satisfy a curiosity excused by its motives.
Accordingly, one morning, after watching him from the house, I stole in
his track, and followed him at a distance.
And this was the outline of his day: he set off at first with a firm
stride, despite his lameness, his gaunt figure erect, the soldierly
chest well thrown out from the threadbare but speckless coat. First he
took his way towards the purlieus of Leicester Square; several times, to
and fro, did he pace the isthmus that leads from Piccadilly into that
reservoir of foreigners, and the lanes and courts that start thence
towards St. Martin's. After an hour or two so passed, the step became
more slow; and often the sleek, napless hat was lifted up, and the brow
wiped. At length he bent his way towards the two great theatres, paused
before the play-bills, as if deliberating seriously on the chances of
entertainment they severally proffered, wandered slowly through the
small streets that surround those temples of the Muse, and finally
emerged into the Strand. There he rested himself for an hour at a small
cook-shop; and as I passed the window and glanced within, I could see
him seated before the simple dinner, which he scarcely touched, and
poring over the advertisement columns of the "Times." The "Times"
finished, and a few morsels distastefully swallowed, the Captain put
down his shilling in silence, receiving his pence in exchange, and I had
just time to slip aside as he reappeared at the threshold. He looked
round as he lingered,--but I took care he should not detect me,--and
then struck off towards the more fashionable quarters of the town. It
was now the afternoon, and, though not yet the season, the streets
swarmed with life. As he came into Waterloo Place, a slight but
muscular figure buttoned up across the breast like his own cantered by
on a handsome bay horse; every eye was on that figure. Uncle Roland
stopped short, and lifted his hand to his hat; the rider touched his own
with his forefinger, and cantered on; Uncle Roland turned round and
gazed.
"Who," I asked of a shop-boy just before me, also staring with all his
eyes, "who is that gentleman on horseback?"
"Why, the Duke to be sure," said the boy, contemptuously.
"The Duke?"
"Wellington, stu-pid!"
"Thank you," said I, meekly. Uncle Roland had moved on into Regent
Street, but with a brisker step: the sight of the old chief had done the
old soldier good. Here again he paced to and fro; till I, watching him
from the other side of the way, was ready to drop with fatigue, stout
walker though I was. But the Captain's day was not half done. He took
out his watch, put it to his ear, and then, replacing it, passed into
Bond Street, and thence into Hyde Park. There, evidently wearied out,
he leaned against the rails, near the bronze statue, in an attitude that
spoke despondency. I seated myself on the grass near the statue, and
gazed at him: the park was empty compared with the streets, but still
there were some equestrian idlers, and many foot-loungers. My uncle's
eye turned wistfully on each: once or twice, some gentleman of a
military aspect (which I had already learned to detect) stopped, looked
at him, approached, and spoke; but the Captain seemed as if ashamed of
such greetings. He answered shortly, and turned again.
The day waned,--evening came on; the Captain again looked at his watch,
shook his head, and made his way to a bench, where he sat perfectly
motionless, his hat over his brows, his arms folded, till up rose the
moon. I had tasted nothing since breakfast, I was famished; but I still
kept my post like an old Roman sentinel.
At length the Captain rose, and re-entered Piccadilly; but how different
his mien and bearing!---languid, stooping; his chest sunk, his head
inclined; his limbs dragging one after the other; his lameness painfully
perceptible. What a contrast in the broken invalid at night from the
stalwart veteran of the morning!
How I longed to spring forward to offer my arm! but I did not dare.
The Captain stopped near a cab-stand. He put his hand in his pocket, he
drew out his purse, he passed his fingers over the net-work; the purse
slipped again into the pocket, and as if with a heroic effort, my uncle
drew up his head and walked on sturdily.
"Where next?" thought I. "Surely home! No, he is pitiless!"
The Captain stopped not till he arrived at one of the small theatres in
the Strand; then he read the bill, and asked if half price was begun.
"Just begun," was the answer, and the Captain entered. I also took a
ticket and followed. Passing by the open doors of a refreshment-room, I
fortified myself with some biscuits and soda-water; and in another
minute, for the first time in my life, I beheld a play. But the play
did not fascinate me. It was the middle of some jocular after piece;
roars of laughter resounded round me. I could detect nothing to laugh
at, and sending my keen eyes into every corner, I perceived at last, in
the uppermost tier, one face as saturnine as my own.--Eureka! It was
the Captain's! "Why should he go to a play if he enjoys it so little?"
thought I; "better have spent a shilling on a cab, poor old fellow!"
But soon came smart-looking men, and still smarter-looking ladies,
around the solitary corner of the poor Captain. He grew fidgety--he
rose--he vanished. I left my place, and stood without the box to watch
for him. Downstairs he stumped,--I recoiled into the shade; and after
standing a moment or two, as in doubt, he entered boldly the
refreshment-room or saloon.
Now, since I had left that saloon it had become crowded, and I slipped
in unobserved. Strange was it, grotesque yet pathetic, to mark the old
soldier in the midst of that gay swarm. He towered above all like a
Homeric hero, a head taller than the tallest; and his appearance was so
remarkable that it invited the instant attention of the fair. I, in my
simplicity, thought it was the natural tenderness of that amiable and
penetrating sex, ever quick to detect trouble and anxious to relieve it,
which induced three ladies in silk attire--one having a hat and plume,
the other two with a profusion of ringlets--to leave a little knot of
gentlemen--with whom they were conversing, and to plant themselves
before my uncle. I advanced through the press to hear what passed.
"You are looking for some one, I'm sure," quoth one familiarly, tapping
his arm with her fan.
The Captain started. "Ma'am, you are not wrong," said he.
"Can I do as well?" said one of those compassionate angels, with
heavenly sweetness.
"You are very kind, I thank you; no, no, ma'am," said the Captain with
his best bow.
"Do take a glass of negus," said another, as her friend gave way to her.
"You seem tired, and so am I. Here, this way;" and she took hold of
his arm to lead him to the table. The Captain shook his head
mournfully; and then, as if suddenly aware of the nature of the
attentions so lavished on him, he looked down upon these fair Armidas
with a look of such mild reproach, such sweet compassion,--not shaking
off the hand, in his chivalrous devotion to the sex, which extended even
to all its outcasts,--that each bold eye felt abashed. The hand was
timidly and involuntarily withdrawn from the arm, and my uncle passed
his way.
He threaded the crowd, passed out at the farther door, and I, guessing
his intention, was in waiting for his steps in the street.
"Now home at last, thank Heaven!" thought I. Mistaken still! My uncle
went first towards that popular haunt which I have since discovered is
called "the Shades;" but he soon re-emerged, and finally he knocked at
the door of a private house in one of the streets out of St. James's.
It was opened jealously, and closed as he entered, leaving me without.
What could this house be? As I stood and watched, some other men
approached: again the low single knock, again the jealous opening and
the stealthy entrance.
A policeman passed and re-passed me. "Don't be tempted, young man,"
said he, looking hard at me: "take my advice, and go home."
"What is that house, then?" said I, with a sort of shudder at this
ominous warning.
"Oh! you know."
"Not I. I am new to London."
"It is a hell," said the policeman, satisfied, by my frank manner, that
I spoke the truth.
"God bless me,--a what? I could not have heard you rightly!"
"A hell,--a gambling-house!"
"Oh!" and I moved on. Could Captain Roland, the rigid, the thrifty, the
penurious, be a gambler? The light broke on me at once: the unhappy
father sought his son! I leaned against the post, and tried hard not to
sob.
By and by, I heard the door open; the Captain came out and took the way
homeward. I ran on before, and got in first, to the inexpressible
relief both of father and mother, who had not seen me since breakfast,
and who were in equal consternation at my absence. I submitted to be
scolded with a good grace. "I had been sight-seeing, and lost my way;"
begged for some supper, and slunk to bed; and five minutes afterwards
the Captain's jaded step came wearily up the stairs.
PART VI.
CHAPTER I.
"I don't know that," said my father.
What is it my father does not know? My father does not know that
"happiness is our being's end and aim."
And pertinent to what does my father reply, by words so sceptical,
to an assertion so seldom disputed?
Reader, Mr. Trevanion has been half an hour seated in our little
drawing-room. He has received two cups of tea from my mother's fair
hand; he has made himself at home. With Mr. Trevanion has come another
friend of my father's, whom he has not seen since he left college,--Sir
Sedley Beaudesert.
Now, you must understand that it is a warm night, a little after nine
o'clock,--a night between departing summer and approaching autumn. The
windows are open; we have a balcony, which my mother has taken care to
fill with flowers; the air, though we are in London, is sweet and fresh;
the street quiet, except that an occasional carriage or hackney
cabriolet rolls rapidly by; a few stealthy passengers pass to and fro
noiselessly on their way homeward. We are on classic ground,--near that
old and venerable Museum, the dark monastic pile which the taste of the
age had spared then,--and the quiet of the temple seems to hallow the
precincts. Captain Roland is seated by the fire-place, and though there
is no fire, he is shading his face with a hand-screen; my father and Mr.
Trevanion have drawn their chairs close to each other in the middle of
the room; Sir Sedley Beaudesert leans against the wall near the window,
and behind my mother, who looks prettier and more pleased than usual
since her Austin has his old friends about him; and I, leaning my elbow
on the table and my chin upon my hand, am gazing with great admiration
on Sir Sedley Beaudesert.
Oh, rare specimen of a race fast decaying,--specimen of the true fine
gentleman, ere the word "dandy" was known, and before "exquisite" became
a noun substantive,--let me here pause to describe thee! Sir Sedley
Beaudesert was the contemporary of Trevanion and my father; but without
affecting to be young, he still seemed so. Dress, tone, look, manner,--
all were young; yet all had a certain dignity which does not belong to
youth. At the age of five and twenty he had won what would have been
fame to a French marquis of the old regime; namely, the reputation of
being "the most charming man of his day,"--the most popular of our sex,
the most favored, my dear lady-reader, by yours. It is a mistake, I
believe, to suppose that it does not require talent to become the
fashion,--at all events, Sir Sedley was the fashion, and he had talent.
He had travelled much, he had read much,--especially in memoirs,
history, and belles-lettres,--he made verses with grace and
a certain originality of easy wit and courtly sentiment, he conversed
delightfully, he was polished and urbane in manner, he was brave and
honorable in conduct; in words he could flatter, in deeds he was
sincere.
Sir Sedley Beaudesert had never married. Whatever his years, he was
still young enough in looks to be married for love. He was high-born,
he was rich, he was, as I have said, popular; yet on his fair features
there was an expression of melancholy, and on that forehead--pure from
the lines of ambition, and free from the weight of study--there was the
shadow of unmistakable regret.
"I don't know that," said my father; "I have never yet found in life one
man who made happiness his end and aim. One wants to gain a fortune,
another to spend it; one to get a place, another to build a name: but
they all know very well that it is not happiness they search for. No
Utilitarian was ever actuated by self-interest, poor man, when he sat
down to scribble his unpopular crotchets to prove self-interest
universal. And as to that notable distinction between self-interest
vulgar and self-interest enlightened, the more the self-interest is
enlightened, the less we are influenced by it. If you tell the young
man who has just written a fine book or made a fine speech that he will
not be any happier if he attain to the fame of Milton or the power of
Pitt, and that, for the sake of his own happiness, he had much better
cultivate a farm, live in the country, and postpone to the last the days
of dyspepsia and gout, he will answer you fairly, 'I am quite as
sensible of that as you are. But I am not thinking whether or not I
shall be happy. I have made up my mind to be, if I can, a great author
or a prime minister.' So it is with all the active sons of the world.
To push on is the law of Nature. And you can no more say to men and to
nations than to children: 'Sit still, and don't wear out your shoes!'"
"Then," said Trevanion, "if I tell you I am not happy, your only answer
is that I obey an inevitable law."
"No, I don't say that it is an inevitable law that man should not be
happy; but it is an inevitable law that a man, in spite of himself,
should live for something higher than his own happiness. He cannot live
in himself or for himself, however egotistical he may try to be. Every
desire he has links him with others. Man is not a machine,--he is a
part of one."
"True, brother, he is a soldier, not an army," said Captain Roland.
"Life is a drama, not a monologue," pursued my father. "'Drama' is
derived from a Greek verb signifying 'to do.' Every actor in the drama
has something to do, which helps on the progress of the whole: that is
the object for which the author created him. Do your part, and let the
Great Play get on."
"Ah!" said Trevanion, briskly, "but to do the part is the difficulty.
Every actor helps to the catastrophe, and yet must do his part without
knowing how all is to end. Shall he help the curtain to fall on a
tragedy or a comedy? Come, I will tell you the one secret of my public
life, that which explains all its failure (for, in spite of my position,
I have failed) and its regrets,--I want Conviction!"
"Exactly," said my father; "because to every question there are two
sides, and you look at them both."
"You have said it," answered Trevanion, smiling also. "For public life
a man should be one-sided: he must act with a party; and a party insists
that the shield is silver, when, if it will take the trouble to turn the
corner, it will see that the reverse of the shield is gold. Woe to the
man who makes that discovery alone, while his party are still swearing
the shield is silver, and that not once in his life, but every night!
"You have said quite enough to convince me that you ought not to belong
to a party, but not enough to convince me why you should not be happy,"
said my father.
"Do you remember," said Sir Sedley Beaudesert, "an anecdote of the first
Duke of Portland? He had a gallery in the great stable of his villa in
Holland, where a concert was given once a week, to cheer and amuse his
horses! I have no doubt the horses thrived all the better for it. What
Trevanion wants is a concert once a week. With him it is always saddle
and spur. Yet, after all, who would not envy him? If life be a drama,
his name stands high in the play-bill, and is printed in capitals on the
walls."
"Envy me!" said Trevanion,--"Me! No, you are the enviable man,--you,
who have only one grief in the world, and that so absurd a one that I
will make you blush by disclosing it. Hear, O sage Austin! O sturdy
Roland! Olivares was haunted by a spectre, and Sedley Beaudesert by the
dread of old age!"
"Well," said my mother, seriously, "I do think it requires a great sense
of religion, or at all events children' of one's own, in whom one is
young again, to reconcile oneself to becoming old."
"My dear ma'am," said Sir Sedley, who had slightly colored at
Trevanion's charge, but had now recovered his easy self-possession, "you
have spoken so admirably that you give me courage to confess my
weakness. I do dread to be old. All the joys of my life have been the
joys of youth. I have had so exquisite a pleasure in the mere sense of
living that old age, as it comes near, terrifies me by its dull eyes and
gray hairs. I have lived the life of a butterfly. Summer is over, and
I see my flowers withering; and my wings are chilled by the first airs
of winter. Yes, I envy Trevanion; for in public life no man is ever
young, and while he can work he is never old."
"My dear Beaudesert," said my father, "when Saint Amable, patron saint
of Riom, in Auvergne, went to Rome, the sun waited upon him as a
servant, carried his cloak and gloves for him in the heat, and kept off
the rain, if the weather changed, like an umbrella. You want to put the
sun to the same use you are quite right; but then, you see, you must
first be a saint before you can be sure of the sun as a servant."
Sir Sedley smiled charmingly; but the smile changed to a sigh as he
added, "I don't think I should much mind being a saint, if the sun would
be my sentinel instead of my courier. I want nothing of him but to
stand still. You see he moved even for Saint Amable. My dear madam,
you and I understand each other; and it is a very hard thing to grow
old, do what one will to keep young."
"What say you, Roland, of these two malcontents?" asked my father. The
Captain turned uneasily in his chair, for the rheumatism was gnawing his
shoulder, and sharp pains were shooting through his mutilated limb.
"I say," answered Roland, "that these men are wearied with marching from
Brentford to Windsor,--that they have never known the bivouac and the
battle."
Both the grumblers turned their eyes to the veteran: the eyes rested
first on the furrowed, care-worn lines in his eagle face; then they fell
on the stiff outstretched cork limb; and then they turned away.
Meanwhile my mother had softly risen, and under pretence of looking for
her work on the table near him, bent over the old soldier and pressed
his hand.
"Gentlemen," said my father, "I don't think my brother ever heard of
Nichocorus, the Greek comic writer; yet he has illustrated him very
ably. Saith Nichocorus, 'The best cure for drunkenness is a sudden
calamity.' For chronic drunkenness, a continued course of real
misfortune must be very salutary!"
No answer came from the two complainants; and my father took up a great
book.
CHAPTER II.
"Mr friends," said my father, looking up from his book, and addressing
himself to his two visitors, know of one thing, milder than calamity,
that would do you both a great deal of good."
"What is that?" asked Sir Sedley.
"A saffron bag, worn at the pit of the stomach!"
"Austin, my dear," said my mother, reprovingly.
My father did not heed the interruption, but continued gravely: "Nothing
is better for the spirits! Roland is in no want of saffron, because he
is a warrior; and the desire of fighting and the hope of victory infuse
such a heat into the spirits as is profitable for long life, and keeps
up the system."
"Tut!" said Trevanion.
"But gentlemen in your predicament must have recourse to artificial
means. Nitre in broth, for instance,--about three grains to ten (cattle
fed upon nitre grow fat); or earthy odors,--such as exist in cucumbers
and cabbage. A certain great lord had a clod of fresh earth, laid in a
napkin, put under his nose every morning after sleep. Light anointing
of the head with oil, mixed with roses and salt, is not bade but, upon
the whole, I prescribe the saffron bag at the--"
"Sisty, my dear, will you look for my scissors?" said my mother.
"What nonsense are you talking! Question! question!" cried Mr.
Trevanion.
"Nonsense!" exclaimed my father, opening his eyes: "I am giving you the
advice of Lord Bacon. You want conviction: conviction comes from
passion; passion from the spirits; spirits from a saffron bag. You,
Beaudesert, on the other hand, want to keep youth. He keeps youth
longest, who lives longest. Nothing more conduces to longevity than a
saffron bag, provided always it is worn at the--"
"Sisty, my thimble!" said my mother.
"You laugh at us justly," said Beaudesert, smiling; "and the same
remedy, I dare say, would cure us both."
"Yes," said my father, "there is no doubt of that. In the pit of the
stomach is that great central web of nerves called the ganglions; thence
they affect the head and the heart. Mr. Squills proved that to us,
Sisty."
"Yes," said I; "but I never heard Mr. Squills talk of a saffron bag."
"Oh, foolish boy! it is not the saffron bag, it is the belief in the
saffron bag. Apply Belief to the centre of the nerves, and all will go
well," said my father.
CHAPTER III.
"But it is a devil of a thing to have too nice a conscience!" quoth the
member of parliament.
"And it is not an angel of a thing to lose one's front teeth!"
sighed the fine gentleman.
Therewith my father rose, and putting his hand into his waistcoat, more
suo, delivered his famous Sermon Upon The Connection Between Faith And
Purpose.
Famous it was in our domestic circle, but as yet it has not gone beyond;
and since the reader, I am sure, does not turn to the Caxton Memoirs
with the expectation of finding sermons, so to that circle let its fame
be circumscribed. All I shall say about it is that it was a very fine
sermon, and that it proved indisputably--to me at least--the salubrious
effects of a saffron bag applied to the great centre of the nervous
system. But the wise Ali saith that "a fool doth not know what maketh
him look little, neither will he hearken to him that adviseth him." I
cannot assert that my father's friends were fools, but they certainly
came under this definition of Folly.
CHAPTER IV.
For therewith arose, not conviction, but discussion; Trevanion was
logical, Beaudesert sentimental. My father held firm to the saffron
bag. When James the First dedicated to the Duke of Buckingham his
meditation on the Lord's Prayer, he gave a very sensible reason for
selecting his Grace for that honor; "For," saith the king, "it is made
upon a very short and plain prayer, and, therefore, the fitter for a
courtier, for courtiers are for the most part thought neither to have
lust nor leisure to say long prayers, liking best courte messe et long
disner." I suppose it was for a similar reason that my father persisted
in dedicating to the member of parliament and the fine gentleman "this
short and plaine" morality of his,--to wit, the saffron bag. He was
evidently persuaded, if he could once get them to apply that, it was all
that was needful; that they had neither lust nor leisure for longer
instructions. And this saffron bag,--it came down with such a whack, at
every round in the argument! You would have thought my father one of
the old plebeian combatants in the popular ordeal, who, forbidden to use
sword and lance, fought with a sand-bag tied to a flail: a very stunning
weapon it was when filled only with sand; but a bag filled with saffron,
it was irresistible! Though my father had two to one against him, they
could not stand such a deuce of a weapon. And after tats and pishes
innumerable from Mr. Trevanion, and sundry bland grimaces from Sir
Sedley Beaudesert, they fairly gave in, though they would not own they
were beaten.
"Enough," said the member, "I see that you don't comprehend me; I must
continue to move by my own impulse."
My father's pet book was the Colloquies of Erasmus; he was wont to say
that those Colloquies furnished life with illustrations in every page.
Out of the Colloquies of Erasmus he now answered the member.
"Rabirius, wanting his servant Syrus to get up," quoth my father, "cried
out to him to move. 'I do move,' said Syrus. 'I see you move,' replied
Rabirius, 'but you move nothing.' To return to the saffron bag--"
"Confound the saffron bag!" cried Trevanion, in a rage; and then
softening his look as he drew on his gloves, he turned to my mother and
said, with more politeness than was natural to, or at least customary
with, him,--
"By the way, my dear Mrs. Caxton, I should tell you that Lady Ellinor
comes to town to-morrow on purpose to call on you. We shall be here
some little time, Austin; and though London is so empty, there are still
some persons of note to whom I should like to introduce you and yours--"
"Nay," said my father; "your world and my world are not the same. Books
for me, and men for you. Neither Kitty nor I can change our habits,
even for friendship: she has a great piece of work to finish, and so
have I. Mountains cannot stir, especially when in labor; but Mahomet
can come to the mountain as often as he likes."
Mr. Trevanion insisted, and Sir Sedley Beaudesert mildly put in his own
claims; both boasted acquaintance with literary men whom my father
would, at all events, be pleased to meet. My father doubted whether he
could meet any literary men more eloquent than Cicero, or more amusing
than Aristophanes; and observed that if such did exist, he would rather
meet them in their books than in a drawing-room. In fine, he--was
immovable; and so also, with less argument, was Captain Roland.
Then Mr. Trevanion turned to me.
"Your son, at all events, should see something of the world."
My mother's soft eye sparkled.
"My dear friend, I thank you," said my father, touched; "and Pisistratus
and I will talk it over."
Our guests had departed. All four of us gathered to the open window,
and enjoyed in silence the cool air and the moonlight.
"Austin," said my mother at last, "I fear it is for my sake that you
refuse going amongst your old friends: you knew I should be frightened
by such fine people, and--"
"And we have been happy for more than eighteen years without them,
Kitty! My poor friends are not happy, and we are. To leave well alone
is a golden rule worth all in Pythagoras. The ladies of Bubastis, my
dear,--a place in Egypt where the cat was worshipped,--always kept
rigidly aloof from the gentlemen in Athribis, who adored the shrew-mice.
Cats are domestic animals, your shrew-mice are sad gadabouts: you can't
find a better model, any Kitty, than the ladies of Bubastis!"
"How Trevanion is altered!" said Roland, musingly,--"he who was so
lively and ardent!"
"He ran too fast up-hill at first, and has been out of breath ever
since," said my father.
"And Lady Ellinor," said Roland, hesitatingly, "shall you see her to-
morrow?"
"Yes!" said my father, calmly.
As Captain Roland spoke, something in the tone of his question seemed to
flash a conviction on my mother's heart, the woman there was quick; she
drew back, turning pale even in the moonlight, and fixed her eyes on my
father, while I felt her hand, which had clasped mine, tremble
convulsively.
I understood her. Yes, this Lady Ellinor was the early rival whose name
till then she had not known. She fixed her eyes on my father; and at
his tranquil tone and quiet look she breathed more freely, and, sliding
her hand from mine, rested it fondly on his shoulder. A few moments
afterwards, I and Captain Roland found ourselves standing alone by the
window.
"You are young, nephew," said the Captain, "and you have the name of a
fallen family to raise. Your father does well not to reject for you
that opening into the great world which Trevanion offers. As for me, my
business in London seems over: I cannot find what I came to seek. I
have sent for my daughter; when she arrives I shall return to my old
tower, and the man and the ruin will crumble away together."
"Tush, uncle! I must work hard and get money; and then we will repair
the old tower and buy back the old estate. My father shall sell the red
brick house; we will fit him up a library in the keep; and we will all
live united, in peace, and in state, as grand as our ancestors before
us."
While I thus spoke, my uncle's eyes were fixed upon a corner of the
street, where a figure, half in shade, half in moonlight, stood
motionless. "Ah!" said I, following his eye, "I have observed that man
two or three times pass up and down the street on the other side of the
way and turn his head towards our window. Our guests were with us then,
and my father in full discourse, or I should have--"
Before I could finish the sentence my uncle, stifling an exclamation,
broke away, hurried out of the room, stumped down the stairs, and was in
the street, while I was yet rooted to the spot with surprise. I
remained at the window, and my eye rested on the figure. I saw the
Captain, with his bare head and his gray hair, cross the street; the
figure started, turned the corner, and fled.
Then I followed my uncle, and arrived in time to save him from falling;
he leant his head on my breast, and I heard him murmur: "It is he--it is
he! He has watched us!---he repents!"
CHAPTER V.
The next day Lady Ellinor called; but, to my great disappointment,
without Fanny.
Whether or not some joy at the incident of the previous night had served
to rejuvenate my uncle, I know not, but he looked to me ten years
younger when Lady Ellinor entered. How carefully the buttoned-up coat
was brushed; how new and glossy was the black stock! The poor Captain
was restored to his pride, and mighty proud he looked! with a glow on
his cheek and a fire in his eye, his head thrown back, and his whole air
composed, severe, Mavortian, and majestic, as if awaiting the charge of
the French cuirassiers at the head of his detachment.
My father, on the contrary, was as usual (till dinner, when he always
dressed punctiliously, out of respect to his Kitty), in his easy
morning-gown and slippers; and nothing but a certain compression in his
lips, which had lasted all the morning, evinced his anticipation of the
visit, or the emotion it caused him.
Lady Ellinor behaved beautifully. She could not conceal a certain
nervous trepidation when she first took the hand my father extended; and
in touching rebuke of the Captain's stately bow, she held out to him the
hand left disengaged, with a look which brought Roland at once to her
side. It was a desertion of his colors to which nothing, short of Ney's
shameful conduct at Napoleon's return from Elba, affords a parallel in
history. Then, without waiting for introduction, and before a word
indeed was said, Lady Ellinor came to my mother so cordially, so
caressingly; she threw into her smile, voice, manner, such winning
sweetness,--that I, intimately learned in my poor mother's simple,
loving heart, wondered how she refrained from throwing her arms round
Lady Ellinor's neck and kissing her outright. It must have been a great
conquest over herself not to do it! My turn came next; and talking to
me and about me soon set all parties at their ease,--at least
apparently.
What was said, I cannot remember; I do not think one of us could. But
an hour slipped away, and there was no gap in the conversation.
With curious interest, and a survey I strove to make impartial, I
compared Lady Ellinor with my mother; and I comprehended the fascination
which the high-born lady must, in their earlier youth, have exercised
over both brothers, so dis-similar to each other. For charm was the
characteristic of Lady Ellinor,--a charm indefinable. It was not the
mere grace of refined breeding, though that went a great way, it was a
charm that seemed to spring from natural sympathy. Whomsoever she
addressed, that person appeared for the moment to engage all her
attention, to interest her whole mind. She had a gift of conversation
very peculiar. She made what she said like a continuation of what was
said to her. She seemed as if she had entered into your thoughts, and
talked them aloud. Her mind was evidently cultivated with great care,
but she was perfectly void of pedantry. A hint, an allusion, sufficed
to show how much she knew, to one well instructed, without mortifying or
perplexing the ignorant. Yes, there probably was the only woman my
father had ever met who could be the companion to his mind, walk through
the garden of knowledge by his side, and trim the flowers while he
cleared the vistas. On the other hand, there was an inborn nobility in
Lady Ellinor's sentiments that must have struck the most susceptible
chord in Roland's nature, and the sentiments took eloquence from the
look, the mien, the sweet dignity of the very turn of the head. Yes,
she must have been a fitting Oriana to a young Amadis. It was not hard
to see that Lady Ellinor was ambitious, that she had a love of fame for
fame itself, that she was proud, that she set value (and that morbidly)
on the world's opinion. This was perceptible when she spoke of her
husband, even of her daughter. It seemed to me as if she valued the
intellect of the one, the beauty of the other, by the gauge of the
social distinction it conferred. She took measure of the gift as I was
taught at Dr. Herman's to take measure of the height of a tower,--by the
length of the shadow it cast upon the ground.
My dear father, with such a wife you would never have lived eighteen
years shivering on the edge of a Great Book!
My dear uncle, with such a wife you would never have been contented with
a cork leg and a Waterloo medal!
And I understand why Mr. Trevanion, "eager and ardent," as ye say he was
in youth, with a heart bent on the practical success of life, won the
hand of the heiress. Well, you see Mr. Trevanion has contrived not to
be happy! By the side of my listening, admiring mother, with her blue
eyes moist and her coral lips apart, Lady Ellinor looks faded. Was she
ever as pretty as my mother is now? Never. But she was much handsomer.
What delicacy in the outline, and yet how decided, in spite of the
delicacy! The eyebrow so defined; the profile slightly aquiline, so
clearly cut, with the curved nostril, which, if physiognomists are
right, shows sensibility so keen; and the classic lip that, but for the
neighboring dimple, would be so haughty. But wear and tear are in that
face. The nervous, excitable temper has helped the fret and cark of
ambitious life. My dear uncle, I know not yet your private life; but
'as for my father, I am sure that though he might have done more on
earth, he would have been less fit for heaven, if he had married Lady
Ellinor.
At last this visit--dreaded, I am sure, by three of the party--was over,
but not before I had promised to dine at the Trevanions' that day.
When we were again alone, my father threw off a long breath, and looking
round him cheerfully, said, "Since Pisistratus deserts us, let us
console ourselves for his absence; send for brother Jack, and all four
go down to Richmond to drink tea."
"Thank you, Austin," said Roland; "but I don't want it, I assure you."
"Upon your honor?" said my father, in a half whisper.
"Upon my honor."
"Nor I either. So, my dear Kitty, Roland and I will take a walk, and be
back in time to see if that young Anachronism looks as handsome as his
new London-made clothes will allow him. Properly speaking, he ought to
go with an apple in his hand, and a dove in his bosom. But now I think
of it, that was luckily not the fashion with the Athenians till the time
of Alcibiades!"
CHAPTER VI.
You may judge of the effect that my dinner at Mr. Trevanion's, with a
long conversation after it with Lady Ellinor, made upon my mind when, on
my return home, after having satisfied all questions of parental
curiosity, I said nervously, and looking down: "My dear father, I should
like very much, if you have no objection--to--to--"
"What, my dear?" asked my father, kindly.
"Accept an offer Lady Ellinor has made me on the part of Mr. Trevanion.
He wants a secretary. He is kind enough to excuse my inexperience, and
declares I shall do very well, and can soon get into his ways. Lady
Ellinor says," I continued with dignity, "that it will be a great
opening in public life for me; and at all events, my dear father, I
shall see much of the world, and learn what I really think will be more
useful to me than anything they will teach him at college."
My mother looked anxiously at my father. "It will indeed be a great
thing for Sisty," said she, timidly; and then, taking courage, she
added--"and that is just the sort of life he is formed for."
"Hem!" said my uncle.
My father rubbed his spectacles thoughtfully, and replied, after a long
pause,--
"You may be right, Kitty: I don't think Pisistratus is meant for study;
action will suit him better. But what does this office lead to?"
"Public employment, sir," said I, boldly; "the service of my country."
"If that be the case," quoth Roland, "have not a word to say. But I
should have thought that for a lad of spirit, a descendant of the old De
Caxtons, the army would have--"
"The army!" exclaimed my mother, clasping her hands, and looking
involuntarily at my uncle's cork leg.
"The army!" repeated my father, peevishly. "Bless my soul, Roland, you
seem to think man is made for nothing else but to be shot at! You would
not like the army, Pisistratus?"
"Why, sir, not if it pained you and my dear mother; otherwise, indeed--"
"Papoe!" said my father, interrupting me. "This all comes of your
giving the boy that ambitious, uncomfortable name, Mrs. Caxton; what
could a Pisistratus be but the plague of one's life? That idea of
serving his country is Pisistratus ipsissimus all over. If ever I have
another son (Dii metiora!) he has only got to be called Eratostratus,
and then he will be burning down St. Paul's,--which I believe was, by
the way, first made out of the stones of a temple to Diana. Of the two,
certainly, you had better serve your country with a goose-quill than by
poking a bayonet into the ribs of some unfortunate Indian; I don't think
there are any other people whom the service of one's country makes it
necessary to kill just at present, eh, Roland?"
"It is a very fine field, India," said my uncle, sententiously; "it is
the nursery of captains."
"Is it? Those plants take up a good deal of ground, then, that might be
more profitably cultivated. And, indeed, considering that the tallest
captains in the world will be ultimately set into a box not above seven
feet at the longest, it is astonishing what a quantity of room that
species of arbor mortis takes in the growing! However, Pisistratus, to
return to your request, I will think it over, and talk to Trevanion."
"Or rather to Lady Ellinor," said I, imprudently: my mother slightly
shivered, and took her hand from mine. I felt cut to the heart by the
slip of my own tongue.
"That, I think, your mother could do best," said my father, dryly, "if
she wants to be quite convinced that somebody will see that your shirts
are aired. For I suppose they mean you to lodge at Trevanion's."
"Oh, no!" cried my mother; "he might as well go to college then. I
thought he was to stay with us,--only go in the morning, but, of course,
sleep here."
"If I know anything of Trevanion," said my father, "his secretary will
be expected to do without sleep. Poor boy! you don't know what it is
you desire. And yet, at your age, I--" my father stopped short. "No!"
he renewed abruptly, after a long silence, and as if soliloquizing,--
"no; man is never wrong while he lives for others. The philosopher who
contemplates from the rock is a less noble image than the sailor who
struggles with the storm. Why should there be two of us? And could he
be an alter ego, even if I wished it? Impossible!" My father turned on
his chair, and laying the left leg on the right knee, said smilingly, as
he bent down to look me full in the face: "But, Pisistratus, will you
promise me always to wear the saffron bag?"
CHAPTER VII.
I now make a long stride in my narrative. I am domesticated with the
Trevanions. A very short conversation with the statesman sufficed to
decide my father; and the pith of it lay in this single sentence uttered
by Trevanion: "I promise you one thing,--he shall never be idle!"
Looking back, I am convinced that my father was right, and that he
understood my character, and the temptations to which I was most prone,
when he consented to let me resign college and enter thus prematurely on
the world of men. I was naturally so joyous that I should have made
college life a holiday, and then, in repentance, worked myself into a
phthisis.
And my father, too, was right that though I could study, I was not meant
for a student.
After all, the thing was an experiment. I had time to spare; if the
experiment failed, a year's delay would not necessarily be a year's
loss.
I am ensconced, then, at Mr. Trevanion's; I have been there some months.
It is late in the winter; Parliament and the season have commenced. I
work hard,--Heaven knows, harder than I should have worked at college.
Take a day for sample.
Trevanion gets up at eight o'clock, and in all--weathers rides an hour
before breakfast; at nine he takes that meal in his wife's dressing-
room; at half-past nine he comes into his study. By that time he
expects to find done by his secretary the work I am about to describe.
On coming home,--or rather before going to bed, which is usually after
three o'clock,--it is Mr. Trevanion's habit to leave on the table of the
said study a list of directions for the secretary. The following, which
I take at random from many I have preserved, may show their multifarious
nature:--
1. Look out in the Reports (Committee, House of Lords) for the last
seven years all that is said about the growth of flax; mark the
passages for me.
2. Do, do. "Irish Emigration."
3. Hunt out second volume of Kames's "History of Man," passage
containing Reid's Logic,--don't know where the book is!
4. How does the line beginning Lumina conjurent, inter something,
end? Is it in Grey? See.
5. Fracastorius writes: Quantum hoe infecit vitium, quot adiverit
urbes. Query, ought it not, in strict grammar, to be injecerit,
instead of infecit? If you don't know, write to father.
6. Write the four letters in full from the notes I leave; i. e.,
about the Ecclesiastical Courts.
7. Look out Population Returns: strike average of last five years
(between mortality and births) in Devonshire and Lancashire.
8. Answer these six begging letters "No,"--civilly.
9. The other six, to constituents, "that I have no interest with
Government."
10. See, if you have time, whether any of the new books on the
round table are not trash.
11. I want to know All about Indian corn.
12. Longinus says something, somewhere, in regret for uncongenial
pursuits (public life, I suppose): what is it? N. B. Longinus is
not in my London catalogue, but is here, I know,--I think in a box
in the lumber-room.
13. Set right the calculation I leave on the poor-rates. I have
made a blunder somewhere, etc.
Certainly my father knew Mr. Trevanion; he never expected a secretary to
sleep! To get through the work required of me by half-past nine, I get
up by candle-light. At half-past nine I am still hunting for Longinus,
when Mr. Trevanion comes in with a bundle of letters.
Answers to half the said letters fall to my share. Directions verbal,--
in a species of short-hand talk. While I write, Mr. Trevanion reads the
newspapers, examines what I have done, makes notes therefrom,--some for
Parliament, some for conversation, some for correspondence,--skims over
the Parliamentary papers of the morning, and jots down directions for
extracting, abridging, and comparing them with others, perhaps twenty
years old. At eleven he walks down to a Committee of the House of
Commons,--leaving me plenty to do,--till half-past three, when he
returns. At four, Fanny puts her head into the room--and I lose mine.
Four days in the week Mr. Trevanion then disappears for the rest of the
day; dines at Bellamy's or a club; expects me at the House at eight
o'clock, in case he thinks of something, wants a fact or a quotation.
He then releases me,--generally with a fresh list of instructions. But
I have my holidays, nevertheless. On Wednesdays and Saturdays Mr.
Trevanion gives dinners, and I meet the most eminent men of the day, on
both sides; for Trevanion is on both sides himself,--or no side at all,
which comes to the same thing. On Tuesdays Lady Ellinor gives me a
ticket for the Opera, and I get there at least in time for the ballet.
I have already invitations enough to balls and soirees, for I am
regarded as an only son of great expectations. I am treated as becomes
a Caxton who has the right, if he pleases, to put a De before his name.
I have grown very smart. I have taken a passion for dress,--natural to
eighteen. I like everything I do, and every one about me. I am over
head and ears in love with Fanny Trevanion, who breaks my heart,
nevertheless; for she flirts with two peers, a life-guardsman, three old
members of Parliament, Sir Sedley Beaudesert, one ambassador and all his
attaches and positively (the audacious minx!) with a bishop, in full wig
and apron, who, people say, means to marry again.
Pisistratus has lost color and flesh. His mother says he is very much
improved,--that he takes to be the natural effect produced by Stultz and
Hoby. Uncle Jack says he is "fined down." His father looks at him and
writes to Trevanion,--
"Dear T.--I refused a salary for my son. Give him a horse, and two
hours a day to ride it. Yours, A. C."
The next day I am master of a pretty bay mare, and riding by the side of
Fanny Trevanion. Alas! alas!
CHAPTER VIII.
I have not mentioned my Uncle Roland. He is gone--abroad--to fetch his
daughter. He has stayed longer than was expected. Does he seek his son
still,--there as here? My father has finished the first portion of his
work, in two great volumes. Uncle Jack, who for some time has been
looking melancholy, and who now seldom stirs out, except on Sundays (on
which clays we all meet at my father's and dine together),--Uncle Jack,
I say, has undertaken to sell it.
"Don't be over-sanguine," says Uncle Jack, as he locks up the MS. in
two red boxes with a slit in the lids, which belonged to one of the
defunct companies. "Don't be over-sanguine as to the price. These
publishers never venture much on a first experiment. They must be
talked even into looking at the book."
"Oh!" said my father, "if they will publish it at all, and at their own
risk, I should not stand out for any other terms. 'Nothing great,' said
Dryden, 'ever came from a venal pen!'"
"An uncommonly foolish observation of Dryden's," returned Uncle Jack;
"he ought to have known better."
"So he did," said I, "for he used his pen to fill his pockets, poor
man!"
"But the pen was not venal, Master Anachronism," said my father. "A
baker is not to be called venal if he sells his loaves, he is venal if
he sells himself; Dryden only sold his loaves."
"And we must sell yours," said Uncle Jack, emphatically. "A thousand
pounds a volume will be about the mark, eh?"
"A thousand pounds a volume!" cried my father. "Gibbon, I fancy, did
not receive more."
"Very likely; Gibbon had not an Uncle Jack to look after his interests,"
said Mr. Tibbets, laughing, and rubbing those smooth hands of his. "No!
two thousand pounds the two volumes,--a sacrifice, but still I recommend
moderation."
"I should be happy indeed if the book brought in anything," said my
father, evidently fascinated; "for that young gentleman is rather
expensive. And you, my dear Jack,--perhaps half the sum may be of use
to you!"
"To me! my dear brother," cried Uncle Jack "to me! Why when my new
speculation has succeeded, I shall be a millionnaire!"
"Have you a new speculation, uncle?" said I, anxiously. "What is it?"
"Mum!" said my uncle, putting his finger to his lip, and looking all
round the room; "Mum! Mum!"
Pisistratus.--"A Grand National Company for blowing up both Houses of
Parliament!"
Mr. Caxton.---"Upon my life, I hope something newer than that; for they,
to judge by the newspapers, don't want brother Jack's assistance to blow
up each other!"
Uncle Jack (mysteriously).--"Newspapers! you don't often read a
newspaper, Austin Caxton!"
Mr. Caxton.--"Granted, John Tibbets!"
Uncle Jack.--"But if my speculation make you read a newspaper every
day?"
Mr. Caxton (astounded).--"Make me read a newspaper every day!"
Uncle Jack (warming, and expanding his hands to the fire).--"As big as
the 'Times'!"
Mr. Caxton (uneasily).--"Jack, you alarm me!"
Uncle Jack.--"And make you write in it too,--a leader!"
Mr. Caxton, pushing back his chair, seizes the only weapon at his
command, and hurls at Uncle Jack a great sentence of Greek,--
". . . a quotation in Greek . . ." (1)
Uncle Jack (nothing daunted).--"Ay, and put as much Greek as you like
into it!"
Mr. Caxton (relieved and softening). "My dear Jack, you are a great man;
let us hear you!"
Then Uncle Jack began. Now, perhaps my readers may have remarked that
this illustrious speculator was really fortunate in his ideas. His
speculations in themselves always had something sound in the kernel,
considering how barren they were in the fruit; and this it was that made
him so dangerous. The idea Uncle Jack had now got hold of will, I am
convinced, make a man's fortune one of these days; and I relate it with
a sigh, in thinking how much has gone out of the family. Know, then, it
was nothing less than setting up a daily paper, on the plan of the
"Times," but devoted entirely to Art, Literature, and Science,--Mental
Progress, in short; I say on the plan of the "Times," for it was to
imitate the mighty machinery of that diurnal illuminator. It was to be
the Literary Salmoneus of the Political Jupiter, and rattle its thunder
over the bridge of knowledge. It was to have correspondents in all
parts of the globe; everything that related to the chronicle of the
mind, from the labor of the missionary in the South Sea Islands, or the
research of a traveller in pursuit of that mirage called Timbuctoo, to
the last new novel at Paris, or the last great emendation of a Greek
particle at a German university, was to find a place in this focus of
light. It was to amuse, to instruct, to interest,--there was nothing it
was not to do. Not a man in the whole reading public, not only of the
three kingdoms, not only of the British empire, but under the cope of
heaven, that it was not to touch somewhere, in head, in heart, or in
pocket. The most crotchety member of the intellectual community might
find his own hobby in those stables.
"Think," cried Uncle Jack,--"think of the march of mind; think of the
passion for cheap knowledge; think how little quarterly, monthly, weekly
journals can keep pace with the main wants of the age! As well have a
weekly journal on politics as a weekly journal on all the matters still
more interesting than politics to the mass of the public. My 'Literary
Times' once started, people will wonder how they had ever lived without
it! Sir, they have not lived without it,--they have vegetated; they
have lived in holes and caves, like the Troggledikes."
"Troglodytes," said my father, mildly,--"from trogle, `a cave,' and
dumi, 'to go under.' They lived in Ethiopia, and had their wives in
common."
"As to the last point, I don't say that the public, poor creatures, are
as bad as that," said Uncle Jack, candidly; "but no simile holds good in
all its points. And the public are no less Troggledummies, or whatever
you call them, compared with what they will be when living under the
full light of my 'Literary Times.' Sir, it will be a revolution in the
world. It will bring literature out of the clouds into the parlor, the
cottage, the kitchen. The idlest dandy, the finest fine lady, will find
something to her taste; the busiest man of the mart and counter will
find some acquisition to his practical knowledge. The practical man
will see the progress of divinity, medicine, nay, even law. Sir, the
Indian will read me under the banyan; I shall be in the seraglios of the
East; and over my sheets the American Indian will smoke the calumet of
peace. We shall reduce politics to its proper level in the affairs of
life; raise literature to its due place in the thoughts and business of
men. It is a grand thought, and my heart swells with pride while I
contemplate it!"
"My dear Jack," said my father, seriously, and rising with emotion, "it
is a grand thought, and I honor you for it. You are quite right,--it
would be a revolution! It would educate mankind insensibly. Upon my
life, I should be proud to write a leader, or a paragraph. Jack, you
will immortalize yourself!"
"I believe I shall," said Uncle Jack, modestly; "but I have not said a
word yet on the greatest attraction of all."
"Ah! and that?"
"The Advertisements!" cried my uncle, spreading his hands, with all the
fingers at angles, like the threads of a spider's wed. "The
advertisements--oh, think of them!--a perfect El Dorado. The
advertisements, sir, on the most moderate calculation, will bring us in
L50,000 a year. My dear Pisistratus, I shall never marry; you are my
heir. Embrace me!"
So saying, my Uncle Jack threw himself upon me, and squeezed out of
breath the prudential demur that was rising to my lips.
My poor mother, between laughing and sobbing, faltered out:
"And it is my brother who will pay back to his son all--all he gave up
for me!"
While my father walked to and fro the room, more excited than ever I saw
him before, muttering, "A sad, useless dog I have been hitherto! I
should like to serve the world! I should indeed!"
Uncle Jack had fairly done it this time. He had found out the only bait
in the world to catch so shy a carp as my father,--haaret letalis
arundo. I saw that the deadly hook was within an inch of my father's
nose, and that he was gazing at it with a fixed determination to
swallow.
But if it amused my father? Boy that I was, I saw no further. I must
own I myself was dazzled, and, perhaps with childlike malice, delighted
at the perturbation of my betters. The young carp was pleased to see
the waters so playfully in movement when the old carp waved his tail and
swayed himself on his fins.
"Mum!" said Uncle Jack, releasing me; "not a word to Mr. Trevanion, to
any one."
"But why?"
"Why? God bless my soul. Why? If my scheme gets wind, do you suppose
some one will not clap on sail to be before me? You frighten me out of
my senses. Promise me faithfully to be silent as the grave."
"I should like to hear Trevanion's opinion too."
"As well hear the town-crier! Sir, I have trusted to your honor. Sir,
at the domestic hearth all secrets are sacred. Sir, I--"
"My dear Uncle Jack, you have said quite enough. Not a word will I
breathe!"
"I'm sure you may trust him, Jack," said my mother.
"And I do trust him,--with wealth untold," replied my uncle. "May I ask
you for a little water--with a trifle of brandy in it--and a biscuit, or
indeed a sandwich. This talking makes me quite hungry."
My eye fell upon Uncle Jack as he spoke. Poor Uncle Jack, he had grown
thin!
(1) "Some were so barbarous as to eat their own species." The sentence
refers to the Scythians, and is in Strabo. I mention the authority, for
Strabo is not an author that any man engaged on a less work than the
"History of Human Error" is expected to have by heart.
PART VII.
CHAPTER I.
Saith Dr. Luther, "When I saw Dr. Gode begin to tell his puddings
hanging in the chimney, I told him he would not live long!"
I wish I had copied that passage from "The Table Talk" in large round
hand, and set it before my father at breakfast, the morn preceding that
fatal eve in which Uncle Jack persuaded him to tell his puddings.
Yet, now I think of it, Uncle Jack hung the puddings in the chimney, but
he did not persuade my father to tell them.
Beyond a vague surmise that half the suspended "tomacula" would furnish
a breakfast to Uncle Jack, and that the youthful appetite of Pisistratus
would despatch the rest, my father did not give a thought to the
nutritious properties of the puddings,--in other words, to the two
thousand pounds which, thanks to Mr. Tibbets, dangled down the chimney.
So far as the Great Work was concerned, my father only cared for its
publication, not its profits. I will not say that he might not hunger
for praise, but I am quite sure that he did not care a button for
pudding. Nevertheless, it was an infaust and sinister augury for Austin
Caxton, the very appearance, the very suspension and danglement of any
puddings whatsoever, right over his ingle-nook, when those puddings were
made by the sleek hands of Uncle Jack! None of the puddings which he,
poor man, had all his life been stringing, whether from his own chimneys
or the chimneys of other people, had turned out to be real puddings,--
they had always been the eidola, the erscheinungen, the phantoms and
semblances of puddings.
I question if Uncle Jack knew much about Democritus of Abdera. But he
was certainly tainted with the philosophy of that fanciful sage. He
peopled the air with images of colossal stature which impressed all his
dreams and divinations, and from whose influences came his very
sensations and thoughts. His whole being, asleep or waking, was thus
but the reflection of great phantom puddings!
As soon as Mr. Tibbets had possessed himself of the two volumes of the
"History of Human Error," he had necessarily established that hold upon
my father which hitherto those lubricate hands of his had failed to
effect. He had found what he had so long sighed for in vain,--his point
d'appui, wherein to fix the Archimedean screw. He fixed it tight in the
"History of Human Error," and moved the Caxtonian world.
A day or two after the conversation recorded in my last chapter, I saw
Uncle Jack coming out of the mahogany doors of my father's banker; and
from that time there seemed no reason why Mr. Tibbets should not visit
his relations on weekdays as well as Sundays. Not a day, indeed, passed
but what he held long conversations with my father. He had much to
report of his interviews with the publishers. In these conversations he
naturally recurred to that grand idea of the "Literary Times," which had
so dazzled my poor father's imagination; and, having heated the iron,
Uncle Jack was too knowing a man not to strike while it was hot.
When I think of the simplicity my wise father exhibited in this crisis
of his life, I must own that I am less moved by pity than admiration for
that poor great-hearted student. We have seen that out of the learned
indolence of twenty years, the ambition which is the instinct of a man
of genius had emerged; the serious preparation of the Great Book for the
perusal of the world had insensibly restored the claims of that noisy
world on the silent individual. And therewith came a noble remorse that
he had hitherto done so little for his species. Was it enough to write
quartos upon the past history of Human Error? Was it not his duty, when
the occasion was fairly presented, to enter upon that present, daily,
hourly war with Error, which is the sworn chivalry of Knowledge? Saint
George did not dissect dead dragons, he fought the live one. And
London, with that magnetic atmosphere which in great capitals fills the
breath of life with stimulating particles, had its share in quickening
the slow pulse of the student. In the country he read but his old
authors, and lived with them through the gone ages. In the city, my
father, during the intervals of repose from the Great Book, and still
more now that the Great Book had come to a pause, inspected the
literature of his own time. It had a prodigious effect upon him. He
was unlike the ordinary run of scholars, and, indeed, of readers, for
that matter, who, in their superstitious homage to the dead, are always
willing enough to sacrifice the living. He did justice to the
marvellous fertility of intellect which characterizes the authorship of
the present age. By the present age, I do not only mean the present
day, I commence with the century. "What," said my father one day in
dispute with Trevanion, "what characterizes the literature of our time
is its human interest. It is true that we do not see scholars
addressing scholars, but men addressing men,--not that scholars are
fewer, but that the reading public is more large. Authors in all ages
address themselves to what interests their readers; the same things do
not interest a vast community which interested half a score of monks or
book-worms. The literary polls was once an oligarchy, it is now a
republic. It is the general brilliancy of the atmosphere which prevents
your noticing the size of any particular star. Do you not see that with
the cultivation of the masses has awakened the Literature of the
affections? Every sentiment finds an expositor, every feeling an
oracle. Like Epimenides, I have been sleeping in a cave; and, waking, I
see those whom I left children are bearded men, and towns have sprung up
in the landscapes which I left as solitary wastes."
Thence the reader may perceive the causes of the change which had come
over my father. As Robert Hall says, I think of Dr. Kippis. "He had
laid so many books at the top of his head that the brains could not
move." But the electricity had now penetrated the heart, and the
quickened vigor of that noble organ enabled the brain to stir.
Meanwhile, I leave my father to these influences, and to the continuous
conversations of Uncle Jack, and proceed with the thread of my own
egotism.
Thanks to Mr. Trevanion, my habits were not those which favor
friendships with the idle, but I formed some acquaintances amongst young
men a few years older than myself, who held subordinate situations in
the public offices, or were keeping their terms for the Bar. There was
no want of ability amongst these gentlemen, but they had not yet settled
into the stern prose of life. Their busy hours only made them more
disposed to enjoy the hours of relaxation. And when we got together, a
very gay, light-hearted set we were! We had neither money enough to be
very extravagant, nor leisure enough to be very dissipated; but we
amused ourselves notwithstanding. My new friends were wonderfully
erudite in all matters connected with the theatres. From an opera to a
ballet, from "Hamlet" to the last farce from the French, they had the
literature of the stage at the finger-ends of their straw-colored
gloves. They had a pretty large acquaintance with actors and actresses,
and were perfect Walpoladi in the minor scandals of the day. To do them
justice, however, they were not indifferent to the more masculine
knowledge necessary in "this wrong world." They talked as familiarly of
the real actors of life as of the sham ones. They could adjust to a
hair the rival pretensions of contending statesmen. They did not
profess to be deep in the mysteries of foreign cabinets (with the
exception of one young gentleman connected with the Foreign Office, who
prided himself on knowing exactly what the Russians meant to do with
India--when they got it); but, to make amends, the majority of them had
penetrated the closest secrets of our own. It is true that, according
to a proper subdivision of labor, each took some particular member of
the government for his special observation; just as the most skilful
surgeons, however profoundly versed in the general structure of our
frame, rest their anatomical fame on the light they throw on particular
parts of it,--one man taking the brain, another the duodenum, a third
the spinal cord, while a fourth, perhaps, is a master of all the
symptoms indicated by a pensile finger. Accordingly, one of my friends
appropriated to himself the Home Department; another the Colonies; and a
third, whom we all regarded as a future Talleyrand (or a De Retz at
least), had devoted himself to the special study of Sir Robert Peel, and
knew, by the way in which that profound and inscrutable statesman threw
open his coat, every thought that was passing in his breast! Whether
lawyers or officials, they all had a great idea of themselves,--high
notions of what they were to be, rather than what they were to do, some
day. As the king of modern fine gentlemen said to himself, in
paraphrase of Voltaire, "They had letters in their pockets addressed to
Posterity,--which the chances were, however, that they might forget to
deliver." Somewhat "priggish" most of them might be; but, on the whole,
they were far more interesting than mere idle men of pleasure. There
was about them, as features of a general family likeness, a redundant
activity of life, a gay exuberance of ambition, a light-hearted
earnestness when at work, a schoolboy's enjoyment of the hours of play.
A great contrast to these young men was Sir Sedley Beaudesert, who was
pointedly kind to me, and whose bachelor's house was always open to me
after noon: Sir Sedley was visible to no one but his valet before that
hour. A perfect bachelor's house it was, too, with its windows opening
on the Park, and sofas nicked into the windows, on which you might loll
at your ease, like the philosopher in Lucretius,--
"Despicere unde queas alios, passimque videre Errare,"--
and see the gay crowds ride to and fro Rotten Row, without the fatigue
of joining them, especially if the wind was in the east.
There was no affectation of costliness about the rooms, but a wonderful
accumulation of comfort. Every patent chair that proffered a variety in
the art of lounging found its place there; and near every chair a little
table, on which you might deposit your book or your coffee-cup, without
the trouble of moving more than your hand. In winter, nothing warmer
than the quilted curtains and Axminster carpets can be conceived; in
summer, nothing airier and cooler than the muslin draperies and the
Indian mattings. And I defy a man to know to what perfection dinner may
be brought, unless he had dined with Sir Sedley Beaudesert. Certainly,
if that distinguished personage had but been an egotist, he had been the
happiest of men. But, unfortunately for him, he was singularly amiable
and kind-hearted. He had the bonne digestion, but not the other
requisite for worldly felicity,--the mauvais cceur. He felt a sincere
pity for every one else who lived in rooms without patent chairs and
little coffee-tables, whose windows did not look on the Park, with sofas
niched into their recesses. As Henry IV. wished every man to have his
pot au feu, so Sir Sedley Beaudesert, if he could have had his way,
would have every man served with an early cucumber for his fish, and a
caraffe of iced water by the side of his bread and cheese. He thus
evinced on politics a naive simplicity which delightfully contrasted his
acuteness on matters of taste. I remember his saying, in a discussion
on the Beer Bill, "The poor ought not to be allowed to drink beer, it is
so particularly rheumatic! The best drink in hard work is dry
champagne,--not vtousseux; I found that out when I used to shoot on the
moors."
Indolent as Sir Sedley was, he had contrived to open an extraordinary
number of drains on his wealth.
First, as a landed proprietor there was no end to applications from
distressed farmers, aged poor, benefit societies, and poachers he had
thrown out of employment by giving up his preserves to please his
tenants.
Next, as a man of pleasure the whole race of womankind had legitimate
demands on him. From a distressed duchess whose picture lay perdu under
a secret spring of his snuff-box, to a decayed laundress to whom he
might have paid a compliment on the perfect involutions of a frill, it
was quite sufficient to be a daughter of Eve to establish a just claim
on Sir Sedley's inheritance from Adam.
Again, as an amateur of art and a respectful servant of every muse, all
whom the public had failed to patronize,--painter, actor, poet,
musician,--turned, like dying sunflowers to the sun, towards the pitying
smile of Sir Sedley Beaudesert. Add to these the general miscellaneous
multitude who "had heard of Sir Sedley's high character for
benevolence," and one may well suppose what a very costly reputation he
had set up. In fact, though Sir Sedley could not spend on what might
fairly be called "himself" a fifth part of his very handsome income, I
have no doubt that he found it difficult to make both ends meet at the
close of the year. That he did so, he owed perhaps to two rules which
his philosophy had peremptorily adopted. He never made debts, and he
never gambled. For both these admirable aberrations from the ordinary
routine of fine gentlemen I believe he was indebted to the softness of
his disposition. He had a great compassion for a wretch who was dunned.
"Poor fellow!" he would say, "it must be so painful to him to pass his
life in saying 'No.'" So little did he know about that class of
promisers,--as if a man dunned ever said 'No'! As Beau Brummell, when
asked if he was fond of vegetables, owned that he had once eat a pea, so
Sir Sedley Beaudesert owned that he had once played high at piquet. "I
was so unlucky as to win," said he, referring to that indiscretion, "and
I shall never forget the anguish on the face of the man who paid me.
Unless I could always lose, it would be a perfect purgatory to play."
Now nothing could be more different in their kinds of benevolence than
Sir Sedley and Mr. Trevanion. Mr. Trevanion had a great contempt for
individual charity. He rarely put his hand into his purse,--he drew a
great check on his bankers. Was a congregation without a church, or a
village without a school, or a river without a bridge, Mr. Trevanion set
to work on calculations, found out the exact sum required by an
algebraic x--y, and paid it as he would have paid his butcher. It must
be owned that the distress of a man whom he allowed to be deserving, did
not appeal to him in vain. But it is astonishing how little he spent in
that way; for it was hard indeed to convince Mr. Trevanion that a
deserving man ever was in such distress as to want charity.
That Trevanion, nevertheless, did infinitely more real good than Sir
Sedley, I believe; but he did it as a mental operation,--by no means as
an impulse from the heart. I am sorry to say that the main difference
was this,--distress always seemed to accumulate round Sir Sedley, and
vanish from the presence of Trevanion. Where the last came, with his
busy, active, searching mind, energy woke, improvement sprang up. Where
the first came, with his warm, kind heart, a kind of torpor spread under
its rays; people lay down and basked in the liberal sunshine. Nature in
one broke forth like a brisk, sturdy winter; in the other like a lazy
Italian summer. Winter is an excellent invigorator, no doubt, but we
all love summer better.
Now, it is a proof how lovable Sir Sedley was, that I loved him, and yet
was jealous of him. Of all the satellites round my fair Cynthia, Fanny
Trevanion, I dreaded most this amiable luminary. It was in vain for me
to say, with the insolence of youth, that Sir Sedley Beaudesert was of
the same age as Fanny's father; to see them together, he might have
passed for Trevanion's son. No one amongst the younger generation was
half so handsome as Sedley Beaudesert. He might be eclipsed at first
sight by the showy effect of more redundant locks and more brilliant
bloom; but he had but to speak, to smile, in order to throw a whole
cohort of dandies into the shade. It was the expression of his
countenance that was so bewitching; there was something so kindly in its
easy candor, its benign good-nature. And he understood women so well!
He flattered their foibles so insensibly; he commanded their affection
with so gracious a dignity. Above all, what with his accomplishments,
his peculiar reputation, his long celibacy, and the soft melancholy of
his sentiments, he always contrived to interest them. There was not a
charming woman by whom this charming man did not seem just on the point
of being caught! It was like the sight of a splendid trout in a
transparent stream, sailing pensively to and fro your fly, in a willand-
a-won't sort of a way. Such a trout! it would be a thousand pities to
leave him, when evidently so well disposed! That trout, fair maid or
gentle widow, would have kept youwhipping the stream and dragging the
fly--from morning to dewy eve. Certainly I don't wish worse to my
bitterest foe of five and twenty than such a rival as Sedley Beaudesert
at seven and forty.
Fanny, indeed, perplexed me horribly. Sometimes I fancied she liked me;
but the fancy scarce thrilled me with delight before it vanished in the
frost of a careless look or the cold beam of a sarcastic laugh. Spoiled
darling of the world as she was, she seemed so innocent in her exuberant
happiness that one forgot all her faults in that atmosphere of joy which
she diffused around her. And despite her pretty insolence, she had so
kind a woman's heart below the surface! When she once saw that she had
pained you, she was so soft, so winning, so humble, till she had healed
the wound. But then, if she saw she had pleased you too much, the
little witch was never easy till she had plagued you again. As heiress
to so rich a father, or rather perhaps mother (for the fortune came from
Lady Ellinor), she was naturally surrounded with admirers not wholly
disinterested. She did right to plague them; but Me! Poor boy that I
was, why should I seem more disinterested than others; how should she
perceive all that lay hid in my young deep heart? Was I not in all--
worldly pretensions the least worthy of her admirers, and might I not
seem, therefore, the most mercenary,--I, who never thought of her
fortune, or if that thought did come across me, it was to make me start
and turn pale? And then it vanished at her first glance, as a ghost
from the dawn. How hard it is to convince youth, that sees all the
world of the future before it, and covers that future with golden
palaces, of the inequalities of life! In my fantastic and sublime
romance I looked out into that Great Beyond, saw myself orator,
statesman, minister, ambassador,--Heaven knows what,--laying laurels,
which I mistook for rent-rolls, at Fanny's feet.
Whatever Fanny might have discovered as to the state of my heart, it
seemed an abyss not worth prying into by either Trevanion or Lady
Ellinor. The first, indeed, as may be supposed, was too busy to think
of such trifles. And Lady Ellinor treated me as a mere boy,--almost
like a boy of her own, she was so kind to me. But she did not notice
much the things that lay immediately around her. In brilliant
conversation with poets, wits, and statesmen, in sympathy with the toils
of her husband or proud schemes for his aggrandizement, Lady Ellinor
lived a life of excitement. Those large, eager, shining eyes of hers,
bright with some feverish discontent, looked far abroad, as if for new
worlds to conquer; the world at her feet escaped from her vision. She
loved her daughter, she was proud of her, trusted in her with a superb
repose; she did not watch over her. Lady Ellinor stood alone on a
mountain and amidst a cloud.
CHAPTER II.
One day the Trevanions had all gone into the country on a visit to a
retired minister distantly related to Lady Ellinor, and who was one of
the few persons Trevanion himself condescended to consult. I had almost
a holiday. I went to call on Sir Sedley Beaudesert. I had always
longed to sound him on one subject, and had never dared. This time I
resolved to pluck up courage.
"Ah, my young friend!" said he, rising from the contemplation of a
villanous picture by a young artist, which he had just benevolently
purchased, "I was thinking of you this morning.--Wait a moment, Summers
[this to the valet]. Be so good as to take this picture; let it be
packed up and go down into the country. It is a sort of picture," he
added, turning to me, "that requires a large house. I have an old
gallery with little casements that let in no light. It is astonishing
how convenient I have found it!" As soon as the picture was gone, Sir
Sedley drew a long breath, as if relieved, and resumed more gayly,--
"Yes, I was thinking of you; and if you will forgive any interference in
your affairs,--from your father's old friend,--I should be greatly
honored by your permission to ask Trevanion what he supposes is to be
the ultimate benefit of the horrible labor he inflicts upon you."
"But, my dear Sir Sedley, I like the labors; I am perfectly contented."
"Not to remain always secretary to one who, if there were no business to
be done among men, would set about teaching the ants to build hills upon
better architectural principles! My dear sir, Trevanion is an awful
man, a stupendous man, one catches fatigue if one is in the same room
with him three minutes! At your age,--an age that ought to be so
happy,"--continued Sir Sedley, with a compassion perfectly angelically
"it is sad to see so little enjoyment!"
"But, Sir Sedley, I assure you that you are mistaken, I thoroughly enjoy
myself; and have I not heard even you confess that one may be idle and
not happy?"
"I did not confess that till I was on the wrong side of forty!" said Sir
Sedley, with a slight shade on his brow. "Nobody would ever think you
were on the wrong side of forty!" said I, with artful flattery, winding
into my subject. "Miss Trevanion, for instance?"
I paused. Sir Sedley looked hard at me, from his bright dark-blue eyes.
"Well, Miss Trevanion for instance?"
"Miss Trevanion, who has all the best-looking fellows in London round
her, evidently prefers you to any of them."
I said this with a great gulp. I was obstinately bent on plumbing the
depth of my own fears.
Sir Sedley rose; he laid his hand kindly on mine, and said, "Do not let
Fanny Trevanion torment you even more than her father does!"
"I don't understand you, Sir Sedley."
"But if I understand you, that is more to the purpose. A girl like Miss
Trevanion is cruel till she discovers she has a heart. It is not safe
to risk one's own with any woman till she has ceased to be a coquette.
My dear young friend, if you took life less in earnest, I should spare
you the pain of these hints. Some men sow flowers, some plant trees:
you are planting a tree under which you will soon find that no flower
will grow. Well and good, if the tree could last to bear fruit and give
shade; but beware lest you have to tear it up one day or other; for
then--What then? Why, you will find your whole life plucked away with
its roots!"
Sir Sedley said these last words with so serious an emphasis that I was
startled from the confusion I had felt at the former part of his
address. He paused long, tapped his snuff-box, inhaled a pinch slowly,
and continued, with his more accustomed sprightliness,--
"Go as much as you can into the world. Again I say, 'Enjoy yourself.'
And again I ask, what is all this labor to do for you? On some men, far
less eminent than Trevanion, it would impose a duty to aid you in a
practical career, to secure you a public employment; not so on him. He
would not mortgage an inch of his independence by asking a favor from a
minister. He so thinks occupation the delight of life that he occupies
you out of pure affection. He does not trouble his head about your
future. He supposes your father will provide for that, and does not
consider that meanwhile your work leads to nothing! Think over all
this. I have now bored you enough."
I was bewildered; I was dumb. These practical men of the world, how
they take us by surprise! Here had I come to sound Sir Sedley, and here
was I plumbed, gauged, measured, turned inside out, without having got
an inch beyond the sur face of that smiling, debonnaire, unruffled ease.
Yet, with his invariable delicacy, in spite of all this horrible
frankness, Sir Sedley had not said a word to wound what he might think
the more sensitive part of my amour propre,--not a word as to the
inadequacy of my pretensions to think seriously of Fanny Trevanion. Had
we been the Celadon and Chloe of a country village, he could not have
regarded us as more equal, so far as the world went. And for the rest,
he rather insinuated that poor Fanny, the great heiress, was not worthy
of me, than that I was not worthy of Fanny.
I felt that there was no wisdom in stammering and blushing out denials
and equivocations; so I stretched my hand to Sir Sedley, took up my hat,
and went. Instinctively I bent my way to my father's house. I had not
been there for many days. Not only had I had a great deal to do in the
way of business, but I am ashamed to say that pleasure itself had so
entangled my leisure hours, and Miss Trevanion especially so absorbed
them, that, without even uneasy foreboding, I had left my father
fluttering his wings more feebly and feebly in the web of Uncle Jack.
When I arrived in Russell Street I found the fly and the spider cheek-
by-jowl together. Uncle Jack sprang up at my entrance and cried,
"Congratulate your father. Congratulate him!---no; congratulate the
world!"
"What, uncle!" said I, with a dismal effort at sympathizing liveliness,
"is the 'Literary Times' launched at last?"
"Oh! that is all settled,--settled long since. Here's a specimen of the
type we have chosen for the leaders." And Uncle Jack, whose pocket was
never without a wet sheet of some kind or other, drew forth a steaming
papyral monster, which in point of size was to the political "Times" as
a mammoth may be to an elephant. "That is all settled. We are only
preparing our contributors, and shall put out our programme next week or
the week after. No, Pisistratus, I mean the Great Work."
"My dear father, I am so glad. What! it is really sold, then?"
"Hum!" said my father.
"Sold!" burst forth Uncle Jack. "Sold,--no, sir, we would not sell it!
No; if all the booksellers fell down on their knees to us, as they will
some day, that book should not be sold! Sir, that book is a revolution;
it is an era; it is the emancipator of genius from mercenary thraldom,--
That Book!"
I looked inquiringly from uncle to father, and mentally retracted my
congratulations. Then Mr. Caxton, slightly blushing, and shyly rubbing
his spectacles, said, "You see, Pisistratus, that though poor Jack has
devoted uncommon pains to induce the publishers to recognize the merit
he has discovered in the 'History of Human Error,' he has failed to do
so."
"Not a bit of it; they all acknowledge its miraculous learning, its--"
"Very true; but they don't think it will sell, and therefore most
selfishly refuse to buy it. One bookseller, indeed, offered to treat
for it if I would leave out all about the Hottentots and Caffres, the
Greek philosophers and Egyptian priests, and confining myself solely to
polite society, entitle the work 'Anecdotes of the Courts of Europe,
Ancient and Modern.'"
"The--wretch!" groaned Uncle Jack.
"Another thought it might be cut up into little essays, leaving out the
quotations, entitled 'Men and Manners.' A third was kind enough to
observe that though this kind of work was quite unsalable, yet, as I
appeared to have some historical information, he should be happy to
undertake an historical romance from my graphic pen,'--that was the
phrase, was it not, Jack?"
Jack was too full to speak.
"Provided I would introduce a proper love-plot, and make it into three
volumes post octavo, twenty-three lines in a page, neither more nor
less. One honest fellow at last was found who seemed to me a very
respectable and indeed enterprising person. And after going through a
list of calculations, which showed that no possible profit could arise,
he generously offered to give me half of those no-profits, provided I
would guarantee half the very visible expenses. I was just meditating
the prudence of accepting this proposal, when your uncle was seized with
a sublime idea, which has whisked up my book in a whirlwind of
expectation."
"And that idea?" said I, despondently.
"That idea," quoth Uncle Jack, recovering himself, "is simply and
shortly this. From time immemorial, authors have been the prey of the
publishers. Sir, authors have lived in garrets, nay, have been choked
in the street by an unexpected crumb of bread, like the man who wrote
the play, poor fellow!"
"Otway," said my father. "The story is not true,--no matter."
"Milton, sir, as everybody knows, sold 'Paradise Lost' for ten pounds,--
ten pounds, Sir! In short, instances of a like nature are too numerous
to quote.--But the booksellers, sir, they are leviathans; they roll in
seas of gold; they subsist upon authors as vampires upon little
children. But at last endurance has reached its limit; the fiat has
gone forth; the tocsin of liberty has resounded: authors have burst
their fetters. And we have just inaugurated the institution of 'The
Grand Anti-Publisher Confederate Authors' Society,' by which,
Pisistratus, by which, mark you, every author is to be his own
publisher; that is, every author who joins the society. No more
submission of immortal works to mercenary calculators, to sordid tastes;
no more hard bargains and broken hearts; no more crumbs of bread choking
great tragic poets in the streets; no more Paradises Lost sold at L10 a-
piece! The author brings his book to a select committee appointed for
the purpose,--men of delicacy, education, and refinement, authors
themselves; they read it, the society publish; and after a modest
deduction, which goes towards the funds of the society, the treasurer
hands over the profits to the author."
"So that, in fact, uncle, every author who can't find a publisher
anywhere else will of course come to the society. The fraternity will
be numerous."
"It will indeed."
"And the speculation--ruinous."
"Ruinous, why?"
"Because in all mercantile negotiations it is ruinous to invest capital
in supplies which fail of demand. You undertake to publish books that
booksellers will not publish: why? Because booksellers can't sell them.
It's just probable that you'll not sell them any better than the
booksellers. Ergo, the more your business, the larger your deficit; and
the more numerous your society, the more disastrous your condition. Q.
E. D."
"Pooh! The select committee will decide what books are to be
published."
"Then where the deuce is the advantage to the authors? I would as lief
submit; my work to a publisher as I would to a select committee of
authors. At all events, the publisher is not my rival; and I suspect he
is the best judge, after all, of a book,--as an accoucheur ought to be
of a baby."
"Upon my word, nephew, you pay a bad compliment to your father's Great
Work, which the booksellers will have nothing to do with."
That was artfully said, and I was posed; when Mr. Caxton observed, with
an apologetic smile,--
"The fact is, my dear Pisistratus, that I want my book published without
diminishing the little fortune I keep for you some day. Uncle Jack
starts a society so to publish it. Health and long life to Uncle Jack's
society! One can't look a gift horse in the mouth."
Here my mother entered, rosy from a shopping expedition with Mrs.
Primmins; and in her joy at hearing that I could stay to dinner, all
else was forgotten. By a wonder, which I did not regret, Uncle Jack
really was engaged to dine out. He had other irons in the fire besides
the "Literary Times" and the "Confederate Authors' Society;" he was deep
in a scheme for making house-tops of felt (which, under other hands,
has, I believe, since succeeded); and he had found a rich man (I suppose
a hatter) who seemed well inclined to the project, and had actually
asked him to dine and expound his views.
CHAPTER III.
Here we three are seated round the open window--after dinner--familiar
as in the old happy time--and my mother is talking low, that she may not
disturb my father, who seems in thought--
Cr-cr-crrr-cr-cr! I feel it--I have it. Where! What! Where! Knock
it down; brush it off! For Heaven's sake, see to it! Crrrr-crrrrr--
there--here--in my hair--in my sleeve--in my ear--cr-cr.
I say solemnly, and on the word of a Christian, that as I sat down to
begin this chapter, being somewhat in a brown study, the pen insensibly
slipped from my hand, and leaning back in my chair, I fell to gazing in
the fire. It is the end of June, and a remarkably cold evening, even
for that time of year. And while I was so gazing I felt something
crawling just by the nape of the neck, ma'am. Instinctively and
mechanically, and still musing, I put my hand there, and drew forth
What? That what it is which perplexes me. It was a thing--a dark
thing--a much bigger thing than I had expected. And the sight took me
so by surprise that I gave my hand a violent shake, and the thing went--
where I know not. The what and the where are the knotty points in the
whole question! No sooner had it gone than I was seized with repentance
not to have examined it more closely; not to have ascertained what the
creature was. It might have been an earwig,--a very large, motherly
earwig; an earwig far gone in that way in which earwigs wish to be who
love their lords. I have a profound horror of earwigs; I firmly believe
that they do get into the ear. That is a subject on which it is useless
to argue with me upon philosophical grounds. I have a vivid
recollection of a story told me by Mrs. Primmins,--how a lady for many
years suffered under the most excruciating headaches; how, as the
tombstones say, "physicians were in vain;" how she died; and how her
head was opened, and how such a nest of earwigs, ma'am, such a nest!
Earwigs are the prolifickest things, and so fond of their offspring!
They sit on their eggs like hens, and the young, as soon as they are
born, creep under them for protection,--quite touchingly! Imagine such
an establishment domesticated at one's tympanum!
But the creature was certainly larger than an earwig. It might have
been one of that genus in the family of Forficulidce called Labidoura,--
monsters whose antennae have thirty joints! There is a species of this
creature in England--but to the great grief of naturalists, and to the
great honor of Providence, very rarely found--infinitely larger than the
common earwig, or Forfaculida auriculana. Could it have been an early
hornet? It had certainly a black head and great feelers. I have a
greater horror of hornets, if possible, than I have of earwigs. Two
hornets will kill a man, and three a carriage-horse sixteen hands high.
However, the creature was gone. Yes, but where? Where had I so rashly
thrown it? It might have got into a fold of my dressing-gown or into my
slippers, or, in short, anywhere, in the various recesses for earwigs
and hornets which a gentleman's habiliments afford. I satisfy myself at
last as far as I can, seeing that I am not alone in the room, that it is
not upon me. I look upon the carpet, the rug, the chair under the
fender. It is non inventus. I barbarously hope it is frizzing behind
that great black coal in the grate. I pluck up courage; I prudently
remove to the other end of the room. I take up my pen, I begin my
chapter,--very nicely, too, I think upon the whole. I am just getting
into my subject, when--cr-cr-er-cr-er--crawl--crawl--crawl--creep--
creep--creep. Exactly, my dear ma'am, in the same place it was before!
Oh, by the Powers! I forgot all my scientific regrets at not having
scrutinized its genus before, whether Forfaculida or Labidoura. I made
a desperate lunge with both hands,--something between thrust and cut,
ma'am. The beast is gone. Yes, but, again, where? I say that where is
a very horrible question. Having come twice, in spite of all my
precautions--and exactly on the same spot, too--it shows a confirmed
disposition to habituate itself to its quarters, to effect a parochial
settlement upon me; there is something awful and preternatural in it. I
assure you that there is not a part of me that has not gone cr-cr-cr!--
that has not crept, crawled, and forficulated ever since; and I put it
to you what sort of a chapter I can make after such a--My good little
girl, will you just take the candle and look carefully under the table?
that's a dear! Yes, my love, very black indeed, with two horns, and
inclined to be corpulent. Gentlemen and ladies who have cultivated an
acquaintance with the Phcenician language are aware that Beelzebub,
examined etymologically and entomologically, is nothing more nor less
than Baalzebub, "the Jupiter-fly," an emblem of the Destroying Attribute,
which attribute, indeed, is found in all the insect tribes more or less.
Wherefore, as--Mr. Payne Knight, in his "Inquiry into Symbolical
Languages," hath observed, the Egyptian priests shaved their whole
bodies, even to their eyebrows, lest unaware they should harbor any of
the minor Zebubs of the great Baal. If I were the least bit more
persuaded that that black cr-cr were about me still, and that the
sacrifice of my eyebrows would deprive him of shelter, by the souls of
the Ptolemies I would,--and I will too! Icing the bell, my little dear!
John, my--my cigar-box! There is not a cr in the world that can abide
the fumes of the havana! Pshaw! sir, I am not the only man who lets his
first thoughts upon cold steel end, like this chapter, in--Pff--pff--
pff!
CHAPTER IV.
Everything in this world is of use, even a black thing crawling over the
nape of one's neck! Grim unknown, I shall make of thee--a simile!
I think, ma'am, you will allow that if an incident such as I have
described had befallen yourself, and you had a proper and lady-like
horror of earwigs (however motherly and fond of their offspring), and
also of early hornets,--and indeed of all unknown things of the insect
tribe with black heads and two great horns, or feelers, or forceps, just
by your ear,--I think, ma'am, you will allow that you would find it
difficult to settle back to your former placidity of mood and innocent
stitch-work. You would feel a something that grated on your nerves and
cr'd-cr'd "all over you like," as the children say. And the worst is,
that you would be ashamed to say it. You would feel obliged to look
pleased and join in the conversation, and not fidget too much, nor
always be shaking your flounces and looking into a dark corner of your
apron. Thus it is with many other things in life besides black insects.
One has a secret care, an abstraction, a something between the memory
and the feeling, of a dark crawling cr which one has never dared to
analyze. So I sat by my another, trying to smile and talk as in the old
time, but longing to move about, and look around, and escape to my own
solitude, and take the clothes off my mind, and see what it was that had
so troubled and terrified me; for trouble and terror were upon me. And
my mother, who was always (Heaven bless her!) inquisitive enough in all
that concerned her darling Anachronism, was especially inquisitive that
evening. She made me say where I had been, and what I had done, and how
I had spent my time; and Fanny Trevanion (whom she had seen, by the way,
three or four times, and whom she thought the prettiest person in the
world), oh, she must know exactly what I thought of Fanny Trevanion!
And all this while my father seemed in thought; and so, with my arm over
my mother's chair, and my hand in hers, I answered my mother's
questions, sometimes by a stammer, sometimes by a violent effort at
volubility; when at some interrogatory that went tingling right to my
heart I turned uneasily, and there were my father's eyes fixed on mine,
fixed as they had been when, and none knew why, I pined and languished,
and my father said, "He must go to school;" fixed with quiet, watchful
tenderness. Ah, no! his thoughts had not been on the Great Work; he had
been deep in the pages of that less worthy one for which he had yet more
an author's paternal care. I met those eyes and yearned to throw myself
on his heart and tell him all. Tell him what? Ma'am, I no more knew
what to tell him than I know what that black thing was which has so
worried me all this blessed evening!
"Pisistratus," said my father, softly, "I fear you have forgotten the
saffron bag."
"No, indeed, sir," said I, smiling.
"He," resumed my father, "he who wears the saffron bag has more
cheerful, settled spirits than you seem to have, my poor boy."
"My dear Austin, his spirits are very good, I think," said my mother,
anxiously.
My father shook his head; then he took two or three turns about the
room.
"Shall I ring for candles, sir? It is getting dark; you will wish to
read."
"No, Pisistratus, it is you who shall read; and this hour of twilight
best suits the book I am about to open to you."
So saying, he drew a chair between me and my mother and seated himself
gravely, looking down a long time in silence, then turning his eyes to
each of us alternately.
"My dear wife," said he, at length, almost solemnly, "I am going to
speak of myself as I was before I knew you."
Even in the twilight I saw that my mother's countenance changed.
"You have respected my secrets, Katherine, tenderly, honestly. Now the
time is come when I can tell them to you and to our son."
CHAPTER V.
MY FATHER'S FIRST LOVE.
"I lost my mother early; my father--a good man, but who was so indolent
that he rarely stirred from his chair, and who often passed whole days
without speaking, like an Indian dervish--left Roland and myself to
educate ourselves much according to our own tastes. Roland shot and
hunted and fished, read all the poetry and books of chivalry to be found
in my father's collection, which was rich in such matters, and made a
great many copies of the old pedigree,--the only thing in which my
father ever evinced much vital interest. Early in life I conceived a
passion for graver studios, and by good luck I found a tutor in Mr.
Tibbets, who, but for his modesty, Kitty, would have rivalled Porson.
He was a second Budaeus for industry,--and, by the way, he said exactly
the same thing that Budmus did, namely, 'That the only lost day in his
life was that in which he was married; for on that day he had only had
six hours for reading'! Under such a master I could not fail to be a
scholar. I came from the university with such distinction as led me to
look sanguinely on my career in the world.
"I returned to my father's quiet rectory to pause and consider what path
I should take to faire. The rectory was just at the foot of the hill,
on the brow of which were the ruins of the castle Roland has since
purchased. And though I did not feel for the ruins the same romantic
veneration as my dear brother (for my day-dreams were more colored by
classic than feudal recollections), I yet loved to climb the hill, book
in hand, and built my castles in the air midst the wrecks of that which
time had shattered on the earth.
"One day, entering the old weed-grown court, I saw a lady seated on my
favorite spot, sketching the ruins. The lady was young, more beautiful
than any woman I had yet seen,--at least to my eyes. In a word, I was
fascinated, and as the trite phrase goes, 'spell-bound.' I seated
myself at a little distance, and contemplated her without desiring to
speak. By and by, from another part of the ruins, which were then
uninhabited, came a tall, imposing elderly gentleman with a benignant
aspect, and a little dog. The dog ran up to me barking. This drew the
attention of both lady and gentleman to me. The gentleman approached,
called off the dog, and apologized with much politeness. Surveying me
somewhat curiously, he then began to ask questions about the old place
and the family it had belonged to, with the name and antecedents of
which he was well acquainted. By degrees it came out that I was the
descendant of that family, and the younger son of the humble rector who
was now its representative. The gentleman then introduced himself to me
as the Earl of Rainsforth, the principal proprietor in the neighborhood,
but who had so rarely visited the country during my childhood and
earlier youth that I had never before seen him. His only son, however,
a young man of great promise, had been at the same college with me in my
first year at the University. The young lord was a reading man and a
scholar, and we had become slightly acquainted when he left for his
travels.
"Now, on hearing my name Lord Rainsforth took my hand cordially, and
leading me to his daughter, said, 'Think, Ellinor, how fortunate!--this
is the Mr. Caxton whom your brother so often spoke of.'
"In short, my dear Pisistratus, the ice was broken, the acquaintance
made; and Lord Rainsforth, saying he was come to atone for his long
absence from the county, and to reside at Compton the greater part of
the year, pressed me to visit him. I did so. Lord Raipsforth's liking
to me increased; I went there often."
My father paused, and seeing my mother had fixed her eyes upon him with
a sort of mournful earnestness, and had pressed her hands very tightly
together, he bent down and kissed her forehead.
"There is no cause, my child!" said he. It was the only time I ever
heard him address my mother so parentally. But then I never heard him
before so grave and solemn,--not a quotation, too; it was incredible: it
was not my father speaking, it was another man. "Yes, I went there
often. Lord Rainsforth was a remarkable person. Shyness that was
wholly without pride (which is rare), and a love for quiet literary
pursuits, had prevented his taking that personal part in public life for
which he was richly qualified; but his reputation for sense and honor,
and his personal popularity, had given him no inconsiderable influence
even, I believe, in the formation of cabinets, and he had once been
prevailed upon to fill a high diplomatic situation abroad, in which I
have no doubt that he was as miserable as a good man can be under any
infliction. He was now pleased to retire from the world, and look at it
through the loopholes of retreat. Lord Rainsforth had a great respect
for talent, and a warm interest in such of the young as seemed to him to
possess it. By talent, indeed, his family had risen, and were
strikingly characterized. His ancestor, the first peer, had been a
distinguished lawyer; his father had been celebrated for scientific
attainments; his children, Ellinor and Lord Pendarvis, were highly
accomplished. Thus the family identified themselves with the
aristocracy of intellect, and seemed unconscious of their claims to the
lower aristocracy of rank. You must bear this in mind throughout my
story.
"Lady Ellinor shared her father's tastes and habits of thought (she was
not then an heiress). Lord Rainsforth talked to me of my career. It
was a time when the French Revolution had made statesmen look round with
some anxiety to strengthen the existing order of things, by alliance
with all in the rising generation who evinced such ability as might
influence their contemporaries.
"University distinction is, or was formerly, among the popular passports
to public life. By degrees, Lord Rainsforth liked me so well as to
suggest to me a seat in the House of Commons. A member of Parliament
might rise to anything, and Lord Rainsforth had sufficient influence to
effect my return. Dazzling prospect this to a young scholar fresh from
Thucydides, and with Demosthenes fresh at his tongue's end! My dear
boy, I was not then, you see, quite what I am now: in a word, I loved
Ellinor Compton, and therefore I was ambitious. You know how ambitious
she is still. But I could not mould my ambition to hers. I could not
contemplate entering the senate of my country as a dependent on a party
or a patron,--as a man who must make his fortune there; as a man who, in
every vote, must consider how much nearer he advanced himself to
emolument. I was not even certain that Lord Rainsforth's views on
politics were the same as mine would be. How could the politics of an
experienced man of the world be those of an ardent young student? But
had they been identical, I felt that I could not so creep into equality
with a patron's daughter. No! I was ready to abandon my own more
scholastic predilections, to strain every energy at the Bar, to carve or
force my own way to fortune; and if I arrived at independence, then,--
what then? Why, the right to speak of love and aim at power. This was
not the view of Ellinor Compton. The law seemed to her a tedious,
needless drudgery; there was nothing in it to captivate her imagination.
She listened to me with that charm which she yet retains, and by which
she seems to identify herself with those who speak to her. She would
turn to me with a pleading look when her father 'dilated on the
brilliant prospects of a parliamentary success; for he (not having
gained it, yet having lived with those who had) overvalued it, and
seemed ever to wish to enjoy it through some other. But when I, in
turn, spoke of independence, of the Bar, Ellinor's face grew overcast.
The world,--the world was with her, and the ambition of the world, which
is always for power or effect! A part of the house lay exposed to the
east wind. 'Plant half-way down the hill,' said I one day. 'Plant!'
cried Lady Ellinor,--`it will be twenty years before the trees grow up.
No, my dear father, build a wall and cover it with creepers!' That was
an illustration of her whole character. She could not wait till trees
had time to grow; a dead wall would be so much more quickly thrown up,
and parasite creepers would give it a prettier effect. Nevertheless,
she was a grand and noble creature. And I--in love! Not so discouraged
as you may suppose; for Lord Rainsforth often hinted encouragement which
even I could scarcely misconstrue. Not caring for rank, and not wishing
for fortune beyond competence for his daughter, he saw in me all he
required,--a gentleman of ancient birth, and one in whom his own active
mind could prosecute that kind of mental ambition which overflowed in
him, and yet had never had its vent. And Ellinor!---Heaven forbid I
should say she loved me, but something made me think she could do so.
Under these notions, suppressing all my hopes, I made a bold effort to
master the influences round me and to adopt that career I thought
worthiest of us all. I went to London to read for the Bar."
"The Bar! is it possible?" cried I. My father smiled sadly.
"Everything seemed possible to me then. I read some months. I began to
see my way even in that short time,--began to comprehend what would be
the difficulties before me, and to feel there was that within me which
could master them. I took a holiday and returned to Cumberland. I
found Roland there on my return. Always of a roving, adventurous
temper, though he had not then entered the army, he had, for more than
two years, been wandering over Great Britain and Ireland on foot. It
was a young knight-errant whom I embraced, and who overwhelmed me with
reproaches that I should be reading for the law. There had never been a
lawyer in the family! It was about that time, I think, that I petrified
him with the discovery of the printer! I knew not exactly wherefore,
whether from jealousy, fear, foreboding, but it certainly was a pain
that seized me when I learned from Roland that he had become intimate at
Compton Hall. Roland and Lord Rainsforth had met at the house of a
neighboring gentleman, and Lord Rainsforth had welcomed his
acquaintance, at first, perhaps, for my sake, afterwards for his own.
"I could not for the life of me," continued my father, "ask Roland if he
admired Ellinor; but when I found that he did not put that question to
me, I trembled!
"We went to Compton together, speaking little by the way. We stayed
there some days."
My father here thrust his hand into his waistcoat. All men have their
little ways, which denote much; and when my father thrust his hand into
his waistcoat, it was always a sign of some mental effort,--he was going
to prove or to argue, to moralize or to preach. Therefore, though I was
listening before with all my ears, I believe I had, speaking
magnetically and mesmerically, an extra pair of ears, a new sense
supplied to me, when my father put his hand into his waistcoat.
CHAPTER VI.
"There is not a mystical creation, type, symbol, or poetical invention
for meanings abtruse, recondite, and incomprehensible which is not
represented by the female gender," said my father, having his hand quite
buried in his waistcoat. "For instance, the Sphinx and Isis, whose veil
no man had ever lifted, were both ladies, Kitty! And so was Persephone,
who must be always either in heaven or hell; and Hecate, who was one
thing by night and another by day. The Sibyls were females, and so were
the Gorgons, the Harpies, the Furies, the Fates, and the Teutonic
Valkyrs, Nornies, and Hela herself; in short, all representations of
ideas obscure, inscrutable, and portentous, are nouns feminine."
Heaven bless my father! Augustine Caxton was himself again! I began to
fear that the story had slipped away from him, lost in that labyrinth of
learning. But luckily, as he paused for breath, his look fell on those
limpid blue eyes of my mother, and that honest open brow of hers, which
had certainly nothing in common with Sphinxes, Fates, Furies, or
Valkyrs; and whether his heart smote him, or his reason made him own
that he had fallen into a very disingenuous and unsound train of
assertion, I know not, but his front relaxed, and with a smile he
resumed: "Ellinor was the last person in the world to deceive any one
willingly. Did she deceive me and Roland, that we both, though not
conceited men, fancied that, if we had dared to speak openly of love, we
had not so dared in vain; or do you think, Kitty, that a woman really
can love (not much, perhaps, but somewhat) two or three, or half a
dozen, at a time?"
"Impossible!" cried my mother. "And as for this Lady Ellinor, I am
shocked at her--I don't know what to call it!"
"Nor I either, my dear," said my father, slowly taking his hand from his
waistcoat, as if the effort were too much for him, and the problem were
insoluble. "But this, begging your pardon, I do think, that before a
young woman does really, truly, and cordially centre her affections on
one object, she suffers fancy, imagination, the desire of power,
curiosity, or Heaven knows what, to stimulate, even to her own mind,
pale reflections of the luminary not yet risen,--parhelia that precede
the sun. Don't judge of Roland as you see him now, Pisistratus,--grim,
and gray, and formal: imagine a nature soaring high amongst daring
thoughts, or exuberant with the nameless poetry of youthful life, with a
frame matchless for bounding elasticity, an eye bright with haughty
fire, a heart from which noble sentiments sprang like sparks from an
anvil. Lady Ellinor had an ardent, inquisitive imagination. This bold,
fiery nature must have moved her interest. On the other hand, she had
an instructed, full, and eager mind. Am I vain if I say, now after the
lapse of so many years, that in my mind her intellect felt
companionship? When a woman loves and marries and settles, why then she
becomes a one whole, a completed being. But a girl like Ellinor has in
her many women. Various herself, all varieties please her. I do
believe that if either of us had spoken the word boldly, Lady Ellinor
would have shrunk back to her own heart, examined it, tasked it, and
given a frank and generous answer; and he who had spoken first might
have had the better chance not to receive a 'No.' But neither of us
spoke. And perhaps she was rather curious to know if she had made an
impression, than anxious to create it. It was not that she willingly
deceived us, but her whole atmosphere was delusion. Mists come before
the sunrise. However this be, Roland and I were not long in detecting
each other. And hence arose, first coldness, then jealousy, then
quarrel."
"Oh, my father, your love must have been indeed powerful to have made a
breach between the hearts of two such brothers!"
"Yes," said my father, "it was amidst the old ruins of the castle, there
where I had first seen Ellinor, that, winding my arm round Roland's neck
as I found--him seated amongst the weeds and stones, his face buried in
his hands,--it was there that I said, "Brother, we both love this woman!
My nature is the calmer of the two, I shall feel the loss less.
Brother, shake hands! and God speed you, for I go!"
"Austin!" murmured my mother, sinking her head on my father's breast.
"And therewith we quarrelled. For it was Roland who insisted, while the
tears rolled down his eyes and he stamped his foot on the ground, that
he was the intruder, the interloper; that he had no hope; that he had
been a fool and a madman; and that it was for him to go! Now, while we
were disputing, and words began to run high, my father's old servant
entered the desolate place with a note from Lady Ellinor to me, asking
for the loan of some book I had praised. Roland saw the handwriting,
and while I turned the note over and over irresolutely, before I broke
the seal, he vanished.
"He did not return to my father's house. We did not know what had
become of him. But I, thinking over that impulsive, volcanic nature,
took quick alarm. And I went in search of him; came on his track at
last; and after many days found him in a miserable cottage amongst the
most dreary of the dreary wastes which form so large a part of
Cumberland. He was so altered I scarcely knew him. To be brief, we
came at last to a compromise. We would go back to Compton. This
suspense was intolerable. One of us at least should take courage and
learn his fate. But who should speak first? We drew lots, and the lot
fell on me.
"And now that I was really to pass the Rubicon, now that I was to impart
that secret hope which had animated me so long, been to me a new life,
what were my sensations? My dear boy, depend on it that that age is the
happiest when such feelings as I felt then can agitate us no more; they
are mistakes in the serene order of that majestic life which Heaven
meant for thoughtful man. Our souls should be as stars on earth, not as
meteors and tortured comets. What could I offer to Ellinor, to her
father? What but a future of patient labor? And in either answer what
alternative of misery,--my own existence shattered, or Roland's noble
heart!
"Well, we went to Compton. In our former visits we had been almost the
only guests. Lord Rainsforth did not much affect the intercourse of
country squires, less educated then than now; and in excuse for Ellinor
and for us, we were almost the only men of our own age she had seen in
that large dull house. But now the London season had broken up, the
house was filled; there was no longer that familiar and constant
approach to the mistress of the Hall which had made us like one family.
Great ladies, fine people were round her; a look, a smile, a passing
word were as much as I had a right to expect. And the talk, too, how
different! Before I could speak on books,--I was at home there! Roland
could pour forth his dreams, his chivalrous love for the past, his bold
defiance of the unknown future. And Ellinor, cultivated and fanciful,
could sympathize with both. And her father, scholar and gentleman,
could sympathize too. But now--"
CHAPTER VII.
"It is no use in the world," said my father, "to know all the languages
expounded in grammars and splintered up into lexicons, if we don't learn
the language of the world. It is a talk apart, Kitty," cried my father,
warming up. "It is an Anaglyph,--a spoken anaglyph, my dear! If all
the hieroglyphs of the Egyptians had been A B C to you, still, if you
did not know the anaglyph, you would know nothing of the true mysteries
of the priests. (1)
"Neither Roland nor I knew one symbol letter of the anaglyph. Talk,
talk, talk on persons we never heard of, things we never cared for. All
we thought of importance, puerile or pedantic trifles; all we thought so
trite and childish, the grand momentous business of life! If you found
a little schoolboy on his half-holiday fishing for minnows with a
crooked pin, and you began to tell him of all the wonders of the deep,
the laws of the tides, and the antediluvian relies of iguanodon and
ichthyosaurus; nay, if you spoke but of pearl fisheries and coral-banks,
or water-kelpies and naiads,--would not the little boy cry out
peevishly, 'Don't tease me with all that nonsense; let me fish in peace
for my minnows!' I think the little boy is right after his own way: it
was to fish for minnows that he came out, poor child, not to hear about
iguanodons and water-kelpies.
"So the company fished for minnows, and not a word could we say about
our pearl-fisheries and coral-banks! And as for fishing for minnows
ourselves, my dear boy, we should have been less bewildered if you had
asked us to fish for a mermaid! Do you see, now, one reason why I have
let you go thus early into the world? Well, but amongst these minnow-
fishers there was one who fished with an air that made the minnows look
larger than salmons.
"Trevanion had been at Cambridge with me. We were even intimate. He
was a young man like myself, with his way to make in the world. Poor as
I, of a family upon a par with mine, old enough, but decayed. There
was, however, this difference between us: he had connections in the
great world; I had none. Like me, his chief pecuniary resource was a
college fellowship. Now, Trevanion had established a high reputation at
the University; but less as a scholar, though a pretty fair one, than as
a man to rise in life. Every faculty he had was an energy. He aimed at
everything: lost some things, gained others. He was a great speaker in
a debating society, a member of some politico-economical club. He was
an eternal talker,--brilliant, various, paradoxical, florid; different
from what he is now, for, dreading fancy, his career since has been one
effort to curb it. But all his mind attached itself to something that
we Englishmen call solid; it was a large mind,--not, my dear Kitty, like
a fine whale sailing through knowledge from the pleasure of sailing, but
like a polypus, that puts forth all its feelers for the purpose of
catching hold of something. Trevanion had gone at once to London from
the University; his reputation and his talk dazzled his connections, not
unjustly. They made an effort, they got him into Parliament; he had
spoken, he had succeeded. He came to Compton in the flush of his virgin
fame. I cannot convey to you who know him now--with his careworn face
and abrupt, dry manner, reduced by perpetual gladiatorship to the skin
and bone of his former self--what that man was when he first stepped
into the arena of life.
"You see, my listeners, that you have to recollect that we middle-aged
folks were young then; that is to say, we were as different from what we
are now as the green bough of summer is from the dry wood out of which
we make a ship or a gatepost. Neither man nor wood comes to the uses of
life till the green leaves are stripped and the sap gone. And then the
uses of life transform us into strange things with other names: the tree
is a tree no more, it is a gate or a ship; the youth is a youth no more,
but a one-legged soldier, a hollow-eyed statesman, a scholar spectacled
and slippered! When Micyllus"--here the hand slides into the waistcoat
again--"when Micyllus," said my father, "asked the cock that had once
been Pythagoras(2) if the affair of Troy was really as Homer told it,
the cock replied scornfully, 'How could Homer know anything about it?
At that time he was a camel in Bactria.' Pisistratus, according to the
doctrine of metempsychosis you might have been a Bactrian camel when
that which to my life was the siege of Troy saw Roland and Trevanion
before the walls.
"Handsome you can see that Trevanion has been: but the beauty of his
countenance then was in its perpetual play, its intellectual eagerness;
and his conversation was so discursive, so various, so animated, and
above all so full of the things of the day! If he had been a priest of
Serapis for fifty years he could not have known the anaglyph better.
Therefore he filled up every crevice and pore of that hollow society
with his broken, inquisitive, petulant light; therefore he was admired,
talked of, listened to, and everybody said, 'Trevanion is a rising man.'
"Yet I did not do him then the justice I have done since; for we
students and abstract thinkers are apt too much, in our first youth, to
look to the depth, of a man's mind or knowledge, and not enough to the
surface it may cover. There may be more water in a flowing stream only
four feet deep, and certainly more force and more health, than in a
sullen pool thirty yards to the bottom. I did not do Trevanion justice;
I did not see how naturally he realized Lady Ellinor's ideal. I have
said that she was like many women in one. Trevanion was a thousand men
in one. He had learning to please her mind, eloquence to dazzle her
fancy, beauty to please her eye, reputation precisely of the kind to
allure her vanity, honor and conscientious purpose to satisfy her
judgment; and, above all, he was ambitious,--ambitious not as I, not as
Roland was, but ambitious as Ellinor was; ambitious, not to realize some
grand ideal in the silent heart, but to grasp the practical, positive
substances that lay without.
"Ellinor was a child of the great world, and so was he.
"I saw not all this, nor did Roland; and Trevanion seemed to pay no
particular court to Ellinor.
"But the time approached when I ought to speak. The house began to
thin. Lord Rainsforth had leisure to resume his easy conferences with
me; and one day, walking in his garden, he gave me the opportunity,--for
I need not say, Pisistratus," said my father, looking at me earnestly,
"that before any man of honor, if of inferior worldly pretensions, will
open his heart seriously to the daughter, it is his duty to speak first
to the parent, whose confidence has imposed that trust." I bowed my
head and colored.
"I know not how it was," continued my father, "but Lord Rainsforth
turned the conversation on Ellinor. After speaking of his expectations
in his son, who was returning home, he said, 'But he will of course
enter public life,--will, I trust, soon marry, have a separate
establishment, and I shall see but little of him. My Ellinor! I cannot
bear the thought of parting wholly with her. And that, to say the
selfish truth, is one reason why I have never wished her to marry a rich
man, and so leave me forever. I could hope that she will give herself
to one who may be contented to reside at least great part of the year
with me, who may bless me with another son, not steal from me a
daughter. I do not mean that he should waste his life in the country;
his occupations would probably lead him to London. I care not where my
house is,--all I want is to keep my home. You know,' he added, with a
smile that I thought meaning, 'how often I have implied to you that I
have no vulgar ambition for Ellinor. Her portion must be very small,
for my estate is strictly entailed, and I have lived too much up to my
income all my life to hope to save much now. But her tastes do not
require expense, and while I live, at least, there need be no change.
She can only prefer a man whose talents, congenial to hers, will win
their own career, and ere I die that career may be made.' Lord
Rainsforth paused; and then--how, in what words I know not, but out all
burst!--my long-suppressed, timid, anxious, doubtful, fearful love. The
strange energy it had given to a nature till then so retiring and calm!
My recent devotion to the law; my confidence that, with such a prize, I
could succeed,--it was but a transfer of labor from one study to
another. Labor could conquer all things, and custom sweeten them in the
conquest. The Bar was a less brilliant career than the senate. But the
first aim of the poor man should be independence. In short,
Pisistratus, wretched egotist that I was, I forgot Roland in that
moment; and I spoke as one who felt his life was in his words.
"Lord Rainsforth looked at me, when I had done, with a countenance full
of affection, but it was not cheerful.
"'My dear Caxton,' said he, tremulously, 'I own that I once wished
this,--wished it from the hour I knew you; but why did you so long--I
never suspected that--nor, I am sure, did Ellinor.' He stopped short,
and added quickly: 'However, go and speak, as you have spoken to me, to
Ellinor. Go; it may not yet be too late. And yet--but go.'
"Too late!'--what meant those words? Lord Rainsforth had turned hastily
down another walk, and left me alone, to ponder over an answer which
concealed a riddle. Slowly I took my way towards the house and sought
Lady Ellinor, half hoping, half dreading to find her alone. There was a
little room communicating with a conservatory, where she usually sat in
the morning. Thither I took my course. "That room,--I see it still!--
the walls covered with pictures from her own hand, many were sketches of
the haunts we had visited together; the simple ornaments, womanly but
not effeminate; the very books on the table, that had been made familiar
by dear associations. Yes, there the Tasso, in which we had read
together the episode of Clorinda; there the Aeschylus in which I
translated to her the "Prometheus." Pedantries these might seem to
some, pedantries, perhaps, they were; but they were proofs of that
congeniality which had knit the man of books to the daughter of the
world. That room, it was the home of my heart.
"Such, in my vanity of spirit, methought would be the air round a home
to come. I looked about me, troubled and confused, and, halting
timidly, I saw Ellinor before me, leaning her face on her hand, her
cheek more flushed than usual, and tears in her eyes. I approached in
silence, and as I drew my chair to the table, my eye fell on a glove on
the floor. It was a man's glove. Do you know," said my father, "that
once, when I was very young, I saw a Dutch picture called 'The Glove,'
and the subject was of murder? There was a weed-grown, marshy pool, a
desolate, dismal landscape, that of itself inspired thoughts of ill
deeds and terror. And two men, as if walking by chance, came to this
pool; the finger of one pointed to a blood-stained glove, and the eyes
of both were fixed on each other, as if there were no need of words.
That glove told its tale. The picture had long haunted me in my
boyhood, but it never gave me so uneasy and fearful a feeling as did
that real glove upon the floor. Why? My dear Pisistratus, the theory
of forebodings involves one of those questions on which we may ask 'why'
forever. More chilled than I had been in speaking to her father, I took
heart at last, and spoke to Ellinor."
My father stopped short; the moon had risen, and was shining full into
the room and on his face. And by that light the face was changed; young
emotions had brought back youth,--my father looked a young man. But
what pain was there! If the memory alone could raise what, after all,
was but the ghost of suffering, what had been its living reality!
Involuntarily I seized his hand; my father pressed it convulsively, and
said with a deep breath: "It was too late; Trevanion was Lady Ellinor's
accepted, plighted, happy lover. My dear Katherine, I do not envy him
now; look up, sweet wife, look up!"
(1). The anaglyph was peculiar to the Egyptian priests; the hieroglyph
generally known to the well educated.
(2). Lucian, The Dream of Micyllus.
CHAPTER VIII.
"Ellinor (let me do her justice) was shocked at my silent emotion. No
human lip could utter more tender sympathy, more noble self-reproach;
but that was no balm to my wound. So I left the house; so I never
returned to the law; so all impetus, all motive for exertion, seemed
taken from my being; so I went back into books. And so a moping,
despondent, worthless mourner might I have been to the end of my days,
but that Heaven, in its mercy, sent thy mother, Pisistratus, across my
path; and day and night I bless God and her, for I have been, and am--
oh, indeed, I am a happy man!"
My mother threw herself on my father's breast, sobbing violently, and
then turned from the room without a word; my father's eye, swimming in
tears, followed her; and then, after pacing the room for some moments in
silence, he came up to me, and leaning his arm on my shoulder,
whispered, "Can you guess why I have now told you all this, my son?"
"Yes, partly: thank you, father," I faltered, and sat down, for I felt
faint.
"Some sons," said my father, seating himself beside me, "would find in
their father's follies and errors an excuse for their own; not so will
you, Pisistratus."
"I see no folly, no error, sir; only nature and sorrow."
"Pause ere you thus think," said my father. "Great was the folly and
great the error of indulging imagination that has no basis, of linking
the whole usefulness of my life to the will of a human creature like
myself. Heaven did not design the passion of love to be this tyrant;
nor is it so with the mass and multitude of human life. We dreamers,
solitary students like me, or half-poets like poor Roland, make our own
disease. How many years, even after I had regained serenity, as your
mother gave me a home long not appreciated, have I wasted! The
mainstring of my existence was snapped; I took no note of time. And
therefore now, you see, late in life, Nemesis wakes. I look back with
regret at powers neglected, opportunities gone. Galvanically I brace up
energies half-palsied by disuse; and you see me, rather than rest quiet
and good for nothing, talked into what, I dare say, are sad follies, by
an Uncle Jack! And now I behold Ellinor again; and I say in wonder:
'All this--all this--all this agony, all this torpor, for that, haggard
face, that worldly spirit!' So is it ever in life: mortal things fade;
immortal things spring more freshly with every step to the tomb.
"Ah!" continued my father, with a sigh, "it would not have been so if at
your age I had found out the secret of the saffron bag!"
CHAPTER IX.
"And Roland, sir," said I, "how did he take it?"
"With all the indignation of a proud, unreasonable man; more indignant,
poor fellow, for me than himself. And so did he wound and gall me by
what he said of Ellinor, and so did he rage against me because I would
not share his rage, that again we quarrelled. We parted, and did not
meet for many years. We came into sudden possession of our little
fortunes. His he devoted (as you may know) to the purchase of the old
ruins and the commission in the army, which had always been his dream;
and so went his way, wrathful. My share gave me an excuse for
indolence,--it satisfied all my wants; and when my old tutor died, and
his young child became my ward, and, somehow or other, from my ward my
wife, it allowed me to resign my fellowship and live amongst my books,
still as a book myself. One comfort, somewhat before my marriage, I had
conceived; and that, too, Roland has since said was comfort to him,--
Ellinor became an heiress. Her poor brother died, and all of the estate
that did not pass in the male line devolved on her. That fortune made a
gulf between us almost as wide as her marriage. For Ellinor poor and
portionless, in spite of her rank, I could have worked, striven, slaved;
but Ellinor Rich! it would have crushed me. This was a comfort. But
still, still the past,--that perpetual aching sense of something that
had seemed the essential of life withdrawn from life evermore, evermore!
What was left was not sorrow,--it was a void. Had I lived more with
men, and less with dreams and books, I should have made my nature large
enough to bear the loss of a single passion. But in solitude we shrink
up. No plant so much as man needs the sun and the air. I comprehend
now why most of our best and wisest men have lived in capitals; and
therefore again I say, that one scholar in a family is enough.
Confiding in your sound heart and strong honor, I turn you thus betimes
on the world. Have I done wrong? Prove that I have not, my child. Do
you know what a very good man has said? Listen and follow my precept,
not example.
"'The state of the world is such, and so much depends on action, that
everything seems to say aloud to every man, "Do something--do it--do
it!"'"
I was profoundly touched, and I rose refreshed and hopeful, when
suddenly the door opened, and who or what in the world should come in--
But certainly he, she, it, or they shall not come into this chapter! On
that point I am resolved. No, my dear young lady, I am extremely
flattered, I feel for your curiosity; but really not a peep,--not one!
And yet--Well, then, if you will have it, and look so coaxingly--Who or
what, I say, should come in abrupt, unexpected--taking away one's
breath, not giving one time to say, "By your leave, or with your leave,"
but making one's mouth stand open with surprise, and one's eyes fix in a
big round stupid stare--but--
PART VIII.
CHAPTER I.
There entered, in the front drawing-room of my father's house in Russell
Street, an Elf! clad in white,--small, delicate, with curls of jet over
her shoulders; with eyes so large and so lustrous that they shone
through the room as no eyes merely human could possibly shine. The Elf
approached, and stood facing us. The sight was so unexpected and the
apparition so strange that we remained for some moments in startled
silence. At length my father, as the bolder and wiser man of the two,
and the more fitted to deal with the eerie things of another world, had
the audacity to step close up to the little creature, and, bending down
to examine its face, said, "What do you want, my pretty child?"
Pretty child! Was it only a pretty child after all? Alas! it would be
well if all we mistake for fairies at the first glance could resolve
themselves only into pretty children.
"Come," answered the child, with a foreign accent, and taking my father
by the lappet of his coat, "come, poor papa is so ill! I am frightened!
come, and save him."
"Certainly," exclaimed my father, quickly. "Where's my hat, Sisty?
Certainly, my child; we will go and save papa."
"But who is papa?" asked Pisistratus,--a question that would never have
occurred to my father. He never asked who or what the sick papas of
poor children were when the children pulled him by the lappet of his
coat. "Who is papa?"
The child looked hard at me, and the big tears rolled from those large,
luminous eyes, but quite silently. At this moment a full-grown figure
filled up the threshold, and emerging from the shadow, presented to us
the aspect of a stout, well-favored young woman. She dropped a
courtesy, and then said, mincingly,--
"Oh, miss, you ought to have waited for me, and not alarmed the
gentlefolks by running upstairs in that way! If you please, sir, I was
settling with the cabman, and he was so imperent,--them low fellows
always are, when they have only us poor women to deal with, sir, and--"
"But what is the matter?" cried I, for my father had taken the child in
his arms soothingly, and she was now weeping on his breast.
"Why, you see, sir [another courtesy], the gent only arrived last night
at our hotel, sir,--the Lamb, close by Lunnun Bridge,--and he was taken
ill, and he's not quite in his right mind like; so we sent for the
doctor, and the doctor looked at the brass plate on the gent's carpet-
bag, sir, and then he looked into the 'Court Guide,' and he said, 'There
is a Mr. Caxton in Great Russell Street,--is he any relation?' and this
young lady said, 'That's my papa's brother, and we were going there.'
And so, sir, as the Boots was out, I got into a cab, and miss would come
with me, and--"
"Roland--Roland ill! Quick, quick, quick!" cried my father, and with
the child still in his arms he ran down the stairs. I followed with his
hat, which of course he had forgotten. A cab, by good luck, was passing
our very door; but the chambermaid would not let us enter it till she
had satisfied herself that it was not the same she had dismissed. This
preliminary investigation completed, we entered and drove to the Lamb.
The chambermaid, who sat opposite, passed the time in ineffectual
overtures to relieve my father of the little girl,--who still clung
nestling to his breast,--in a long epic, much broken into episodes, of
the causes which had led to her dismissal of the late cabman, who, to
swell his fare, had thought proper to take a "circumbendibus!"--and with
occasional tugs at her cap, and smoothings down of her gown, and
apologies for being such a figure, especially when her eyes rested on my
satin cravat, or drooped on my shining boots.
Arrived at the Lamb, the chambermaid, with conscious dignity, led us up
a large staircase, which seemed interminable. As she mounted the region
above the third story, she paused to take breath and inform us,
apologetically, that the house was full, but that if the "gent" stayed
over Friday, he would be moved into No. 54, "with a look-out and a
chimbly." My little cousin now slipped from my father's arms, and,
running up the stairs, beckoned to us to follow. We did so, and were
led to a door, at which the child stopped and listened; then, taking off
her shoes, she stole in on tiptoe. We entered after her.
By the light of a single candle we saw my poor uncle's face; it was
flushed with fever, and the eyes had that bright, vacant stare which it
is so terrible to meet. Less terrible is it to find the body wasted,
the features sharp with the great life-struggle, than to look on the
face from which the mind is gone,--the eyes in which there is no
recognition. Such a sight is a startling shock to that unconscious
habitual materialism with which we are apt familiarly to regard those we
love; for in thus missing the mind, the heart, the affection that sprang
to ours, we are suddenly made aware that it was the something within the
form, and not the form itself, that was so dear to us. The form itself
is still, perhaps, little altered; but that lip which smiles no welcome,
that eye which wanders over us as strangers, that ear which
distinguishes no more our voices,--the friend we sought is not there!
Even our own love is chilled back; grows a kind of vague, superstitious
terror. Yes, it was not the matter, still present to us, which had
conciliated all those subtle, nameless sentiments which are classed and
fused in the word "affection;" it was the airy, intangible, electric
something, the absence of which now appals us.
I stood speechless; my father crept on, and took the hand that returned
no pressure. The child only did not seem to share our emotions, but,
clambering on the bed, laid her cheek on the breast, and was still.
"Pisistratus," whispered my father at last, and I stole near, hushing my
breath,--"Pisistratus, if your mother were here!"
I nodded; the same thought had struck us both. His deep wisdom, my
active youth, both felt their nothingness then and there. In the sick
chamber both turned helplessly to miss the woman.
So I stole out, descended the stairs, and stood in the open air in a
sort of stunned amaze. Then the tramp of feet, and the roll of wheels,
and the great London roar, revived me. That contagion of practical life
which lulls the heart and stimulates the brain,--what an intellectual
mystery there is in its common atmosphere! In another moment I had
singled out, like an inspiration, from a long file of those ministrants
of our Trivia, the cab of the lightest shape and with the strongest
horse, and was on my way, not to my mother's, but to Dr. M-- H--,
Manchester Square, whom I knew as the medical adviser to the Trevanions.
Fortunately, that kind and able physician was at home, and he promised
to be with the sufferer before I myself could join him. I then drove to
Russell Street, and broke to my mother, as cautiously as I could, the
intelligence with which I was charged.
When we arrived at the Lamb, we found the doctor already writing his
prescription and injunctions: the activity of the treatment announced
the clanger. I flew for the surgeon who had been before called in.
Happy those who are strange to that indescribable silent bustle which
the sick-room at times presents,--that conflict which seems almost hand
to hand between life and death,--when all the poor, unresisting,
unconscious frame is given up to the war against its terrible enemy the
dark blood flowing, flowing; the hand on the pulse, the hushed suspense,
every look on the physician's bended brow; then the sinapisms to the
feet, and the ice to the head; and now and then, through the lull of the
low whispers, the incoherent voice of the sufferer,--babbling, perhaps,
of green fields and fairyland, while your hearts are breaking! Then, at
length, the sleep,--in that sleep, perhaps, the crisis,--the breathless
watch, the slow waking, the first sane words, the old smile again, only
fainter, your gushing tears, your low "Thank God thank God!"
Picture all this! It is past; Roland has spoken, his sense has
returned; my mother is leaning over him; his child's small hands are
clasped round his neck; the surgeon, who has been there six hours, has
taken up his hat, and smiles gayly as he nods farewell; and my father is
leaning against the wall, his face covered with his hands.
CHAPTER II.
All this had been so sudden that, to use the trite phrase,--for no other
is so expressive,--it was like a dream. I felt an absolute, an
imperious want of solitude, of the open air. The swell of gratitude
almost stifled me; the room did not seem large enough for my big heart.
In early youth, if we find it difficult to control our feelings, so we
find it difficult to vent them in the presence of others. On the spring
side of twenty, if anything affects us, we rush to lock ourselves up in
our room, or get away into the streets or the fields; in our earlier
years we are still the savages of Nature, and we do as the poor brute
does: the wounded stag leaves the herd, and if there is anything on a
dog's faithful heart, he slinks away into a corner.
Accordingly, I stole out of the hotel and wandered through the streets,
which were quite deserted. It was about the first hour of dawn,--the
most comfortless hour there is, especially in London! But I only felt
freshness in the raw air, and soothing in the desolate stillness. The
love my uncle inspired was very remarkable in its nature; it was not
like that quiet affection with which those advanced in life must usually
content themselves, but connected with the more vivid interest that
youth awakens. There was in him still so much of viva, city and fire,
in his errors and crotchets so much of the self-delusion of youth, that
one could scarce fancy him other than young. Those Quixotic,
exaggerated notions of honor, that romance of sentiment which no
hardship, care, grief, disappointment, could wear away (singular in a
period when, at two and twenty, young men declare themselves blases!),
seemed to leave him all the charm of boyhood. A season in London had
made me more a man of the world, older in heart than he was. Then, the
sorrow that gnawed him with such silent sternness. No, Captain Roland
was one of those men who seize hold of your thoughts, who mix themselves
up with your lives. The idea that Roland should die,--die with the load
at his heart unlightened,--was one that seemed to take a spring out of
the wheels of nature, all object out of the aims of life,--of my life at
least. For I had made it one of the ends of my existence to bring back
the son to the father, and restore the smile, that must have been gay
once, to the downward curve of that iron lip. But Roland was now out of
danger; and yet, like one who has escaped shipwreck, I trembled to look
back on the danger past: the voice of the devouring deep still boomed in
my ears. While rapt in my reveries, I stopped mechanically to hear a
clock strike--four; and, looking round, I perceived that I had wandered
from the heart of the City, and was in one of the streets that lead out
of the Strand. Immediately before me, on the doorsteps of a large shop
whose closed shutters were as obstinate a stillness as if they had
guarded the secrets of seventeen centuries in a street in Pompeii,
reclined a form fast asleep, the arm propped on the hard stone
supporting the head, and the limbs uneasily strewn over the stairs. The
dress of the slumberer was travel-stained, tattered, yet with the
remains of a certain pretence; an air of faded, shabby, penniless
gentility made poverty more painful, because it seemed to indicate
unfitness to grapple with it. The face of this person was hollow and
pale, but its expression, even in sleep, was fierce and hard. I drew
near and nearer; I recognized the countenance, the regular features, the
raven hair, even a peculiar gracefulness of posture: the young man whom
I had met at the inn by the way-side, and who had left me alone with the
Savoyard and his mice in the churchyard, was before me. I remained
behind the shadow of one of the columns of the porch, leaning against
the area rails, and irresolute whether or not so slight an acquaintance
justified me in waking the sleeper, when a policeman, suddenly emerging
from an angle in the street, terminated my deliberations with the
decision of his practical profession; for he laid hold of the young
man's arm and shook it roughly: "You must not lie here; get up and go
home!" The sleeper woke with a quick start, rubbed his eyes, looked
round, and fixed them upon the policeman so haughtily that that
discriminating functionary probably thought that it was not from sheer
necessity that so improper a couch had been selected, and with an air of
greater respect he said, "You have been drinking, young man,--can you
find your way home?"
"Yes," said the youth, resettling himself, "you see I have found it!"
"By the Lord Harry!" muttered the policeman, "if he ben't going to sleep
again. Come, come, walk on; or I must walk you off."
My old acquaintance turned round. "Policeman," said he, with a strange
sort of smile, "what do you think this lodging is worth,--I don't say
for the night, for you see that is over, but for the next two hours?
The lodging is primitive, but it suits me; I should think a shilling
would be a fair price for it, eh?"
"You love your joke, sir," said the policeman, with a brow much relaxed,
and opening his hand mechanically.
"Say a shilling, then; it is a bargain! I hire it of you upon credit.
Good night, and call me at six o'clock."
With that the young man settled himself so resolutely, and the
policeman's face exhibited such bewilderment, that I burst out laughing,
and came from my hiding-place.
The policeman looked at me. "Do you know this--this--"
"This gentleman?" said I, gravely. "Yes, you may leave him to me;" and
I slipped the price of the lodging into the policeman's hand. He looked
at the shilling, he looked at me, he looked up the street and down the
street, shook his head, and walked off. I then approached the youth,
touched him, and said: "Can you remember me, sir; and what have you done
with Mr. Peacock?"
Stranger (after a pause).--"I remember you; your name is Caxton."
Pisistratus.--"And yours?"
Stranger.--"Poor devil, if you ask my pockets,--pockets, which are the
symbols of man; Dare-devil, if you ask my heart. [Surveying me from
head to foot.] The world seems to have smiled on you, Mr. Caxton! Are
you not ashamed to speak to a wretch lying on the stones? but, to be
sure, no one sees you."
Pisistratus (sententiously).--"Had I lived in the last century, I might
have found Samuel Johnson lying on the stones."
Stranger (rising).--"You have spoilt my sleep: you had a right, since
you paid for the lodging. Let me walk with you a few paces; you need
not fear, I do not pick pockets--yet!"
Pisistratus.--"You say the world has smiled on me; I fear it has frowned
on you. I don't say 'courage,' for you seem to have enough of that; but
I say 'patience,' which is the rarer quality of the two."
Stranger.--"Hem! [again looking at me keenly.] Why is it that you stop
to speak to me,--one of whom you know nothing, or worse than nothing?"
Pisistratus.--"Because I have often thought of you; because you interest
me; because--pardon me--I would help you if I can,--that is, if you want
help."
Stranger.--"Want? I am one want! I want sleep, I want food; I want the
patience you recommend,--patience to starve and rot. I have travelled
from Paris to Boulogne on foot, with twelve sous in my pocket. Out of
those twelve sous in my pocket I saved four; with the four I went to a
billiard-room at Boulogne: I won just enough to pay my passage and buy
three rolls. You see I only require capital in order to make a fortune.
If with four sous I can win ten francs in a night, what could I win with
a capital of four sovereigns, and in the course of a year? That is an
application of the Rule of Three which my head aches too much to
calculate just at present. Well, those three rolls have lasted me three
days; the last crumb went for supper last night. Therefore, take care
how you offer me money (for that is what men mean by help). You see I
have no option but to take it. But I warn you, don't expect gratitude;
I have none in me!"
Pisistratus.--"You are not so bad as you paint yourself. I would do
something more for you, if I can, than lend you the little I have to
offer. Will you be frank with me?"
Stranger.--"That depends; I have been frank enough hitherto, I think."
Pisistratus.--"True; so I proceed without scruple. Don't tell me your
name or your condition, if you object to such confidence; but tell me if
you have relations to whom you can apply? You shake your head. Well,
then, are you willing to work for yourself, or is it only at the
billiard-table--pardon me--that you can try to make four sous produce
ten francs?"
Stranger (musing).--"I understand you. I have never worked yet,--I
abhor work. But I have no objection to try if it is in me."
Pisistratus.--"It is in you. A man who can walk from Paris to Boulogne
with twelve sous in his pocket and save four for a purpose; who can
stake those four on the cool confidence in his own skill, even at
billiards; who can subsist for three days on three rolls; and who, on
the fourth day, can wake from the stones of a capital with an eye and a
spirit as proud as yours,--has in him all the requisites to subdue
fortune."
Stranger.--"Do you work--you?"
Pisistratus.--"Yes--and hard."
Stranger.--"I am ready to work, then."
Pisistratus.--"Good. Now, what can you do?"
Stranger (with his odd smile).--"Many things useful. I can split a
bullet on a penknife; I know the secret tierce of Coulon, the fencing-
master; I can speak two languages (besides English) like a native, even
to their slang; I know every game in the cards; I can act comedy,
tragedy, farce; I can drink down Bacchus himself; I can make any woman I
please in love with me,--that is, any woman good for nothing. Can I
earn a handsome livelihood out of all this,--wear kid gloves and set up
a cabriolet? You see my wishes are modest!"
Pisistratus.--"You speak two languages, you say, like a native,--French,
I suppose, is one of them?"
Stranger.--"Yes."
Pisistratus.--"Will you teach it?"
Stranger (haughtily). "No. Je suis gentilhomme, which means more or
less than a gentleman. Gentilhomme means well born, because free born;
teachers are slaves!"
Pisistratus (unconsciously imitating Mr. Trevanion).--"Stuff!"
Stranger (looks angry, and then laughs).--"Very true; stilts don't suit
shoes like these! But I cannot teach. Heaven help those I should
teach! Anything else?"
Pisistratus.--"Anything else!--you leave me a wide margin. You know
French thoroughly,--to write as well as speak? That is much. Give me
some address where I can find you,--or will you call on me?"
Stranger.--"No! Any evening at dusk I will meet you. I have no address
to give, and I cannot show these rags at another man's door."
Pisistratus.--"At nine in the evening, then, and here in the Strand, on
Thursday next. I may then have found some thing that will suit you.
Meanwhile--" slides his purse into the Stranger's hand. N. B.--Purse
not very full.
Stranger, with the air of one conferring a favor, pockets the purse; and
there is something so striking in the very absence of all emotion at so
accidental a rescue from starvation that Pisistratus exclaims,--
"I don't know why I should have taken this fancy to you, Mr. Dare-devil,
if that be the name that pleases you best. The wood you are made of
seems cross-grained, and full of knots; and yet, in the hands of a
skilful carver, I think it would be worth much."
Stranger (startled).--"Do you? Do you? None, I believe, ever thought
that before. But the same wood, I suppose, that makes the gibbet could
make the mast of a man-of-war. I tell you, however, why you have taken
this fancy to me,--the strong sympathize with the strong. You, too,
could subdue fortune!"
Pisistratus.--"Stop! If so, if there is congeniality between us, then
liking should be reciprocal. Come, say that; for half my chance of
helping you is in my power to touch your heart."
Stranger (evidently softened).--"If I were as great a rogue as I ought
to be, my answer would be easy enough. As it is, I delay it. Adieu.--
On Thursday."
Stranger vanishes in the labyrinth of alleys round Leicester Square.
CHAPTER III.
On my return to the Lamb, I found that my uncle was in a soft sleep; and
after a morning visit from the surgeon, and his assurance that the fever
was fast subsiding, and all cause for alarm was gone, I thought it
necessary to go back to Trevanion's house and explain the reason for my
night's absence. But the family had not returned from the country.
Trevanion himself came up for a few hours in the afternoon, and seemed
to feel much for my poor uncle's illness. Though, as usual, very busy,
he accompanied me to the Lamb to see my father and cheer him up. Roland
still continued to mend, as the surgeon phrased it; and as we went back
to St. James's Square, Trevanion had the consideration to release me
from my oar in his galley for the next few days. My mind, relieved from
my anxiety for Roland, now turned to my new friend. It had not been
without an object that I had questioned the young man as to his
knowledge of French. Trevanion had a large correspondence in foreign
countries which was carried on in that language; and here I could be but
of little help to him. He himself, though he spoke and wrote French
with fluency and grammatical correctness, wanted that intimate knowledge
of the most delicate and diplomatic of all languages to satisfy his
classical purism.
For Trevanion was a terrible word-weigher. His taste was the plague of
my life and his own. His prepared speeches (or rather perorations) were
the most finished pieces of cold diction that could be conceived under
the marble portico of the Stoics,--so filed and turned, trimmed and
tamed, that they never admitted a sentence that could warm the heart, or
one that could offend the ear. He had so great a horror of a vulgarism
that, like Canning, he would have made a periphrasis of a couple of
lines to avoid using the word "cat." It was only in extempore speaking
that a ray of his real genius could indiscreetly betray itself. One may
judge what labor such a super-refinement of taste would inflict upon a
man writing in a language not his own to some distinguished statesman or
some literary institution,--knowing that language just well enough to
recognize all the native elegances he failed to attain. Trevanion at
that very moment was employed upon a statistical document intended as a
communication to a Society at Copenhagen of which he was all honorary
member. It had been for three weeks the torment of the whole house,
especially of poor Fanny (whose French was the best at our joint
disposal). But Trevanion had found her phraseology too mincing, too
effeminate, too much that of the boudoir. Here, then, was an
opportunity to introduce my new friend and test the capacities that I
fancied he possessed. I therefore, though with some hesitation, led the
subject to "Remarks on the Mineral Treasures of Great Britain and
Ireland" (such was the title of the work intended to enlighten the
savants of Denmark); and by certain ingenious circumlocutions, known to
all able applicants, I introduced my acquaintance with a young gentleman
who possessed the most familiar and intimate knowledge of French, and
who might be of use in revising the manuscript. I knew enough of
Trevanion to feel that I could not reveal the circumstances under which
I had formed that acquaintance, for he was much too practical a man not
to have been frightened out of his wits at the idea of submitting so
classical a performance to so disreputable a scapegrace. As it was,
however, Trevanion, whose mind at that moment was full of a thousand
other things, caught at my suggestion, with very little cross-
questioning on the subject, and before he left London consigned the
manuscript to my charge.
"My friend is poor," said I, timidly.
"Oh! as to that," cried Trevanion, hastily, "if it be a matter of
charity, I put my purse in your hands; but don't put my manuscript in
his! If it be a matter of business, it is another affair; and I must
judge of his work before I can say how much it is worth,--perhaps
nothing!"
So ungracious was this excellent man in his very virtues!
"Nay," said I, "it is a matter of business, and so we will consider it."
"In that case," said Trevanion, concluding the matter and buttoning his
pockets, "if I dislike his work,--nothing; if I like it,--twenty
guineas. Where are the evening papers?" and in another moment the
member of Parliament had forgotten the statist, and was pishing and
tutting over the "Globe" or the "Sun."
On Thursday my uncle was well enough to be moved into our house; and on
the same evening I went forth to keep my appointment with the stranger.
The clock struck nine as we met. The palm of punctuality might be
divided between us. He had profited by the interval, since our last
meeting, to repair the more obvious deficiencies of his wardrobe; and
though there was something still wild, dissolute, outlandish, about his
whole appearance, yet in the elastic energy of his step and the resolute
assurance of his bearing there was that which Nature gives to her own
aristocracy: for, as far as my observation goes, what has been called
the "grand air" (and which is wholly distinct from the polish of manner
or the urbane grace of high breeding) is always accompanied, and perhaps
produced, by two qualities,--courage, and the desire of command. It is
more common to a half-savage nature than to one wholly civilized.
The Arab has it, so has the American Indian; and I suspect that it
was more frequent among the knights and barons of the Middle Ages
than it is among the polished gentlemen of the modern drawing-room.
We shook hands, and walked on a few moments in silence; at length thus
commenced the Stranger,--
"You have found it more difficult, I fear, than you imagined, to make
the empty sack stand upright. Considering that at least one third of
those born to work cannot find it, why should I?"
Pisistratus.--"I am hard-hearted enough to believe that work never fails
to those who seek it in good earnest. It was said of some man, famous
for keeping his word, that 'if he had promised you an acorn, and all the
oaks in England failed to produce one, he would have sent to Norway for
an acorn.' If I wanted work, and there was none to be had in the Old
World, I would find my way to the New. But to the point: I have found
something for you, which I do not think your taste will oppose, and
which may open to you the means of an honorable independence. But I
cannot well explain it in the streets: where shall we go?"
Stranger (after some hesitation).--"I have a lodging near here which I
need not blush to take you to,--I mean, that it is not among rogues and
castaways."
Pisistratus (much pleased, and taking the stranger's arm).--"Come,
then."
Pisistratus and the stranger pass over Waterloo Bridge and pause before
a small house of respectable appearance. Stranger admits them both with
a latch-key, leads the way to the third story, strikes a light, and does
the honors to a small chamber, clean and orderly. Pisistratus explains
the task to be done, and opens the manuscript. The stranger draws his
chair deliberately towards the light and runs his eye rapidly over the
pages. Pisistratus trembles to see him pause before a long array of
figures and calculations. Certainly it does not look inviting; but,
pshaw! it is scarcely a part of the task, which limits itself to the
mere correction of words.
Stranger (briefly).--"There must be a mistake here--stay!--I see--" (He
turns back a few pages and corrects with rapid precision an error in a
somewhat complicated and abstruse calculation.)
Pisistratus (surprised).--"You seem a notable arithmetician."
Stranger.--"Did I not tell you that I was skilful in all games of
mingled skill and chance? It requires an arithmetical head for that: a
first-rate card-player is a financier spoilt. I am certain that you
never could find a man fortunate on the turf or at the gaining-table who
had not an excellent head for figures. Well, this French is good
enough, apparently; there are but a few idioms, here and there, that,
strictly speaking, are more English than French. But the whole is a
work scarce worth paying for!"
Pisistratus.--"The work of the head fetches a price not proportioned to
the quantity, but the quality. When shall I call for this?"
Stranger.--"To-morrow." (And he puts the manuscript away in a drawer.)
We then conversed on various matters for nearly an hour; and my
impression of this young man's natural ability was confirmed and
heightened. But it was an ability as wrong and perverse in its
directions or instincts as a French novelist's. He seemed to have, to a
high degree, the harder portion of the reasoning faculty, but to be
almost wholly without that arch beautifier of character, that sweet
purifier of mere intellect,--the imagination; for though we are too much
taught to be on our guard against imagination, I hold it, with Captain
Roland, to be the divinest kind of reason we possess, and the one that
leads us the least astray. In youth, indeed, it occasions errors, but
they are not of a sordid or debasing nature. Newton says that one final
effect of the comets is to recruit the seas and the planets by a
condensation of the vapors and exhalations therein; and so even the
erratic flashes of an imagination really healthful and vigorous deepen
our knowledge and brighten our lights; they recruit our seas and our
stars. Of such flashes my new friend was as innocent as the sternest
matter-of-fact person could desire. Fancies he had in profusion, and
very bad ones; but of imagination not a scintilla! His mind was one of
those which live in a prison of logic, and cannot, or will not, see
beyond the bars such a nature is at once positive and sceptical. This
boy had thought proper to decide at once on the numberless complexities
of the social world from his own harsh experience.
With him the whole system was a war and a cheat. If the universe were
entirely composed of knaves, he would be sure to have made his way. Now
this bias of mind, alike shrewd and unamiable, might be safe enough if
accompanied by a lethargic temper; but it threatened to become terrible
and dangerous in one who, in default of imagination, possessed abundance
of passion: and this was the case with the young outcast. Passion, in
him, comprehended many of the worst emotions which militate against
human happiness. You could not contradict him but you raised quick
choler; you could not speak of wealth, but the cheek paled with gnawing
envy. The astonishing natural advantages of this poor boy his beauty,
his readiness, the daring spirit that breathed around him like a fiery
atmosphere--had raised his constitutional self-confidence into an
arrogance that turned his very claims to admiration into prejudices
against him. Irascible, envious, arrogant,--bad enough, but not the
worst, for these salient angles were all varnished over with a cold,
repellent cynicism,--his passions vented themselves in sneers. There
seemed in him no moral susceptibility, and, what was more remarkable in
a proud nature, little or nothing of the true point of honor. He had,
to a morbid excess, that desire to rise which is vulgarly called
"ambition," but no apparent wish for fame or esteem or the love of his
species; only the hard wish to succeed, not shine, not serve,--succeed,
that he might have the right to despise a world which galled his self-
conceit, and enjoy the pleasures which the redundant nervous life in him
seemed to crave. Such were the more patent attributes of a character
that, ominous as it was, yet interested me, and yet appeared to me to be
redeemable,--nay, to have in it the rude elements of a certain
greatness. Ought we not to make something great out of a youth, under
twenty, who has, in the highest degree, quickness to conceive and
courage to execute? On the other hand, all faculties that can make
greatness, contain those that can attain goodness. In the savage
Scandinavian or the ruthless Frank lay the germs of a Sidney or a
Bayard. What would the best of us be if he were suddenly placed at war
with the whole world? And this fierce spirit was at war with the whole
world,--a war self-sought, perhaps, but it was war not the less. You
must surround the savage with peace, if you want the virtues of peace.
I cannot say that it was in a single interview and conference that I
came to these convictions; but I am rather summing up the impressions
which I received as I saw more of this person, whose destiny I presumed
to take under my charge.
In going away, I said, "But at all events you have a name in your
lodgings: whom am I to ask for when I call tomorrow?"
"Oh! you may know my name now," said he smiling, "it is Vivian,--Francis
Vivian."
CHAPTER IV.
I remember one morning, when a boy, loitering by an old wall to watch
the operations of a garden spider whose web seemed to be in great
request. When I first stopped, she was engaged very quietly with a fly
of the domestic species, whom she managed with ease and dignity. But
just when she was most interested in that absorbing employment came a
couple of May-flies, and then a gnat, and then a blue-bottle,--all at
different angles of the web. Never was a poor spider so distracted by
her good fortune! She evidently did not know which godsend to take
first. The aboriginal victim being released, she slid half-way towards
the May-flies; then one of her eight eyes caught sight of the blue-
bottle, and she shot off in that direction,--when the hum of the gnat
again diverted her; and in the middle of this perplexity, pounce came a
young wasp in a violent passion! Then the spider evidently lost her
presence of mind; she became clean demented; and after standing, stupid
and stock-still, in the middle of her meshes for a minute or two, she
ran off to her hole as fast as she could run, and left her guests to
shift for themselves. I confess that I am somewhat in the dilemma of
the attractive and amiable insect I have just described. I got on well
enough while I had only my domestic fly to see after. But now that
there is something fluttering at every end of my net (and especially
since the advent of that passionate young wasp, who is fuming and
buzzing in the nearest corner), I am fairly at a loss which I should
first grapple with; and alas! unlike the spider, I have no hole where I
can hide myself, and let the web do the weaver's work. But I will
imitate the spider as far as I can; and while the rest hum and struggle
away their impatient, unnoticed hour, I will retreat into the inner
labyrinth of my own life.
The illness of my uncle and my renewed acquaintance with Vivian had
naturally sufficed to draw my thoughts from the rash and unpropitious
love I had conceived for Fanny Trevanion. During the absence of the
family from London (and they stayed some time longer than had been
expected), I had leisure, however, to recall my father's touching
history, and the moral it had so obviously preached to me; and I formed
so many good resolutions that it was with an untrembling hand that I
welcomed Miss Trevanion at last to London, and with a firm heart that I
avoided, as much as possible, the fatal charm of her society. The slow
convalescence of my uncle gave me a just excuse to discontinue our
rides. What time Trevanion spared me, it was natural that I should
spend with my family. I went to no balls nor parties; I even absented
myself from Trevanion's periodical dinners. Miss Trevanion at first
rallied me on my seclusion, with her usual lively malice. But I
continued worthily to complete my martyrdom. I took care that no
reproachful look at the gayety that wrung my soul should betray my
secret. Then Fanny seemed either hurt or disdainful, and avoided
altogether entering her father's study; all at once, she changed her
tactics, and was seized with a strange desire for knowledge, which
brought her into the room to look for a book, or ask a question, ten
times a day. I was proof to all. But, to speak truth, I was profoundly
wretched. Looking back now, I am dismayed at the remembrance of my own
sufferings: my health became seriously affected; I dreaded alike the
trial of the day and the anguish of the night. My only distractions
were in my visits to Vivian and my escape to the dear circle of home.
And that home was my safeguard and preservative in that crisis of my
life; its atmosphere of unpretended honor and serene virtue strengthened
all my resolutions; it braced me for my struggles against the strongest
passion which youth admits, and counteracted the evil vapors of that air
in which Vivian's envenomed spirit breathed and moved. Without the
influence of such a home, if I had succeeded in the conduct that probity
enjoined towards those in whose house I was a trusted guest, I do not
think I could have resisted the contagion of that malign and morbid
bitterness against fate and the world which love, thwarted by fortune,
is too inclined of itself to conceive, and in the expression of which
Vivian was not without the eloquence that belongs to earnestness,
whether in truth or falsehood. But, somehow or other, I never left the
little room that contained the grand suffering in the face of the
veteran soldier, whose lip, often quivering with anguish, was never
heard to murmur, and the tranquil wisdom which had succeeded my father's
early trials (trials like my own), and the loving smile on my mother's
tender face, and the innocent childhood of Blanche (by which name the
Elf had familiarized herself to us), whom I already loved as a sister,--
without feeling that those four walls contained enough to sweeten the
world, had it been filled to its capacious brim with gall and hyssop.
Trevanion had been more than satisfied with Vivian's performance, he had
been struck with it; for though the corrections in the mere phraseology
had been very limited, they went beyond verbal amendments,--they
suggested such words as improved the thoughts; and besides that notable
correction of an arithmetical error which Trevanion's mind was formed to
over-appreciate, one or two brief annotations on the margin were boldly
hazarded, prompting some stronger link in a chain of reasoning, or
indicating the necessity for some further evidence in the assertion of a
statement. And all this from the mere natural and naked logic of an
acute mind, unaided by the smallest knowledge of the subject treated of!
Trevanion threw quite enough work into Vivian's hands, and at a
remuneration sufficiently liberal to realize my promise of an
independence. And more than once he asked me to introduce to him my
friend. But this I continued to elude,--Heaven knows, not from
jealousy, but simply because I feared that Vivian's manner and way of
talk would singularly displease one who detested presumption, and
understood no eccentricities but his own.
Still, Vivian, whose industry was of a strong wing, but only for short
flights, had not enough to employ more than a few hours of the day, and
I dreaded lest he should, from very idleness, fall back into old habits
and re-seek old friendships. His cynical candor allowed that both were
sufficiently disreputable to justify grave apprehensions of such a
result; accordingly, I contrived to find leisure in my evenings to
lessen his ennui, by accompanying him in rambles through the gas-lit
streets, or occasionally, for an hour or so, to one of the theatres.
Vivian's first care, on finding himself rich enough, had been bestowed
on his person; and those two faculties of observation and imitation
which minds so ready always eminently possess, had enabled him to
achieve that graceful neatness of costume peculiar to the English
gentleman. For the first few days of his metamorphosis traces indeed of
a constitutional love of show or vulgar companionship were noticeable;
but one by one they disappeared. First went a gaudy neckcloth, with
collars turned down; then a pair of spurs vanished; and lastly a
diabolical instrument that he called a cane--but which, by means of a
running bullet, could serve as a bludgeon at one end, and concealed a
dagger in the other--subsided into the ordinary walking-stick adapted to
our peaceable metropolis. A similar change, though in a less degree,
gradually took place in his manner and his conversation. He grew less
abrupt in the one, and more calm, perhaps more cheerful, in the other.
It was evident that he was not insensible to the elevated pleasure of
providing for himself by praiseworthy exertion, of feeling for the first
time that his intellect was of use to him creditably.
A new world, though still dim--seen through mist and fog--began to dawn
upon him.
Such is the vanity of us poor mortals that my interest in Vivian was
probably increased, and my aversion to much in him materially softened,
by observing that I had gained a sort of ascendancy over his savage
nature. When we had first suet by the roadside, and afterwards
conversed in the churchyard, the ascendancy was certainly not on my
side. But I now came from a larger sphere of society than that in which
he had yet moved. I had seen and listened to the first men in England.
What had then dazzled me only, now moved my pity. On the other hand,
his active mind could not but observe the change in me; and whether from
envy or a better feeling, he was willing to learn from me how to eclipse
me and resume his earlier superiority,--not to be superior chafed him.
Thus he listened to me with docility when I pointed out the books which
connected themselves with the various subjects incidental to the
miscellaneous matters on which he was employed. Though he had less of
the literary turn of mind than any one equally clever I had ever met,
and had read little, considering the quantity of thought he had acquired
and the show he made of the few works with which he had voluntarily made
himself familiar, he yet resolutely sat himself down to study; and
though it was clearly against the grain, I augured the more favorably
from tokens of a determination to do what was at the present irksome for
a purpose in the future. Yet whether I should have approved the purpose
had I thoroughly understood it, is another question. There were
abysses, both in his past life and in his character, which I could not
penetrate. There was in him both a reckless frankness and a vigilant
reserve: his frankness was apparent in his talk on all matters
immediately before us, in the utter absence of all effort to make
himself seem better than he was. His reserve was equally shown in the
ingenious evasion of every species of confidence that could admit me
into such secrets of his life as he chose to conceal where he had been
born, reared, and educated; how he came to be thrown on his own
resources; how he had contrived, how he had subsisted, were all matters
on which he had seemed to take an oath to Harpocrates, the god of
silence. And yet he was full of anecdotes of what he had seen, of
strange companions whom he never named, but with whom he had been
thrown. And, to do him justice, I remarked that though his precocious
experience seemed to have been gathered from the holes and corners, the
sewers and drains of life, and though he seemed wholly without dislike
to dishonesty, and to regard virtue or vice with as serene an
indifference as some grand poet who views them both merely as
ministrants to his art, yet he never betrayed any positive breach of
honesty in himself. He could laugh over the story of some ingenious
fraud that he had witnessed, and seem insensible to its turpitude; but
he spoke of it in the tone of an approving witness, not of an actual
accomplice. As we grew more intimate, he felt gradually, however, that
pudor, or instinctive shame, which the contact with minds habituated to
the distinctions between wrong and right unconsciously produces, and
such stories ceased. He never but once mentioned his family, and that
was in the following odd and abrupt manner:--
"Ah!" cried he one day, stopping suddenly before a print-shop, "how that
reminds me of my dear, dear mother."
"Which?" said I, eagerly, puzzled between an engraving of Raffaelle's
"Madonna" and another of "The Brigand's Wife."
Vivian did not satisfy my curiosity, but drew me on in spite of my
reluctance.
"You loved your mother, then?" said I, after a pause. "Yes, as a whelp
may a tigress."
" |
