A CHAPTER OF DISAPPOINTMENTS, WHICH RALPH HOPES THE READER WILL NOT
SHARE--SOME COMPARISONS WHICH HE HOPES WILL NOT BE FOUND ODIOUS, AND
SOME REFLECTIONS WHICH HE THINKS CANNOT BE RESENTED.
My friends will perceive, that at the time of which I am speaking, the
stage-coach contained, if not actually a bad character, I a person on
the very verge of being one--that I was that graceless, yet tolerated
being, a scamp, was very certain--yet my gentle demeanour, my smooth,
bright countenance, and never-ceasing placid smile, would have given a
very different impression of my qualities. I have been thus liberal in
my confessions, in order that parents may see that their duties do not
terminate where those of the schoolmaster begin; that the schoolmaster
himself must be taken to task, and the watcher watched. I had been
placed in one of the first boarding-schools near town; a most liberal
stipend had been paid with me; I had every description of master; yet,
after all this outlay of money, which is not dross--and waste of time,
which is beyond price precious, what was I at leaving this academy? Let
the good folks withinside of the Stickenham stage testify; by one trick
or another I had contrived to make them all tolerably uncomfortable
before the journey was half over.
But where am I going? Caesar and his fortunes are embarked in a
stage-coach. An hour and a half had elapsed when I perceived that the
horses were dragging the vehicle slowly up a steep hill. The
full-leaved trees are arching for us, overhead, a verdant canopy; the
air becomes more bracing and elastic: and even I feel its invigorating
influence, and cease to drop slily the gravelly dirt I had collected
from my shoes, down the neck and back of a very pretty girl, who sat
blushing furiously on my left. Now the summit is gained and, in another
moment, the coach thunders down the other side of the hill. But what a
beautiful view is spread before my fascinated eyes! and then rose up in
my young heart the long sleeping emotions of love, and kindred
affection. Into whose arms was I to be received? whose were to be the
beautiful lips that were now longing to kiss me with parental, perhaps
fraternal rapture? Had I a sister? Could I doubt it at that ecstatic
moment? How I would love her! The fatted calf was not only killed, but
cooked, to welcome the long lost. Nor Latin, nor French, nor Greek, nor
Mathematics, should embitter the passing moments. This young summer,
that breathed such aromatic joy around me, had put on its best smile to
welcome me to my paternal abode. "No doubt," said I to myself--"no
doubt, but that some one of the strange stories that I told of myself at
Root's, is going to be realised."
In the midst of these rapturous anticipations, each later one becoming
more wild and more glorious than the previous one that begot it, it
wanting still an hour of sundown, all at once the coach stopped before a
house, upon a gentle elevation--stopped with a jerk, too, as if it were
going to usher in some glorious event. I looked out, and behold! in
hated gold letters, upon the hated blue board, the bitterly hated word
"Academy" met my agonised sight.
I burst into tears. I needed no voice to tell me that I was the person
to alight. I knew my doom. Farewell to all my glorious visions! I
could have hurled back into the face of the laughing sun, my hate, and
called him deceiver and traitor; for had he not, with other causes
conspired to smile me, five minutes ago, into a fool's paradise?
"Master Rattlin, won't you please to alight?" said one of those
under-toned, gerund-singing voices, that my instinct told me to be an
usher's.
"No, thank'ee, sir," said I, amidst my sobbings, "I want to go home."
"But you are to get down here, however," said my evil-omened inviter.
"Your boxes are all off the coach, and the coachman wants to go
forward."
"So do I."
"It's excessively droll this--hi, hi, hi as sure as my name's
Saltseller, it is excessively droll. So you want to get forward, Master
Rattlin? why come to school then, that's the way--droll, isn't it? Why,
you've been riding backwards all the way, too--time to change--droll
that--hi, hi!"
"It's no change," said I, getting out, sulkily, "from one school to
another--and do you call this a school?" I continued, looking round
contemptuously, for I found about twenty little boys playing upon a
green knoll before the house, and over which we were compelled to walk
to reach it, as the road did not come near the habitation. "Do you call
this a school? Well, if you catch me being flogged here, I'm a sop,
that's all--a school! And I suppose you're the usher--I don't think
those little boys bumped you last half-year."
"I don't think they did," said Mr Saltseller, which was actually the
wretch's name, and with whom I fell desperately in hate at first sight.
"Bump me!" he exclaimed soliloquising--and with that air of
astonishment, as if he had heard the most monstrous impossibility spoken
of imaginable. "Bump me? droll, isn't it--excessively? Where have you
been brought up, Master Rattlin?"
"Where they bar out tyrannical masters, and bump sneaking ushers," said
I. "That's where I was brought up."
"Then that's what I call very bad bringing up."
"Not so bad as being brought down here, anyhow."
His next "excessively droll, isn't it?" brought us to the door of the
academy; but, in passing over the play-ground, I could see, at once,
that I was with quite another class of beings than those who composed my
late school-fellows. They were evidently more delicately nurtured; they
had not the air of schoolboy daring to which I had been so much
accustomed, and they called each other "Master." Everything, too,
seemed to be upon a miniature scale. The house was much smaller, yet
there was an air of comfort and of health around, that at first I did
not appreciate, though I could not help remarking it.
No sooner was I conducted into the passage, than I heard a voice which I
thought I remembered, exclaim, "Show Master Rattlin in here, and shut
the door."
I entered; and the next moment I was in the arms of the mysterious and
very beautiful lady that had called to see me the few times that I have
recorded; and who, I conceived, was intimately connected with my
existence. I think that I have before said that she never avowed
herself, either to my nurse or to myself, as more than my godmother.
She evinced a brief, but violent emotion; and then controlled her
features to a very staid and matronly expression. For myself I wept
most bitterly; from many mingled emotions; but, to the shame of human
nature, and of my own, wounded pride was the most intolerable pang that
I felt. In all my day-dreams, I had made this lady the presiding
genius. I gave her, in my inmost heart, all the reverence and the
filial affection of a son; but it was the implied understanding between
my love and my vanity, that in joining herself to me as a mother, she
was to bestow upon me a duchess at least; though I should not have
thought myself over-well used had it been a princess. And here were all
these glorious anticipations merged, sunk, destroyed, in the person of a
boarding-school mistress of about twenty boys, myself the biggest. It
was no use that I said to myself, over and over again, she is not less
lovely--her voice less musical, her manner less endearing, or her
apparel less rich. The startling truth was ever in my ear--she "keeps a
school," and consequently, she cannot be my mother.
She could not know what was passing in my mind; but it was evident that
my grief was of that intensity that nearly approached to misery. She
took me by the hand, showed me my nice little bed, the large garden, the
river that ran at the bottom of it, and placed before me fruit and
cakes; I would not be consoled; what business had she to be a
schoolmistress? I had a thousand times rather have had Mrs Brandon for
a mother again--she had never deceived me. But I was soon aware that
this lady, whom I now, for the first time, heard named, as Mrs
Cherfeuil, was as little disposed to grant me the honour of calling her
mother, as I was to bestow it. I was introduced to her husband as the
son of a female friend of hers of early life; that she had stood
godmother to me, that my parentage was respectable; and, as she before
had sufficient references to satisfy him from the agent, who had called
a week before my arrival, the good man thought there was nothing
singular in the affair.
But let us describe this good man, my new pedagogue. In all things he
was the antithesis of Mr Root. The latter was large, florid, and
decidedly handsome--Mr Cherfeuil was little, sallow, and more than
decidedly ugly. Mr Root was worldly wise, and very ignorant; Mr
Cherfeuil, a fool in the world, and very learned. The mind of Mr Root
was so empty, that he found no trouble in arranging his one idea and a
half; Mr Cherfeuil's was so full that there was no room for any
arrangement at all. Mr Root would have thought himself a fool if he
condescended to write poetry; but he supposed he could, for he never
tried. Mr Cherfeuil would have thought any man a fool that did not
perceive at once that he, Cherfeuil, was born a great poet. Shall I
carry, after the manner of Plutarch, the comparison any further? No;
let us bring it to an abrupt conclusion, by saying, in a few words, that
Mr Root was English, Mr Cherfeuil French; that the one had a large
school, and the other a little one and that both were immeasurably great
men in their own estimation--though not universally so in that of
others.
Mr Cherfeuil was ambitious to be thought five feet high, his attitude,
therefore, was always erect; and, to give himself an air of consequence,
he bridled and strutted like a full-breasted pigeon, with his head
thrown back, and was continually in the act of wriggling his long chin
into his ample neckerchief. He could not ask you how do you do, or say
in answer to that question, "I thank you, sare, very well," without
stamping prettily with his foot, as if cracking a snail, and tossing his
chin into the air as if he were going to balance a ladder upon it.
Then, though his features were compressed into a small, monkeyfied
compass, they were themselves, individually, upon a magnificent scale.
It was as if there had been crowded half a dozen gigantic specimens of
human ugliness into my lady's china closet, all of which were elbowing
each other for room. The eyes would have been called large, had it not
been for the vast proportions of the nose, and the nose would have been
thought preposterous, had it not been for the horrible dimensions of the
mouth. Yet the expression of all these anomalies, though very
grotesque, was not unpleasing. You smiled with satisfaction when you
saw how great the improvement was that baboonery had made toward
manhood. You might call him, in a word, a queer, little, ugly-looking
box of yellow mortality, that contained some amiable qualities, and a
great many valuable attainments. Of good sense, or of common sense, he
was never known to show, during the whole period of his life, but one
instance; and that was a most important one--a complete deference, in
all things, to his stately and beautiful wife. Her dominion was
undivided, complete, and unremitting. How she came to marry him was one
of those human riddles that will never be satisfactorily resolved. He
had been a French _emigre_, had had a most superior education, played on
several instruments without taste, understood everything connected with
the classics but their beauty, and was deeply versed in mathematics,
without comprehending their utility.
At this school my progress was rapid. All the care and attention that
the most maternal of hearts could bestow upon me were mine; yet there
was no approach to anything like familiarity on the part of Mrs
Cherfeuil. There lay a large wild common before the house; there was a
noble collection of deep water in the vicinity, in which I perfected my
natatory studies (affected phraseology is the fashion), and my body
strengthened, my mind improved, and I began to taste of real happiness.
It would be amusing work to write a biography of some of the most
remarkable ushers. They seem to be the bats of the social scale.
Gentlemen will not own them, and the classes beneath reject them. They
are generally self-sufficient; the dependency of their situation makes
them mean, and the exercise of delegated power tyrannical. If they have
either spirit or talent, they lift themselves above their situation; but
when they cannot do this, they are, in my estimation, the most abject of
all classes--gipsies and beggars not excepted. Mr Cherfeuil was, in
himself, a mine of learning; but he delivered it out from the dark
cavities of his mind, encumbered with so much ore, and in such misshaped
masses, that it required another person to arrange for use what he was
so lavish in producing. A good usher or assistant was therefore
necessary; but I do not recollect more than one, out of the thirty or
forty that came and went during the three years I was at the school.
This class of people are, alas! fatally susceptible of the tender
impulses. They always find the rosy cheeks of the housemaid or the _en
bon point_ of the cook irresistible. And they have themselves such
delicate soft hands, so white and so ashy. On Sundays, too, their linen
is generally clean! so, altogether, the maid-servants find them killing.
Mr Saltseller, who found everything droll, and who used to paint his
cheeks, lost his situation just at the precise moment that the housemaid
lost her character. Two losses together were not of very great moment;
then we had another, and another, and another; and more characters were
lost--till at last there did come a man:--
"Take him for all in all,
I ne'er shall look upon his like again."
He was very tall, stout, of a pompous carriage, _un homme magnifique_.
He wore a green coat, false hair, a black patch over his left eye, and
was fifty, or rather, fifty-five. His face was large, round, and the
least in the world bloated. This Adonis of matured ushers, after
school-hours, would hang a guitar from his broad neck, by means of a
pale pink riband, and walk up and down on the green before the house,
thrum, thrum, thrumming, the admiration of all the little boys, and the
coveted of all the old tabbies in the village. Oh, he was the
_beau-ideal_ of a _vieux garcon_. We recommend all school-assistants to
learn the guitar and grow fat--if they can; and then, perhaps, they may
prosper, like Mr Sigismund Pontifex. He contrived to elope with a
maiden lady, of good property, just ten years older than himself: the
sweet, innocent, indiscreet ones went off by stealth one morning before
daylight, in a chaise-and-four, and returned a week after, Mr and Mrs
Pontifex.
The gentleman hung up his guitar, and for ever; and every fine day he
was found, pipe in mouth and tankard in hand, presiding at the
bowling-green of the Black Lion, the acknowledged and revered umpire--
cherished by mine host, and referred to by the players. I write this
life for instruction. Gentlemen ushers, look to it--be ambitious--learn
the guitar, and make your mouths water with ideas of prospective
tankards of ale, and odoriferous pipes.