I RECEIVE MY FIRST LESSONS IN PUGNACITY--AND IMBIBE THE EVIL SPIRIT--
LEARN TO READ BY INTUITION, AND TO FIGHT BY PRACTICE--GO TO SCHOOL TO A
SOLDIER--AM A GOOD BOY AND GET WHIPPED.
At six years of age my health had become firmly established, but this
establishment caused dismay in that of Joe Brandon. As I was no longer
the sickly infant that called for incessant attention and the most
careful nurture, it was intimated to my foster-parents that a
considerable reduction would be made in the quarterly allowance paid on
my account. The indignation of Brandon was excessive. He looked upon
himself as one grievously wronged. No sinecurist, with his pension
recently reduced, could have been more vehement on the subject of the
sanctity of vested rights. But his ire was not to be vented in idle
declamation only. He was not a man to rest content with mere words: he
declaimed for a full hour upon his wife's folly in procuring him the
means of well-fed idleness so long, threatened to take the brat--meaning
no less a personage than myself--to the workhouse: and then wound up
affairs, indoors, by beating his wife, and himself, out of doors, by
getting royally drunk.
This was the first scene that made a deep impression on me. Young as I
was, I comprehended that I was the cause of the ill-treatment of my
nurse, whom I fondly loved. I interfered--I placed my little body
between her and her brutal oppressor. I scratched, I kicked, I
screamed--I grew mad with passion. At that hour, the spirit of evil and
of hate blew the dark coal in my heart into a flame; and the demon of
violent anger has ever since found it too easy to erect there his altar,
of which the fire, though, at the time, all-consuming, is never durable.
From that moment I commenced my intellectual existence. I looked on
the sobbing mother, and knew what it was to love, and my love found its
expression in an agony of tears. I looked on the tyrant, I felt what it
was to hate, and endeavoured to relieve the burning desire to punish
with frantic actions and wild outcries. Old Ford, who had been present
and enjoyed the _fracas_, immediately took me into his especial favour;
he declared that I was after his own heart, for I had the devil in me--
said that I had the right spirit to bring me to the gallows, and he
hoped, old as he was, to live to see it: he then entreated of the Lord
that my precious soul might be saved as a burning brand out of the
fire--took me by the hand and led me to the next gin-shop--made me taste
the nauseating poison--told me I was a little man, and it was glorious
to fight--doubled up for me my puny fists, and asserted that cowards
only suffered a blow without returning it. A lesson like this never can
be forgotten. I ground my teeth whilst I was receiving it--I clenched
my hands, and looked wildly round for something to destroy. I was in
training to become a little tiger. From what I then experienced, I can
easily conceive the feelings that actuate, and can half forgive the
crowned monsters who have revelled in blood, and relished the inflicting
of torture; as pandering to their worst passions in infancy resolves
them into a terrible instrument of cruelty, the control of which rests
not with themselves. But this lesson in tiger ferocity had its
emollient, though not its antidote, in the tenderness of the love which
I bore to my nurse, when, on my return, I flung myself into her arms.
Ever since that day I have been subject to terrific fits of passion; but
very happily for me they have long ceased to be but of very rare
occurrence.
The next morning, Master Joseph came home ill, and if not humbled, at
least almost helpless. He had now three children of his own, and the
necessity of eschewing skittles, and presiding over the sawpit, became
urgent. With all his vices and his roughness, he was surprisingly fond
of me. He, too, applauded my spirit in attacking himself. He now
rejoiced to take me to the sawpit, to allow me to play about the
timber-yards, and share with him his _alfresco_ midday meal and pot of
porter. I always passed for his eldest son, my name being told to the
neighbours as Ralph Rattlin Brandon. I knew no otherwise, and my
foster-parents kept the secret religiously. At seven I began to fight
with dirty little urchins in the street, who felt much scandalised at
the goodness of my clothes. It is hard work fighting up-hill at seven
years of age. Old Ford would wipe the blood from my nose, and clap the
vinegar and brown paper on my bruises with words of sweet encouragement;
though he always ended by predicting that his hopeful godson would be
hung, and that he should live to see it. I have certainly not been
drowned yet, though I have had my escapes, and old Ford has been dead
these thirty years. As one part of the prophecy will certainly never be
fulfilled, I have some faint hopes of avoiding the exaltation hinted at
in the other.
About this time, I began to notice that a lady, at long intervals, came
to see me. She seemed exceedingly happy in my caresses, though she
showed no weakness. She passed for my godmother, and so she certainly
was. She was minute in her examination in ascertaining that I was
perfectly clean; and always brought me a number of delicacies, which
were invariably devoured immediately after her departure, by me and
those little cormorants my loving foster-brothers and sister. Moreover,
my nurse always received a present, which she very carefully and
dutifully concealed from her liege lord of the pits. However, I cannot
call to my mind more than four of these "angelic visits" altogether.
"Angelic visits," indeed, they might be termed, if the transcendent
beauty of the visitor be regarded. At that time, her form and her
countenance furnished me with the idea I had of the blessed inhabitants
of heaven before man was created, and I have never been able to replace
it since by anything more beautiful. The reader shall soon know how, at
that very early age, I became so well acquainted with angelic lore.
When eight years old I was sent to school. I could read before I went
there. How I picked up this knowledge I never could discover: both my
foster-parents were grossly illiterate. Perhaps old Ford taught me--but
this is one of the mysteries I could never solve; and it is strange that
I should have so totally forgotten all about an affair so important, as
not to remember a single lesson, and yet to hold so clear a recollection
of many minor events. But so it is. To school I went: my master was a
cadaverous, wooden-legged man, a disbanded soldier, and a
disciplinarian, as well as an a-b-c-darian.
I well remember old Isaacs, and his tall, handsome, crane-necked
daughter. The hussy was as straight as an arrow, yet, for the sake of
coquetry, or singularity, she would sit in the Methodist chapel, with
her dimpled chin resting upon an iron hoop, and her finely formed
shoulders braced back with straps so tightly, as to thrust out in a
remarkable manner her swanlike chest, and her almost too exuberant bust.
This instrument for the distorted, with its bright crimson leather,
thus pressed into the service of the beautiful, had a most singular and
exciting effect upon the beholder. I have often thought of this girl in
my maturer years, and confess that no dress that I ever beheld gave a
more piquant interest to the wearer, than those straps and irons. The
jade never wore them at home: perhaps the fancy was her father's, he
being an old soldier, and his motto "Eyes right! dress!" Whosever fancy
it was, his daughter rejoiced in it. "Eyes right! dress!" is as good a
motto for the ladies as for the army--and well do they act up to it.
The most important facts that my mind has preserved concerning this
scholastic establishment are--that one evening, for a task, I learned
perfectly by heart the two first chapters of the Gospel according to
Saint John; that there was an unbaked gooseberry pie put prominently on
the shelf in the schoolroom, a fortnight before the vacation at
Midsummer, to be partaken of on the happy day of breaking-up, each boy
paying fourpence for his share of the mighty feast. There were between
forty and fifty of us. I had almost forgotten to mention that I was to
be duly punished whenever I deserved it, but the master was, on no
account, to hurt me, or make me cry. I deserved it regularly three or
four times a day, and was as regularly horsed once. Oh! those
floggings, how deceptive they were, and how much I regretted them when I
came to understand the thing fundamentally. Old Isaacs could not have
performed the operation more delicately, if he were only brushing a fly
off the down of a lady's cheek. _He_ never made me cry.