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THE THREE CLERKS
BY ANTHONY TROLLOPE
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY W. TEIGNMOUTH SHORE
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
Born London, April 24, 1815 Died London, December 6, 1882
INTRODUCTION
There is the proper mood and the just environment for the reading as
well as for the writing of works of fiction, and there can be no better
place for the enjoying of a novel by Anthony Trollope than under a tree
in Kensington Gardens of a summer day. Under a tree in the avenue that
reaches down from the Round Pond to the Long Water. There, perhaps more
than anywhere else, lingers the early Victorian atmosphere. As we sit
beneath our tree, we see in the distance the dun, red-brick walls of
Kensington Palace, where one night Princess Victoria was awakened to
hear that she was Queen; there in quaint, hideously ugly Victorian
rooms are to be seen Victorian dolls and other playthings; the whole
environment is early Victorian. Here to the mind's eye how easy it is to
conjure up ghosts of men in baggy trousers and long flowing whiskers, of
prim women in crinolines, in hats with long trailing feathers and
with ridiculous little parasols, or with Grecian-bends and
chignons--church-parading to and fro beneath the trees or by the water's
edge--perchance, even the fascinating Lady Crinoline and the elegant Mr.
Macassar Jones, whose history has been written by Clerk Charley in the
pages we are introducing to the 'gentle reader'. As a poetaster of an
earlier date has written:--
Where Kensington high o'er the neighbouring lands
'Midst green and sweets, a royal fabric, stands,
And sees each spring, luxuriant in her bowers,
A snow of blossoms, and a wild of flowers,
The dames of Britain oft in crowds repair
To gravel walks, and unpolluted air.
Here, while the town in damps and darkness lies,
They breathe in sunshine, and see azure skies;
Each walk, with robes of various dyes bespread,
Seems from afar a moving tulip bed,
Where rich brocades and glossy damasks glow,
And chintz, the rival of the showery bow.
Indeed, the historian of social manners, when dealing with the Victorian
period, will perforce have recourse to the early volumes of Punch and to
the novels of Thackeray, Dickens, and Trollope.
There are certain authors of whom personally we know little, but of
whose works we cannot ever know enough, such a one for example as
Shakespeare; others of whose lives we know much, but for whose works
we can have but scant affection: such is Doctor Johnson; others who are
intimate friends in all their aspects, as Goldsmith and Charles Lamb;
yet others, who do not quite come home to our bosoms, whose writings we
cannot entirely approve, but for whom and for whose works we find a soft
place somewhere in our hearts, and such a one is Anthony Trollope. His
novels are not for every-day reading, any more than are those of Marryat
and Borrow--to take two curious examples. There are times and moods and
places in which it would be quite impossible to read _The Three Clerks_;
others in which this story is almost wholly delightful. With those who
are fond of bed-reading Trollope should ever be a favourite, and it is
no small compliment to say this, for small is the noble army of authors
who have given us books which can enchant in the witching hour between
waking and slumber. It is probable that all lovers of letters have their
favourite bed-books. Thackeray has charmingly told us of his. Of the few
novels that can really be enjoyed when the reader is settling down for
slumber almost all have been set forth by writers who--consciously or
unconsciously--have placed character before plot; Thackeray himself,
Miss Austen, Borrow, Marryat, Sterne, Dickens, Goldsmith and--Trollope.
Books are very human in their way, as what else should they be, children
of men and women as they are? Just as with human friends so with book
friends, first impressions are often misleading; good literary coin
sometimes seems to ring untrue, but the untruth is in the ear of the
reader, not of the writer. For instance, Trollope has many odd and
irritating tricks which are apt to scare off those who lack perseverance
and who fail to understand that there must be something admirable
in that which was once much admired by the judicious. He shares with
Thackeray the sinful habit of pulling up his readers with a wrench by
reminding them that what is set before them is after all mere fiction
and that the characters in whose fates they are becoming interested
are only marionettes. With Dickens and others he shares the custom, so
irritating to us of to-day, of ticketing his personages with clumsy,
descriptive labels, such as, in _The Three Clerks_, Mr. Chaffanbrass,
Sir Gregory Hardlines, Sir Warwick West End, Mr. Neverbend, Mr. Whip
Vigil, Mr. Nogo and Mr. Gitemthruet. He must plead guilty, also, to some
bad ways peculiarly his own, or which he made so by the thoroughness
with which he indulged in them. He moralizes in his own person in
deplorable manner: is not this terrible:--'Poor Katie!--dear, darling,
bonnie Katie!--sweet, sweetest, dearest child! why, oh, why, has that
mother of thine, that tender-hearted loving mother, put thee unguarded
in the way of such perils as this? Has she not sworn to herself that
over thee at least she would watch as a hen over her young, so that no
unfortunate love should quench thy young spirit, or blanch thy cheek's
bloom?' Is this not sufficient to make the gentlest reader swear to
himself?
Fortunately this and some other appalling passages occur after the story
is in full swing and after the three Clerks and those with whom
they come into contact have proved themselves thoroughly interesting
companions. Despite all his old-fashioned tricks Trollope does
undoubtedly succeed in giving blood and life to most of his characters;
they are not as a rule people of any great eccentricity or of profound
emotions; but ordinary, every-day folk, such as all of us have met,
and loved or endured. Trollope fills very adequately a space between
Thackeray and Dickens, of whom the former deals for the most part with
the upper 'ten', the latter with the lower 'ten'; Trollope with the
suburban and country-town 'ten'; the three together giving us a very
complete and detailed picture of the lives led by our grandmothers and
grandfathers, whose hearts were in the same place as our own, but whose
manners of speech, of behaviour and of dress have now entered into the
vague region known as the 'days of yore'.
_The Three Clerks_ is an excellent example of Trollope's handiwork. The
development of the plot is sufficiently skilful to maintain the reader's
interest, and the major part of the characters is lifelike, always
well observed and sometimes depicted with singular skill and insight.
Trollope himself liked the work well:--
'The plot is not so good as that of _The Macdermots_; nor are any
characters in the book equal to those of Mrs. Proudie and the Warden;
but the work has a more continued interest, and contains the first
well-described love-scene that I ever wrote. The passage in which Kate
Woodward, thinking she will die, tries to take leave of the lad she
loves, still brings tears to my eyes when I read it. I had not the heart
to kill her. I never could do that. And I do not doubt that they are
living happily together to this day.
'The lawyer Chaffanbrass made his first appearance in this novel, and I
do not think that I have cause to be ashamed of him. But this novel
now is chiefly noticeable to me from the fact that in it I introduced a
character under the name of Sir Gregory Hardlines, by which I intended
to lean very heavily on that much loathed scheme of competitive
examination, of which at that time Sir Charles Trevelyan was the
great apostle. Sir Gregory Hardlines was intended for Sir Charles
Trevelyan--as any one at the time would know who had taken an interest
in the Civil Service. 'We always call him Sir Gregory,' Lady Trevelyan
said to me afterwards when I came to know her husband. I never learned
to love competitive examination; but I became, and am, very fond of Sir
Charles Trevelyan. Sir Stafford Northcote, who is now Chancellor of
the Exchequer, was then leagued with his friend Sir Charles, and he too
appears in _The Three Clerks_ under the feebly facetious name of Sir
Warwick West End. But for all that _The Three Clerks_ was a good novel.'
Which excerpt from Trollope's _Autobiography_ serves to throw light
not only upon the novel in question, but also upon the character of its
author.
Trollope served honestly and efficiently for many a long year in the
Post Office, achieving his entrance through a farce of an examination:--
'The story of that examination', he says, 'is given accurately in the
opening chapters of a novel written by me, called _The Three Clerks_.
If any reader of this memoir would refer to that chapter and see how
Charley Tudor was supposed to have been admitted into the Internal
Navigation Office, that reader will learn how Anthony Trollope was
actually admitted into the Secretary's office of the General Post Office
in 1834.'
Poe's description of the manner in which he wrote _The Raven_ is
incredible, being probably one of his solemn and sombre jokes; equally
incredible is Trollope's confession of his humdrum, mechanical methods
of work. Doubtless he believed he was telling the whole truth, but only
here and there in his _Autobiography_ does he permit to peep out touches
of light, which complete the portrait of himself. It is impossible that
for the reader any character in fiction should live which has not been
alive to its creator; so is it with Trollope, who, speaking of his
characters, says,
'I have wandered alone among the rooks and woods, crying at their grief,
laughing at their absurdities, and thoroughly enjoying their joy. I
have been impregnated with my own creations till it has been my only
excitement to sit with the pen in my hand, and drive my team before me
at as quick a pace as I could make them travel.'
There is a plain matter-of-factness about Trollope's narratives which is
convincing, making it difficult for the reader to call himself back to
fact and to remember that he has been wandering in a world of fiction.
In _The Three Clerks_, the young men who give the tale its title are all
well drawn. To accomplish this in the cases of Alaric and Charley Tudor
was easy enough for a skilled writer, but to breathe life into Harry
Norman was difficult. At first he appears to be a lay-figure, a priggish
dummy of an immaculate hero, a failure in portraiture; but toward the
end of the book it is borne in on us that our dislike had been aroused
by the lifelike nature of the painting, dislike toward a real man,
priggish indeed in many ways, but with a very human strain of obstinacy
and obdurateness, which few writers would have permitted to have entered
into the make-up of any of their heroes. Of the other men, Undy Scott
may be named as among the very best pieces of portraiture in Victorian
fiction; touch after touch of detail is added to the picture with really
admirable skill, and Undy lives in the reader's memory as vividly as
he must have existed in the imagination of his creator. There are some
strong and curious passages in Chapter XLIV, in which the novelist
contrasts the lives and fates of Varney, Bill Sykes and Undy Scott; they
stir the blood, proving uncontestibly that Undy Scott was as real to
Trollope as he is to us: 'The figure of Undy swinging from a gibbet at
the broad end of Lombard Street would have an effect. Ah, my fingers
itch to be at the rope.'
Trollope possessed the rare and beautiful gift of painting the hearts
and souls of young girls, and of this power he has given an admirable
example in Katie Woodward. It would be foolish and cruel to attempt to
epitomize, or rather to draw in miniature, this portrait that Trollope
has drawn at full length; were it not for any other end, those that are
fond of all that is graceful and charming in young womanhood should read
_The Three Clerks_, so becoming the friend, nay, the lover of Katie. Her
sisters are not so attractive, simply because nature did not make them
so; a very fine, faithful woman, Gertrude; a dear thing, Linda. All
three worthy of their mother, she who, as we are told in a delicious
phrase, 'though adverse to a fool' 'could sympathize with folly '.
These eight portraits are grouped in the foreground of this
'conversation' piece, the background being filled with slighter but
always live figures.
Particularly striking, as being somewhat unusual with Trollope, is the
depiction of the public-house, 'The Pig and Whistle', in Norfolk Street,
the landlady, Mrs. Davis, and the barmaid, Norah Geraghty. We can almost
smell the gin, the effluvia of stale beer, the bad tobacco, hear
the simpers and see the sidlings of Norah, feel sick with and at
Charley:--he 'got up and took her hand; and as he did so, he saw that
her nails were dirty. He put his arms round her waist and kissed her;
and as he caressed her, his olfactory nerves perceived that the pomatum
in her hair was none of the best ... and then he felt very sick'. But,
oh, why 'olfactory nerves'? Was it vulgar in early Victorian days to
call a nose a nose?
How far different would have been Dickens's treatment of such characters
and such a scene; out of Mrs. Davis and Norah he would have extracted
fun, and it would never have entered into his mind to have brought such
a man as Charley into contact with them in a manner that must hurt that
young hero's susceptibilities. Thackeray would have followed a third
way, judging by his treatment of the Fotheringay and Captain Costigan,
partly humorous, partly satirical, partly serious.
Trollope was not endowed with any spark of wit, his satire tends towards
the obvious, and his humour is mild, almost unconscious, as if he could
depict for us what of the humorous came under his observation without
himself seeing the fun in it. Where he sets forth with intent to be
humorous he sometimes attains almost to the tragic; there are few things
so sad as a joke that misses fire or a jester without sense of humour.
Of the genius of a writer of fiction there is scarce any other test so
sure as this of the reality of his characters. Few are the authors that
have created for us figures of fiction that are more alive to us than
the historic shadows of the past, whose dead bones historians do not
seem to be able to clothe with flesh and blood. Trollope hovers on the
border line between genius and great talent, or rather it would be more
fair to say that with regard to him opinions may justly differ. For
our own part we hold that his was not talent streaked with genius, but
rather a jog-trot genius alloyed with mediocrity. He lacked the supreme
unconsciousness of supreme genius, for of genius as of talent there are
degrees. There are characters in _The Three Clerks_ that live; those
who have read the tale must now and again when passing Norfolk Street,
Strand, regret that it would be waste of time to turn down that rebuilt
thoroughfare in search of 'The Pig and Whistle', which was 'one of these
small tranquil shrines of Bacchus in which the god is worshipped with as
constant a devotion, though with less noisy demonstration of zeal than
in his larger and more public temples'. Alas; lovers of Victorian
London must lament that such shrines grow fewer day by day; the great
thoroughfares know them no more; they hide nervously in old-world
corners, and in them you will meet old-world characters, who not seldom
seem to have lost themselves on their way to the pages of Charles
Dickens.
Despite the advent of electric tramways, Hampton would still be
recognized by the three clerks, 'the little village of Hampton, with its
old-fashioned country inn, and its bright, quiet, grassy river.' Hampton
is now as it then was, the 'well-loved resort of cockneydom'.
So let us alight from the tramcar at Hampton, and look about on the
outskirts of the village for 'a small old-fashioned brick house,
abutting on the road, but looking from its front windows on to a lawn
and garden, which stretched down to the river'. Surbiton Cottage it is
called. Let us peep in at that merry, happy family party; and laugh at
Captain Cuttwater, waking from his placid sleep, rubbing his eyes in
wonderment, and asking, 'What the devil is all the row about?' But it is
only with our mind's eye that we can see Surbiton Cottage--a cottage
in the air it is, but more substantial to some of us than many a real
jerry-built villa of red brick and stucco.
Old-fashioned seem to us the folk who once dwelt there, old-fashioned in
all save that their hearts were true and their outlook on life sane and
clean; they live still, though their clothes be of a quaint fashion and
their talk be of yesterday.
Who knows but that they will live long after we who love them shall be
dead and turned to dust?
W. TEIGNMOUTH SHORE.
CONTENTS
I. THE WEIGHTS AND MEASURES
II. THE INTERNAL NAVIGATION
III. THE WOODWARDS
IV. CAPTAIN CUTTWATER
V. BUSHEY PARK
VI. SIR GREGORY HARDLINES
VII. MR. FIDUS NEVERBEND
VIII. THE HON. UNDECIMUS SCOTT
IX. MR. MANYLODES
X. WHEAL MARY JANE
XI. THE THREE KINGS
XII. CONSOLATION
XIII. A COMMUNICATION OF IMPORTANCE
XIV. VERY SAD
XV. NORMAN RETURNS TO TOWN
XVI. THE FIRST WEDDING
XVII. THE HONOURABLE MRS. VAL AND MISS GOLIGHTLY
XVIII. A DAY WITH ONE OF THE NAVVIES.--MORNING
XIX. A DAY WITH ONE OF THE NAVVIES.--AFTERNOON
XX. A DAY WITH ONE OF THE NAVVIES.--EVENING
XXI. HAMPTON COURT BRIDGE
XXII. CRINOLINE AND MACASSAR; OR, MY AUNT'S WILL
XXIII. SURBITON COLLOQUIES
XXIV. MR. M'BUFFER ACCEPTS THE CHILTERN HUNDREDS
XXV. CHISWICK GARDENS
XXVI. KATIE'S FIRST BALL
XXVII. EXCELSIOR
XXVIII. OUTERMAN _v_. TUDOR
XXIX. EASY IS THE SLOPE OF HELL
XXX. MRS. WOODWARD'S REQUEST
XXXI. HOW APOLLO SAVED THE NAVVY
XXXII. THE PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE
XXXIII. TO STAND, OR NOT TO STAND
XXXIV. WESTMINSTER HALL
XXXV. MRS. VAL'S NEW CARRIAGE
XXXVI. TICKLISH STOCK
XXXVII. TRIBULATION
XXXVIII. ALARIC TUDOR TAKES A WALK
XXXIX. THE LAST BREAKFAST
XL. MR. CHAFFANBRASS
XLI. THE OLD BAILEY
XLII. A PARTING INTERVIEW
XLIII. MILLBANK
XLIV. THE CRIMINAL POPULATION IS DISPOSED OF
XLV. THE FATE OF THE NAVVIES
XLVI. MR. NOGO'S LAST QUESTION
XLVII. CONCLUSION
CHAPTER I
THE WEIGHTS AND MEASURES
All the English world knows, or knows of, that branch of the Civil
Service which is popularly called the Weights and Measures. Every
inhabitant of London, and every casual visitor there, has admired the
handsome edifice which generally goes by that name, and which stands so
conspicuously confronting the Treasury Chambers. It must be owned that
we have but a slip-slop way of christening our public buildings. When a
man tells us that he called on a friend at the Horse Guards, or looked
in at the Navy Pay, or dropped a ticket at the Woods and Forests, we put
up with the accustomed sounds, though they are in themselves, perhaps,
indefensible. The 'Board of Commissioners for Regulating Weights and
Measures', and the 'Office of the Board of Commissioners for Regulating
Weights and Measures', are very long phrases; and as, in the course of
this tale, frequent mention will be made of the public establishment in
question, the reader's comfort will be best consulted by maintaining its
popular though improper denomination.
It is generally admitted that the Weights and Measures is a
well-conducted public office; indeed, to such a degree of efficiency has
it been brought by its present very excellent secretary, the two
very worthy assistant-secretaries, and especially by its late most
respectable chief clerk, that it may be said to stand quite alone as
a high model for all other public offices whatever. It is exactly
antipodistic of the Circumlocution Office, and as such is always
referred to in the House of Commons by the gentleman representing the
Government when any attack on the Civil Service, generally, is being
made.
And when it is remembered how great are the interests entrusted to the
care of this board, and of these secretaries and of that chief clerk, it
must be admitted that nothing short of superlative excellence ought to
suffice the nation. All material intercourse between man and man must be
regulated, either justly or unjustly, by weights and measures; and as we
of all people depend most on such material intercourse, our weights and
measures should to us be a source of never-ending concern. And then that
question of the decimal coinage! is it not in these days of paramount
importance? Are we not disgraced by the twelve pennies in our
shilling, by the four farthings in our penny? One of the worthy
assistant-secretaries, the worthier probably of the two, has already
grown pale beneath the weight of this question. But he has sworn within
himself, with all the heroism of a Nelson, that he will either do or
die. He will destroy the shilling or the shilling shall destroy him.
In his more ardent moods he thinks that he hears the noise of battle
booming round him, and talks to his wife of Westminster Abbey or a
peerage. Then what statistical work of the present age has shown half
the erudition contained in that essay lately published by the secretary
on _The Market Price of Coined Metals_? What other living man could have
compiled that chronological table which is appended to it, showing the
comparative value of the metallic currency for the last three hundred
years? Compile it indeed! What other secretary or assistant-secretary
belonging to any public office of the present day, could even read it
and live? It completely silenced Mr. Muntz for a session, and even _The
Times_ was afraid to review it.
Such a state of official excellence has not, however, been obtained
without its drawbacks, at any rate in the eyes of the unambitious tyros
and unfledged novitiates of the establishment. It is a very fine thing
to be pointed out by envying fathers as a promising clerk in the
Weights and Measures, and to receive civil speeches from mammas with
marriageable daughters. But a clerk in the Weights and Measures is soon
made to understand that it is not for him to--
Sport with Amaryllis in the shade.
It behoves him that his life should be grave and his pursuits laborious,
if he intends to live up to the tone of those around him. And as,
sitting there at his early desk, his eyes already dim with figures, he
sees a jaunty dandy saunter round the opposite corner to the Council
Office at eleven o'clock, he cannot but yearn after the pleasures of
idleness.
Were it not better done, as others use?
he says or sighs. But then comes Phoebus in the guise of the chief
clerk, and touches his trembling ears--
As he pronounces lastly on each deed,
Of so much fame, in Downing Street--expect the meed.
And so the high tone of the office is maintained.
Such is the character of the Weights and Measures at this present period
of which we are now treating. The exoteric crowd of the Civil Service,
that is, the great body of clerks attached to other offices, regard
their brethren of the Weights as prigs and pedants, and look on them
much as a master's favourite is apt to be regarded by other boys at
school. But this judgement is an unfair one. Prigs and pedants, and
hypocrites too, there are among them, no doubt--but there are also among
them many stirred by an honourable ambition to do well for their country
and themselves, and to two such men the reader is now requested to
permit himself to be introduced.
Henry Norman, the senior of the two, is the second son of a gentleman
of small property in the north of England. He was educated at a public
school, and thence sent to Oxford; but before he had finished his
first year at Brasenose his father was obliged to withdraw him from it,
finding himself unable to bear the expense of a university education for
his two sons. His elder son at Cambridge was extravagant; and as, at
the critical moment when decision became necessary, a nomination in
the Weights and Measures was placed at his disposal, old Mr. Norman
committed the not uncommon injustice of preferring the interests of his
elder but faulty son to those of the younger with whom no fault had been
found, and deprived his child of the chance of combining the glories and
happiness of a double first, a fellow, a college tutor, and a don.
Whether Harry Norman gained or lost most by the change we need not now
consider, but at the age of nineteen he left Oxford and entered on his
new duties. It must not, however, be supposed that this was a step which
he took without difficulty and without pause. It is true that the grand
modern scheme for competitive examinations had not as yet been composed.
Had this been done, and had it been carried out, how awful must have
been the cramming necessary to get a lad into the Weights and Measures!
But, even as things were then, it was no easy matter for a young man to
convince the chief clerk that he had all the acquirements necessary for
the high position to which he aspired.
Indeed, that chief clerk was insatiable, and generally succeeded in
making every candidate conceive the very lowest opinion of himself and
his own capacities before the examination was over. Some, of course,
were sent away at once with ignominy, as evidently incapable. Many
retired in the middle of it with a conviction that they must seek their
fortunes at the bar, or in medical pursuits, or some other comparatively
easy walk of life. Others were rejected on the fifth or sixth day as
being deficient in conic sections, or ignorant of the exact principles
of hydraulic pressure. And even those who were retained were so
retained, as it were, by an act of grace. The Weights and Measures was,
and indeed is, like heaven--no man can deserve it. No candidate can
claim as his right to be admitted to the fruition of the appointment
which has been given to him. Henry Norman, however, was found, at the
close of his examination, to be the least undeserving of the young men
then under notice, and was duly installed in his clerkship.
It need hardly be explained, that to secure so high a level of
information as that required at the Weights and Measures, a scale
of salaries equally exalted has been found necessary. Young men
consequently enter at £100 a year. We are speaking, of course, of that
more respectable branch of the establishment called the Secretary's
Department. At none other of our public offices do men commence with
more than £90--except, of course, at those in which political confidence
is required. Political confidence is indeed as expensive as hydraulic
pressure, though generally found to be less difficult of attainment.
Henry Norman, therefore, entered on his labours under good auspices,
having £10 per annum more for the business and pleasures of life in
London than most of his young brethren of the Civil Service. Whether
this would have sufficed of itself to enable him to live up to that tone
of society to which he had been accustomed cannot now be surmised, as
very shortly after his appointment an aunt died, from whom he inherited
some £150 or £200 a year. He was, therefore, placed above all want, and
soon became a shining light even in that bright gallery of spiritualized
stars which formed the corps of clerks in the Secretary's Office at the
Weights and Measures.
Young Norman was a good-looking lad when he entered the public service,
and in a few years he grew up to be a handsome man. He was tall and thin
and dark, muscular in his proportions, and athletic in his habits. From
the date of his first enjoyment of his aunt's legacy he had a wherry on
the Thames, and was soon known as a man whom it was hard for an amateur
to beat. He had a racket in a racket-court at St. John's Wood Road,
and as soon as fortune and merit increased his salary by another £100
a year, he usually had a nag for the season. This, however, was not
attained till he was able to count five years' service in the Weights
and Measures. He was, as a boy, somewhat shy and reserved in his
manners, and as he became older he did not shake off the fault. He
showed it, however, rather among men than with women, and, indeed, in
spite of his love of exercise, he preferred the society of ladies to
any of the bachelor gaieties of his unmarried acquaintance. He was,
nevertheless, frank and confident in those he trusted, and true in his
friendships, though, considering his age, too slow in making a friend.
Such was Henry Norman at the time at which our tale begins. What were
the faults in his character it must be the business of the tale to show.
The other young clerk in this office to whom we alluded is Alaric Tudor.
He is a year older than Henry Norman, though he began his official
career a year later, and therefore at the age of twenty-one. How it
happened that he contrived to pass the scrutinizing instinct and deep
powers of examination possessed by the chief clerk, was a great wonder
to his friends, though apparently none at all to himself. He took the
whole proceeding very easily; while another youth alongside of him,
who for a year had been reading up for his promised nomination, was so
awe-struck by the severity of the proceedings as to lose his powers of
memory and forget the very essence of the differential calculus.
Of hydraulic pressure and the differential calculus young Tudor knew
nothing, and pretended to know nothing. He told the chief clerk that
he was utterly ignorant of all such matters, that his only acquirements
were a tolerably correct knowledge of English, French, and German, with
a smattering of Latin and Greek, and such an intimacy with the ordinary
rules of arithmetic and with the first books of Euclid, as he had been
able to pick up while acting as a tutor, rather than a scholar, in a
small German university.
The chief clerk raised his eyebrows and said he feared it would not
do. A clerk, however, was wanting. It was very clear that the young
gentleman who had only showed that he had forgotten his conic sections
could not be supposed to have passed. The austerity of the last few
years had deterred more young men from coming forward than the extra £10
had induced to do so. One unfortunate, on the failure of all his hopes,
had thrown himself into the Thames from the neighbouring boat-stairs;
and though he had been hooked out uninjured by the man who always
attends there with two wooden legs, the effect on his parents' minds had
been distressing. Shortly after this occurrence the chief clerk had been
invited to attend the Board, and the Chairman of the Commissioners, who,
on the occasion, was of course prompted by the Secretary, recommended
Mr. Hardlines to be a _leetle_ more lenient. In doing so the quantity of
butter which he poured over Mr. Hardlines' head and shoulders with the
view of alleviating the misery which such a communication would be sure
to inflict, was very great. But, nevertheless, Mr. Hardlines came out
from the Board a crestfallen and unhappy man. 'The service,' he said,
'would go to the dogs, and might do for anything he cared, and he did
not mind how soon. If the Board chose to make the Weights and Measures a
hospital for idiots, it might do so. He had done what little lay in his
power to make the office respectable; and now, because mammas complained
when their cubs of sons were not allowed to come in there and rob
the public and destroy the office books, he was to be thwarted and
reprimanded! He had been,' he said, 'eight-and-twenty years in office,
and was still in his prime--but he should,' he thought, 'take advantage
of the advice of his medical friends, and retire. He would never remain
there to see the Weights and Measures become a hospital for incurables!'
It was thus that Mr. Hardlines, the chief clerk, expressed himself.
He did not, however, send in a medical certificate, nor apply for a
pension; and the first apparent effect of the little lecture which he
had received from the Chairman, was the admission into the service
of Alaric Tudor. Mr. Hardlines was soon forced to admit that the
appointment was not a bad one, as before his second year was over, young
Tudor had produced a very smart paper on the merits--or demerits--of the
strike bushel.
Alaric Tudor when he entered the office was by no means so handsome a
youth as Harry Norman; but yet there was that in his face which was more
expressive, and perhaps more attractive. He was a much slighter man,
though equally tall. He could boast no adventitious capillary graces,
whereas young Norman had a pair of black curling whiskers, which
almost surrounded his face, and had been the delight and wonder of the
maidservants in his mother's house, when he returned home for his first
official holiday. Tudor wore no whiskers, and his light-brown hair was
usually cut so short as to give him something of the appearance of a
clean Puritan. But in manners he was no Puritan; nor yet in his mode of
life. He was fond of society, and at an early period of his age strove
hard to shine in it. He was ambitious; and lived with the steady aim of
making the most of such advantages as fate and fortune had put in his
way. Tudor was perhaps not superior to Norman in point of intellect; but
he was infinitely his superior in having early acquired a knowledge how
best to use such intellect as he had.
His education had been very miscellaneous, and disturbed by many causes,
but yet not ineffective or deficient. His father had been an officer in
a cavalry regiment, with a fair fortune, which he had nearly squandered
in early life. He had taken Alaric when little more than an infant, and
a daughter, his only other child, to reside in Brussels. Mrs. Tudor was
then dead, and the remainder of the household had consisted of a French
governess, a _bonne_, and a man-cook. Here Alaric remained till he
had perfectly acquired the French pronunciation, and very nearly as
perfectly forgotten the English. He was then sent to a private school
in England, where he remained till he was sixteen, returning home to
Brussels but once during those years, when he was invited to be present
at his sister's marriage with a Belgian banker. At the age of sixteen he
lost his father, who, on dying, did not leave behind him enough of the
world's wealth to pay for his own burial. His half-pay of course died
with him, and young Tudor was literally destitute.
His brother-in-law, the banker, paid for his half-year's schooling
in England, and then removed him to a German academy, at which it was
bargained that he should teach English without remuneration, and learn
German without expense. Whether he taught much English may be doubtful,
but he did learn German thoroughly; and in that, as in most other
transactions of his early life, certainly got the best of the bargain
which had been made for him.
At the age of twenty he was taken to the Brussels bank as a clerk; but
here he soon gave visible signs of disliking the drudgery which was
exacted from him. Not that he disliked banking. He would gladly have
been a partner with ever so small a share, and would have trusted to
himself to increase his stake. But there is a limit to the good nature
of brothers-in-law, even in Belgium; and Alaric was quite aware that no
such good luck as this could befall him, at any rate until he had gone
through many years of servile labour. His sister also, though sisterly
enough in her disposition to him, did not quite like having a brother
employed as a clerk in her husband's office. They therefore put their
heads together, and, as the Tudors had good family connexions in
England, a nomination in the Weights and Measures was procured.
The nomination was procured; but when it was ascertained how very short
a way this went towards the attainment of the desired object, and how
much more difficult it was to obtain Mr. Hardlines' approval than the
Board's favour, young Tudor's friends despaired, and recommended him to
abandon the idea, as, should he throw himself into the Thames, he might
perhaps fall beyond the reach of the waterman's hook. Alaric himself,
however, had no such fears. He could not bring himself to conceive that
he could fail in being fit for a clerkship in a public office, and the
result of his examination proved at any rate that he had been right to
try.
The close of his first year's life in London found him living in
lodgings with Henry Norman. At that time Norman's income was nearly
three times as good as his own. To say that Tudor selected his companion
because of his income would be to ascribe unjustly to him vile motives
and a mean instinct. He had not done so. The two young men had been
thrown together by circumstances. They worked at the same desk, liked
each other's society, and each being alone in the world, thereby not
unnaturally came together. But it may probably be said that had Norman
been as poor as Tudor, Tudor might probably have shrunk from rowing in
the same boat with him.
As it was they lived together and were fast allies; not the less so
that they did not agree as to many of their avocations. Tudor, at his
friend's solicitation, had occasionally attempted to pull an oar from
Searle's slip to Battersea bridge. But his failure in this line was so
complete, and he had to encounter so much of Norman's raillery, which
was endurable, and of his instruction, which was unendurable, that he
very soon gave up the pursuit. He was not more successful with a racket;
and keeping a horse was of course out of the question.
They had a bond of union in certain common friends whom they much loved,
and with whom they much associated. At least these friends soon became
common to them. The acquaintance originally belonged to Norman, and he
had first cemented his friendship with Tudor by introducing him at the
house of Mrs. Woodward. Since he had done so, the one young man was
there nearly as much as the other.
Who and what the Woodwards were shall be told in a subsequent chapter.
As they have to play as important a part in the tale about to be told as
our two friends of the Weights and Measures, it would not be becoming to
introduce them at the end of this.
As regards Alaric Tudor it need only be further said, by way of preface,
of him as of Harry Norman, that the faults of his character must be made
to declare themselves in the course of our narrative.