How shall I describe the emotions with which I read the first novel I ever
perused! A school-fellow had secretly brought with him from home after the
holidays, the novel of Peregrine Pickle, which he carefully concealed in
his trunk. He at first lent it to some of the elder boys, who read it, and
enlarging on some of the most despicable incidents to be found, disgusted
my meek spirit of it, by their report. It seemed to violate all my
cherished ideas of beauty and soft luxury. I was then about fourteen years
of age, and my companions persuaded me to a perusal. I took it up
listlessly, expecting but little pleasure, but what language can paint the
manner in which I was entranced by it? I read it over and over with
increased delight, my entire soul and frame of mind and passions seemed to
be suddenly changed and remodelled. I forgot Ariadne and Telemachus, and
Tom Pipes and Hatchway became my idols, the undivided objects of my
admiration.
I had hitherto been a remarkably quiet and inoffensive boy; Telemachus I
considered never took delight in robbing orchards. I had the confidence of
my teachers from my uniform rejection of any participation in the rude
affrays, the catastrophe of which dramas was in general an almost universal
flogging match. My admiration naturally led to its probable result, a
desire to imitate--I firmly resolved to become a Peregrine. I soon promoted
myself to be the leader of every mad prank that the wit of a spirit
suddenly excited to activity could devise. In the first fortnight I got
flogged for tying a huge mass of brown paper to the tail of the favourite
cat of the master's lady, with which she rushed with an insane and
terrifying distraction into the drawing-room. We owed a spite to a
neighbouring milkman for tale-bearing, and we rendered his pump, the great
source of profit, useless, by filling it with soot and mire. The old woman
who served the school with tarts, and who, in her endeavours to please all
palates, brought some varieties heated over a charcoal fire, had her
apparatus blown to atoms by an ounce of gunpowder, insinuated with so much
art, that although done before her face, she could attach no one with the
offence. All became riot, waste, and destruction under the guidance of my
beloved Peregrine.
But, ah! the poor Count--amiable, patient, and long-suffering Gaul! He was
an unhappy refugee, who had sought a home, by becoming the reviled,
insulted teacher of his native tongue to a mob of heartless ruffians. How
well do I remember his neat but thread-bare coat and pigtail; his stooping
gait, not the decrepitude of age, but as though it sprang from the
abasement of his fortune; his endurance of injury to a certain point, when
patience suddenly forsook him, and his, to us, irresistibly comic rage and
exasperation! What would that generous seaman Pipes have thought a
defenceless Frenchman fit for, but as the object of spirited and
well-conducted pranks? Nothing cruel or revengeful, but only to show our
own superior wit and address in concerted and premeditated annoyance.
I had gained with a most surprising rapidity upon the confidence of the
most conspicuous rioters in the school. There was something so noble and
daring in all my designs, that they seemed to yield willingly to so
superior a spirit. The sudden alteration in my manners had been noticed
with secret wonder by the masters, and they, thinking to check my fatal
tendencies at the outset, had inflicted on me several severe and
well-merited chastisements. I converted even these into means of extending
my influence. I had borne them like a hero, a very Peregrine. No groan--no
sigh--no bellowing promise of amendment, had lessened my dignity. Under the
torture, I was sullen and silent. The stoutest heart in the school envied
my manhood and composure.
The poor French teacher had been the hereditary object of annoyance for
several generations of boys. The meekest and most chicken-hearted scrubs in
the school tried their apprenticeship to mischief upon him, and were
tutored to more noble game by beginning with the Count. They split and cut
his pens into a thousand fantastic shapes during a momentary absence; they
filled his snuff with the most odious pulverulents. They placed on his desk
rude, but expressive designs of a guillotine, with a meagre fellow in
ruffles and no shirt, running in the extremity of speed from the spot.
These, and a thousand exhibitions of budding genius, and original sin, were
our daily subjects of merriment and applause. I taught them nobler arts, or
rather the spirit of Pickle which spake within me. It was nothing to annoy
on such a petty and momentary scale; let the art and forethought of
Hatchway be exhibited.
The amiable Frenchman was a zealous Catholic, and upon certain festivals
always received from a Catholic gentleman of rank and fortune in the
neighbourhood, an invitation to visit him. On these occasions his dress was
the most ludicrous imaginable, being compounded of remnants of pristine
finery, such as his wardrobe could afford, without attention to uniformity,
or consistency of colour. Above all, he possessed a pair of light pea-green
small clothes, on which he much prided himself, and I swore by old Trunnion
to be their murderer. His custom on the aforesaid visits was to dress
early, and then hastily to dismiss his lessons, and proceed immediately.
Having gained intelligence of an approaching field day, we prepared a
strong solution of gum, with which we varnished the bottom of a leather
chair upon which he sat in the school. The morning came, his green _media_
and white silk stockings were hailed with the most extravagant but secret
exultation. He seated himself, and let us run as we pleased through our
tasks, with an unusual portion of smiles and pleasantries, and then looking
at his watch, he attempted hastily to rise! in vain--there seemed an
indissoluble bond of union between him and the chair; the most grotesque
series of strugglings ensued, and by one desperate effort he was erect, a
thin coating of the black leather which he had torn off, firmly adhering to
his dress! Nothing abated my delight at my success, but the thought that my
magnus Apollo, Pickle, was not there to enjoy it; to see the poor Count
stand mute with a mixed passion of rage and distress for several seconds,
and then to witness his fruitless attempts to view the full extent of the
injury, which, notwithstanding the surprising flexibility of his vertebrae,
he was unable to compass. Tom Pipes I felt certain would have died on the
spot, he must have split.
_The Inspector_.
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