 | Tales of a traveller |  |
BUCKTHORNE AND HIS FRIENDS.
LITERARY LIFE.
Among the great variety of characters which
fall in a traveller's way, I became acquainted during
my sojourn in London, with an eccentric
personage of the name of Buckthorne. He was
a literary man, had lived much in the metropolis,
and had acquired a great deal of curious,
though unprofitable knowledge concerning it.
He was a great observer of character, and could
give the natural history of every odd animal that
presented itself in this great wilderness of men.
Finding me very curious about literary life and
literary characters, he took much pains to gratify
my curiosity.
“The literary world of England,” said he to
me one day, “is made up of a number of little
fraternities, each existing merely for itself, and
thinking the rest of the world created only to look
firmament, consisting of a number of systems,
each composed of its own central sun with its
revolving train of moons and satellites, all acting
in the most harmonious concord; but the comparison
fails in part, inasmuch as the literary
world has no general concord. Each system acts
independently of the rest, and indeed considers
all other stars as mere exhalations and transient
meteors, beaming for a while with false fires, but
doomed soon to fall and be forgotten; while its
own luminaries are the lights of the universe,
destined to increase in splendour and to shine
steadily on to immortality.”
“And pray,” said I, “how is a man to get a
peep into one of these systems you talk of? I
presume an intercourse with authors is a kind of
intellectual exchange, where one must bring his
commodities to barter, and always give a quid
pro quo.”
“Pooh, pooh—how you mistake,” said Buckthorne,
smiling: “you must never think to become
popular among wits by shining. They go
the brilliancy of others. I thought as you do
when I first cultivated the society of men of letters,
and never went to a blue stocking coterie
without studying my part before hand as diligently
as an actor. The consequence was, I
soon got the name of an intolerable proser, and
should in a little while have been completely excommunicated
had I not changed my plan of
operations. From thenceforth I became a most
assiduous listener, or if ever I were eloquent, it
was tête-à-tête with an author, in praise of his
own works, or what is nearly as acceptable, in
disparagement of the works of his contemporaries.
If ever he spoke favourably of the productions
of some particular friend, I ventured boldly
to dissent from him, and to prove that his friend
was a blockhead, and much as people say of the
pertinacity and irritability of authors I never
found one to take offence at my contradictions.
No, no, sir, authors are particularly candid in
admitting the faults of their friends.
“Indeed, I was extremely sparing of my remarks
sarcastic observations on the most distinguished
writers of the day. I never ventured to praise
an author that had not been dead at least half a
century; and even then I was rather cautious;
for you must know that many old writers have
been enlisted under the banners of different sects,
and their merits have become as complete topics
of party prejudice and dispute, as the merits of
living statesmen and politicians. Nay, there
have been whole periods of literature absolutely
taboo'd, to use a South Sea phrase. It is, for
example, as much as a man's reputation is worth,
in some circles, to say a word in praise of any
writers of the reign of Charles the Second, or
even of Queen Anne; they being all declared to
be Frenchmen in disguise.”
“And pray, then,” said I, “when am I to
know that I am on safe grounds; being totally
unacquainted with the literary landmarks and
the boundary lines of fashionable taste?”
“Oh,” replied he, “there is fortunately one
ground, on which all the literary world meet
amicably; lay down their weapons, and even run
riot in their excess of good humour, and this is,
the reigns of Elizabeth and James. Here you
may praise away at a venture; here it is `cut
and come again,' and the more obscure the author,
and the more quaint and crabbed his style,
the more your admiration will smack of the real
relish of the connoisseur; whose taste, like that
of an epicure, is always for game that has an
antiquated flavour.
“But,” continued he, “as you seem anxious
to know something of literary society I will take
an opportunity to introduce you to some coterie,
where the talents of the day are assembled. I
cannot promise you, however, that they will be
of the first order. Some how or other, our great
geniuses are not gregarious, they do not go in
flocks; but fly singly in general society. They
prefer mingling, like common men, with the multitude;
and are apt to carry nothing of the author
inferior orders that herd together, acquire
strength and importance by their confederacies,
and bear all the distinctive characteristics of
their species.”
A LITERARY DINNER.
A few days after this conversation with Mr.
Buckthorne, he called upon me, and took me
with him to a regular literary dinner. It was
given by a great bookseller, or rather a company
of booksellers, whose firm surpassed in length
even that of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego.
I was surprised to find between twenty and
thirty guests assembled, most of whom I had
never seen before. Buckthorne explained this
to me by informing me that this was a “business
dinner,” or kind of field day, which the house
gave about twice a year to its authors. It is
true, they did occasionally give snug dinners to
three or four literary men at a time, but then
these were generally select authors; favourites
of the public; such as had arrived at their sixth
and seventh editions. “There are,” said he,
literature, and you may judge tolerably well of
an author's popularity, by the wine his bookseller
gives him. An author crosses the port line
about the third edition and gets into claret, but
when he has reached the sixth and seventh, he
may revel in champaigne and burgundy.”
“And pray,” said I, “how far may these gentlemen
have reached that I see around me; are
any of these claret drinkers?”
“Not exactly, not exactly. You find at these
great dinners the common steady run of authors,
one, two, edition men; or if any others are invited
they are aware that it is a kind of republican
meeting.—You understand me—a meeting of
the republic of letters, and that they must expect
nothing but plain substantial fare.”
These hints enabled me to comprehend more
fully the arrangement of the table. The two
ends were occupied by two partners of the house.
And the host seemed to have adopted Addison's
ideas as to the literary precedence of his guests.
A popular poet had the post of honour, opposite
with plates. A grave looking antiquarian, who
had produced several solid works, which were
much quoted and little read, was treated with
great respect, and seated next to a neat dressy gentleman
in black, who had written a thin, genteel,
hot pressed octavo on political economy, that was
getting into fashion. Several three volume duo-decimo
men of fair currency were placed about
the centre of the table; while the lower end was
taken up with small poets, translators, and authors,
who had not as yet risen into much notice.
The conversation during dinner was by fits and
starts; breaking out here and there in various
parts of the table in small flashes, and ending in
smoke. The poet who had the confidence of a
man on good terms with the world and independent
of his bookseller, was very gay and brilliant,
and said many clever things, which set the partner
next him in a roar, and delighted all the company.
The other partner, however, maintained
his sedateness, and kept carving on, with the air
of a thorough man of business, intent upon the
to me by my friend Buckthorne. He
informed me that the concerns of the house were
admirably distributed among the partners.—
“Thus, for instance,” said he, “the grave gentleman
is the carving partner who attends to the
joints, and the other is the laughing partner who
attends to the jokes.”
The general conversation was chiefly carried
on at the upper end of the table; as the authors
there seemed to possess the greatest courage of
the tongue. As to the crew at the lower end, if
they did not make much figure in talking they
did in eating. Never was there a more determined,
inveterate, thoroughly sustained attack
on the trencher, than by this phalanx of masticators.
When the cloth was removed, and the wine
began to circulate, they grew very merry and jocose
among themselves. Their jokes, however,
if by chance any of them reached the upper end
of the table, seldom produced much effect. Even
the laughing partner did not seem to think it necessary
to honour them with a smile; which my
me that there was a certain degree of popularity
to be obtained, before a bookseller could afford
to laugh at an author's jokes.
Among this crew of questionable gentlemen
thus seated below the salt, my eye singled out
one in particular. He was rather shabbily dressed;
though he had evidently made the most of a
rusty black coat, and wore his shirt frill plaited
and puffed out voluminously at the bosom. His
face was dusky, but florid—perhaps a little too
florid, particularly about the nose, though the
rosy hue gave the greater lustre to a twinkling
black eye. He had a little the look of a boon
companion, with that dash of the poor devil in
it which gives an inexpressibly mellow tone to a
man's humour. I had seldom seen a face of richer
promise; but never was promise so ill kept.
He said nothing; ate and drank with the keen
appetite of a gazetteer, and scarcely stopped to
laugh even at the good jokes from the upper end
of the table. I inquired who he was. Buckthorne
he, “I have seen that face before, but where I
cannot recollect. He cannot be an author of
any note. I suppose some writer of sermons or
grinder of foreign travels.”
After dinner we retired to another room to
take tea and coffee, where we were reinforced
by a cloud of inferior guests. Authors of small
volumes in boards, and pamphlets stitched in
blue paper. These had not as yet arrived to the
importance of a dinner invitation, but were invited
occasionally to pass the evening “in a
friendly way.” They were very respectful to
the partners, and indeed seemed to stand a little
in awe of them; but they paid very devoted
court to the lady of the house, and were extravagantly
fond of the children. I looked round for
the poor devil author in the rusty black coat and
magnificent frill, but he had disappeared immediately
after leaving the table; having a dread,
no doubt, of the glaring light of a drawing room.
Finding nothing farther to interest my attention,
served, leaving the port and the thin, genteel,
hot-pressed, octavo gentlemen, masters of the
field.
THE
CLUB OF QUEER FELLOWS.
I think it was but the very next evening that
in coming out of Covent Garden Theatre with my
eccentric friend Buckthorne, he proposed to give
me another peep at life and character. Finding
me willing for any research of the kind, he took
me through a variety of the narrow courts and
lanes about Covent Garden, until we stopped before
a tavern from which we heard the bursts of
merriment of a jovial party. There would be
a loud peal of laughter, then an interval, then
another peal, as if a prime wag were telling a
story. After a little while there was a song, and
at the close of each stanza a hearty roar and a
vehement thumping on the table.
“This is the place,” whispered Buckthorne.
resort of the small wits, third rate actors, and
newspaper critics of the theatres. Any one can
go in on paying a shilling at the bar for the use
of the club.”
We entered, therefore, without ceremony, and
took our seats at a lone table in a dusky corner
of the room. The club was assembled round a
table, on which stood beverages of various kinds,
according to the taste of the individual. The
members were a set of queer fellows indeed; but
what was my surprise on recognizing in the
prime wit of the meeting the poor devil author
whom I had remarked at the booksellers'
dinner for his promising face and his complete
taciturnity. Matters, however, were entirely
changed with him. There he was a mere
cypher: here he was lord of the ascendant;
the choice spirit, the dominant genius. He sat
at the head of the table with his hat on, and an
eye beaming even more luminously than his nose.
He had a quiz and a fillip for every one, and a
good thing on every occasion. Nothing could
him; and I solemnly declare I have heard much
worse wit even from noblemen. His jokes, it
must be confessed, were rather wet, but they
suited the circle in which he presided. The
company were in that maudlin mood when a
little wit goes a great way. Every time he
opened his lips there was sure to be a roar, and
sometimes before he had time to speak.
We were fortunate enough to enter in time for
a glee composed by him expressly for the club,
and which he sang with two boon companions,
who would have been worthy subjects for Hogarth's
pencil. As they were each provided with
a written copy, I was enabled to procure the
reading of it.
And merrily troll the glee,
For he who won't drink till he wink is an ass,
So neighbour I drink to thee.
Merrily, merrily puddle thy nose,
Until it right rosy shall be;
For a jolly red nose, I speak under the rose,
Is a sign of good company.
We waited until the party broke up, and no
one but the wit remained. He sat at the table
with his legs stretched under it, and wide apart;
his hands in his breeches pockets; his head
drooped upon his breast; and gazing with lack-lustre
countenance on an empty tankard. His
gayety was gone, his fire completely quenched.
My companion approached and startled him
from his fit of brown study, introducing himself
on the strength of their having dined together at
the booksellers'.
“By the way,” said he, “it seems to me I
have seen you before; your face is surely the
face of an old acquaintance, though for the life
of me I cannot tell where I have known you.”
“Very likely,” replied he with a smile; “many
of my old friends have forgotten me. Though,
to tell the truth, my memory in this instance is
as bad as your own. If however it will assist
your recollection in any way, my name is Thomas
Dribble, at your service.”
“What, Tom Dribble, who was at old Birchell's
school in Warwickshire?”
“The same,” said the other, coolly. “Why
then we are old schoolmates, though it's no
wonder you don't recollect me. I was your
junior by several years; don't you recollect little
Jack Buckthorne?”
Here then ensued a scene of school fellow recognition;
and a world of talk about old school
times and school pranks. Mr. Dribble ended by
observing, with a heavy sigh, “that times were
sadly changed since those days.”
“Faith, Mr. Dribble,” said I, “you seem
quite a different man here from what you were
at dinner. I had no idea that you had so much
stuff in you. There you were all silence; but
here you absolutely keep the table in a roar.”
“Ah, my dear sir,” replied he, with a shake
of the head and a shrug of the shoulder, “I'm
a mere glow worm. I never shine by daylight.
Besides, it's a hard thing for a poor devil of an
author to shine at the table of a rich bookseller.
Who do you think would laugh at any
thing I could say, when I had some of the current
wits of the day about me? But here, though a
poor devil, I am among still poorer devils than
and a bel esprit, and all my jokes pass as
sterling gold from the mint.”
“You surely do yourself injustice, sir,” said I;
“I have certainly heard more good things from
you this evening than from any of those beaux
esprits by whom you appear to have been so
daunted.”
“Ah, sir! but they have luck on their side;
they are in the fashion—there's nothing like
being in fashion. A man that has once got
his character up for a wit, is always sure of a
laugh, say what he may. He may utter as
much nonsense as he pleases, and all will pass
current. No one stops to question the coin of a
rich man; but a poor devil cannot pass off either
a joke or a guinea, without its being examined on
both sides. Wit and coin are always doubted
with a threadbare coat.
“For my part,” continued he, giving his hat a
twitch a little more on one side, “for my part, I
hate your fine dinners; there's nothing, sir, like
the freedom of a chop house. I'd rather any time,
than drink claret and eat venison with your cursed
civil, elegant company, who never laugh at a
good joke from a poor devil, for fear of its being
vulgar. A good joke grows in a wet soil; it
flourishes in low places, but withers on your d—d
high, dry grounds. I once kept high company,
sir, until I nearly ruined myself; I grew so dull,
and vapid, and genteel. Nothing saved me but
being arrested by my landlady and thrown into
prison; where a course of catch clubs, eight penny
ale, and poor devil company, manured my
mind and brought it back to itself again.”
As it was now growing late we parted for the
evening; though I felt anxious to know more of
this practical philosopher. I was glad, therefore,
when Buckthorne proposed to have another
meeting to talk over old school times, and inquired
his schoolmate's address. The latter seemed
at first a little shy of naming his lodgings; but
suddenly assuming an air of hardihood—“Green
Arbour court, sir,” exclaimed he—“number—
in Green Arbour court. You must know the
was there Goldsmith wrote his Vicar of Wakefield.
I always like to live in literary haunts.”
I was amused with this whimsical apology for
shabby quarters. On our way homewards Buckthorne
assured me that this Dribble had been the
prime wit and great wag of the school in their
boyish days, and one of those unlucky urchins
denominated bright geniuses. As he perceived
me curious respecting his old schoolmate, he
promised to take me with him in his proposed
visit to Green Arbour court.
A few mornings afterwards he called upon me,
and we set forth on our expedition. He led me
through a variety of singular alleys, and courts,
and blind passages; for he appeared to be profoundly
versed in all the intricate geography of
the metropolis. At length we came out upon
Fleet Market, and traversing it, turned up a narrow
street to the bottom of a long steep flight of
stone steps, named Break-neck Stairs. These,
he told me, led up to Green Arbour court, and
that down them poor Goldsmith might many a
the court, I could not but smile to think in what
out of the way corners genius produces her bantlings!
And the muses, those capricious dames,
who, forsooth, so often refuse to visit palaces,
and deny a single smile to votaries in splendid
studies and gilded drawing rooms,—what holes
and burrows will they frequent to lavish their
favours on some ragged disciple!
This Green Arbour court I found to be a small
square of tall and miserable houses, the very intestines
of which seemed turned inside out, to
judge from the old garments and frippery that
fluttered from every window. It appeared to
be a region of washerwomen, and lines were
stretched about the little square, on which clothes
were dangling to dry. Just as we entered the
square, a scuffle took place between two virago's
about a disputed right to a washtub, and immediately
the whole community was in a hubbub.
Heads in mob caps popped out of every window,
and such a clamour of tongues ensued that I
was fain to stop my ears. Every Amazon took
brandished her arms dripping with soapsuds, and
fired away from her window as from the embrazure
of a fortress; while the swarms of children
nestled and cradled in every procreant chamber
of this hive, waking with the noise, set up their
shrill pipes to swell the general concert.
Poor Goldsmith! what a time must he have
had of it, with his quiet disposition and nervous
habits, penned up in this den of noise and vulgarity.
How strange that while every sight
and sound was sufficient to imbitter the heart
and fill it with misanthropy, his pen should be
dropping the honey of Hybla. Yet it is more
than probable that he drew many of his inimitable
pictures of low life from the scenes which
surrounded him in this abode. The circumstance
of Mrs. Tibbs being obliged to wash her husband's
two shirts in a neighbour's house, who refused
to lend her washtub, may have been no
sport of fancy, but a fact passing under his own
eye. His landlady may have sat for the picture,
and Beau Tibbs' scanty wardrobe have been a
fac simile of his own.
It was with some difficulty that we found our
way to Dribble's lodgings. They were up two
pair of stairs, in a room that looked upon the
court, and when we entered he was seated on the
edge of his bed, writing at a broken table. He
received us, however, with a free, open, poor
devil air, that was irresistible. It is true he did
at first appear slightly confused; buttoned up his
waistcoat a little higher and tucked in a stray
frill of linen. But he recollected himself in an
instant; gave a half swagger, half leer, as he
stepped forth to receive us; drew a three-legged
stool for Mr. Buckthorne; pointed me to a lumbering
old damask chair that looked like a dethroned
monarch in exile, and bade us welcome
to his garret.
We soon got engaged in conversation. Buckthorne
and he had much to say about early
school scenes; and as nothing opens a man's
heart more than recollections of the kind we
soon drew from him a brief outline of his literary
career.
THE
POOR DEVIL AUTHOR.
I began life unluckily by being the wag and
bright fellow at school; and I had the farther
misfortune of becoming the great genius of my
native village. My father was a country attorney,
and intended that I should succeed him in
business; but I had too much genius to study,
and he was too fond of my genius to force it into
the traces. So I fell into bad company and took
to bad habits. Do not mistake me. I mean that
I fell into the company of village literati and village
blues, and took to writing village poetry.
It was quite the fashion in the village to be
literary. We had a little knot of choice spirits
who assembled frequently together, formed ourselves
into a Literary, Scientific and Philosophical
philos in existence. Every one had a great
character assigned him, suggested by some casual
habit or affectation. One heavy fellow drank
an enormous quantity of tea; rolled in his arm
chair, talked sententiously, pronounced dogmatically,
and was considered a second Dr. Johnson;
another, who happened to be a curate, uttered
coarse jokes, wrote doggerel rhymes, and was the
Swift of our association. Thus we had also our
Popes, and Goldsmiths, and Addisons, and a
blue stocking lady whose drawing room we frequented,
who corresponded about nothing with
all the world, and wrote letters with the stiffness
and formality of a printed book, was cried up as
another Mrs. Montagu. I was, by common consent,
the juvenile prodigy, the poetical youth,
the great genius, the pride and hope of the village,
through whom it was to become one day as celebrated
as Stratford on Avon.
My father died and left me his blessing and
his business. His blessing brought no money
into my pocket; and as to his business it soon
could not attend to law; and my clients, though
they had great respect for my talents, had no
faith in a poetical attorney.
I lost my business therefore, spent my money,
and finished my poem. It was the Pleasures of
Melancholy, and was cried up to the skies by the
whole circle. The Pleasures of Imagination, the
Pleasures of Hope, and the Pleasures of Memory,
though each had placed its author in the first
rank of poets, were blank prose in comparison.
Our Mrs. Montagu would cry over it from beginning
to end. It was pronounced by all the
members of the Literary, Scientific and Philosophical
Society, the greatest poem of the age, and
all anticipated the noise it would make in the
great world. There was not a doubt but the
London booksellers would be mad after it, and
the only fear of my friends was, that I would
make a sacrifice by selling it too cheap. Every
time they talked the matter over they increased
the price. They reckoned up the great sums
given for the poems of certain popular writers,
all put together, and ought to be paid for accordingly.
For my part, I was modest in my expectations,
and determined that I would be satisfied
with a thousand guineas. So I put my
poem in my pocket and set off for London.
My journey was joyous. My heart was light
as my purse, and my head full of anticipations of
fame and fortune. With what swelling pride
did I cast my eyes upon old London from the
heights of Highgate. I was like a general looking
down upon a place he expects to conquer.
The great metropolis lay stretched before me,
buried under a home-made cloud of murky
smoke, that wrapped it from the brightness of a
sunny day, and formed for it a kind of artificial
bad weather. At the outskirts of the city,
away to the west, the smoke gradually decreased
until all was clear and sunny, and the view
stretched uninterrupted to the blue line of the
Kentish Hills.
My eye turned fondly to where the mighty
cupola of St. Paul's swelled dimly through this
realm of learning that lies about its base. How
soon should the Pleasures of Melancholy throw
this world of booksellers and printers into a bustle
of business and delight! How soon should
I hear my name repeated by printers' devils
throughout Pater Noster Row, and Angel Court,
and Ave Maria Lane, until Amen corner should
echo back the sound!
Arrived in town, I repaired at once to the
most fashionable publisher. Every new author
patronizes him of course. In fact, it had been
determined in the village circle that he should
be the fortunate man. I cannot tell you how
vaingloriously I walked the streets; my head
was in the clouds. I felt the airs of heaven
playing about it, and fancied it already encircled
by a halo of literary glory. As I passed by the
windows of bookshops, I anticipated the time
when my work would be shining among the
hotpressed wonders of the day; and my face,
scratched on copper, or cut in wood, figuring in
Moore.
When I applied at the publisher's house there
was something in the loftiness of my air, and the
dinginess of my dress, that struck the clerks
with reverence. They doubtless took me for
some person of consequence, probably a digger
of Greek roots, or a penetrator of pyramids. A
proud man in a dirty shirt is always an imposing
character in the world of letters; one must feel
intellectually secure before he can venture to
dress shabbily; none but a great scholar or a
great genius dares to be dirty; so I was ushered
at once to the sanctum sanctorum of this high
priest of Minerva.
The publishing of books is a very different
affair now a-days, from what it was in the time
of Bernard Lintot. I found the publisher a
fashionably dressed man, in an elegant drawing
room, furnished with sofas, and portraits of
celebrated authors, and cases of splendidly bound
books. He was writing letters at an elegant
table. This was transacting business in style.
publications that issued from it. I rejoiced at
the choice I had made of a publisher, for I always
liked to encourage men of taste and spirit.
I stepped up to the table with the lofty poetical
port that I had been accustomed to maintain
in our village circle; though I threw in it something
of a patronizing air, such as one feels when
about to make a man's fortune. The publisher
paused with his pen in his hand, and seemed
waiting in mute suspense to know what was to
be announced by so singular an apparition.
I put him at his ease in a moment, for I felt
that I had but to come, see, and conquer. I made
known my name, and the name of my poem;
produced my precious roll of blotted manuscript,
laid it on the table with an emphasis, and told
him at once, to save time and come directly to
the point, the price was one thousand guineas.
I had given him no time to speak, nor did he
seem so inclined. He continued looking at me
for a moment with an air of whimsical perplexity;
scanned me from head to foot; looked down at
to a chair; and whistling softly to himself, went
on writing his letter.
I sat for some time waiting his reply, supposing
he was making up his mind; but he only
paused occasionally to take a fresh dip of ink;
to stroke his chin or the tip of his nose, and then
resumed his writing. It was evident his mind
was intently occupied upon some other subject;
but I had no idea that any other subject should
be attended to and my poem lie unnoticed on the
table. I had supposed that every thing would
make way for the Pleasures of Melancholy.
My gorge at length rose within me. I took up
my manuscript; thrust it into my pocket, and
walked out of the room; making some noise as
I went, to let my departure be heard. The publisher,
however, was too much busied in minor
concerns to notice it. I was suffered to walk
down stairs without being called back. I sallied
forth into the street, but no clerk was sent after
me; nor did the publisher call after me from the
drawing room window. I have been told since,
I leave you to judge how much he was in the
wrong in his opinion.
When I turned the corner my crest fell. I
cooled down in my pride and my expectations,
and reduced my terms with the next bookseller
to whom I applied. I had no better success: nor
with a third; nor with a fourth. I then desired
the booksellers to make an offer themselves; but
the deuce an offer would they make. They told
me poetry was a mere drug; every body wrote
poetry; the market was overstocked with it.
And then, they said, the title of my poem was not
taking: that pleasures of all kinds were worn
threadbare; nothing but horrors did now a-days,
and even these were almost worn out. Tales of
pirates, robbers, and bloody Turks might answer
tolerably well; but then they must come from
some established well-known name, or the public
would not look at them.
At last I offered to leave my poem with a bookseller
to read it and judge for himself. “Why,
really, my dear Mr.—a—a—I forget your name,”
gaiters, “really, sir, we are so pressed with
business just now, and have so many manuscripts
on hand to read, that we have not time to look
at any new production, but if you can call again
in a week or two, or say the middle of next
month, we may be able to look over your writings
and give you an answer. Don't forget, the
month after next—good morning, sir—happy to
see you any time you are passing this way”—so
saying he bowed me out in the civilest way imaginable.
In short, sir, instead of an eager competition
to secure my poem I could not even get
it read! In the mean time I was harassed by
letters from my friends, wanting to know when
the work was to appear; who was to be my publisher;
but above all things warning me not to
let it go too cheap.
There was but one alternative left. I determined
to publish the poem myself; and to have
my triumph over the booksellers, when it should
become the fashion of the day. I accordingly
published the Pleasures of Melancholy and ruined
and to my friends in the country, not one,
I believe, ever left the bookseller's warehouse.
The printer's bill drained my purse, and the only
notice that was taken of my work was contained
in the advertisements paid for by myself.
I could have borne all this, and have attributed
it as usual to the mismanagement of the publisher,
or the want of taste in the public; and
could have made the usual appeal to posterity:
but my village friends would not let me rest in
quiet. They were picturing me to themselves
feasting with the great, communing with the literary,
and in the high course of fortune and renown.
Every little while, some one came to
me with a letter of introduction from the village
circle, recommending him to my attentions, and
requesting that I would make him known in society;
with a hint that an introduction to the
house of a celebrated literary nobleman would be
extremely agreeable.
I determined, therefore, to change my lodgings,
drop my correspondence, and disappear
Besides, I was anxious to make one more poetic
attempt. I was by no means disheartened by
the failure of my first. My poem was evidently
too didactic. The public was wise enough. It
no longer read for instruction. “They want
horrors, do they?” said I, “I'faith, then they
shall have enough of them” So I looked out
for some quiet retired place, where I might be
out of reach of my friends, and have leisure to
cook up some delectable dish of poetical “hellbroth.”
I had some difficulty in finding a place to my
mind, when chance threw me in the way of Canonbury
Castle. It is an ancient brick tower,
hard by “merry Islington;” the remains of a
hunting seat of Queen Elizabeth, where she took
the pleasures of the country, when the neighbourhood
was all woodland. What gave it particular
interest in my eyes, was the circumstance
that it had been the residence of a poet. It was
here Goldsmith resided when he wrote his Deserted
Village. I was shown the very apartment.
the castle, with pannelled wainscots and gothic
windows. I was pleased with its air of antiquity,
and with its having been the residence of poor
Goldy. “Goldsmith was a pretty poet,” said I
to myself, “a very pretty poet; though rather
of the old school. He did not think and feel so
strongly as is the fashion now a-day: but had
he lived in these times of hot hearts and hot
heads, he would have written quite differently.”
In a few days I was quietly established in my
new quarters; my books all arranged, my writing
desk placed by a window looking out into
the fields; and I felt as snug as Robinson Crusoe,
when he had finished his bower. For several
days I enjoyed all the novelty of change and the
charms which grace a new lodgings before one
has found out their defects. I rambled about the
fields where I fancied Goldsmith had rambled.
I explored merry Islington; ate my solitary dinner
at the Black Bull, which according to tradition
was a country seat of Sir Walter Raleigh,
and would sit and sip my wine and muse on old
had been held.
All this did very well for a few days: I was
stimulated by novelty; inspired by the associations
awakened in my mind by these curious
haunts, and began to think I felt the spirit of composition
stirring within me; but Sunday came,
and with it the whole city world, swarming
about Canonbury Castle. I could not open my
window but I was stunned with shouts and noises
from the cricket ground The late quiet road
beneath my window was alive with the tread of
feet and clack of tongues; and to complete my
misery, I found that my quiet retreat was absolutely
a “show house!” the tower and its contents
being shown to strangers at sixpence a
head.
There was a perpetual tramping up stairs of
citizens and their families, to look about the
country from the top of the tower, and to take a
peep at the city through the telescope, to try if
they could discern their own chimneys. And
then, in the midst of a vein of thought, or a moment
ideas put to flight, by my intolerable landlady's
tapping at the door, and asking me, if I would
“jist please to let a lady and gentleman come in
to take a look at Mr. Goldsmith's room.”
If you know any thing what an author's
study is, and what an author is himself, you
must know that there was no standing this. I
put a positive interdict on my rooms being exhibited;
but then it was shown when I was
absent, and my papers put in confusion; and on
returning home one day, I absolutely found a
cursed tradesman and his daughters gaping over
my manuscripts; and my landlady in a panic at
my appearance. I tried to make out a little
longer by taking the key in my pocket, but it
would not do. I overheard mine hostess one
day telling some of her customers on the stairs
that the room was occupied by an author, who
was always in a tantrum if interrupted; and I
immediately perceived, by a slight noise at the
door, that they were peeping at me through the
key hole. By the head of Apollo, but this was
and my ambition of the stare of the million, I
had no idea of being exhibited by retail, at sixpence
a head, and that through a key hole. So
I bade adieu to Canonbury Castle, merry Islington,
and the haunts of poor Goldsmith, without
having advanced a single line in my labours.
My next quarters were at a small white-washed
cottage, which stands not far from Hempstead,
just on the brow of a hill, looking over Chalk
farm, and Cambden town, remarkable for the
rival houses of Mother Red Cap and Mother
Black Cap; and so across Crackskull common
to the distant city.
The cottage is in no wise remarkable in itself;
but I regarded it with reverence, for it had been
the asylum of a persecuted author. Hither poor
Steele had retreated and lain perdue when persecuted
by creditors and bailiffs; those immemorial
plagues of authors and free spirited gentlemen;
and here he had written many numbers
of the Spectator. It was from hence, too, that
he had despatched those little notes to his lady,
the fond husband, the careless gentleman, and
the shifting spendthrift, were so oddly blended.
I thought, as I first eyed the window of his
apartment, that I could sit within it and write
volumes.
No such thing! It was haymaking season,
and, as ill luck would have it, immediately opposite
the cottage was a little alehouse with the
sign of the load of hay. Whether it was there
in Steele's time or not I cannot say; but it set all
attempt at conception or inspiration at defiance.
It was the resort of all the Irish haymakers who
mow the broad fields in the neighbourhood; and
of drovers and teamsters who travel that road.
Here would they gather in the endless summer
twilight, or by the light of the harvest moon, and
sit round a table at the door; and tipple, and
laugh, and quarrel, and fight, and sing drowsy
songs, and dawdle away the hours until the deep
solemn notes of St. Paul's clock would warn the
varlets home.
In the day time I was still less able to write.
work in the fields, and the perfume of the newmown
hay brought with it the recollection of my
native fields. So instead of remaining in my
room to write, I went wandering about Primrose
Hill and Hempstead Heights and Shepherd's
Field, and all those Arcadian scenes so celebrated
by London bards. I cannot tell you how
many delicious hours I have passed lying on the
cocks of new-mown hay, on the pleasant slopes
of some of those hills, inhaling the fragrance of
the fields, while the summer fly buzzed about
me, or the grasshopper leaped into my bosom;
and how I have gazed with half-shut eye upon
the smoky mass of London, and listened to the
distant sound of its population, and pitied the
poor sons of earth, toiling in its bowels, like
Gnomes in “the dark gold mine.”
People may say what they please about Cockney
pastorals; but after all, there is a vast deal
of rural beauty about the western vicinity of
London; and any one that has looked down
upon the valley of Westend, with its soft bosom
dotted with cattle; the steeple of Hempstead
rising among rich groves on the brow of the hill,
and the learned height of Harrow in the distance;
will confess that never has he seen a
more absolutely rural landscape in the vicinity
of a great metropolis.
Still, however, I found myself not a whit the
better off for my frequent change of lodgings;
and I began to discover that in literature, as in
trade, the old proverb holds good, “a rolling
stone gathers no moss.”
The tranquil beauty of the country played
the very vengeance with me. I could not
mount my fancy into the termagant vein. I
could not conceive, amidst the smiling landscape,
a scene of blood and murder; and the smug citizens
in breeches and gaiters, put all ideas of
heroes and bandits out of my brain. I could
think of nothing but dulcet subjects. “The
pleasures of spring”—“the pleasures of solitude”—“the
pleasures of tranquillity”—“the
pleasures of sentiment”—nothing but pleasures;
of melancholy” too strongly in my recollection
to be beguiled by them.
Chance at length befriended me. I had frequently
in my ramblings loitered about Hempstead
Hill; which is a kind of Parnassus of the
metropolis. At such times I occasionally took
my dinner at Jack Straw's Castle. It is a country
inn so named. The very spot where that notorious
rebel and his followers held their council
of war. It is a favourite resort of citizens when
rurally inclined, as it commands fine fresh air
and a good view of the city.
I sat one day in the public room of this inn,
ruminating over a beefsteak and a pint of port,
when my imagination kindled up with ancient
and heroic images. I had long wanted a
theme and a hero; both suddenly broke upon my
mind; I determined to write a poem on the history
of Jack Straw. I was so full of my subject
that I was fearful of being anticipated. I
wondered that none of the poets of the day, in
their researches after ruffian heroes, had ever
blotted several sheets of paper with choice
floating thoughts, and battles, and descriptions,
to be ready at a moment's warning. In a few
days time I sketched out the skeleton of my
poem, and nothing was wanting but to give it
flesh and blood. I used to take my manuscript
and stroll about Caen Wood, and read aloud; and
would dine at the castle, by way of keeping up
the vein of thought.
I was taking a meal there, one day, at a rather
late hour, in the public room. There was no
other company but one man, who sat enjoying
his pint of port at a window, and noticing the
passers by. He was dressed in a green shooting
coat. His countenance was strongly marked.
He had a hooked nose, a romantic eye, excepting
that it had something of a squint; and altogether,
as I thought, a poetical style of head. I was
quite taken with the man, for you must know I
am a little of a physiognomist: I set him down
at once for either a poet or a philosopher.
As I like to make new acquaintances, considering
every man a volume of human nature, I
soon fell into conversation with the stranger,
who, I was pleased to find, was by no means
difficult of access. After I had dined, I joined
him at the window, and we became so sociable
that I proposed a bottle of wine together; to
which he most cheerfully assented.
I was too full of my poem to keep long quiet
on the subject, and began to talk about the origin
of the tavern, and the history of Jack Straw.
I found my new acquaintance to be perfectly at
home on the topic, and to jump exactly with
my humour in every respect. I became elevated
by the wine and the conversation. In the fullness
of an author's feelings, I told him of my
projected poem, and repeated some passages;
and he was in raptures. He was evidently of a
strong poetical turn.
“Sir,” said he, filling my glass at the same
time, “our poets don't look at home. I don't
see why we need go out of old England for
robbers and rebels to write about. I like your
like him, sir. I like him exceedingly. He's
English to the back bone, damme. Give me
honest old England, after all; them's my sentiments,
sir!”
“I honour your sentiments,” cried I zealously.
“They are exactly my own. An English
ruffian is as good a ruffian for poetry as
any in Italy or Germany, or the Archipelago;
but it is hard to make our poets think so.”
“More shame for them!” replied the man in
green. “What a plague would they have?
What have we to do with their Archipelago's of
Italy and Germany? Haven't we heaths and
commons and high-ways on our own little island?
Aye, and stout fellows to pad the hoof over them
too? Come sir, my service to you—I agree
with you perfectly.”
“Poets in old times had right notions on this
subject,” continued I; “witness the fine old ballads
about Robin Hood, Allen A'Dale, and
other staunch blades of yore.”
“Right, sir, right,” interrupted he. “Robin
and never flinch.”
“Ah, sir,” said I, “they had famous bands of
robbers in the good old times. Those were glorious
poetical days. The merry crew of Sherwood
Forest, who led such a roving picturesque
life, “under the greenwood tree.” I have often
wished to visit their haunts, and tread the scenes
of the exploits of Friar Tuck, and Clym of the
Clough, and Sir William of Cloudeslie.”
“Nay, sir,” said the gentleman in green, “we
have had several very pretty gangs since their day.
Those gallant dogs that kept about the great
heaths in the neighbourhood of London; about
Bagshot, and Hounslow, and Black Health, for
instance—come sir, my service to you. You
don't drink.”
“I suppose,” said I, emptying my glass—“I
suppose you have heard of the famous Turpin,
who was born in this very village of Hempstead,
and who used to lurk with his gang in Epping
Forest, about a hundred years since.”
“Have I?” cried he—“to be sure I have! A
we used to call him. A famous
fine fellow, sir.”
“Well sir,” continued I, “I have visited Waltham
Abbey, and Chinkford Church, merely
from the stories I heard, when a boy, of his exploits
there, and I have searched Epping Forest
for the cavern where he used to conceal himself.
You must know,” added I, “that I am a sort of
amateur of highwaymen. They were dashing,
daring fellows; the last apologies that we had for
the knights errants of yore. Ah, sir! the country
has been sinking gradually into tameness and
common place. We are losing the old English
spirit. The bold knights of the post have all
dwindled down into lurking footpads and sneaking
pick-pockets. There's no such thing as a dashing
gentleman-like robbery committed now-a-days
on the king's highway. A man may roll
from one end of England to the other in a drowsy
coach or jingling post-chaise without any other
adventure than that of being occasionally overturned,
sleeping in damp sheets, or having an ill
cooked dinner.
“We hear no more of public coaches being stopped
and robbed by a well-mounted gang of resolute
fellows with pistols in their hands and crapes
over their faces. What a pretty poetical incident
was it for example in domestic life, for a
family carriage, on its way to a country seat, to
be attacked about dusk; the old gentleman eased
of his purse and watch, the ladies of their necklaces
and ear-rings, by a politely spoken highwayman
on a blood mare, who afterwards leaped
the hedge and gallopped across the country,
to the admiration of Miss Carolina the daughter,
who would write a long and romantic account
of the adventure to her friend Miss Juliana in
town. Ah, sir! we meet with nothing of such
incidents now-a-days!”
“That, sir,”—said my companion, taking advantage
of a pause, when I stopped to recover
breath and to take a glass of wine, which he
had just poured out—“that sir, craving your
pardon, is not owing to any want of old English
pluck. It is the effect of this cursed system of
banking. People do not travel with bags of
notes and drafts on bankers. To rob a coach is
like catching a crow; where you have nothing
but carrion flesh and feathers for your pains.
But a coach in old times, sir, was as rich as a
Spanish galleon. It turned out the yellow boys
bravely; and a private carriage was a cool hundred
or two at least.”
I cannot express how much I was delighted
with the sallies of my new acquaintance. He
told me that he often frequented the castle, and
would be glad to know more of me; and I promised
myself many a pleasant afternoon with
him, when I should read him my poem, as it
proceeded, and benefit by his remarks; for it
was evident he had the true poetical feeling.
“Come, sir!” said he, pushing the bottle,
“Damme I like you!—You're a man after my
own heart; I'm cursed slow in making new acquaintances
in general. One must stand on the
reserve, you know. But when I meet with a
man of your kidney, damme my heart jumps
at once to him. Them's my sentiments, sir.
one can drink it now-a-days without treason!”
“With all my heart,” said I gayly, “and
Dick Turpin's into the bargain!”
“Ah, sir!” said the man in green, those are
the kind of men for poetry. The Newgate kalendar,
sir! the Newgate kalendar is your only
reading! There's the place to look for bold
deeds and dashing fellows.
We were so much pleased with each other
that we sat until a late hour. I insisted on paying
the bill, for both my purse and my heart
were full; and I agreed that he should pay the
score at our next meeting. As the coaches had
all gone that run between Hempstead and London
he had to return on foot. He was so delighted
with the idea of my poem that he could
talk of nothing else. He made me repeat such
passages as I could remember, and though I did
it in a very mangled manner, having a wretched
memory, yet he was in raptures.
Every now and then he would break out with
but would rub his hands and exclaim,
“By Jupiter that's fine! that's noble! Damme,
sir, if I can conceive how you hit upon such
ideas!”
I must confess I did not always relish his misquotations,
which sometimes made absolute nonsense
of the passages; but what author stands
upon trifles when he is praised? Never had I
spent a more delightful evening. I did not perceive
how the time flew. I could not bear to
separate, but continued walking on, arm in arm
with him past my lodgings, through Cambden
town, and across Crackscull Common, talking
the whole way about my poem.
When we were half way across the common
he interrupted me in the midst of a quotation by
telling me that this had been a famous place for
footpads, and was still occasionally infested by
them; and that a man had recently been shot
there in attempting to defend himself.
“The more fool he!” cried I. “A man is an
idiot to risk life, or even limb, to save a paltry
that of a duel, where one's honour is concerned.
“For my part,” added I, “I should never think
of making resistance against one of those desperadoes.”
“Say you so?” cried my friend in green,
turning suddenly upon me, and putting a pistol
to my breast, “Why, then have at you my lad!
—come, disburse! empty! unsack!”
In a word, I found that the muse had played
me another of her tricks, and had betrayed me
into the hands of a footpad. There was no
time to parley; he made me turn my pockets
inside out; and hearing the sound of distant footsteps,
he made one fell swoop upon purse, watch
and all, gave me a thwack over my unlucky
pate that laid me sprawling on the ground; and
scampered away with his booty.
I saw no more of my friend in green until a
year or two afterwards; when I caught a sight
of his poetical countenance among a crew of
scapegraces, heavily ironed, who were on the
way for transportation. He recognized me at
me how I came on with the history of Jack
Straw's castle.
The catastrophe at Crackscull Common put
an end to my summer's campaign. I was cured
of my poetical enthusiasm for rebels robbers and
highwaymen. I was put out of conceit of my
subject, and what was worse, I was lightened of
my purse, in which was almost every farthing I
had in the world. So I abandoned Sir Richard
Steele's cottage in despair, and crept into less
celebrated, though no less poetical and airy lodgings
in a garret in town.
I see you are growing weary, so I will not detain
you with any more of my luckless attempts
to get astride of Pegasus. Still I could not consent
to give up the trial and abandon those dreams
of renown in which I had indulged. How should
I ever be able to look the literary circle of my
native village in the face, if I were so completely
to falsify their predictions. For some time longer,
therefore, I continued to write for fame, and of
besides being in continual risk of starvation.
I have many a time strolled sorrowfully along,
with a sad heart and an empty stomach, about
five o'clock, and looked wistfully down the areas
in the west end of the town; and seen through
the kitchen windows the fires gleaming, and the
joints of meat turning on the spits and dripping
with gravy; and the cook maids beating up puddings,
or trussing turkeys, and have felt for the
moment that if I could but have the run of one
of those kitchens, Apollo and the muses might
have the hungry heights of Parnassus for me.
Oh sir! talk of meditations among the tombs—
they are nothing so melancholy as the meditations
of a poor devil without penny in pouch, along a
line of kitchen windows towards dinner time.
At length, when almost reduced to famine and
despair, the idea all at once entered my head, that
perhaps I was not so clever a fellow as the village
and myself had supposed. It was the salvation
of me. The moment the idea popped into
my brain, it brought conviction and comfort with
fame to those who could live on air; took
to writing for mere bread, and have ever since
led a very tolerable life of it. There is no man
of letters so much at his ease, sir, as he that has
no character to gain or lose. I had to train myself
to it a little however, and to clip my wings
short at first, or they would have carried me up
into poetry in spite of myself. So I determined
to begin by the opposite extreme, and abandoning
the higher regions of the craft I came plump
down to the lowest, and turned creeper.
“Creeper,” interrupted I, “and pray what is
that?” Oh sir! I see you are ignorant of the
language of the craft; a creeper is one who furnishes
the newspapers with paragraphs at so much
a line; one that goes about in quest of misfortunes;
attends the Bow-street office; the courts of justice
and every other den of mischief and iniquity. We
are paid at the rate of a penny a line, and as we can
sell the same paragraph to almost every paper,
we sometimes pick up a very decent day's work.
Now and then the muse is unkind, or the day
and sometimes the unconscionable editors will
clip our paragraphs when they are a little too
rhetorical, and snip off twopence or threepence
at a go. I have many a time had my pot of
porter snipped off of my dinner in this way; and
have had to dine with dry lips. However, I
cannot complain. I rose gradually in the lower
ranks of the craft, and am now I think in the
most comfortable region of literature.
“And pray,” said I, “what may you be at
present?”
“At present,” said he, “I am a regular job
writer, and turn my hand to any thing. I work
up the writings of others at so much a sheet; turn
off translations; write second rate articles to fill
up reviews and magazines; compile travels and
voyages, and furnish theatrical criticisms for the
newspapers. All this authorship, you perceive,
is anonymous; it gives no reputation, except
among the trade, where I am considered an author
of all work, and am always sure of employ.
That's the only reputation I want. I sleep
leave immortal fame to those that choose to
fret and fight about it. Take my word for it,
the only happy author in this world is he who
is below the care of reputation.
The preceding anecdotes of Buckthorne's early
schoolmate, and a variety of peculiarities which
I had remarked in himself, gave me a strong
curiosity to know something of his own history.
There was a dash of careless good humour
about him that pleased me exceedingly, and at
times a whimsical tinge of melancholy ran
through his humour that gave it an additional
relish. He had evidently been a little chilled
and buffeted by fortune, without being soured
thereby, as some fruits become mellower and
sweeter, from having been bruised or frost bitten.
He smiled when I expressed my desire. “I have
no great story,” said he, “to relate. A mere
you shall have one epoch of it, by which you
may judge of the rest. And so, without any
farther prelude, he gave me the following anecdotes
of his early adventures.
BUCKTHORNE,
OR THE
YOUNG MAN OF GREAT EXPECTATIONS.
I was born to very little property, but to great
expectations; which is perhaps one of the most
unlucky fortunes that a man can be born to. My
father was a country gentleman, the last of a
very ancient and honourable but decayed family,
and resided in an old hunting lodge in Warwickshire.
He was a keen sportsman and lived
to the extent of his moderate income, so that I
had little to expect from that quarter; but then
I had a rich uncle by the mother's side, a penurious
accumulating curmudgeon, who it was confidently
expected would make me his heir; because
he was an old bachelor; because I was
named after him, and because he hated all the
world except myself.
He was, in fact, an inveterate hater, a miser
even in misanthropy, and hoarded up a grudge
as he did a guinea. Thus, though my mother
was an only sister, he had never forgiven her
marriage with my father, against whom he had
a cold, still, immoveable pique, which had lain
at the bottom of his heart, like a stone in a well,
ever since they had been school boys together.
My mother, however, considered me as the intermediate
being that was to bring every thing
again into harmony, for she looked upon me as
a prodigy—God bless her! My heart overflows
whenever I recall her tenderness: she was the
most excellent, the most indulgent of mothers.
I was her only child, it was a pity she had no
more, for she had fondness of heart enough to
have spoiled a dozen!
I was sent, at an early age to a public school
sorely against my mother's wishes, but my
father insisted that it was the only way to make
boys hardy. The school was kept by a conscientious
prig of the ancient system, who did
his duty by the boys intrusted to his care; that is
get our lessons. We were put into classes and thus
flogged on in droves along the highways of
knowledge, in much the same manner as cattle
are driven to market, where those that are heavy
in gait or short in leg have to suffer for the superior
alertness or longer limbs of their companions.
For my part, I confess it with shame, I was
an incorrigible laggard. I have always had the
poetical feeling, that is to say, I have always
been an idle fellow and prone to play the vagabond.
I used to get away from my books
and school whenever I could, and ramble about
the fields. I was surrounded by seductions for
such a temperament. The school house was
an old fashioned white-washed mansion of wood
and plaister, standing on the skirts of a beautiful
village. Close by it was the venerable
church with a tall Gothic spire. Before it
spread a lovely green valley, with a little stream
glistening along through willow groves; while
a line of blue hills that bounded the landscape
fairy land that lay beyond.
In spite of all the scourgings I suffered at that
school to make me love my book, I cannot but
look back upon the place with fondness. Indeed,
I considered this frequent flaggellation as the
common lot of humanity, and the regular mode
in which scholars were made. My kind mother
used to lament over my details of the sore
trials I underwent in the cause of learning; but
my father turned a deaf ear to her expostulations.
He had been flogged through school himself, and
swore there was no other way of making a man
of parts; though, let me speak it with all due reverence,
my father was but an indifferent illustration
of his own theory, for he was considered
a grievous blockhead.
My poetical temperament evinced itself at a very
early period. The village church was attended
every Sunday by a neighbouring squire—the
lord of the manor, whose park stretched quite
to the village, and whose spacious country seat
seemed to take the church under its protection.
been consecrated to him instead of to the Deity.
The parish clerk bowed low before him, and the
vergers humbled themselves into the dust in his
presence. He always entered a little late and
with some stir, striking his cane emphatically
on the ground; swaying his hat in his hand,
and looking loftily to the right and left, as he
walked slowly up the aisle, and the parson, who
always ate his Sunday dinner with him, never
commenced service until he appeared. He sat
with his family in a large pew gorgeously lined,
humbling himself devoutly on velvet cushions, and
reading lessons of meekness and lowliness of
spirit out of splended gold and morocco prayer
books. Whenever the parson spoke of the difficulty
of a rich man's entering the kingdom of
heaven, the eyes of the congregation would turn
towards the “grand pew,” and I thought the
squire seemed pleased with the application.
The pomp of this pew and the aristocratical
air of the family struck my imagination wonderfully,
and I fell desperately in love with a little
age This freak of fancy made me more truant
from my studies than ever. I used to stroll
about the squire's park, and would lurk near the
house, to catch glimpses of this little damsel at
the windows, or playing about the lawns, or
walking out with her governess.
I had not enterprize, or impudence enough to
venture from my concealment; indeed, I felt like
an arrant poacher, until I read one or two of
Ovid's Metamorphoses, when I pictured myself
as some sylvan deity, and she a coy wood
nymph of whom I was in pursuit. There is
something extremely delicious in these early
awakenings of the tender passion. I can feel
even at this moment, the thrilling of my boyish
bosom, whenever by chance I caught a
glimpse of her white frock fluttering among the
shrubbery. I now began to read poetry. I carried
about in my bosom a volume of Waller,
which I had purloined from my mother's library;
and I applied to my little fair one all the compliments
lavished upon Sacharissa.
At length I danced with her at a school ball.
I was so awkward a booby, that I dared scarcely
speak to her; I was filled with awe and embarrassment
in her presence; but I was so inspired
that my poetical temperament for the first time
broke out in verse; and I fabricated some glowing
lines, in which I berhymed the little lady
under the favourite name of Sacharissa. I slipped
the verses, trembling and blushing, into her
hand the next Sunday as she came out of church.
The little prude handed them to her mamma;
the mamma handed them to the squire; the
squire, who had no soul for poetry, sent them in
dudgeon to the school master; and the school
master, with a barbarity worthy of the dark ages,
gave me a sound and peculiarly humiliating flogging
for thus trespassing upon Parnassus.
This was a sad outset for a votary of the muse.
It ought to have cured me of my passion for
poetry; but it only confirmed it, for I felt the
spirit of a martyr rising within me. What was
as well, perhaps, it cured me of my passion for
the young lady; for I felt so indignant at the ignominious
her charms, that I could not hold up my head in
church.
Fortunately for my wounded sensibility, the
midsummer holydays came on, and I returned
home. My mother, as usual, inquired into all
my school concerns, my little pleasures, and cares,
and sorrows; for boyhood has its share of the
one as well as of the others. I told her all, and
she was indignant at the treatment I had experienced.
She fired up at the arrogance of the
squire, and the prudery of the daughter; and as to
the school masters, she wondered where was the
use of having school masters, and why boys could
not remain at home and be educated by tutors,
under the eye of their mothers. She asked to
see the verses I had written, and she was delighted
with them; for to confess the truth, she
had a pretty taste in poetry. She even showed
them to the parson's wife, who protested they
were charming, and the parson's three daughters
insisted on each having a copy of them.
All this was exceedingly balsamic, and I was
young ladies, who were the blue stockings of the
neighbourhood, and had read Dr. Johnson's lives
quite through, assured my mother that great genuises
never studied, but were always idle; upon
which I began to surmise that I was myself
something out of the common run. My father,
however, was of a very different opinion, for
when my mother, in the pride of her heart, showed
him my copy of verses, he threw them out of
the window, asking her “if she meant to make a
ballad monger of the boy.” But he was a careless,
common thinking man, and I cannot say that
I ever loved him much; my mother absorbed all
my filial affection.
I used occasionally, during holydays, to be
sent on short visits to the uncle, who was to make
me his heir; they thought it would keep me in
his mind, and render him fond of me. He was
a withered, anxious looking old fellow, and
lived in a desolate old country seat, which he
suffered to go to ruin from absolute niggardliness.
He kept but one man servant, who had
woman was allowed to sleep in the house. A
daughter of the old servant lived by the gate, in
what had been a porter's lodge, and was permitted
to come into the house about an hour each
day, to make the beds, and cook a morsel of provisions.
The park that surrounded the house was all
run wild; the trees grown out of shape; the fish
ponds stagnant; the urns and statues fallen from
their pedestals and buried among the rank grass.
The hares and pheasants were so little molested,
except by poachers, that they bred in great abundance,
and sported about the rough lawns and
weedy avenues. To guard the premises and
frighten off robbers, of whom he was somewhat
apprehensive, and visiters, whom he held in almost
equal awe, my uncle kept two or three
blood hounds, who were always prowling round
the house, and were the dread of the neighbouring
peasantry. They were gaunt and half-starved,
seemed ready to devour one from mere hunger,
approach to this wizard castle.
Such was my uncle's house, which I used to
visit now and then during the holydays. I was,
as I have before said, the old man's favourite; that
is to say, he did not hate me so much as he did
the rest of the world. I had been apprised of his
character, and cautioned to cultivate his good
will; but I was too young and careless to be a
courtier; and indeed have never been sufficiently
studious of my interests to let them govern my
feelings. However, we seemed to jog on very
well together; and as my visits cost him almost
nothing, they did not seem to be very unwelcome.
I brought with me my gun and fishing rod, and
half supplied the table from the park and the fish
ponds.
Our meals were solitary and unsocial. My uncle
rarely spoke; he pointed for whatever he
wanted, and the servant perfectly understood
him. Indeed, his man John, or Iron John, as he
was called in the neighbourhood, was a counter-part
of his master. He was a tall bony old fellow,
tail, and a face as tough as though it had been
made of bull's hide. He was generally clad in a
long, patched livery coat, taken out of the wardrobe
of the house; and which bagged loosely
about him, having evidently belonged to some
corpulent predecessor, in the more plenteous days
of the mansion. From long habits of taciturnity,
the hinges of his jaws seemed to have grown
absolutely rusty, and it cost him as much effort
to set them ajar, and to let out a tolerable sentence,
as it would have done to set open the iron
gates of the park, and let out the old family carriage
that was dropping to pieces in the coach
house.
I cannot say, however, but that I was for some
time amused with my uncle's peculiarities. Even
the very desolateness of the establishment had
something in it that hit my fancy. When the
weather was fine I used to amuse myself, in a solitary
way, by rambling about the park, and coursing
like a colt across its lawns. The hares and
pheasants seemed to stare with surprise, to see a
by day-light. Sometimes I amused myself by
jerking stones, or shooting at birds with a bow
and arrows; for to have used a gun would have
been treason. Now and then my path was crossed
by a little red-headed ragged-tailed urchin,
the son of the woman at the lodge, who ran wild
about the premises. I tried to draw him into familiarity,
and to make a companion of him; but
he seemed to have imbibed the strange unsocial
character of every thing around him; and always
kept aloof; so I considered him as another Orson,
and amused myself with shooting at him
with my bow and arrows, and he would hold up
his breeches with one hand, and scamper away
like a deer.
There was something in all this loneliness
and wildness strangely pleasing to me. The
great stables, empty and weather-broken, with
the names of favourite horses over the vacant
stalls; the windows bricked and boarded up;
the broken roofs, garrisoned by rooks and jackdaws;
all had a singularly forlorn appearance:
uninhabited, were it not for a little thread
of blue smoke, which now and then curled up
like a corkscrew, from the centre of one of the
wide chimneys, when my uncle's starveling meal
was cooking.
My uncle's room was in a remote corner of
the building, strongly secured and generally
locked. I was never admitted into this strong
hold, where the old man would remain for
the greater part of the time, drawn up like a
veteran spider in the citadel of his web. The
rest of the mansion, however, was open to me,
and I sauntered about it, unconstrained. The
damp and rain which beat in through the broken
windows, crumbled the paper from the walls;
mouldered the pictures, and gradually destroyed
the furniture. I loved to rove about the wide
waste chambers in bad weather, and listen to
the howling of the wind, and the banging about
of the doors and window shutters. I pleased
myself with the idea how completely, when I
came to the estate, I would renovate all things,
till it was astonished at its own jocundity.
The chamber which I occupied on these visits
was the same that had been my mother's, when
a girl. There was still the toilet table of her
own adorning; the landscapes of her own drawing.
She had never seen it since her marriage,
but would often ask me if every thing was still
the same. All was just the same; for I loved
that chamber on her account, and had taken
pains to put every thing in order, and to mend
all the flaws in the windows with my own hands.
I anticipated the time when I should once more
welcome her to the house of her fathers, and restore
her to this little nestling place of her childhood.
At length my evil genius, or, what perhaps is
the same thing, the muse inspired me with the
notion of rhyming again. My uncle, who never
went to church, used on Sundays to read chapters
out of the bible; and Iron John, the woman
from the lodge, and myself, were his congregation.
It seemed to be all one to him what he read, so
long as it was something from the bible: sometimes,
and this withered anatomy would read
about being “stayed with flaggons and comforted
with apples, for he was sick of love.”
Sometimes he would hobble, with spectacle on
nose, through whole chapters of hard Hebrew
names in Deuteronomy; at which the poor woman
would sigh and groan as if wonderfully
moved. His favourite book, however, was “The
Pilgrim's Progress;” and when he came to that
part which treats of Doubting Castle and Giant
Despair, I thought invariably of him and his desolate
old country seat. So much did the idea
amuse me, that I took to scribbling about it under
the trees in the park; and in a few days had
made some progress in a poem, in which I had
given a description of the place, under the name
of Doubting Castle, and personified my uncle as
Giant Despair.
I lost my poem somewhere about the house,
and I soon suspected that my uncle had found it;
as he harshly intimated to me that I could return
again until he should send for me.
Just about this time my mother died.—I cannot
dwell upon the circumstance; my heart,
careless and wayworn as it is, gushes with the
recollection. Her death was an event, that perhaps
gave a turn to all my after fortunes. With
her died all that made home attractive, for my
father was harsh, as I have before said, and had
never treated me with kindness. Not that he
exerted any unusual severity towards me, but it
was his way. I do not complain of him. In
fact, I have never been much of a complaining
disposition. I seem born to be buffetted by
friends and fortune, and nature has made me a
careless endurer of buffettings.
I now, however, began to grow very impatient
of remaining at school, to be flogged for things
that I did not like. I longed for variety, especially
now that I had not my uncle's to resort to,
by way of diversifying the dullness of school
with the dreariness of his country seat. I was
now turned of sixteen; tall for my age, and full
desire to see different kinds of life, and different
orders of society; and this vagrant humour had
been fostered in me by Tom Dribble, the prime
wag and great genius of the school, who had all
the rambling propensities of a poet.
I used to set at my desk in the school, on a fine
summer's day, and instead of studying the book
which lay open before me, my eye was gazing
through the window on the green fields and
blue hills. How I envied the happy groups
seated on the tops of stage coaches, chatting,
and joking, and laughing, as they were whirled
by the school house, on their way to the metropolis.
Even the waggoners trudging along beside
their ponderous teams, and traversing the
kingdom, from one end to the other, were objects
of envy to me. I fancied to myself what adventures
they must experience, and what odd
scenes of life they must witness. All this was,
doubtless, the poetical temperament working
within me, and tempting me forth into a world
of its own creation, which I mistook for the
world of real life.
While my mother lived this strong propensity
to rove was counteracted by the stronger attractions
of home, and by the powerful ties of affection,
which drew me to her side; but now that
she was gone, the attractions had ceased; the
ties were severed. I had no longer an anchorage
ground for my heart; but was at the mercy
of every vagrant impulse. Nothing but the narrow
allowance on which my father kept me, and
the consequent penury of my purse, prevented
me from mounting the top of a stage coach and
launching myself adrift on the great ocean of
life.
Just about this time the village was agitated for
a day or two, by the passing through of several
caravans, containing wild beasts, and other spectacles
for a great fair annually held at a neighbouring
town.
I had never seen a fair of any consequence,
and my curiosity was powerfully awakened by
this bustle of preparation. I gazed with respect
and wonder at the vagrant personages who
accompanied these caravans. I loitered about
to the slang talk and cant jokes of the
showmen and their followers; and I felt an
eager desire to witness this fair, which my fancy
decked out as something wonderfully fine.
A holyday afternoon presented, when I could
be absent from the school from noon until evening.
A waggon was going from the village to
the fair. I could not resist the temptation, nor
the eloquence of Tom Dribble, who was a truant
to the very heart's core. We hired seats, and
sat off full of boyish expectation. I promised
myself that I would but take a peep at the land
of promise, and hasten back again before my absence
should be noticed.
Heavens! how happy I was on arriving at
the fair! How I was enchanted with the world
of fun and pageantry around me! The humours
of Punch; the feats of the equestrians;
the magical tricks of the conjurors! But what
principally caught my attention was—an itinerant
t heatre; where a tragedy, pantomine and
farce were all acted in the course of half an
than at either Drury Lane or Covent Garden
in a whole evening. I have since seen many a
play performed by the best actors in the world,
but never have I derived half the delight from
any that I did from this first representation.
There was a ferocious tyrant in a skull cap
like an inverted porringer, and a dress of red
baize, magnificently embroidered with gilt leather;
with his face so be-whiskered and his eyebrows
so knit and expanded with burnt cork,
that he made my heart quake within me as he
stamped about the little stage. I was enraptured
too with the surpassing beauty of a distressed
damsel, in faded pink silk, and dirty white muslin,
whom he held in cruel captivity by way of
gaining her affections; and who wept and wrung
her hands and flourished a ragged pocket handkerchief
from the top of an impregnable tower,
of the size of a band-box.
Even after I had come out from the play, I
could not tear myself from the vicinity of the
theatre; but lingered, gazing, and wondering,
performed their antics, or danced upon a stage
in front of the booth, to decoy a new set of spectators.
I was so bewildered by the scene, and so lost
in the crowd of sensations that kept swarming
upon me, that I was like one entranced. I lost
my companion Tom Dribble, in a tumult and
scuffle that took place near one of the shows,
but I was too much occupied in mind to think
long about him. I strolled about until dark,
when the fair was lighted up, and a new scene
of magic opened upon me. The illumination
of the tents and booths; the brilliant effect of
the stages decorated with lamps, with dramatic
groups flaunting about them in gaudy dresses,
contrasted splendidly with the surrounding darkness;
while the uproar of drums, trumpets, fiddles,
hautboys and cymbals, mingled with the
harangues of the showmen, the squeaking of
Punch, and the shouts and laughter of the
crowd, all united to complete my giddy distraction.
Time flew without my perceiving it. When I
came to myself and thought of the school, I hastened
to return. I inquired for the waggon in
which I had come: it had been gone for hours.
I asked the time: it was almost midnight! A
sudden quaking seized me. How was I to get
back to school? I was too weary to make the
journey on foot, and I knew not where to apply
for a conveyance. Even if I should find one,
could I venture to disturb the school house long
after midnight? to arouse that sleeping lion the
usher, in the very midst of his night's rest? The
idea was too dreadful for a delinquent schoolboy.
All the horrors of return rushed upon me
—my absence must long before this have been
remarked—and absent for a whole night!—a
deed of darkness not easily to be expiated. The
rod of the pedagogue budded forth into tenfold
terrors before my affrighted fancy. I pictured to
myself punishment and humiliation in every variety
of form; and my heart sickened at the picture.
Alas! how often are the petty ills of boy-hood
sterner evils of manhood to our robuster minds.
I wandered about among the booths, and I
might have derived a lesson from my actual feelings,
how much the charms of this world depend
upon ourselves; for I no longer saw any thing gay
or delightful in the revelry around me. At length
I lay down, wearied and perplexed, behind one
of the large tents, and covering myself with the
margin of the tent cloth, to keep off the night
chill, I soon fell asleep.
I had not slept long, when I was awakened by
the noise of merriment within an adjoining
booth. It was the itinerant theatre, rudely constructed
of boards and canvas. I peeped through
an aperture, and saw the whole dramatis personæ,
tragedy, comedy, and pantomime, all refreshing
themselves after the final dismissal of
their auditors. They were merry and gamesome,
and made their flimsy theatre ring with their
laughter. I was astonished to see the tragedy
tyrant in red baize and fierce whiskers, who had
made my heart quake as he strutted about the
fellow; the beaming porringer laid aside
from his brow, and his jolly face washed from
all the terrors of burnt cork. I was delighted,
too, to see the distressed damsel, in faded silk
and dirty muslin, who had trembled under his
tyranny, and afflicted me so much by her sorrows;
now seated familiarly on his knee, and
quaffing from the same tankard. Harlequin lay
asleep on one of the benches; and monks, satyrs,
and vestal virgins were grouped together, laughing
outrageously at a broad story, told by an unhappy
count, who had been barbarously murdered
in the tragedy.
This was, indeed, novelty to me. It was a
peep into another planet. I gazed and listened
with intense curiosity and enjoyment. They
had a thousand odd stories and jokes about the
events of the day, and burlesque descriptions and
mimickings of the spectators, who had been admiring
them. Their conversation was full of
allusions to their adventures at different places,
where they had exhibited; the characters they
difficulties in which they had occasionally
been involved. All past cares and troubles
were now turned by these thoughtless beings
into matter of merriment; and made to contribute
to the gayety of the moment. They
had been moving from fair to fair about the
kingdom, and were the next morning to set out
on their way to London.
My resolution was taken. I crept from my
nest, and scrambled through a hedge into a
neighbouring field, where I went to work to
make a tatterdemalion of myself. I tore my
clothes; soiled them with dirt; begrimed my
face and hands; and, crawling near one of the
booths, purloined an old hat, and left my new
one in its place. It was an honest theft, and I
hope may not hereafter rise up in judgment
against me.
I now ventured to the scene of merrymaking,
and, presenting myself before the dramatic corps,
offered myself as a volunteer. I felt terribly
agitated and abashed, for “never before stood
to the manager of the company. He was a fat
man dressed in dirty white; with a red sash
fringed with tinsel, swathed round his body.
His face was smeared with paint, and a majestic
plume towered from an old spangled black bonnet.
He was the Jupiter tonans of this Olympus,
and was surrounded by the inferior gods
and goddesses of his court. He sat on the end
of a bench, by a table, with one arm akimbo and
the other extended to the handle of a tankard,
which he had slowly set down from his lips, as
he surveyed me from head to foot. It was a
moment of awful scrutiny, and I fancied the
groups around all watching us in silent suspense,
and waiting for the imperial nod.
He questioned me as to who I was; what were
my qualifications; and what terms I expected. I
passed myself off for a discharged servant from a
gentleman's family; and as, happily, one does
not require a special recommendation to get admitted
into bad company, the questions on that
head were easily satisfied. As to my accomplishments,
several scenes of plays, which I had learnt at
school exhibitions. I could dance—, that
was enough; no farther questions were asked
me as to accomplishments; it was the very thing
they wanted; and, as I asked no wages, but
merely meat and drink, and safe conduct about
the world, a bargain was struck in a moment.
Behold me, therefore, transformed of a sudden,
from a gentleman student to a dancing buffoon;
for such, in fact, was the character in which
I made my debut. I was one of those who
formed the groupes in the dramas, and were principally
employed on the stage in front of the
booth, to attract company. I was equipped as
a satyr, in a dress of drab frize that fitted to my
shape; with a great laughing mask, ornamented
with huge ears and short horns. I was pleased
with the disguise, because it kept me from the
danger of being discovered, whilst we were in
that part of the country; and, as I had merely
to dance and make antics, the character was favourable
to a debutant, being almost on a par
nothing but roaring.
I cannot tell you how happy I was at this sudden
change in my situation. I felt no degradation,
for I had seen too little of society to be
thoughtful about the differences of rank; and a
boy of sixteen is seldom aristocratical. I had
given up no friend; for there seemed to be no
one in the world that cared for me, now my poor
mother was dead. I had given up no pleasure;
for my pleasure was to ramble about and indulge
the flow of a poetical imagination; and I now
enjoyed it in perfection. There is no life so
truly poetical as that of a dancing buffoon.
It may be said that all this argued grovelling
inclinations. I do not think so; not that I mean
to vindicate myself in any great degree; I know
too well what a whimsical compound I am. But
in this instance I was seduced by no love of low
company, nor disposition to indulge in low vices.
I have always despised the brutally vulgar; and
I have always had a disgust at vice, whether in
high or low life. I was governed merely by a
of resorting to this profession as a mode of life;
or of attaching myself to these people, as my future
class of society. I thought merely of a temporary
gratification of my curiosity, and an indulgence
of my humours. I had already a strong
relish for the peculiarities of character and the
varieties of situation, and I have always been
fond of the comedy of life, and desirous of seeing
it through all its shifting scenes.
In mingling, therefore, among mountebanks
and buffoons I was protected by the very vivacity
of imagination which had led me among
them. I moved about enveloped, as it were, in
a protecting delusion, which my fancy spread
around me. I assimilated to these people only
as they struck me poetically; their whimsical
ways and a certain picturesqueness in their mode
of life entertained me; but I was neither amused
nor corrupted by their vices. In short, I mingled
among them, as Prince Hal did among
his graceless associates, merely to gratify my
humour.
I did not investigate my motives in this manner,
at the time, for I was too careless and
thoughtless to reason about the matter; but I do
so now, when I look back with trembling to
think of the ordeal to which I unthinkingly exposed
myself, and the manner in which I passed
through it. Nothing, I am convinced, but the
poetical temperament, that hurried me into the
scrape, brought me out of it without my becoming
an arrant vagabond.
Full of the enjoyment of the moment, giddy
with the wildness of animal spirits, so rapturous
in a boy, I capered, I danced, I played at housand
fantastic tricks about the stage, in the villages
in which we exhibited; and I was universally
pronounced the most agreeable monster that had
ever been seen in those parts. My disappearance
from school had awakened my father's anxiety;
for I one day heard a description of myself cried
before the very booth in which I was exhibiting;
with the offer of a reward for any intelligence of
me. I had no great scruple about letting my father
suffer a little uneasiness on my account; it
make him value me the more when he found me
again. I have wondered that some of my comrades
did not recognize in me the stray sheep
that was cried; but they were all, no doubt, occupied
by their own concerns. They were all labouring
seriously in their antic vocations, for folly
was a mere trade with most of them, and they
often grinned and capered with heavy hearts.
With me, on the contrary, it was all real. I acted
con amore, and rattled and laughed from the irrepressible
gayety of my spirits. It is true that,
now and then, I started and looked grave on receiving
a sudden thwack from the wooden sword
of Harlequin, in the course of my gambols; as it
brought to mind the birch of my schoolmaster.
But I soon got accustomed to it; and bore all the
cuffing, and kicking, and tumbling about, that
form the practical wit of your itinerant pantomime,
with a good humour that made me a prodigious
favourite.
The country campaign of the troop was soon
at an end, and we set off for the metropolis, to
The greater part of our theatrical property was
sent on direct, to be in a state of preparation for
the opening of the fairs; while a detachment of
the company travelled slowly on, foraging among
the villages. I was amused with the desultory,
hap-hazard kind of life we led; here to-day, and
gone to-morrow. Sometimes revelling in ale
houses; sometimes feasting under hedges in the
green fields. When audiences were crowded
and business profitable, we fared well, and when
otherwise, we fared scantily, and consoled ourselves
with anticipations of the next day's success.
At length the increasing frequency of coaches
hurrying past us, covered with passengers; the
increasing number of carriages, carts, wagons,
gigs, droves of cattle and flocks of sheep, all
thronging the road; the snug country boxes with
trim flower gardens twelve feet square, and their
trees twelve feet high, all powdered with dust;
and the innumerable seminaries for young ladies
and gentlemen, situated along the road, for the
benefit of country air and rural retirement; all
was at hand. The hurry, and the crowd, and
the bustle, and the noise, and the dust, increased
as we proceeded, until I saw the great cloud of
smoke hanging in the air, like a canopy of state,
over this queen of cities.
In this way, then, did I enter the metropolis; a
strolling vagabond; on the top of a caravan with
a crew of vagabonds about me; but I was as happy
as a prince, for, like Prince Hal, I felt myself
superior to my situation, and knew that I could
at any time cast it off and emerge into my proper
sphere.
How my eyes sparkled as we passed Hyde-park
corner, and I saw splendid equipages rolling
by, with powdered footmen behind, in rich
liveries, and fine nosegays, and gold-headed
canes; and with lovely women within, so
sumptuously dressed and so surpassingly fair. I
was always extremely sensible to female beauty;
and here I saw it in all its fascination, for, whatever
may be said of “beauty unadorned,” there
is something almost awful in female loveliness
encircled with diamonds; the raven locks, clustered
with pearls; the ruby glowing on the snowy
bosom, are objects that I could never contemplate
without emotion; and a dazzling white arm
clasped with bracelets, and taper transparent fingers
laden with sparkling rings, are to me irresistible.
My very eyes ached as I gazed at the
high and courtly beauty that passed before me.
It surpassed all that my imagination had conceived
of the sex. I shrunk, for a moment, into shame
at the company in which I was placed, and repined
at the vast distance that seemed to intervene
between me and these magnificent beings.
I forbear to give a detail of the happy life which
I led about the skirts of the metropolis, playing
at the various fairs, held there during the latter
part of spring and the beginning of summer.
This continual change from place to place, and
scene to scene, fed my imagination with novelties,
and kept my spirits in a perpetual state of
excitement.
As I was tall of my age I aspired, at one time,
trials, I was pronounced, by the manager, totally
unfit for the line; and our first tragic actress,
who was a large woman, and held a small hero
in abhorrence, confirmed his decision.
The fact is, I had attempted to give point to
language which had no point, and nature to
scenes which had no nature. They said I did
not fill out my characters; and they were right.
The characters had all been prepared for a different
sort of man. Our tragedy hero was a
round robustious fellow, with an amazing voice;
who stamped and slapped his breast until his
wig shook again; and who roared and bellowed
out his bombast, until every phrase swelled upon
the ear like the sound of a kettle-drum. I might
as well have attempted to fill out his clothes as
his characters. When we had a dialogue together,
I was nothing before him, with my slender
voice and discriminating manner. I might
as well have attempted to parry a cudgel with
a small sword. If he found me in any way
gaining ground upon him, he would take refuge
of thunder at me, until they were drowned in
the still louder thunders of applause from the
audience.
To tell the truth, I suspect that I was not
shown fair play, and that there was management
at the bottom; for without vanity, I think I was
a better actor than he. As I had not embarked
in the vagabond line through ambition, I did not
repine at lack of preferment; but I was grieved
to find that a vagrant life was not without its
cares and anxieties, and that jealousies, intrigues
and mad ambition were to be found even among
vagabonds.
Indeed, as I became more familiar with my
situation, and the delusions of fancy began to
fade away, I discovered that my associates were
not the happy careless creatures I had at first
imagined them. They were jealous of each
other's talents; they quarrelled about parts, the
same as the actors on the grand theatres; they
quarrelled about dresses; and there was one robe
of yellow silk, trimmed with red, and a headdress
were continually setting the ladies of the company
by the ears. Even those who had attained
the highest honours were not more happy than
the rest; for Mr. Flimsey himself, our first tragedian,
and apparently a jovial good humoured
fellow, confessed to me one day, in the fullness
of his heart, that he was a miserable man. He
had a brother-in-law, a relative by marriage,
though not by blood, who was manager of a
theatre in a small country town. And this same
brother, (“a little more than kin, but less than
kind,”) looked down upon him, and treated him
with contumely, because forsooth he was but a
strolling player. I tried to console him with the
thoughts of the vast applause he daily received, but
it was all in vain. He declared that it gave him
no delight, and that he should never be a happy
man until the name of Flimsey rivalled the name
of Crimp.
How little do those before the scenes know
of what passes behind; how little can they judge,
from the countenances of actors, of what is passing
quarrel like cats behind the scenes, who were,
the moment after, to fly into each other's embraces.
And I have dreaded, when our Belvidera
was to take her farewell kiss of her Jaffier,
lest she should bite a piece out of his cheek.
Our tragedian was a rough joker off the stage;
our prime clown the most peevish mortal living.
The latter used to go about snapping and snarling,
with a broad laugh painted on his countenance;
and I can assure you that, whatever may
be said of the gravity of a monkey, or the melancholy
of a gibed cat, there is no more melancholy
creature in existence than a mountebank
off duty.
The only thing in which all parties agreed
was to backbite the manager, and cabal against
his regulations. This, however, I have since
discovered to be a common trait of human nature,
and to take place in all communities. It
would seem to be the main business of man to
repine at government. In all situations of life into
which I have looked, I have found mankind
and those who are ridden. The great struggle
of life seems to be which shall keep in the saddle.
This, it appears to me, is the fundamental
principle of politics, whether in great or little
life. However, I do not mean to moralize; but
one cannot always sink the philosopher.
Well then, to return to myself. It was determined,
as I said, that I was not fit for tragedy,
and, unluckily, as my study was bad, having a
very poor memory, I was pronounced unfit for
comedy also: besides, the line of young gentlemen
was already engrossed by an actor with
whom I could not pretend to enter into competition,
he having filled it for almost half a century.
I came down again therefore to pantomime.
In consequence, however, of the good
offices of the manager's lady, who had taken a
liking to me, I was promoted from the part of the
satyr to that of the lover; and with my face
patched and painted; a huge cravat of paper; a
steeple crowned hat, and dangling long-skirted,
sky blue coat, was metamorphosed into the
much of the tender and sentimental. I had
merely to pursue the fugitive fair one; to have
a door now and then slammed in my face; to
run my head occasionally against a post; to
tumble and roll about with Pantaloon and the
clown; and to endure the hearty thwacks of
Harlequin's wooden sword.
As ill luck would have it, my poetical temperament
began to ferment within me, and to work
out new troubles. The inflammatory air of a
great metropolis, added to the rural scenes in
which the fairs were held; such as Greenwich
Park; Epping Forest; and the lovely valley of
West End, had a powerful effect upon me. While
in Greenwich Park I was witness to the old holyday
games of running down hill; and kissing
in the ring; and then the firmament of blooming
faces and blue eyes, that would be turned towards
me, as I was playing antics on the stage;
all these set my young blood, and my poetical
vein, in full flow. In short, I played my character
to the life, and became desperately enamoured
tempting girl; with a roguish dimpling face, and
fine chesnut hair clustering all about it. The moment
I got fairly smitten, there was an end to
all playing. I was such a creature of fancy and
feeling, that I could not put on a pretended, when
I was powerfully affected by a real emotion. I
could not sport with a fiction that came so near
to the fact. I became too natural in my acting to
succeed. And then; what a situation for a lover!
I was a mere stripling, and she played with my
passion; for girls soon grow more adroit and
knowing in these matters, than your awkward
youngsters. What agonies had I to suffer. Every
time that she danced in front of the booth, and
made such liberal displays of her charms, I was
in torment. To complete my misery, I had a
real rival in Harlequin; an active, vigorous,
knowing varlet of six-and-twenty. What had a
raw inexperienced youngster like me to hope
from such a competition.
I had still, however, some advantages in my
favour. In spite of my change of life, I retained
the gentleman; that something which
dwells in a man's air and deportment, and not in
his clothes; and which it is as difficult for a gentleman
to put off, as for a vulgar fellow to put
on. The company generally felt it, and used to
call me little gentleman Jack. The girl felt it
too; and in spite of her predilection for my powerful
rival, she liked to flirt with me. This only
aggravated my troubles, by increasing my passion,
and awakening the jealousy of her particoloured
lover.
Alas! think what I suffered, at being obliged
to keep up an ineffectual chase after my Columbine
through whole pantomimes; to see her carried
off in the vigorous arms of the happy Harlequin;
and to be obliged instead of snatching
her from him, to tumble sprawling with Pantaloon
and the clown; and bear the infernal and
degrading thwacks of my rival's weapon of lath;
which, may heaven confound him! (excuse my
passion) the villain laid on with a malicious good
will; nay, I could absolutely hear him chuckle
pardon for growing a little warm in my narration.
I wish to be cool, but these recollections
will sometimes agitate me. I have heard and
read of many desperate and deplorable situations
of lovers; but none I think in which true love
was ever exposed to so severe and peculiar a
trial.
This could not last long. Flesh and blood, at
least such flesh and blood as mine, could not bear
it. I had repeated heart-burnings and quarrels
with my rival, in which he treated me with the
mortifying forbearance of a man towards a child.
Had he quarrelled outright with me, I could have
stomached it; at least I should have known what
part to take; but to be humoured and treated as
a child in the presence of my mistress, when I
felt all the bantam spirit of a little man swelling
within me—gods, it was insufferable!
At length we were exhibiting one day at West
End fair, which was at that time a very fashionable
resort, and often beleaguered by gay equipages
from town. Among the spectators that filled
afternoon, when I had to figure in a pantomime,
was a party of young ladies from a boarding-school,
with their governess. Guess my confusion,
when, in the midst of my antics, I beheld
among the number my quondam flame; her whom
I had berhymed at school; her for whose charms
I had smarted so severely; the cruel Sacharissa!
What was worse, I fancied she recollected me;
and was repeating the story of my humiliating
flagellation, for I saw her whispering her companions
and her governess. I lost all consciousness
of the part I was acting, and of the place
where I was. I felt shrunk to nothing, and could
have crept into a rat-hole—unluckily, none was
open to receive me. Before I could recover from
my confusion, I was tumbled over by Pantaloon
and the clown; and I felt the sword of Harlequin
making vigorous assaults, in a manner most degrading
to my dignity.
Heaven and earth! was I again to suffer martyrdom
in this ignominious manner, in the knowledge,
and even before the very eyes of this most
my long-smothered wrath broke out at once;
the dormant feelings of the gentleman arose within
me; stung to the quick by intolerable mortification.
I sprang on my feet in an instant;
leaped upon Harlequin like a young tiger; tore
off his mask; buffetted him in the face, and soon
shed more blood on the stage than had been spilt
upon it during a whole tragic campaign of battles
and murders.
As soon as Harlequin recovered from his surprise
he returned my assault with interest. I was
nothing in his hands. I was game to be sure,
for I was a gentleman; but he had the clownish
advantages of bone and muscle. I felt as if
I could have fought even unto the death; and I
was likely to do so; for he was, according to
the vulgar phrase, “putting my head into Chancery,”
when the gentle Columbine flew to my
assistance. God bless the women; they are
always on the side of the weak and the oppressed.
The battle now became general; the dramatis
personæ ranged on either side. The manager
black bonnet and towering white feathers seen
whisking about, and nodding, and bobbing, in the
thickest of the fight. Warriors, ladies, priests,
satyrs, kings, queens, gods and goddesses, all
joined pell-mell in the fray. Never, since the
conflict under the walls of Troy, had there been
such a chance medley warfare of combatants,
human and divine. The audience applauded,
the ladies shrieked, and fled from the theatre,
and a scene of discord ensued that baffles all description.
Nothing but the interference of the peace officers
restored some degree of order. The havoc,
however, that had been made among dresses and
decorations put an end to all farther acting for
that day. The battle over, the next thing was
to inquire why it was begun; a common question
among politicians, after a bloody and unprofitable
war; and one not always easy to be answered.
It was soon traced to me, and my unaccountable
transport of passion, which they could
only attribute to my having run a muck. The
the bargain, and in such cases justice is always
speedily administered. He came out of the fight
as sublime a wreck as the Santissima Trinidada.
His gallant plumes, which once towered aloft,
were drooping about his ears. His robe of state
hung in ribbands from his back, and but ill concealed
the ravages he had suffered in the rear.
He had received kicks and cuffs from all sides,
during the tumult; for every one took the opportunity
of slyly gratifying some lurking grudge
on his fat carcass. He was a discreet man, and
did not choose to declare war with all his company;
so he swore all those kicks and cuffs had
been given by me, and I let him enjoy the opinion.
Some wounds he bore, however, which
were the incontestible traces of a woman's warfare.
His sleek rosy cheek was scored by trickling
furrows, which were ascribed to the nails of
my intrepid and devoted Columbine. The ire of
the monarch was not to be appeased. He had
suffered in his person, and he had suffered in his
purse; his dignity too had been insulted, and that
irascible the more petty the potentate. He
wreaked his wrath upon the beginners of the affray,
and Columbine and myself were discharged,
at once, from the company.
Figure me, then, to yourself, a stripling of little
more than sixteen; a gentleman by birth; a
vagabond by trade; turned adrift upon the world;
making the best of my way through the crowd of
West End fair; my mountebank dress fluttering
in rags about me; the weeping Columbine hanging
upon my arm, in splendid, but tattered finery;
the tears coursing one by one down her face;
carrying off the red paint in torrents, and literally
“preying upon her damask cheek.”
The crowd made way for us as we passed and
hooted in our rear. I felt the ridicule of my situation,
but had too much gallantry to desert this
fair one, who had sacrificed every thing for me.
Having wandered through the fair, we emerged,
like another Adam and Eve, into unknown regions,
and “had the world before us where to
choose.” Never was a more disconsolate pair
Columbine cast back many a lingering look
at the fair, which seemed to put on a more than
usual splendour; its tents, and booths, and parti-coloured
groups, all brightening in the sunshine,
and gleaming among the trees; and its gay flags
and streamers playing and fluttering in the light
summer airs. With a heavy sigh she would lean
on my arm and proceed. I had no hope or consolation
to give her; but she had linked herself
to my fortunes, and she was too much of a woman
to desert me.
Pensive and silent, then, we traversed the beautiful
fields that lie behind Hempstead, and wandered
on, until the fiddle, and the hautboy, and
the shout, and the laugh, were swallowed up in
the deep sound of the big bass drum, and even
that died away into a distant rumble. We passed
along the pleasant sequestered walk of Nightingale
lane. For a pair of lovers what scene
could be more propitious?—But such a pair of
lovers! Not a nightingale sang to soothe us:
the very gypsies who were encamped there during
such an ill-omened couple, whose fortunes, I
suppose, they thought too legibly written to need
an interpreter; and the gypsey children crawled
into their cabins and peeped out fearfully at us
as we went by. For a moment I paused, and
was almost tempted to turn gypsey, but the
poetical feeling for the present was fully satisfied,
and I passed on. Thus we travelled, and travelled,
like a prince and princess in nursery chronicle,
until we had traversed a part of Hempstead
Heath and arrived in the vicinity of Jack Straw's
castle.
Here, wearied and dispirited we seated ourselves
on the margin of the hill, hard by the very
mile stone where Whittington of yore heard the
Bow bells ring out the presage of his future greatness.
Alas! no bell rung an invitation to us, as
we looked disconsolately upon the distant city.
Old London seemed to wrap itself up unsociably
in its mantle of brown smoke, and to offer no encouragement
to such a couple of tatterdemalions.
For once at least the usual course of the pantomime
the lover had carried off Columbine in good earnest.
But what was I to do with her? I had
never contemplated such a dilemma; and I now
felt that even a fortunate lover may be embarrassed
by his good fortune. I really knew not
what was to become of me; for I had still the
boyish fear of returning home; standing in awe
of the stern temper of my father, and dreading
the ready arm of the pedagogue. And even if I
were to venture home, what was I to do with
Columbine? I could not take her in my hand,
and throw myself on my knees, and crave his
forgiveness and his blessing according to dramatic
usage. The very dogs would have chased
such a draggle-tailed beauty from the grounds.
In the midst of my doleful dumps, some one
tapped me on the shoulder, and looking up I saw
a couple of rough sturdy fellows standing behind
me. Not knowing what to expect I jumped on
my legs, and was preparing again to make battle;
but I was tripped up and secured in a twinkling.
“Come, come, young master,” said one of the
fellows in a gruff, but good humoured tone,
“don't let's have any of your tantrums; one would
have thought you had had swing enough for this
bout. Come, it's high time to leave off harle-quinading,
and go home to your father.”
In fact I had a couple of Bow street officers
hold of me. The cruel Sacharissa had proclaimed
who I was, and that a reward had been offered
throughout the country for any tidings of
me; and they had seen a description of me which
had been forwarded to the police office in town.
Those harpies, therefore, for the mere sake of
filthy lucre, were resolved to deliver me over
into the hands of my father and the clutches of
my pedagogue.
It was in vain that I swore I would not leave
my faithful and afflicted Columbine. It was
in vain that I tore myself from their grasp, and
flew to her; and vowed to protect her; and
wiped the tears from her cheek, and with them
a whole blush that might have vied with the
carnation for brilliancy. My persecutors were
and to enjoy this theatrical display of
dirt, and finery, and tribulation. I was carried
off in despair, leaving my Columbine destitute
in the wide world; but many a look of agony
did I cast back at her, as she stood gazing piteously
after me from the brink of Hempstead
Hill; so forlorn, so fine, so ragged, so bedraggled,
yet so beautiful.
Thus ended my first peep into the world. I
returned home, rich in good-for-nothing experience,
and dreading the reward I was to receive
for my improvement. My reception, however,
was quite different from what I had expected.
My father had a spice of the devil in him, and
did not seem to like me the worse for my freak,
which he termed “sewing my wild oats.” He
happened to have several of his sporting friends
to dine with him the very day of my return; they
made me tell some of my adventures, and laughed
heartily at them. One old fellow, with an
outrageously red nose, took to me hugely. I
heard him whisper to my father that I was a lad
which my father replied that “I had good points,
but was an ill broken whelp, and required a
great deal of the whip.” Perhaps this very conversation
raised me a little in his esteem, for I
found the red-nosed old gentleman was a veteran
fox hunter of the neighbourhood, for whose
opinion my father had vast deference. Indeed,
I believe he would have pardoned any thing in
me more readily than poetry; which he called a
cursed, sneaking, puling, housekeeping employment,
the bane of all true manhood. He swore it
was unworthy of a youngster of my expectations,
who was one day to have so great an estate, and
would be able to keep horses and hounds and
hire poets to write songs for him into the bargain.
I had now satisfied, for a time, my roving propensity.
I had exhausted the poetical feeling.
I had been heartily buffeted out of my love for
theatrical display. I felt humiliated by my exposure,
and was willing to hide my head any
where for a season; so that I might be out of the
folks not altogether so indulgent abroad, as they
were at my father's table. I could not stay at
home; the house was intolerably doleful now
that my mother was no longer there to cherish
me. Every thing around spoke mournfully of
her. The little flower-garden in which she delighted,
was all in disorder and overrun with
weeds. I attempted, for a day or two, to arrange
it, but my heart grew heavier and heavier
as I laboured. Every little broken down flower,
that I had seen her rear so tenderly, seemed to
plead in mute eloquence to my feelings. There
was a favourite honeysuckle which I had seen
her often training with assiduity, and had heard
her say it should be the pride of her garden. I
found it grovelling along the ground, tangled and
wild, and twining round every worthless weed,
and it struck me as an emblem of myself: a mere
scatterling, running to waste and uselessness. I
could work no longer in the garden.
My father sent me to pay a visit to my uncle,
by way of keeping the old gentleman in mind of
of discontent; which we always considered
equivalent to a hearty welcome. Whether
he had ever heard of my strolling freak or not I
could not discover; he and his man were both so
taciturn. I spent a day or two roaming about
the dreary mansion and neglected park; and
felt at one time, I believe, a touch of poetry, for
I was tempted to drown myself in a fish-pond;
I rebuked the evil spirit, however, and it left me.
I found the same red-headed boy running wild
about the park, but I felt in no humour to hunt
him at present. On the contrary, I tried to coax
him to me, and to make friends with him, but the
young savage was untameable.
When I returned from my uncle's I remained
at home for some time, for my father was disposed,
he said, to make a man of me. He took me
out hunting with him, and I became a great favourite
of the red-nosed squire, because I rode at
every thing; never refused the boldest leap, and
was always sure to be in at the death. I used
often, however, to offend my father at hunting
My father was amazingly ignorant—so ignorant
in fact, as not to know that he knew nothing.
He was staunch, however, to church and king,
and full of old-fashioned prejudices. Now, I had
picked up a little knowledge in politics and religion,
during my rambles with the strollers, and
found myself capable of setting him right as to
many of his antiquated notions. I felt it my duty
to do so; we were apt, therefore, to differ occasionally
in the political discussions that sometimes
arose at these hunting dinners.
I was at that age when a man knows least and
is most vain of his knowledge; and when he is
extremely tenacious in defending his opinion upon
subjects about which he knows nothing. My
father was a hard man for any one to argue with,
for he never knew when he was refuted. I
sometimes posed him a little, but then he had one
argument that always settled the question; he
would threaten to knock me down. I believe
he at last grew tired of me, because I both out-talked
and outrode him. The red-nosed squire,
of the chase, I rode over him one day as he and
his horse lay sprawling in the dirt. My father,
therefore, thought it high time to send me to college;
and accordingly to Trinity College at Oxford
was I sent.
I had lost my habits of study while at home;
and I was not likely to find them again at college.
I found that study was not the fashion at
college, and that a lad of spirit only ate his terms;
and grew wise by dint of knife and fork. I was
always prone to follow the fashions of the company
into which I fell; so I threw by my books,
and became a man of spirit. As my father made
me a tolerable allowance, notwithstanding the
narrowness of his income, having an eye always
to my great expectations, I was enabled to appear
to advantage among my fellow students. I cultivated
all kinds of sports and exercises. I was
one of the most expert oarsmen that rowed on
the Isis. I boxed, and fenced. I was a keen
huntsman, and my chambers in college were always
decorated with whips of all kinds, spurs,
breeches would seem to be throwing one leg out
of the half open drawers, and empty bottles lumbered
the bottom of every closet.
I soon grew tired of this; and relapsed into
my vein of mere poetical indulgence. I was
charmed with Oxford, for it was full of poetry
to me. I thought I should never grow tired of
wandering about its courts and cloisters; and
visiting the different college halls. I used to
love to get in places surrounded by the colleges,
where all modern buildings were screened from
the sight; and to walk about them in twilight,
and see the professors and students sweeping
along in the dusk in their caps and gowns.
There was complete delusion in the scene. It
seemed to transport me among the edifices and
the people of old times. It was a great luxury,
too, for me to attend the evening service in the
new college chapel, and to hear the fine organ
and the choir swelling an anthem in that solemn
building; where painting and music and architecture
seem to combine their grandest effects.
I became a loiterer, also, about the Bodleian
library, and a great dipper into books; but too
idle to follow any course of study or vein of research.
One of my favourite haunts was the
beautiful walk, bordered by lofty elms, along
the Isis, under the old gray walls of Magdalen
College, which goes by the name of Addison's
Walk; and was his resort when a student at the
college. I used to take a volume of poetry in
my hand, and stroll up and down this walk for
hours.
My father came to see me at college. He asked
me how I came on with my studies; and
what kind of hunting there was in the neighbourhood.
He examined my sporting apparatus;
wanted to know if any of the professors were
fox hunters; and whether they were generally
good shots; for he suspected this reading so
much was rather hurtful to the sight. Such was
the only person to whom I was responsible for
my improvement: is it matter of wonder, therefore,
that I became a confirmed idler?
I do not know how it is, but I cannot be idle
smitten with a shopkeeper's daughter in the high
street; who in fact was the admiration of many
of the students. I wrote several sonnets in praise
of her, and spent half of my pocket money at
the shop, in buying articles which I did not want,
that I might have an opportunity of speaking to
her. Her father, a severe looking old gentleman,
with bright silver buckles and a crisp curled wig,
kept a strict guard on her; as the fathers generally
do upon their daughters in Oxford; and
well they may. I tried to get into his good graces,
and to be sociable with him; but in vain.
I said several good things in his shop, but he
never laughed; he had no relish for wit and humour.
He was one of those dry old gentlemen
who keep youngsters at bay. He had already
brought up two or three daughters, and was experienced
in the ways of students. He was as
knowing and wary as a gray old badger that has
often been hunted. To see him on Sunday, so
stiff and starched in his demeanour; so precise
in his dress; with his daughter under his arm,
enough to deter all graceless youngsters from
approaching.
I managed, however, in spite of his vigilance,
to have several conversations with the daughter,
as I cheapened articles in the shop. I made
terrible long bargains, and examined the articles
over and over, before I purchased. In the mean
time, I would convey a sonnet or an acrostic
under cover of a piece of cambric, or slipped
into a pair of stockings; I would whisper soft
nonsense into her ear as I haggled about the
price; and would squeeze her hand tenderly as
I received my halfpence of change, in a bit of
whity-brown paper. Let this serve as a hint to
all haberdashers, who have pretty daughters for
shop girls, and young students for customers. I
do not know whether my words and looks were
very eloquent; but my poetry was irresistible;
for, to tell the truth, the girl had some literary
taste, and was seldom without a book from the
circulating library.
By the divine power of poetry, therefore,
subdue the heart of this fair little haberdasher.
We carried on a sentimental correspondence for
a time across the counter, and I supplied her
with rhyme by the stocking full. At length I
prevailed on her to grant me an assignation.
But how was it to be effected? Her father kept
her always under his eye; she never walked out
alone; and the house was locked up the moment
that the shop was shut. All these difficulties
served but to give zest to the adventure. I proposed
that the assignation should be in her own
chamber, into which I would climb at night.
The plan was irresistible. A cruel father, a
secret lover, and a clandestine meeting! All the
little girl's studies from the circulating library
seemed about to be realized. But what had I
in view in making this assignation? Indeed I
know not. I had no evil intentions; nor can I
say that I had any good ones. I liked the girl,
and wanted to have an opportunity of seeing
more of her; and the assignation was made, as
I have done many things else, heedlessly and
of the kind, after all my arrangements were
made; but the answers were very unsatisfactory.
“Am I to ruin this poor thoughtless girl?” said
I to myself. “No!” was the prompt and indignant
answer. “Am I to run away with her?”
“Whither—and to what purpose?” “Well, then,
am I to marry her?”—“Pah! a man of my
expectations marry a shopkeeper's daughter!”
“What then am I to do with her?” “Hum—
why—Let me get into her chamber first, and
then consider”—and so the self examination
ended.
Well, sir, “come what come might,” I stole
under cover of the darkness to the dwelling of
my dulcinea. All was quiet. At the concerted
signal her window was gently opened. It was
just above the projecting bow window of her father's
shop, which assisted me in mounting. The
house was low, and I was enabled to scale the
fortress with tolerable ease. I clambered with a
beating heart; I reached the casement; I hoisted
my body half into the chamber and was welcomed,
one, but by the grasp of the crabbed-looking old
father in the crisp curled wig.
I extricated myself from his clutches and endeavoured
to make my retreat; but I was confounded
by his cries of thieves! and robbers!
I was bothered too by his Sunday cane; which
was amazingly busy about my head as I descended;
and against which my hat was but a poor
protection. Never before had I an idea of the
activity of an old man's arm, and hardness of the
knob of an ivory-headed cane. In my hurry and
confusion I missed my footing, and fell sprawling
on the pavement. I was immediately surrounded
by myrmidons, who I doubt not were on the
watch for me. Indeed, I was in no situation to
escape, for I had sprained my ankle in the fall,
and could not stand. I was seized as a house-breaker;
and to exonerate myself from a greater
crime I had to accuse myself of a less. I made
known who I was, and why I came there. Alas!
the varlets knew it already, and were only amusing
themselves at my expense. My perfidious
tricks. The old curmudgeon of a father had
found my sonnets and acrostics hid away in holes
and corners of his shop; he had no taste for
poetry like his daughter, and had instituted a
rigorous though silent observation. He had
moused upon our letters; detected the ladder of
ropes, and prepared every thing for my reception.
Thus was I ever doomed to be led into scrapes
by the muse. Let no man henceforth carry on
a secret amour in poetry!
The old man's ire was in some measure appeased
by the pummelling of my head, and the
anguish of my sprain; so he did not put me to
death on the spot. He was even humane enough
to furnish a shutter, on which I was carried back
to college like a wounded warrior. The porter
was roused to admit me; the college gate was
thrown open for my entry; the affair was blazed
abroad the next morning, and became the joke
of the college from the buttery to the hall.
I had leisure to repent during several weeks
confinement by my sprain, which I passed in
I received a most tender and ill-spelled letter from
my mistress, who had been sent to a relation in
Coventry. She protested her innocence of my
misfortunes, and vowed to be true to me “till
death.” I took no notice of the letter, for I was
cured, for the present, both of love and poetry.
Women, however, are more constant in their attachments
than men, whatever philosophers may
say to the contrary. I am assured that she actually
remained faithful to her vow for several
months; but she had to deal with a cruel father
whose heart was as hard as the knob of his cane.
He was not to be touched by tears or poetry;
but absolutely compelled her to marry a reputable
young tradesman; who made her a happy
woman in spite of herself, and of all the rules of
romance; and what is more, the mother of several
children. They are at this very day a thriving
couple, and keep a snug corner shop, just
opposite the figure of Peeping Tom at Coventry.
I will not fatigue you by any more details of
my studies at Oxford, though they were not always
as dear for my lessons. People may say what
they please, a studious life has its charms, and
there are many places more gloomy than the
cloisters of a university.
To be brief, then, I lived on in my usual miscellaneous
manner, gradually getting a knowledge
of good and evil, until I had attained my twenty-first
year. I had scarcely come of age when I
heard of the sudden death of my father. The
shock was severe, for though he had never treated
me with kindness, still he was my father, and
at his death I felt myself alone in the world.
I returned home to act as chief mourner at
his funeral. It was attended by many of the
sportsmen of the county; for he was an important
member of their fraternity. According to his
request his favourite hunter was led after the
hearse. The red-nosed fox hunter, who had
taken a little too much wine at the house, made
a maudlin eulogy of the deceased, and wished to
give the view halloo over the grave; but he was
rebuked by the rest of the company. They all
things to me, and invited me to become
a member of the hunt in my father's place.
When I found myself alone in my paternal
home, a crowd of gloomy feelings came thronging
upon me. It was a place that always seemed
to sober me, and bring me to reflection.
Now especially, it looked so deserted and melancholy;
the furniture displaced about the room;
the chairs in groups, as their departed occupants
had sat, either in whispering tête-à-têtes, or
gossipping clusters; the bottles and decanters and
wine glasses, half emptied, and scattered about
the tables—all dreary traces of a funeral festival.
I entered the little breakfasting room. There
were my father's whip and spurs hanging by
the fire-place, and his favourite pointer lying on
the hearth rug. The poor animal came fondling
about me, and licked my hand, though he had
never before noticed me; and then he looked
round the room, and whined, and wagged his
tail slightly, and gazed wistfully in my face. I
felt the full force of the appeal. “Poor Dash!”
nobody to care for us, and we'll take care of one
another.” The dog never quitted me afterwards.
I could not go into my mother's room: my
heart swelled when I passed within sight of the
door. Her portrait hung in the parlour, just
over the place where she used to sit. As I cast
my eyes on it I thought it looked at me with tenderness,
and I burst into tears. My heart had
long been seared by living in public schools, and
buffetting about among strangers who cared
nothing for me; but the recollection of a mother's
tenderness was overcoming.
I was not of an age or a temperament to be
long depressed. There was a reaction in my
system that always brought me up again after
every pressure; and indeed my spirits were
most buoyant after a temporary prostration. I
settled the concerns of the estate as soon as possible;
realized my property, which was not very
considerable; but which appeared a vast deal to
me, having a poetical eye that magnified every
months, free of all farther business or restraint,
I determined to go to London and enjoy myself.
Why should not I?—I was young, animated,
joyous; had plenty of funds for present pleasures,
and my uncle's estate in the perspective.
Let those mope at college and pore over books,
thought I, who have their way to make in the
world; it would be ridiculous drudgery in a
youth of my expectations.
Well, sir, away to London I rattled in a tandem,
determined to take the town gayly. I
passed through several of the villages where I
had played the jack-pudding a few years before;
and I visited the scenes of many of my adventures
and follies, merely from that feeling of melancholy
pleasure which we have in stepping
again in the footprints of foregone existence, even
when they have passed among weeds and briars.
I made a circuit in the latter part of my journey,
so as to take in West End and Hempstead, the
scenes of my last dramatic exploit, and of the
battle royal of the booth. As I drove along
castle, I paused at the spot where Columbine
and I had sat down so disconsolately in our ragged
finery, and looked dubiously upon London.
I almost expected to see her again, standing on
the hill's brink, “like Niobe all tears;”—mournful
as Babylon in ruins!
“Poor Columbine!” said I, with a heavy sigh,
“thou wert a gallant, generous girl—a true woman,
faithful to the distressed, and ready to sacrifice
thyself in the cause of worthless man!”
I tried to whistle off the recollection of her;
for there was always something of self-reproach
with it. I drove gayly along the road, enjoying
the stare of hostlers and stable boys as I managed
my horses knowingly down the steep street of
Hempstead; when, just at the skirts of the village,
one of the traces of my leader came loose.
I pulled up; and as the animal was restive and
my servant a bungler, I called for assistance to
the robustious master of a snug ale house, who
stood at his door with a tankard in his hand. He
came readily to assist me, followed by his wife
and two more at her heels. I stared for a moment
as if doubting my eyes. I could not be
mistaken; in the fat beer-blown landlord of the
ale house I recognized my old rival Harlequin,
and in his slattern spouse, the once trim and
dimpling Columbine.
The change of my looks, from youth to manhood,
and the change of my circumstances, prevented
them from recognizing me. They could
not suspect, in the dashing young buck, fashionably
dressed, and driving his own equipage, their
former comrade, the painted beau, with old
peaked hat and long, flimsy, sky blue coat.
My heart yearned with kindness towards Columbine,
and I was glad to see her establishment a
thriving one. As soon as the harness was adjusted
I tossed a small purse of gold into her
ample bosom; and then, pretending to give my
horses a hearty cut of the whip, I made the lash
curl with a whistling about the sleek sides of
ancient Harlequin. The horses dashed off like
lightning, and I was whirled out of sight, before
at my liberal donations. I have always considered
this as one of the greatest proofs of my poetical
genius. It was distributing poetical justice
in perfection.
I now entered London en cavalier, and became
a blood upon town. I took fashionable
lodgings in the West End; employed the first
tailor; frequented the regular lounges; gambled
a little; lost my money good humouredly,
and gained a number of fashionable good-for-nothing
acquaintances. Had I had more industry
and ambition in my nature, I might have
worked my way to the very height of fashion,
as I saw many laborious gentlemen doing around
me. But it is a toilsome, an anxious, and an
unhappy life; there are few beings so sleepless
and miserable as your cultivators of fashionable
smiles.
I was quite content with that kind of society
which forms the frontiers of fashion, and may
be easily taken possession of. I found it a light,
easy, productive soil. I had but to go about and
of invitations. Indeed, my figure and address
were by no means against me. It was whispered,
too, among the young ladies, that I was prodigiously
clever, and wrote poetry; and the old
ladies had ascertained that I was a young gentleman
of good family, handsome fortune, and
“great expectations.”
I now was carried away by the hurry of gay
life, so intoxicating to a young man; and which
a man of poetical temperament enjoys so highly
on his first tasting of it. That rapid variety of
sensations; that whirl of brilliant objects; that
succession of pungent pleasures. I had no time
for thought; I only felt. I never attempted to
write poetry; my poetry seemed all to go off by
transpiration. I lived poetry; it was all a poetical
dream to me. A mere sensualist knows nothing
of the delights of a splendid metropolis. He
lives in a round of animal gratifications and
heartless habits. But to a young man of poetical
feelings it is an ideal world; a scene of enchantment
and delusion; his imagination is in
to every pleasure.
A season of town life somewhat sobered me
of my intoxication; or rather I was rendered
more serious by one of my old complaints—I fell
in love. It was with a very pretty, though a
very haughty fair one, who had come to London
under the care of an old maiden aunt, to enjoy the
pleasures of a winter in town, and to get married.
There was not a doubt of her commanding a
choice of lovers; for she had long been the belle
of a little cathedral town; and one of the prebendaries
had absolutely celebrated her beauty in
a copy of Latin verses.
I paid my court to her, and was favourably received
both by her and her aunt. Nay, I had a
marked preference shown me over the younger
son of a needy Baronet, and a captain of dragoons
on half pay. I did not absolutely take the
field in form, for I was determined not to be precipitate;
but I drove my equipage frequently
through the street in which she lived, and was
always sure to see her at the window, generally
at rhyming, and sent her a long copy of verses;
anonymously to be sure; but she knew my hand
writing. They displayed, however, the most delightful
ignorance on the subject. The young
lady showed them to me; wondered who they
could be written by; and declared there was nothing
in this world she loved so much as poetry:
while the maiden aunt would put her pinching
spectacles on her nose, and read them, with blunders
in sense and sound, that were excruciating
to an author's ears; protesting there was nothing
equal to them in the whole elegant extracts.
The fashionable season closed without my adventuring
to make a declaration, though I certainly
had encouragement. I was not perfectly
sure that I had effected a lodgement in the young
ladies heart; and, to tell the truth, the aunt overdid
her part, and was a little too extravagant in
her liking of me. I knew that maiden aunts
were not apt to be captivated by the mere personal
merits of their nieces' admirers, and I
wanted to ascertain how much of all this favour
great expectations.
I had received many hints how charming their
native town was during the summer months;
what pleasant society they had; and what beautiful
drives about the neighbourhood. They had
not, therefore, returned home long, before I made
my appearance in dashing style, driving down
the principal street. It is an easy thing to put a
little quiet cathedral town in a buzz. The very
next morning I was seen at prayers, seated in
the pew of the reigning belle. All the congregation
was in a flutter. The prebends eyed me
from their stalls; questions were whispered about
the aisles after service, “who is he?” and “what
is he?” and the replies were as usual—“A young
gentleman of good family and fortune, and great
expectations.”
I was pleased with the peculiarities of a cathedral
town, where I found I was a personage
of some consequence. I was quite a brilliant
acquisition to the young ladies of the cathedral
circle, who were glad to have a beau that was
know that there was a vast distinction between
the classes of society of the town. As it was a
place of some trade there were many wealthy
inhabitants among the commercial and manufacturing
classes, who lived in style and gave
many entertainments. Nothing of trade, however,
was admitted into the cathedral circle—
faugh! the thing could not be thought of. The
cathedral circle, therefore, was apt to be very
select, very dignified, and very dull. They had
evening parties, at which the old ladies played
cards with the prebends, and the young ladies
sat and looked on, and shifted from one chair
to another about the room, until it was time to
go home.
It was difficult to get up a ball, from the want
of partners, the cathedral circle being very deficient
in dancers; and on those occasions, there
was an occasional drafting among the dancing
men of the other circle, who, however, were
generally regarded with great reserve and condescension
by the gentlemen in powdered wigs.
that they had often looked with a wistful
eye at the gayety of the other circle, where
there was such plenty of young beaux, and where
they all seemed to enjoy themselves so merrily;
but that it would be degradation to think of descending
from their sphere.
I admired the degree of old fashioned ceremony,
and superannuated courtesy that prevailed
in this little place. The bowings and curtseyings
that would take place about the cathedral
porch after morning service, where knots of old
gentlemen and ladies would collect together to
ask after each other's health, and settle the card
party for the evening. The little presents of
fruit and delicacies, and the thousand petty messages
that would pass from house to house; for
in a tranquil community like this, living entirely
at ease, and having little to do, little duties and
little civilities and little amusements, fill up the
day. I have smiled, as I looked from my window
on a quiet street near the cathedral, in the
middle of a warm summer day, to see a corpulent
small tart on a large silver salver. A dainty tit-bit,
sent, no doubt, by some worthy old dowager,
to top off the dinner of her favourite prebend.
Nothing could be more delectable, also, than
the breaking up of one of their evening card parties.
Such shakings of hand; such mobbing up
in cloaks and tippets! There were two or three
old sedan chairs that did the duty of the whole
place; though the greater part made their exit
in clogs or pattens, with a footman or waiting
maid carrying a lanthorn in advance; and at a
certain hour of the night the clank of pattens and
the gleam of these jack lanthorns, here and
there, about the quiet little town, gave notice
that the cathedral card party had dissolved, and
the luminaries were severally seeking their
homes. To such a community, therefore, or
at least to the female part of it, the accession of
a gay, dashing young beau was a matter of some
importance. The old ladies eyed me with complacency
through their spectacles, and the young
ladies pronounced me divine. Every body received
who had written the Latin verses on the belle.—
Not that he was jealous of my success with the
lady, for he had no pretensions to her; but he
heard my verses praised wherever he went, and
he could not endure a rival with the muse.
I was thus carrying every thing before me. I
was the Adonis of the cathedral circle; when
one evening there was a public ball which was
attended likewise by the gentry of the neighbourhood.
I took great pains with my toilet
on the occasion, and I had never looked better.
I had determined that night to make my grand
assault on the heart of the young lady, to batter
it with all my forces, and the next morning to
demand a surrender in due form.
I entered the ball room amidst a buzz and
flutter, which generally took place among the
young ladies on my appearance. I was in fine
spirits; for to tell the truth, I had exhilarated
myself by a cheerful glass of wine on the occasion.
I talked, and rattled, and said a thousand
silly things, slap dash, with all the confidence of
its effect.
In the midst of my triumph I observed a little
knot gathering together in the upper part of the
room. By degrees it increased. A tittering broke
out there; and glances were cast round at
me, and then there would be fresh tittering.
Some of the young ladies would hurry away to
distant parts of the room, and whisper to their
friends: wherever they went there was still this
tittering and glancing at me. I did not know
what to make of all this: I looked at myself
from head to foot; and peeped at my back in a
glass, to see if any thing was odd about my person;
any awkward exposure; any whimsical
tag hanging out—no—every thing was right. I
was a perfect picture.
I determined that it must be some choice saying
of mine, that was bandied about in this knot
of merry beauties, and I determined to enjoy one
of my good things in the rebound.
I stepped gently, therefore, up the room, smiling
at every one as I passed, who I must say all
group, smirking and perking my chin, like a man
who is full of pleasant feeling, and sure of being
well received. The cluster of little belles opened
as I advanced.
Heavens and earth! whom should I perceive in
the midst of them, but my early and tormenting
flame, the everlasting Sacharissa! She was
grown up, it is true, into the full beauty of womanhood,
but showed by the provoking merriment
of her countenance, that she perfectly recollected
me, and the ridiculous flagellations of
which she had twice been the cause.
I saw at once the exterminating cloud of ridicule
that was bursting over me. My crest fell.
The flame of love went suddenly out in my bosom;
or was extinguished by overwhelming
shame. How I got down the room I know not;
I fancied every one tittering at me. Just as I
reached the door, I caught a glance of my mistress
and her aunt listening to the whispers of my
poetic rival; the old lady raising her hands and
eyes, and the face of the young one lighted up
but made two steps from the top of the stairs to
the bottom. The next morning, before sunrise,
I beat a retreat; and did not feel the blushes cool
from my tingling cheeks, until I had lost sight of
the old towers of the cathedral.
I now returned to town thoughtful and crestfallen.
My money was nearly spent, for I had
lived freely and without calculation. The dream
of love was over, and the reign of pleasure at an
end. I determined to retrench while I had yet
a trifle left; so selling my equipage and horses
for half their value, I quietly put the money in
my pocket, and turned pedestrian. I had not a
doubt that, with my great expectations, I could
at any time raise funds, either on usury or by borrowing;
but I was principled against both one
and the other; and resolved, by strict economy,
to make my slender purse hold out, until my uncle
should give up the ghost; or rather, the estate.
I staid at home, therefore, and read, and would
have written; but I had already suffered too
much from my poetical productions, which had
I gradually acquired a rusty look, and had a
straightened, money-borrowing air, upon which
the world began to shy me. I have never felt
disposed to quarrel with the world for its conduct.
It has always used me well. When I have been
flush, and gay, and disposed for society, it has
caressed me; and when I have been pinched,
and reduced, and wished to be alone, why, it has
left me alone; and what more could a man desire?—Take
my word for it, this world is a more
obliging world than people generally represent it.
Well, sir, in the midst of my retrenchment, my
retirement and my studiousness, I received news
that my uncle was dangerously ill. I hastened
on the wings of an heir's affections to receive his
dying breath and his last testament. I found
him attended by his faithful valet old Iron John;
by the woman who occasionally worked about
the house; and by the foxy-headed boy young
Orson, whom I had occasionally hunted about
the park.
Iron John gasped a kind of asthmatical salutation
something almost like a smile of welcome. The
woman sat blubbering at the foot of the bed; and
the foxy headed Orson, who had now grown up
to be a lubberly lout, stood gazing in stupid vacancy
at a distance.
My uncle lay stretched upon his back. The
chamber was without fire, or any of the comforts
of a sick room. The cobwebs flaunted from the
ceiling. The tester was covered with dust, and
the curtains were tattered. From underneath
the bed peeped out one end of his strong box.
Against the wainscot were suspended rusty blunderbusses,
horse pistols, and a cut-and-thrust
sword, with which he had fortified his room to
defend his life and treasure. He had employed
no physician during his illness, and from the
scanty relics lying on the table, seemed almost
to have denied himself the assistance of a cook.
When I entered the room he was lying motionless;
his eyes fixed and his mouth open; at
the first look I thought him a corpse. The
noise of my entrance made him turn his head.
face, and his glazing eye gleamed with satisfaction.
It was the only smile he had ever given
me, and it went to my heart. “Poor old man!”
thought I, “why would you not let me love
you?—Why would you force me to leave you
thus desolate, when I see that my presence has
the power to cheer you?”
“Nephew,” said he, after several efforts, and
in a low gasping voice—“I am glad you are
come. I shall now die with satisfaction. Look,”
said he, raising his withered hand and pointing—“look—in
that box on the table you will
find that I have not forgotten you,”
I pressed his hand to my heart, and the tears
stood in my eyes. I sat down by his bed side,
and watched him, but he never spoke again.
My presence, however, gave him evident satisfaction—for
every now and then, as he looked
at me, a vague smile would come over his visage,
and he would feebly point to the sealed box on
the table. As the day wore away his life seemed
to wear away with it. Towards sun set, his
eyes grew glazed; his mouth remained open, and
thus he gradually died.
I could not but feel shocked at this absolute
extinction of my kindred. I dropped a tear of
real sorrow over this strange old man, who had
thus reserved his smile of kindness to his death
bed; like an evening sun after a gloomy day,
just shining out to set in darkness. Leaving the
corpse in charge of the domestics, I retired for
the night.
It was a rough night. The winds seemed as
if singing my uncle's requiem about the mansion;
and the bloodhounds howled without as if they
knew of the death of their old master. Iron
John almost grudged me the tallow candle to
burn in my apartment and light up its dreariness;
so accustomed had he been to starveling economy.
I could not sleep. The recollection of my uncle's
dying scene and the dreary sounds about the
house, affected my mind. These, however, were
succeeded by plans for the future, and I lay awake
the greater part of the night, indulging the poetical
old walls ring with cheerful life, and restore the
hospitality of my mother's ancestors.
My uncle's funeral was decent, but private. I
knew there was nobody that respected his memory;
and I was determined that none should
be summoned to sneer over his funeral wines, and
make merry at his grave. He was buried in the
church of the neighbouring village, though it was
not the burying place of his race; but he had
expressly enjoined that he should not be buried
with his family; he had quarrelled with the most
of them when living, and he carried his resentments
even into the grave.
I defrayed the expenses of the funeral out of
my own purse, that I might have done with the
undertakers at once, and clear the ill-omened
birds from the premises. I invited the parson of
the parish, and the lawyer from the village to attend
at the house the next morning and hear the
reading of the will. I treated them to an excellent
breakfast, a profusion that had not been seen
at the house for many a year. As soon as the
John, the woman, and the boy, for I was particular
in having every one present and proceeding
regularly. The box was placed on the table.
All was silence. I broke the seal; raised the
lid; and beheld—not the will, but my accursed
poem of Doubting Castle and Giant Despair!
Could any mortal have conceived that this old
withered man; so taciturn, and apparently lost
to feeling, could have treasured up for years the
thoughtless pleasantry of a boy, to punish him
with such cruel ingenuity? I now could account
for his dying smile, the only one he had ever
given me. He had been a grave man all his
life; it was strange that he should die in the enjoyment
of a joke; and it was hard that that
joke should be at my expense.
The lawyer and the parson seemed at a loss to
comprehend the matter. “Here must be some
mistake,” said the lawyer, “there is no will
here.”
“Oh,” said Iron John, creaking forth his rusty.
I can find one.”
He retired with the same singular smile with
which he had greeted me on my arrival, and
which I now apprehended boded me no good.
In a little while he returned with a will perfect
at all points, properly signed and sealed and witnessed;
worded with horrible correctness; in
which he left large legacies to Iron John and
his daughter, and the residue of his fortune
to the foxy-headed boy; who, to my utter
astonishment, was his son by this very woman;
he having married her privately; and, as
I verily believe, for no other purpose than to have
an heir, and so baulk my father and his issue of
the inheritance. There was one little proviso,
in which he mentioned that having discovered
his nephew to have a pretty turn for poetry, he
presumed he had no occasion for wealth: he recommended
him, however, to the patronage of his
heir; and requested that he might have a garret,
rent free, in Doubting Castle.
GRAVE REFLECTIONS
OF
A DISAPPOINTED MAN.
Mr. Buckthorne had paused at the death
of his uncle, and the downfall of his great expectations,
which formed, as he said, an epoch
in his history; and it was not until some little
time afterwards, and in a very sober mood, that
he resumed his parti-coloured narrative.
After leaving the domains of my defunct uncle,
said he, when the gate closed between me and
what was once to have been mine, I felt thrust
out naked into the world, and completely abandoned
to fortune. What was to become of me?
I had been brought up to nothing but expectations,
and they had all been disappointed. I
had no relations to look to for counsel or assistance.
from me. Wave after wave of relationship had
ebbed off, and I was left a mere hulk upon the
strand. I am not apt to be greatly cast down,
but at this time I felt sadly disheartened. I
could not realize my situation, nor form a conjecture
how I was to get forward.
I was now to endeavour to make money.
The idea was new and strange to me. It was
like being asked to discover the philosophers'
stone. I had never thought about money, other
than to put my hand into my pocket and find it,
or if there were none there, to wait until a new
supply came from home. I had considered life
as a mere space of time to be filled up with enjoyments;
but to have it portioned out into long
hours and days of toil, merely that I might gain
bread to give me strength to toil on; to labour
but for the purpose of perpetuating a life of labour
was new and appalling to me. This may
appear a very simple matter to some, but it will
be understood by every unlucky wight in my predicament,
born to great expectations.
I passed several days in rambling about the
scenes of my boyhood; partly because I absolutely
did not know what to do with myself, and
partly because I did not know that I should ever
see them again. I clung to them as one clings
to a wreck, though he knows he must eventually
cast himself loose and swim for his life. I sat down
on a hill within sight of my paternal home, but
I did not venture to approach it, for I felt compunction
at the thoughtlessness with which I had
dissipated my patrimony. But was I to blame,
when I had the rich possessions of my curmudgeon
of an uncle in expectation?
The new possessor of the place was making
great alterations. The house was almost rebuilt.
The trees which stood about it were cut down;
my mother's flower-garden was thrown into a
lawn; all was undergoing a change. I turned
my back upon it with a sigh, and rambled to another
part of the country.
How thoughtful a little adversity makes one,
I had so often been flogged in the cause of wisdom,
you would hardly have recognized the truant
boy who but a few years since had eloped so
heedlessly from its walls. I leaned over the paling
of the play ground, and watched the scholars
at their games, and looked to see if there might
not be some urchin among them, like I was once,
full of gay dreams about life and the world. The
play ground seemed smaller than when I used to
sport about it. The house and park, too, of the
neighbouring squire, the father of the cruel Sacharissa,
had shrunk in size and diminished in
magnificence. The distant hills no longer appeared
so far off, and, alas! no longer awakened
ideas of a fairy land beyond.
As I was rambling pensively through a neighbouring
meadow, in which I had many a time
gathered primroses, I met the very pedagogue
who had been the tyrant and dread of my boyhood.
I had sometimes vowed to myself, when
suffering under his rod, that I would have my
revenge if ever I met him when I had grown to
disposition to keep my vow. The few years
which had matured me into a vigorous man had
shrunk him into decrepitude. He appeared to
have had a paralytic stroke. I looked at him,
and wondered that this poor helpless mortal
could have been an object of terror to me! That
I should have watched with anxiety the glance
of that failing eye, or dreaded the power of that
trembling hand! He tottered feebly along the
path, and had some difficulty in getting over a
style. I ran and assisted him. He looked at me
with surprise, but did not recognize me, and made
a low bow of humility and thanks. I had no
disposition to make myself known, for I felt that
I had nothing to boast of. The pains he had
taken and the pains he had inflicted had been
equally useless. His repeated predictions were
fully verified, and I felt that little Jack Buckthorne,
the idle boy, had grown up to be a very
good-for-nothing man.
This is all very comfortless detail; but as I have
how for once I was schooled for them.
The most thoughtless of mortals will some
time or other have this day of gloom, when he
will be compelled to reflect. I felt on this occasion
as if I had a kind of penance to perform,
and I made a pilgrimage in expiation of my past
levity.
Having passed a night at Leamington, I set
off by a private path which leads up a hill,
through a grove, and across quiet fields, until I
came to the small village, or rather hamlet of
Lenington. I sought the village church. It is
an old low edifice of gray stone on the brow of a
small hill, looking over fertile fields to where
the proud towers of Warwick Castle lift themselves
against the distant horizon. A part of
the church yard is shaded by large trees. Under
one of these my mother lay buried. You have,
no doubt, thought me a light, heartless being.
I thought myself so—but there are moments of
adversity which let us into some feelings of our
nature, to which we might otherwise remain
perpetual strangers.
I sought my mother's grave. The weeds
were already matted over it, and the tombstone
was half hid among nettles. I cleared them
away and they stung my hands; but I was heedless
of the pain, for my heart ached too severely.
I sat down on the grave, and read over and over
again the epitaph on the stone. It was simple,
but it was true. I had written it myself. I had
tried to write a poetical epitaph, but in vain; my
feelings refused to utter themselves in rhyme.
My heart had gradually been filling during my
lonely wanderings; it was now charged to the
brim and overflowed. I sank upon the grave
and buried my face in the tall grass and wept
like a child. Yes, I wept in manhood upon the
grave, as I had in infancy upon the bosom of my
mother, Alas! how little do we appreciate a
mother's tenderness while living! How heedless
are we, in youth, of all her anxieties and
kindness. But when she is dead and gone;
when the cares and coldness of the world
come withering to our hearts; when we find how
hard it is to find true sympathy, how few love
our misfortunes; then it is we think of the mother
we have lost. It is true I had always loved
my mother, even in my most heedless days; but
I felt how inconsiderate and ineffectual had
been my love. My heart melted as I retraced
the days of infancy, when I was led by a mother's
hand, and rocked to sleep in a mother's arms,
and was without care or sorrow. “Oh, my mother!”
exclaimed I, burying my face again in
the grass of the grave—“Oh, that I were once
more by your side; sleeping, never to wake
again, on the cares and troubles of this world!”
I am not naturally of a morbid temperament,
and the violence of my emotion gradually exhausted
itself. It was a hearty, honest, natural,
discharge of griefs which had been slowly accumulating,
and gave me wonderful relief. I rose
from the grave as if I had been offering up a
sacrifice, and I felt as if that sacrifice had been
accepted.
I sat down again on the grass, and plucked,
one by one, the weeds from her grave; the tears
ceased to be bitter. It was a comfort to think
that she had died before sorrow and poverty
came upon her child, and that all his great expectations
were blasted.
I leaned my cheek upon my hand and looked
upon the landscape. Its quiet beauty soothed
me. The whistle of a peasant from an adjoining
field came cheerily to my ear. I seemed to
respire hope and comfort with the free air that
whispered through the leaves and played lightly
with my hair, and dried the tears upon my
cheek. A lark, rising from the field before me,
and leaving, as it were, a stream of song behind
him as he rose, lifted my fancy with him. He
hovered in the air just above the place where the
towers of Warwick Castle marked the horizon;
and seemed as if fluttering with delight at his
own melody. “Surely,” thought I, “if there
were such a thing as transmigration of souls, this
might be taken for some poet, let loose from
earth, but still revelling in song, and carrolling
about fair fields and lordly towns.”
At this moment the long forgotten feeling of
poetry rose within me. A thought sprung at
once into my mind: “I will become an author,”
said I. “I have hitherto indulged in poetry as
a pleasure, and it has brought me nothing but
pain. Let me try what it will do, when I cultivate
it with devotion as a pursuit.”
The resolution, thus suddenly aroused within
me, heaved a load from off my heart. I felt
a confidence in it from the very place where it
was formed. It seemed as though my mother's
spirit whispered it to me from her grave. “I
will henceforth,” said I, “endeavour to be all
that she fondly imagined me. I will endeavour
to act as if she were witness of my actions. I
will endeavour to acquit myself in such manner,
that when I revisit her grave there may, at least,
be no compunctious bitterness in my tears.”
I bowed down and kissed the turf in solemn
attestation of my vow. I plucked some primroses
that were growing there and laid them next
my heart. I left the church yard with my spirits
once more lifted up, and set out a third time
for London, in the character of an author.
Here my companion made a pause, and I waited
in anxious suspense; hoping to have a whole
volume of literary life unfolded to me. He seemed,
however, to have sunk into a fit of pensive
musing; and when after some time I gently roused
him by a question or two as to his literary career.
“No,” said he smiling, “over that part of my
story I wish to leave a cloud. Let the mysteries
of the craft rest sacred for me. Let those who
have never adventured into the republic of letters,
still look upon it as a fairy land. Let them suppose
the author the very being they picture him
from his works: I am not the man to mar their
illusion. I am not the man to hint, while one is
admiring the silken web of Persia, that it has
been spun from the entrails of a miserable worm.”
“Well,” said I, “if you will tell me nothing
of your literary history, let me know at least if
you have had any farther intelligence from
Doubting Castle.”
“Willingly,” replied he, “though I have but
little to communicate.”
THE BOOBY SQUIRE.
A long time elapsed, said Buckthorne, without
my receiving any accounts of my cousin and
his estate. Indeed, I felt so much soreness on
the subject, that I wished, if possible, to shut it
from my thoughts. At length chance took me
into that part of the country, and I could not refrain
from making some inquiries.
I learnt that my cousin had grown up ignorant,
self-willed, and clownish. His ignorance
and clownishness had prevented his mingling
with the neighbouring gentry. In spite of his
great fortune he had been unsuccessful in an attempt
to gain the hand of the daughter of the parson,
and had at length shrunk into the limits of
in a country neighbourhood.
He kept horses and hounds and a roaring table,
at which were collected the loose livers of
the country round, and the shabby gentlemen of
a village in the vicinity. When he could get no
other company he would smoke and drink with
his own servants, who in their turns fleeced and
despised him. Still, with all this apparent prodigality,
he had a leaven of the old man in him,
which showed that he was his true born son.
He lived far within his income, was vulgar in
his expenses, and penurious on many points on
which a gentleman would be extravagant. His
house servants were obliged occasionally to work
on the estate, and part of the pleasure grounds
were ploughed up and devoted to husbandry.
His table, though plentiful, was coarse; his
liquors strong and bad; and more ale and whiskey
were expended in his establishment than
generous wine. He was loud and arrogant at
his own table, and exacted a rich man's homage
from his vulgar and obsequious guests.
As to Iron John, his old grandfather, he had
grown impatient of the tight hand his own
grandson kept over him, and quarrelled with him
soon after he came to the estate. The old man
had retired to a neighbouring village where he
lived on the legacy of his late master, in a small
cottage, and was as seldom seen out of it as a
rat out of his hole in day light.
The cub, like Caliban, seemed to have an
instinctive attachment to his mother. She resided
with him; but, from long habit, she acted
more as servant than as mistress of the mansion;
for she toiled in all the domestic drudgery,
and was oftener in the kitchen than the parlour.
Such was the information which I collected of
my rival cousin who had so unexpectedly elbowed
me out of all my expectations.
I now felt an irresistible hankering to pay a
visit to this scene of my boyhood; and to get a
peep at the odd kind of life that was passing
within the mansion of my maternal ancestors. I
determined to do so in disguise. My booby
cousin had never seen enough of me to be very
make great difference between youth and manhood.
I understood he was a breeder of cattle
and proud of his stock. I dressed myself, therefore,
as a substantial farmer, and with the assistance
of a red scratch that came low down on
my forehead, made a complete change in my
physiognomy.
It was past three o'clock when I arrived at
the gate of the park, and was admitted by an old
woman, who was washing in a dilapidated
building which had once been a porter's lodge.
I advanced up the remains of a noble avenue,
many of the trees of which had been cut down
and sold for timber. The grounds were in
scarcely better keeping than during my uncle's
lifetime. The grass was overgrown with
weeds, and the trees wanted pruning and clearing
of dead branches. Cattle were grazing
about the lawns, and ducks and geese swimming
in the fishponds.
The road to the house bore very few traces of
carriage wheels, as my cousin received few visiters
never used a carriage himself. Once, indeed, as
I was told, he had had the old family carriage
drawn out from among the dust and cobwebs of
the coach house and furbished up, and had
drove with his mother, to the village church, to
take formal possession of the family pew; but
there was such hooting and laughing after them
as they passed through the village, and such giggling
and bantering about the church door, that
the pageant had never made a reappearance.
As I approached the house, a legion of whelps
sallied out barking at me, accompanied by the
low howling rather than barking of two old wornout
bloodhounds, which I recognized for the ancient
life guards of my uncle. The house had
still a neglected, random appearance, though
much altered for the better since my last visit.
Several of the windows were broken and patched
up with boards; and others had been bricked
up, to save taxes. I observed smoke, however,
rising from the chimneys; a phenomenon rarely
witnessed in the ancient establishment. On
room was situated, I heard the sound of boisterous
merriment; where three or four voices were
talking at once, and oaths and laughter were
horribly mingled.
The uproar of the dogs had brought a servant
to the door, a tall, hard-fisted country clown,
with a livery coat put over the under garments
of a ploughman. I requested to see the master
of the house, but was told he was at dinner with
some “gemmen” of the neighbourhood. I made
known my business and sent in to know if I
might talk with the master about his cattle; for
I felt a great desire to have a peep at him at his
orgies. Word was returned that he was engaged
with company, and could not attend to business,
but that if I would “step in and take a
drink of something, I was heartily welcome.”
I accordingly entered the hall, where whips and
hats of all kinds and shapes were lying on an
oaken table; two or three clownish servants were
lounging about; every thing had a look of confusion
and carelessness.
The apartments through which I passed had
the same air of departed gentility and sluttish
housekeeping. The once rich curtains were
faded and dusty; the furniture greased and tarnished.
On entering the dining room I found a
number of odd vulgar looking rustic gentlemen
seated round a table, on which were bottles, decanters,
tankards, pipes and tobacco. Several
dogs were lying about the room, or sitting and
watching their masters, and one was gnawing a
bone under a side table.
The master of the feast sat at the head of the
board. He was greatly altered. He had grown
thick set and rather gummy, with a fiery foxy
head of hair. There was a singular mixture of
foolishness arrogance and conceit in his countenance.
He was dressed in a vulgarly fine style,
with leather breeches, a red waistcoat and green
coat, and was evidently, like his guests, a little
flushed with drinking. The whole company
stared at me with a whimsical muggy look;
like men whose senses were a little obfruseated
by beer rather than wine.
My cousin, (God forgive me! the appellation
sticks in my throat,) my cousin invited me with
awkward civility, or, as he intended it, condescension,
to sit to the table and drink. We talked
as usual, about the weather, the crops, politics,
and hard times. My cousin was a loud
politician, and evidently accustomed to talk
without contradiction at his own table. He
was amazingly loyal, and talked of standing by
the throne to the last guinea, “as every gentleman
of fortune should do.” The village exciseman,
who was half asleep, could just ejaculate
“very true,” to every thing he said.
The conversation turned upon cattle; he boasted
of his breed, his mode of managing it, and of
the general management of his estate. This unluckily
drew on a history of the place and of the
family. He spoke of my late uncle with the
greatest irreverence, which I could easily forgive.
He mentioned my name, and my blood began to
boil. He described my frequent visits to my uncle
when I was a lad, and I found the varlet, even
was to inherit the estate.
He described the scene of my uncle's death,
and the opening of the will, with a degree of
coarse humour that I had not expected from him;
and, vexed as I was, I could not help joining in
the laugh; for I have always relished a joke,
even though made at my own expense. He went
on to speak of my various pursuits; my strolling
freak, and that somewhat nettled me. At length
he talked of my parents. He ridiculed my father:
I stomached even that, though with great
difficulty. He mentioned my mother with a sneer
—and in an instant he lay sprawling at my feet.
Here a scene of tumult succeeded. The table
was nearly overturned. Bottles, glasses, and
tankards rolled crashing and clattering about the
floor. The company seized hold of both of us to
keep us from doing farther mischief. I struggled
to get loose, for I was boiling with fury. My
cousin defied me to strip and fight him on the
lawn. I agreed; for I felt the strength of a giant
in me, and I longed to pummel him soundly.
Away then we were borne. A ring was formed.
I had a second assigned me in true boxing
style. My cousin, as he advanced to fight, said
something about his generosity in showing me
such fair play, when I had made such an unprovoked
attack upon him at his own table.
“Stop there!” cried I, in a rage—“unprovoked!—know
that I am John Buckthorne, and
you have insulted the memory of my mother.”
The lout was suddenly struck by what I said.
He drew back and reflected for a moment.
“Nay, damn it,” said he, “that's too much—
that's clear another thing. I've a mother myself,
and no one shall speak ill of her, bad as she
is.”
He paused again. Nature seemed to have a
rough struggle in his rude bosom.
“Damn it, cousin,” cried he, “I'm sorry for
what I said. Thou'st served me right in knocking
me down, and I like thee the better for it.
Here's my hand. Come and live with me, and
damme but the best room in the house, and the
best horse in the stable, shall be at thy service.”
I declare to you I was strongly moved at this
instance of nature breaking her way through
such a lump of flesh. I forgave the fellow in a
moment all his crimes of having been born in
wedlock and inheriting my estate. I shook the
hand he offered me, to convince him that I bore
him no ill will; and then making my way through
the gaping crowd of toad eaters, bade adieu to
my uncle's domains forever. This is the last I
have seen or heard of my cousin, or of the domestic
concerns of Doubting Castle.
THE
STROLLING MANAGER.
As I was walking one morning with Buckthorne,
near one of the principal theatres, he directed my
attention to a groupe of those equivocal beings
that may often be seen hovering about the stage
doors of theatres. They were marvellously
ill favoured in their attire, their coats buttoned
up to their chins; yet they wore their hats smartly
on one side, and had a certain knowing, dirty-gentleman
like air, which is common to the subalterns
of the drama. Buckthorne knew them
well by early experience.
These, said he, are the ghosts of departed
kings and heroes; fellows who sway sceptres
and truncheons; command kingdoms and armies;
night, have scarce a shilling to pay for a breakfast
in the morning. Yet they have the true
vagabond abhorrence of all useful and industrious
employment; and they have their pleasures too:
one of which is to longue in this way in the sunshine,
at the stage door, during rehearsals, and
make hackneyed theatrical jokes on all passers
by.
Nothing is more traditional and legitimate
than the stage. Old scenery, old clothes, old
sentiments, old ranting, and old jokes, are handed
down from generation to generation; and
will probably continue to be so, until time shall
be no more. Every hanger on of a theatre
becomes a wag by inheritance, and flourishes
about at tap rooms and six-penny clubs, with
the property jokes of the green room.
While amusing ourselves with reconnoitring
this groupe, we noticed one in particular who
appeared to be the oracle. He was a weather
beaten veteran, a little bronzed by time and
beer, who had, no doubt, grown gray in the
walking noblemen.
“There's something in the set of that hat, and
the turn of that physiognomy, that is extremely
familiar to me,” said Buckthorne. He looked
a little closer. “I cannot be mistaken,” added
he, “that must be my old brother of the truncheon,
Flimsey, the tragic hero of the strolling
company.”
It was he in fact. The poor fellow showed
evident signs that times went hard with him; he
was so finely and shabbily dressed. His coat
was somewhat threadbare, and of the Lord
Townly cut; single breasted, and scarcely capable
of meeting in front of his body; which, from
long intimacy, had acquired the symmetry and
robustness of a beer barrel. He wore a pair of
dingy white stockinet pantaloons, which had
much ado to reach his waistcoat; a great quantity
of dirty cravat; and a pair of old russet-coloured
tragedy boots.
When his companions had dispersed, Buckthorne
drew him aside and made himself known
him, or believe that he was really his quondam
associate “little gentleman Jack.” Buckthorne
invited him to a neighbouring coffee house
to talk over old times; and in the course of a
little while we were put in possession of his history
in brief.
He had continued to act the heroes in the strolling
company for some time after Buckthorne
had left it, or rather had been driven from it so
abruptly. At length the manager died, and the
troop was thrown into confusion. Every one
aspired to the crown; every one was for taking
the lead; and the manager's widow, although a
tragedy queen, and a brimstone to boot, pronounced
it utterly impossible to keep any controul
over such a set of tempestuous rascallions.
Upon this hint I spoke, said Flimsey—I
stepped forward, and offered my services in the
most effectual way. They were accepted. In
a week's time I married the widow and succeeded
to the throne. “The funeral baked meats did
coldly furnish forth the marriage table,” as Hamlet
haunted me; and I inherited crowns, sceptres,
bowls, daggers, and all the stage trappings and
trumpery, not omitting the widow, without the
least molestation.
I now led a flourishing life of it; for our company
was pretty strong and attractive, and as my
wife and I took the heavy parts of tragedy, it
was a great saving to the treasury. We carried
off the palm from all the rival shows at country
fairs; and I assure you we have even drawn full
houses, and been applauded by the critics at Bartlemy
fair itself, though we had Astley's troop,
the Irish giant, and “the death of Nelson” in
wax work to contend against.
I soon began to experience, however, the cares
of command. I discovered that there were cabals
breaking out in the company, headed by
the clown, who you may recollect was a terribly
peevish, fractious fellow, and always in ill
humour. I had a great mind to turn him off at
once, but I could not do without him, for there
was not a droller scoundrel on the stage. His
back upon the audience and all the ladies were
ready to die with laughing. He felt his importance,
and took advantage of it. He would
keep the audience in a continual roar, and then
come behind the scenes and fret and fume and
play the very devil. I excused a great deal in
him, however, knowing that comic actors are a
little prone to this infirmity of temper.
I had another trouble of a nearer and dearer nature
to struggle with; which was, the affection of
my wife. As ill luck would have it she took it into
her head to be very fond of me, and became intolerably
jealous. I could not keep a pretty
girl in the company, and hardly dared embrace an
ugly one, even when my part required it. I have
known her to reduce a fine lady to tatters, “to
very rags,” as Hamlet says, in an instant, and
destroy one of the very best dresses in the wardrobe;
merely because she saw me kiss her at
the side scenes;—though I give you my honour
it was done merely by way of rehearsal.
This was doubly annoying, because I have a
them about me; and because they are indispensable
to the success of a company at a fair,
where one has to vie with so many rival theatres.
But when once a jealous wife gets a freak in her
head there's no use in talking of interest or any
thing else. Egad, sirs, I have more than once
trembled when during a fit of her tantrums, she
was playing high tragedy, and flourishing her tin
dagger on the stage, lest she should give way
to her humour, and stab some fancied rival in
good earnest.
I went on better, however, than could be expected,
considering the weakness of my flesh
and the violence of my rib. I had not a much
worse time of it than old Jupiter, whose spouse
was continually ferreting out some new intrigue
and making the heavens almost too hot to hold
him.
At length, as luck would have it, we were
performing at a country fair, when I understood
the theatre of a neighbouring town to be vacant.
I had always been desirous to be enrolled in a
was to get on a par with a brother-in-law, who
was manager of a regular theatre, and who had
looked down upon me. Here was an opportunity
not to be neglected. I concluded an agreement
with the proprietors, and in a few days
opened the theatre with great eclat.
Behold me now at the summit of my ambition,
“the high top-gallant of my joy,” as Thomas
says. No longer a chieftain of a wandering
tribe, but the monarch of a legitimate throne—
and entitled to call even the great potentates of
Covent Garden and Drury Lane cousin.
You no doubt think my happiness complete.
Alas, sir! I was one of the most uncomfortable
dogs living. No one knows, who has not tried,
the miseries of a manager; but above all, of a
country manager—no one can conceive the contentions
and quarrels within doors, the oppressions
and vexations from without.
I was pestered with the bloods and loungers
of a country town, who infested my green room,
and played the mischief among my actresses.
would have been ruin to affront them; for,
though troublesome friends, they would have
been dangerous enemies. Then there were the
village critics and village amateurs, who were
continually tormenting me with advice, and
getting into a passion if I would not take it:—
especially the village doctor and the village attorney;
who had both been to London occasionally,
and knew what acting should be.
I had also to manage as arrant a crew of scape
graces as were ever collected together within the
walls of a theatre. I had been obliged to combine
my original troop with some of the former
troop of the theatre, who were favourites with
the public. Here was a mixture that produced
perpetual ferment. They were all the time
either fighting or frolicking with each other, and
I scarcely knew which mood was least troublesome.
If they quarrelled, every thing went
wrong; and if they were friends, they were continually
playing off some confounded prank upon
each other, or upon me; for I had unhappily
good-natured fellow, the worst character that a
manager can possess.
Their waggery at times drove me almost crazy;
for there is nothing so vexatious as the
hackneyed tricks and hoaxes and pleasantries of
a veteran band of theatrical vagabonds. I relished
them well enough, it is true, while I was
merely one of the company, but as manager I
found them detestable. They were incessantly
bringing some disgrace upon the theatre by their
tavern frolicks, and their pranks about the country
town. All my lectures upon the importance
of keeping up the dignity of the profession, and
the respectability of the company were in vain.
The villains could not sympathize with the delicate
feelings of a man in station. They even
trifled with the seriousness of stage business. I
have had the whole piece interrupted and a crowded
audience of at least twenty-five pounds kept
waiting, because the actors had hid away the
breeches of Rosalind; and have known Hamlet
stalk solemnly on to deliver his soliloquy, with a
baleful consequences of a managers' getting a
character for good nature.
I was intolerably annoyed, too, by the great
actors, who came down starring, as it is called,
from London. Of all baneful influences, keep
me from that of a London star. A first rate actress,
going the rounds of the country theatres,
is as bad as a blazing comet, whisking about the
heavens, and shaking fire, and plagues, and discords
from its tail.
The moment one of these “heavenly bodies,”
appeared on my horizon, I was sure to be in hot
water. My theatre was overrun by provincial dandies,
copper-washed counterfeits of Bond-street
loungers; who are always proud to be in the
train of an actress from town, and anxious to be
thought on exceeding good terms with her. It
was really a relief to me when some random
young nobleman would come in pursuit of the
bait, and awe all this small fry to a distance. I
have always felt myself more at ease with a nobleman
than with the dandy of a country town.
And then the injuries I suffered in my personal
dignity and my managerial authority from the
visits of these great London actors. Sir, I was
no longer master of myself or my throne. I was
hectored and lectured in my own green-room, and
made an absolute nincompoop on my own stage.
There is no tyrant so absolute and capricious as
a London star at a country theatre.
I dreaded the sight of all of them; and yet if
I did not engage them, I was sure of having the
public clamourous against me. They drew full
houses, and appeared to be making my fortune;
but they swallowed up all the profits by their insatiable
demands. They were absolute tape
worms to my little theatre; the more it took in,
the poorer it grew. They were sure to leave me
with an exhausted public, empty benches, and a
score or two of affronts to settle among the towns
folk, in consequence of misunderstandings about
the taking of places.
But the worst thing I had to undergo in my managerial
career was patronage. Oh, sir, of all
things deliver me from the patronage of the great
must know that this town, though small, was
filled with feuds, and parties, and great folks;
being a busy little trading and manufacturing
town. The mischief was, that their greatness
was of a kind not to be settled by reference to the
court calender, or college of heraldry. It was
therefore the most quarrelsome kind of greatness
in existence. You smile, sir, but let me tell you
there are no feuds more furious than the frontier
feuds, which take place on these “debateable
lands” of gentility. The most violent dispute
that I ever knew in high life, was one that occurred
at a country town, on a question of precedence
between the ladies of a manufacturer of
pins, and a manufacturer of needles.
At the town where I was situated there were
perpetual altercations of the kind. The head
manufacturer's lady, for instance, was at daggers
drawings with the head shopkeeper's, and both
were too rich, and had too many friends to be
treated lightly. The doctor's and lawyer's ladies
held their heads still higher; but they in
country banker, who kept her own carriage;
while a masculine widow of cracked character,
and second hand fashion, who lived in a large
house, and was in some way related to nobility,
looked down upon them all. She had been exiled
from the great world, but here she ruled absolute.
To be sure her manners were not over
elegant, nor her fortune over large; but then,
sir, her blood—oh, her blood carried it all hollow;
there was no withstanding a woman with
such blood in her veins.
After all, she had frequent battles for precedence
at balls and assemblies, with some of the
sturdy dames of the neighbourhood, who stood
upon their wealth and their reputations; but
then she had two dashing daughters, who dressed
as fine as dragons, and had as high blood as their
mother, and seconded her in every thing. So
they carried their point with high heads, and
every body hated, abused, and stood in awe of
the Fantadlins.
Such was the state of the fashionable world in
not as well acquainted with its politics as I should
have been. I had found myself a stranger and
in great perplexities during my first season; I
determined, therefore, to put myself under the
patronage of some powerful name, and thus to
take the field with the prejudices of the public in
my favour. I cast round my thoughts for the
purpose, and in an evil hour they fell upon Mrs.
Fantadlin. No one seemed to me to have a more
absolute sway in the world of fashion. I had
always noticed that her party slammed the box
door the loudest at the theatre; had most beaux
attending on them; and talked and laughed loudest
during the performance; and then the Miss
Fantadlins wore always more feathers and flowers
than any other ladies; and used quizzing
glasses incessantly. The first evening of my
theatre's reopening, therefore, was announced in
flaring capitals on the play bills, “under the patronage
of the Honourable Mrs. Fantadlin.”
Sir, the whole community flew to arms! The
banker's wife felt her dignity grievously insulted
high bailiff, and the richest man in the place.
She immediately issued invitations for a large
party, for the night of the performance, and asked
many a lady to it whom she never had noticed
before. The fashionable world had long groaned
under the tyranny of the Fantadlins, and were
glad to make a common cause against this new
instance of assumption.—Presume to patronize
the theatre! insufferable! Those, too, who had
never before been noticed by the banker's lady,
were ready to enlist in any quarrel, for the honour
of her acquaintance. All minor feuds were therefore
forgotten. The doctor's lady and the lawyer's
lady met together; and the manufacturer's
lady and the shopkeeper's lady kissed each
other; and all, headed by the banker's lady, voted
the theatre a bore, and determined to encourage
nothing but the Indian Jugglers, and Mr.
Walker's Eidonianeon.
Alas for poor Pillgarlick! I little knew the
mischief that was brewing against me. My box
book remained blank. The evening arrived;
pit and gallery, but no fashionables! I
peeped anxiously from behind the curtain, but
the time passed away; the play was retarded
until pit and gallery became furious; and I had
to raise the curtain, and play my greatest part in
tragedy to “a beggarly account of empty boxes.”
It is true the Fantadlins came late, as was
their custom, and entered like a tempest, with a
flutter of feathers and red shawls; but they were
evidently disconcerted at finding they had no
one to admire and envy them, and were enraged
at this glaring defection of their fashionable followers.
All the beau-monde were engaged at
the banker's lady's rout. They remained for
some time in solitary and uncomfortable state,
and though they had the theatre almost to themselves,
yet, for the first time, they talked in
whispers. They left the house at the end of the
first piece, and I never saw them afterwards.
Such was the rock on which I split. I never
got over the patronage of the Fantadlin family.
It became the vogue to abuse the theatre and
troop opened a circus in the town about
the same time, and rose on my ruins. My house
was deserted; my actors grew discontented because
they were ill paid; my door became a
hammering place for every bailiff in the county;
and my wife became more and more shrewish
and tormenting, the more I wanted comfort.
The establishment now became a scene of
confusion and peculation. I was considered
a ruined man, and of course fair game for every
one to pluck at, as every one plunders a sinking
ship. Day after day some of the troop deserted,
and like deserting soldiers, carried off their arms
and accoutrements with them. In this manner
my wardrobe took legs and walked away; my
finery strolled all over the country; my swords
and daggers glittered in every barn; until at
last my tailor made “one fell swoop,” and carried
off three dress coats, half a dozen doublets,
and nineteen pair of flesh coloured pantaloons.
This was the “be all and the end all” of my
fortune. I no longer hesitated what to do.
day, I'll steal too. So I secretly gathered together
the jewels of my wardrobe; packed up a hero's
dress in a handkerchief, slung it on the end
of a tragedy sword, and quietly stole off at dead
of night—“the bell then beating one,”—leaving
my queen and kingdom to the mercy of my rebellious
subjects, and my merciless foes the bumbailiffs.
Such, sir, was the “end of all my greatness.”
I was heartily cured of all passion for governing,
and returned once more into the ranks. I had
for some time the usual run of an actor's life. I
played in various country theatres, at fairs and
in barns; sometimes hard pushed; sometimes
flush, until on one occasion I came within an
ace of making my fortune, and becoming one of
the wonders of the age.
I was playing the part of Richard the Third
in a country barn, and absolutely “out-Heroding
Herod.” An agent of one of the great London
theatres was present: He was on the lookout
for something that might be got up as a
condition—nothing but a miracle could save it.
He pitched upon me for that miracle. I had a
remarkable bluster in my style, and swagger in
my gait, and having taken to drink a little
during my troubles, my voice was somewhat
cracked; so that it seemed like two voices run
into one. The thought struck the agent to bring
me out as a theatrical wonder; as the restorer
of natural and legitimate acting; as the only one
who could understand and act Shakspeare rightly.
He waited upon me the next morning, and
opened his plan. I shrunk from it with becoming
modesty; for well as I thought of myself, I
felt myself unworthy of such praise.
“ 'Sblood, man!” said he, “no praise at all.
You don't imagine that I think you all this. I
only want the public to think so. Nothing so
easy as gulling the public if you only set up a
prodigy. You need not try to act well, you must
only act furiously. No matter what you do, or
how you act, so that it be but odd and strange.
We will have all the pit packed, and the newspapers
famous actors, it shall be insisted that you are
right and they were wrong. If you rant, it shall
be pure passion; if you are vulgar, it shall be a
touch of nature. Every one shall be prepared
to fall into raptures, and shout and yell, at certain
points which you shall make. If you do
but escape pelting the first night, your fortune
and the fortune of the theatre is made.”
I set off for London, therefore, full of new
hopes. I was to be the restorer of Shakspeare
and nature, and the legitimate drama; my very
swagger was to be heroic, and my cracked voice
the standard of elocution. Alas, sir! my usual
luck attended me. Before I arrived at the metropolis,
a rival wonder had appeared. A woman
who could dance the slack rope, and run up
a cord from the stage to the gallery with fire
works all round her. She was seized on by the
manager with avidity; she was the saving of the
great national theatre for the season. Nothing
was talked of but Madame Saqui's fire works
and flame-coloured pantaloons; and nature,
were completely left in the lurch.
However, as the manager was in honour bound
to provide for me he kept his word. It had been
a turn up of a die whether I should be Alexander
the Great or Alexander the coppersmith: the
latter carried it. I could not be put at the head
of the drama, so I was put at the tail. In other
words, I was enrolled among the number of what
are called useful men; who, let me tell you, are
the only comfortable actors on the stage. We
are safe from hisses and below the hope of applause.
We fear not the success of rivals, nor
dread the critic's pen. So long as we get the
words of our parts, and they are not often many,
it is all we care for. We have our own merriment,
our own friends, and our own admirers;
for every actor has his friends and admirers, from
the highest to the lowest. The first rate actor
dines with the noble amateur, and entertains a
fashionable table with scraps and songs and theatrical
slip-slop. The second rate actors have
their second rate friends and admirers, with whom
and so down even to us; who have our friends
and admirers among spruce clerks and aspiring
apprentices, who treat us to a dinner now and
then, and enjoy at tenth hand the same scraps,
and songs, and slip-slop, that have been served
up by our more fortunate brethren at the tables
of the great.
I now, for the first time in my theatrical life,
knew what true pleasure is. I have known
enough of notoriety to pity the poor devils who
are called favourites of the public. I would rather
be a kitten in the arms of a spoiled child,
to be one moment petted and pampered, and
the next moment thumped over the head with
the spoon. I smile, too, to see our leading actors,
fretting themselves with envy and jealousy about
a trumpery renown, questionable in its quality
and uncertain in its duration. I laugh, too,
though of course in my sleeve, at the bustle and
importance and trouble and perplexities of our
manager, who is harrassing himself to death in
the hopeless effort to please every body.
I have found among my fellow subalterns two
or three quondam managers, who, like myself,
have wielded the sceptres of country theatres;
and we have many a sly joke together at the expense
of the manager and the public. Sometimes,
too, we meet like deposed and exiled kings,
talk over the events of our respective reigns;
moralize over a tankard of ale, and laugh at the
humbug of the great and little world; which, I
take it, is the very essence of practical philosophy.
Thus end the anecdotes of Buckthorne and
his friends. A few mornings after our hearing
the history of the ex-manager, he bounced into
my room before I was out of bed.
“Give me joy! Give me joy!” said he, rubbing
his hands with the utmost glee, “my great
expectations are realized!”
I stared at him with a look of wonder and
inquiry.
“My booby cousin is dead!” cried he, “may he
rest in peace! He nearly broke his neck in a fall
from his horse in a fox chase. By good luck he
lived long enough to make his will. He has
made me his heir, partly out of an odd feeling of
retributive justice, and partly because, as he says,
none of his own family or friends knew how to
enjoy such an estate. I'm off to the country to
take possession. I've done with authorship—
That for the critics!” said he, snapping his fingers.
“Come down to Doubting Castle when I
get settled, and egad I'll give you a rouse.” So
saying he shook me heartily by the hand and
bounded off in high spirits.
A long time elapsed before I heard from him
again. Indeed, it was but a short time since
that I received a letter written in the happiest of
moods. He was getting the estate into fine order,
every thing went to his wishes, and what was
more, he was married to Sacharissa: who it
seems had always entertained an ardent though
secret attachment for him, which he fortunately
discovered just after coming to his estate.
“I find,” said he, “you are a little given to the sin
of authorship, which I renounce. If the anecdotes
I have given you of my story are of any interest,
you may make use of them; but come down to
Doubting Castle and see how we live, and I'll
give you my whole London life over a social
glass; and a rattling history it shall be about authors
and reviewers.”
If ever I visit Doubting Castle, and get the history
he promises, the public shall be sure to hear
of it.
| Tales of a traveller | |