_My father becomes a bankrupt: Flies the country: Lists for an East
India soldier, and dies on ship-board: Distress of my mother; and the
beginning of my misfortunes: I am bound apprentice: Characteristic
traits of my master: The dreadful sufferings I undergo; and my narrow
escapes with life_
Young as I was, I perfectly remember that the strange departure of my
uncle Elford produced a very sensible effect upon me. It may well be
imagined that, when my understanding was more mature, the perusal of
this affectionate letter, and the recollection of his kindness to me
in my days of childhood, excited no little emotion.
As for my aunt, prepared as she had been for some violent catastrophe
to their quarrelling, she was either so struck by the letter and
the remembrance of past follies, or so fearful of the comments and
scrutiny of the neighbourhood, that within a month after he was
missing she quitted the country, and went to reside at the city of
****, where in less than a year she died. Her departure was private,
and the place of her retreat was not known till her last illness;
when intelligence was sent to the rector, to whom she bequeathed such
property as she possessed.
The absence of my uncle contributed to hasten the approach of that
cloudy reverse at which I have already hinted. For some time the
ruin of my father's affairs had been prevented by the sums which his
eloquence had wrung from the well-meaning Mr. Elford. Hugh was no
contemptible orator on these occasions. Hope seldom forsook him, and
he built so securely on what he hoped might come to pass as sometimes
to assert the thing had already happened. Such convenient mistakes are
daily made. If indeed the good graces of fortune would but have kept
pace with his expectations, England would not have afforded a more
flourishing or gallant yeoman. But, like monopolizers in general,
he was apt to speculate a little too deeply. Eager to enjoy, he was
impatient to obtain the means of enjoyment. So that, at one time,
the turning up of the jack at all fours was to make his fortune; but
how provoking! it happened to be the ten: at another it depended
on a duck-wing cock, which (who could have foreseen so strange an
accident?) disgraced the best feeder in the kingdom, by running away:
and it more than once did not want half a neck's length of being
realized by a favourite horse; yet was lost, contrary to the most
accurate calculations which, as the learned in these matters affirm,
had been made from Wheatherby's Racing Calendar.
Thus to repeated disappointments in his bets and his bargains, and to
his neglect of his farming affairs, it was owing that, in anno domini
---- when I was nine years and a half old, after having expended
the property with which he had been supplied, and incurred debts to
the amount of little less than a thousand pounds, my father found
it prudent to depart by night in the basket of the stage coach for
London. And prudent it certainly was, for his effects had not only
been seized in execution of a bond and judgment, but the bailiffs from
all quarters were at his heels.
My mother at this time was pregnant; the sister I have mentioned was
dead; but I had a fine healthy brother about three years old, and it
was agreed that we should follow to the great city, as soon as he had
found employment; which, according to his notions, was the most easy
thing imaginable.
It so happened, however, that he had not been there a full month
before the trifling sum he and my mother had collected for his
immediate existence was lost, by the turn of a die; contrary to his
certain conviction that he had discovered, at a hazard table, the
ready way to repair all past mistakes.
To send for wife and children was now out of the question. Destitute
of support, without the means of obtaining another shilling, after
fasting a day and a half, his courage, that is his appetite, could
hold out no longer, and he enlisted for an East-India soldier; having
first convinced himself, by the soundest arguments, that he should
immediately be made a serjeant; which perhaps was no improbable
calculation; that he should then soon get a commission, and that he
should undoubtedly return a commanding officer, or general in chief,
to the surprise of his friends and the utter confusion of the rector,
and all those whom he accounted his persecutors.
That these great events might not actually have happened who shall
pretend to say? Miracles of old were plentiful; and even in these
unbelieving days strange things have come to pass. But all his
unbounded hopes, many of which he had stated in his last letter to
my mother, were unexpectedly subverted, by an accident to which it
appears men in general are subject. He caught a fever, while the ship
in which he was to be a passenger lay waiting in the Downs for a wind;
and, in spite of the surgeon and his whole chest of medicines, died:
of all which events there was a circumstantial account, transmitted by
one of his comrades to my mother.
The ruin of prospects so fair, the desolation of a house and homeless
woman, with two orphan children, and pregnant of a third, and the
loss of a husband, who at the worst of times had always kept hope
alive, were sufficient causes of affliction to my mother. Tears were
plentifully shed, and daily and nightly wailings were indulged.
Every resource was soon exhausted, and immediate relief became
necessary. To whom could she apply? To whom, but the rector? She wrote
to him in terms the most moving, the most humiliating, and indeed
the most abject, that her imagination could suggest. But in vain: no
prayers, no tears, no terrors, of this world or of the next, could
move him. The father, and the divine, were equally inexorable. He
pleaded his oath, but he remembered his revenge. After the first
letter he would receive no more, and when she wrote again and again,
with the direction in a different hand, and using other little
stratagems, he returned no answer.
From this extreme distress, and from the intolerable disgrace, as my
mother supposed it to be, of coming on the parish, we were relieved,
to the best of her ability, by a poor widow woman with four children;
who had formerly lived a servant in the Trevor family, and who,
after her husband's death, maintained herself and her orphans with
incredible industry, and with no other aid but the produce of a cow,
that she fed chiefly on the common where her cottage stood. The active
good sense with which she did every thing that was entrusted to her,
was the cause that she never wanted employment; and she exerted her
utmost attention to make her children, as they grew up, as useful as
herself.
By this woman's advice and aid, my mother applied herself to spinning;
and it was agreed that I should either drive the plough or be put
apprentice, as soon as I could find a master.
For my own part, all my sources of pleasure and improvement were at
once retrenched. That I had not horses to ride, a father to play with
and caress me, and a kind uncle to instruct and delight me, were among
the least of my misfortunes. Reading, that great field of enjoyment,
which was daily opening more amply upon me, was totally cut off. My
curiosity had been awakened, my memory praised, and my acuteness
admired: in an instant, as it were, all these joys were vanished.
Previous to my uncle's departure, I had found another mode of
obtaining knowledge, and applause. He was musical, and a few persons
of the like turn, scattered through the neighbouring hamlets, used
occasionally to meet at his house; where they exercised themselves
in singing, from the works of Croft, Green, Boyce, Purcell, Handel,
and such authors as they possessed. One of them played the bassoon,
another the flute, and a third the violin, I had a quick ear, was
attracted by their harmony, and began to join in their concerts. A
treble voice was a great acquisition; I was apt and they encouraged
me, by frequent praise and admiration. My uncle gave me Arnold's
Psalmody, in which I eagerly studied the rudiments of the science: but
this book, with the rest, was swept away in the general wreck; and I,
after having had a glimpse of the enchanted land of knowledge, was
cast back, apparently to perish in the gloomy deserts of ignorance. I
had no source of information, except my mother; and her stores, at the
best, were scanty: at present, labour left her but little leisure, and
the little she had was spent in complaint.
The poor widow, indeed, willingly did me every kindness in her power;
but that alas was small. With this honest-hearted creature I remained
eight months, going out to a day's work whenever I could get one, to
weed, drive the plough, set potatoes, or any thing else that they
would put me to: till at last a farmer, finding me expert, agreed to
take me as an apprentice; on condition that I should serve him till I
was one and twenty. The offer was joyfully accepted by my mother, and
I had spirit and understanding enough to be happy that I could thus
provide for myself.
I had soon reason to repent; my master was the most passionate madman
I ever beheld; and, when in a passion, the most mischievous. His
cattle, his horses, his servants, his wife, his children, were each of
them in turn the objects of his fury.
The accidents that happened from his ungovernable choler were
continual, and his cruelty, when in these fits, was incredible; though
at other times, strange to tell, he was remarkably compassionate. He
one day beat out the eye of a calf, because it would not instantly
take the milk he offered. Another time he pursued a goose, that ran
away from him when he flung it oats; and was so enraged, by the
efforts it made to escape, that he first tore off its wing and then
twisted its neck round. On a third occasion he bit off a pig's ear,
because it struggled and cried while he was ringing it. One of his
children was lamed, and, though nobody knew how it happened, every
body gave him credit for the accident. Yet he had his paroxysms of
fondness for his children, and for the lame boy in particular. Indeed
it was generally remarked that he was the most cruel to those for whom
he had the greatest affection. The perception of his own absurdity
did but increase his rage, till it was exhausted; after which he has
sometimes been seen to burst into tears, at the recollection of his
own madness and inhumanity.
One habit arising from his excessive vivacity was that, when he wanted
any thing done, he expected the person nearest to him should not
only instantly obey, but conceive what he meant from the pointing of
his finger, the turn of his head, or the motion of his eye, without
speaking a word; while the dread of his anger stupified and rendered
the person against whom it was directed motionless.
I continued for an unexampled length of time to be his favourite. The
family remarked, at first with surprise, and afterward either with a
sense of injustice or of enmity, the restraint he put upon himself,
and the great partiality with which he treated me. My superior
quickness excited his admiration; he held me up as an example, and
laid the flattering unction to his soul that he was no tyrant; on the
contrary, when people had but common sense, nobody was more kind.
But old habits, though they may suffer a temporary disguise, are
devils incarnate. The tide of passion at length broke loose, and with
redoubled violence for having suffered constraint. To add to the
misfortune, my thirst after knowledge was the cause, or at least the
pretext, of this change. It happened that an old book of arithmetic
fell in my way, and, as this was at that time the sole treasure of
instruction within my reach, I made it my constant companion, carried
it in my bosom, and pored over it whenever I could steal a moment to
myself. In the heinous act of reading this book I was twice detected,
by my moody master. The first time he cautioned me, with fire in his
eyes, never to let him catch me idling my time in that manner again;
and the second he snatched hold of my ear and gave me so sudden and
violent a pull that he brought me to the ground. He did worse, he took
away my book, and locked it up.
Hostilities having thus commenced, they soon grew hot, and were
pursued with bitterness, tyranny, and malignity. Proceeding from bad
to worse, after a while every thing I did was wrong. In proportion as
his frenzy became hateful or rather terrible to his own imagination,
his cruelty increased. He seemed, in my instance, to have the dread
upon him of committing some injury so violent as perhaps to bring him
to the gallows; and several times in his chafing fits declared his
fear.
This idea haunted him so much that he adopted a new mode of conduct
with me, and, instead of kicking me, knocking me down, or hurling the
first thing that came to hand at me, gave himself time enough to take
the horsewhip. Yet he could not always be thus cautious; and even when
he was, such infernal discipline, though less dangerous, was more
intolerable.
The scenes I went through with this man, the sufferings I endured, and
the stupifying terrors that seized me if I saw but his shadow, I can
never forget. Every thing I did was a motive for chastisement; one
day it was for having turned the horses out to graze, and the very
next for suffering them to stand in the stable. The cattle of his
neighbour, for whom he had a mortal enmity, broke into his field
during the night; and for this I was most unmercifully flogged the
next morning. The pretence was my not having told him that the fence
was defective. Rainy weather made him fret, and then I was sure of a
beating. If it were fine, he was all hurry, anxiety, and impatience;
and to escape the wicked itching of his fingers was impossible.
One effect that he produced might be thought remarkable, had we not
the history of Sparta in its favour; and did we not occasionally
observe the like in other boys, under tyrannical treatment. The
efforts I was obliged to make, to endure the terrible punishment
he inflicted and live, at last rendered me, to a certain degree,
insensible of pain. They were powerfully aided indeed by the indignant
detestation which I felt, and by the something like defiance with
which it enabled me to treat him.
This on one occasion exasperated him so much that, seeing me support
the lash without a tear and as if disdaining complaint, he franticly
snatched up a pitch-fork, drove it at me, and, I luckily avoiding it,
struck the prongs into the barn-door; with the exclamation, 'Damn your
soul! I'll make you feel me!' The moment after he was seized with a
sense of his own lunacy, turned as pale as death, and stood aghast
with horror! My supposed crime was that I had eaten some milk, the
last of which I myself had seen the dog lap. Perceiving the terror of
his mind, I took courage and told him, 'Jowler eat the milk: I saw
him, just as he had done. I would not tell you, because I knew if I
had you would have hanged the poor dog.' This short sentence had such
an effect upon him that he dropped on his knees, the tears rolling
from his eyes, and cried out in an undescribable agony, 'Lord have
mercy upon my sinful soul! I shall surely come to be hanged!'
The terror of this lesson remained longer than those who knew him
would have expected; but it insensibly wore away.
The efforts I made in the interval to conciliate and avoid wakening
the fiend were strenuous, but ineffectual. I shrunk from no labour,
and the business with which he intrusted me shewed the confidence he
placed in my activity and intelligence. At eleven years old I drove
the loaded team, to market or elsewhere, without a superintendant. I
was sent in every direction across the country, to bring home sheep,
deliver calves to the butcher, fetch cattle, cart coals, or any thing
else within my strength.
Various were the distresses in which these duties, and the distempered
choler of my master, involved me. On one occasion a wicked boy set
his dog at my sheep, and drove them into a turnip field; out of which
I could not get them but with great difficulty and loss of time, of
which my master demanded a severe account. A calf once broke from me
and foolishly tumbled into a water-pit, from which I delivered it at
the hazard of my life. Another time, when the roads were heavy, my
waggon was set fast in a clay rut, where I was detained above an hour;
two drivers refusing to give me a pull because they had both lived
with my malicious master; and a third being only prevailed on, for
this master of mine was generally hated, by my prayers and tears and
the picture I drew of my own distress.
At length the violence of his temper recovered its full elasticity;
which was a second time chiefly excited by my earnest longing after
knowledge. Notwithstanding that my book was taken from me, my mind
was often occupied with the arithmetic I had learned in better days,
which had been strongly revived by its contents. At the employment
this afforded me I was twice caught by my master; once multiplying
and dividing with a nail against the paling, and the second time
extracting the square root with chalk on the wall.
These misdemeanours were aggravated by another incident. I one morning
happened to find, by good luck as I thought, a half-crown piece
that was lying on the high road. The moment I was possessed of this
treasure, I began to consider how it ought to be expended. I was in
great want of shoes, stockings, and other things; but with those my
master was bound to provide me; and, if I attempted to supply myself,
the probability was that he would beat me, for not having given him
the money.
After pondering again and again on the necessaries I might obtain,
the luxuries in which I might indulge, and, what was infinitely more
tempting, the stores of learning with which such a sum would furnish
me, the recollection of my mother, brother, and sister, for so
the young one proved to be, and their distress, with that of the
benevolent poor creature who afforded them a shelter, seized me so
strongly that I thought it would be wicked not to send my half-crown
where it was so much wanted. But how to convey it thither? That was
the difficulty. I had no means, no messenger, no soul in whom I durst
confide. I therefore resolved for the present to conceal it by pinning
it in the lining of my waistcoat; and this was one of those unforeseen
events that are generally called lucky chances.
My master's devil was again let loose, and a most uncontrolable devil
he was. I had overslept myself, a very uncommon accident with me,
and had put him into one of his hateful humours. At breakfast, while
eating his bread and cheese, I was set to watch the milk that stood on
the fire to boil. By some accident I forgot my office; he saw it rise
in the pipkin, looked toward me, could not catch my eye, and, seized
with one of his unaccountably hellish fits, sprang forward just as the
milk began to boil over, and struck at me with a clasped knife that he
held in his hand!
Fortunately for me, the point found resistance, by the saving
intervention of my half-crown! The clasp gave way with the violence of
the blow, and shutting made a deep gash in his own hand.
Again he turned pale, and, as the blood smeared the floor, knew not I
believe whether it was mine or his own. My dame trembling called out,
'Are you hurt, Hugh?' for she too saw the blood, and knew not whose it
was. I answered, 'No:' but with a tremulous voice, being in dread of
more blows. They soon descended upon me, after he had discovered his
mistake, and it was with difficulty that I escaped being thrown behind
the fire.
This was not the end of the history of my half-crown. I kept it above
three months till I happened to be sent to the market town, with a
load of hay. Here, in passing through the street, my eye as usual was
attracted by the bookseller's window. I had not forgotten how rich
I was, and could not resist. I went in, examined some of the stores
the shop contained, and with great difficulty restrained myself to
the purchase of the Seven Champions of Christendom, which cost me a
shilling. The other eighteen pence I found an opportunity, it being
market day, of sending by a neighbour to my mother; with an injunction
that six-pence of it should be given to her poor hostess.
With what eagerness I read the valiant deeds of these valiant knights,
as I rode home in my empty cart, I will leave the reader to divine:
but he will probably pity me when I inform him that I was so deeply
engaged in my book as not to perceive the arrival of the cart at
my master's yard gate, and that he himself stood at the barn door,
contemplating me in the profound negligence of my studies.
Riding in the cart, neglecting the team, having a new book, and
reading in it, formed a catalogue of crimes too black to hope for
pardon. Not the horse but the cart whip was the instrument of
vengeance; and, after having tired himself and left weals of a
finger's breadth on my body, arms, legs, and thighs, he completed his
malice this time, not by locking up but by burning my book. I had
already lived a year and a half under the tortures of this demon, till
they became so intolerable that at last I determined to run away. I
was confirmed in this resolution by another dangerous incident, which
terrified me more even than any of the preceding, and convinced me
that if I stayed any longer with this villainous savage I could not
escape death.
I was one day driving the plough for him when a young horse, not half
broken in, was the second in the team. I used my utmost endeavours but
could not manage him, and the lunatic my master, who was as strong as
he was ferocious, caught up a stone and aimed it at the colt (at least
so from his manner at the moment I supposed) but struck me with it,
and knocked me down immediately in the furrow, where the plough was
coming. I saw the plough-share that in an instant was to cut me in
two; but the madman, with an incredible effort, started it out of
the earth and flung it fairly over me! Unable however to recover his
balance, he trod upon my forehead with his hob-nailed shoe, and cut a
deep gash just over my eye, and another in my skull: whether with the
same foot or in what manner I do not know. My eye was presently closed
up, and my hair steeped in the blood that flowed plentifully from both
wounds.
There I lay, stunned for a moment, while he was obliged to attend to
the frightened colt, which forced the other horses to run, and was
become wholly unmanageable. When I recovered I heard him holloa, and
saw him struggling with the horses at the farther end of the field;
but the impression of the danger I had just escaped was so strong that
my resolution of running away came upon me with irresistible force,
and, perceiving him so thoroughly engaged, I immediately put it in
execution.
I imagine it was some time before he missed me, and he then probably
conjectured I was gone home. Be it as it will, I used my legs without
molestation; and, committing myself to chance and the wide world, made
the best of my way.