BUCKTHORNE, OR THE YOUNG MAN OF GREAT EXPECTATIONS

I was born to very little property, but to great expectations;

which is perhaps one of the most unlucky fortunes that a man can

be born to. My father was a country gentleman, the last of a very

ancient and honorable, but decayed family, and resided in an old

hunting lodge in Warwickshire. He was a keen sportsman and lived

to the extent of his moderate income, so that I had little to

expect from that quarter; but then I had a rich uncle by the

mother’s side, a penurious, accumulating curmudgeon, who it was

confidently expected would make me his heir; because he was an

old bachelor; because I was named after him, and because he hated

all the world except myself.

He was, in fact, an inveterate hater, a miser even in

misanthropy, and hoarded up a grudge as he did a guinea. Thus,

though my mother was an only sister, he had never forgiven her

marriage with my father, against whom he had a cold, still,

immovable pique, which had lain at the bottom of his heart, like

a stone in a well, ever since they had been school boys together.

My mother, however, considered me as the intermediate being that

was to bring every thing again into harmony, for she looked upon

me as a prodigy—God bless her. My heart overflows whenever I

recall her tenderness: she was the most excellent, the most

indulgent of mothers. I was her only child; it was a pity she had

no more, for she had fondness of heart enough to have spoiled a

dozen!

I was sent, at an early age, to a public school, sorely against

my mother’s wishes, but my father insisted that it was the only

way to make boys hardy. The school was kept by a conscientious

prig of the ancient system, who did his duty by the boys

intrusted to his care; that is to say, we were flogged soundly

when we did not get our lessons. We were put into classes and

thus flogged on in droves along the highways of knowledge, in the

same manner as cattle are driven to market, where those that are

heavy in gait or short in leg have to suffer for the superior

alertness or longer limbs of their companions.

For my part, I confess it with shame, I was an incorrigible

laggard. I have always had the poetical feeling, that is to say,

I have always been an idle fellow and prone to play the vagabond.

I used to get away from my books and school whenever I could, and

ramble about the fields. I was surrounded by seductions for such

a temperament. The school-house was an old-fashioned,

white-washed mansion of wood and plaister, standing on the skirts

of a beautiful village. Close by it was the venerable church with

a tall Gothic spire. Before it spread a lovely green valley, with

a little stream glistening along through willow groves; while a

line of blue hills that bounded the landscape gave rise to many a

summer day dream as to the fairy land that lay beyond.

In spite of all the scourgings I suffered at that school to make

me love my book, I cannot but look back upon the place with

fondness. Indeed, I considered this frequent flagellation as the

common lot of humanity, and the regular mode in which scholars

were made. My kind mother used to lament over my details of the

sore trials I underwent in the cause of learning; but my father

turned a deaf ear to her expostulations. He had been flogged

through school himself, and swore there was no other way of

making a man of parts; though, let me speak it with all due

reverence, my father was but an indifferent illustration of his

own theory, for he was considered a grievous blockhead.

My poetical temperament evinced itself at a very early period.

The Village church was attended every Sunday by a neighboring

squire—the lord of the manor, whose park stretched quite to the

village, and whose spacious country seat seemed to take the

church under its protection. Indeed, you would have thought the

church had been consecrated to him instead of to the Deity. The

parish clerk bowed low before him, and the vergers humbled

themselves into the dust in his presence. He always entered a

little late and with some stir, striking his cane emphatically on

the ground; swaying his hat in his hand, and looking loftily to

the right and left, as he walked slowly up the aisle, and the

parson, who always ate his Sunday dinner with him, never

commenced service until he appeared. He sat with his family in a

large pew gorgeously lined, humbling himself devoutly on velvet

cushions, and reading lessons of meekness and lowliness of spirit

out of splendid gold and morocco prayer-books. Whenever the

parson spoke of the difficulty of the rich man’s entering the

kingdom of heaven, the eyes of the congregation would turn

towards the “grand pew,” and I thought the squire seemed pleased

with the application.

The pomp of this pew and the aristocratical air of the family

struck My imagination wonderfully, and I fell desperately in love

with a little daughter of the squire’s about twelve years of age.

This freak of fancy made me more truant from my studies than

ever. I used to stroll about the squire’s park, and would lurk

near the house to catch glimpses of this little damsel at the

windows, or playing about the lawns, or walking out with her

governess.

I had not enterprise or impudence enough to venture from my

concealment; indeed, I felt like an arrant poacher, until I read

one or two of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, when I pictured myself as

some sylvan deity, and she a coy wood nymph of whom I was in

pursuit. There is something extremely delicious in these early

awakenings of the tender passion. I can feel, even at this

moment, the thrilling of my boyish bosom, whenever by chance I

caught a glimpse of her white frock fluttering among the

shrubbery. I now began to read poetry. I carried about in my

bosom a volume of Waller, which I had purloined from my mother’s

library; and I applied to my little fair one all the compliments

lavished upon Sacharissa.

At length I danced with her at a school ball. I was so awkward a

booby, that I dared scarcely speak to her; I was filled with awe

and embarrassment in her presence; but I was so inspired that my

poetical temperament for the first time broke out in verse; and I

fabricated some glowing lines, in which I be-rhymed the little

lady under the favorite name of Sacharissa. I slipped the verses,

trembling and blushing, into her hand the next Sunday as she came

out of church. The little prude handed them to her mamma; the

mamma handed them to the squire, the squire, who had no soul for

poetry, sent them in dudgeon to the school-master; and the

school-master, with a barbarity worthy of the dark ages, gave me

a sound and peculiarly humiliating flogging for thus trespassing

upon Parnassus.

This was a sad outset for a votary of the muse. It ought to have

cured me of my passion for poetry; but it only confirmed it, for

I felt the spirit of a martyr rising within me. What was as well,

perhaps, it cured me of my passion for the young lady; for I felt

so indignant at the ignominious horsing I had incurred in

celebrating her charms, that I could not hold up my head in

church.

Fortunately for my wounded sensibility, the midsummer holydays

came on, and I returned home. My mother, as usual, inquired into

all my school concerns, my little pleasures, and cares, and

sorrows; for boyhood has its share of the one as well as of the

others. I told her all, and she was indignant at the treatment I

had experienced. She fired up at the arrogance of the squire, and

the prudery of the daughter; and as to the school-master, she

wondered where was the use of having school-masters, and why boys

could not remain at home and be educated by tutors, under the eye

of their mothers. She asked to see the verses I had written, and

she was delighted with them; for to confess the truth, she had a

pretty taste in poetry. She even showed to them to the parson’s

wife, who protested they were charming, and the parson’s three

daughters insisted on each having a copy of them.

All this was exceedingly balsamic, and I was still more consoled

and encouraged, when the young ladies, who were the

blue-stockings of the neighborhood, and had read Dr. Johnson’s

lives quite through, assured my mother that great geniuses never

studied, but were always idle; upon which I began to surmise that

I was myself something out of the common run. My father, however,

was of a very different opinion, for when my mother, in the pride

of her heart, showed him my copy of verses, he threw them out of

the window, asking her “if she meant to make a ballad monger of

the boy.” But he was a careless, common-thinking man, and I

cannot say that I ever loved him much; my mother absorbed all my

filial affection.

I used occasionally, during holydays, to be sent on short visits

to the uncle, who was to make me his heir; they thought it would

keep me in his mind, and render him fond of me. He was a

withered, anxious-looking old fellow, and lived in a desolate old

country seat, which he suffered to go to ruin from absolute

niggardliness. He kept but one man-servant, who had lived, or

rather starved, with him for years. No woman was allowed to sleep

in the house. A daughter of the old servant lived by the gate, in

what had been a porter’s lodge, and was permitted to come into

the house about an hour each day, to make the beds, and cook a

morsel of provisions.

The park that surrounded the house was all run wild; the trees

grown out of shape; the fish-ponds stagnant; the urns and statues

fallen from their pedestals and buried among the rank grass. The

hares and pheasants were so little molested, except by poachers,

that they bred in great abundance, and sported about the rough

lawns and weedy avenues. To guard the premises and frighten off

robbers, of whom he was somewhat apprehensive, and visitors, whom

he held in almost equal awe, my uncle kept two or three

blood-hounds, who were always prowling round the house, and were

the dread of the neighboring peasantry. They were gaunt and

half-starved, seemed ready to devour one from mere hunger, and

were an effectual check on any stranger’s approach to this wizard

castle.

Such was my uncle’s house, which I used to visit now and then

during The holydays. I was, as I have before said, the old man’s

favorite; that is to say, he did not hate me so much as he did

the rest of the world. I had been apprised of his character, and

cautioned to cultivate his good-will; but I was too young and

careless to be a courtier; and indeed have never been

sufficiently studious of my interests to let them govern my

feelings. However, we seemed to jog on very well together; and as

my visits cost him almost nothing, they did not seem to be very

unwelcome. I brought with me my gun and fishing-rod, and half

supplied the table from the park and the fishponds.

Our meals were solitary and unsocial. My uncle rarely spoke; he

pointed for whatever he wanted, and the servant perfectly

understood him. Indeed, his man John, or Iron John, as he was

called in the neighborhood, was a counterpart of his master. He

was a tall, bony old fellow, with a dry wig that seemed made of

cow’s tail, and a face as tough as though it had been made of

bull’s hide. He was generally clad in a long, patched livery

coat, taken out of the wardrobe of the house; and which bagged

loosely about him, having evidently belonged to some corpulent

predecessor, in the more plenteous days of the mansion. From long

habits of taciturnity, the hinges of his jaws seemed to have

grown absolutely rusty, and it cost him as much effort to set

them ajar, and to let out a tolerable sentence, as it would have

done to set open the iron gates of a park, and let out the family

carriage that was dropping to pieces in the coach-house.

I cannot say, however, but that I was for some time amused with

my uncle’s peculiarities. Even the very desolateness of the

establishment had something in it that hit my fancy. When the

weather was fine I used to amuse myself, in a solitary way, by

rambling about the park, and coursing like a colt across its

lawns. The hares and pheasants seemed to stare with surprise, to

see a human being walking these forbidden grounds by day-light.

Sometimes I amused myself by jerking stones, or shooting at birds

with a bow and arrows; for to have used a gun would have been

treason. Now and then my path was crossed by a little red-headed,

ragged-tailed urchin, the son of the woman at the lodge, who ran

wild about the premises. I tried to draw him into familiarity,

and to make a companion of him; but he seemed to have imbibed the

strange, unsocial character of every thing around him; and always

kept aloof; so I considered him as another Orson, and amused

myself with shooting at him with my bow and arrows, and he would

hold up his breeches with one hand, and scamper away like a deer.

There was something in all this loneliness and wildness strangely

pleasing to me. The great stables, empty and weather-broken, with

the names of favorite horses over the vacant stalls; the windows

bricked and boarded up; the broken roofs, garrisoned by rooks and

jackdaws; all had a singularly forlorn appearance: one would have

concluded the house to be totally uninhabited, were it not for a

little thread of blue smoke, which now and then curled up like a

corkscrew, from the centre of one of the wide chimneys, when my

uncle’s starveling meal was cooking.

My uncle’s room was in a remote corner of the building, strongly

secured and generally locked. I was never admitted into this

strong-hold, where the old man would remain for the greater part

of the time, drawn up like a veteran spider in the citadel of his

web. The rest of the mansion, however, was open to me, and I

sauntered about it unconstrained. The damp and rain which beat in

through the broken windows, crumbled the paper from the walls;

mouldered the pictures, and gradually destroyed the furniture. I

loved to rove about the wide, waste chambers in bad weather, and

listen to the howling of the wind, and the banging about of the

doors and window-shutters. I pleased myself with the idea how

completely, when I came to the estate, I would renovate all

things, and make the old building ring with merriment, till it

was astonished at its own jocundity.

The chamber which I occupied on these visits was the same that

had been my mother’s, when a girl. There was still the

toilet-table of her own adorning; the landscapes of her own

drawing. She had never seen it since her marriage, but would

often ask me if every thing was still the same. All was just the

same; for I loved that chamber on her account, and had taken

pains to put every thing in order, and to mend all the flaws in

the windows with my own hands. I anticipated the time when I

should once more welcome her to the house of her fathers, and

restore her to this little nestling-place of her childhood.

At length my evil genius, or, what perhaps is the same thing, the

muse, inspired me with the notion of rhyming again. My uncle, who

never went to church, used on Sundays to read chapters out of the

Bible; and Iron John, the woman from the lodge, and myself, were

his congregation. It seemed to be all one to him what he read, so

long as it was something from the Bible: sometimes, therefore, it

would be the Song of Solomon; and this withered anatomy would

read about being “stayed with flagons and comforted with apples,

for he was sick of love.” Sometimes he would hobble, with

spectacle on nose, through whole chapters of hard Hebrew names in

Deuteronomy; at which the poor woman would sigh and groan as if

wonderfully moved. His favorite book, however, was “The Pilgrim’s

Progress;” and when he came to that part which treats of Doubting

Castle and Giant Despair, I thought invariably of him and his

desolate old country seat. So much did the idea amuse me, that I

took to scribbling about it under the trees in the park; and in a

few days had made some progress in a poem, in which I had given a

description of the place, under the name of Doubting Castle, and

personified my uncle as Giant Despair.

I lost my poem somewhere about the house, and I soon suspected

that my uncle had found it; as he harshly intimated to me that I

could return home, and that I need not come and see him again

until he should send for me.

Just about this time my mother died.—I cannot dwell upon this

circumstance; my heart, careless and wayworn as it is, gushes

with the recollection. Her death was an event that perhaps gave a

turn to all my after fortunes. With her died all that made home

attractive, for my father was harsh, as I have before said, and

had never treated me with kindness. Not that he exerted any

unusual severity towards me, but it was his way. I do not

complain of him. In fact, I have never been of a complaining

disposition. I seem born to be buffeted by friends and fortune,

and nature has made me a careless endurer of buffetings.

I now, however, began to grow very impatient of remaining at

school, to be flogged for things that I did not like. I longed

for variety, especially now that I had not my uncle’s to resort

to, by way of diversifying the dullness of school with the

dreariness of his country seat. I was now turned of sixteen; tall

for my age, and full of idle fancies. I had a roving,

inextinguishable desire to see different kinds of life, and

different orders of society; and this vagrant humor had been

fostered in me by Tom Dribble, the prime wag and great genius of

the school, who had all the rambling propensities of a poet.

I used to set at my desk in the school, on a fine summer’s day,

and instead of studying the book which lay open before me, my eye

was gazing through the window on the green fields and blue hills.

How I envied the happy groups seated on the tops of

stage-coaches, chatting, and joking, and laughing, as they were

whirled by the school-house, on their way to the metropolis. Even

the wagoners trudging along beside their ponderous teams, and

traversing the kingdom, from one end to the other, were objects

of envy to me. I fancied to myself what adventures they must

experience, and what odd scenes of life they must witness. All

this was doubtless the poetical temperament working within me,

and tempting me forth into a world of its own creation, which I

mistook for the world of real life.

While my mother lived, this strange propensity to roam was

counteracted by the stronger attractions of home, and by the

powerful ties of affection, which drew me to her side; but now

that she was gone, the attractions had ceased; the ties were

severed. I had no longer an anchorage ground for my heart; but

was at the mercy of every vagrant impulse. Nothing but the narrow

allowance on which my father kept me, and the consequent penury

of my purse, prevented me from mounting the top of a stage-coach

and launching myself adrift on the great ocean of life.

Just about this time the village was agitated for a day or two,

by the passing through of several caravans, containing wild

beasts, and other spectacles for a great fair annually held at a

neighboring town.

I had never seen a fair of any consequence, and my curiosity was

Powerfully awakened by this bustle of preparation. I gazed with

respect and wonder at the vagrant personages who accompanied

these caravans. I loitered about the village inn, listening with

curiosity and delight to the slang talk and cant jokes of the

showmen and their followers; and I felt an eager desire to

witness this fair, which my fancy decked out as something

wonderfully fine.

A holyday afternoon presented, when I could be absent from the

school from noon until evening. A wagon was going from the

village to the fair. I could not resist the temptation, nor the

eloquence of Tom Dribble, who was a truant to the very heart’s

core. We hired seats, and set off full of boyish expectation. I

promised myself that I would but take a peep at the land of

promise, and hasten back again before my absence should be

noticed.

Heavens! how happy I was on arriving at the fair! How I was

enchanted with the world of fun and pageantry around me! The

humors of Punch; the feats of the equestrians; the magical tricks

of the conjurors! But what principally caught my attention was—an

itinerant theatre; where a tragedy, pantomime, and farce were all

acted in the course of half an hour, and more of the dramatis

personae murdered, than at either Drury Lane or Covent Garden in

a whole evening. I have since seen many a play performed by the

best actors in the world, but never have I derived half the

delight from any that I did from this first representation.

There was a ferocious tyrant in a skull cap like an inverted

porringer, and a dress of red baize, magnificently embroidered

with gilt leather; with his face so be-whiskered and his eyebrows

so knit and expanded with burnt cork, that he made my heart quake

within me as he stamped about the little stage. I was enraptured

too with the surpassing beauty of a distressed damsel, in faded

pink silk, and dirty white muslin, whom he held in cruel

captivity by way of gaining her affections; and who wept and

wrung her hands and flourished a ragged pocket handkerchief from

the top of an impregnable tower, of the size of a band-box.

Even after I had come out from the play, I could not tear myself

from the vicinity of the theatre; but lingered, gazing, and

wondering, and laughing at the dramatis personae, as they

performed their antics, or danced upon a stage in front of the

booth, to decoy a new set of spectators.

I was so bewildered by the scene, and so lost in the crowd of

sensations that kept swarming upon me that I was like one

entranced. I lost my companion Tom Dribble, in a tumult and

scuffle that took place near one of the shows, but I was too much

occupied in mind to think long about him. I strolled about until

dark, when the fair was lighted up, and a new scene of magic

opened upon me. The illumination of the tents and booths; the

brilliant effect of the stages decorated with lamps, with

dramatic groups flaunting about them in gaudy dresses, contrasted

splendidly with the surrounding darkness; while the uproar of

drums, trumpets, fiddles, hautboys, and cymbals, mingled with the

harangues of the showmen, the squeaking of Punch, and the shouts

and laughter of the crowd, all united to complete my giddy

distraction.

Time flew without my perceiving it. When I came to myself and

thought of the school, I hastened to return. I inquired for the

wagon in which I had come: it had been gone for hours. I asked

the time: it was almost midnight! A sudden quaking seized me. How

was I to get back to school? I was too weary to make the journey

on foot, and I knew not where to apply for a conveyance. Even if

I should find one, could I venture to disturb the school-house

long after midnight? to arouse that sleeping lion, the usher, in

the very midst of his night’s rest? The idea was too dreadful for

a delinquent school-boy. All the horrors of return rushed upon

me—my absence must long before this have been remarked—and absent

for a whole night? A deed of darkness not easily to be expiated.

The rod of the pedagogue budded forth into tenfold terrors before

my affrighted fancy. I pictured to myself punishment and

humiliation in every variety of form; and my heart sickened at

the picture. Alas! how often are the petty ills of boyhood as

painful to our tender natures, as are the sterner evils of

manhood to our robuster minds.

I wandered about among the booths, and I might have derived a

lesson from my actual feelings, how much the charms of this world

depend upon ourselves; for I no longer saw anything gay or

delightful in the revelry around me. At length I lay down,

wearied and perplexed, behind one of the large tents, and

covering myself with the margin of the tent cloth to keep off the

night chill, I soon fell fast asleep.

I had not slept long, when I was awakened by the noise of

merriment within an adjoining booth. It was the itinerant

theatre, rudely constructed of boards and canvas. I peeped

through an aperture, and saw the whole dramatis personae,

tragedy, comedy, pantomime, all refreshing themselves after the

final dismissal of their auditors. They were merry and gamesome,

and made their flimsy theatre ring with laughter. I was

astonished to see the tragedy tyrant in red baize and fierce

whiskers, who had made my heart quake as he strutted about the

boards, now transformed into a fat, good humored fellow; the

beaming porringer laid aside from his brow, and his jolly face

washed from all the terrors of burnt cork. I was delighted, too,

to see the distressed damsel in faded silk and dirty muslin, who

had trembled under his tyranny, and afflicted me so much by her

sorrows, now seated familiarly on his knee, and quaffing from the

same tankard. Harlequin lay asleep on one of the benches; and

monks, satyrs, and Vestal virgins were grouped together, laughing

outrageously at a broad story told by an unhappy count, who had

been barbarously murdered in the tragedy. This was, indeed,

novelty to me. It was a peep into another planet. I gazed and

listened with intense curiosity and enjoyment. They had a

thousand odd stories and jokes about the events of the day, and

burlesque descriptions and mimickings of the spectators who had

been admiring them. Their conversation was full of allusions to

their adventures at different places, where they had exhibited;

the characters they had met with in different villages; and the

ludicrous difficulties in which they had occasionally been

involved. All past cares and troubles were now turned by these

thoughtless beings into matter of merriment; and made to

contribute to the gayety of the moment. They had been moving from

fair to fair about the kingdom, and were the next morning to set

out on their way to London.

My resolution was taken. I crept from my nest, and scrambled

through a hedge into a neighboring field, where I went to work to

make a tatterdemalion of myself. I tore my clothes; soiled them

with dirt; begrimed my face and hands; and, crawling near one of

the booths, purloined an old hat, and left my new one in its

place. It was an honest theft, and I hope may not hereafter rise

up in judgment against me.

I now ventured to the scene of merrymaking, and, presenting

myself before the dramatic corps, offered myself as a volunteer.

I felt terribly agitated and abashed, for “never before stood I

in such a presence.” I had addressed myself to the manager of the

company. He was a fat man, dressed in dirty white; with a red

sash fringed with tinsel, swathed round his body. His face was

smeared with paint, and a majestic plume towered from an old

spangled black bonnet. He was the Jupiter tonans of this Olympus,

and was surrounded by the interior gods and goddesses of his

court. He sat on the end of a bench, by a table, with one arm

akimbo and the other extended to the handle of a tankard, which

he had slowly set down from his lips as he surveyed me from head

to foot. It was a moment of awful scrutiny, and I fancied the

groups around all watching us in silent suspense, and waiting for

the imperial nod.

He questioned me as to who I was; what were my qualifications;

and what terms I expected. I passed myself off for a discharged

servant from a gentleman’s family; and as, happily, one does not

require a special recommendation to get admitted into bad

company, the questions on that head were easily satisfied. As to

my accomplishments, I would spout a little poetry, and knew

several scenes of plays, which I had learnt at school

exhibitions. I could dance—, that was enough; no further

questions were asked me as to accomplishments; it was the very

thing they wanted; and, as I asked no wages, but merely meat and

drink, and safe conduct about the world, a bargain was struck in

a moment.

Behold me, therefore transformed of a sudden from a gentleman

student to a dancing buffoon; for such, in fact, was the

character in which I made my debut. I was one of those who formed

the groups in the dramas, and were principally, employed on the

stage in front of the booth, to attract company. I was equipped

as a satyr, in a dress of drab frize that fitted to my shape;

with a great laughing mask, ornamented with huge ears and short

horns. I was pleased with the disguise, because it kept me from

the danger of being discovered, whilst we were in that part of

the country; and, as I had merely to dance and make antics, the

character was favorable to a debutant, being almost on a par with

Simon Snug’s part of the Lion, which required nothing but

roaring.

I cannot tell you how happy I was at this sudden change in my

situation. I felt no degradation, for I had seen too little of

society to be thoughtful about the differences of rank; and a boy

of sixteen is seldom aristocratical. I had given up no friend;

for there seemed to be no one in the world that cared for me, now

my poor mother was dead. I had given up no pleasure; for my

pleasure was to ramble about and indulge the flow of a poetical

imagination; and I now enjoyed it in perfection. There is no life

so truly poetical as that of a dancing buffoon.

It may be said that all this argued grovelling inclinations. I do

not think so; not that I mean to vindicate myself in any great

degree; I know too well what a whimsical compound I am. But in

this instance I was seduced by no love of low company, nor

disposition to indulge in low vices. I have always despised the

brutally vulgar; and I have always had a disgust at vice, whether

in high or low life. I was governed merely by a sudden and

thoughtless impulse. I had no idea of resorting to this

profession as a mode of life; or of attaching myself to these

people, as my future class of society. I thought merely of a

temporary gratification of my curiosity, and an indulgence of my

humors. I had already a strong relish for the peculiarities of

character and the varieties of situation, and I have always been

fond of the comedy of life, and desirous of seeing it through all

its shifting scenes.

In mingling, therefore, among mountebanks and buffoons I was

protected by the very vivacity of imagination which had led me

among them. I moved about enveloped, as it were, in a protecting

delusion, which my fancy spread around me. I assimilated to these

people only as they struck me poetically; their whimsical ways

and a certain picturesqueness in their mode of life entertained

me; but I was neither amused nor corrupted by their vices. In

short, I mingled among them, as Prince Hal did among his

graceless associates, merely to gratify my humor.

I did not investigate my motives in this manner, at the time, for

I was too careless and thoughtless to reason about the matter;

but I do so now, when I look back with trembling to think of the

ordeal to which I unthinkingly exposed myself, and the manner in

which I passed through it. Nothing, I am convinced, but the

poetical temperament, that hurried me into the scrape, brought me

out of it without my becoming an arrant vagabond.

Full of the enjoyment of the moment, giddy with the wildness of

animal spirits, so rapturous in a boy, I capered, I danced, I

played a thousand fantastic tricks about the stage, in the

villages in which we exhibited; and I was universally pronounced

the most agreeable monster that had ever been seen in those

parts. My disappearance from school had awakened my father’s

anxiety; for I one day heard a description of myself cried before

the very booth in which I was exhibiting; with the offer of a

reward for any intelligence of me. I had no great scruple about

letting my father suffer a little uneasiness on my account; it

would punish him for past indifference, and would make him value

me the more when he found me again. I have wondered that some of

my comrades did not recognize in me the stray sheep that was

cried; but they were all, no doubt, occupied by their own

concerns. They were all laboring seriously in their antic

vocations, for folly was a mere trade with the most of them, and

they often grinned and capered with heavy hearts. With me, on the

contrary, it was all real. I acted _con amore_, and rattled and

laughed from the irrepressible gayety of my spirits. It is true

that, now and then, I started and looked grave on receiving a

sudden thwack from the wooden sword of Harlequin, in the course

of my gambols; as it brought to mind the birch of my

school-master. But I soon got accustomed to it; and bore all the

cuffing, and kicking, and tumbling about, that form the practical

wit of your itinerant pantomime, with a good humor that made me a

prodigious favorite.

The country campaign of the troupe was soon at an end, and we set

off for the metropolis, to perform at the fairs which are held in

its vicinity. The greater part of our theatrical property was

sent on direct, to be in a state of preparation for the opening

of the fairs; while a detachment of the company travelled slowly

on, foraging among the villages. I was amused with the desultory,

hap-hazard kind of life we led; here to-day, and gone to-morrow.

Sometimes revelling in ale-houses; sometimes feasting under

hedges in the green fields. When audiences were crowded and

business profitable, we fared well, and when otherwise, we fared

scantily, and consoled ourselves with anticipations of the next

day’s success.

At length the increasing frequency of coaches hurrying past us,

covered with passengers; the increasing number of carriages,

carts, wagons, gigs, droves of cattle and flocks of sheep, all

thronging the road; the snug country boxes with trim flower

gardens twelve feet square, and their trees twelve feet high, all

powdered with dust; and the innumerable seminaries for young

ladies and gentlemen, situated along the road, for the benefit of

country air and rural retirement; all these insignia announced

that the mighty London was at hand. The hurry, and the crowd, and

the bustle, and the noise, and the dust, increased as we

proceeded, until I saw the great cloud of smoke hanging in the

air, like a canopy of state, over this queen of cities.

In this way, then, did I enter the metropolis; a strolling

vagabond; on the top of a caravan with a crew of vagabonds about

me; but I was as happy as a prince, for, like Prince Hal, I felt

myself superior to my situation, and knew that I could at any

time cast it off and emerge into my proper sphere.

How my eyes sparkled as we passed Hyde-park corner, and I saw

splendid equipages rolling by, with powdered footmen behind, in

rich liveries, and fine nosegays, and gold-headed canes; and with

lovely women within, so sumptuously dressed and so surpassingly

fair. I was always extremely sensible to female beauty; and here

I saw it in all its fascination; for, whatever may be said of

“beauty unadorned,” there is something almost awful in female

loveliness decked out in jewelled state. The swan-like neck

encircled with diamonds; the raven locks, clustered with pearls;

the ruby glowing on the snowy bosom, are objects that I could

never contemplate without emotion; and a dazzling white arm

clasped with bracelets, and taper transparent fingers laden with

sparkling rings, are to me irresistible. My very eyes ached as I

gazed at the high and courtly beauty that passed before me. It

surpassed all that my imagination had conceived of the sex. I

shrunk, for a moment, into shame at the company in which I was

placed, and repined at the vast distance that seemed to intervene

between me and these magnificent beings.

I forbear to give a detail of the happy life which I led about

the skirts of the metropolis, playing at the various fairs, held

there during the latter part of spring and the beginning of

summer. This continual change from place to place, and scene to

scene, fed my imagination with novelties, and kept my spirits in

a perpetual state of excitement.

As I was tall of my age I aspired, at one time, to play heroes in

tragedy; but after two or three trials, I was pronounced, by the

manager, totally unfit for the line; and our first tragic

actress, who was a large woman, and held a small hero in

abhorrence, confirmed his decision.

The fact is, I had attempted to give point to language which had

no point, and nature to scenes which had no nature. They said I

did not fill out my characters; and they were right. The

characters had all been prepared for a different sort of man. Our

tragedy hero was a round, robustious fellow, with an amazing

voice; who stamped and slapped his breast until his wig shook

again; and who roared and bellowed out his bombast, until every

phrase swelled upon the ear like the sound of a kettle-drum. I

might as well have attempted to fill out his clothes as his

characters. When we had a dialogue together, I was nothing before

him, with my slender voice and discriminating manner. I might as

well have attempted to parry a cudgel with a small sword. If he

found me in any way gaining ground upon him, he would take refuge

in his mighty voice, and throw his tones like peals of thunder at

me, until they were drowned in the still louder thunders of

applause from the audience.

To tell the truth, I suspect that I was not shown fair play, and

that there was management at the bottom; for without vanity, I

think I was a better actor than he. As I had not embarked in the

vagabond line through ambition, I did not repine at lack of

preferment; but I was grieved to find that a vagrant life was not

without its cares and anxieties, and that jealousies, intrigues,

and mad ambition were to be found even among vagabonds.

Indeed, as I become more familiar with my situation, and the

delusions of fancy began to fade away, I discovered that my

associates were not the happy careless creatures I had at first

imagined them. They were jealous of each other’s talents; they

quarrelled about parts, the same as the actors on the grand

theatres; they quarrelled about dresses; and there was one robe

of yellow silk, trimmed with red, and a head-dress of three

rumpled ostrich feathers, which were continually setting the

ladies of the company by the ears. Even those who had attained

the highest honors were not more happy than the rest; for Mr.

Flimsey himself, our first tragedian, and apparently a jovial,

good-humored fellow, confessed to me one day, in the fullness of

his heart, that he was a miserable man. He had a brother-in-law,

a relative by marriage, though not by blood, who was manager of a

theatre in a small country town. And this same brother, (“a

little more than kin, but less than kind,”) looked down upon him,

and treated him with contumely, because forsooth he was but a

strolling player. I tried to console him with the thoughts of the

vast applause he daily received, but it was all in vain. He

declared that it gave him no delight, and that he should never be

a happy man until the name of Flimsey rivalled the name of Crimp.

How little do those before the scenes know of what passes behind;

how little can they judge, from the countenances of actors, of

what is passing in their hearts. I have known two lovers quarrel

like cats behind the scenes, who were, the moment after, ready to

fly into each other’s embraces. And I have dreaded, when our

Belvidera was to take her farewell kiss of her Jaffier, lest she

should bite a piece out of his cheek. Our tragedian was a rough

joker off the stage; our prime clown the most peevish mortal

living. The latter used to go about snapping and snarling, with a

broad laugh painted on his countenance; and I can assure you

that, whatever may be said of the gravity of a monkey, or the

melancholy of a gibed cat, there is no more melancholy creature

in existence than a mountebank off duty.

The only thing in which all parties agreed was to backbite the

manager, and cabal against his regulations. This, however, I have

since discovered to be a common trait of human nature, and to

take place in all communities. It would seem to be the main

business of man to repine at government. In all situations of

life into which I have looked, I have found mankind divided into

two grand parties;—those who ride and those who are ridden. The

great struggle of life seems to be which shall keep in the

saddle. This, it appears to me, is the fundamental principle of

politics, whether in great or little life. However, I do not mean

to moralize; but one cannot always sink the philosopher.

Well, then, to return to myself. It was determined, as I said,

that I was not fit for tragedy, and unluckily, as my study was

bad, having a very poor memory, I was pronounced unfit for comedy

also: besides, the line of young gentlemen was already engrossed

by an actor with whom I could not pretend to enter into

competition, he having filled it for almost half a century. I

came down again therefore to pantomime. In consequence, however,

of the good offices of the manager’s lady, who had taken a liking

to me, I was promoted from the part of the satyr to that of the

lover; and with my face patched and painted, a huge cravat of

paper, a steeple-crowned hat, and dangling, long-skirted,

sky-blue coat, was metamorphosed into the lover of Columbine. My

part did not call for much of the tender and sentimental. I had

merely to pursue the fugitive fair one; to have a door now and

then slammed in my face; to run my head occasionally against a

post; to tumble and roll about with Pantaloon and the clown; and

to endure the hearty thwacks of Harlequin’s wooden sword.

As ill luck would have it, my poetical temperament began to

ferment within me, and to work out new troubles. The inflammatory

air of a great metropolis added to the rural scenes in which the

fairs were held; such as Greenwich Park; Epping Forest; and the

lovely valley of the West End, had a powerful effect upon me.

While in Greenwich Park I was witness to the old holiday games of

running down hill; and kissing in the ring; and then the

firmament of blooming faces and blue eyes that would be turned

towards me as I was playing antics on the stage; all these set my

young blood, and my poetical vein, in full flow. In short, I

played my character to the life, and became desperately enamored

of Columbine. She was a trim, well-made, tempting girl, with a

rougish, dimpling face, and fine chestnut hair clustering all

about it. The moment I got fairly smitten, there was an end to

all playing. I was such a creature of fancy and feeling that I

could not put on a pretended, when I was powerfully affected by a

real emotion. I could not sport with a fiction that came so near

to the fact. I became too natural in my acting to succeed. And

then, what a situation for a lover! I was a mere stripling, and

she played with my passion; for girls soon grow more adroit and

knowing in these than your awkward youngsters. What agonies had I

to suffer. Every time that she danced in front of the booth and

made such liberal displays of her charms, I was in torment. To

complete my misery, I had a real rival in Harlequin; an active,

vigorous, knowing varlet of six-and-twenty. What had a raw,

inexperienced youngster like me to hope from such a competition?

I had still, however, some advantages in my favor. In spite of my

change of life, I retained that indescribable something which

always distinguishes the gentleman; that something which dwells

in a man’s air and deportment, and not in his clothes; and which

it is as difficult for a gentleman to put off as for a vulgar

fellow to put on. The company generally felt it, and used to call

me little gentleman Jack. The girl felt it too; and in spite of

her predilection for my powerful rival, she liked to flirt with

me. This only aggravated my troubles, by increasing my passion,

and awakening the jealousy of her parti-colored lover.

Alas! think what I suffered, at being obliged to keep up an

ineffectual chase after my Columbine through whole pantomimes; to

see her carried off in the vigorous arms of the happy Harlequin;

and to be obliged, instead of snatching her from him, to tumble

sprawling with Pantaloon and the clown; and bear the infernal and

degrading thwacks of my rival’s weapon of lath; which, may heaven

confound him! (excuse my passion) the villain laid on with a

malicious good-will; nay, I could absolutely hear him chuckle and

laugh beneath his accursed mask—I beg pardon for growing a little

warm in my narration. I wish to be cool, but these recollections

will sometimes agitate me. I have heard and read of many

desperate and deplorable situations of lovers; but none, I think,

in which true love was ever exposed to so severe and peculiar a

trial.

This could not last long. Flesh and blood, at least such flesh

and blood as mine, could not bear it. I had repeated

heartburnings and quarrels with my rival, in which he treated me

with the mortifying forbearance of a man towards a child. Had he

quarrelled outright with me, I could have stomached it; at least

I should have known what part to take; but to be humored and

treated as a child in the presence of my mistress, when I felt

all the bantam spirit of a little man swelling within me—gods, it

was insufferable!

At length we were exhibiting one day at West End fair, which was

at that time a very fashionable resort, and often beleaguered by

gay equipages from town. Among the spectators that filled the

front row of our little canvas theatre one afternoon, when I had

to figure in a pantomime, was a party of young ladies from a

boarding-school, with their governess. Guess my confusion, when,

in the midst of my antics, I beheld among the number my quondam

flame; her whom I had be-rhymed at school; her for whose charms I

had smarted so severely; tho cruel Sacharissa! What was worse, I

fancied she recollected me; and was repeating the story of my

humiliating flagellation, for I saw her whispering her companions

and her governess. I lost all consciousness of the part I was

acting, and of the place where I was. I felt shrunk to nothing,

and could have crept into a rat-hole—unluckily, none was open to

receive me. Before I could recover from my confusion, I was

tumbled over by Pantaloon and the clown; and I felt the sword of

Harlequin making vigorous assaults, in a manner most degrading to

my dignity.

Heaven and earth! was I again to suffer martyrdom in this

ignominious manner, in the knowledge, and even before the very

eyes of this most beautiful, but most disdainful of fair ones?

All my long-smothered wrath broke out at once; the dormant

feelings of the gentleman arose within me; stung to the quick by

intolerable mortification, I sprang on my feet in an instant;

leaped upon Harlequin like a young tiger; tore off his mask;

buffeted him in the face, and soon shed more blood on the stage

than had been spilt upon it during a whole tragic campaign of

battles and murders.

As soon as Harlequin recovered from his surprise he returned my

assault with interest. I was nothing in his hands. I was game to

be sure, for I was a gentleman; but he had the clownish

advantages of bone and muscle. I felt as if I could have fought

even unto the death; and I was likely to do so; for he was,

according to the vulgar phrase, “putting my head into Chancery,”

when the gentle Columbine flew to my assistance. God bless the

women; they are always on the side of the weak and the oppressed.

The battle now became general; the dramatis personae ranged on

either side. The manager interfered in vain. In vain were his

spangled black bonnet and towering white feathers seen whisking

about, and nodding, and bobbing, in the thickest of the fight.

Warriors, ladies, priests, satyrs, kings, queens, gods and

goddesses, all joined pell-mell in the fray. Never, since the

conflict under the walls of Troy, had there been such a chance

medley warfare of combatants, human and divine. The audience

applauded, the ladies shrieked and fled from the theatre, and a

scene of discord ensued that baffles all description.

Nothing but the interference of the peace officers restored some

degree of order. The havoc, however, that had been made among

dresses and decorations put an end to all farther acting for that

day. The battle over, the next thing was to inquire why it was

begun; a common question among politicians, after a bloody and

unprofitable war; and one not always easy to be answered. It was

soon traced to me, and my unaccountable transport of passion,

which they could only attribute to my having run _a muck_. The

manager was judge and jury, and plaintiff in the bargain, and in

such cases justice is always speedily administered. He came out

of the fight as sublime a wreck as the Santissìma Trinidada. His

gallant plumes, which once towered aloft, were drooping about his

ears. His robe of state hung in ribbands from his back, and but

ill concealed the ravages he had suffered in the rear. He had

received kicks and cuffs from all sides, during the tumult; for

every one took the opportunity of slyly gratifying some lurking

grudge on his fat carcass. He was a discreet man, and did not

choose to declare war with all his company; so he swore all those

kicks and cuffs had been given by me, and I let him enjoy the

opinion. Some wounds he bore, however, which were the

incontestible traces of a woman’s warfare. His sleek rosy cheek

was scored by trickling furrows, which were ascribed to the nails

of my intrepid and devoted Columbine. The ire of the monarch was

not to be appeased. He had suffered in his person, and he had

suffered in his purse; his dignity too had been insulted, and

that went for something; for dignity is always more irascible the

more petty the potentate. He wreaked his wrath upon the beginners

of the affray, and Columbine and myself were discharged, at once,

from the company.

Figure me, then, to yourself, a stripling of little more than

sixteen; a gentleman by birth; a vagabond by trade; turned adrift

upon the world; making the best of my way through the crowd of

West End fair; my mountebank dress fluttering in rags about me;

the weeping Columbine hanging upon my arm, in splendid, but

tattered finery; the tears coursing one by one down her face;

carrying off the red paint in torrents, and literally “preying

upon her damask cheek.”

The crowd made way for us as we passed and hooted in our rear. I

felt the ridicule of my situation, but had too much gallantry to

desert this fair one, who had sacrificed everything for me.

Having wandered through the fair, we emerged, like another Adam

and Eve, into unknown regions, and “had the world before us where

to choose.” Never was a more disconsolate pair seen in the soft

valley of West End. The luckless Columbine cast back many a

lingering look at the fair, which seemed to put on a more than

usual splendor; its tents, and booths, and parti-colored groups,

all brightening in the sunshine, and gleaming among the trees;

and its gay flags and streamers playing and fluttering in the

light summer airs. With a heavy sigh she would lean on my arm and

proceed. I had no hope or consolation to give her; but she had

linked herself to my fortunes, and she was too much of a woman to

desert me.

Pensive and silent, then, we traversed the beautiful fields that

lie behind Hempstead, and wandered on, until the fiddle, and the

hautboy, and the shout, and the laugh, were swallowed up in the

deep sound of the big bass drum, and even that died away into a

distant rumble. We passed along the pleasant sequestered walk of

Nightingale lane. For a pair of lovers what scene could be more

propitious?—But such a pair of lovers! Not a nightingale sang to

soothe us: the very gypsies who were encamped there during the

fair, made no offer to tell the fortunes of such an ill-omened

couple, whose fortunes, I suppose, they thought too legibly

written to need an interpreter; and the gypsey children crawled

into their cabins and peeped out fearfully at us as we went by.

For a moment I paused, and was almost tempted to turn gypsey, but

the poetical feeling for the present was fully satisfied, and I

passed on. Thus we travelled, and travelled, like a prince and

princess in nursery chronicle, until we had traversed a part of

Hempstead Heath and arrived in the vicinity of Jack Straw’s

castle.

Here, wearied and dispirited, we seated ourselves on the margin

of the hill, hard by the very mile-stone where Whittington of

yore heard the Bow bells ring out the presage of his future

greatness. Alas! no bell rung in invitation to us, as we looked

disconsolately upon the distant city. Old London seemed to wrap

itself up unsociably in its mantle of brown smoke, and to offer

no encouragement to such a couple of tatterdemalions.

For once, at least, the usual course of the pantomime was

reversed. Harlequin was jilted, and the lover had earned off

Columbine in good earnest. But what was I to do with her? I had

never contemplated such a dilemma; and I now felt that even a

fortunate lover may be embarrassed by his good fortune. I really

knew not what was to become of me; for I had still the boyish

fear of returning home; standing in awe of the stern temper of my

father, and dreading the ready arm of the pedagogue. And even if

I were to venture home, what was I to do with Columbine? I could

not take her in my hand, and throw myself on my knees, and crave

his forgiveness and his blessing according to dramatic usage. The

very dogs would have chased such a draggle-tailed beauty from the

grounds.

In the midst of my doleful dumps, some one tapped me on the

shoulder, and looking up I saw a couple of rough sturdy fellows

standing behind me. Not knowing what to expect I jumped on my

legs, and was preparing again to make battle; but I was tripped

up and secured in a twinkling.

“Come, come, young master,” said one of the fellows in a gruff,

but good-humored tone, “don’t let’s have any of your tantrums;

one would have thought that you had had swing enough for this

bout. Come, it’s high time to leave off harlequinading, and go

home to your father.”

In fact I had a couple of Bow street officers hold of me. The

cruel Sacharissa had proclaimed who I was, and that a reward had

been offered throughout the country for any tidings of me; and

they had seen a description of me that had been forwarded to the

police office in town. Those harpies, therefore, for the mere

sake of filthy lucre, were resolved to deliver me over into the

hands of my father and the clutches of my pedagogue.

It was in vain that I swore I would not leave my faithful and

Afflicted Columbine. It was in vain that I tore myself from their

grasp, and flew to her; and vowed to protect her; and wiped the

tears from her cheek, and with them a whole blush that might have

vied with the carnation for brilliancy. My persecutors were

inflexible; they even seemed to exult in our distress; and to

enjoy this theatrical display of dirt, and finery, and

tribulation. I was carried off in despair, leaving my Columbine

destitute in the wide world; but many a look of agony did I cast

back at her, as she stood gazing piteously after me from the

brink of Hempstead Hill; so forlorn, so fine, so ragged, so

bedraggled, yet so beautiful.

Thus ended my first peep into the world. I returned home, rich in

good-for-nothing experience, and dreading the reward I was to

receive for my improvement. My reception, however, was quite

different from what I had expected. My father had a spice of the

devil in him, and did not seem to like me the worse for my freak,

which he termed “sowing my wild oats.” He happened to have

several of his sporting friends to dine with him the very day of

my return; they made me tell some of my adventures, and laughed

heartily at them. One old fellow, with an outrageously red nose,

took to me hugely. I heard him whisper to my father that I was a

lad of mettle, and might make something clever; to which my

father replied that “I had good points, but was an ill-broken

whelp, and required a great deal of the whip.” Perhaps this very

conversation raised me a little in his esteem, for I found the

red-nosed old gentleman was a veteran fox-hunter of the

neighborhood, for whose opinion my father had vast deference.

Indeed, I believe he would have pardoned anything in me more

readily than poetry; which he called a cursed, sneaking, puling,

housekeeping employment, the bane of all true manhood. He swore

it was unworthy of a youngster of my expectations, who was one

day to have so great an estate, and would he able to keep horses

and hounds and hire poets to write songs for him into the

bargain.

I had now satisfied, for a time, my roving propensity. I had

exhausted the poetical feeling. I had been heartily buffeted out

of my love for theatrical display. I felt humiliated by my

exposure, and was willing to hide my head anywhere for a season;

so that I might be out of the way of the ridicule of the world;

for I found folks not altogether so indulgent abroad as they were

at my father’s table. I could not stay at home; the house was

intolerably doleful now that my mother was no longer there to

cherish me. Every thing around spoke mournfully of her. The

little flower-garden in which she delighted was all in disorder

and overrun with weeds. I attempted, for a day or two, to arrange

it, but my heart grew heavier and heavier as I labored. Every

little broken-down flower that I had seen her rear so tenderly,

seemed to plead in mute eloquence to my feelings. There was a

favorite honeysuckle which I had seen her often training with

assiduity, and had heard her say it should be the pride of her

garden. I found it grovelling along the ground, tangled and wild,

and twining round every worthless weed, and it struck me as an

emblem of myself: a mere scatterling, running to waste and

uselessness. I could work no longer in the garden.

My father sent me to pay a visit to my uncle, by way of keeping

the old gentleman in mind of me. I was received, as usual,

without any expression of discontent; which we always considered

equivalent to a hearty welcome. Whether he had ever heard of my

strolling freak or not I could not discover; he and his man were

both so taciturn. I spent a day or two roaming about the dreary

mansion and neglected park; and felt at one time, I believe, a

touch of poetry, for I was tempted to drown myself in a

fish-pond; I rebuked the evil spirit, however, and it left me. I

found the same red-headed boy running wild about the park, but I

felt in no humor to hunt him at present. On the contrary, I tried

to coax him to me, and to make friends with him, but the young

savage was untameable.

When I returned from my uncle’s I remained at home for some time,

for my father was disposed, he said, to make a man of me. He took

me out hunting with him, and I became a great favorite of the

red-nosed squire, because I rode at everything; never refused the

boldest leap, and was always sure to be in at the death. I used

often however, to offend my father at hunting dinners, by taking

the wrong side in politics. My father was amazingly ignorant—so

ignorant, in fact, as not to know that he knew nothing. He was

staunch, however, to church and king, and full of old-fashioned

prejudices. Now, I had picked up a little knowledge in politics

and religion, during my rambles with the strollers, and found

myself capable of setting him right as to many of his antiquated

notions. I felt it my duty to do so; we were apt, therefore, to

differ occasionally in the political discussions that sometimes

arose at these hunting dinners.

I was at that age when a man knows least and is most vain of his

knowledge; and when he is extremely tenacious in defending his

opinion upon subjects about which he knows nothing. My father was

a hard man for any one to argue with, for he never knew when he

was refuted. I sometimes posed him a little, but then he had one

argument that always settled the question; he would threaten to

knock me down. I believe he at last grew tired of me, because I

both out-talked and outrode him. The red-nosed squire, too, got

out of conceit of me, because in the heat of the chase, I rode

over him one day as he and his horse lay sprawling in the dirt.

My father, therefore, thought it high time to send me to college;

and accordingly to Trinity College at Oxford was I sent.

I had lost my habits of study while at home; and I was not likely

to find them again at college. I found that study was not the

fashion at college, and that a lad of spirit only ate his terms;

and grew wise by dint of knife and fork. I was always prone to

follow the fashions of the company into which I fell; so I threw

by my books, and became a man of spirit. As my father made me a

tolerable allowance, notwithstanding the narrowness of his

income, having an eye always to my great expectations, I was

enabled to appear to advantage among my fellow-students. I

cultivated all kinds of sports and exercises. I was one of the

most expert oarsmen that rowed on the Isis. I boxed and fenced. I

was a keen huntsman, and my chambers in college were always

decorated with whips of all kinds, spurs, foils, and boxing

gloves. A pair of leather breeches would seem to be throwing one

leg out of the half-open drawers, and empty bottles lumbered the

bottom of every closet.

I soon grew tired of this, and relapsed into my vein of mere

poetical indulgence. I was charmed with Oxford, for it was full

of poetry to me. I thought I should never grow tired of wandering

about its courts and cloisters; and visiting the different

college halls. I used to love to get in places surrounded by the

colleges, where all modern buildings were screened from the

sight; and to walk about them in twilight, and see the professors

and students sweeping along in the dusk in their caps and gowns.

There was complete delusion in the scene. It seemed to transport

me among the edifices and the people of old times. It was a great

luxury, too, for me to attend the evening service in the new

college chapel, and to hear the fine organ and the choir swelling

an anthem in that solemn building; where painting and music and

architecture seem to combine their grandest effects.

I became a loiterer, also, about the Bodleian library, and a

great dipper into books; but too idle to follow any course of

study or vein of research. One of my favorite haunts was the

beautiful walk, bordered by lofty elms, along the Isis, under the

old gray walls of Magdalen College, which goes by the name of

Addison’s Walk; and was his resort when a student at the college.

I used to take a volume of poetry in my hand, and stroll up and

down this walk for hours.

My father came to see me at college. He asked me how I came on

with my studies; and what kind of hunting there was in the

neighborhood. He examined my sporting apparatus; wanted to know

if any of the professors were fox-hunters; and whether they were

generally good shots; for he suspected this reading so much was

rather hurtful to the sight. Such was the only person to whom I

was responsible for my improvement: is it matter of wonder,

therefore, that I became a confirmed idler?

I do not know how it is, but I cannot be idle long without

getting in love. I became deeply smitten with a shopkeeper’s

daughter in the high street; who in fact was the admiration of

many of the students. I wrote several sonnets in praise of her,

and spent half of my pocket-money at the shop, in buying articles

which I did not want, that I might have an opportunity of

speaking to her. Her father, a severe-looking old gentleman, with

bright silver buckles and a crisp, curled wig, kept a strict

guard on her; as the fathers generally do upon their daughters in

Oxford; and well they may. I tried to get into his good graces,

and to be sociable with him; but in vain. I said several good

things in his shop, but he never laughed; he had no relish for

wit and humor. He was one of those dry old gentlemen who keep

youngsters at bay. He had already brought up two or three

daughters, and was experienced in the ways of students.

He was as knowing and wary as a gray old badger that has often

been hunted. To see him on Sunday, so stiff and starched in his

demeanor; so precise in his dress; with his daughter under his

arm, and his ivory-headed cane in his hand, was enough to deter

all graceless youngsters from approaching.

I managed, however, in spite of his vigilance, to have several

Conversations with the daughter, as I cheapened articles in the

shop. I made terrible long bargains, and examined the articles

over and over, before I purchased. In the meantime, I would

convey a sonnet or an acrostic under cover of a piece of cambric,

or slipped into a pair of stockings; I would whisper soft

nonsense into her ear as I haggled about the price; and would

squeeze her hand tenderly as I received my halfpence of change,

in a bit of whity-brown paper. Let this serve as a hint to all

haberdashers, who have pretty daughters for shop-girls, and young

students for customers. I do not know whether my words and looks

were very eloquent; but my poetry was irresistible; for, to tell

the truth, the girl had some literary taste, and was seldom

without a book from the circulating library.

By the divine power of poetry, therefore, which is irresistible

with the lovely sex, did I subdue the heart of this fair little

haberdasher. We carried on a sentimental correspondence for a

time across the counter, and I supplied her with rhyme by the

stockingful. At length I prevailed on her to grant me an

assignation. But how was it to be effected? Her father kept her

always under his eye; she never walked out alone; and the house

was locked up the moment that the shop was shut. All these

difficulties served but to give zest to the adventure. I proposed

that the assignation should be in her own chamber, into which I

would climb at night. The plan was irresistible. A cruel father,

a secret lover, and a clandestine meeting! All the little girl’s

studies from the circulating library seemed about to be realised.

But what had I in view in making this assignation? Indeed I know

not. I had no evil intentions; nor can I say that I had any good

ones. I liked the girl, and wanted to have an opportunity of

seeing more of her; and the assignation was made, as I have done

many things else, heedlessly and without forethought. I asked

myself a few questions of the kind, after all my arrangements

were made; but the answers were very unsatisfactory. “Am I to

ruin this poor thoughtless girl?” said I to myself. “No!” was the

prompt and indignant answer. “Am I to run away with her?”

“Whither—and to what purpose?” “Well, then, am I to marry

her!”—“Pah! a man of my expectations marry a shopkeeper’s

daughter!” “What, then, am I to do with her?” “Hum—why.—Let me

get into her chamber first, and then consider”—and so the

self-examination ended.

Well, sir, “come what come might,” I stole under cover of the

darkness to the dwelling of my dulcinea. All was quiet. At the

concerted signal her window was gently opened. It was just above

the projecting bow-window of her father’s shop, which assisted me

in mounting. The house was low, and I was enabled to scale the

fortress with tolerable ease. I clambered with a beating heart; I

reached the casement; I hoisted my body half into the chamber and

was welcomed, not by the embraces of my expecting fair one, but

by the grasp of the crabbed-looking old father in the crisp

curled wig.

I extricated myself from his clutches and endeavored to make my

retreat; but I was confounded by his cries of thieves! and

robbers! I was bothered, too, by his Sunday cane; which was

amazingly busy about my head as I descended; and against which my

hat was but a poor protection. Never before had I an idea of the

activity of an old man’s arm, and hardness of the knob of an

ivory-headed cane. In my hurry and confusion I missed my footing,

and fell sprawling on the pavement. I was immediately surrounded

by myrmidons, who I doubt not were on the watch for me. Indeed, I

was in no situation to escape, for I had sprained my ankle in the

fall, and could not stand. I was seized as a housebreaker; and to

exonerate myself from a greater crime I had to accuse myself of a

less. I made known who I was, and why I came there. Alas! the

varlets knew it already, and were only amusing themselves at my

expense. My perfidious muse had been playing me one of her

slippery tricks. The old curmudgeon of a father had found my

sonnets and acrostics hid away in holes and corners of his shop;

he had no taste for poetry like his daughter, and had instituted

a rigorous though silent observation. He had moused upon our

letters; detected the ladder of ropes, and prepared everything

for my reception. Thus was I ever doomed to be led into scrapes

by the muse. Let no man henceforth carry on a secret amour in

poetry.

The old man’s ire was in some measure appeased by the pummelling

of my head, and the anguish of my sprain; so he did not put me to

death on the spot. He was even humane enough to furnish a

shutter, on which I was carried back to the college like a

wounded warrior. The porter was roused to admit me; the college

gate was thrown open for my entry; the affair was blazed abroad

the next morning, and became the joke of the college from the

buttery to the hall.

I had leisure to repent during several weeks’ confinement by my

sprain, which I passed in translating Boethius’ Consolations of

Philosophy. I received a most tender and ill-spelled letter from

my mistress, who had been sent to a relation in Coventry. She

protested her innocence of my misfortunes, and vowed to be true

to me “till death.” I took no notice of the letter, for I was

cured, for the present, both of love and poetry. Women, however,

are more constant in their attachments than men, whatever

philosophers may say to the contrary. I am assured that she

actually remained faithful to her vow for several months; but she

had to deal with a cruel father whose heart was as hard as the

knob of his cane. He was not to be touched by tears or poetry;

but absolutely compelled her to marry a reputable young

tradesman; who made her a happy woman in spite of herself, and of

all the rules of romance; and what is more, the mother of several

children. They are at this very day a thriving couple and keep a

snug corner shop, just opposite the figure of Peeping Tom at

Coventry.

I will not fatigue you by any more details of my studies at

Oxford, though they were not always as severe as these; nor did I

always pay as dear for my lessons. People may say what they

please, a studious life has its charms, and there are many places

more gloomy than the cloisters of a university.

To be brief, then, I lived on in my usual miscellaneous manner,

gradually getting a knowledge of good and evil, until I had

attained my twenty-first year. I had scarcely come of age when I

heard of the sudden death of my father. The shock was severe, for

though he had never treated me with kindness, still he was my

father, and at his death I felt myself alone in the world.

I returned home to act as chief mourner at his funeral. It was

attended by many of the sportsmen of the country; for he was an

important member of their fraternity. According to his request

his favorite hunter was led after the hearse. The red-nosed

fox-hunter, who had taken a little too much wine at the house,

made a maudlin eulogy of the deceased, and wished to give the

view halloo over the grave; but he was rebuked by the rest of the

company. They all shook me kindly by the hand, said many

consolatory things to me, and invited me to become a member of

the hunt in my father’s place.

When I found myself alone in my paternal home, a crowd of gloomy

feelings came thronging upon me. It was a place that always

seemed to sober me, and bring me to reflection. Now, especially,

it looked so deserted and melancholy; the furniture displaced

about the room; the chairs in groups, as their departed occupants

had sat, either in whispering tête-à-têtes, or gossiping

clusters; the bottles and decanters and wine-glasses, half

emptied, and scattered about the tables—all dreary traces of a

funeral festival. I entered the little breakfasting room. There

were my father’s whip and spurs hanging by the fire-place, and

his favorite pointer lying on the hearth-rug. The poor animal

came fondling about me, and licked my hand, though he had never

before noticed me; and then he looked round the room, and whined,

and wagged his tail slightly, and gazed wistfully in my face. I

felt the full force of the appeal. “Poor Dash!” said I, “we are

both alone in the world, with nobody to care for us, and we’ll

take care of one another.” The dog never quitted me afterwards.

I could not go into my mother’s room: my heart swelled when I

passed Within sight of the door. Her portrait hung in the parlor,

just over the place where she used to sit. As I cast my eyes on

it I thought it looked at me with tenderness, and I burst into

tears. My heart had long been seared by living in public schools,

and buffeting about among strangers who cared nothing for me; but

the recollection of a mother’s tenderness was overcoming.

I was not of an age or a temperament to be long depressed. There

was a reaction in my system that always brought me up again at

every pressure; and indeed my spirits were most buoyant after a

temporary prostration. I settled the concerns of the estate as

soon as possible; realized my property, which was not very

considerable, but which appeared a vast deal to me, having a

poetical eye that magnified everything; and finding myself, at

the end of a few months, free of all farther business or

restraint, I determined to go to London and enjoy myself. Why

should not I?—I was young, animated, joyous; had plenty of funds

for present pleasures, and my uncle’s estate in the perspective.

Let those mope at college and pore over books, thought I, who

have their way to make in the world; it would be ridiculous

drudgery in a youth of my expectations.

Well, sir, away to London I rattled in a tandem, determined to

take the town gaily. I passed through several of the villages

where I had played the jack-pudding a few years before; and I

visited the scenes of many of my adventures and follies, merely

from that feeling of melancholy pleasure which we have in

stepping again into the footprints of foregone existence, even

when they have passed among weeds and briars. I made a circuit in

the latter part of my journey, so as to take in West End and

Hempstead, the scenes of my last dramatic exploit, and of the

battle royal of the booth. As I drove along the ridge of

Hempstead Hill, by Jack Straw’s castle, I paused at the spot

where Columbine and I had sat down so disconsolately in our

ragged finery, and looked dubiously upon London. I almost

expected to see her again, standing on the hill’s brink, “like

Niobe all tears;”—mournful as Babylon in ruins!

“Poor Columbine!” said I, with a heavy sigh, “thou wert a

gallant, generous girl—a true woman, faithful to the distressed,

and ready to sacrifice thyself in the cause of worthless man!”

I tried to whistle off the recollection of her; for there was

always Something of self-reproach with it. I drove gayly along

the road, enjoying the stare of hostlers and stable-boys as I

managed my horses knowingly down the steep street of Hempstead;

when, just at the skirts of the village, one of the traces of my

leader came loose. I pulled up; and as the animal was restive and

my servant a bungler, I called for assistance to the robustious

master of a snug ale-house, who stood at his door with a tankard

in his hand. He came readily to assist me, followed by his wife,

with her bosom half open, a child in her arms, and two more at

her heels. I stared for a moment as if doubting my eyes. I could

not be mistaken; in the fat, beer-blown landlord of the ale-house

I recognized my old rival Harlequin, and in his slattern spouse,

the once trim and dimpling Columbine.

The change of my looks, from youth to manhood, and the change of

my circumstances, prevented them from recognizing me. They could

not suspect, in the dashing young buck, fashionably dressed, and

driving his own equipage, their former comrade, the painted beau,

with old peaked hat and long, flimsy, sky-blue coat. My heart

yearned with kindness towards Columbine, and I was glad to see

her establishment a thriving one. As soon as the harness was

adjusted, I tossed a small purse of gold into her ample bosom;

and then, pretending give my horses a hearty cut of the whip, I

made the lash curl with a whistling about the sleek sides of

ancient Harlequin. The horses dashed off like lightning, and I

was whirled out of sight, before either of the parties could get

over their surprise at my liberal donations. I have always

considered this as one of the greatest proofs of my poetical

genius. It was distributing poetical justice in perfection.

I now entered London _en cavalier_, and became a blood upon town.

I took fashionable lodgings in the West End; employed the first

tailor; frequented the regular lounges; gambled a little; lost my

money good-humoredly, and gained a number of fashionable

good-for-nothing acquaintances. Had I had more industry and

ambition in my nature, I might have worked my way to the very

height of fashion, as I saw many laborious gentlemen doing around

me. But it is a toilsome, an anxious, and an unhappy life; there

are few beings so sleepless and miserable as your cultivators of

fashionable smiles.

I was quite content with that kind of society which forms the

frontiers of fashion, and may be easily taken possession of. I

found it a light, easy, productive soil. I had but to go about

and sow visiting cards, and I reaped a whole harvest of

invitations. Indeed, my figure and address were by no means

against me. It was whispered, too, among the young ladies, that I

was prodigiously clever, and wrote poetry; and the old ladies had

ascertained that I was a young gentleman of good family, handsome

fortune, and “great expectations.”

I now was carried away by the hurry of gay life, so intoxicating

to a young man; and which a man of poetical temperament enjoys so

highly on his first tasting of it. That rapid variety of

sensations; that whirl of brilliant objects; that succession of

pungent pleasures. I had no time for thought; I only felt. I

never attempted to write poetry; my poetry seemed all to go off

by transpiration. I lived poetry; it was all a poetical dream to

me. A mere sensualist knows nothing of the delights of a splendid

metropolis. He lives in a round of animal gratifications and

heartless habits. But to a young man of poetical feelings it is

an ideal world; a scene of enchantment and delusion; his

imagination is in perpetual excitement, and gives a spiritual

zest to every pleasure.

A season of town life somewhat sobered me of my intoxication; or

rather I was rendered more serious by one of my old complaints—I

fell in love. It was with a very pretty, though a very haughty

fair one, who had come to London under the care of an old maiden

aunt, to enjoy the pleasures of a winter in town, and to get

married. There was not a doubt of her commanding a choice of

lovers; for she had long been the belle of a little cathedral

town; and one of the prebendaries had absolutely celebrated her

beauty in a copy of Latin verses.

I paid my court to her, and was favorably received both by her

and her aunt. Nay, I had a marked preference shown me over the

younger son of a needy baronet, and a captain of dragoons on half

pay. I did not absolutely take the field in form, for I was

determined not to be precipitate; but I drove my equipage

frequently through the street in which she lived, and was always

sure to see her at the window, generally with a book in her hand.

I resumed my knack at rhyming, and sent her a long copy of

verses; anonymously to be sure; but she knew my handwriting. They

displayed, however, the most delightful ignorance on the subject.

The young lady showed them to me; wondered who they could be

written by; and declared there was nothing in this world she

loved so much as poetry: while the maiden aunt would put her

pinching spectacles on her nose, and read them, with blunders in

sense and sound, that were excruciating to an author’s ears;

protesting there was nothing equal to them in the whole elegant

extracts.

The fashionable season closed without my adventuring to make a

declaration, though. I certainly had encouragement. I was not

perfectly sure that I had effected a lodgment in the young lady’s

heart; and, to tell the truth, the aunt overdid her part, and was

a little too extravagant in her liking of me. I knew that maiden

aunts were not apt to be captivated by the mere personal merits

of their nieces’ admirers, and I wanted to ascertain how much of

all this favor I owed to my driving an equipage and having great

expectations.

I had received many hints how charming their native town was

during the summer months; what pleasant society they had; and

what beautiful drives about the neighborhood. They had not,

therefore, returned home long, before I made my appearance in

dashing style, driving down the principal street. It is an easy

thing to put a little quiet cathedral town in a buzz. The very

next morning I was seen at prayers, seated in the pew of the

reigning belle. All the congregation was in a flutter. The

prebends eyed me from their stalls; questions were whispered

about the aisles after service, “who is he?” and “what is he?”

and the replies were as usual—“A young gentleman of good family

and fortune, and great expectations.”

I was pleased with the peculiarities of a cathedral town, where I

found I was a personage of some consequence. I was quite a

brilliant acquisition to the young ladies of the cathedral

circle, who were glad to have a beau that was not in a black coat

and clerical wig.

You must know that there was a vast distinction between the

classes of society of the town. As it was a place of some trade,

there were many wealthy inhabitants among the commercial and

manufacturing classes, who lived in style and gave many

entertainments. Nothing of trade, however, was admitted into the

cathedral circle—faugh! the thing could not be thought of. The

cathedral circle, therefore, was apt to be very select, very

dignified, and very dull. They had evening parties, at which the

old ladies played cards with the prebends, and the young ladies

sat and looked on, and shifted from one chair to another about

the room, until it was time to go home.

It was difficult to get up a ball, from the want of partners, the

Cathedral circle being very deficient in dancers; and on those

occasions, there was an occasional drafting among the dancing men

of the other circle, who, however, were generally regarded with

great reserve and condescension by the gentlemen in powdered

wigs. Several of the young ladies assured me, in confidence, that

they had often looked with a wistful eye at the gayety of the

other circle, where there was such plenty of young beaux, and

where they all seemed to enjoy themselves so merrily; but that it

would be degradation to think of descending from their sphere.

I admired the degree of old-fashioned ceremony and superannuated

courtesy that prevailed in this little place. The bowings and

courtseyings that would take place about the cathedral porch

after morning service, where knots of old gentlemen and ladies

would collect together to ask after each other’s health, and

settle the card party for the evening. The little presents of

fruits and delicacies, and the thousand petty messages that would

pass from house to house; for in a tranquil community like this,

living entirely at ease, and having little to do, little duties

and little civilities and little amusements, fill up the day. I

have smiled, as I looked from my window on a quiet street near

the cathedral, in the middle of a warm summer day, to see a

corpulent powdered footman in rich livery, carrying a small tart

on a large silver salver. A dainty titbit, sent, no doubt, by

some worthy old dowager, to top off the dinner of her favorite

prebend.

Nothing could be more delectable, also, than the breaking up of

one of their evening card parties. Such shaking of hands such

mobbing up in cloaks and tippets! There were two or three old

sedan chairs that did the duty of the whole place; though the

greater part made their exit in clogs and pattens, with a footman

or waiting-maid carrying a lanthorn in advance; and at a certain

hour of the night the clank of pattens and the gleam of these

jack lanthorns, here and there, about the quiet little town, gave

notice that the cathedral card party had dissolved, and the

luminaries were severally seeking their homes. To such a

community, therefore, or at least to the female part of it, the

accession of a gay, dashing young beau was a matter of some

importance. The old ladies eyed me with complacency through their

spectacles, and the young ladies pronounced me divine. Everybody

received me favorably, excepting the gentleman who had written

the Latin verses on the belle.—Not that he was jealous of my

success with the lady, for he had no pretensions to her; but he

heard my verses praised wherever he went, and he could not endure

a rival with the muse.

I was thus carrying every thing before me. I was the Adonis of

the Cathedral circle; when one evening there was a public ball

which was attended likewise by the gentry of the neighborhood. I

took great pains with my toilet on the occasion, and I had never

looked better. I had determined that night to make my grand

assault on the heart of the young lady, to batter it with all my

forces, and the next morning to demand a surrender in due form.

I entered the ball-room amidst a buzz and flutter, which

generally took place among the young ladies on my appearance. I

was in fine spirits; for to tell the truth, I had exhilarated

myself by a cheerful glass of wine on the occasion. I talked, and

rattled, and said a thousand silly things, slap-dash, with all

the confidence of a man sure of his auditors; and every thing had

its effect.

In the midst of my triumph I observed a little knot gathering

together in the upper part of the room. By degrees it increased.

A tittering broke out there; and glances were cast round at me,

and then there would be fresh tittering. Some of the young ladies

would hurry away to distant parts of the room, and whisper to

their friends; wherever they went there was still this tittering

and glancing at me. I did not know what to make of all this. I

looked at myself from head to foot; and peeped at my back in a

glass, to see if any thing was odd about my person; any awkward

exposure; any whimsical tag hanging out—no—every thing was right.

I was a perfect picture.

I determined that it must be some choice saying of mine, that was

handled about in this knot of merry beauties, and I determined to

enjoy one of my good things in the rebound.

I stepped gently, therefore, up the room, smiling at every one as

I passed, who I must say all smiled and tittered in return. I

approached the group, smirking and perking my chin, like a man

who is full of pleasant feeling, and sure of being well received.

The cluster of little belles opened as I advanced.

Heavens and earth! whom should I perceive in the midst of them,

but my early and tormenting flame, the everlasting Sacharissa!

She was grown up, it is true, into the full beauty of womanhood,

but showed by the provoking merriment of her countenance, that

she perfectly recollected me, and the ridiculous flagellations of

which she had twice been the cause.

I saw at once the exterminating cloud of ridicule that was

bursting over me. My crest fell. The flame of love went suddenly

out in my bosom; or was extinguished by overwhelming shame. How I

got down the room I know not; I fancied every one tittering at

me. Just as I reached the door, I caught a glance of my mistress

and her aunt, listening to the whispers of my poetic rival; the

old lady raising her hands and eyes, and the face of the young

one lighted up with scorn ineffable. I paused to see no more; but

made two steps from the top of the stairs to the bottom. The next

morning, before sunrise, I beat a retreat; and did not feel the

blushes cool from my tingling cheeks until I had lost sight of

the old towers of the cathedral.

I now returned to town thoughtful and crestfallen. My money was

nearly spent, for I had lived freely and without calculation. The

dream of love was over, and the reign of pleasure at an end. I

determined to retrench while I had yet a trifle left; so selling

my equipage and horses for half their value, I quietly put the

money in my pocket and turned pedestrian. I had not a doubt that,

with my great expectations, I could at any time raise funds,

either on usury or by borrowing; but I was principled against

both one and the other; and resolved, by strict economy, to make

my slender purse hold out, until my uncle should give up the

ghost; or rather, the estate.

I stayed at home, therefore, and read, and would have written;

but I had already suffered too much from my poetical productions,

which had generally involved me in some ridiculous scrape. I

gradually acquired a rusty look, and had a straightened,

money-borrowing air, upon which the world began to shy me. I have

never felt disposed to quarrel with the world for its conduct. It

has always used me well. When I have been flush, and gay, and

disposed for society, it has caressed me; and when I have been

pinched, and reduced, and wished to be alone, why, it has left me

alone, and what more could a man desire?—Take my word for it,

this world is a more obliging world than people generally

represent it.

Well, sir, in the midst of my retrenchment, my retirement, and my

studiousness, I received news that my uncle was dangerously ill.

I hastened on the wings of an heir’s affection to receive his

dying breath and his last testament. I found him attended by his

faithful valet, old Iron John; by the woman who occasionally

worked about the house; and by the foxy-headed boy, young Orson,

whom I had occasionally hunted about the park.

Iron John gasped a kind of asthmatical salutation as I entered

the room, and received me with something almost like a smile of

welcome. The woman sat blubbering at the foot of the bed; and the

foxy-headed Orson, who had now grown to be a lubberly lout, stood

gazing in stupid vacancy at a distance.

My uncle lay stretched upon his back. The chamber was without a

fire, or any of the comforts of a sick-room. The cobwebs flaunted

from the ceiling. The tester was covered with dust, and the

curtains were tattered. From underneath the bed peeped out one

end of his strong box. Against the wainscot were suspended rusty

blunderbusses, horse pistols, and a cut-and-thrust sword, with

which he had fortified his room to defend his life and treasure.

He had employed no physician during his illness, and from the

scanty relics lying on the table, seemed almost to have denied

himself the assistance of a cook.

When I entered the room he was lying motionless; with his eyes

fixed and his mouth open; at the first look I thought him a

corpse. The noise of my entrance made him turn his head. At the

sight of me a ghastly smile came over his face, and his glazing

eye gleamed with satisfaction. It was the only smile he had ever

given me, and it went to my heart. “Poor old man!” thought I,

“why would you not let me love you?—Why would you force me to

leave you thus desolate, when I see that my presence has the

power to cheer you?”

“Nephew,” said he, after several efforts, and in a low gasping

voice —“I am glad you are come. I shall now die with

satisfaction. Look,” said he, raising his withered hand and

pointing—“look—in that box on the table you will find that I have

not forgotten you.”

I pressed his hand to my heart, and the tears stood in my eyes. I

sat down by his bed-side, and watched him, but he never spoke

again. My presence, however, gave him evident satisfaction—for

every now and then, as he looked at me, a vague smile would come

over his visage, and he would feebly point to the sealed box on

the table. As the day wore away, his life seemed to wear away

with it. Towards sunset, his hand sunk on the bed and lay

motionless; his eyes grew glazed; his mouth remained open, and

thus he gradually died.

I could not but feel shocked at this absolute extinction of my

kindred. I dropped a tear of real sorrow over this strange old

man, who had thus reserved his smile of kindness to his deathbed;

like an evening sun after a gloomy day, just shining out to set

in darkness. Leaving the corpse in charge of the domestics, I

retired for the night.

It was a rough night. The winds seemed as if singing my uncle’s

requiem about the mansion; and the bloodhounds howled without as

if they knew of the death of their old master. Iron John almost

grudged me the tallow candle to burn in my apartment and light up

its dreariness; so accustomed had he been to starveling economy.

I could not sleep. The recollection of my uncle’s dying scene and

the dreary sounds about the house, affected my mind. These,

however, were succeeded by plans for the future, and I lay awake

the greater part of the night, indulging the poetical

anticipation, how soon I would make these old walls ring with

cheerful life, and restore the hospitality of my mother’s

ancestors.

My uncle’s funeral was decent, but private, I knew there was

nobody That respected his memory; and I was determined that none

should be summoned to sneer over his funeral wines, and make

merry at his grave. He was buried in the church of the

neighboring village, though it was not the burying place of his

race; but he had expressly enjoined that he should not be buried

with his family; he had quarrelled with the most of them when

living, and he carried his resentments even into the grave.

I defrayed the expenses of the funeral out of my own purse, that

I might have done with the undertakers at once, and clear the

ill-omened birds from the premises. I invited the parson of the

parish, and the lawyer from the village to attend at the house

the next morning and hear the reading of the will. I treated them

to an excellent breakfast, a profusion that had not been seen at

the house for many a year. As soon as the breakfast things were

removed, I summoned Iron John, the woman, and the boy, for I was

particular of having every one present and proceeding regularly.

The box was placed on the table. All was silence. I broke the

seal; raised the lid; and beheld—not the will, but my accursed

poem of Doubting Castle and Giant Despair!

Could any mortal have conceived that this old withered man; so

taciturn, and apparently lost to feeling, could have treasured up

for years the thoughtless pleasantry of a boy, to punish him with

such cruel ingenuity? I could now account for his dying smile,

the only one he had ever given me. He had been a grave man all

his life; it was strange that he should die in the enjoyment of a

joke; and it was hard that that joke should be at my expense.

The lawyer and the parson seemed at a loss to comprehend the

matter. “Here must be some mistake,” said the lawyer, “there is

no will here.”

“Oh,” said Iron John, creaking forth his rusty jaws, “if it is a

will you are looking for, I believe I can find one.”

He retired with the same singular smile with which he had greeted

me on my arrival, and which I now apprehended boded me no good.

In a little while he returned with a will perfect at all points,

properly signed and sealed and witnessed; worded with horrible

correctness; in which he left large legacies to Iron John and his

daughter, and the residue of his fortune to the foxy-headed boy;

who, to my utter astonishment, was his son by this very woman; he

having married her privately; and, as I verily believe, for no

other purpose than to have an heir, and so baulk my father and

his issue of the inheritance. There was one little proviso, in

which he mentioned that having discovered his nephew to have a

pretty turn for poetry, he presumed he had no occasion for

wealth; he recommended him, however, to the patronage of his

heir; and requested that he might have a garret, rent free, in

Doubting Castle.

Mr. Buckthorne had paused at the death of his uncle, and the

downfall of his great expectations, which formed, as he said, an

epoch in his history; and it was not until some little time

afterwards, and in a very sober mood, that he resumed his

particolored narrative.

After leaving the domains of my defunct uncle, said he, when the

gate Closed between me and what was once to have been mine, I

felt thrust out naked into the world, and completely abandoned to

fortune. What was to become of me? I had been brought up to

nothing but expectations, and they had all been disappointed. I

had no relations to look to for counsel or assistance. The world

seemed all to have died away from me. Wave after wave of

relationship had ebbed off, and I was left a mere hulk upon the

strand. I am not apt to be greatly cast down, but at this, time I

felt sadly disheartened. I could not realize my situation, nor

form a conjecture how I was to get forward.

I was now to endeavor to make money. The idea was new and strange

to me. It was like being asked to discover the philosopher’s

stone. I had never thought about money, other than to put my hand

into my pocket and find it, or if there were none there, to wait

until a new supply came from home. I had considered life as a

mere space of time to be filled up with enjoyments; but to have

it portioned out into long hours and days of toil, merely that I

might gain bread to give me strength to toil on; to labor but for

the purpose of perpetuating a life of labor was new and appalling

to me. This may appear a very simple matter to some, but it will

be understood by every unlucky wight in my predicament, who has

had the misfortune of being born to great expectations.

I passed several days in rambling about the scenes of my boyhood;

partly because I absolutely did not know what to do with myself,

and partly because I did not know that I should ever see them

again. I clung to them as one clings to a wreck, though he knows

he must eventually cast himself loose and swim for his life. I

sat down on a hill within sight of my paternal home, but I did

not venture to approach it, for I felt compunction at the

thoughtlessness with which I had dissipated my patrimony. But was

I to blame, when I had the rich possessions of my curmudgeon of

an uncle in expectation?

The new possessor of the place was making great alterations. The

house was almost rebuilt. The trees which stood about it were cut

down; my mother’s flower-garden was thrown into a lawn; all was

undergoing a change. I turned my back upon it with a sigh, and

rambled to another part of the country.

How thoughtful a little adversity makes one. As I came in sight

of the school-house where I had so often been flogged in the

cause of wisdom, you would hardly have recognized the truant boy

who but a few years since had eloped so heedlessly from its

walls. I leaned over the paling of the playground, and watched

the scholars at their games, and looked to see if there might not

be some urchin among them, like I was once, full of gay dreams

about life and the world. The play-ground seemed smaller than

when I used to sport about it. The house and park, too, of the

neighboring squire, the father of the cruel Sacharissa, had

shrunk in size and diminished in magnificence. The distant hills

no longer appeared so far off, and, alas! no longer awakened

ideas of a fairy land beyond.

As I was rambling pensively through a neighboring meadow, in

which I had many a time gathered primroses, I met the very

pedagogue who had been the tyrant and dread of my boyhood. I had

sometimes vowed to myself, when suffering under his rod, that I

would have my revenge if ever I met him when I had grown to be a

man. The time had come; but I had no disposition to keep my vow.

The few years which had matured me into a vigorous man had shrunk

him into decrepitude. He appeared to have had a paralytic stroke.

I looked at him, and wondered that this poor helpless mortal

could have been an object of terror to me! That I should have

watched with anxiety the glance of that failing eye, or dreaded

the power of that trembling hand! He tottered feebly along the

path, and had some difficulty in getting over a stile. I ran and

assisted him. He looked at me with surprise, but did not

recognize me, and made a low bow of humility and thanks. I had no

disposition to make myself known, for I felt that I had nothing

to boast of. The pains he had taken and the pains he had

inflicted had been equally useless. His repeated predictions were

fully verified, and I felt that little Jack Buckthorne, the idle

boy, had grown up to be a very good-for-nothing man.

This is all very comfortless detail; but as I have told you of my

follies, it is meet that I show you how for once I was schooled

for them.

The most thoughtless of mortals will some time or other have this

day of gloom, when he will be compelled to reflect. I felt on

this occasion as if I had a kind of penance to perform, and I

made a pilgrimage in expiation of my past levity.

Having passed a night at Leamington, I set off by a private path

which leads up a hill, through a grove, and across quiet fields,

until I came to the small village, or rather hamlet of Lenington.

I sought the village church. It is an old low edifice of gray

stone on the brow of a small hill, looking over fertile fields to

where the proud towers of Warwick Castle lifted themselves

against the distant horizon. A part of the church-yard is shaded

by large trees. Under one of these my mother lay buried. You

have, no doubt, thought me a light, heartless being. I thought

myself so—but there are moments of adversity which let us into

some feelings of our nature, to which we might otherwise remain

perpetual strangers.

I sought my mother’s grave. The weeds were already matted over

it, and the tombstone was half hid among nettles. I cleared them

away and they stung my hands; but I was heedless of the pain, for

my heart ached too severely. I sat down on the grave, and read

over and over again the epitaph on the stone. It was simple, but

it was true. I had written it myself. I had tried to write a

poetical epitaph, but in vain; my feelings refused to utter

themselves in rhyme. My heart had gradually been filling during

my lonely wanderings; it was now charged to the brim and

overflowed. I sank upon the grave and buried my face in the tall

grass and wept like a child. Yes, I wept in manhood upon the

grave, as I had in infancy upon the bosom of my mother. Alas! how

little do we appreciate a mother’s tenderness while living! How

heedless are we in youth, of all her anxieties and kindness. But

when she is dead and gone; when the cares and coldness of the

world come withering to our hearts; when we find how hard it is

to find true sympathy, how few love us for ourselves, how few

will befriend us in our misfortunes; then it is we think of the

mother we have lost. It is true I had always loved my mother,

even in my most heedless days; but I felt how inconsiderate and

ineffectual had been my love. My heart melted as I retraced the

days of infancy, when I was led by a mother’s hand and rocked to

sleep in a mother’s arms, and was without care or sorrow. “Oh, my

mother!” exclaimed I, burying my face again in the grass of the

grave—“Oh, that I were once more by your side; sleeping, never to

wake again, on the cares and troubles of this world!”

I am not naturally of a morbid temperament, and the violence of

my emotion gradually exhausted itself. It was a hearty, honest,

natural discharge of griefs which had been slowly accumulating,

and gave me wonderful relief. I rose from the grave as if I had

been offering up a sacrifice, and I felt as if that sacrifice had

been accepted.

I sat down again on the grass, and plucked, one by one, the weeds

from her grave; the tears trickled more slowly down my cheeks,

and ceased to be bitter. It was a comfort to think that she had

died before sorrow and poverty came upon her child, and that all

his great expectations were blasted.

I leaned my cheek upon my hand and looked upon the landscape. Its

quiet beauty soothed me. The whistle of a peasant from an

adjoining field came cheerily to my ear. I seemed to respire hope

and comfort with the free air that whispered through the leaves

and played lightly with my hair, and dried the tears upon my

cheek. A lark, rising from the field before me, and leaving, as

it were, a stream of song behind him as he rose, lifted my fancy

with him. He hovered in the air just above the place where the

towers of Warwick Castle marked the horizon; and seemed as if

fluttering with delight at his own melody. “Surely,” thought I,

“if there were such a thing as transmigration of souls, this

might be taken for some poet, let loose from earth, but still

revelling in song, and carolling about fair fields and lordly

towns.”

At this moment the long forgotten feeling of poetry rose within

me. A Thought sprung at once into my mind: “I will become an

author,” said I. “I have hitherto indulged in poetry as a

pleasure, and it has brought me nothing but pain. Let me try what

it will do, when I cultivate it with devotion as a pursuit.”

The resolution, thus suddenly aroused within me, heaved a load

from off my heart. I felt a confidence in it from the very place

where it was formed. It seemed as though my mother’s spirit

whispered it to me from her grave. “I will henceforth,” said I,

“endeavor to be all that she fondly imagined me. I will endeavor

to act as if she were witness of my actions. I will endeavor to

acquit myself in such manner, that when I revisit her grave there

may, at least, be no compunctious bitterness in my tears.”

I bowed down and kissed the turf in solemn attestation of my vow.

I plucked some primroses that were growing there and laid them

next my heart. I left the church-yard with my spirits once more

lifted up, and set out a third time for London, in the character

of an author.

Here my companion made a pause, and I waited in anxious suspense;

hoping to have a whole volume of literary life unfolded to me. He

seemed, however, to have sunk into a fit of pensive musing; and

when after some time I gently roused him by a question or two as

to his literary career. “No,” said he smiling, “over that part of

my story I wish to leave a cloud. Let the mysteries of the craft

rest sacred for me. Let those who have never adventured into the

republic of letters, still look upon it as a fairy land. Let them

suppose the author the very being they picture him from his

works; I am not the man to mar their illusion. I am not the man

to hint, while one is admiring the silken web of Persia, that it

has been spun from the entrails of a miserable worm.”

“Well,” said I, “if you will tell me nothing of your literary

history, let me know at least if you have had any farther

intelligence from Doubting Castle.”

“Willingly,” replied he, “though I have but little to

communicate.”