The Oxford visions, of which some have been given, were but
anticipations necessary to illustrate the glimpse opened of childhood,
(as being its reaction.) In this SECOND part, returning from that
anticipation, I retrace an abstract of my boyish and youthful days so
far as they furnished or exposed the germs of later experiences in
worlds more shadowy.
Upon me, as upon others scattered thinly by tens and twenties over every
thousand years, fell too powerfully and too early the vision of life.
The horror of life mixed itself already in earliest youth with the
heavenly sweetness of life; that grief, which one in a hundred has
sensibility enough to gather from the sad retrospect of life in its
closing stage, for me shed its dews as a prelibation upon the fountains
of life whilst yet sparkling to the morning sun. I saw from afar and
from before what I was to see from behind. Is this the description of an
early youth passed in the shades of gloom? No, but of a youth passed in
the divinest happiness. And if the reader has (which so few have) the
passion, without which there is no reading of the legend and
superscription upon man's brow, if he is not (as most are) deafer than
the grave to every _deep_ note that sighs upwards from the Delphic caves
of human life, he will know that the rapture of life (or any thing which
by approach can merit that name) does not arise, unless as perfect music
arises--music of Mozart or Beethoven--by the confluence of the mighty
and terrific discords with the subtle concords. Not by contrast, or as
reciprocal foils do these elements act, which is the feeble conception
of many, but by union. They are the sexual forces in music: "male and
female created he them;" and these mighty antagonists do not put forth
their hostilities by repulsion, but by deepest attraction.
As "in to-day already walks to-morrow," so in the past experience of a
youthful life may be seen dimly the future. The collisions with alien
interests or hostile views, of a child, boy, or very young man, so
insulated as each of these is sure to be,--those aspects of opposition
which such a person _can_ occupy, are limited by the exceedingly few and
trivial lines of connexion along which he is able to radiate any
essential influence whatever upon the fortunes or happiness of others.
Circumstances may magnify his importance for the moment; but, after all,
any cable which he carries out upon other vessels is easily slipped upon
a feud arising. Far otherwise is the state of relations connecting an
adult or responsible man with the circles around him as life advances.
The network of these relations is a thousand times more intricate, the
jarring of these intricate relations a thousand times more frequent, and
the vibrations a thousand times harsher which these jarrings diffuse.
This truth is felt beforehand misgivingly and in troubled vision, by a
young man who stands upon the threshold of manhood. One earliest
instinct of fear and horror would darken his spirit if it could be
revealed to itself and self-questioned at the moment of birth: a second
instinct of the sane nature would again pollute that tremulous mirror,
if the moment were as punctually marked as physical birth is marked,
which dismisses him finally upon the tides of absolute self-control. A
dark ocean would seem the total expanse of life from the first: but far
darker and more appalling would seem that interior and second chamber of
the ocean which called him away for ever on the direct accountability of
others. Dreadful would be the morning which should say--"Be thou a human
child incarnate;" but more dreadful the morning which should say--"Bear
thou henceforth the sceptre of thy self-dominion through life, and the
passion of life!" Yes, dreadful would be both: but without a basis of
the dreadful there is no perfect rapture. It is a part through the
sorrow of life, growing out of its events, that this basis of awe and
solemn darkness slowly accumulates. _That_ I have illustrated. But, as
life expands, it is more through the _strife_ which besets us, strife
from conflicting opinions, positions, passions, interests, that the
funereal ground settles and deposits itself, which sends upward the dark
lustrous brilliancy through the jewel of life--else revealing a pale and
superficial glitter. Either the human being must suffer and struggle as
the price of a more searching vision, or his gaze must be shallow and
without intellectual revelation.
Through accident it was in part, and, where through no accident but my
own nature, not through features of it at all painful to recollect, that
constantly in early life (that is, from boyish days until eighteen, when
by going to Oxford, practically I became my own master) I was engaged in
duels of fierce continual struggle, with some person or body of persons,
that sought, like the Roman _retiarius_, to throw a net of deadly
coercion or constraint over the undoubted rights of my natural freedom.
The steady rebellion upon my part in one-half, was a mere human reaction
of justifiable indignation; but in the other half it was the struggle of
a conscientious nature--disdaining to feel it as any mere right or
discretional privilege--no, feeling it as the noblest of duties to
resist, though it should be mortally, those that would have enslaved me,
and to retort scorn upon those that would have put my head below their
feet. Too much, even in later life, I have perceived in men that pass
for good men, a disposition to degrade (and if possible to degrade
through self-degradation) those in whom unwillingly they feel any weight
of oppression to themselves, by commanding qualities of intellect or
character. They respect you: they are compelled to do so: and they hate
to do so. Next, therefore, they seek to throw off the sense of this
oppression, and to take vengeance for it, by co-operating with any
unhappy accidents in your life, to inflict a sense of humiliation upon
you, and (if possible) to force you into becoming a consenting party to
that humiliation. Oh, wherefore is it that those who presume to call
themselves the "friends" of this man or that woman, are so often those
above all others, whom in the hour of death that man or woman is most
likely to salute with the valediction--Would God I had never seen your
face?
In citing one or two cases of these early struggles, I have chiefly in
view the effect of these upon my subsequent visions under the reign of
opium. And this indulgent reflection should accompany the mature reader
through all such records of boyish inexperience. A good tempered-man,
who is also acquainted with the world, will easily evade, without
needing any artifice of servile obsequiousness, those quarrels which an
upright simplicity, jealous of its own rights, and unpractised in the
science of worldly address, cannot always evade without some loss of
self-respect. Suavity in this manner may, it is true, be reconciled with
firmness in the matter; but not easily by a young person who wants all
the appropriate resources of knowledge, of adroit and guarded language,
for making his good temper available. Men are protected from insult and
wrong, not merely by their own skill, but also in the absence of any
skill at all, by the general spirit of forbearance to which society has
trained all those whom they are likely to meet. But boys meeting with no
such forbearance or training in other boys, must sometimes be thrown
upon feuds in the ratio of their own firmness, much more than in the
ratio of any natural proneness to quarrel. Such a subject, however, will
be best illustrated by a sketch or two of my own principal feuds.
The first, but merely transient and playful, nor worth noticing at all,
but for its subsequent resurrection under other and awful colouring in
my dreams, grew out of an imaginary slight, as I viewed it, put upon me
by one of my guardians. I had four guardians: and the one of these who
had the most knowledge and talent of the whole, a banker, living about a
hundred miles from my home, had invited me when eleven years old to his
house. His eldest daughter, perhaps a year younger than myself, wore at
that time upon her very lovely face the most angelic expression of
character and temper that I have almost ever seen. Naturally, I fell in
love with her. It seems absurd to say so; and the more so, because two
children more absolutely innocent than we were cannot be imagined,
neither of us having ever been at any school;--but the simple truth is,
that in the most chivalrous sense I was in love with her. And the proof
that I was so showed itself in three separate modes: I kissed her glove
on any rare occasion when I found it lying on a table; secondly, I
looked out for some excuse to be jealous of her; and, thirdly, I did my
very best to get up a quarrel. What I wanted the quarrel for was the
luxury of a reconciliation; a hill cannot be had, you know, without
going to the expense of a valley. And though I hated the very thought of
a moment's difference with so truly gentle a girl, yet how, but through
such a purgatory, could one win the paradise of her returning smiles?
All this, however, came to nothing; and simply because she positively
would _not_ quarrel. And the jealousy fell through, because there was no
decent subject for such a passion, unless it had settled upon an old
music-master whom lunacy itself could not adopt as a rival. The quarrel
meantime, which never prospered with the daughter, silently kindled on
my part towards the father. His offence was this. At dinner, I naturally
placed myself by the side of M., and it gave me great pleasure to touch
her hand at intervals. As M. was my cousin, though twice or even three
times removed, I did not feel taking too great a liberty in this little
act of tenderness. No matter if three thousand times removed, I said, my
cousin is my cousin: nor had I ever very much designed to conceal the
act; or if so, rather on her account than my own. One evening, however,
papa observed my manoeuvre. Did he seem displeased? Not at all: he
even condescended to smile. But the next day he placed M. on the side
opposite to myself. In one respect this was really an improvement;
because it gave me a better view of my cousin's sweet countenance. But
then there was the loss of the hand to be considered, and secondly there
was the affront. It was clear that vengeance must be had. Now there was
but one thing in this world that I could do even decently: but _that_ I
could do admirably. This was writing Latin hexameters. Juvenal, though
it was not very much of him that I had then read, seemed to me a divine
model. The inspiration of wrath spoke through him as through a Hebrew
prophet. The same inspiration spoke now in me. _Facit indignatio
versum_, said Juvenal. And it must be owned that Indignation has never
made such good verses since as she did in that day. But still, even to
me this agile passion proved a Muse of genial inspiration for a couple
of paragraphs: and one line I will mention as worthy to have taken its
place in Juvenal himself. I say this without scruple, having not a
shadow of vanity, nor on the other hand a shadow of false modesty
connected with such boyish accomplishments. The poem opened thus--
"Te nimis austerum; sacrae qui foedera mensae
Diruis, insector Satyrae reboante flagello."
But the line, which I insist upon as of Roman strength, was the closing
one of the next sentence. The general effect of the sentiment was--that
my clamorous wrath should make its way even into ears that were past
hearing:
"----mea saeva querela
Auribus insidet ceratis, auribus etsi
Non audituris hybernâ nocte procellam."
The power, however, which inflated my verse, soon collapsed; having been
soothed from the very first by finding--that except in this one instance
at the dinner-table, which probably had been viewed as an indecorum, no
further restraint of any kind whatever was meditated upon my intercourse
with M. Besides, it was too painful to lock up good verses in one's own
solitary breast. Yet how could I shock the sweet filial heart of my
cousin by a fierce lampoon or _stylites_ against her father, had Latin
even figured amongst her accomplishments? Then it occurred to me that
the verses might be shown to the father. But was there not something
treacherous in gaining a man's approbation under a mask to a satire upon
himself? Or would he have always understood me? For one person a year
after took the _sacrae mensae_ (by which I had meant the sanctities of
hospitality) to mean the sacramental table. And on consideration I began
to suspect, that many people would pronounce myself the party who had
violated the holy ties of hospitality, which are equally binding on
guest as on host. Indolence, which sometimes comes in aid of good
impulses as well as bad, favoured these relenting thoughts; the society
of M. did still more to wean me from further efforts of satire: and,
finally, my Latin poem remained a _torso_. But upon the whole my
guardian had a narrow escape of descending to posterity in a
disadvantageous light, had he rolled down to it through my hexameters.
Here was a case of merely playful feud. But the same talent of Latin
verses soon after connected me with a real feud that harassed my mind
more than would be supposed, and precisely by this agency, viz. that it
arrayed one set of feelings against another. It divided my mind as by
domestic feud against itself. About a year after, returning from the
visit to my guardian's, and when I must have been nearly completing my
twelfth year, I was sent to a great public school. Every man has reason
to rejoice who enjoys so great an advantage. I condemned and _do_
condemn the practice of sometimes sending out into such stormy exposures
those who are as yet too young, too dependent on female gentleness, and
endowed with sensibilities too exquisite. But at nine or ten the
masculine energies of the character are beginning to be developed: or,
if not, no discipline will better aid in their developement than the
bracing intercourse of a great English classical school. Even the
selfish are forced into accommodating themselves to a public standard of
generosity, and the effeminate into conforming to a rule of manliness. I
was myself at two public schools; and I think with gratitude of the
benefit which I reaped from both; as also I think with gratitude of the
upright guardian in whose quiet household I learned Latin so
effectually. But the small private schools which I witnessed for brief
periods, containing thirty to forty boys, were models of ignoble
manners as respected some part of the juniors, and of favouritism
amongst the masters. Nowhere is the sublimity of public justice so
broadly exemplified as in an English school. There is not in the
universe such an areopagus for fair play and abhorrence of all crooked
ways, as an English mob, or one of the English time-honoured public
schools. But my own first introduction to such an establishment was
under peculiar and contradictory circumstances. When my "rating," or
graduation in the school, was to be settled, naturally my altitude (to
speak astronomically) was taken by the proficiency in Greek. But I could
then barely construe books so easy as the Greek Testament and the Iliad.
This was considered quite well enough for my age; but still it caused me
to be placed three steps below the highest rank in the school. Within
one week, however, my talent for Latin verses, which had by this time
gathered strength and expansion, became known. I was honoured as never
was man or boy since Mordecai the Jew. Not properly belonging to the
flock of the head master, but to the leading section of the second, I
was now weekly paraded for distinction at the supreme tribunal of the
school; out of which at first grew nothing but a sunshine of approbation
delightful to my heart, still brooding upon solitude. Within six weeks
this had changed. The approbation indeed continued, and the public
testimony of it. Neither would there, in the ordinary course, have been
any painful reaction from jealousy or fretful resistance to the
soundness of my pretensions; since it was sufficiently known to some of
my schoolfellows, that I, who had no male relatives but military men,
and those in India, could not have benefited by any clandestine aid.
But, unhappily, the head master was at that time dissatisfied with some
points in the progress of his head form; and, as it soon appeared, was
continually throwing in their teeth the brilliancy of my verses at
twelve, by comparison with theirs at seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen.
I had observed him sometimes pointing to myself; and was perplexed at
seeing the gesture followed by gloomy looks, and what French reporters
call "sensation," in these young men, whom naturally I viewed with awe
as my leaders, boys that were called young men, men that were reading
Sophocles--(a name that carried with it the sound of something seraphic
to my ears)--and who never had vouchsafed to waste a word on such a
child as myself. The day was come, however, when all that would be
changed. One of these leaders strode up to me in the public playgrounds,
and delivering a blow on my shoulder, which was not intended to hurt me,
but as a mere formula of introduction, asked me, "What the d--l I meant
by bolting out of the course, and annoying other people in that manner?
Were other people to have no rest for me and my verses, which, after
all, were horribly bad?" There might have been some difficulty in
returning an answer to this address, but none was required. I was
briefly admonished to see that I wrote worse for the future, or
else----At this _aposiopesis_ I looked enquiringly at the speaker, and
he filled up the chasm by saying, that he would "annihilate" me. Could
any person fail to be aghast at such a demand? I was to write worse than
my own standard, which, by his account of my verses, must be difficult;
and I was to write worse than himself, which might be impossible. My
feelings revolted, it may be supposed, against so arrogant a demand,
unless it had been far otherwise expressed; and on the next occasion for
sending up verses, so far from attending to the orders issued, I
double-shotted my guns; double applause descended on myself; but I
remarked with some awe, though not repenting of what I had done, that
double confusion seemed to agitate the ranks of my enemies. Amongst them
loomed out in the distance my "annihilating" friend, who shook his huge
fist at me, but with something like a grim smile about his eyes. He took
an early opportunity of paying his respects to me--saying, "You little
devil, do you call this writing your worst?" "No," I replied; "I call it
writing my best." The annihilator, as it turned out, was really a
good-natured young man; but he soon went off to Cambridge; and with the
rest, or some of them, I continued to wage war for nearly a year. And
yet, for a word spoken with kindness, I would have resigned the
peacock's feather in my cap as the merest of baubles. Undoubtedly,
praise sounded sweet in my ears also. But _that_ was nothing by
comparison with what stood on the other side. I detested distinctions
that were connected with mortification to others. And, even if I could
have got over _that_, the eternal feud fretted and tormented my nature.
Love, that once in childhood had been so mere a necessity to me, _that_
had long been a mere reflected ray from a departed sunset. But peace,
and freedom from strife, if love were no longer possible, (as so rarely
it is in this world,) was the absolute necessity of my heart. To contend
with somebody was still my fate; how to escape the contention I could
not see; and yet for itself, and the deadly passions into which it
forced me, I hated and loathed it more than death. It added to the
distraction and internal feud of my own mind--that I could not
_altogether_ condemn the upper boys. I was made a handle of humiliation
to them. And in the mean time, if I had an advantage in one
accomplishment, which is all a matter of accident, or peculiar taste and
feeling, they, on the other hand, had a great advantage over me in the
more elaborate difficulties of Greek, and of choral Greek poetry. I
could not altogether wonder at their hatred of myself. Yet still, as
they had chosen to adopt this mode of conflict with me, I did not feel
that I had any choice but to resist. The contest was terminated for me
by my removal from the school, in consequence of a very threatening
illness affecting my head; but it lasted nearly a year; and it did not
close before several amongst my public enemies had become my private
friends. They were much older, but they invited me to the houses of
their friends, and showed me a respect which deeply affected me--this
respect having more reference, apparently, to the firmness I had
exhibited than to the splendour of my verses. And, indeed, these had
rather drooped from a natural accident; several persons of my own class
had formed the practice of asking me to write verses for _them_. I could
not refuse. But, as the subjects given out were the same for all of us,
it was not possible to take so many crops off the ground without
starving the quality of all.
Two years and a half from this time, I was again at a public school of
ancient foundation. Now I was myself one of the three who formed the
highest class. Now I myself was familiar with Sophocles, who once had
been so shadowy a name in my ear. But, strange to say, now in my
sixteenth year, I cared nothing at all for the glory of Latin verse. All
the business of school was slight and trivial in my eyes. Costing me not
an effort, it could not engage any part of my attention; that was now
swallowed up altogether by the literature of my native land. I still
reverenced the Grecian drama, as always I must. But else I cared little
then for classical pursuits. A deeper spell had mastered me; and I lived
only in those bowers where deeper passions spoke.
Here, however, it was that began another and more important struggle. I
was drawing near to seventeen, and, in a year after _that_, would arrive
the usual time for going to Oxford. To Oxford my guardians made no
objection; and they readily agreed to make the allowance then
universally regarded as the _minimum_ for an Oxford student, viz. £200
per annum. But they insisted, as a previous condition, that I should
make a positive and definitive choice of a profession. Now I was well
aware that, if I _did_ make such a choice, no law existed, nor could any
obligation be created through deeds or signature, by which I could
finally be compelled into keeping my engagement. But this evasion did
not suit me. Here, again, I felt indignantly that the principle of the
attempt was unjust. The object was certainly to do me service by saving
money, since, if I selected the bar as my profession, it was contended
by some persons, (misinformed, however,) that not Oxford, but a special
pleader's office, would be my proper destination; but I cared not for
arguments of that sort. Oxford I was determined to make my home; and
also to bear my future course utterly untrammeled by promises that I
might repent. Soon came the catastrophe of this struggle. A little
before my seventeenth birthday, I walked off one lovely summer morning
to North Wales--rambled there for months--and, finally, under some
obscure hopes of raising money on my personal security, I went up to
London. Now I was in my eighteenth year; and, during this period it was
that I passed through that trial of severe distress, of which I gave
some account in my former Confessions. Having a motive, however, for
glancing backwards briefly at that period in the present series, I will
do so at this point.
I saw in one journal an insinuation that the incidents in the
_preliminary_ narrative were possibly without foundation. To such an
expression of mere gratuitous malignity, as it happened to be supported
by no one argument except a remark, apparently absurd, but certainly
false, I did not condescend to answer. In reality, the possibility had
never occurred to me that any person of judgment would seriously suspect
me of taking liberties with that part of the work, since, though no one
of the parties concerned but myself stood in so central a position to
the circumstances as to be acquainted with _all_ of them, many were
acquainted with each separate section of the memoir. Relays of witnesses
might have been summoned to mount guard, as it were, upon the accuracy
of each particular in the whole succession of incidents; and some of
these people had an interest, more or less strong, in exposing any
deviation from the strictest _letter_ of the truth, had it been in their
power to do so. It is now twenty-two years since I saw the objection
here alluded to; and, in saying that I did not condescend to notice it,
the reader must not find any reason for taxing me with a blamable
haughtiness. But every man is entitled to be haughty when his veracity
is impeached; and, still more, when it is impeached by a dishonest
objection, or, if not _that_, by an objection which argues a
carelessness of attention almost amounting to dishonesty, in a case
where it was meant to sustain an imputation of falsehood. Let a man read
carelessly if he will, but not where he is meaning to use his reading
for a purpose of wounding another man's honour. Having thus, by
twenty-two years' silence, sufficiently expressed my contempt for the
slander,[19] I now feel myself at liberty to draw it into notice, for
the sake, _inter alia_, of showing in how rash a spirit malignity often
works. In the preliminary account of certain boyish adventures which had
exposed me to suffering of a kind not commonly incident to persons in my
station of life, and leaving behind a temptation to the use of opium
under certain arrears of weakness, I had occasion to notice a
disreputable attorney in London, who showed me some attentions, partly
on my own account as a boy of some expectations, but much more with the
purpose of fastening his professional grappling-hooks upon the young
Earl of A----t, my former companion, and my present correspondent. This
man's house was slightly described, and, with more minuteness, I had
exposed some interesting traits in his household economy. A question,
therefore, naturally arose in several people's curiosity--Where was this
house situated? and the more so because I had pointed a renewed
attention to it by saying, that on that very evening, (viz. the evening
on which that particular page of the Confessions was written,) I had
visited the street, looked up at the windows, and, instead of the gloomy
desolation reigning there when myself and a little girl were the sole
nightly tenants, sleeping in fact (poor freezing creatures that we both
were) on the floor of the attorney's law-chamber, and making a pillow
out of his infernal parchments, I had seen with pleasure the evidences
of comfort, respectability, and domestic animation, in the lights and
stir prevailing through different stories of the house. Upon this the
upright critic told his readers that I had described the house as
standing in Oxford Street, and then appealed to their own knowledge of
that street whether such a house could be _so_ situated. Why not--he
neglected to tell us. The houses at the east end of Oxford Street are
certainly of too small an order to meet my account of the attorney's
house; but why should it be at the east end? Oxford Street is a mile and
a quarter long, and being built continuously on both sides, finds room
for houses of _many_ classes. Meantime it happens that, although the
true house was most obscurely indicated, _any_ house whatever in Oxford
Street was most luminously excluded. In all the immensity of London
there was but one single street that could be challenged by an attentive
reader of the Confessions as peremptorily _not_ the street of the
attorney's house--and _that_ one was Oxford Street; for, in speaking of
my own renewed acquaintance with the outside of this house, I used some
expression implying that, in order to make such a visit of
reconnoissance, I had turned _aside_ from Oxford Street. The matter is a
perfect trifle in itself, but it is no trifle in a question affecting a
writer's accuracy. If in a thing so absolutely impossible to be
forgotten as the true situation of a house painfully memorable to a
man's feelings, from being the scene of boyish distresses the most
exquisite--nights passed in the misery of cold, and hunger preying upon
him both night and day, in a degree which very many would not have
survived,--he, when retracing his schoolboy annals, could have shown
indecision even, far more dreaded inaccuracy, in identifying the house,
not one syllable after _that_, which he could have said on any other
subject, would have won any confidence, or deserved any, from a
judicious reader. I may now mention--the Herod being dead whose
persecutions I had reason to fear--that the house in question stands in
Greek Street on the west, and is the house on that side nearest to
Soho-Square, but without looking into the Square. This it was hardly
safe to mention at the date of the published Confessions. It was my
private opinion, indeed, that there were probably twenty-five chances to
one in favour of my friend the attorney having been by that time hanged.
But then this argued inversely; one chance to twenty-five that my friend
might be _un_hanged, and knocking about the streets of London; in which
case it would have been a perfect god-send to him that here lay an
opening (of _my_ contrivance, not _his_) for requesting the opinion of a
jury on the amount of _solatium_ due to his wounded feelings in an
action on the passage in the Confessions. To have indicated even the
street would have been enough. Because there could surely be but one
such Grecian in Greek Street, or but one that realized the other
conditions of the unknown quantity. There was also a separate danger not
absolutely so laughable as it sounds. Me there was little chance that
the attorney should meet; but my book he might easily have met
(supposing always that the warrant of _Sus. per coll._ had not yet on
_his_ account travelled down to Newgate.) For he was literary; admired
literature; and, as a lawyer, he wrote on some subjects fluently; Might
he not publish _his_ Confessions? Or, which would be worse, a supplement
to mine--printed so as exactly to match? In which case I should have had
the same affliction that Gibbon the historian dreaded so much; viz. that
of seeing a refutation of himself, and his own answer to the refutation,
all bound up in one and the same self-combating volume. Besides, he
would have cross-examined me before the public in Old Bailey style; no
story, the most straightforward that ever was told, could be sure to
stand _that_. And my readers might be left in a state of painful doubt
whether _he_ might not, after all, have been a model of suffering
innocence--I (to say the kindest thing possible) plagued with the
natural treacheries of a schoolboy's memory. In taking leave of this
case and the remembrances connected with it, let me say that, although
really believing in the probability of the attorney's having at least
found his way to Australia, I had no satisfaction in thinking of that
result. I knew my friend to be the very perfection of a scamp. And in
the running account between us, (I mean, in the ordinary sense, as to
money,) the balance could not be in _his_ favour; since I, on receiving
a sum of money, (considerable in the eyes of us both,) had transferred
pretty nearly the whole of it to _him_, for the purpose ostensibly held
out to me (but of course a hoax) of purchasing certain law "stamps;" for
he was then pursuing a diplomatic correspondence with various Jews who
lent money to young heirs, in some trifling proportion on my own
insignificant account, but much more truly on the account of Lord
A----t, my young friend. On the other side, he had given to me simply
the reliques of his breakfast-table, which itself was hardly more than a
relique. But in this he was not to blame. He could not give to me what
he had not for himself, nor sometimes for the poor starving child whom I
now suppose to have been his illegitimate daughter. So desperate was the
running fight, yard-arm to yard-arm, which he maintained with creditors
fierce as famine and hungry as the grave; so deep also was his horror (I
know not for which of the various reasons supposable) against falling
into a prison, that he seldom ventured to sleep twice successively in
the same house. That expense of itself must have pressed heavily in
London, where you pay half-a-crown at least for a bed that would cost
only a shilling in the provinces. In the midst of his knaveries, and
what were even more shocking to my remembrance, his confidential
discoveries in his rambling conversations of knavish _designs_, (not
always pecuniary,) there was a light of wandering misery in his eye at
times, which affected me afterwards at intervals when I recalled it in
the radiant happiness of nineteen, and amidst the solemn tranquillities
of Oxford. That of itself was interesting; the man was worse by far than
he had been meant to be; he had not the mind that reconciles itself to
evil. Besides, he respected scholarship, which appeared by the deference
he generally showed to myself, then about seventeen; he had an interest
in literature; _that_ argues something good; and was pleased at any
time, or even cheerful, when I turned the conversation upon books; nay,
he seemed touched with emotion, when I quoted some sentiment noble and
impassioned from one of the great poets, and would ask me to repeat it.
He would have been a man of memorable energy, and for good purposes, had
it not been for his agony of conflict with pecuniary embarrassments.
These probably had commenced in some fatal compliance with temptation
arising out of funds confided to him by a client. Perhaps he had gained
fifty guineas for a moment of necessity, and had sacrificed for that
trifle _only_ the serenity and the comfort of a life. Feelings of
relenting kindness, it was not in my nature to refuse in such a case;
and I wished to * * * But I never succeeded in tracing his steps through
the wilderness of London until some years back, when I ascertained that
he was dead. Generally speaking, the few people whom I have disliked in
this world were flourishing people of good repute. Whereas the knaves
whom I have known, one and all, and by no means few, I think of with
pleasure and kindness.
Heavens! when I look back to the sufferings which I have witnessed or
heard of even from this one brief London experience, I say if life could
throw open its long suits of chambers to our eyes from some station
_beforehand_, if from some secret stand we could look _by anticipation_
along its vast corridors, and aside into the recesses opening upon them
from either hand, halls of tragedy or chambers of retribution, simply in
that small wing and no more of the great caravanserai which we ourselves
shall haunt, simply in that narrow tract of time and no more where we
ourselves shall range, and confining our gaze to those and no others for
whom personally we shall be interested, what a recoil we should suffer
of horror in our estimate of life! What if those sudden catastrophes, or
those inexpiable afflictions, which _have_ already descended upon the
people within my own knowledge, and almost below my own eyes, all of
them now gone past, and some long past, had been thrown open before me
as a secret exhibition when first I and they stood within the vestibule
of morning hopes; when the calamities themselves had hardly begun to
gather in their elements of possibility, and when some of the parties to
them were as yet no more than infants! The past viewed not _as_ the
past, but by a spectator who steps back ten years deeper into the rear,
in order that he may regard it as a future; the calamity of 1840
contemplated from the station of 1830--the doom that rang the knell of
happiness viewed from a point of time when as yet it was neither feared
nor would even have been intelligible--the name that killed in 1843,
which in 1835 would have struck no vibration upon the heart--the
portrait that on the day of her Majesty's coronation would have been
admired by you with a pure disinterested admiration, but which if seen
to-day would draw forth an involuntary groan--cases such as these are
strangely moving for all who add deep thoughtfulness to deep
sensibility. As the hastiest of improvisations, accept--fair reader,
(for you it is that will chiefly feel such an invocation of the
past)--three or four illustrations from my own experience.
Who is this distinguished-looking young woman with her eyes drooping,
and the shadow of a dreadful shock yet fresh upon every feature? Who is
the elderly lady with her eyes flashing fire? Who is the downcast child
of sixteen? What is that torn paper lying at their feet? Who is the
writer? Whom does the paper concern? Ah! if she, if the central figure
in the group--twenty-two at the moment when she is revealed to
us--could, on her happy birth-day at sweet seventeen, have seen the
image of herself five years onwards, just as _we_ see it now, would she
have prayed for life as for an absolute blessing? or would she not have
prayed to be taken from the evil to come--to be taken away one evening
at least before this day's sun arose? It is true, she still wears a look
of gentle pride, and a relic of that noble smile which belongs to _her_
that suffers an injury which many times over she would have died sooner
than inflict. Womanly pride refuses itself before witnesses to the total
prostration of the blow; but, for all _that_, you may see that she longs
to be left alone, and that her tears will flow without restraint when
she is so. This room is her pretty boudoir, in which, till
to-night--poor thing!--she has been glad and happy. There stands her
miniature conservatory, and there expands her miniature library; as we
circumnavigators of literature are apt (you know) to regard all female
libraries in the light of miniatures. None of these will ever rekindle a
smile on _her_ face; and there, beyond, is her music, which only of all
that she possesses, will now become dearer to her than ever; but not, as
once, to feed a self-mocked pensiveness, or to cheat a half-visionary
sadness. She will be sad indeed. But she is one of those that will
suffer in silence. Nobody will ever detect _her_ failing in any point of
duty, or querulously seeking the support in others which she can find
for herself in this solitary room. Droop she will not in the sight of
men; and, for all beyond, nobody has any concern with _that_ except God.
You shall hear what becomes of her, before we take our departure; but
now let me tell you what has happened. In the main outline I am sure you
guess already without aid of mine, for we leaden-eyed men, in such
cases, see nothing by comparison with you our quick-witted sisters. That
haughty-looking lady with the Roman cast of features, who must once have
been strikingly handsome--an Agrippina, even yet, in a favourable
presentation--is the younger lady's aunt. She, it is rumoured, once
sustained, in her younger days, some injury of that same cruel nature
which has this day assailed her niece, and ever since she has worn an
air of disdain, not altogether unsupported by real dignity, towards men.
This aunt it was that tore the letter which lies upon the floor. It
deserved to be torn; and yet she that had the best right to do so would
_not_ have torn it. That letter was an elaborate attempt on the part of
an accomplished young man to release himself from sacred engagements.
What need was there to argue the case of _such_ engagements? Could it
have been requisite with pure female dignity to plead any thing, or do
more than _look_ an indisposition to fulfil them? The aunt is now moving
towards the door, which I am glad to see; and she is followed by that
pale timid girl of sixteen, a cousin, who feels the case profoundly, but
is too young and shy to offer an intellectual sympathy.
One only person in this world there is, who _could_ to-night have been a
supporting friend to our young sufferer, and _that_ is her dear loving
twin-sister, that for eighteen years read and wrote, thought and sang,
slept and breathed, with the dividing-door open for ever between their
bedrooms, and never once a separation between their hearts; but she is
in a far distant land. Who else is there at her call? Except God,
nobody. Her aunt had somewhat sternly admonished her, though still with
a relenting in her eye as she glanced aside at the expression in her
niece's face, that she must "call pride to her assistance." Ay, true;
but pride, though a strong ally in public, is apt in private to turn as
treacherous as the worst of those against whom she is invoked. How could
it be dreamed by a person of sense, that a brilliant young man of
merits, various and eminent, in spite of his baseness, to whom, for
nearly two years, this young woman had given her whole confiding love,
might be dismissed from a heart like hers on the earliest summons of
pride, simply because she herself had been dismissed from _his_, or
seemed to have been dismissed, on a summons of mercenary calculation?
Look! now that she is relieved from the weight of an unconfidential
presence, she has sat for two hours with her head buried in her hands.
At last she rises to look for something. A thought has struck her; and,
taking a little golden key which hangs by a chain within her bosom, she
searches for something locked up amongst her few jewels. What is it? It
is a Bible exquisitely illuminated, with a letter attached, by some
pretty silken artifice, to the blank leaves at the end. This letter is a
beautiful record, wisely and pathetically composed, of maternal anxiety
still burning strong in death, and yearning, when all objects beside
were fast fading from _her_ eyes, after one parting act of communion
with the twin darlings of her heart. Both were thirteen years old,
within a week or two, as on the night before her death they sat weeping
by the bedside of their mother, and hanging on her lips, now for
farewell whispers, and now for farewell kisses. They both knew that, as
her strength had permitted during the latter month of her life, she had
thrown the last anguish of love in her beseeching heart into a letter of
counsel to themselves. Through this, of which each sister had a copy,
she trusted long to converse with her orphans. And the last promise
which she had entreated on this evening from both, was--that in either
of two contingencies they would review her counsels, and the passages to
which she pointed their attention in the Scriptures; namely, first, in
the event of any calamity, that, for one sister or for both, should
overspread their paths with total darkness; and secondly, in the event
of life flowing in too profound a stream of prosperity, so as to
threaten them with an alienation of interest from all spiritual objects.
She had not concealed that, of these two extreme cases, she would prefer
for her own children the first. And now had that case arrived indeed,
which she in spirit had desired to meet. Nine years ago, just as the
silvery voice of a dial in the dying lady's bedroom was striking nine
upon a summer evening, had the last visual ray streamed from her seeking
eyes upon her orphan twins, after which, throughout the night, she had
slept away into heaven. Now again had come a summer evening memorable
for unhappiness; now again the daughter thought of those dying lights of
love which streamed at sunset from the closing eyes of her mother;
again, and just as she went back in thought to this image, the same
silvery voice of the dial sounded nine o'clock. Again she remembered her
mother's dying request; again her own tear-hallowed promise--and with
her heart in her mother's grave she now rose to fulfil it. Here, then
when this solemn recurrence to a testamentary counsel has ceased to be a
mere office of duty towards the departed, having taken the shape of a
consolation for herself, let us pause.
* * * * *
Now, fair companion in this exploring voyage of inquest into hidden
scenes, or forgotten scenes of human life--perhaps it might be
instructive to direct our glasses upon the false perfidious lover. It
might. But do not let us do so. We might like him better, or pity him
more, than either of us would desire. His name and memory have long
since dropped out of every body's thoughts. Of prosperity, and (what is
more important) of internal peace, he is reputed to have had no gleam
from the moment when he betrayed his faith, and in one day threw away
the jewel of good conscience, and "a pearl richer than all his tribe."
But, however that may be, it is certain that, finally, he became a
wreck; and of any _hopeless_ wreck it is painful to talk--much more so,
when through him others also became wrecks.
Shall we, then, after an interval of nearly two years has passed over
the young lady in the boudoir, look in again upon _her_? You hesitate,
fair friend: and I myself hesitate. For in fact she also has become a
wreck; and it would grieve us both to see her altered. At the end of
twenty-one months she retains hardly a vestige of resemblance to the
fine young woman we saw on that unhappy evening with her aunt and
cousin. On consideration, therefore, let us do this. We will direct our
glasses to her room, at a point of time about six weeks further on.
Suppose this time gone; suppose her now dressed for her grave, and
placed in her coffin. The advantage of that is--that, though no change
can restore the ravages of the past, yet (as often is found to happen
with young persons) the expression has revived from her girlish years.
The child-like aspect has revolved, and settled back upon her features.
The wasting away of the flesh is less apparent in the face; and one
might imagine that, in this sweet marble countenance, was seen the very
same upon which, eleven years ago, her mother's darkening eyes had
lingered to the last, until clouds had swallowed up the vision of her
beloved _twins_. Yet, if that were in part a fancy, this at least is no
fancy--that not only much of a child-like truth and simplicity has
reinstated itself in the temple of her now reposing features, but also
that tranquillity and perfect peace, such as are appropriate to
eternity; but which from the _living_ countenance had taken their flight
for ever, on that memorable evening when we looked in upon the
impassioned group--upon the towering and denouncing aunt, the
sympathizing but silent cousin, the poor blighted niece, and the wicked
letter lying in fragments at their feet.
Cloud, that hast revealed to us this young creature and her blighted
hopes, close up again. And now, a few years later, not more than four or
five, give back to us the latest arrears of the changes which thou
concealest within thy draperies. Once more, "open sesame!" and show us a
third generation. Behold a lawn islanded with thickets. How perfect is
the verdure--how rich the blossoming shrubberies that screen with
verdurous walls from the possibility of intrusion, whilst by their own
wandering line of distribution they shape and umbrageously embay, what
one might call lawny saloons and vestibules--sylvan galleries and
closets. Some of these recesses, which unlink themselves as fluently as
snakes, and unexpectedly as the shyest nooks, watery cells, and crypts,
amongst the shores of a forest-lake, being formed by the mere caprices
and ramblings of the luxuriant shrubs, are so small and so quiet, that
one might fancy them meant for _boudoirs_. Here is one that, in a less
fickle climate, would make the loveliest of studies for a writer of
breathings from some solitary heart, or of _suspiria_ from some
impassioned memory! And opening from one angle of this embowered study,
issues a little narrow corridor, that, after almost wheeling back upon
itself, in its playful mazes, finally widens into a little circular
chamber; out of which there is no exit, (except back again by the
entrance,) small or great; so that, adjacent to his study, the writer
would command how sweet a bed-room, permitting him to lie the summer
through, gazing all night long at the burning host of heaven. How
silent _that_ would be at the noon of summer nights, how grave-like in
its quiet! And yet, need there be asked a stillness or a silence more
profound than is felt at this present noon of day? One reason for such
peculiar repose, over and above the tranquil character of the day, and
the distance of the place from high-roads, is the outer zone of woods,
which almost on every quarter invests the shrubberies--swathing them,
(as one may express it,) belting them, and overlooking them, from a
varying distance of two and three furlongs, so as oftentimes to keep the
winds at a distance. But, however caused and supported, the silence of
these fanciful lawns and lawny chambers is oftentimes oppressive in the
depth of summer to people unfamiliar with solitudes, either mountainous
or sylvan; and many would be apt to suppose that the villa, to which
these pretty shrubberies form the chief dependencies, must be
untenanted. But that is not the case. The house is inhabited, and by its
own legal mistress--the proprietress of the whole domain; and not at all
a silent mistress, but as noisy as most little ladies of five years old,
for that is her age. Now, and just as we are speaking, you may hear her
little joyous clamour as she issues from the house. This way she comes,
bounding like a fawn; and soon she rushes into the little recess which I
pointed out as a proper study for any man who should be weaving the deep
harmonies of memorial _suspiria_. But I fancy that she will soon
dispossess it of that character, for her _suspiria_ are not many at this
stage of her life. Now she comes dancing into sight; and you see that,
if she keeps the promise of her infancy, she will be an interesting
creature to the eye in after life. In other respects, also, she is an
engaging child--loving, natural, and wild as any one of her neighbours
for some miles round; viz. leverets, squirrels and ring-doves. But what
will surprise you most is--that, although a child of pure English blood,
she speaks very little English; but more Bengalee than perhaps you will
find it convenient to construe. That is her Ayah, who comes up from
behind at a pace so different from her youthful mistress's. But, if
their paces are different, in other things they agree most cordially;
and dearly they love each other. In reality, the child has passed her
whole life in the arms of this ayah. She remembers nothing elder than
_her_; eldest of things is the ayah in her eyes; and, if the ayah should
insist on her worshipping herself as the goddess Railroadina or
Steamboatina, that made England and the sea and Bengal, it is certain
that the little thing would do so, asking no question but this--whether
kissing would do for worshipping.
Every evening at nine o'clock, as the ayah sits by the little creature
lying awake in bed, the silvery tongue of a dial tolls the hour. Reader,
you know who she is. She is the granddaughter of her that faded away
about sunset in gazing at her twin orphans. Her name is Grace. And she
is the niece of that elder and once happy Grace, who spent so much of
her happiness in this very room, but whom, in her utter desolation, we
saw in the boudoir with the torn letter at her feet. She is the daughter
of that other sister, wife to a military officer, who died abroad.
Little Grace never saw her grandmama, nor her lovely aunt that was her
namesake, nor consciously her mama. She was born six months after the
death of the elder Grace; and her mother saw her only through the mists
of mortal suffering, which carried her off three weeks after the birth
of her daughter.
This view was taken several years ago; and since then the younger Grace
in her turn is under a cloud of affliction. But she is still under
eighteen; and of her there may be hopes. Seeing such things in so short
a space of years, for the grandmother died at thirty-two, we say--Death
we can face: but knowing, as some of us do, what is human life, which of
us is it that without shuddering could (if consciously we were summoned)
face the hour of birth?