AN ADVENTURE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT
That night stands up without any clear traces about it or near it, like
the brazen castle of romance round which the sea-tide flows. My father
must have borne me miles along the road; he must have procured food for
me; I have an idea of feeling a damp forehead and drinking new milk,
and by-and-by hearing a roar of voices or vehicles, and seeing a dog
that went alone through crowded streets without a master, doing as he
pleased, and stopping every other dog he met. He took his turning, and
my father and I took ours. We were in a house that, to my senses, had
the smell of dark corners, in a street where all the house-doors were
painted black, and shut with a bang. Italian organ-men and milk-men
paraded the street regularly, and made it sound hollow to their music.
Milk, and no cows anywhere; numbers of people, and no acquaintances
among them; my thoughts were occupied by the singularity of such
things.
My father could soon make me forget that I was transplanted; he could
act dog, tame rabbit, fox, pony, and a whole nursery collection alive,
but he was sometimes absent for days, and I was not of a temper to be
on friendly terms with those who were unable to captivate my
imagination as he had done. When he was at home I rode him all round
the room and upstairs to bed, I lashed him with a whip till he
frightened me, so real was his barking; if I said 'Menagerie' he became
a caravan of wild beasts; I undid a button of his waistcoat, and it was
a lion that made a spring, roaring at me; I pulled his coat-tails and
off I went tugging at an old bear that swung a hind leg as he turned,
in the queerest way, and then sat up and beating his breast sent out a
mew-moan. Our room was richer to me than all the Grange while these
performances were going forward. His monkey was almost as wonderful as
his bear, only he was too big for it, and was obliged to aim at reality
in his representation of this animal by means of a number of breakages;
a defect that brought our landlady on the scene. The enchantment of my
father's companionship caused me to suffer proportionately in his
absence. During that period of solitude, my nursemaid had to order me
to play, and I would stumble about and squat in the middle of the
floor, struck suddenly by the marvel of the difference between my
present and my other home. My father entered into arrangements with a
Punch and Judy man for him to pay me regular morning visits opposite
our window; yet here again his genius defeated his kind intentions; for
happening once to stand by my side during the progress of the show, he
made it so vivid to me by what he said and did, that I saw no fun in it
without him: I used to dread the heralding crow of Punch if he was
away, and cared no longer for wooden heads being knocked ever so hard.
On Sundays we walked to the cathedral, and this was a day with a
delight of its own for me. He was never away on the Sunday. Both of us
attired in our best, we walked along the streets hand in hand; my
father led me before the cathedral monuments, talking in a low tone of
British victories, and commending the heroes to my undivided attention.
I understood very early that it was my duty to imitate them. While we
remained in the cathedral he talked of glory and Old England, and
dropped his voice in the middle of a murmured chant to introduce
Nelson's name or some other great man's and this recurred regularly.
'What are we for now?' he would ask me as we left our house. I had to
decide whether we took a hero or an author, which I soon learnt to do
with capricious resolution. We were one Sunday for Shakespeare; another
for Nelson or Pitt. 'Nelson, papa,' was my most frequent rejoinder, and
he never dissented, but turned his steps toward Nelson's cathedral
dome, and uncovered his head there, and said: 'Nelson, then, to-day';
and we went straight to his monument to perform the act of homage. I
chose Nelson in preference to the others because near bed-time in the
evening my father told me stories of our hero of the day, and neither
Pitt nor Shakespeare lost an eye, or an arm, or fought with a huge
white bear on the ice to make himself interesting. I named them
occasionally out of compassion, and to please my father, who said that
they ought to have a turn. They were, he told me, in the habit of
paying him a visit, whenever I had particularly neglected them, to
learn the grounds for my disregard of their claims, and they urged him
to intercede with me, and imparted many of their unpublished
adventures, so that I should be tempted to give them a chance on the
following Sunday.
'Great Will,' my father called Shakespeare, and 'Slender Billy,' Pitt.
The scene where Great Will killed the deer, dragging Falstaff all over
the park after it by the light of Bardolph's nose, upon which they put
an extinguisher if they heard any of the keepers, and so left everybody
groping about and catching the wrong person, was the most wonderful
mixture of fun and tears. Great Will was extremely youthful, but
everybody in the park called him, 'Father William'; and when he wanted
to know which way the deer had gone, King Lear (or else my memory
deceives me) punned, and Lady Macbeth waved a handkerchief for it to be
steeped in the blood of the deer; Shylock ordered one pound of the
carcase; Hamlet (the fact was impressed on me) offered him a
three-legged stool; and a number of kings and knights and ladies lit
their torches from Bardolph; and away they flew, distracting the
keepers and leaving Will and his troop to the deer. That poor thing
died from a different weapon at each recital, though always with a flow
of blood and a successful dash of his antlers into Falstaff; and to
hear Falstaff bellow! But it was mournful to hear how sorry Great Will
was over the animal he had slain. He spoke like music. I found it
pathetic in spite of my knowing that the whole scene was lighted up by
Bardolph's nose. When I was just bursting out crying—for the deer's
tongue was lolling out and quick pantings were at his side; he had
little ones at home—Great Will remembered his engagement to sell
Shylock a pound of the carcase; determined that no Jew should eat of
it, he bethought him that Falstaff could well spare a pound, and he
said the Jew would not see the difference: Falstaff only got off by
hard running and roaring out that he knew his unclean life would make
him taste like pork and thus let the Jew into the trick.
My father related all this with such a veritable matter-of-fact air,
and such liveliness—he sounded the chase and its cries, and showed King
Lear tottering, and Hamlet standing dark, and the vast substance of
Falstaff—that I followed the incidents excitedly, and really saw them,
which was better than understanding them. I required some help from him
to see that Hamlet's offer of a three-legged stool at a feverish moment
of the chase, was laughable. He taught me what to think of it by
pitching Great Will's voice high, and Hamlet's very low. By degrees I
got some unconscious knowledge of the characters of Shakespeare.
There never was so fascinating a father as mine for a boy anything
under eight or ten years old. He could guess on Saturday whether I
should name William Pitt on the Sunday; for, on those occasions,
'Slender Billy,' as I hope I am not irreverent in calling him, made up
for the dulness of his high career with a raspberry-jam tart, for
which, my father told me solemnly, the illustrious Minister had in his
day a passion. If I named him, my father would say, 'W. P., otherwise
S. B., was born in the year so-and-so; now,' and he went to the
cupboard, 'in the name of Politics, take this and meditate upon him.'
The shops being all shut on Sunday, he certainly bought it,
anticipating me unerringly, on the Saturday, and, as soon as the tart
appeared, we both shouted. I fancy I remember his repeating a couplet,
'Billy Pitt took a cake and a raspberry jam,
When he heard they had taken Seringapatam.'
At any rate, the rumour of his having done so, at periods of strong
excitement, led to the inexplicable display of foresight on my father's
part.
My meditations upon Pitt were, under this influence, favourable to the
post of a Prime Minister, but it was merely appetite that induced me to
choose him; I never could imagine a grandeur in his office,
notwithstanding my father's eloquent talk of ruling a realm,
shepherding a people, hurling British thunderbolts. The day's
discipline was, that its selected hero should reign the undisputed
monarch of it, so when I was for Pitt, I had my tart as he used to have
it, and no story, for he had none, and I think my idea of the ruler of
a realm presented him to me as a sort of shadow about a pastrycook's
shop. But I surprised people by speaking of him. I made remarks to our
landlady which caused her to throw up her hands and exclaim that I was
astonishing. She would always add a mysterious word or two in the
hearing of my nursemaid or any friend of hers who looked into my room
to see me. After my father had got me forward with instructions on the
piano, and exercises in early English history and the book of the
Peerage, I became the wonder of the house. I was put up on a stool to
play 'In my Cottage near a Wood,' or 'Cherry Ripe,' and then, to show
the range of my accomplishments, I was asked, 'And who married the
Dowager Duchess of Dewlap?' and I answered, 'John Gregg Wetherall,
Esquire, and disgraced the family.' Then they asked me how I accounted
for her behaviour.
'It was because the Duke married a dairymaid,' I replied, always
tossing up my chin at that. My father had concocted the questions and
prepared me for the responses, but the effect was striking, both upon
his visitors and the landlady's. Gradually my ear grew accustomed to
her invariable whisper on these occasions. 'Blood Rile,' she said; and
her friends all said 'No!' like the run of a finger down a
fiddlestring.
A gentleman of his acquaintance called on him one evening to take him
out for a walk. My father happened to be playing with me when this
gentleman entered our room: and he jumped up from his hands and knees,
and abused him for intruding on his privacy, but afterwards he
introduced him to me as Shylock's great-great-great-grandson, and said
that Shylock was satisfied with a pound, and his descendant wanted two
hundred pounds, or else all his body: and this, he said, came of the
emigration of the family from Venice to England. My father only seemed
angry, for he went off with Shylock's very great grandson arm-in-arm,
exclaiming, 'To the Rialto!' When I told Mrs. Waddy about the visitor,
she said, 'Oh, dear! oh, dear! then I'm afraid your sweet papa won't
return very soon, my pretty pet.' We waited a number of days, until
Mrs. Waddy received a letter from him. She came full-dressed into my
room, requesting me to give her twenty kisses for papa, and I looked on
while she arranged her blue bonnet at the glass. The bonnet would not
fix in its place. At last she sank down crying in a chair, and was all
brown silk, and said that how to appear before a parcel of dreadful
men, and perhaps a live duke into the bargain, was more than she knew,
and more than could be expected of a lone widow woman. 'Not for
worlds!' she answered my petition to accompany her. She would not, she
said, have me go to my papa there for anything on earth; my papa would
perish at the sight of me; I was not even to wish to go. And then she
exclaimed, 'Oh, the blessed child's poor papa!' and that people were
cruel to him, and would never take into account his lovely temper, and
that everybody was his enemy, when he ought to be sitting with the
highest in the land. I had realized the extremity of my forlorn state
on a Sunday that passed empty of my father, which felt like his having
gone for ever. My nursemaid came in to assist in settling Mrs. Waddy's
bonnet above the six crisp curls, and while they were about it I sat
quiet, plucking now and then at the brown silk, partly to beg to go
with it, partly in jealousy and love at the thought of its seeing him
from whom I was so awfully separated. Mrs. Waddy took fresh kisses off
my lips, assuring me that my father would have them in twenty minutes,
and I was to sit and count the time. My nursemaid let her out. I
pretended to be absorbed in counting, till I saw Mrs. Waddy pass by the
window. My heart gave a leap of pain. I found the street-door open and
no one in the passage, and I ran out, thinking that Mrs. Waddy would be
obliged to take me if she discovered me by her side in the street.
I was by no means disconcerted at not seeing her immediately. Running
on from one street to another, I took the turnings with unhesitating
boldness, as if I had a destination in view. I must have been out near
an hour before I understood that Mrs. Waddy had eluded me; so I
resolved to enjoy the shop-windows with the luxurious freedom of one
whose speculations on those glorious things all up for show are no
longer distracted by the run of time and a nursemaid. Little more than
a glance was enough, now that I knew I could stay as long as I liked.
If I stopped at all, it was rather to exhibit the bravado of liberty
than to distinguish any particular shop with my preference: all were
equally beautiful; so were the carriages; so were the people. Ladies
frequently turned to look at me, perhaps because I had no covering on
my head; but they did not interest me in the least. I should have been
willing to ask them or any one where the Peerage lived, only my mind
was quite full, and I did not care. I felt sure that a great deal of
walking would ultimately bring me to St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey;
to anything else I was indifferent.
Toward sunset my frame was struck as with an arrow by the sensations of
hunger on passing a cook's-shop. I faltered along, hoping to reach a
second one, without knowing why I had dragged my limbs from the first.
There was a boy in ragged breeches, no taller than myself, standing
tiptoe by the window of a very large and brilliant pastry-cook's. He
persuaded me to go into the shop and ask for a cake. I thought it
perfectly natural to do so, being hungry; but when I reached the
counter and felt the size of the shop, I was abashed, and had to repeat
the nature of my petition twice to the young woman presiding there.
'Give you a cake, little boy?' she said. 'We don't give cakes, we sell
them.'
'Because I am hungry,' said I, pursuing my request.
Another young woman came, laughing and shaking lots of ringlets.
'Don't you see he's not a common boy? he doesn't whine,' she remarked,
and handed me a stale bun, saying, 'Here, Master Charles, and you
needn't say thank you.'
'My name is Harry Richmond, and I thank you very much,' I replied.
I heard her say, as I went out, 'You can see he's a gentleman's son.'
The ragged boy was awaiting me eagerly. 'Gemini! you're a lucky one,'
he cried; 'here, come along, curly-poll.' I believe that I meant to
share the bun with him, but of course he could not be aware of my
beneficent intentions: so he treated me as he thought I was for
treating him, and making one snatch at the bun, ran off cramming it
into his mouth. I stood looking at any hand. I learnt in that instant
what thieving was, and begging, and hunger, for I would have perished
rather than have asked for another cake, and as I yearned for it in
absolute want of food, the boy's ungenerous treatment of me came down
in a cloud on my reason. I found myself being led through the crush of
people, by an old gentleman, to whom I must have related an
extraordinary rigmarole. He shook his head, saying that I was
unintelligible; but the questions he put to me, 'Why had I no hat on in
the open street?—Where did my mother live?—What was I doing out alone
in London?' were so many incitements to autobiographical composition to
an infant mind, and I tumbled out my history afresh each time that he
spoke. He led me into a square, stooping his head to listen all the
while; but when I perceived that we had quitted the region of shops I
made myself quite intelligible by stopping short and crying: 'I am so
hungry.' He nodded and said, 'It's no use cross-examining an empty
stomach. You'll do me the favour to dine with me, my little man. We'll
talk over your affairs by-and-by.'
My alarm at having left the savoury street of shops was not soothed
until I found myself sitting at table with him, and a nice young lady,
and an old one who wore a cap, and made loud remarks on my garments and
everything I did. I was introduced to them as the little boy dropped
from the sky. The old gentleman would not allow me to be questioned
before I had eaten. It was a memorable feast. I had soup, fish, meat,
and pastry, and, for the first time in my life, a glass of wine. How
they laughed to see me blink and cough after I had swallowed half the
glass like water. At once my tongue was unloosed. I seemed to rise
right above the roofs of London, beneath which I had been but a
wandering atom a few minutes ago. I talked of my wonderful father, and
Great Will, and Pitt, and the Peerage. I amazed them with my knowledge.
When I finished a long recital of Great Will's chase of the deer, by
saying that I did not care about politics (I meant, in my own mind,
that Pitt was dull in comparison), they laughed enormously, as if I had
fired them off. 'Do you know what you are, sir?' said the old
gentleman; he had frowning eyebrows and a merry mouth 'you're a comical
character.'
I felt interested in him, and asked him what he was. He informed me
that he was a lawyer, and ready to be pantaloon to my clown, if I would
engage him.
'Are you in the Peerage?' said I.
'Not yet,' he replied.
'Well, then,' said I, 'I know nothing about you.'
The young lady screamed with laughter. 'Oh, you funny little boy; you
killing little creature!' she said, and coming round to me, lifted me
out of my chair, and wanted to know if I knew how to kiss.
'Oh, yes; I've been taught that,' said I, giving the salute without
waiting for the invitation; 'but,' I added, 'I don't care about it
much.'
She was indignant, and told me she was going to be offended, so I let
her understand that I liked being kissed and played with in the morning
before I was up, and if she would come to my house ever so early, she
would find me lying next the wall and ready for her.
'And who lies outside?' she asked.
'That's my papa,' I was beginning to say, but broke the words with a
sob, for I seemed to be separated from him now by the sea itself.
They petted me tenderly. My story was extracted by alternate leading
questions from the old gentleman and timely caresses from the ladies. I
could tell them everything except the name of the street where I lived.
My midnight excursion from the house of my grandfather excited them
chiefly; also my having a mother alive who perpetually fanned her face
and wore a ball-dress and a wreath; things that I remembered of my
mother. The ladies observed that it was clear I was a romantic child. I
noticed that the old gentleman said 'Humph,' very often, and his
eyebrows were like a rook's nest in a tree when I spoke of my father
walking away with Shylock's descendant and not since returning to me. A
big book was fetched out of his library, in which he read my
grandfather's name. I heard him mention it aloud. I had been placed on
a stool beside a tea-tray near the fire, and there I saw the old red
house of Riversley, and my mother dressed in white, and my aunt
Dorothy; and they all complained that I had ceased to love them, and
must go to bed, to which I had no objection. Somebody carried me up and
undressed me, and promised me a great game of kissing in the morning.
The next day in the strange house I heard that the old gentleman had
sent one of his clerks down to my grandfather at Riversley, and
communicated with the constables in London; and, by-and-by, Mrs. Waddy
arrived, having likewise visited those authorities, one of whom
supported her claims upon me. But the old gentleman wished to keep me
until his messenger returned from Riversley. He made all sorts of
pretexts. In the end, he insisted on seeing my father, and Mrs. Waddy,
after much hesitation, and even weeping, furnished the address: upon
hearing which, spoken aside to him, he said, 'I thought so.' Mrs. Waddy
entreated him to be respectful to my father, who was, she declared, his
superior, and, begging everybody's pardon present, the superior of us
all, through no sin of his own, that caused him to be so unfortunate;
and a real Christian and pattern, in spite of outsides, though as true
a gentleman as ever walked, and by rights should be amongst the
highest. She repeated 'amongst the highest' reprovingly, with the ears
of barley in her blue bonnet shaking, and her hands clasped tight in
her lap. Old Mr. Bannerbridge (that was the old gentleman's name) came
back very late from his visit to my father, so late that he said it
would be cruel to let me go out in the street after my bed-time. Mrs.
Waddy consented to my remaining, on the condition of my being
surrendered to her at nine o'clock, and no later, the following
morning.
I was assured by Mr. Bannerbridge that my father's health and appetite
were excellent; he gave me a number of unsatisfying messages, all the
rest concerning his interview he whispered to his daughter and his
sister, Miss Bannerbridge, who said they hoped they would have news
from Hampshire very early, so that the poor child might be taken away
by the friends of his infancy. I could understand that my father was
disapproved of by them, and that I was a kind of shuttlecock flying
between two battledores; but why they pitied me I could not understand.
There was a great battle about me when Mrs. Waddy appeared punctual to
her appointed hour. The victory was hers, and I, her prize, passed a
whole day in different conveyances, the last of which landed us miles
away from London, at the gates of an old drooping, mossed and streaked
farmhouse, that was like a wall-flower in colour.