I now make a long stride in my narrative. I am domesticated with the
Trevanions. A very short conversation with the statesman sufficed to
decide my father; and the pith of it lay in this single sentence uttered
by Trevanion: "I promise you one thing,--he shall never be idle!"
Looking back, I am convinced that my father was right, and that he
understood my character, and the temptations to which I was most prone,
when he consented to let me resign college and enter thus prematurely on
the world of men. I was naturally so joyous that I should have made
college life a holiday, and then, in repentance, worked myself into a
phthisis.
And my father, too, was right that though I could study, I was not meant
for a student.
After all, the thing was an experiment. I had time to spare; if the
experiment failed, a year's delay would not necessarily be a year's
loss.
I am ensconced, then, at Mr. Trevanion's; I have been there some months.
It is late in the winter; Parliament and the season have commenced. I
work hard,--Heaven knows, harder than I should have worked at college.
Take a day for sample.
Trevanion gets up at eight o'clock, and in all--weathers rides an hour
before breakfast; at nine he takes that meal in his wife's dressing-
room; at half-past nine he comes into his study. By that time he
expects to find done by his secretary the work I am about to describe.
On coming home,--or rather before going to bed, which is usually after
three o'clock,--it is Mr. Trevanion's habit to leave on the table of the
said study a list of directions for the secretary. The following, which
I take at random from many I have preserved, may show their multifarious
nature:--
1. Look out in the Reports (Committee, House of Lords) for the last
seven years all that is said about the growth of flax; mark the
passages for me.
2. Do, do. "Irish Emigration."
3. Hunt out second volume of Kames's "History of Man," passage
containing Reid's Logic,--don't know where the book is!
4. How does the line beginning Lumina conjurent, inter something,
end? Is it in Grey? See.
5. Fracastorius writes: Quantum hoe infecit vitium, quot adiverit
urbes. Query, ought it not, in strict grammar, to be injecerit,
instead of infecit? If you don't know, write to father.
6. Write the four letters in full from the notes I leave; i. e.,
about the Ecclesiastical Courts.
7. Look out Population Returns: strike average of last five years
(between mortality and births) in Devonshire and Lancashire.
8. Answer these six begging letters "No,"--civilly.
9. The other six, to constituents, "that I have no interest with
Government."
10. See, if you have time, whether any of the new books on the
round table are not trash.
11. I want to know All about Indian corn.
12. Longinus says something, somewhere, in regret for uncongenial
pursuits (public life, I suppose): what is it? N. B. Longinus is
not in my London catalogue, but is here, I know,--I think in a box
in the lumber-room.
13. Set right the calculation I leave on the poor-rates. I have
made a blunder somewhere, etc.
Certainly my father knew Mr. Trevanion; he never expected a secretary to
sleep! To get through the work required of me by half-past nine, I get
up by candle-light. At half-past nine I am still hunting for Longinus,
when Mr. Trevanion comes in with a bundle of letters.
Answers to half the said letters fall to my share. Directions verbal,--
in a species of short-hand talk. While I write, Mr. Trevanion reads the
newspapers, examines what I have done, makes notes therefrom,--some for
Parliament, some for conversation, some for correspondence,--skims over
the Parliamentary papers of the morning, and jots down directions for
extracting, abridging, and comparing them with others, perhaps twenty
years old. At eleven he walks down to a Committee of the House of
Commons,--leaving me plenty to do,--till half-past three, when he
returns. At four, Fanny puts her head into the room--and I lose mine.
Four days in the week Mr. Trevanion then disappears for the rest of the
day; dines at Bellamy's or a club; expects me at the House at eight
o'clock, in case he thinks of something, wants a fact or a quotation.
He then releases me,--generally with a fresh list of instructions. But
I have my holidays, nevertheless. On Wednesdays and Saturdays Mr.
Trevanion gives dinners, and I meet the most eminent men of the day, on
both sides; for Trevanion is on both sides himself,--or no side at all,
which comes to the same thing. On Tuesdays Lady Ellinor gives me a
ticket for the Opera, and I get there at least in time for the ballet.
I have already invitations enough to balls and soirees, for I am
regarded as an only son of great expectations. I am treated as becomes
a Caxton who has the right, if he pleases, to put a De before his name.
I have grown very smart. I have taken a passion for dress,--natural to
eighteen. I like everything I do, and every one about me. I am over
head and ears in love with Fanny Trevanion, who breaks my heart,
nevertheless; for she flirts with two peers, a life-guardsman, three old
members of Parliament, Sir Sedley Beaudesert, one ambassador and all his
attaches and positively (the audacious minx!) with a bishop, in full wig
and apron, who, people say, means to marry again.
Pisistratus has lost color and flesh. His mother says he is very much
improved,--that he takes to be the natural effect produced by Stultz and
Hoby. Uncle Jack says he is "fined down." His father looks at him and
writes to Trevanion,--
"Dear T.--I refused a salary for my son. Give him a horse, and two
hours a day to ride it. Yours, A. C."
The next day I am master of a pretty bay mare, and riding by the side of
Fanny Trevanion. Alas! alas!