Father Dyke was one of those characters which Ireland alone produces,--a
sporting priest. In France, Spain, or Italy, the type is unknown. Time
was, when the _abbé_, elegant, witty, and well-bred, was a great element
of polished life; when his brilliant conversation and his insidious
address threw all the charm of culture over a society which was only
rescued from coarseness by the marvellous dexterity of such intellectual
gladiators. They have passed away, like many other things brilliant and
striking: the gilded coach, the red-heeled slipper, and the supper of
the regency; the powdered marquise, for a smile of whose dimpled mouth
the deadly rapier has flashed in the moonlight; the perfumed beauty,
for one of whose glances a poet would have racked his brain to render
worthily in verse; the gilded _salon_ where, in a sort of incense,
all the homage of genius was offered up before the altar of
loveliness,--gone are they all! _Au fond_, the world is pretty much the
same, although we drive to a club dinner in a one-horse brougham; and
if we meet the _curé_ of St. Roch, we find him to be rather a morose
middle-aged man with a taste for truffles, and a talent for silence. It
is not as the successor of the witty _abbé_ that I adduce the sporting
priest, but simply as a variety of the ecclesiastical character which,
doubtless, a very few more years will have consigned to the realm of
history. He, too, will be a bygone! Father Tom, as he was popularly
called, never needing any more definite designation, was _tam Marte quam
Mercurio_, as much poacher as priest, and made his sporting acquirements
subservient to the demands of an admirable table. The thickest salmon,
the curdiest trout, the fattest partridge, and the most tender woodcock
smoked on his board, and, rumor said, cooked with a delicacy that more
pretentious houses could not rival. In the great world nothing is more
common than to see some favored individual permitted to do things which,
by common voice, are proclaimed impracticable or improper. With a sort
of prescriptive right to outrage the ordinances of society, such people
accept no law but their own inclination, and seem to declare that they
are altogether exempt from the restraints that bind other men. In a
small way, and an humble sphere, Father Tom enjoyed this privilege,
and there was not in his whole county to be found one man churlish or
ungenerous enough to dispute it; and thus was he suffered to throw his
line, snap his gun, or unleash his dog in precincts where many with
higher claims had been refused permission.
It was not alone that he enjoyed the invigorating pleasure of field
sports in practice, but he delighted in everything which bore any
relationship to them. There was not a column of “Bell's Life” in which
he had not his sympathy,--the pigeon match, the pedestrian, the Yankee
trotter, the champion for the silver sculls at Chelsea, the dog “Billy,”
were all subjects of interest to him. Never did the most inveterate
blue-stocking more delight in the occasion of meeting a great celebrity
of letters, than did he when chance threw him in the way of the jock
who rode the winner at the Oaks, or the “Game Chicken” who punished the
“Croydon Pet” in the prize ring. But now for the letter, which will
as fully reveal the man as any mere description. It was a narrative of
races he had attended, and rowing-matches he had witnessed, with little
episodes of hawking, badger-drawing, and cock-fighting intermixed.
“I came down here--Brighton--to swim for a wager of five-and-twenty
sovereigns against a Major Blayse, of the Third Light Dragoon Guards; we
made the match after mess at Aldershot, when neither of us was anything
to speak of too sober; but as we were backed strongly,--he rather the
favorite,--there was no way of drawing the bet. I beat him after a hard
struggle; we were two hours and forty minutes in the water, and netted
about sixty pounds besides. We dined with the depot in the evening,
and I won a ten-pound note on a question of whether there ought to be
saffron in the American drink called 'greased lightning;' but this was
not the only piece of luck that attended me, as you shall hear. As I was
taking my morning canter on the Downs, I perceived that a stranger--a
jockey-like fellow, not quite a gentleman but near it--seemed to keep me
in view; now riding past, now behind me, and always bestowing his whole
attention on my nag. Of course, I showed the beast off to the best, and
handled him skilfully. I thought to myself, he likes the pony; he 'll be
for making me an offer for him. I was right. I had just seated myself at
breakfast, when the stranger sent his card, with a request to speak to
me. He was a foreigner, but spoke very correct English, and his object
was to learn if I would sell my horse. It is needless to say that I
refused at once. The animal suited me, and I was one of those people
who find it excessively difficult to be mounted to their satisfaction.
I needed temper, training, action, gentleness, beauty, high courage, and
perfect steadiness, and a number of such-like seeming incongruities.
He looked a little impatient at all this; he seemed to say, 'I know all
this kind of nonsense; I have heard shiploads of such gammon before.
Be frank and say what's the figure; how much do you want for him?' He
looked this, I say, but he never uttered a word, and at last I asked
him,--
“'Are you a dealer?'
“'Well,' said he, with an arch smile, 'something in that line.'
“'I thought so,' said I. 'The pony is a rare good one.'
“He nodded assent.
“'He can jump a bar of his own height?'
“Another nod.
“'And he's as fresh on his legs--'
“'As if he were not twenty-six years old,' he broke in.
“'Twenty-six fiddle-sticks! Look at his mouth; he has an eight-year-old
mouth.'
“'I know it,' said he, dryly; 'and so he had fourteen years ago. Will
you take fifty sovereigns for him?' he added, drawing out a handful of
gold from his pocket.
“'No,' said I, firmly; 'nor sixty, nor seventy, nor eighty!'
“'I am sorry to have intruded upon you,' said he, rising, 'and I beg you
to excuse me. The simple fact is, that I am one who gains his living
by horses, and it is only possible for me to exist by the generosity of
those who deal with me.'
“This appeal was a home thrust, and I said, 'What can you afford to
give?'
“'All I have here,' said he, producing a handful of gold, and spreading
it on the table.
“We set to counting, and there were sixty-seven sovereigns in the mass.
I swept off the money into the palm of my hand, and said, 'The beast is
yours.'
“He drew a long breath, as if to relieve his heart of a load of care,
and said, 'Men of _my_ stamp, and who lead such lives as I do, are
rarely superstitious.'
“'Very true,' said I, with a nod of encouragement for him to go on.
“'Well,' said he, resuming, 'I never thought for a moment that any
possibility could have made me so. If ever there was a man that laughed
at lucky and unlucky days, despised omens, sneered at warnings, and
scorned at predictions, I was he; and yet I have lived to be the most
credulous and the most superstitious of men. It is now fourteen years
and twenty-seven days--I remember the time to an hour--since I sold that
pony to the Prince Ernest von Saxen-hausen, and since that day I never
had luck. So long as I owned him all went well with me. I ought to tell
you that I am the chief of a company of equestrians, and one corps,
known as Klam's Kunst-Reiters, was the most celebrated on the Continent
In three years I made three hundred thousand guilders, and if the devil
had not induced me to sell “Schatzchen”--that was his name--I should be
this day as rich as Heman Rothschild! From the hour he walked out of the
circus our calamities began. I lost my wife by fever at Wiesbaden, the
most perfect high-school horsewoman in Europe; my son, of twenty years
of age, fell, and dislocated his neck; the year after, at Vienna, my
daughter Gretchen was blinded riding through a fiery hoop at Homburg;
and four years later, all the company died of yellow fever at the
Havannah, leaving me utterly beggared and ruined. Now these, you would
say, though great misfortunes, are all in the course of common events.
But what will you say when, on the eve of each of them, Schatzchen
appeared to me in a dream, performing some well-known feat or other, and
bringing down, as he ever did, thunders of applause; and never did he so
appear without a disaster coming after. I struggled hard before I
suffered this notion to influence me. It was years before I even
mentioned it to any one; and I used for a while to make a jest of it in
the circus, saying, “Take care of yourselves tonight, for I saw
Schatzchen.” Of course they were not the stuff to be deterred by such
warnings, but they became so at last. That they did, and were so
terrified, so thoroughly terrified, that the day after one of my visions
not a single member of the troupe would venture on a hazardous feat of
any kind; and if we performed at all, it was only some commonplace
exercises, with few risks, and no daring exploits whatever. Worn out
with evil fortune, crushed and almost broken-hearted, I struggled on for
years, secretly determining, if ever I should chance upon him, to buy
back Schatzchen with my last penny in the world. Indeed, there were
moments in which such was the intense excitement of my mind, I could
have committed a dreadful crime to regain possession of him. We were on
the eve of embarking for Ostend the other night, when I saw you riding
on the Downs, and I came ashore at once to track you out, for I knew
him, though fully half a mile away. None of my comrades could guess what
detained me, nor understand why I asked each of them in turn to lend me
whatever money he could spare. It was in this way I made up the little
purse you see. It was thus provided that I dared to present myself
to-day before you.”
“As he gave me this narrative, his manner grew more eager and excited,
and I could not help feeling that his mind, from the long-continued
pressure of one thought, had received a serious shock. It was exactly
one of those cases which physicians describe as leaving the intellect
unimpaired, while some one faculty is under the thraldom of a dominant
and all-pervading impression. I saw this more palpably, when, having
declined to accept more than his original offer of fifty pounds, I
replaced the remainder in his hand, he evinced scarcely any gratitude
for my liberality, so totally was he engrossed by the idea that the
horse was now his own, and that Fortune would no longer have any pretext
for using him so severely as before.
“'I don't know,--I cannot know,' said he, 'if fortune means to deal more
kindly by me than heretofore, but I feel a sort of confidence in the
future now; I have a kind of trustful courage as to what may come, that
tells me no disaster will deter me, no mishap cast me down.'
“These were his words as he arose to take his leave. Of his meeting with
the pony I am afraid to trust myself to speak. It was such an overflow
of affection as one might witness from a long absent brother on being
once again restored to his own. I cannot say that the beast knew him,
nor would I go so far as to assert that he did not, for certainly some
of his old instincts seemed gradually to revive within him on hearing
certain words; and when ordered to take a respectful farewell of me, the
pony planted a foreleg on each of his master's shoulders, and,
taking off his hat with his teeth, bowed twice or thrice in the most
deferential fashion. I wished them both every success in life, and we
parted. As I took my evening's stroll on the pier, I saw them embark for
Ostend, the pony sheeted most carefully, and every imaginable precaution
taken to insure him against cold. The man himself was poorly clad, and
indifferently provided against the accidents of the voyage. He appeared
to feel that the disparity required a word of apology, for he said, in a
whisper: 'It 'll soon furnish me with a warm cloak; it 'll not leave
me long in difficulties!' I assure you, my dear Crofton, there was
something contagious in the poor fellow's superstition, for, as he
sailed away, the thought lay heavily on my heart, 'What if I, too,
should have parted with my good luck in life? How if I have bartered my
fortune for a few pieces of money?' The longer I dwelt on this theme,
the more forcibly did it strike me. My original possession of the animal
was accomplished in a way that aided the illusion. It was thus I won him
on a hit of backgammon!”
As I read thus far, the paper dropped from my hands, my head reeled, and
in a faint dreamy state, as if drugged by some strong narcotic, I sank,
I know not how long, unconscious. The first thing which met my eyes on
awakening, was the line, “I won him on a hit of backgammon!” The whole
story was at once before me. It was of Blondel I was reading! Blondel
was the beast whose influence had swayed one man's destiny. So long as
he owned him, the world went well and happily with him; all prospered
and succeeded. It was a charm like the old lamp of Aladdin. And this was
the treasure I had lost. So far from imputing an ignorant superstition
to the German, I concurred in every speculation, every theory of
his invention. The man had evidently discovered one of those curious
problems in what we rashly call the doctrine of chances. It was not
the animal himself that secured good fortune, it was that, in his
“circumstances,” what Strauff calls “die amringende Bege-benheiten”
of his lot, this creature was sure to call forth efforts and develop
resources in his possessor, of which, without his aid, he would have
gone all through life unconscious.
The vulgar notion that our lives are the sport of accident,--the minute
too early or too late, the calm that detained us, the snow-storm that
blocked the road, the chance meeting with this or that man, which we lay
such stress on,--what are they in reality but trivial incidents without
force or effect, save that they impel to action? They call out certain
qualities in our nature by which our whole characters become modified.
Your horse balks at a fence, and throws you over his head; the fall is
not a very grave one, and you are scarcely hurt; you have fallen into
a turnip-field, and the honest fellow, who is hoeing away near, comes
kindly to your aid, and, in good Samaritan fashion, bathes your temples
and restores you. When you leave him at last, you go forth with a
kindlier notion of human nature; you recognize the tie “that makes the
whole world kin,” and you seem to think that hard toil hardens not the
heart, nor a life of labor shuts out generous sympathies,--the lesson is
a life one. But suppose that in your fall you alight on a bed of choice
tulips, you descend in the midst of a rich parterre of starry anemones,
and that your first conscious struggles are met with words of anger and
reproach; instead of sorrow for your suffering, you hear sarcasms
on your horsemanship, and insults on your riding,--no sympathy, no
kindness, no generous anxiety for your safety, but all that irritate and
offend,--more thought, in fact, for the petals of a flower than for the
ligaments of your knee,--then, too, is the lesson a life one, and
its fruits will be bitter memories for many a year. The events of our
existence are in reality nothing, save in our treatment of them. By
Blondel, I recognized one of those suggestive influences which mould
fate by moulding temperament. The deep reflecting German saw this: it
was clear _he_ knew that in that animal was typified all that his life
might become. Why should not I contest the prize with him? Blondel was
charged with another destiny as well as his.
I turned once more to the letter, but I could not bear to read it; so
many were the impertinent allusions to myself, my manner, my appearance,
and my conversation. Still more insulting were the speculations as to
what class or condition I belonged to. “He puzzled us completely,” wrote
the priest, “for while unmistakably vulgar in many things, there were
certain indications of reading and education about him that refuted the
notion of his being what Keldrum thought,--an escaped counter-jumper!
The Guardsman insisted he was a valet; my own impression was, the fellow
had kept a small circulating library, and gone mad with the three-volume
novels. At all events, I have given him a lesson which, whether
profitable or not to _him_, has turned out tolerably well for _me_,
If ever you chance to hear of him,--his name was Podder or Pedder, I
think,--pray let me know, for my curiosity is still unslaked about him.”
He thence went off to a sort of descriptive catalogue of my signs and
tokens, so positively insulting that I cannot recall it; the whole
winding up: “Add to all these an immense pomposity of tone, with a lisp,
and a Dublin accent, and you can scarcely mistake him.” Need I say,
benevolent reader, that fouler calumnies were never uttered, nor more
unfounded slanders ever pronounced?
It is not in this age of photography that a man need defend his
appearance. By the aid of sun and collodion, I may, perhaps, one
day convince you that I am not so devoid of personal graces as this
foul-mouthed priest would persuade you. I am, possibly, in this pledge,
exceeding the exact limits which this publication may enable me to
sustain. I may be contracting an engagement which cannot be, consistent
with its principles, fulfilled. If so, I must be your artist; but I
swear to you, that I shall not flatter. Potto, painted by himself, shall
be a true portrait. Meanwhile I have time to look out for my canvas, and
you will be patient enough to wait till it be filled.
Again to this confounded letter:--
“There is another reason” (wrote Dyke ) “why I should like to-chance
upon this fellow.” (“This fellow” meant me.) “I used to fancy myself
unequalled in the imaginative department of conversation, by the vulgar
called lying. Here, I own, with some shame, he was my match. A more
fearless, determined, go-ahead liar, I never met. Now, as one who deems
himself no small proficient in the art, I would really like to meet
him once more. We could approach each other like the augurs of old, and
agree to be candid and free-spoken together, exchanging our ideas on
this great topic, and frankly communicating any secret knowledge each
might deem that he possessed. I'd go a hundred miles to pass an evening
with him alone, to hear from his own lips the sort of early training and
discipline his mind went through,--who were his first instructors,
what his original inducements. Of one thing I feel certain: a man
thus constituted has only to put the curb upon his faculty to be most
successful in life, his perils will all lie in the exuberance of
his resources; let him simply bend himself to believe in some of the
impositions he would force upon others. Let him give his delusions the
force acquired by convictions, and there is no limit to what he may
become. Be on the lookout, therefore, for him, as a great psychological
phenomenon, the man who outlied
“Your sincerely attached friend,
“Thomas Darcy Dyke.
“P. S. I have just remembered his name. It was Potts; the villain said
from the Pozzo di Borgo family. I 'm sure with this hint you can't fail
to run him to earth; and I entreat of you spare no pains to do it.”
There followed here some more impertinent personalities as clews to my
discovery, which my indulgent reader will graciously excuse me if I do
not stop to record; enough to say they were as unfounded as they were
scurrilous.
Another and very different train of thought, however, soon banished
these considerations. This letter had been given me by Crofton, who had
already read it; he had perused all this insolent narrative about
me before handing it to me, and doubtless, in so doing, had no other
intention than to convey, in the briefest and most emphatic way to me,
that I was found out. It was simply saying, in the shortest possible
space, “Thou art the man!” Oh, the ineffable shame and misery of that
thought! Oh, the bitterness of feeling! How my character should now be
viewed and my future discussed! “Only think, Mary,” I fancied I heard
him say,--“only think who our friend should turn out to be,--this same
Potts: the fellow that vanquished Father Dyke in story-telling, and
outlied the priest! And here we have been lavishing kindness and
attentions upon one who, after all, is little better than a swindler,
sailing under false colors and fictitious credentials; for who can now
credit one syllable about his having written those verses he read for
us, or composed that tale of which he told us the opening? What a lesson
in future about extending confidence to utter strangers! What caution
and reserve should it not teach us! How guarded should we be not to
suffer ourselves to be fascinated by the captivations of manner and the
insinuating charms of address! If Potts had been less prepossessing
in appearance, less gifted and agreeable,--if, instead of being a
consummate man of the world, with the breeding of a courtier and the
knowledge of a scholar, he had been a pedantic puppy with a lisp and a
Dublin accent--” Oh, ignominy and disgrace! these were the very words
of the priest in describing me, which came so aptly to my memory, and I
grew actually sick with shame as I recalled them. I next became angry.
Was this conduct of Crofton's delicate or considerate? Was it becoming
in one who had treated me as his friend thus abruptly to conclude our
intimacy by an insult? Handing me such a letter was saying, “There's a
portrait; can you say any one it resembles?” How much more generous had
he said, “Tell me all about this wager of yours with Father Dyke; I want
to hear _your_ account of it, for old Tom is not the most veracious of
mortals, nor the most mealy-mouthed of commentators. Just give me _your_
version of the incident, Potts, and I am satisfied it will be the true
one.” That's what he might, that's what he ought to have said. I can
swear it is what I, Potts, would have done by _him_, or by any other
stranger whose graceful manners and pleasing qualities had won my esteem
and conciliated my regard. I 'd have said, “Potts, I have seen enough
of life to know how unjust it is to measure men by one and the same
standard. The ardent, impassioned nature cannot be ranked with the cold
and calculating spirit The imaginative man has the same necessity for
the development of his creative faculty as the strongly muscular man
of bodily exercise. He must blow off the steam of his invention, or the
boiler will not contain it. You and Le Sage and Alexandre Dumas are a
category. You are not the Clerks of a Census Commission, or Masters
in Equity. You are the chartered libertines of fiction. Shake out your
reefs, and go free,--free as the winds that waft you!”
To all these reflections came the last one. “I must be up and doing, and
that speedily! I will recover Blondel, if I devote my life to the
task. I will regain him, let the cost be what it may. Mounted upon that
creature, I will ride up to the Rosary; the time shall be evening; a sun
just sunk behind the horizon shall have left in the upper atmosphere a
golden and rosy light, which shall tip his mane with a softened lustre,
and shed over my own features a rich Titian-like tint. 'I come,' will I
say, 'to vindicate the fair fame of one who once owned your affection.
It is Potts, the man of impulse, the child of enthusiasm, who now
presents himself before you. Poor, if you like to call him so, in
worldly craft or skill, poor in its possessions, but rich, boundlessly
rich, in the stores of an ideal wealth. Blondel and I are the embodiment
of this idea. These fancies you have stigmatized as lies are but the
pilot balloons by which great minds calculate the currents in that upper
air they are about to soar in.'”
And, last of all, there was a sophistry that possessed a great charm for
my mind, in this wise: to enable a man, humble as myself, to reach that
station in which a career of adventure should open before him, some
ground must be won, some position gained. That I assume to be something
that I am not, is simply to say that I trade upon credit. If my future
transactions be all honorable and trustworthy,--if by a fiction,
only known to my own heart, I acquire that eminence from which I
can distribute benefits to hundreds,--who is to stigmatize me as a
fraudulent trader?
Is it not a well-known fact, that many of those now acknowledged as the
wealthiest of men, might, at some time or other of their lives, have
been declared insolvent had the real state of their affairs been known?
The world, however, had given them its confidence, and time did the
rest. Let the same world be but as generous towards _me!_ The day will
come,--I say it confidently and boldly,--the day will come when I can
“show my books,” and “point to my balance-sheet.” When Archimedes asked
for a base on which to rest his lever, he merely uttered the great
truth, that some one fixed point is essential to the success of a motive
power.
It is by our use or abuse of opportunity we are either good or bad
men. The physician is not less conversant with noxious drags than the
poisoner; the difference lies in the fact that the one employs his skill
to alleviate suffering, the other to work out evil and destruction. If
I, therefore, but make some feigned station in life the groundwork from
which I can become the benefactor of my fellowmen, I shall be good
and blameless. My heart tells me how well and how fairly I mean by the
world: I would succor the weak, console the afflicted, and lift up the
oppressed; and if to carry out grand and glorious conceptions of this
kind all that be needed is a certain self-delusion which may extend
its influence to others, “Go in,” I say, “Potts; be all that your fancy
suggests,--
Dives, honoratus, pulcher, rex deniqne regain,
--Be rich, honored and fair, a prince or a begum,--but, above all, never
distrust your destiny, or doubt your star.”