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THE CAXTONS
A FAMILY PICTURE
By Edward Bulwer Lytton
(LORD LYTTON)
PART I.
PREFACE.
If it be the good fortune of this work to possess any interest for the
Novel reader, that interest, perhaps, will be but little derived from
the customary elements of fiction. The plot is extremely slight, the
incidents are few, and with the exception of those which involve the
fate of Vivian, such as may be found in the records of ordinary life.
Regarded as a Novel, this attempt is an experiment somewhat apart from
the previous works of the author. It is the first of his writings in
which Humor has been employed, less for the purpose of satire than in
illustration of amiable characters; it is the first, too, in which man
has been viewed, less in his active relations with the world, than in
his repose at his own hearth,--in a word, the greater part of the canvas
has been devoted to the completion of a simple Family Picture. And
thus, in any appeal to the sympathies of the human heart, the common
household affections occupy the place of those livelier or larger
passions which usually (and not unjustly) arrogate the foreground in
Romantic composition.
In the Hero whose autobiography connects the different characters and
events of the work, it has been the Author's intention to imply the
influences of Home upon the conduct and career of youth; and in the
ambition which estranges Pisistratus for a time from the sedentary
occupations in which the man of civilized life must usually serve his
apprenticeship to Fortune or to Fame, it is not designed to describe the
fever of Genius conscious of superior powers and aspiring to high
destinies, but the natural tendencies of a fresh and buoyant mind,
rather vigorous than contemplative, and in which the desire of action is
but the symptom of health.
Pisistratus in this respect (as he himself feels and implies) becomes
the specimen or type of a class the numbers of which are daily
increasing in the inevitable progress of modern civilization. He is one
too many in the midst of the crowd; he is the representative of the
exuberant energies of youth, turning, as with the instinct of nature for
space and development, from the Old World to the New. That which may be
called the interior meaning of the whole is sought to be completed by
the inference that, whatever our wanderings, our happiness will always
be found within a narrow compass, and amidst the objects more
immediately within our reach, but that we are seldom sensible of this
truth (hackneyed though it be in the Schools of all Philosophies) till
our researches have spread over a wider area. To insure the blessing of
repose, we require a brisker excitement than a few turns up and down our
room. Content is like that humor in the crystal, on which Claudian has
lavished the wonder of a child and the fancies of a Poet,--
"Vivis gemma tumescit aquis."
E. B. L.
October, 1849.
THE CAXTONS.
PART I.
CHAPTER I.
"Sir--sir, it is a boy!"
"A boy," said my father, looking up from his book, and evidently much
puzzled: "what is a boy?"
Now my father did not mean by that interrogatory to challenge
philosophical inquiry, nor to demand of the honest but unenlightened
woman who had just rushed into his study, a solution of that mystery,
physiological and psychological, which has puzzled so many curious
sages, and lies still involved in the question, "What is man?" For as
we need not look further than Dr. Johnson's Dictionary to know that a
boy is "a male child,"--i.e., the male young of man,--so he who would go
to the depth of things, and know scientifically what is a boy, must be
able to ascertain "what is a man." But for aught I know, my father may
have been satisfied with Buffon on that score, or he may have sided with
Monboddo. He may have agreed with Bishop Berkeley; he may have
contented himself with Professor Combe; he may have regarded the genus
spiritually, like Zeno, or materially, like Epicurus. Grant that boy is
the male young of man, and he would have had plenty of definitions to
choose from. He might have said, "Man is a stomach,--ergo, boy a male
young stomach. Man is a brain,--boy a male young brain. Man is a
bundle of habits,--boy a male young bundle of habits. Man is a
machine,--boy a male young machine. Man is a tail-less monkey,--boy a
male young tail-less monkey. Man is a combination of gases,--boy a male
young combination of gases. Man is an appearance,--boy a male young
appearance," etc., etc., and etcetera, ad infinitum! And if none of
these definitions had entirely satisfied my father, I am perfectly
persuaded that he would never have come to Mrs. Primmins for a new one.
But it so happened that my father was at that moment engaged in the
important consideration whether the Iliad was written by one Homer, or
was rather a collection of sundry ballads, done into Greek by divers
hands, and finally selected, compiled, and reduced into a whole by a
Committee of Taste, under that elegant old tyrant Pisistratus; and the
sudden affirmation, "It is a boy," did not seem to him pertinent to the
thread of the discussion. Therefore he asked, "What is a boy?" vaguely,
and, as it were, taken by surprise.
"Lord, sir!" said Mrs. Primmins, "what is a boy? Why, the baby!"
"The baby!" repeated my father, rising. "What, you don't mean to say
that Mrs. Caxton is--eh?"
"Yes, I do," said Mrs. Primmins, dropping a courtesy; "and as fine a
little rogue as ever I set eyes upon."
"Poor dear woman," said my father, with great compassion. "So soon,
too--so rapidly," he resumed, in a tone of musing surprise. "Why, it is
but the other day we were married!"
"Bless my heart, sir," said Mrs. Primmins, much scandalized, "it is ten
months and more."
"Ten months!" said my father with a sigh. "Ten months! and I have not
finished fifty pages of my refutation of Wolfe's monstrous theory! In
ten months a child! and I'll be bound complete,--hands, feet, eyes,
ears, and nose!--and not like this poor Infant of Mind," and my father
pathetically placed his hand on the treatise, "of which nothing is
formed and shaped, not even the first joint of the little finger! Why,
my wife is a precious woman! Well, keep her quiet. Heaven preserve
her, and send me strength--to support this blessing!"
"But your honor will look at the baby? Come, sir!" and Mrs. Primmins
laid hold of my father's sleeve coaxingly.
"Look at it,--to be sure," said my father, kindly; "look at it,
certainly: it is but fair to poor Mrs. Caxton, after taking so much
trouble, dear soul!"
Therewith my father, drawing his dressing-robe round him in more stately
folds, followed Mrs. Primmins upstairs into a room very carefully
darkened.
"How are you, my dear?" said my father, with compassionate tenderness,
as he groped his way to the bed.
A faint voice muttered: "Better now, and so happy!" And at the same
moment Mrs. Primmins pulled my father away, lifted a coverlid from a
small cradle, and holding a candle within an inch of an undeveloped
nose, cried emphatically, "There--bless it!"
"Of course, ma'am, I bless it," said my father, rather peevishly. "It
is my duty to bless it--Bless It! And this, then, is the way we come
into the world!--red, very red,--blushing for all the follies we are
destined to commit."
My father sat down on the nurse's chair, the women grouped round him.
He continued to gaze on the contents of the cradle, and at length said,
musingly, "And Homer was once like this!"
At this moment--and no wonder, considering the propinquity of the candle
to his visual organs--Homer's infant likeness commenced the first
untutored melodies of nature.
"Homer improved greatly in singing as he grew older," observed Mr.
Squills, the accoucheur, who was engaged in some mysteries in a corner
of the room.
My father stopped his ears. "Little things can make a great noise,"
said he, philosophically; "and the smaller the thing; the greater noise
it can make."
So saying, he crept on tiptoe to the bed, and clasping the pale hand
held out to him, whispered some words that no doubt charmed and soothed
the ear that heard them, for that pale hand was suddenly drawn from his
own and thrown tenderly round his neck. The sound of a gentle kiss was
heard through the stillness.
"Mr. Caxton, sir," cried Mr. Squills, in rebuke, "you agitate my
patient; you must retire."
My father raised his mild face, looked round apologetically, brushed his
eyes with the back of his hand, stole to the door, and vanished.
"I think," said a kind gossip seated at the other side of my mother's
bed, "I think, my dear, that Mr. Caxton might have shown more joy,--more
natural feeling, I may say,--at the sight of the baby: and Such a baby!
But all men are just the same, my dear,--brutes,--all brutes, depend
upon it!"
"Poor Austin!" sighed my mother, feebly; "how little you understand
him!"
"And now I shall clear the room," said Mr. Squills. "Go to sleep, Mrs.
Caxton."
"Mr. Squills," exclaimed my mother, and the bed-curtains trembled, "pray
see that Mr. Caxton does not set himself on fire. And, Mr. Squills,
tell him not to be vexed and miss me,--I shall be down very soon,--sha'
n't I?"
"If you keep yourself easy, you will, ma'am."
"Pray, say so. And, Primmins--"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Every one, I fear, is neglecting your master. Be sure," and my
mother's lips approached close to Mrs. Primmins' ear, "be sure that you-
-air his nightcap yourself."
"Tender creatures those women," soliloquized Mr. Squills as, after
clearing the room of all present save Mrs. Primmins and the nurse, he
took his way towards my father's study. Encountering the footman in the
passage, "John," said he, "take supper into your master's room, and make
us some punch, will you,--stiffish!"