Imagination fondly stoops to trace
The parlor splendours of that festive place.
_Deserted Village._
There is little to interest in a narrative of early childhood, unless,
indeed, one were writing on education. We shall not, therefore, linger
over the infancy of the motherless boy left to the protection of Mrs.
Margery Lobkins, or, as she was sometimes familiarly called, Peggy, or
Piggy, Lob. The good dame, drawing a more than sufficient income from
the profits of a house which, if situated in an obscure locality, enjoyed
very general and lucrative repute, and being a lone widow without kith or
kin, had no temptation to break her word to the deceased, and she
suffered the orphan to wax in strength and understanding until the age of
twelve,--a period at which we are now about to reintroduce him to our
readers.
The boy evinced great hardihood of temper, and no inconsiderable
quickness of intellect. In whatever he attempted, his success was rapid,
and a remarkable strength of limb and muscle seconded well the dictates
of an ambition turned, it must be confessed, rather to physical than
mental exertion. It is not to be supposed, however, that his boyish life
passed in unbroken tranquillity. Although Mrs. Lobkins was a good woman
on the whole, and greatly attached to her _protegee_, she was violent and
rude in temper, or, as she herself more flatteringly expressed it, "her
feelings were unkimmonly strong;" and alternate quarrel and
reconciliation constituted the chief occupations of the _protegee's_
domestic life. As, previous to his becoming the ward of Mrs. Lobkins, he
had never received any other appellation than "the child," so the duty of
christening him devolved upon our hostess of the Mug; and after some
deliberation, she blessed him with the name of Paul. It was a name of
happy omen, for it had belonged to Mrs. Lobkins's grandfather, who had
been three times transported and twice hanged (at the first occurrence of
the latter description, he had been restored by the surgeons, much to the
chagrin of a young anatomist who was to have had the honour of cutting
him up). The boy did not seem likely to merit the distinguished
appellation he bore, for he testified no remarkable predisposition to the
property of other people. Nay, although he sometimes emptied the pockets
of any stray visitor to the coffee-room of Mrs. Lobkins, it appeared an
act originating rather in a love of the frolic than a desire of the
profit; for after the plundered person had been sufficiently tormented by
the loss, haply, of such utilities as a tobacco-box or a handkerchief;
after he had, to the secret delight of Paul, searched every corner of the
apartment, stamped, and fretted, and exposed himself by his petulance to
the bitter objurgation of Mrs. Lobkins, our young friend would quietly
and suddenly contrive that the article missed should return of its own
accord to the pocket from which it had disappeared. And thus, as our
readers have doubtless experienced when they have disturbed the peace of
a whole household for the loss of some portable treasure which they
themselves are afterwards discovered to have mislaid, the unfortunate
victim of Paul's honest ingenuity, exposed to the collected indignation
of the spectators, and sinking from the accuser into the convicted,
secretly cursed the unhappy lot which not only vexed him with the loss of
his property, but made it still more annoying to recover it.
Whether it was that, on discovering these pranks, Mrs. Lobkins trembled
for the future bias of the address they displayed, or whether she thought
that the folly of thieving without gain required speedy and permanent
correction, we cannot decide; but the good lady became at last extremely
anxious to secure for Paul the blessings of a liberal education. The key
of knowledge (the art of reading) she had, indeed, two years prior to the
present date, obtained for him; but this far from satisfied her
conscience,--nay, she felt that if she could not also obtain for him the
discretion to use it, it would have been wise even to have withheld a key
which the boy seemed perversely to apply to all locks but the right one.
In a word, she was desirous that he should receive an education far
superior to those whom he saw around him; and attributing, like most
ignorant persons, too great advantages to learning, she conceived that in
order to live as decorously as the parson of the parish, it was only
necessary to know as much Latin.
One evening in particular, as the dame sat by her cheerful fire, this
source of anxiety was unusually active in her mind, and ever and anon she
directed unquiet and restless glances towards Paul, who sat on a form at
the opposite corner of the hearth, diligently employed in reading the
life and adventures of the celebrated Richard Turpin. The form on which
the boy sat was worn to a glassy smoothness, save only in certain places,
where some ingenious idler or another had amused himself by carving
sundry names, epithets, and epigrammatic niceties of language. It is
said that the organ of carving upon wood is prominently developed on all
English skulls; and the sagacious Mr. Combe has placed this organ at the
back of the head, in juxtaposition to that of destructiveness, which is
equally large among our countrymen, as is notably evinced upon all
railings, seats, temples, and other things-belonging to other people.
Opposite to the fireplace was a large deal table, at which Dummie,
surnamed Dunnaker, seated near the dame, was quietly ruminating over a
glass of hollands and water. Farther on, at another table in the corner
of the room, a gentleman with a red wig, very rusty garments, and linen
which seemed as if it had been boiled in saffron, smoked his pipe, apart,
silent, and apparently plunged in meditation. This gentleman was no
other than Mr. Peter MacGrawler, the editor of a magnificent periodical
entitled "The Asiaeum," which was written to prove that whatever is
popular is necessarily bad,--a valuable and recondite truth, which "The
Asinaeum" had satisfactorily demonstrated by ruining three printers and
demolishing a publisher. We need not add that Mr. MacGrawler was Scotch
by birth, since we believe it is pretty well known that _all_ periodicals
of this country have, from time immemorial, been monopolized by the
gentlemen of the Land of Cakes. We know not how it may be the fashion to
eat the said cakes in Scotland, but _here_ the good emigrators seem to
like them carefully buttered on both sides. By the side of the editor
stood a large pewter tankard; above him hung an engraving of the
"wonderfully fat boar formerly in the possession of Mr. Fattem, grazier."
To his left rose the dingy form of a thin, upright clock in an oaken
case; beyond the clock, a spit and a musket were fastened in parallels to
the wall. Below those twin emblems of war and cookery were four shelves,
containing plates of pewter and delf, and terminating, centaur-like, in a
sort of dresser. At the other side of these domestic conveniences was a
picture of Mrs. Lobkins, in a scarlet body and a hat and plume. At the
back of the fair hostess stretched the blanket we have before mentioned.
As a relief to the monotonous surface of this simple screen, various
ballads and learned legends were pinned to the blanket. There might you
read in verses, pathetic and unadorned, how--
"Sally loved a sailor lad
As fought with famous Shovel!"
There might you learn, if of two facts so instructive you were before
unconscious, that
"Ben the toper loved his bottle,--
Charley only loved the lasses!"
When of these and various other poetical effusions you were somewhat
wearied, the literary fragments in bumbler prose afforded you equal
edification and delight. There might you fully enlighten yourself as to
the "Strange and Wonderful News from Kensington, being a most full and
true Relation how a Maid there is supposed to have been carried away by
an Evil Spirit on Wednesday, 15th of April last, about Midnight." There,
too, no less interesting and no less veracious, was that uncommon
anecdote touching the chief of many-throned powers entitled "The Divell
of Mascon; or, the true Relation of the Chief Things which an Unclean
Spirit did and said at Mascon, in Burgundy, in the house of one Mr.
Francis Pereaud: now made English by one that hath a Particular Knowledge
of the Truth of the Story."
Nor were these materials for Satanic history the only prosaic and
faithful chronicles which the bibliothecal blanket afforded. Equally
wonderful, and equally indisputable, was the account of "a young lady,
the daughter of a duke, with three legs and the face of a porcupine."
Nor less so "The Awful Judgment of God upon Swearers, as exemplified in
the case of John Stiles, who Dropped down dead after swearing a Great
Oath; and on stripping the unhappy man they found 'Swear not at all'
written on the tail of his shirt!"
Twice had Mrs. Lobkins heaved a long sigh, as her eyes turned from Paul
to the tranquil countenance of Dummie Dunnaker, and now, re-settling
herself in her chair, as a motherly anxiety gathered over her visage,--
"Paul, my ben cull," said she, "what gibberish hast got there?"
"Turpin, _the great_ highwayman!" answered the young student, without
lifting his eyes from the page, through which he was spelling his
instructive way.
"Oh! he be's a chip of the right block, dame!" said Mr. Dunnaker, as he
applied his pipe to an illumined piece of paper. "He'll ride a 'oss
foaled by a hacorn yet, I varrants!"
To this prophecy the dame replied only with a look of indignation; and
rocking herself to and fro in her huge chair, she remained for some
moments in silent thought. At last she again wistfully eyed the hopeful
boy, and calling him to her side, communicated some order, in a dejected
whisper. Paul, on receiving it, disappeared behind the blanket, and
presently returned with a bottle and a wineglass. With an abstracted
gesture, and an air that betokened continued meditation, the good dame
took the inspiring cordial from the hand of her youthful cupbearer,--
"And ere a man had power to say 'Behold!'
The jaws of Lobkins had devoured it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion!"
The nectarean beverage seemed to operate cheerily on the matron's system;
and placing her hand on the boy's curly head, she said (like Andromache,
_dakruon gelasasa_, or, as Scott hath it, "With a smile on her cheek, but
a tear in her eye"),--
"Paul, thy heart be good, thy heart be good; thou didst not spill a drop
of the tape! Tell me, my honey, why didst thou lick Tom Tobyson?"
"Because," answered Paul, "he said as how you ought to have been hanged
long ago."
"Tom Tobyson is a good-for-nought," returned the dame, "and deserves to
shove the tumbler [Be whipped at the cart's tail]; I but oh, my child,
be not too venturesome in taking up the sticks for a blowen,--it has
been the ruin of many a man afore you; and when two men goes to quarrel
for a 'oman, they doesn't know the natur' of the thing they quarrels
about. Mind thy latter end, Paul, and reverence the old, without axing
what they has been before they passed into the wale of years. Thou
mayst get me my pipe, Paul,--it is upstairs, under the pillow."
While Paul was accomplishing this errand, the lady of the Mug, fixing her
eyes upon Mr. Dunnaker, said, "Dummie, Dummie, if little Paul should come
to be scragged!"
"Whish!" muttered Dummie, glancing over his shoulder at MacGrawler;
"mayhap that gemman--" Here his voice became scarcely audible even to
Mrs. Lobkins; but his whisper seemed to imply an insinuation that the
illustrious editor of "The Asinaeum" might be either an informer, or one
of those heroes on whom an informer subsists.
Mrs. Lobkins's answer, couched in the same key, appeared to satisfy
Dunnaker, for with a look of great contempt he chucked up his head and
said, "Oho! that be all, be it!"
Paul here reappeared with the pipe; and the dame, having filled the tube,
leaned forward, and lighted the Virginian weed from the blower of Mr.
Dunnaker. As in this interesting occupation the heads of the hostess and
the guest approached each other, the glowing light playing cheerily on
the countenance of each, there was an honest simplicity in the picture
that would have merited the racy and vigorous genius of a Cruikshank. As
soon as the Promethean spark had been fully communicated to the lady's
tube, Mrs. Lobkins, still possessed by the gloomy idea she had conjured
up, repeated,--
"Ah, Dummie, if little Paul should be scragged!"
Dummie, withdrawing the pipe from his mouth, heaved a sympathizing puff,
but remained silent; and Mrs. Lobkins, turning to Paul, who stood with
mouth open and ears erect at this boding ejaculation, said,--
"Dost think, Paul, they'd have the heart to hang thee?"
"I think they'd have the rope, dame!" returned the youth.
"But you need not go for to run your neck into the noose!" said the
matron; and then, inspired by the spirit of moralizing, she turned round
to the youth, and gazing upon his attentive countenance, accosted him
with the following admonitions:--
"Mind thy kittychism, child, and reverence old age. Never steal,
'specially when any one be in the way. Never go snacks with them as be
older than you,--'cause why? The older a cove be, the more he cares for
hisself, and the less for his partner. At twenty, we diddles the public;
at forty, we diddles our cronies! Be modest, Paul, and stick to your
sitivation in life. Go not with fine tobymen, who burn out like a candle
wot has a thief in it,--all flare, and gone in a whiffy! Leave liquor to
the aged, who can't do without it. Tape often proves a halter, and there
be's no ruin like blue ruin! Read your Bible, and talk like a pious 'un.
People goes more by your words than your actions. If you wants what is
not your own, try and do without it; and if you cannot do without it,
take it away by insinivation, not bluster. They as swindles does more
and risks less than they as robs; and if you cheats toppingly, you may
laugh at the topping cheat [Gallows]. And now go play."
Paul seized his hat, but lingered; and the dame, guessing at the
signification of the pause, drew forth and placed in the boy's hand the
sum of five halfpence and one farthing.
"There, boy," quoth she, and she stroked his head fondly when she spoke,
"you does right not to play for nothing,--it's loss of time; but play
with those as be less than yoursel', and then you can go for to beat 'em
if they says you go for to cheat!"
Paul vanished; and the dame, laying her hand on Dummie's shoulder, said,
--
"There be nothing like a friend in need, Dummie; and somehow or other, I
thinks as how you knows more of the horigin of that 'ere lad than any of
us!"
"Me, dame!" exclaimed Dummie, with a broad gaze of astonishment.
"Ah, you! you knows as how the mother saw more of you just afore she died
than she did of 'ere one of us. Noar, now, noar, now! Tell us all about
'un. Did she steal 'un, think ye?"
"Lauk, Mother Margery, dost think I knows? Vot put such a crotchet in
your 'ead?"
"Well!" said the dame, with a disappointed sigh, "I always thought as how
you were more knowing about it than you owns. Dear, dear, I shall never
forgit the night when Judith brought the poor cretur here,--you knows she
had been some months in my house afore ever I see'd the urchin; and when
she brought it, she looked so pale and ghostly that I had not the heart
to say a word, so I stared at the brat, and it stretched out its wee
little hands to me. And the mother frowned at it, and throwed it into my
lap."
"Ah! she was a hawful voman, that 'ere!" said Dummie, shaking his head.
"But howsomever, the hurchin fell into good 'ands; for I be's sure you
'as been a better mother to 'un than the raal 'un!"
"I was always a fool about childer," rejoined Mrs. Lobkins; "and I thinks
as how little Paul was sent to be a comfort to my latter end! Fill the
glass, Dummie."
"I 'as heard as 'ow Judith was once blowen to a great lord!" said Dummie.
"Like enough!" returned Mrs. Lobkins,--"like enough! She was always a
favourite of mine, for she had a spuret [spirit] as big as my own; and
she paid her rint like a decent body, for all she was out of her sinses,
or 'nation like it."
"Ay, I _knows_ as how you liked her,--'cause vy? 'T is not your vay to
let a room to a voman! You says as how 't is not respectable, and you
only likes men to wisit the Mug!"
"And I doesn't like all of them as comes here!" answered the
dame,--"'specially for Paul's sake; but what can a lone 'oman do? Many's
the gentleman highwayman wot comes here, whose money is as good as the
clerk's of the parish. And when a bob [shilling] is in my hand, what does it
sinnify whose hand it was in afore?"
"That's what I call being sinsible and _practical_," said Dummie,
approvingly. "And after all, though you 'as a mixture like, I does not
know a halehouse where a cove is better entertained, nor meets of a
Sunday more illegant company, than the Mug!"
Here the conversation, which the reader must know had been sustained in a
key inaudible to a third person, received a check from Mr. Peter
MacGrawler, who, having finished his revery and his tankard, now rose to
depart. First, however, approaching Mrs. Lobkins, he observed that he
had gone on credit for some days, and demanded the amount of his bill.
Glancing towards certain chalk hieroglyphics inscribed on the wall at the
other side of the fireplace, the dame answered that Mr. MacGrawler was
indebted to her for the sum of one shilling and ninepence three
farthings.
After a short preparatory search in his waistcoat pockets, the critic
hunted into one corner a solitary half-crown, and having caught it
between his finger and thumb, he gave it to Mrs. Lobkins and requested
change.
As soon as the matron felt her hand anointed with what has been called by
some ingenious Johnson of St. Giles's "the oil of palms," her
countenance softened into a complacent smile; and when she gave the
required change to Mr. MacGrawler, she graciously hoped as how he would
recommend the Mug to the public.
"That you may be sure of," said the editor of "The Asinaeum." "There is
not a place where I am so much at home."
With that the learned Scotsman buttoned his coat and went his way.
"How spiteful the world be!" said Mrs. Lobkins, after a pause,
"'specially if a 'oman keeps a fashionable sort of a public! When Judith
died, Joe, the dog's-meat man, said I war all the better for it, and that
she left I a treasure to bring up the urchin. One would think a thumper
makes a man richer,--'cause why? Every man _thumps!_ I got nothing
more than a watch and ten guineas when Judy died, and sure that scarce
paid for the burrel [burial]."
"You forgits the two quids [Guineas] I giv' you for the hold box of rags,--much
of a treasure I found there!" said Dummie, with sycophantic archness.
"Ay," cried the dame, laughing, "I fancies you war not pleased with the
bargain. I thought you war too old a ragmerchant to be so free with the
blunt; howsomever, I supposes it war the tinsel petticoat as took you
in!"
"As it has mony a viser man than the like of I," rejoined Dummie, who to
his various secret professions added the ostensible one of a rag-merchant
and dealer in broken glass.
The recollection of her good bargain in the box of rags opened our
landlady's heart.
"Drink, Dummie," said she, good-humouredly,--"drink; I scorns to score
lush to a friend."
Dummie expressed his gratitude, refilled his glass, and the hospitable
matron, knocking out from her pipe the dying ashes, thus proceeded:
"You sees, Dummie, though I often beats the boy, I loves him as much as
if I war his raal mother,--I wants to make him an honour to his country,
and an ixciption to my family!"
"Who all flashed their ivories at Surgeons' Hall!" added the metaphorical
Dummie.
"True!" said the lady; "they died game, and I be n't ashamed of 'em. But
I owes a duty to Paul's mother, and I wants Paul to have a long life. I
would send him to school, but you knows as how the boys only corrupt one
another. And so, I should like to meet with some decent man, as a tutor,
to teach the lad Latin and vartue!"
"My eyes!" cried Dummie; aghast at the grandeur of this desire.
"The boy is 'cute enough, and he loves reading," continued the dame; but
I does not think the books he gets hold of will teach him the way to grow
old."
"And 'ow came he to read, anyhows?"
"Ranting Rob, the strolling player, taught him his letters, and said he'd
a deal of janius."
"And why should not Ranting Rob tache the boy Latin and vartue?"
"'Cause Ranting Rob, poor fellow, was lagged [Transported for
burglary] for doing a panny!" answered the dame, despondently.
There was a long silence; it was broken by Mr. Dummie. Slapping his
thigh with the gesticulatory vehemence of a Ugo Foscolo, that gentleman
exclaimed,--
"I 'as it,--I 'as thought of a tutor for leetle Paul!"
"Who's that? You quite frightens me; you 'as no marcy on my narves,"
said the dame, fretfully.
"Vy, it be the gemman vot writes," said Dummie, putting his finger to his
nose,--"the gemman vot paid you so flashly!"
"What! the Scotch gemman?"
"The werry same!" returned Dummie.
The dame turned in her chair and refilled her pipe. It was evident from
her manner that Mr. Dunnaker's suggestion had made an impression on her.
But she recognized two doubts as to its feasibility: one, whether the
gentleman proposed would be adequate to the task; the other, whether he
would be willing to undertake it.
In the midst of her meditations on this matter, the dame was interrupted
by the entrance of certain claimants on her hospitality; and Dummie soon
after taking his leave, the suspense of Mrs. Lobkins's mind touching the
education of little Paul remained the whole of that day and night utterly
unrelieved.