Part Two
The next decade of my outer life is so uninteresting, even to myself,that I will hurry through it as fast as I can. It will prove dullreading, I fear.
]
My Uncle Ibbetson (as I now called him) took to me and arranged toeducate and start me in life, and make "a gentleman" of me--an "Englishgentleman." But I had to change my name and adopt his; for some reason Idid not know, he seemed to hate my father's very name. Perhaps it wasbecause he had injured my father through life in many ways, and myfather had always forgiven him; a very good reason! Perhaps it wasbecause he had proposed to my mother three times when she was a girl,and had been thrice refused! (After the third time, he went to India forseven years, and just before his departure my father and mother weremarried, and a year after that I was born.)
So Pierre Pasquier de la Mariere, _alias_ Monsieur Gogo, became MasterPeter Ibbetson, and went to Bluefriars, the gray-coat school, where hespent six years--an important slice out of a man's life, especiallyat that age.
I hated the garb, I hated the surroundings--the big hospital at theback, and that reek of cruelty, drunkenness, and filth, thecattle-market--where every other building was either a slaughter-house,a gin-palace, or a pawnbroker's shop, more than all I hated the gloomyjail opposite, where they sometimes hanged a man in public on a Mondaymorning. This dismal prison haunted my dreams when I wanted to dream ofPassy, of my dear dead father and mother and Madame Seraskier.
For the first term or two they were ever in my thoughts, and I wasalways trying to draw their profiles on desks and slates and copybooks,till at last all resemblance seemed to fade out of them; and then I drewM. le Major till his side face became quite demoralized and impossible,and ceased to be like anything in life. Then I fell back on others: lePere Francois, with his eternal _bonnet de colon_ and sabots stuffedwith straw; the dog Medor, the rocking-horse, and all the rest of themenagerie; the diligence that brought me away from Paris; the heavilyjack-booted couriers in shiny hats and pigtails, and white breeches, andshort-tailed blue coats covered with silver buttons, who used to ridethrough Passy, on their way to and fro between the Tuileries and St.Cloud, on little, neighing, gray stallions with bells round their necksand tucked-up tails, and beautiful heads like the horses' heads in theElgin Marbles.
In my sketches they always looked and walked and trotted the same way:to the left, or westward as it would be on the map. M. le Major, MadameSeraskier, Medor, the diligences and couriers, were all bound westwardby common consent--all going to London, I suppose, to look after me, whowas so dotingly fond of them.
Some of the boys used to admire these sketches and preserve them--someof the bigger boys would value my idealized (!) profiles of MadameSeraskier, with eyelashes quite an inch in length, and an eye threetimes the size of her mouth; and thus I made myself an artisticreputation for a while. But it did not last long, for my vein waslimited; and soon another boy came to the school, who surpassed me invariety and interest of subject, and could draw profiles looking eitherway with equal ease; he is now a famous Academician, and seems to havepreserved much of his old facility.[A]
[Footnote A: _Note_.--I have here omitted several pages, containing adescription in detail of my cousin's life "at Bluefriars"; and also theportraits (not always flattering) which he has written of masters andboys, many of whom are still alive, and some of whom have risen todistinction; but these sketches would be without special interest unlessthe names were given as well, and that would be unadvisable for manyreasons. Moreover, there is not much in what I have left out that hasany bearing on his subsequent life, or the development of his character.MADGE PLUNKET.]
* * * * *
Thus, on the whole, my school career was neither happy nor unhappy, nordid I distinguish myself in any way, nor (though I think I was ratherliked than otherwise) make any great or lasting friendships; on theother hand. I did not in any way disgrace myself, nor make a singleenemy that I knew of. Except that I grew our of the common tall andvery strong, a more commonplace boy than I must have seemed (after myartistic vein gad run itself dry) never went to a public school. So muchfor my outer life at Bluefriars.
A DREAM OF CHIVALRY]
But I had an inner world of my own, whose capital was Passy, whose faunaand flora were not to be surpassed by anything in Regent's Park or theZoological Gardens.
It was good to think of it by day, to dream of it by night, _although Ihad not yet learned how to dream!_
There were soon other and less exclusive regions, however, which Ishared with other boys of that bygone day. Regions of freedom anddelight, where I heard the ominous crack of Deerslayer's rifle, and wasfriends with Chingachgook and his noble son--the last, alas! of theMohicans: where Robin Hood and Friar Tuck made merry, and exchangedbuffets with Lion-hearted Richard under the green-wood tree: whereQuentin Durward, happy squire of dames, rode midnightly by their sidethrough the gibbet-and-gipsy-haunted forests of Touraine.... Ah! I hadmy dream of chivalry!
Happy times and climes! One must be a gray-coated school-boy, in theheart of foggy London, to know that nostalgia.
Not, indeed, but what London has its merits. Sam Weller lived there, andCharley Bates, and the irresistible Artful Dodger--and Dick Swiveller,and his adorable Marchioness, who divided my allegiance with Rebecca ofYork and sweet Diana Vernon.
It was good to be an English boy in those days, and care for suchfriends as these! But it was good to be a French boy also; to have knownParis, to possess the true French feel of things--and the language.
Indeed, bilingual boys--boys double-tongued from their very birth(especially in French and English)--enjoy certain rare privileges. It isnot a bad thing for a school-boy (since a school-boy he must be) to hailfrom two mother-countries if he can, and revel now and then in thesweets of homesickness for that of his two mother-countries in which hedoes not happen to be; and read _Les Trois Mousquetaires_ in thecloisters of Bluefriars, or _Ivanhoe_ in the dull, dusty prison-yardthat serves for a playground in so many a French _lycee_!
Without listening, he hears all round him the stodgy language of everyday, and the blatant shouts of his school-fellows, in the voices heknows so painfully well--those shrill trebles, those cracked barytonesand frog-like early basses! There they go, bleating and croaking andyelling; Dick, Tom, and Harry, or Jules, Hector, and Alphonse! Howvaguely tiresome and trivial and commonplace they are--those toofamiliar sounds; yet what an additional charm they lend to that soutterly different but equally familiar word-stream that comes silentlyflowing into his consciousness through his rapt eyes! The luxurioussense of mental exclusiveness and self-sequestration is made doublycomplete by the contrast!
And for this strange enchantment to be well and thoroughly felt, bothhis languages must be native; not acquired, however perfectly. Everysingle word must have its roots deep down in a personal past so remotefor him as to be almost unremembered; the very sound and printed aspectof each must be rich in childish memories of home; in all the countless,nameless, priceless associations that make it sweet and fresh andstrong, and racy of the soil.
Oh! Porthos, Athos, and D'Artagnan--how I loved you, and your immortalsquires, Planchet, Grimaud, Mousqueton! How well and wittily you spokethe language I adored--better even than good Monsieur Lallemand, theFrench master at Bluefriars, who could wield the most irregularsubjunctives as if they had been mere feathers--trifles light as air.
Then came the Count of Monte-Cristo, who taught me (only too well) histerrible lesson of hatred and revenge; and _Les Mysteres de Paris, LeJuif Errant_, and others.
But no words that I can think of in either mother-tongue can expresswhat I felt when first, through these tear-dimmed eyes of mine, and deepinto my harrowed soul, came silently flowing the never-to-be-forgottenhistory of poor Esmeralda,[A] my first love! whose cruel fate filledwith pity, sorrow, and indignation the last term of my life at school.It was the most important, the most solemn, the most epoch-making eventof my school life. I read it, reread it, and
read it again. I have notbeen able to read it since; it is rather long! but how well I rememberit, and how short it seemed then! and oh! how short thosewell-spent hours!
[Footnote A: Notre Dame de Paris, par Victor Hugo.]
That mystic word [Greek: Anagkae]! I wrote it on the flyleaf of all mybooks. I carved it on my desk. I intoned it in the echoing cloisters! Ivowed I would make a pilgrimage to Notre Dame some day, that I mighthunt for it in every hole and corner there, and read it with my owneyes, and feel it with my own forefinger.
And then that terrible prophetic song the old hag sings in the darkslum--how it haunted me, too! I could not shake it out of my troubledconsciousness for months:
_Grouille, greve, greve, grouille, File, File, ma quenouille:_
_File sa corde au bourreau Qui siffle dans le preau.
[Greek:"'Anagkae!'Anagkae!'Anagkae_!"]
Yes; it was worth while having been a little French boy just for a fewyears.
I especially found it so during the holidays, which I regularly spent atBluefriars; for there was a French circulating library in Holborn, closeby--a paradise. It was kept by a delightful old French lady who had seenbetter days, and was very kind to me, and did not lend me all the booksI asked for!
Thus irresistibly beguiled by these light wizards of our degenerate age,I dreamed away most of my school life, utterly deaf to the voices of theolder enchanters--Homer, Horace, Virgil--whom I was sent to school onpurpose to make friends with; a deafness I lived to deplore, like otherdunces, when it was too late.
* * * * *
And I was not only given to dream by day--I dreamed by night; my sleepwas full of dreams--terrible nightmares, exquisite visions, strangescenes full of inexplicable reminiscence; all vague and incoherent, likeall men's dreams that have hitherto been; _for I had not yet learned howto dream_.
A vast world, a dread and beautiful chaos, an ever-changing kaleidoscopeof life, too shadowy and dim to leave any lasting impression on thebusy, waking mind; with here and there more vivid images of terror ordelight, that one remembered for a few hours with a strange wonder andquestioning, as Coleridge remembered his Abyssinian maid who playedupon the dulcimer (a charming and most original combination).
The whole cosmos is in a man's brains--as much of it, at least, as aman's brains will hold; perhaps it is nowhere else. And when sleeprelaxes the will, and there are no earthly surroundings to distractattention--no duty, pain, or pleasure to compel it--riderless Fancytakes the bit in its teeth, and the whole cosmos goes mad and has itswild will of us.
"NOTRE DAME DE PARIS."]
Ineffable false joys, unspeakable false terror and distress, strangephantoms only seen as in a glass darkly, chase each other without rhymeor reason, and play hide-and-seek across the twilit field and throughthe dark recesses of our clouded and imperfect consciousness.
And the false terrors and distress, however unspeakable, are no worsethan such real terrors and distress as are only too often the waking lotof man, or even so bad; but the ineffable false joys transcend allpossible human felicity while they last, and a little while it is! Wewake, and wonder, and recall the slight foundation on which suchultra-human bliss has seemed to rest. What matters the foundation if butthe bliss be there, and the brain has nerves to feel it?
Poor human nature, so richly endowed with nerves of anguish, sosplendidly organized for pain and sorrow, is but slenderly equippedfor joy.
What hells have we not invented for the afterlife! Indeed, what hells wehave often made of this, both for ourselves and others, and at reallysuch a very small cost of ingenuity, after all!
Perhaps the biggest and most benighted fools have been the besthell-makers.
Whereas the best of our heavens is but a poor perfunctory conception,for all that the highest and cleverest among us have done their veryutmost to decorate and embellish it, and make life there seem worthliving. So impossible it is to imagine or invent beyond the sphere ofour experience.
Now, these dreams of mine (common to many) of the false but ineffablejoys, are they not a proof that there exist in the human brain hiddencapacities, dormant potentialities of bliss, unsuspected hitherto, tobe developed some day, perhaps, and placed within the reach of all,wakers and sleepers alike?
A sense of ineffable joy, attainable at will, and equal in intensity andduration to (let us say) an attack of sciatica, would go far to equalizethe sorrowful, one-sided conditions under which we live.
* * * * *
But there is one thing which, as a school-boy, I never dreamed--namely,that I, and one other holding a torch, should one day, by commonconsent, find our happiness in exploring these mysterious caverns of thebrain; and should lay the foundations of order where only misrule hadbeen before: and out of all those unreal, waste, and transitory realmsof illusion, evolve a real, stable, and habitable world, which all whorun may reach.
* * * * *
At last I left school for good, and paid a visit to my Uncle Ibbetson inHopshire, where he was building himself a lordly new pleasure-house onhis own land, as the old one he had inherited a year or two ago was nolonger good enough for him.
It was an uninteresting coast on the German Ocean, without a rock, or acliff, or a pier, or a tree; even without cold gray stones for the seato break on--nothing but sand!--a bourgeois kind of sea, charmless inits best moods, and not very terrible in its wrath, except to a fewstray fishermen whom it employed, and did not seem to reward verymunificently.
Inland it was much the same. One always thought of the country as gray,until one looked and found that it was green; and then, if one were oldand wise, one thought no more about it, and turned one's gaze inward.Moreover, it seemed to rain incessantly.
But it was the country and the sea, after Bluefriars and thecloisters--after Newgate, St. Bartholomew, and Smithfield.
And one could fish and bathe in the sea after all, and ride in thecountry, and even follow the hounds, a little later; which would havebeen a joy beyond compare if one had not been blessed with an uncle whothought one rode like a French tailor, and told one so, and mimickedone, in the presence of charming young ladies who rode in perfection.
In fact, it was heaven itself by comparison, and would have remained solonger but for Colonel Ibbetson's efforts to make a gentleman of me--anEnglish gentleman.
What is a gentleman? It is a grand old name; but what does it mean?
At one time, to say of a man that he is a gentleman, is to confer on himthe highest title of distinction we can think of; even if we arespeaking of a prince.
At another, to say of a man that he is _not_ a gentleman is almost tostigmatize him as a social outcast, unfit for the company of hiskind--even if it is only one haberdasher speaking of another.
_Who_ is a gentleman, and yet who _is not_?
The Prince of Darkness was one, and so was Mr. John Halifax, if we areto believe those who knew them best; and so was one "Pelham," accordingto the late Sir Edward Bulwer, Earl of Lytton, etc.; and it certainlyseemed as if _he_ ought to know.
And I was to be another, according to Roger Ibbetson, Esquire, ofIbbetson Hall, late Colonel of the--, and it certainly seemed as ifhe ought to know too! The word was as constantly on his lips (whentalking to _me_) as though, instead of having borne her Majesty'scommission, he were a hairdresser's assistant who had just come into anindependent fortune.
This course of tuition began pleasantly enough, before I left London, byhis sending me to his tailors, who made me several beautiful suits;especially an evening suit, which has lasted me for life, alas; andthese, after the uniform of the gray-coat school, were like aninitiation to the splendors of freedom and manhood.
Colonel Ibbetson--or Uncle Ibbetson, as I used to call him--was mymother's first cousin; my grandmother, Mrs. Biddulph, was the sister ofhis father, the late Archdeacon Ibbetson, a very pious, learned, andexemplary divine, of good family.
But his
mother (the Archdeacon's second wife) had been the only childand heiress of an immensely rich pawnbroker, by name Mendoza; aPortuguese Jew, with a dash of colored blood in his veins besides, itwas said; and, indeed, this remote African strain still showed itself inUncle Ibbetson's thick lips, wide open nostrils, and big black eyes withyellow whites--and especially in his long, splay, lark-heeled feet,which gave both himself and the best bootmaker in London a great dealof trouble.
Otherwise, and in spite of his ugly face, he was not without a certainsoldier-like air of distinction, being very tall and powerfully built.He wore stays, and an excellent wig, for he was prematurely bald; and hecarried his hat on one side, which (in my untutored eyes) made him lookvery much like a "_swell_," but not quite like a _gentleman_.
To wear your hat jauntily cocked over one eye, and yet "look like agentleman!"
It can be done, I am told; and has been, and is even still! It is not,perhaps, a very lofty achievement--but such as it is, it requires asomewhat rare combination of social and physical gifts in the wearer;and the possession of either Semitic or African blood does not seem tobe one of these.
"PORTRAIT CHARMANT, PORTRAIT DE MON AMIE ..."]
Colonel Ibbetson could do a little of everything--sketch (especially asteam-boat on a smooth sea, with beautiful thick smoke reflected in thewater), play the guitar, sing chansonnettes and canzonets, write societyverses, quote De Musset--
_"Avez-vous vu dans Barcelone Une Andalouse au sein bruni?"_
He would speak French whenever he could, even to an English ostler, andthen recollect himself suddenly, and apologize for his thoughtlessness;and even when he spoke English, he would embroider it with littletwo-penny French tags and idioms: "Pour tout potage"; "Nous avons changetout cela"; "Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galere?" etc.; orItalian, "Chi lo sa?" "Pazienza!" "Ahime!" or even Latin, "Eheufugaces," and "Vidi tantum!" for he had been an Eton boy. It must havebeen very cheap Latin, for I could always understand it myself! He drewthe line at German and Greek; fortunately, for so do I. He was abachelor, and his domestic arrangements had been irregular, and I willnot dwell upon them; but his house, as far as it went, seemed to promisebetter things.
His architect, Mr. Lintot, an extraordinary little man, full of geniusand quite self-made, became my friend and taught me to smoke, and drinkgin and water.
He did his work well; but of an evening he used to drink more than wasgood for him, and rave about Shelley, his only poet. He would recite"The Skylark" (his only poem) with uncertain _h_'s, and a rathercockney accent--
"'_Ail to thee blythe sperrit! Bird thou never wert, That from 'eaven, or near it Po'rest thy full 'eart In profuse strains of hunpremeditated hart_."
As the evening wore on his recitations became "low comic," and quiteadmirable for accent and humour. He could imitate all the actors inLondon (none of which I had seen) so well as to transport me withdelight and wonder; and all this with nobody but me for an audience, aswe sat smoking and drinking together in his room at the "Ibbetson Arms."
I felt grateful to adoration.
Later still, he would become sentimental again; and dilate to me on thejoys of his wedded life, on the extraordinary of intellect and beauty ofMrs. Lintot. First he would describe to me the beauties of her mind, andcompare her to "L.E.L." and Felicia Hemans. Then he would fall back onher physical perfections; there was nobody worthy to be compared to herin these--but I draw the veil.
He was very egotistical. Whatever he did, whatever he liked, whateverbelonged to him, was better than anything else in world; and he wascleverer than any one else, except Mrs. Lintot, to whom he yielded thepalm; and then he would cheer up and become funny again.
In fact his self-satisfaction was quite extraordinary; and what is moreextraordinary still, it was not a bit offensive--at least, to me;perhaps because he was such a tiny little man; or because much of thisvanity of his seemed to have no very solid foundation, for it was not ofthe gifts I most admired in him that he was vainest; or because it cameout most when he was most tipsy, and genial tipsiness redeems so much;or else because he was most vain about things I should never have beenvain about myself; and the most unpardonable vanity in others is thatwhich is secretly our own, whether we are conscious of it or not.
"I FELT GRATEFUL TO ADORATION."]
And then he was the first funny man I had ever met. What a gift it is!He was always funny when he tried to be, whether one laughed with him orat him, and I loved him for it. Nothing on earth is more patheticallypitiable than the funny man when he still tries and succeeds no longer.
The moment Lintot's vein was exhausted, he had the sense to leave offand begin to cry, which was still funny; and then I would jump out ofhis clothes and into his bed and be asleep in a second, with the tearsstill trickling down his little nose--and even that was funny!
But next morning he was stern and alert and indefatiguable, as thoughgin and poetry and conjugal love had never been, and fun were acapital crime.
Uncle Ibbetson thought highly of him as an architect, but not otherwise;he simply made use of him.
"He's a terrible little snob, of course, and hasn't got an _h_ in hishead" (as if _that_ were a capital crime); "but he's very clever--lookat that campanile--and then he's cheap, my boy, cheap."
There were several fine houses in fine parks not very far from IbbetsonHall; but although Uncle Ibbetson appeared in name and wealth and socialposition to be on a par with their owners, he was not on terms ofintimacy with any of them, or even of acquaintance, as far as I know,and spoke of them with contempt, as barbarians--people with whom he hadnothing in common. Perhaps they, too, had found out thisincompatibility, especially the ladies; for, school-boy as I was, I wasnot long in discovering that his manner towards those of the other sexwas not always such as to please either of them or their husbands orfathers or brothers. The way he looked at them was enough. Indeed, mostof his lady-friends and acquaintances through life had belonged to the_corps de ballet_, the _demi-monde_, etc.--not, I should imagine, thebest school of manners in the world.
On the other hand, he was very friendly with some families in the town;the doctor's, the rector's, his own agent's (a broken-down brotherofficer and bosom friend, who had ceased to love him since he receivedhis pay); and he used to take Mr. Lintot and me to parties there; and hewas the life of those parties.
He sang little French songs, with no voice, but quite a good Frenchaccent, and told little anecdotes with no particular point, but inFrench and Italian (so that the point was never missed); and we alllaughed and admired without quite knowing why, except that he was thelord of the manor.
On these festive occasions poor Lintot's confidence and power of amusingseemed to desert him altogether; he sat glum in a corner.
Though a radical and a sceptic, and a peace-at-any-price man, he wasmuch impressed by the social status of the army and the church.
Of the doctor, a very clever and accomplished person, and the besteducated man for miles around, he thought little; but the rector, thecolonel, the poor captain, even, now a mere land-steward, seemed to fillhim with respectful awe. And for his pains he was cruelly snubbed byMrs. Captain and Mrs. Rector and their plain daughters, who littleguessed what talents he concealed, and thought him quite a common littleman, hardly fit to turn over the leaves of their music.
It soon became pretty evident that Ibbetson was very much smitten witha Mrs. Deane, the widow of a brewer, a very handsome woman indeed, inher own estimation and mine, and everybody else's, except Mr. Lintot's,who said, "Pooh, you should see my wife!"
Her mother, Mrs. Glyn, excelled us all in her admiration of ColonelIbbetson.
For instance, Mrs. Deane would play some common little waltz of thecheap kind that is never either remembered or forgotten, and Mrs. Glynwould exclaim, "_Is_ not that _lovely_?"
And Ibbetson would say: "Charming! charming! Whose is it? Rossini's?Mozart's?"
"Why, no, my dear colonel. Don't you remember? _It's your own_
!"
"Ah, so it is! I had quite forgotten." And general laughter and applausewould burst forth at such a natural mistake on the part of ourgreat man.
Well, I could neither play nor sing, and found it far easier by thistime to speak English than French, especially to English people who wereignorant of any language but their own. Yet sometimes Colonel Ibbetsonwould seem quite proud of me.
"Deux metres, bien sonnes!" he would say, alluding to my stature, "et leprofil d'Antinoues!" which he would pronounce without the two little dotson the _u_.
And afterwards, if he had felt his evening a pleasant one, if he hadsung all he knew, if Mrs. Deane had been more than usually loving andself-surrendering, and I had distinguished myself by skilfully turningover the leaves when her mother had played the piano, he would tell me,as we walked home together, that I "did credit to his name, and that Iwould make an excellent figure in the world as soon as I had _decrasse_myself; that I must get another dress-suit from his tailor, just aneighth of an inch longer in the tails; that I should have a commissionin his old regiment (the Eleventeenth Royal Bounders), a deuced crackcavalry regiment; and see the world and break a few hearts (it is notfor nothing that our friends have pretty wives and sisters); and finallymarry some beautiful young heiress of title, and make a home for himwhen he was a poor solitary old fellow. Very little would do for him: acrust of bread, a glass of wine and water, and a clean napkin, a coupleof rooms, and an old piano and a few good books. For, of course,Ibbetson Hall would be mine and every penny he possessed in the world."
]
All this in confidential French--lest the very clouds should hearus--and with the familiar thee and thou of blood-relationship, which Idid not care to return.
It did not seem to bode very serious intentions towards Mrs. Deane, andwould scarcely have pleased her mother.
Or else, if something had crossed him, and Mrs. Deane had flirtedoutrageously with somebody else, and he had not been asked to sing (orsomebody else had), he would assure me in good round English that I wasthe most infernal lout that ever disgraced a drawing-room, or ate a manout of house and home, and that he was sick and ashamed of me. "Whycan't you sing, you d--d French milksop? The d--d roulade-monger of afather of yours could sing fast enough, if he could do nothing else,confound him! Why can't you talk French, you infernal British booby? Whycan't you hand round the tea and muffins, confound you! Why, twice Mrs.Glyn dropped her pocket-handkerchief and had to pick it up herself!What, 'at the other end of the room,' were you? Well, you should haveskipped _across_ the room, and picked it up, and handed it to her with apretty speech, like a gentleman! When I was your age I was _always_ onthe lookout for ladies' pocket-handkerchiefs to drop--or their fans! Inever missed _one_!"
Then he would take me out to shoot with him (for it was quite essentialthat an English gentleman should be a sportsman)--a terrible ordeal toboth of us.
A snipe that I did not want to kill in the least would sometimes riseand fly right and left like a flash of lightning, and I would missit--always; and he would d--n me for a son of a confounded FrenchMicawber, and miss the next himself, and get into a rage and thrash hisdog, a pointer that I was very fond of. Once he thrashed her so cruellythat I saw scarlet, and nearly yielded to the impulse of emptying bothmy barrels in his broad back. If I had done so it would have passed fora mere mishap, after all, and saved many future complications.
* * * * *
One day he pointed out to me a small bird pecking in a field--anextremely pretty bird--I think it was a skylark--and whispered to me inhis most sarcastic manner--
"Look here, you Peter without any salt, do you think, if you were tokneel down and rest your gun comfortably on this gate without making anoise, and take a careful aim, you could manage to shoot that bird_sitting_? I've heard of some Frenchmen who would be equal to _that_!"
I said I would try, and, resting my gun as he told me, I carefully aimeda couple of yards above the bird's head, and mentally ejaculating,
"'_All to thee blythe sperrit_!"
I fired both barrels (for fear of any after-mishap to Ibbetson), and thebird naturally flew away.
After this he never took me out shooting with him again; and, indeed, Ihad discovered to my discomfiture that I, the friend and admirer andwould-be emulator of Natty Bumppo the Deerslayer, I, the familiar of thelast of the Mohicans and his scalp-lifting father, could not bear thesight of blood--least of all, of blood shed by myself, and for my ownamusement.
The only beast that ever fell to my gun during those shootings withUncle Ibbetson was a young rabbit, and that more by accident thandesign, although I did not tell Uncle Ibbetson so.
As I picked it off the ground, and felt its poor little warm narrowchest, and the last beats of its heart under its weak ribs, and saw theblood on its fur, I was smitten with pity, shame, and remorse; andsettled with myself that I would find some other road to Englishgentlemanhood than the slaying of innocent wild things whose happy lifeseems so well worth living.
"'AIL TO THEE BLYTHE SPERRIT!"]
I must eat them, I suppose, but I would never shoot them any more; myhands, at least, should be clean of blood henceforward.
Alas, the irony of fate!
The upshot of all this was that he confided to Mrs. Deane the task oflicking his cub of a nephew into shape. She took me in hand with rightgood-will, began by teaching me how to dance, that I might dance withher at the coming hunt ball; and I did so nearly all night, to myinfinite joy and triumph, and to the disgust of Colonel Ibbetson, whocould dance much better than I--to the disgust, indeed, of many smartmen in red coats and black, for she was considered the belle ofthe evening.
THE DANCING LESSON.]
Of course I fell, or fancied I fell, in love with her. To her mother'sextreme distress, she gave me every encouragement, partly for fun,partly to annoy Colonel Ibbetson, whom she had apparently grown to hate.And, indeed, from the way he spoke of her to me (this trainer of Englishgentlemen), he well deserved that she should hate him. He never had theslightest intention of marrying her--that is certain; and yet he hadmade her the talk of the place.
And here I may state that Ibbetson was one of those singular men who gothrough life afflicted with the mania that they are fatallyirresistible to women.
He was never weary of pursuing them--not through any special love ofgallantry for its own sake, I believe, but from the mere wish to appearas a Don Giovanni in the eyes of others. Nothing made him happier thanto be seen whispering mysteriously in corners with the prettiest womanin the room. He did not seem to perceive that for one woman silly orvain or vulgar enough to be flattered by his idiotic persecution, adozen would loathe the very sight of him, and show it plainly enough.
This vanity had increased with years and assumed a very dangerous form.He became indiscreet, and, more disastrous still, he told lies! The verydead--the honored and irreproachable dead--were not even safe in theirgraves. It was his revenge for unforgotten slights.
He who kisses and tells, he who tells even though he has notkissed--what can be said for him, what should be done to him?
Ibbetson one day expiated this miserable craze with his life, and theman who took it--more by accident than design, it is true--has not yetfound it in his heart to feel either compunction or regret.
* * * * *
So there was a great row between Ibbetson and myself. He d----d andconfounded and abused me in every way, and my father before me, andfinally struck me; and I had sufficient self-command not to strike himback, but left him then and there with as much dignity as Icould muster.
Thus unsuccessfully ended my brief experience of English country life--alittle hunting and shooting and fishing, a little dancing and flirting;just enough of each to show me I was unfit for all.
A bitter-sweet remembrance, full of humiliation, but not altogetherwithout charm. There was the beauty of sea and open sky and changingcountry weather; and the beauty of Mrs. Deane, who made
a fool of me torevenge herself on Colonel Ibbetson for trying to make a fool of her,whereby he became the laughing-stock of the neighborhood for at leastnine days.
And I revenged myself on both--heroically, as I thought; though wherethe heroism comes in, and where the revenge, does not appearquite patent.
For I ran away to London, and enlisted in her Majesty's HouseholdCavalry, where I remained a twelvemonth, and was happy enough, andlearned a great deal more good than harm.
* * * * *
Then I was bought out and articled to Mr. Lintot, architect andsurveyor: a conclave of my relatives agreeing to allow me ninety poundsa year for three years; then all hands were to be washed of mealtogether.[A]
[Footnote A: _Note_.--I have thought it better to leave out, in itsentirety, my cousin's account of his short career as a private soldier.It consists principally of personal descriptions that are not altogetherunprejudiced; he seems never to have quite liked those who were placedin authority above him, either at school or in the army. MADGE PLUNKET.]
* * * * *
So I took a small lodging in Pentonville, to be near Mr. Lintot, andworked hard at my new profession for three years, during which nothingof importance occurred in my outer life. After this Lintot employed meas a salaried clerk, and I do not think he had any reason to complain ofme, nor did he make any complaint. I was worth my hire, I think, andsomething over; which I never got and never asked for.
Nor did I complain of him; for with all his little foibles of vanity,irascibility, and egotism, and a certain close-fistedness, he was a goodfellow and a very clever one.
His paragon of a wife was by no means the beautiful person he had madeher out to be, nor did anybody but he seem to think her so.
She was a little older than himself; very large and massive, with sternbut not irregular features, and a very high forehead; she had a slighttendency to baldness, and colorless hair that she wore in an austerecurl on each side of her face, and a menacing little topknot on herocciput. She had been a Unitarian and a governess, was fond of good longwords, like Dr. Johnson, and very censorious.
But one of my husband's intimate friends, General----, who was cornet inthe Life Guards in my poor cousin's time, writes me that "he remembershim well, as far and away the tallest and handsomest lad in the wholeregiment, of immense physical strength, unimpeachable good conduct, anda thorough gentleman from top to toe."
Her husband's occasional derelictions in the matter of grammar andaccent must have been very trying to her!
PENTONVILLE.]
She knew her own mind about everything under the sun, and expected thatother people should know it, too, and be of the same mind as herself.And yet she was not proud; indeed, she was a very dragon of humility,and had raised injured meekness to the rank of a militant virtue. Andwell she knew how to be master and mistress in her own house!
But with all this she was an excellent wife to Mr. Lintot and a devotedmother to his children, who were very plain and subdued (and adoredtheir father); so that Lintot, who thought her Venus and Diana andMinerva in one, was the happiest man in all Pentonville.
And, on the whole, she was kind and considerate to me, and I always didmy best to please her.
Moreover (a gift for which I could never be too grateful), she presentedme with an old square piano, which had belonged to her mother, and haddone duty in her school-room, till Lintot gave her a new one (for shewas a highly cultivated musician of the severest classical type). Itbecame the principal ornament of my small sitting-room, which it nearlyfilled, and on it I tried to learn my notes, and would pick out with onefinger the old beloved melodies my father used to sing, and my motherplay on the harp.
To sing myself was, it seems, out of the question; my voice (which Itrust was not too disagreeable when I was content merely to speak)became as that of a bull-frog under a blanket whenever I strove toexpress myself in song; my larynx refused to produce the notes I held soaccurately in my mind, and the result was disaster.
On the other hand, in my mind I could sing most beautifully. Once on arainy day, inside an Islington omnibus, I mentally sang "Adelaida" withthe voice of Mr. Sims Reeves--an unpardonable liberty to take; andalthough it is not for me to say so, I sang it even better than he, forI made myself shed tears--so much so that a kind old gentleman sittingopposite seemed to feel for me very much.
I also had the faculty of remembering any tune I once heard, and wouldwhistle it correctly ever after--even one of Uncle Ibbetson's waltzes!
As an instance of this, worth recalling, one night I found myself inGuildford Street, walking in the same direction as another belatedindividual (only on the other side of the road), who, just as the mooncame out of a cloud, was moved to whistle.
He whistled exquisitely, and, what was more, he whistled quite the mostbeautiful tune I had ever heard. I felt all its changes and modulations,its majors and minors, just as if a whole band had been there to playthe accompaniment, so cunning and expressive a whistler was he.
And so entranced was I that I made up my mind to cross over and ask himwhat it was--"Your melody or your life!" But he suddenly stopped at No.48, and let himself in with his key before I could prefer myhumble request.
Well, I went whistling that tune all next day, and for many days after,without ever finding out what it was; till one evening, happening to beat the Lintots. I asked Mrs. Lintot (who happened to be at the piano) ifshe knew it, and began to whistle it once more. To my delight andsurprise she straightway accompanied it all through (a wonderfulcondescension in so severe a purist), and I did not make a singlewrong note.
"Yes," said Mrs. Lintot, "it's a pretty, catchy little tune--of a kindto achieve immediate popularity."
Now, I apologize humbly to the reader for this digression; but if he bemusical he will forgive me, for that tune was the "Serenade" ofSchubert, and I had never even heard Schubert's name!
And having thus duly apologized, I will venture to transgress anddigress anew, and mention here a kind of melodic malady, a singularobsession to which I am subject, and which I will call unconsciousmusical cerebration.
I am never without some tune running in my head--never for a moment; notthat I am always aware of it; existence would be insupportable if Iwere. What part of my brain sings it, or rather in what part of my brainit sings itself, I cannot imagine--probably in some useless corner fullof cobwebs and lumber that is fit for nothing else.
But it never leaves off; now it is one tune, now another; now a song_without_ words, now _with_; sometimes it is near the surface, so tospeak, and I am vaguely conscious of it as I read or work, or talk orthink; sometimes to make sure it is there I have to dive for it deepinto myself, and I never fail to find it after a while, and bring it upto the top. It is the "Carnival of Venice," let us say; then I let itsink again, and it changes without my knowing; so that when I takeanother dive the "Carnival of Venice" has become "Il Mio Tesoro," or the"Marseillaise," or "Pretty Little Polly Perkins of Paddington Green."And Heaven knows what tunes, unheard and unperceived, this internalbarrel-organ has been grinding meanwhile.
Sometimes it intrudes itself so persistently as to become a nuisance,and the only way to get rid of it is to whistle or sing myself. Forinstance, I may be mentally reciting for my solace and delectation somebeloved lyric like "The Waterfowl," or "Tears, Idle Tears," or "Break,Break, Break"; and all the while, between the lines, this fiend of asubcerebral vocalist, like a wandering minstrel in a distant square,insists on singing, "Cheer, Boys, Cheer," or, "Tommy, make room foryour uncle" (tunes I cannot abide), with words, accompaniment, and all,complete, and not quite so refined an accent as I could wish; so that Ihave to leave off my recitation and whistle "J'ai du Bon Tabac" in quitea different key to exorcise it.
But this, at least, I will say for this never still small voice of mine:its intonation is always perfect; it keeps ideal time, and its quality,though rather thin and somewhat nasal and quite peculiar, is notunsympathetic.
Sometimes, indeed (as in that Islington omnibus), I cancompel it to imitate, _a s'y meprendre_, the tones of some singer I haverecently heard, and thus make for myself a ghostly music which is not tobe despised.
Occasionally, too, and quite unbidden, it would warble little impromptuinward melodies of my own composition, which often seemed to meextremely pretty, old-fashioned, and quaint; but one is not a fair judgeof one's own productions, especially during the heat of inspiration; andI had not the means of recording them, as I had never learned themusical notes. What the world has lost!
Now whose this small voice was I did not find out till many years later,_for it was not mine_!
* * * * *
In spite of such rare accomplishments and resources within myself, I wasnot a happy or contented young man; nor had my discontent in it anythingof the divine.
I disliked my profession, for which I felt no particular aptitude, andwould fain have followed another--poetry, science, literature, music,painting, sculpture; for all of which I most unblushingly thought myselfbetter fitted by the gift of nature.
I disliked Pentonville, which, although clean, virtuous, andrespectable, left much to be desired on the score of shape, color,romantic tradition, and local charm; and I would sooner have livedanywhere else: in the Champs-Elysees, let us say--yes, indeed, even onthe fifth branch of the third tree on the left-hand side as you leavethe Arc de Triomphe, like one of those classical heroes in HenriMurger's _Vie de Boheme_.
I disliked my brother apprentices, and did not get on well with them,especially a certain very clever but vicious and deformed youth calledJudkins, who seemed to have conceived an aversion for me from the first;he is now an associate of the Royal Academy. They thought I gave myselfairs because I did not share in their dissipations; such dissipations asI could have afforded would have been cheap and nasty indeed.
Yet such pothouse dissipation seemed to satisfy them, since they tooknot only a pleasure in it, but a pride.
They even took a pride in a sick headache, and liked it, if it were theresult of a debauch on the previous night; and were as pompouslymock-modest about a black eye, got in a squabble at the Argyll Rooms, asif it had been the Victoria Cross. To pass the night in a police cellwas such glory that it was worth while pretending they had done so whenit was untrue.
They looked upon me as a muff, a milksop, and a prig, and felt thegreatest contempt for me; and if they did not openly show it, it wasonly because they were not quite so fond of black eyes as they made out.
So I left them to their inexpensive joys, and betook myself to pursuitsof my own, among others to the cultivation of my body, after methods Ihad learned in the Life Guards. I belonged to a gymnastic and fencingand boxing club, of which I was a most assiduous frequenter; a morepersevering dumb-beller and Indian-clubber never was, and I became intime an all-round athlete, as wiry and lean as a greyhound, just underfifteen stone, and four inches over six feet in height, which wasconsidered very tall thirty years ago; especially in Pentonville, wherethe distinction often brought me more contumely than respect.
Altogether a most formidable person; but that I was of a timid nature,afraid to hurt, and the peacefulest creature in the world.
My old love for slums revived, and I found out and haunted the worst inLondon. They were very good slums, but they were not the slums ofParis--they manage these things better in France.
Even Cow Cross (where the Metropolitan Railway now runs between King'sCross and Farringdon Street)--Cow Cross, that whilom labyrinth ofslaughter-houses, gin-shops, and thieves' dens, with the famous FleetDitch running underneath it all the while, lacked the fascination andmystery of mediaeval romance. There were no memories of such charmingpeople as Le roi des Truands and Gringoire and Esmeralda; with a sighone had to fall back on visions of Fagin and Bill Sykes and Nancy.
_Quelle degringolade_!
And as to the actual denizens! One gazed with a dull, wondering pity atthe poor, pale, rickety children; the slatternly, coarse women who neversmiled (except when drunk); the dull, morose, miserable men. How theylacked the grace of French deformity, the ease and lightness of Frenchdepravity, the sympathetic distinction of French grotesqueness. Howunterrible they were, who preferred the fist to the noiseless andinsidious knife! who fought with their hands instead of their feet,quite loyally; and reserved the kicks of their hobnailed boots for theirrecalcitrant wives!
And then there was no Morgue; one missed one's Morgue badly.
And Smithfield! It would split me truly to the heart (as M. le Majorused to say) to watch the poor beasts that came on certain days to makea short station in that hideous cattle-market, on their way to theslaughter-house.
What bludgeons have I seen descend on beautiful, bewildered, dazed, meekeyes, so thickly fringed against the country sun; on soft, moist, tendernostrils that clouded the poisonous reek with a fragrance of the far-offfields! What torture of silly sheep and genially cynical pigs!
The very dogs seemed demoralized, and brutal as their masters. And thereone day I had an adventure, a dirty bout at fisticuffs, most humiliatingin the end for me and which showed that chivalry is often its ownreward, like virtue, even when the chivalrous are young and big andstrong, and have learned to box.
A brutal young drover wantonly kicked a sheep, and, as I thought, brokeher hind-leg, and in my indignation I took him by the ear and flung himround onto a heap of mud and filth. He rose and squared at me in a mostplucky fashion; he hardly came up to my chin, and I refused to fighthim. A crowd collected round us, and as I tried to explain to theby-standers the cause of our quarrel, he managed to hit me in the facewith a very muddy fist.
"Bravo, little 'un!" shouted the crowd, and he squared up again. I feltwretchedly ashamed and warded off all his blows, telling him that Icould not hit him or I should kill him.
"Yah!" shouted the crowd again; "go it, little un! Let 'im 'ave it! Thelong un's showing the white feather," etc., and finally I gave him aslight backhander that made his nose bleed and seemed to demoralize himcompletely. "Yah!" shouted the crowd; "'it one yer own size!"
I looked round in despair and rage, and picking out the biggest man Icould see, said, "Are _you_ big enough?" The crowd roared with laughter.
"Well, guv'ner, I dessay I might do at a pinch," he replied; and I triedto slap his face, but missed it, and received such a tremendous box onthe ear that I was giddy for a second or two, and when I recovered Ifound him still grinning at me. I tried to hit him again and again, butalways missed; and at last, without doing me any particular damage, helaid me flat three times running onto the very heap where I had flungthe drover, the crowd applauding madly. Dazed, hatless, and panting, andcovered with filth, I stared at him in hopeless impotence. He put outhis hand, and said, "You're all right, ain't yer, guv'ner? I 'ope I'aven't 'urt yer! My name's Tom Sayers. If you'd a 'it me, I should 'a'gone down like a ninepin, and I ain't so sure as I should ever 'ave gotup again."
He was to become the most famous fighting-man in England!
I wrung his hand and thanked him, and offered him a sovereign, which herefused; and then he led me into a room in a public-house close by,where he washed and brushed me down, and insisted on treating me to aglass of brandy-and-water.
I have had a fondness for fighting-men ever since, and a respect for thenoble science I had never felt before. He was many inches shorter thanI, and did not look at all the Hercules he was.
He told me I was the strongest built man for a youngster that he hadever seen, barring that I was "rather leggy." I do not know if he wassincere or not, but no possible compliment could have pleased me more.Such is the vanity of youth.
And here, although it savors somewhat of vaingloriousness, I cannotresist the temptation of relating another adventure of the same kind,but in which I showed to greater advantage.
It was on a boxing-day (oddly enough), and I was returning with Lintotand one of his boys from a walk in the Highgate Fields. As we plodded ourdirty way homeward through the
Caledonian Road we were stopped by acrowd outside a public-house. A gigantic drayman (they always seembigger than they really are) was squaring up to a poor drunken lout of anavvy not half his size, who had been put up to fight him, and who wasquite incapable of even an attempt it self-defence; he could scarcelylift his arms, I thought at first it was only horse-play; and as littleJoe Lintot wanted to see, I put him up on my shoulder, just as thedrayman, who had been drinking, but was not drunk, and had a mostfiendishly brutal face, struck the poor tipsy wretch with all his mightbetween the eyes, and felled him (it was like pole-axing a bullock), tothe delight of the crowd.
Little Joe, a very gentle and sensitive boy, began to cry; and hisfather, who had the pluck of a bull-terrier, wanted to interfere, inspite of his diminutive stature. I was also beside myself withindignation, and pulling off my coat and hat, which I gave to Lintot,made my way to the drayman, who was offering to fight any three men inthe crowd, an offer that met with no response.
"Now, then, you cowardly skunk!" I said, tucking up my shirt-sleeves;"stand up, and I will knock every tooth down your ugly throat."
His face went the colors of a mottled Stilton cheese, and he asked whatI meddled with him for. A ring formed itself, and I felt the sympathy ofthe crowd _with_ me this time--a very agreeable sensation!
"Now, then, up with your arms! I'm going to kill you!"
"I ain't going to fight you, mister; I ain't going to fight _nobody_.Just you let me alone!"
]
"Oh yes, you are, or you're going on your marrow-bones to be pardon forbeing a brutal, cowardly skunk"; and I gave him a slap on the face thatrang like a pistol-shot--a most finished, satisfactory, and successfulslap this time. My finger-tips tingle at the bare remembrance.
He tried to escape, but was held opposite to me. He began to snivel andwhimper, and said he had never meddled with me, and asked what should Imeddle with him for?
"Then down on your knees--quick--this instant!" and I made as if I weregoing to begin serious business at once, and no mistake.
So down he plumped on his knees, and there he actually fainted fromsheer excess of emotion.
As I was helped on with my coat, I tasted, for once in my life thesweets of popularity, and knew what it was to be the idol of a mob.
Little Joey Lintot and his brothers and sisters, who had never held mein any particular regard before that I knew of, worshipped me from thatday forward.
And I should be insincere if I did not confess that on that one occasionI was rather pleased with myself, although the very moment I stoodopposite the huge, hulking, beer-sodden brute (who had looked soformidable from afar) I felt, with a not unpleasant sense of relief,that he did not stand a chance. He was only big, and even at that Ibeat him.
The real honors of the day belonged to Lintot, who, I am convinced, wasready to act the David to that Goliath. He had the real stomach forfighting, which I lacked, as very tall men are often said to do.
And that, perhaps, is why I have made so much of my not very wonderfulprowess on that occasion; not, indeed, that I am physically a coward--atleast, I do not think so. If I thought I were I should avow it with nomore shame than I should avow that I had a bad digestion, or a weakheart, which makes cowards of us all.
It is that I hate a row, and violence, and bloodshed, even from anose--any nose, either my own or my neighbor's.
* * * * *
There are slums at the east end of London that many fashionable peopleknow something of by this time; I got to know them by heart. In additionto the charm of the mere slum, there was the eternal fascination of theseafaring element; of Jack ashore--a lovable creature who touchesnothing but what he adorns it in his own peculiar fashion.
I constantly haunted the docks, where the smell of tar and the sight ofropes and masts filled me with unutterable longings for the sea--fordistant lands--for anywhere but where it was my fate to be.
I talked to ship captains and mates and sailors, and heard manymarvellous tales, as the reader may well believe, and framed for myselfvisions of cloudless skies, and sapphire seas, and coral reefs, andgroves of spice, and dusky youths in painted plumage roving, andfriendly isles where a lovely half-clad, barefooted Neuha would wave hertorch, and lead me, her Torquil, by the hand through caverns of bliss!
Especially did I haunt a wharf by London Bridge, from whence twosteamers--the _Seine_ and the _Dolphin_, I believe--started on alternatedays for Boulogne-sur-Mer.
I used to watch the happy passengers bound for France, some of them, intheir holiday spirits, already fraternizing together on the sunny deck,and fussing with camp-stools and magazines and novels and bottlesof bitter beer, or retiring before the funnel to smoke the pipe ofpeace.
THE BOULOGNE STEAMER.]
The sound of the boiler getting up steam--what delicious music it was!Would it ever get up steam for me? The very smell of the cabin, the veryfeel of the brass gangway and the brass-bound, oil-clothed steps weredelightful; and down-stairs, on the snowy cloth, were the cold beef andham, the beautiful fresh mustard, the bottles of pale ale and stout. Oh,happy travellers, who could afford all this, and France intothe bargain!
Soon would a large white awning make the after-deck a paradise, fromwhich, by-and-by, to watch the quickly gliding panorama of the Thames.The bell would sound for non-passengers like me to go ashore--"Quediable allait-il faire dans cette galere!" as Uncle Ibbetson would havesaid. The steamer, disengaging itself from the wharf with a pleasantyoho-ing of manly throats and a slow, intermittent plashing of thepaddle-wheels, would carefully pick its sunny, eastward way among thesmall craft of the river, while a few handkerchiefs were waved in afriendly, make-believe farewell--_auf wiedersehen_!
Oh, to stand by that unseasonably sou'-westered man at the wheel, andwatch St. Paul's and London Bridge and the Tower of London fade out ofsight--never, never to see them again. No _auf wiedersehen_ for me!
Sometimes I would turn my footsteps westward and fill my hungry, jealouseyes with a sight of the gay summer procession in Hyde Park, or listento the band in Kensington Gardens, and see beautiful, welldressedwomen, and hear their sweet, refined voices and happy laughter; and alonging would come into my heart more passionate than my longing for thesea and France and distant lands, and quite as unutterable. I would evenforget Neuha and her torch.
After this it was a dreary downfall to go and dine for tenpence all bymyself, and finish up with a book at my solitary lodgings inPentonville. The book would not let itself be read; it sulked and had tobe laid down, for "beautiful woman! beautiful girl!" spelled themselvesbetween me and the printed page. Translate me those words into French, Oye who can even render Shakespeare into French Alexandrines--"Bellefemme? Belle fille?" Ha! ha!
If you want to get as near it as you can, you will have to write, "BelleAnglaise," or "Belle Americaine;" only then will you be understood, evenin France!
Ah! elle etait bien belle, Madame Seraskier!
At other times, more happily inspired, I would slake my thirst fornature by long walks into the country. Hampstead was my Passy--theLeg-of-Mutton Pond my Mare d'Auteuil; Richmond was my St. Cloud, withKew Gardens for a Bois de Boulogne; and Hampton Court made a very fairVersailles--how incomparably fairer, even a pupil of Lintot'sshould know.
And after such healthy fatigue and fragrant impressions the tenpennydinner had a better taste, the little front parlor in Pentonville wasmore like a home, the book more like a friend.
For I read all I could get in English or French.
Novels, travels, history, poetry, science--everything came as grist tothat most melancholy mill, my mind.
I tried to write; I tried to draw; I tried to make myself an inner lifeapart from the sordid, commonplace ugliness of my outer one--a privateoasis of my own; and to raise myself a little, if only mentally, abovethe circumstances in which it had pleased the Fates to place me.[A]
[Footnote A: _Note_--It Is with great reluctance that I now come to mycousin's account of deplorable opi
nions he held, at that period of hislife, on the most important subject that can ever engross the mind ofman. I have left out _much_, but I feel that in suppressing italtogether, I should rob his sad story of all its moral significance;for it cannot be doubted that most of his unhappiness is attributable tothe defective religious training of his childhood, and that his parents(otherwise the best and kindest people I have ever known) incurred aterrible responsibility when they determined to leave him "unbiased," ashe calls it, at that tender and susceptible age when the mind is "Wax to receive, marble to retain." Madge Plunket.]
* * * * *
It goes without saying that, like many thoughtful youths of a melancholytemperament, impecunious and discontented with their lot, and much givento the smoking of strong tobacco (on an empty stomach), I continuouslybrooded on the problems of existence--free-will and determinism, thewhence and why and whither of man, the origin of evil, the immortalityof the soul, the futility of life, etc., and made myself very miserableover such questions.
Often the inquisitive passer-by, had he peeped through the blinds ofNo.--Wharton Street, Pentonville, late at night, would have beenrewarded by the touching spectacle of a huge, rawboned ex-private in herMajesty's Life Guards, with his head bowed over the black and yellowkey-board of a venerable square piano-forte (on which he could notplay), dropping the bitter tear of loneliness and _Weltschmertz_ combined.
It never once occurred to me to seek relief in the bosom of any Church.
Some types are born and not made. I was a born "infidel;" if ever therewas a congenital agnostic, one agnostically constituted from his verybirth, it was I. Not that I had ever heard such an expression asagnosticism; it is an invention of late years....
"_J'avais fait de la prose toute ma vie sans le savoir!_"
But almost the first conscious dislike I can remember was for the blackfigure of the priest, and there were several of these figures in Passy.
Monsieur le Major called them _maitres corbeaux_, and seemed to holdthem in light esteem. Dr. Seraskier hated them; his gentle Catholic wifehad grown to distrust them. My loving, heretic mother loved them not; myfather, a Catholic born and bred, had an equal aversion. They hadpersecuted his gods--the thinkers, philosophers, and scientificdiscoverers--Galileo, Bruno, Copernicus; and brought to his mind thecruelties of the Holy Inquisition, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew; andI always pictured them as burning little heretics alive if they hadtheir will--Eton jackets, white chimney-pot hats, and all!
I have no doubt they were in reality the best and kindest of men.
The parson (and parsons were not lacking in Pentonville) was not soinsidiously repellent as the blue-cheeked, blue-chinned Passy priest;but he was by no means to me a picturesque or sympathetic apparition,with his weddedness, his whiskers, his black trousers, his frock-coat,his tall hat, his little white tie, his consciousness of being a"gentleman" by profession. Most unattractive, also, were the cheap,brand-new churches wherein he spoke the word to his dreary-looking,Sunday-clad flock, with scarcely one of whom his wife would have satdown to dinner--especially if she had been chosen from among them.
SUNDAY IN PENTONVILLE.]
To watch that flock pouring in of a Sunday morning, or afternoon, orevening, at the summons of those bells, and pouring out again after thelong service, and banal, perfunctory sermon, was depressing. Weekdays,in Pentonville, were depressing enough; but Sundays were depressingbeyond words, though nobody seemed to think so but myself. Earlytraining had acclimatized them.
I have outlived those physical antipathies of my salad days; even thesight of an Anglican bishop is no longer displeasing to me, on thecontrary; and I could absolutely rejoice in the beauty of a cardinal.
Indeed, I am now friends with both a parson and a priest, and do notknow which of the two I love and respect the most. They ought to hateme, but they do not; they pity me too much, I suppose. I am too negativeto rouse in either the deep theological hate; and all the little hatethat the practice of love and charity has left in their kind hearts isreserved for each other--an unquenchable hate in which they seem toglory, and which rages all the more that it has to be concealed. Itsaddens me to think that I am a bone of contention between them.
And yet, for all my unbelief, the Bible was my favorite book, and thePsalms my adoration; and most truly can I affirm that my mental attitudehas ever been one of reverence and humility.
But every argument that has ever been advanced against Christianity (andI think I know them all by this time) had risen spontaneously andunprompted within me, and they have all seemed to me unanswerable, andindeed, as yet, unanswered. Nor had any creed of which I ever heardappeared to me either credible or attractive or even sensible, but forthe central figure of the Deity--a Deity that in no case could everbe mine.
The awe-inspiring and unalterable conception that had wrought itselfinto my consciousness, whether I would or no, was that of a Beinginfinitely more abstract, remote, and inaccessible than any the geniusof mankind has ever evolved after its own image and out of the needs ofits own heart--inscrutable, unthinkable, unspeakable; above all humanpassions, beyond the reach of any human appeal; One upon whoseattributes it was futile to speculate--One whose name was _It_,not _He_.
The thought of total annihilation was uncongenial, but had no terror.
Even as a child I had shrewdly suspected that hell was no more than avulgar threat for naughty little boys and girls, and heaven than avulgar bribe, from the casual way in which either was meted out to me asmy probable portion, by servants and such people, according to the way Ibehaved. Such things were never mentioned to me by either my father ormother, or M. le Major, or the Seraskiers--the only people in whomI trusted.
But for the bias against the priest, I was left unbiassed at that tenderand susceptible age. I had learned my catechism and read my Bible, andused to say the Lord's Prayer as I went to bed, and "God bless papa andmamma" and the rest, in the usual perfunctory manner.
Never a word against religion was said in my hearing by those few onwhom I had pinned my childish faith; on the other hand, no suchimportance was attached to it, apparently, as was attached to thevirtues of truthfulness, courage, generosity, self-denial, politeness,and especially consideration for others, high or low, human andanimal alike.
I imagine that my parents must have compromised the matter between them,and settled that I should work out all the graver problems of existencefor myself, when I came to a thinking age, out of my own conscience,and such knowledge of life as I should acquire, and such help as theywould no doubt have given me, according to their lights, hadthey survived.
I did so, and made myself a code of morals to live by, in which religionhad but a small part.
For me there was but one sin, and that was cruelty, because I hated it;though Nature, for inscrutable purposes of her own, almost teaches it asa virtue. All sins that did not include cruelty were merely sins againsthealth, or taste, or common-sense, or public expediency.
Free-will was impossible. We could only _seem_ to will freely, and thatonly within the limits of a small triangle, whose sides were heredity,education, and circumstance--a little geometrical arrangement of my own,of which I felt not a little proud, although it does not quite go onall-fours--perhaps because it is only a triangle.
That is, we could will fast enough--_too_ fast; but could not will _how_to will--fortunately, for we were not fit as yet, and for a long time tocome, to be trusted, constituted as we are!
Even the characters of a novel must act according to the nature,training, and motives their creator the novelist has supplied them with,or we put the novel down and read something else; for human nature mustbe consistent with itself in fiction as well as in fact. Even in itsmadness there must be a method, so how could the will be free?
To pray for any personal boon or remission of evil--to bend the knee, orlift one's voice in praise or thanksgiving for any earthly good that hadbefallen one, either throu
gh inheritance, or chance, or one's ownsuccessful endeavor--was in my eyes simply futile; but, putting itsfutility aside, it was an act of servile presumption, of wheedlingimpertinence, not without suspicion of a lively sense of favors to come.
It seemed to me as though the Jews--a superstitious and business-likepeople, who know what they want and do not care how they get it--musthave taught us to pray like that.
It was not the sweet, simple child innocently beseeching that to-morrowmight be fine for its holiday, or that Santa Claus would be generous; itwas the cunning trader, fawning, flattering, propitiating, bribing withfulsome, sycophantic praise (an insult in itself), as well asburnt-offerings, working for his own success here and hereafter, and hisenemy's confounding.
It was the grovelling of the dog, without the dog's single-hearted love,stronger than even its fear or its sense of self-interest.
What an attitude for one whom God had made after His own image--eventowards his Maker!
* * * * *
The only permissible prayer was a prayer for courage or resignation; forthat was a prayer turned inward, an appeal to what is best inourselves--our honor, our stoicism, our self-respect.
And for a small detail, grace before and after meals seemed to meespecially self-complacent and iniquitous, when there were so many withscarcely ever a meal to say grace for. The only decent and proper gracewas to give half of one's meal away--not, indeed, that I was in thehabit of doing so! But at least I had the grace to reproach myself formy want of charity, and that was my only grace.
* * * * *
Fortunately, since we had no free-will of our own, the tendency thatimpelled us was upward, like the sparks, and bore us with itwilly-nilly--the good and the bad, and the worst and the best.
By seeing this clearly, and laying it well to heart, the motive wassupplied to us for doing all we could in furtherance of that upwardtendency--_pour aider le bon Dieu_--that we might rise the faster andreach Him the sooner, if He were! And when once the human will has beenset going, like a rocket or a clock or a steam-engine, and in the rightdirection, what can it not achieve?
We should in time control circumstance instead of being controlledthereby; education would day by day become more adapted to oneconsistent end; and, finally, conscience-stricken, we should guideheredity with our own hands instead of leaving it to blind chance;unless, indeed, a well-instructed paternal government wisely took thereins, and only sanctioned the union of people who were thoroughly inlove with each other, after due and careful elimination of the unfit.
Thus, cruelty should at least be put into harness, and none of itsvaluable energy wasted on wanton experiments, as it is by Nature.
And thus, as the boy is father to the man, should the human race oneday be father to--what?
That is just where my speculations would arrest themselves; that was theX of a sum in rule of three, not to be worked out by Peter Ibbetson,Architect and Surveyor, Wharton Street, Pentonville.
As the orang-outang is to Shakespeare, so is Shakespeare to ... X?
As the female chimpanzee is to the Venus of Milo, so is the Venus ofMilo to ... X?
Finally, multiply these two X's by each other, and try to conceive theresult!
* * * * *
Such was, crudely, the simple creed I held at this time; and, such as itwas, I had worked it all out for myself, with no help from outside--apoor thing, but mine own; or, as I expressed it in the words of DeMusset, "Mon verre n'est pas grand--mais je bois dans mon verre."
For though such ideas were in the air, like wholesome clouds, they hadnot yet condensed themselves into printed words for the million. Peopledid not dare to write about these things, as they do at present, inpopular novels and cheap magazines, that all who run may read, and learnto think a little for themselves, and honestly say what they think,without having to dread a howl of execration, clerical and lay.
And it was not only that I thought like this and could not thinkotherwise; it was that I felt like this and could not feel otherwise;and I should have appeared to myself as wicked, weak, and base had Iever even _desired_ to think or feel otherwise, however personallydespairing of this life--a traitor to what I jealously guarded as mybest instincts.
And yet to me the faith of others, if but unaggressive, humble, andsincere, had often seemed touching and pathetic, and sometimes evenbeautiful, as childish things seem sometimes beautiful, even in thosewho are no longer children, and should have put them away. It had causedmany heroic lives, and rendered many obscure lives blameless and happy;and then its fervor and passion seemed to burn with a lasting flame.
At brief moments now and then, and especially in the young, unfaith canbe as fervent and as passionate as faith, and just as narrow andunreasonable, as _I_ found; but alas! its flame was intermittent, andits light was not a kindly light.
It had no food for babes; it could not comfort the sick or sorry, norresolve into submissive harmony the inner discords of the soul; norcompensate us for our own failures and shortcomings, nor make up to usin any way for the success and prosperity of others who did not chooseto think as we did.
It was without balm for wounded pride, or stay for weak despondency, orconsolation for bereavement; its steep and rugged thoroughfares led tono promised land of beatitude, and there were no soft resting-placesby the way.
Its only weapon was steadfastness; its only shield, endurance; itsearthly hope, the common weal; its earthly prize, the opening of allroads to knowledge, and the release from a craven inheritance of fear;its final guerdon--sleep? Who knows?
Sleep was not bad.
So that simple, sincere, humble, devout, earnest, fervent, passionate,and over-conscientious young unbelievers like myself had to be verystrong and brave and self-reliant (which I was not), and very much inlove with what they conceived to be the naked Truth (a figure ofdoubtful personal attractions at first sight), to tread the ways of lifewith that unvarying cheerfulness, confidence, and serenity which thebeliever claims as his own special and particular appanage.
So much for my profession of unfaith, shared (had I but known it) bymany much older and wiser and better educated than I, and only reachedby them after great sacrifice of long-cherished illusions, and terriblepangs of soul-questioning--a struggle and a wrench that I was sparedthrough my kind parents' thoughtfulness when I was a little boy.
* * * * *
It thus behooved me to make the most of this life; since, for all Iknew, or believed, or even hoped to the contrary, to-morrow we must die.
Not, indeed, that I might eat and drink and be merry; heredity andeducation had not inclined me that way, I suppose, and circumstances didnot allow it; but that I might try and live up to the best ideal I couldframe out of my own conscience and the past teaching of mankind. Andman, whose conception of the Infinite and divine has been so inadequate,has furnished us with such human examples (ancient and modern, Hebrew,Pagan, Buddhist, Christian, Agnostic, and what not) as the best of uscan only hope to follow at a distance.
I would sometimes go to my morning's work, my heart elate with loftyhope and high resolve.
How easy and simple it seemed to lead a life without fear, or reproach,or self-seeking, or any sordid hope of personal reward, either here orhereafter!--a life of stoical endurance, invincible patience andmeekness, indomitable cheerfulness and self-denial!
After all, it was only for another forty or fifty years at the most, andwhat was that? And after that--_que scais-je?_
The thought was inspiring indeed!
By luncheon-time (and luncheon consisted of an Abernethy biscuit and aglass of water, and several pipes of shag tobacco, cheap and rank) somesubtle change would come over the spirit of my dream.
Other people did not have high resolves. Some people had very badtempers, and rubbed one very much the wrong way.
What a hideous place was Pentonville to slave away one's life in! ...
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What a grind it was to be forever making designs for little new shops inRosoman Street, and not making them well, it seemed! ...
Why should a squinting, pock-marked, bowlegged, hunch-backed littleJudkins (a sight to make a recruiting-sergeant shudder) forever tauntone with having enlisted as a private soldier? ...
And then why should one be sneeringly told to "hit a fellow one's ownsize," merely because, provoked beyond endurance, one just grabbed himby the slack of his trousers and gently shook him out of them onto thefloor, terrified but quite unhurt? ...
And so on, and so on; constant little pin-pricks, sordid humiliations,ugliness, meannesses, and dirt, that called forth in resistance all thatwas lowest and least commendable in one's self.
One has attuned one's nerves to the leading of a forlorn hope, and agnat gets into one's eye, or a little cinder grit, and there it sticks;and there is no question of leading any forlorn hope, after all, andnever will be; all _that_ was in the imagination only: it is alwaysgnats and cinder grits, gnats and cinder grits.
By the evening I had ignominiously broken down, and was plunged in thedepths of an exasperated pessimism too deep even for tears, and wouldhave believed myself the meanest and most miserable of mankind, but thateverybody else, without exception, was even meaner and miserablerthan myself.
They could still eat and drink and be merry. I could not, and did noteven want to.
* * * * *
And so on, day after day, week after week, for months and years....
Thus I grew weary in time of my palling individuality, ever the samethrough all these uncontrollable variations of mood.
Oh, that alternate ebb and flow of the spirits! It is a disease, and,what is most distressing, it is no real change; it is more sickeninglymonotonous than absolute stagnation itself. And from that dreary seesawI could never escape, except through the gates of dreamless sleep, thedeath in life; for even in our dreams we are still ourselves. Therewas no rest!
I loathed the very sight of myself in the shop-windows as I went by; andyet I always looked for it there, in the forlorn hope of at leastfinding some alteration, even for the worse. I passionately longed to besomebody else; and yet I never met anybody else I could have borne to befor a moment.
And then the loneliness of us!
Each separate unit of our helpless race is inexorably bounded by theinner surface of his own mental periphery, a jointless armor in whichthere is no weak place, never a fault, never a single gap of egress forourselves, of ingress for the nearest and dearest of our fellow-units.At only five points can we just touch each other, and all that is--andthat only by the function of our poor senses--from the outside. In vainwe rack them that we may get a little closer to the best beloved andmost implicitly trusted; ever in vain, from the cradle to the grave.
Why should so fantastic a thought have persecuted me so cruelly? I knewnobody with whom I should have felt such a transfusion of soul eventolerable for a second. I cannot tell! But it was like a gadfly whichdrove me to fatigue my body that I should have by day the stolid peaceof mind that comes of healthy physical exhaustion; that I should sleepat night the dreamless sleep--the death in life!
"Of such materials wretched men are made!" Especially wretched youngmen; and the wretcheder one is, the more one smokes; and the more onesmokes, the wretcheder one gets--a vicious circle!
Such was my case. I grew to long for the hour of my release (as Iexpressed it pathetically to myself), and caressed the idea of suicide.I even composed for myself a little rhymed epitaph in French which Ithought very neat--
Je n'etais point. Je fus. Je ne suis plus.
* * * * *
Oh, to perish in some noble cause--to die saving another's life, evenanother's worthless life, to which he clung!
I remember formulating this wish, in all sincerity, one moonlit night asI walked up Frith Street, Soho. I came upon a little group of excitedpeople gathered together at the foot of a house built over a shop. Froma broken window-pane on the second floor an ominous cloud of smoke roselike a column into the windless sky. An ordinary ladder was placedagainst the house, which, they said, was densely inhabited; but nofire-engine or fire-escape had arrived as yet, and it appeared uselessto try and rouse the inmates by kicking and beating at the doorany longer.
A brave man was wanted--a very brave man, who would climb the ladder,and make his way into the house through the broken window. Here was aforlorn hope to lead at last!
Such a man was found. To my lasting shame and contrition, it was not I.
He was short and thick and middle-aged, and had a very jolly red faceand immense whiskers--quite a common sort of man, who seemed by no meanstired of life.
His heroism was wasted, as it happened; for the house was an empty one,as we all heard, to our immense relief, before he had managed to force apassage into the burning room. His whiskers were not even singed!
Nevertheless, I slunk home, and gave up all thoughts ofself-destruction--even in a noble cause; and there, in penance, Isomewhat hastily committed to flame the plodding labor of manymidnights--an elaborate copy in pen and ink, line for line, of Retel'simmortal wood-engraving "Der Tod als Freund," which Mrs. Lintot had beenkind enough to lend me--and under which I had written, in beautifulblack Gothic letters and red capitals (and without the slightest senseof either humor or irreverence), the following poem, which had cost meinfinite pains:
I.
_F, i, fi--n, i, ni! Bon dieu Pere, j'ai fini... Vous qui m'avez lant puni, Dans ma triste vie, Pour tant d'horribles forfaits Que je ne commis jamais Laissez-moi jouir en paix De mon agonie!_
II.
_Les faveurs que je Vous dois, Je les compte sur mes doigts:_ _Tout infirme que je sois, Ca se fait bien vite! Prenez patience, et comptez Tous mes maux--puis computez Toutes Vos severites-- Vous me tiendrez quitte!_
III.
_Ne pour souffrir, et souffrant-- Bas, honni, bete, ignorant, Vieux, laid, chetif--et mourant Dans mon trou sans plainte, Je suis aussi sans desir Autre que d'en bien finir-- Sans regret, sans repentir-- Sans espoir ni crainte!_
IV.
_Pere inflexible et jaloux, Votre Fils est mort pour nous! Aussi, je reste envers Vous Si bien sans rancune, Que je voudrais, sans facon, Faire, au seuil de ma prison, Quelque petite oraison ... Je n'en sais pas une!_
V.
_J'entends sonner l'Angelus Qui rassemble Vos Elus: Pour moi, du bercail exclus. C'est la mort qui sonne! Prier ne profite rien ... Pardonner est le seul bien:_ _C'est le Votre, et c'est le mien: Moi, je Vous pardonne!_
VI.
_Soyez d'un egard pareil! S'il est quelque vrai sommeil Sans ni reve, ni reveil, Ouvrez-m'en la porte-- Faites que l'immense Oubli Couvre, sous un dernier pli, Dans mon corps enseveli, Ma conscience morte!_
Oh me duffer! What a hopeless failure was I in all things, little andbig.