"My dear boy," says the governor, "why didn't you go and breakfast at
the hotel?"
"He must be starved," says my mother.
I had confessed; I had been a prodigal; I had been taken back to my
parents' arms again. It was not a very great crime as yet, or a very
long career of prodigality; but don't we know that a boy who takes a
pin which is not his own, will take a thousand pounds when occasion
serves, brings his parents' grey heads with sorrow to the grave, and
carry his own to the gallows? Witness the career of Dick Idle, upon
whom our friend Mr. Sala has been discoursing. Dick only began by
playing pitch-and-toss on a tombstone: playing fair, for what we know:
and even for that sin he was promptly caned by the beadle. The bamboo
was ineffectual to cane that reprobate's bad courses out of him. From
pitch-and-toss he proceeded to manslaughter if necessary: to highway
robbery; to Tyburn and the rope there. Ah! Heaven be thanked, my
parents' heads are still above the grass, and mine still out of the
noose.
As I look up from my desk, I see Tunbridge Wells Common and the rocks,
the strange familiar place which I remember forty years ago. Boys
saunter over the green with stumps and cricket-bats. Other boys gallop
by on the riding-master's hacks. I protest it is "Cramp, Riding
Master," as it used to be in the reign of George IV., and that Centaur
Cramp must be at least a hundred years old. Yonder comes a footman
with a bundle of novels from the library. Are they as good as _our_
novels? Oh! how delightful they were! Shades of Valancour, awful ghost
of Manfroni, how I shudder at your appearance! Sweet image of Thaddeus
of Warsaw, how often has this almost infantile hand tried to depict
you in a Polish cap and richly embroidered tights! And as for
Corinthian Tom in light blue pantaloons and hessians, and Jerry
Hawthorn from the country, can all the fashion, can all the splendour
of real life which these eyes have subsequently beheld, can all the
wit I have heard or read in later times, compare with your fashion,
with your brilliancy, with your delightful grace, and sparkling
vivacious rattle?
Who knows? They _may_ have kept those very books at the library
still--at the well-remembered library on the Pantiles, where they sell
that delightful, useful Tunbridge ware. I will go and see. I wend my
way to the Pantiles, the queer little old-world Pantiles, where, a
hundred years since, so much good company came to take its pleasure.
Is it possible, that in the past century, gentlefolks of the first
rank (as I read lately in a lecture on George II. in the _Cornhill
Magazine_) assembled here and entertained each other with gaming,
dancing, fiddling, and tea? There are fiddlers, harpers, and
trumpeters performing at this moment in a weak little old balcony, but
where is the fine company? Where are the earls, duchesses, bishops,
and magnificent embroidered gamesters? A half-dozen of children and
their nurses are listening to the musicians; an old lady or two in a
poke bonnet passes; and for the rest, I see but an uninteresting
population of native tradesmen. As for the library, its window is full
of pictures of burly theologians, and their works, sermons, apologues,
and so forth. Can I go in and ask the young ladies at the counter for
"Manfroni, or the One-handed Monk," and "Life in London, or the
Adventures of Corinthian Tom, Jeremiah Hawthorn, Esquire, and their
friend Bob Logic"?--absurd. I turn away abashed from the
casement--from the Pantiles--no longer Pantiles--but Parade. I stroll
over the Common and survey the beautiful purple hills around,
twinkling with a thousand bright villas, which have sprung up over
this charming ground since first I saw it. What an admirable scene of
peace and plenty! What a delicious air breathes over the heath, blows
the cloud-shadows across it, and murmurs through the full-clad trees!
Can the world show a land fairer, richer, more cheerful? I see a
portion of it when I look up from the window at which I write. But
fair scene, green woods, bright terraces gleaming in sunshine, and
purple clouds swollen with summer rain--nay, the very pages over which
my head bends--disappear from before my eyes. They are looking
backwards, back into forty years off, into a dark room, into a little
house hard by on the Common here, in the Bartlemytide holidays. The
parents have gone to town for two days: the house is all his own, his
own and a grim old maid-servant's, and a little boy is seated at night
in the lonely drawing-room, poring over "Manfroni, or the One-handed
Monk," so frightened that he scarcely dares to turn round.
_Thackeray._