Produced by David Widger
A DAY'S RIDE
A LIFE'S ROMANCE
By Charles James Lever.
With Illustrations By W. Cubitt Cooke.
BOSTON:
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
1904.
A DAY'S RIDE:
A LIFE'S ROMANCE.
CHAPTER I. I PREPARE TO SEEK ADVENTURES
It has been said that any man, no matter how small and insignificant the
post he may have filled in life, who will faithfully record the events
in which he has borne a share, even though incapable of himself deriving
profit from the lessons he has learned, may still be of use to
others,--sometimes a guide, sometimes a warning. I hope this is true. I
like to think it so, for I like to think that even I,--A. S. P.,--if I
cannot adorn a tale, may at least point a moral.
Certain families are remarkable for the way in which peculiar gifts
have been transmitted for ages. Some have been great in arms, some in
letters, some in statecraft, displaying in successive generations the
same high qualities which had won their first renown. In an humble
fashion, I may lay claim to belong to this category. My ancestors have
been apothecaries for one hundred and forty-odd years. Joseph Potts,
“drug and condiment man,” lived in the reign of Queen Anne, at Lower
Liffey Street, No. 87; and to be remembered passingly, has the name of
Mr. Addison amongst his clients,--the illustrious writer having, as it
would appear, a peculiar fondness for “Pott's linature,” whatever that
may have been; for the secret died out with my distinguished forefather.
There was Michael Joseph Potts, “licensed for chemicals,” in Mary's
Abbey, about thirty years later; and so we come on to Paul Potts and
Son, and then to Launcelot Peter Potts, “Pharmaceutical Chemist to his
Excellency and the Irish Court,” the father of him who now bespeaks your
indulgence.
My father's great misfortune in life was the ambition to rise above the
class his family had adorned for ages. He had, as he averred, a soul
above senna, and a destiny higher than black drop. He had heard of a
tailor's apprentice becoming a great general. He had himself seen a
wig-maker elevated to the woolsack; and he kept continually repeating,
“Mine is the only walk in life that leads to no high rewards. What
matters it whether my mixtures be addressed to the refined organization
of rank, or the _dura ilia rasorum?_--I shall live and die an
apothecary. From every class are men selected for honors save mine; and
though it should rain baronetcies, the bloody hand would never fall to
the lot of a compounding chemist.”
“What do you intend to make of Algernon Sydney, Mr. Potts?” would say
one of his neighbors. “Bring him up to your own business? A first-rate
connection to start with in life.”
“My own business, sir? I'd rather see him a chimneysweep.”
“But, after all, Mr. Potts, being so to say, at the head of your
profession--”
“It is not a profession, sir. It is not even a trade. High science and
skill have long since left our insulted and outraged ranks; we are mere
commission agents for the sale of patent quackeries. What respect has
the world any longer for the great phials of ruby, and emerald, and
marine blue, which, at nightfall, were once the magical emblems of our
mysteries, seen afar through the dim mists of lowering atmospheres, or
throwing their lurid glare upon the passers-by? What man, now, would
have the courage to adorn his surgery--I suppose you would prefer I
should call it a 'shop'--with skeleton-fishes, snakes, or a stuffed
alligator? Who, in this age of chemical infidelity, would surmount his
door with the ancient symbols of our art,--the golden pestle and mortar?
Why, sir, I'd as soon go forth to apply leeches on a herald's tabard, or
a suit of Milan mail. And what have they done, sir?” he would ask,
with a roused indignation,--“what have they done by their reforms? In
invading the mystery of medicine, they have ruined its prestige. The
precious drops you once regarded as the essence of an elixir vitæ,
and whose efficacy lay in your faith, are now so much strychnine, or
creosote, which you take with fear and think over with foreboding.”
I suppose it can only be ascribed to that perversity which seems a
great element in human nature, that, exactly in the direct ratio of my
father's dislike to his profession was _my_ fondness for it. I used
to take every opportunity of stealing into the laboratory, watching
intently all the curious proceedings that went on there, learning
the names and properties of the various ingredients, the gases, the
minerals, the salts, the essences; and although, as may be imagined,
science took, in these narrow regions, none of her loftiest flights,
they were to me the most marvellous and high-soaring efforts of human
intelligence. I was just at that period of life--the first opening of
adolescence--when fiction and adventure have the strongest bold upon our
nature, my mind filled with the marvels of Eastern romance, and imbued
with a sentiment, strong as any conviction, that I was destined to a
remarkable life. I passed days in dreamland,--what I should do in this
or that emergency; how rescue myself from such a peril; how profit by
such a stroke of fortune; by what arts resist the machinations of this
adversary; how conciliate the kind favor of that. In the wonderful tales
that I read, frequent mention was made of alchemy and its marvels;
now the search was for some secret of endless wealth; now, it was for
undying youth or undecay-ing beauty; while in other stories I read of
men who had learned how to read the thoughts, trace the motives, and
ultimately sway the hearts of their fellow-men, till life became to them
a mere field for the exercise of their every will and caprice, throwing
happiness and misery about them as the humor inclined. The strange life
of the laboratory fitted itself exactly to this phase of my mind.
The wonders it displayed, the endless combinations and transformations
it effected, were as marvellous as any that imaginative fiction could
devise; but even these were nothing compared to the mysterious influence
of the place itself upon my nervous system, particularly when I found
myself there alone. In the tales with which my head was filled, many
of them the wild fancies of Grimm, Hoffman, or Musæus, nothing was more
common than to read how some eager student of the black art, deep in the
mystery of forbidden knowledge, had, by some chance combination, by some
mere accidental admixture of this ingredient with that, suddenly arrived
at the great secret, that terrible mystery which for centuries and
centuries had evaded human search. How often have I watched the fluid as
it boiled and bubbled in the retort, till I thought the air globules,
as they came to the surface, observed a certain rhythm and order. Were
these, words? Were they symbols of some hidden virtue in the liquid?
Were there intelligences to whom these could speak, and thus reveal a
wondrous history? And then, again, with what an intense eagerness have
I gazed on the lurid smoke that arose from some smelting mass, now
fancying that the vapor was about to assume form and substance, and bow
imagining that it lingered lazily, as though waiting for some cabalistic
word of mine to give it life and being? How heartily did I censure
the folly that had ranked alchemy amongst the absurdities of human
invention! Why, rather, had not its facts been treasured and its
discoveries recorded, so that in some future age a great intelligence
arising might classify and arrange them, showing at least what were
practicable and what were only evasive. Alchemists were, certainly,
men of pure lives, self-denying and humble. They made their art no
stepping-stone to worldly advancement or success; they sought no favor
from princes, nor any popularity from the people; but, retired and
estranged from all the pleasures of the world, followed their one
pursuit, unnoticed and unfriended. How cruel, therefore, to drag them
forth from their lonely cells, and expose them to the gaping crowd as
devil worshippers! How inhuman to denounce men whose only crimes were
lives of solitude and study! The last words of Peter von Vordt, burned
for a wizard, at Haarlem, in 1306, were, “Had they left this poor head
a little longer on my shoulders, it would have done more for human
happiness than all this bonfire!”
How rash and presumptuous is it, besides, to set down any fixed limits
to man's knowledge! Is not every age an advance upon its predecessors,
and are not the commonest acts of our present civilization perfect
miracles as compared with the usages of our ancestors? But why do I
linger on this theme, which I only introduced to illustrate the temper
of my boyish days? As I grew older, books of chivalry and romance took
possession of my mind, and my passion grew for lives of adventure. Of
all kinds of existence, none seemed to me so enviable as that of those
men who, regarding life as a vast ocean, hoisted sail, and set forth,
not knowing nor caring whither, but trusting to their own manly spirit
for extrication out of whatever difficulties might beset them. What a
narrow thing, after all, was our modern civilization, with all its forms
and conventionalities, with its gradations of rank and its orders! How
hopeless for the adventurous spirit to war with the stern discipline of
an age that marshalled men in ranks like soldiers, and told that each
could only rise by successive steps! How often have I wondered was there
any more of adventure left in life? Were there incidents in store for
him who, in the true spirit of an adventurer, should go in search of
them? As for the newer worlds of Australia and America, they did not
possess for me much charm. No great association linked them with the
past; no echo came out of them of that heroic time of feudalism, so
peopled with heart-stirring characters. The life of the bush or the
prairie had its incidents, but they were vulgar and commonplace; and
worse, the associates and companions of them were more vulgar still.
Hunting down Pawnees or buffaloes was as mean and ignoble a travesty
of feudal adventure as was the gold diggings at Bendigo of the learned
labors of the alchemist. The perils were unexciting, the rewards prosaic
and commonplace. No. I felt that Europe--in some remote regions--and the
East--in certain less visited tracts--must be the scenes best suited to
my hopes. With considerable labor I could spell my way through a German
romance, and I saw, in the stories of Fouqué, and even of Goethe, that
there still survived in the mind of Germany many of the features which
gave the color-ing to a feudal period. There was, at least, a dreamy
indifference to the present, a careless abandonment to what the hour
might bring forth, so long as the dreamer was left to follow out his
fancies in all their mysticism, that lifted men out of the vulgarities
of this work-o'-day world; and I longed to see a society where
learning consented to live upon the humblest pittance, and beauty dwelt
unflattered in obscurity.
I was now entering upon manhood; and my father--having, with that
ambition so natural to an Irish parent who aspires highly for his only
son, destined me for the bar--made me a student of Trinity College,
Dublin.
What a shock to all the romance of my life were the scenes into which I
now was thrown! With hundreds of companions to choose from, I found
not one congenial to me. The reading men, too deeply bent upon winning
honors, would not waste a thought upon what could not advance their
chances of success. The idle, only eager to get through their career
undetected in their ignorance, passed lives of wild excess or stupid
extravagance.
What was I to do amongst such associates? What I did do,--avoid them,
shun them, live in utter estrangement from all their haunts, their
ways, and themselves. If the proud man who has achieved success in
life encounters immense difficulties when, separating himself from
his fellows, he acknowledges no companionship, nor admits any to his
confidence, it may be imagined what must be the situation of one who
adopts this isolation without any claim to superiority whatever. As can
easily be supposed, I was the butt of my fellow students, the subject of
many sarcasms and practical jokes. The whole of my Freshman year was a
martyrdom. I had no peace, was rhymed on by poetasters, caricatured by
draughtsmen, till the name of Potts became proverbial for all that was
eccentric, ridiculous, and absurd.
Curran has said, “One can't draw an indictment against a nation;” in the
same spirit did I discover “one cannot fight his whole division.” For a
while I believe I experienced a sort of heroism in my solitary state;
I felt the spirit of a Coriolanus in my heart, and muttered, “I banish
_you! _” but this self-supplied esteem did not last long, and I fell
into a settled melancholy. The horrible truth was gradually forcing its
way slowly, clearly, through the mists of my mind, that there might
be something in all this sarcasm, and I can remember to this hour, the
day--ay, and the very place--wherein the questions flashed across me: Is
my hair as limp, my nose as long, my back as arched, my eyes as green as
they have pictured them? Do I drawl so fearfully in my speech? Do I drag
my heavy feet along so ungracefully? Good heavens! have they possibly a
grain of fact to sustain all this fiction against me?
And if so,--horrible thought,--am I the stuff to go forth and seek
adventures? Oh, the ineffable bitterness of this reflection! I remember
it in all its anguish, and even now, after years of such experience as
have befallen few men, I can recall the pain it cost me. While I was yet
in the paroxysm of that sorrow, which assured me that I was not made for
doughty deeds, nor to captivate some fair princess, I chanced to fall
upon a little German volume entitled “Wald Wandelungen und Abentheure,”
von Heinrich Stebbe. Forest rambles and adventures, and of a student,
too! for so Herr Stebbe announces himself, in a short introduction to
the reader. I am not going into any account of his book. It is in
Voss's Leipzig Catalogue, and not unworthy of perusal by those who are
sufficiently imbued with Germanism to accept the changeful moods of a
mystical mind, with all its visionary glimpses of light and shade, its
doubts, fears, hopes, and fancies, in lieu of real incidents and actual
events. Of adventures, properly speaking, he had none. The people he
met, the scenes in which he bore his part, were as commonplace as
need be. The whole narrative never soared above that bread and butter
life--Butter-brod Leben--which Germany accepts as romance; but,
meanwhile, the reflex of whatever passed around him in the narrator's
own mind was amusing; so ingeniously did he contrive to interweave the
imaginary with the actual, throwing over the most ordinary pictures
of life a sort of hazy indistinctness,--meet atmosphere for mystical
creation.
If I did not always sympathize with him in his brain-wrought wanderings,
I never ceased to take pleasure in his description of scenery, and
the heartfelt delight he experienced in Journeying through a world so
beautiful and so varied. There was also a little woodcut frontispiece
which took my fancy much, representing him as he stood leaning on his
horse's mane, gazing rapturously on the Elbe, from one of the cliffs off
the Saxon Switzerland. How peaceful he looked, with his long hair waving
gracefully on his neck, and his large soft eyes turned on the scene
beneath him I His clasped hands, as they lay on the horse's mane,
imparted a sort of repose, too, that seemed to say, “I could linger here
ever so long.” Nor was the horse itself without a significance in the
picture; he was a long-maned, long-tailed, patient-looking beast, well
befitting an enthusiast, who doubtless took but little heed of how he
went or where. If his lazy eye denoted lethargy, his broad feet and
short legs vouched for his sure-footedness.
Why should not I follow Stebbe's example? Surely there was nothing too
exalted or extravagant in his plan of life. It was simply to see the
world as it was, with the aid of such combinations as a fertile fancy
could contribute; not to distort events, but to arrange them, Just as
the landscape painter in the license of his craft moves that massive
rock more to the foreground, and throws that stone pine a little further
to the left of his canvas. There was, indeed, nothing to prevent my
trying the experiment Ireland was not less rich in picturesque scenery
than Germany, and if she boasted no such mighty stream as the Elbe, the
banks of the Blackwater and the Nore were still full of woodland beauty;
and, then, there was lake scenery unrivalled throughout Europe.
I turned to Stebbe's narrative for details of his outfit. His horse be
bought at Nordheim for two hundred and forty gulden,--about ten pounds;
his saddle and knapsack cost him a little more than forty shillings;
with his map, guide-book, compass, and some little extras, all were
comprised within twenty pounds sterling,--surely not too costly an
equipage for one who was adventuring on a sea wide as the world itself.
As _my_ trial was a mere experiment, to be essayed on the most limited
scale, I resolved not to buy, but only hire a horse, taking him by the
day, so that if any change of mind or purpose supervened I should not
find myself in any embarrassment.
A fond uncle had just left me a legacy of a hundred pounds, which,
besides, was the season of the long vacation; thus did everything
combine to favor the easy execution of a plan which I determined
forthwith to put into practice.
“Something quiet and easy to ride, sir, you said?” repeated Mr. Dycer
after me, as I entered his great establishment for the sale and hire of
horses. “Show the gentleman four hundred and twelve.”
“Oh, Heaven forbid!” I exclaimed, in ignorance; “such a number would
only confuse me.”
“You mistake me, sir,” blandly interposed the dealer; “I meant the horse
that stands at that number. Lead him out, Tim. He 's gentle as a lamb,
sir, and, if you find he suits you, can be had for a song,--I mean a ten
pound note.”
“Has he a long mane and tail?” I asked, eagerly.
“The longest tail and the fullest mane I ever saw. But here he comes.”
And with the word, there advanced towards us, at a sort of easy amble,
a small-sized cream-colored horse, with white mane and tail. Knowing
nothing of horseflesh, I was fain to content myself with such
observations as other studies might supply me with; and so I closely
examined his head, which was largely developed in the frontal region,
with moral qualities fairly displayed. He had memory large, and
individuality strong; nor was wit, if it exist in the race, deficient
Over the orbital region the depressions were deep enough to contain my
closed fist, and when I remarked upon them to the groom, he said, “'T
is his teeth will tell you the rayson of that;” a remark which I suspect
was a sarcasm upon my general ignorance.
I liked the creature's eye. It was soft, mild, and contemplative; and
although not remarkable for brilliancy, possessed a subdued lustre that
promised well for temper and disposition.
“Ten shillings a day,--make it three half-crowns by the week, sir.
You 'll never hit upon the like of him again,” said the dealer,
hurriedly, as he passed me, on his other avocations.
“Better not lose him, sir; he's well known at Batty's, and they 'll
have him in the circus again if they see him. Wish you saw him with his
fore-legs on a table, ringing the bell for his breakfast.*'
“I'll take him by the week, though, probably, a day or two will be all I
shall need.”
“Four hundred and twelve for Mr. Potts,” Dycer screamed out. “Shoes
removed, and to be ready in the morning.”