Produced by James Rusk and David Widger
A ROGUE’S LIFE
by Wilkie Collins
INTRODUCTORY WORDS.
The following pages were written more than twenty years since, and were
then published periodically in _Household Words._
In the original form of publication the Rogue was very favorably
received. Year after year, I delayed the republication, proposing,
at the suggestion of my old friend, Mr. Charles Reade, to enlarge
the present sketch of the hero’s adventures in Australia. But the
opportunity of carrying out this project has proved to be one of the
lost opportunities of my life. I republish the story with its
original conclusion unaltered, but with such occasional additions and
improvements as will, I hope, render it more worthy of attention at the
present time.
The critical reader may possibly notice a tone of almost boisterous
gayety in certain parts of these imaginary Confessions. I can only
plead, in defense, that the story offers the faithful reflection of a
very happy time in my past life. It was written at Paris, when I had
Charles Dickens for a near neighbor and a daily companion, and when
my leisure hours were joyously passed with many other friends, all
associated with literature and art, of whom the admirable comedian,
Regnier, is now the only survivor. The revising of these pages has been
to me a melancholy task. I can only hope that they may cheer the sad
moments of others. The Rogue may surely claim two merits, at least,
in the eyes of the new generation--he is never serious for two moments
together; and he “doesn’t take long to read.” W. C.
GLOUCESTER PLACE, LONDON, _March_ 6th, 1879.
A ROGUE’S LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
I AM going to try if I can’t write something about myself. My life
has been rather a strange one. It may not seem particularly useful or
respectable; but it has been, in some respects, adventurous; and that
may give it claims to be read, even in the most prejudiced circles. I
am an example of some of the workings of the social system of this
illustrious country on the individual native, during the early part of
the present century; and, if I may say so without unbecoming vanity, I
should like to quote myself for the edification of my countrymen.
Who am I.
I am remarkably well connected, I can tell you. I came into this world
with the great advantage of having Lady Malkinshaw for a grandmother,
her ladyship’s daughter for a mother, and Francis James Softly, Esq., M.
D. (commonly called Doctor Softly), for a father. I put my father last,
because he was not so well connected as my mother, and my grandmother
first, because she was the most nobly-born person of the three. I have
been, am still, and may continue to be, a Rogue; but I hope I am not
abandoned enough yet to forget the respect that is due to rank. On this
account, I trust, nobody will show such want of regard for my feelings
as to expect me to say much about my mother’s brother. That inhuman
person committed an outrage on his family by making a fortune in the
soap and candle trade. I apologize for mentioning him, even in an
accidental way. The fact is, he left my sister, Annabella, a legacy of
rather a peculiar kind, saddled with certain conditions which indirectly
affected me; but this passage of family history need not be produced
just yet. I apologize a second time for alluding to money matters before
it was absolutely necessary. Let me get back to a pleasing and reputable
subject, by saying a word or two more about my father.
I am rather afraid that Doctor Softly was not a clever medical man; for
in spite of his great connections, he did not get a very magnificent
practice as a physician.
As a general practitioner, he might have bought a comfortable business,
with a house and snug surgery-shop attached; but the son-in-law of Lady
Malkinshaw was obliged to hold up his head, and set up his carriage, and
live in a street near a fashionable square, and keep an expensive
and clumsy footman to answer the door, instead of a cheap and tidy
housemaid. How he managed to “maintain his position” (that is the right
phrase, I think), I never could tell. His wife did not bring him a
farthing. When the honorable and gallant baronet, her father, died, he
left the widowed Lady Malkinshaw with her worldly affairs in a curiously
involved state. Her son (of whom I feel truly ashamed to be obliged to
speak again so soon) made an effort to extricate his mother--involved
himself in a series of pecuniary disasters, which commercial people
call, I believe, transactions--struggled for a little while to get out
of them in the character of an independent gentleman--failed--and then
spiritlessly availed himself of the oleaginous refuge of the soap and
candle trade. His mother always looked down upon him after this; but
borrowed money of him also--in order to show, I suppose, that her
maternal interest in her son was not quite extinct. My father tried
to follow her example--in his wife’s interests, of course; but the
soap-boiler brutally buttoned up his pockets, and told my father to go
into business for himself. Thus it happened that we were certainly a
poor family, in spite of the fine appearance we made, the fashionable
street we lived in, the neat brougham we kept, and the clumsy and
expensive footman who answered our door.
What was to be done with me in the way of education?
If my father had consulted his means, I should have been sent to a
cheap commercial academy; but he had to consult his relationship to Lady
Malkinshaw; so I was sent to one of the most fashionable and famous of
the great public schools. I will not mention it by name, because I don’t
think the masters would be proud of my connection with it. I ran away
three times, and was flogged three times. I made four aristocratic
connections, and had four pitched battles with them: three thrashed me,
and one I thrashed. I learned to play at cricket, to hate rich people,
to cure warts, to write Latin verses, to swim, to recite speeches, to
cook kidneys on toast, to draw caricatures of the masters, to construe
Greek plays, to black boots, and to receive kicks and serious advice
resignedly. Who will say that the fashionable public school was of no
use to me after that?
After I left school, I had the narrowest escape possible of intruding
myself into another place of accommodation for distinguished people; in
other words, I was very nearly being sent to college. Fortunately for
me, my father lost a lawsuit just in the nick of time, and was obliged
to scrape together every farthing of available money that he possessed
to pay for the luxury of going to law. If he could have saved his seven
shillings, he would certainly have sent me to scramble for a place in
the pit of the great university theater; but his purse was empty, and
his son was not eligible therefore for admission, in a gentlemanly
capacity, at the doors.
The next thing was to choose a profession.
Here the Doctor was liberality itself, in leaving me to my own devices.
I was of a roving adventurous temperament, and I should have liked to
go into the army. But where was the money to come from, to pay for my
commission? As to enlisting in the ranks, and working my way up,
the social institutions of my country obliged the grandson of Lady
Malkinshaw to begin military life as an officer and gentleman, or not
to begin it at all. The army, therefore, was out of the question. The
Church? Equally out of the question: since I could not pay for admission
to the prepared place of accommodation for distinguished people, and
could not accept a charitable free pass, in consequence of my high
connections. The Bar? I should be five years getting to it, and should
have to spend two hundred a year in going circuit before I had earned a
farthing. Physic? This really seemed the only gentlemanly refuge left;
and yet, with the knowledge of my father’s experience before me, I was
ungrateful enough to feel a secret dislike for it. It is a degrading
confession to make; but I remember wishing I was not so highly
connected, and absolutely thinking that the life of a commercial
traveler would have suited me exactly, if I had not been a poor
gentleman. Driving about from place to place, living jovially at inns,
seeing fresh faces constantly, and getting money by all this enjoyment,
instead of spending it--what a life for me, if I had been the son of a
haberdasher and the grandson of a groom’s widow!
While my father was uncertain what to do with me, a new profession was
suggested by a friend, which I shall repent not having been allowed
to adopt, to the last day of my life. This friend was an eccentric old
gentleman of large property, much respected in our family. One day,
my father, in my presence, asked his advice about the best manner of
starting me in life, with due credit to my connections and sufficient
advantage to myself.
“Listen to my experience,” said our eccentric friend, “and, if you are
a wise man, you will make up your mind as soon as you have heard me. I
have three sons. I brought my eldest son up to the Church; he is said to
be getting on admirably, and he costs me three hundred a year. I brought
my second son up to the Bar; he is said to be getting on admirably,
and he costs me four hundred a year. I brought my third son up to
_Quadrilles_--he has married an heiress, and he costs me nothing.”
Ah, me! if that worthy sage’s advice had only been followed--if I had
been brought up to Quadrilles!--if I had only been cast loose on the
ballrooms of London, to qualify under Hymen, for a golden degree! Oh!
you young ladies with money, I was five feet ten in my stockings; I was
great at small-talk and dancing; I had glossy whiskers, curling locks,
and a rich voice! Ye girls with golden guineas, ye nymphs with crisp
bank-notes, mourn over the husband you have lost among you--over the
Rogue who has broken the laws which, as the partner of a landed or
fund-holding woman, he might have helped to make on the benches of
the British Parliament! Oh! ye hearths and homes sung about in so
many songs--written about in so many books--shouted about in so many
speeches, with accompaniment of so much loud cheering: what a settler
on the hearth-rug; what a possessor of property; what a bringer-up of a
family, was snatched away from you, when the son of Dr. Softly was lost
to the profession of Quadrilles!
It ended in my resigning myself to the misfortune of being a doctor.
If I was a very good boy and took pains, and carefully mixed in the best
society, I might hope in the course of years to succeed to my father’s
brougham, fashionably-situated house, and clumsy and expensive footman.
There was a prospect for a lad of spirit, with the blood of the early
Malkinshaws (who were Rogues of great capacity and distinction in the
feudal times) coursing adventurous through every vein! I look back on my
career, and when I remember the patience with which I accepted a medical
destiny, I appear to myself in the light of a hero. Nay, I even went
beyond the passive virtue of accepting my destiny--I actually studied, I
made the acquaintance of the skeleton, I was on friendly terms with the
muscular system, and the mysteries of Physiology dropped in on me in the
kindest manner whenever they had an evening to spare.
Even this was not the worst of it. I disliked the abstruse studies of my
new profession; but I absolutely hated the diurnal slavery of qualifying
myself, in a social point of view, for future success in it. My fond
medical parent insisted on introducing me to his whole connection. I
went round visiting in the neat brougham--with a stethoscope and medical
review in the front-pocket, with Doctor Softly by my side, keeping
his face well in view at the window--to canvass for patients, in the
character of my father’s hopeful successor. Never have I been so ill at
ease in prison, as I was in that carriage. I have felt more at home
in the dock (such is the natural depravity and perversity of my
disposition) than ever I felt in the drawing-rooms of my father’s
distinguished patrons and respectable friends. Nor did my miseries end
with the morning calls. I was commanded to attend all dinner-parties,
and to make myself agreeable at all balls. The dinners were the worst
trial. Sometimes, indeed, we contrived to get ourselves asked to the
houses of high and mighty entertainers, where we ate the finest French
dishes and drank the oldest vintages, and fortified ourselves sensibly
and snugly in that way against the frigidity of the company. Of these
repasts I have no hard words to say; it is of the dinners we gave
ourselves, and of the dinners which people in our rank of life gave to
us, that I now bitterly complain.
Have you ever observed the remarkable adherence to set forms of speech
which characterizes the talkers of arrant nonsense! Precisely the same
sheepish following of one given example distinguishes the ordering of
genteel dinners.
When we gave a dinner at home, we had gravy soup, turbot and
lobster-sauce, haunch of mutton, boiled fowls and tongue, lukewarm
oyster-patties and sticky curry for side-dishes; wild duck,
cabinet-pudding, jelly, cream and tartlets. All excellent things, except
when you have to eat them continually. We lived upon them entirely in
the season. Every one of our hospitable friends gave us a return dinner,
which was a perfect copy of ours--just as ours was a perfect copy of
theirs, last year. They boiled what we boiled, and we roasted what they
roasted. We none of us ever changed the succession of the courses--or
made more or less of them--or altered the position of the fowls opposite
the mistress and the haunch opposite the master. My stomach used to
quail within me, in those times, when the tureen was taken off and
the inevitable gravy-soup smell renewed its daily acquaintance with my
nostrils, and warned me of the persistent eatable formalities that were
certain to follow. I suppose that honest people, who have known what it
is to get no dinner (being a Rogue, I have myself never wanted for one),
have gone through some very acute suffering under that privation. It may
be some consolation to them to know that, next to absolute starvation,
the same company-dinner, every day, is one of the hardest trials that
assail human endurance. I date my first serious determination to throw
over the medical profession at the earliest convenient opportunity,
from the second season’s series of dinners at which my aspirations, as a
rising physician, unavoidably and regularly condemned me to be present.