"Can you fancy, young people," said Godfather Garbel, winking with his
prominent eyes, and moving his feet backwards and forwards in his square
shoes, so that you could hear the squeak-leather half a room off--"can
you fancy my having been a very little boy, and having a godmother? But
I had, and she sent me presents on my birthdays too. And young people
did not get presents when I was a child as they get them now. _Grumph_!
We had not half so many toys as you have, but we kept them twice as
long. I think we were fonder of them too, though they were neither so
handsome, nor so expensive as these new-fangled affairs you are always
breaking about the house. _Grumph_!
"You see, middle-class folk were more saving then. My mother turned and
dyed her dresses, and when she had done with them, the servant was very
glad to have them; but, bless me! your mother's maids dress so much
finer than their mistress, I do not think they would say `thank you' for
her best Sunday silk. The bustle's the wrong shape. _Grumph_!
"What's that you are laughing at, little miss? It's _pannier_, is it?
Well, well, bustle or pannier, call it what you like; but only donkeys
wore panniers in my young days, and many's the ride I've had in them.
"Now as I say, my relations and friends thought twice before they pulled
out five shillings in a toy-shop, but they didn't forget me, all the
same.
"On my eighth birthday my mother gave me a bright blue comforter of her
own knitting.
"My little sister gave me a ball. My mother had cut out the divisions
from various bits in the rag bag, and my sister had done some of the
seaming. It was stuffed with bran, and had a cork inside which had
broken from old age, and could no longer fit the pickle jar it belonged
to. This made the ball bound when we played `prisoner's base.'
"My father gave me the broken driving-whip that had lost the lash, and
an old pair of his gloves, to play coachman with; these I had long
wished for, since next to sailing in a ship, in my ideas, came the
honour and glory of driving a coach.
"My whole soul, I must tell you, was set upon being a sailor. In those
days I had rather put to sea once on Farmer Fodder's duck-pond than ride
twice atop of his hay-waggon; and between the smell of hay and the
softness of it, and the height you are up above other folk, and the
danger of tumbling off if you don't look out--for hay is elastic as well
as soft--you don't easily beat a ride on a hay-waggon for pleasure. But
as I say, I'd rather put to sea on the duck-pond, though the best craft
I could borrow was the pigsty-door, and a pole to punt with, and the
village boys jeering when I got aground, which was most of the time--
besides the duck-pond never having a wave on it worth the name, punt as
you would, and so shallow you could not have got drowned in it to save
your life.
"You're laughing now, little master, are you? But let me tell you that
drowning's the death for a sailor, whatever you may think. So I've
always maintained, and have given every navigable sea in the known world
a chance, though here I am after all, laid up in arm-chairs and
feather-beds, to wait for bronchitis or some other slow poison.
_Grumph_!
"Well, we must all go as we're called, sailors or landsmen, and as I was
saying if I was never to sail a ship, I would have liked to drive a
coach. A mail coach, serving His Majesty. (Her Majesty now God bless
her!) carrying the Royal Arms, and bound to go, rough weather and fair.
Many's the time I've done it (in play you understand) with that whip and
those gloves. Dear! dear! The pains I took to teach my sister Patty to
be a highwayman, and jump out on me from the drying ground hedge in the
dusk with a `Stand and deliver!' which she couldn't get out of her
throat for fright, and wouldn't jump hard enough for fear of hurting me.
"The whip and the gloves gave me joy, I can tell you; but there was more
to come.
"Kitty the servant gave me a shell that she had had by her for years.
How I had coveted that shell! It had this remarkable property: when you
put it to your ear you could hear the roaring of the sea. I had never
seen the sea, but Kitty was born in a fisherman's cottage, and many an
hour have I sat by the kitchen fire whilst she told me strange stories
of the mighty ocean, and ever and anon she would snatch the shell from
the mantelpiece and clap it to my ear, crying, `There child, you
couldn't hear it plainer than that. It's the very moral!'
"When Kitty gave me that shell for my very own I felt that life had
little more to offer. I held it to every ear in the house, including
the cat's; and, seeing Dick the sexton's son go by with an armful of
straw to stuff Guy Fawkes, I ran out, and in my anxiety to make him
share the treat, and learn what the sea is like, I clapped the shell to
his ear so smartly and unexpectedly, that he, thinking me to have struck
him, knocked me down then and there with his bundle of straw. When he
understood the rights of the case, he begged my pardon handsomely, and
gave me two whole treacle sticks and part of a third out of his
breeches' pocket, in return for which I forgave him freely, and promised
to let him hear the sea roar on every Saturday half-holiday till farther
notice.
"And, speaking of Dick and the straw reminds me that my birthday falls
on the fifth of November. From this it came about that I always had to
bear a good many jokes about being burnt as a Guy Fawkes; but, on the
other hand, I was allowed to make a small bonfire of my own, and to have
eight potatoes to roast therein, and eight-pennyworth of crackers to let
off in the evening. A potato and a pennyworth of crackers for every
year of my life.
"On this eighth birthday, having got all the above named gifts, I cried,
in the fulness of my heart, `There never was such a day!' And yet there
was more to come, for the evening coach brought me a parcel, and the
parcel was my godmother's picture-book.
"My godmother was a gentlewoman of small means; but she was
accomplished. She could make very spirited sketches, and knew how to
colour them after they were outlined and shaded in Indian ink. She had
a pleasant talent for versifying. She was very industrious. I have it
from her own lips that she copied the figures in my picture-book from
prints in several different houses at which she visited. They were
fancy portraits of characters, most of which were familiar to my mind.
There were Guy Fawkes, Punch, his then Majesty the King, Bogy, the Man
in the Moon, the Clerk of the Weather Office, a Dunce, and Old Father
Christmas. Beneath each sketch was a stanza of my godmother's own
composing.
"My godmother was very ingenious. She had been mainly guided in her
choice of these characters by the prints she happened to meet with, as
she did not trust herself to design a figure. But if she could not get
exactly what she wanted, she had a clever knack of tracing an outline of
the attitude from some engraving, and altering the figure to suit her
purpose in the finished sketch. She was the soul of truthfulness, and
the notes she added to the index of contents in my picture-book spoke at
once for her honesty in avowing obligations, and her ingenuity in
availing herself of opportunities.
"They ran thus:--
"Number 1.--Guy Fawkes. Outlined from a figure of a warehouseman
rolling a sherry cask into Mr Rudd's wine vaults. I added the hat,
cloak, and boots in the finished drawing.
"Number 2.--Punch. I sketched him from the life.
"Number 3.--His Most Gracious Majesty the King. On a quart jug bought
in Cheapside.
"Number 4.--Bogy, _with bad boys in the bag on his back_. Outlined from
Christian bending under his burden, in my mother's old copy of the
`Pilgrim's Progress.' The face from Giant Despair.
"Number 5 and Number 6.--The Man in the Moon, and The Clerk of the
Weather Office. From a book of caricatures belonging to Dr James.
"Number 7.--A Dunce. From a steel engraving framed in rosewood that
hangs in my Uncle Wilkinson's parlour.
"Number 8.--Old Father Christmas. From a German book at Lady
Littleham's."