 | CHAPTER III.
Robin Day begins his education, and advances in the opinion of
the world. The adventures of Robin Day |  |
3. CHAPTER III.
Robin Day begins his education, and advances in the opinion of
the world.
My patron, Dr. Howard, (for that was his name,)
was not content with merely releasing me from
bondage, and punishing my tyrant, but carried his
goodness still further. The few hints I was able to
give him in relation to the shipwreck, led him to
indulge a kind of hope that my parents were perhaps
living, and that I might be restored to their
arms; in consequence of which, he not only instituted
inquiries into the circumstance, but even paid
two different visits to the coast, where he made every
effort to sift the affair to the bottom. His exertions
were, however, of little avail; the reasons for silence
which I had mentioned, were still in operation, and
kept every man's memory under lock and key. No
one of those interested as actors in the scene had the
slightest knowledge or recollection of the affair; there
were a great many wrecks, they said, on their coast,
and they could not pretend to remember them, or
to say who came ashore on them; they knew in
general, no such personage as little Robin Rusty,
though some professed to have heard the name, and
some believed there had been a boy so called, whom
old Mother Moll had picked up some where, they
had never troubled themselves to ask where. In
and all the information that my patron ever succeeded
in acquiring was obtained from persons living
at a distance from the scene; and, indeed, the further
they were off, the more they seemed to know of the
matter. The only difficulty was, that no two agreed
in telling the same story; from which, as well as
from the thousand manifest falsehoods and contradictions
with which the relation was overburthened,
it was clear these worthy personages had gained their
intelligence from their own imaginations, and in
reality knew nothing more than the inquirer himself.
He might, perhaps, have gained all the information
he sought, from the old beldam, Mother Moll,
who was now grown decrepid and helpless with age,
had been long abandoned by her vagabond son, and
was dragging out existence in the most hopeless
poverty; but she had reached the period of dotage
and mere oblivion, and was incapable of rendering
him any assistance. It was with the greatest difficulty
she could be made even to remember my name;
and when she did, and was questioned particularly
concerning me, she, by some unaccountable perversion
of association, always confounded me with her
son Ikey, whose history, including all his monkeytricks,
and sometimes mine with them, his sundry
rebellions against the maternal authority, and final
desertion of her, she was very willing to tell, so long
as her memory served; but that was never long.
She seemed to have some glimmering recollections
of the wreck; but they were not such as could be
turned to profit; and as to the date, which she sometimes
threw twenty years back, and sometimes but
a few months, nothing of the least account could be
gained from her.
All that my patron, therefore, learned, after every
inquiry, was no more than what he knew before;
namely, that there had been a wreck, and that I had
come ashore in it: but of the exact period of the
catastrophe, of the name and character of the vessel,
of the fate of the crew, and other the most interesting
and important particulars, he knew nothing.
The discouragement which he suffered did not, however,
prevent his making the only other effort that
remained. He drew up a brief account—if account
it could be called—of the occurrence, and caused it
to be inserted in several of the newspapers of the
day, in hopes it might attract the eye of some one
interested, and thence lead to further developments
that might finally bring my parentage to light. But
the effort resulted in nothing. Some few persons,
merchants who had lost vessels, and others who had
been deprived of friends, wrote to him for further
particulars, which he had not to give; and there the
matter dropped. Whatever might be my good qualities,
nobody thought me worth claiming.
In the meanwhile, neither my protector's inquiries
nor their failure of success, troubled me in the
least. I had arrived at a fate which satisfied all my
youthful longings, inasmuch as I had plenty to eat
and drink, could take my fill of sleep whenever I
wanted it, and had no fear of an hourly drubbing.
In the enjoyment of these blisses, and in the kitchen
corner, whither my instincts and ambition both carried
me, I should have been content to pass my
existence, contending for nothing but the warmest
rug and the hugest cast-bit, with no rivals but Towzer
the house dog and Tabby the tom-cat. A nobler
strife, and competitors more distinguished, were
subjects that entered neither into my desires nor
thoughts. I was entirely of opinion that the life of
that human being could lead—a life for a skipper,
or the gods themselves.
This grovelling disposition there were some who
considered an inborn one, a characteristic of a naturally
low and vulgar spirit; though I am very well
convinced it was all owing to Skipper Duck and his
villanous treatment; and certain it is, had any nobler
feelings ever existed in my bosom, they could not
have survived the long course of debasing cruelty
to which I had been subjected. The truth is, it had
resulted in quenching every spark of intellect and
spirit I ever possessed, in stultifying, in stupefying, in
reducing me to a condition very little above that of
a mere animal; so that, I verily believe, my old prototype
of Cyprus, he that was
So well his name did with his nature suit,—
body, compared with me, whom every body agreed
in considering not merely a dolt and blockhead of
unusual barrenness, but a kind of Orson, or Wild-boy
Peter, on whose nature, as on Caliban's, “nurture
could never stick,” and every effort at instruction
must be entirely thrown away.
And in this opinion, I am sorry to say, my benevolent
patron also joined, after he had worn out his
patience in the vain effort to awake my dormant faculties,
which he declared were of so low an order as
to be incapable of any cultivation, and so, in despair,
left me to myself, to my own enjoyments, and in the
honourable office—the only one he deemed me fit
for—of scullion and turnspit;—my cooking abilities,
though sufficient for the purposes of Skipper Duck,
not being, in his opinion, brilliant enough for the
department in his household—which was, indeed,
very capably filled by an old negro, whom we called
Don Pedro, a slave from one of the Spanish West
India Islands.
Thus consigned to contempt, and given over as a
case of hopeless stupidity, I must have remained
among pots and pattypans, an ornament of the
kitchen, for life, had it not been for the good offices
of two other friends who were not so willing to desert
me. The first of these was Nature, who, having
been outraged in my person for years, and, in fact,
driven out of it, now returned, and having nothing
to oppose her, save the craziness of the mansion,
began a course of renovation, which, though slow
and at first imperceptible, was destined sooner or
later to make itself manifest. The second was my
patron's son Tommy—his only son, and therefore a
spoiled one—to whose exploit with the oyster-shell
I owed my advancement. The little gentleman, who
was my junior by at least three years, though my
equal in size, and infinitely superior in every thing
that marks the intelligent being—such were the advantages
of a parent's love and care—was by no
means the malicious and wicked imp his unprovoked
attack on me seemed to declare; but, on the contrary,
a very amiable and generous boy, although wild and
prankish, and easily led into mischief, as most boys
are. Perhaps I should say, as most boys were; for
the juveniles of the present generation, as I have observed,
are a much more manly and rational race
than their predecessors of the last, the difference resulting,
I suppose, from a better system of education.
The boys of my day, I declare, were the greatest
scoundrels conceivable, quarrelsome, vindictive, and
cruel, oppressors of one another and of every living
Neroes and Domitians in miniature. And those who
were not born with these happy characteristics,
hastened to get inoculated with them; as nothing
was held more contemptible, because evincing a
babyish, cowardly spirit, than a peaceable temper,
and tenderness to cats and dogs. My little friend
Tommy was of a mixed class, having been born with
spirit enough to adventure into every excess, and
yet with milder and kindlier feelings, that, if carefully
governed, might have made him the best of
boys; and he was of just such a character as to be
able, at any moment, to enter with enthusiasm upon
the torture of a tabbycat, and burst into tears, the
next, at the sight of her dying agonies.
The little fellow's best feelings had been enlisted
by the service I rendered him by plucking him from
the water; and his father had made him aware—if,
indeed, his own conscience had not—of, the meanness
and cruelty he had been guilty of in attacking
such a poor, inoffensive vagabond as I; and the end
was, that Master Tommy was anxious to repair the
mischief he had done, and do me some important
service in return. He straightway contracted a
fiery friendship for me, which he showed in a thousand
different ways; and especially by cramming me
with oranges and sugar-plums, and other infantile
luxuries, such as had never before blessed my lips;
and, what was better still, by appointing me his chief
playmate.
It was Anaxagoras, I think, the philosopher of
Lampsacus, who, being asked at his death-hour, by
the magistrates of the city, what he wished to be
done in commemoration of him, desired they would
give the boys a holiday on the anniversary of his
death, and let them play over his grave. This sentiment
must have been an uncommonly amiable old
gentleman, who had spared the birch in his school,
and was determined the boys of Lampsacus should
be as happy after his death as before. To my mind,
it proves a good deal more, and shows that the philosopher
was a philosopher in earnest, who knew
the influence of childish play—because an institution
of Nature herself—in expanding the powers
of the childish mind; and therefore aimed, in his
festival, as much at the improvement as the happiness
of his youthful heirs. Of the justice and truth
of this remark I am the more strongly persuaded,
as I believe I can trace the first efforts of expansion
in my own spirit to the influence of boyish sports;
and I am convinced that I learned more by playing
leap-frog and cock-horse with Master Tommy Howard
than by thumbing all the hornbooks and primers
his father ever put into my hands.
It must be recollected that the sports of childhood—those
first and truest sources of enjoyment, of
health and of happiness—were vanities I had never
known, nor even dreamed of; all my tender years
having been passed in captivity and servitude, and
every hour and moment devoted to some infernal
drudgery, as killing to the mind as the body. The
smile and laugh of happy vacancy, the shout of merriment,
the whistle, the song, the uproar of play, were
music that had never visited my ears; which were,
indeed seldom invaded by any thing, except abusive
language and the hard palms of my honest skipper.
I was now, for the first time, to be made acquainted
with such joys; and the delight I experienced from
them was only equalled by their happy effects on
my benighted spirit. The change was speedily
manifested in my visage and person, the former of
had hitherto marked it; while the latter took a sudden
start, and grew out of the similitude of a starved
ape, which it had first borne: though, I must confess,
as far as stature is concerned, I have not even
yet entirely got over the effects of my early sufferings.
A still better evidence of the transformation
that had been effected, was soon shown; for little
Tommy now taking upon himself the office of a
schoolmaster, ambitious to succeed in an exploit
which his father had pronounced impracticable, I
was actually, through his instrumentalily, taught to
read; and that before the good doctor dreamed that
the attempt had been made to teach me; and, indeed,
the first intimation he had of the miracle was
when Tommy carried me in triumph before him,
to display the fruits of his skill and enterprise.
The work of regeneration thus commenced by
the son, the parent was determined it should not
languish for want of encouragement on his part;
and the result was that, in a short time, I was translated
from the kitchen to his study, and from thence
to a public school, where it was my good fortune to
make such progress as entirely satisfied my patron;
who from that moment treated me rather as a child
than a poor dependant on his charity. And there
unhappily occurred, soon after, an event which,
while it brought mourning into his family, advanced
me to a still higher niche in his affections. This
was nothing less than the death of poor Tommy,
who, to the eternal grief of his parents, and myself
—for I loved him with all my heart—having now
learned to swim a little, was drowned, while bathing
with other boys in the river. How the catastrophe
happened was not known, as none of his companions
were by him at the moment; and, indeed, he
their sports and gone on shore to dress; when the
sight of his clothes reminded them of his disappearance;
nor was his body ever recovered. He was,
as I have mentioned, an only son—I might almost
have said, an only child; for, though Dr. Howard had
another, a daughter, who was a year older than Tommy,
yet she was, and, from her youth up, had been,
of so frail a constitution, that nothing but her father's
skill and extreme care seemed to keep her
alive, and few believed her term of existence could
extend to many years. The death of Tommy was,
therefore, almost as heavy a blow as if he had been,
in reality, an only child; and it plunged his father
into a kind of despair that lasted several months;
after which he gradually recovered his spirits, and
began to treat me with uncommon marks of regard,
transferring to me in a great degree the affection
which had once been lavished on his son. In this
he was imitated by his wife, an excellent woman,
who had always distinguished me by her favour, and
now carried her benevolence to such a pitch that, as
I have been told, she once even proposed they
should adopt me as their child, and give me their
name; and, although the good doctor did not altogether
consent to carry the matter so far, I was
treated by them both as if the act of affiliation had
really occurred, and also by the world at large—that
is to say, the people of our town, who all considered
that my fortune was now certainly made. My
name was so far changed as to make it read Robin
Day, instead of Robin Rusty; the Day, I presume,
having been borrowed from my skipper.
| CHAPTER III.
Robin Day begins his education, and advances in the opinion of
the world. The adventures of Robin Day | |