Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 64, No. 398, December 1848
In thus stating the grounds of a very decided opinion as to the measure supplementary to the new poor-law, which is most essentially required for Ireland, we do not of course mean to deny, that various other means may be adopted, with more or less of good effect, in furtherance of the same grand object. We have no doubt that both religious and secular education are of the utmost importance to the civilisation and improvement of every country; and although we do not regard education, as some authors do, as the main remedy for the evils of over-population, (being thoroughly persuaded that nature has provided for this object more surely than education can, by that growth of artificial wants in the human mind, which is the result and the reward of pains taken to relieve suffering and secure comfort during youth,) we are as anxious as any of our contemporaries for the extension of education in Ireland. We believe that instruction in agriculture, as well as encouragement to industry, is very much needed in most parts of Ireland; and that measures for the direct communication of such instruction, both to landlords and tenants, may be very useful. We believe that in Ireland, as in this country, there is great need of sanitary regulations; and we trust that the draining, cleaning, and paving of the Irish towns will be regarded with as much interest as similar purifications in England and Scotland. But we think no one who reflects on the subject can fail to perceive two truths, and to acknowledge their direct bearing on the subject of Irish misery —first, that to a people nurtured in destitution and amidst scenes of suffering, something of the great mental stimuli of employment and hope must be applied, in order to enable them to appreciate, or permanently to profit by, any kind of education; and, secondly, that in the existence of laws securing sustenance to all the poor of a country, and at the same time enabling the higher ranks to exact labour as the price of that sustenance, we possess a security such as no other social arrangements can afford, for habitual attention to all means of bettering the condition of the poor, on the part of those who have it in their power to apply those means, and on whose exertions their successful application must necessarily depend. Thus the poor-laws of Ireland, and the subsidiary measures for procuring employment for the poor there, so far from being opposed to any wise system of instruction, or of sanitary improvement, must be regarded as in truth an essential preliminary to the truly beneficial operation of any system that may be devised for either of these purposes.
THE CAXTONS.
PART VIII
CHAPTER XXXV
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 eirie 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-favoured young woman. She dropped a curtsy, and then said, mincingly,
"Oh, miss! you ought to have waited for me, and not alarmed the gentlefolks by running up stairs 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 curtsy,) 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 sate opposite, passed the time in ineffectual overtures to release 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 varnished 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 danger. 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 sinaplasms to the feet, and the ice to the head; and now and then, through the lull or 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 gaily as he nods farewell – and my father is leaning against the wall, with his face covered with his hands.
CHAPTER XXXVI
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 any thing 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 any thing 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 vivacity 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 honour, 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 blasés!) 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, an 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 door-steps of a large shop, whose closed shutters wore 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 recognised 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 something 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 favour, 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 please 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 sympathise 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 XXXVII
On my return to The Lamb, I found that my uncle was in a soft sleep; and after an evening 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 labour 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 recognise 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 an 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 savans 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 is a matter of charity, I put my purse in your hands; but don't put my manuscript in his! If it is 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 one wholly civilised. The Arab has it, so has the American Indian; and I suspect 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 honourable 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 honours 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.