I must give my pictures of the early part of my life, detached and
phantasmagoria-like as they appear to the eye of memory. But yet I will
supply as far as possible any links of connection which are afforded by
that power which is to memory what the second rainbow, which we
sometimes see, is to the first—the reflection of a reflection—I am not
quite sure that that is philosophical—but it is a figure, and it is
pretty—so let it stand, it will do for Boston—the power I speak of is
commonly termed reminiscence—a shadow of remembrance which overtops the
mountain, and is seen indistinctly after the prototype has sunk behind
the steep—God bless me, I am getting into Boston again. Well, upon my
life I will be sober, notwithstanding the sixteen gallon act.
The catching a fish was my first great exploit in life, and I could
evidently see that Father Bonneville paused and pondered over it, as was
his character; for he was a very considerate and thoughtful man, by no
means without powers of observation, and a great habit of reasoning _a
priori_, which sometimes misled him a little. He made me tell him the
whole story of the catching of the fish, and of how I had managed it.
You may judge I dilated not a little, partly from the interest of the
subject to myself, and partly from the difficulty which every child, and
every novelist in three volumes, finds in clothing his thoughts in brief
language. I found afterward that he had deduced his own conclusions from
premises which I had afforded; and I am happy to say they were all
favorable to me. He had deduced, I learnt, from my catching the rod
before it fell into the water, that I possessed considerable quickness
and presence of mind. He had inferred from the fact of my having got the
line through my hands before I attempted to strain the rod, that there
was a great deal of cautiousness and foresight in my disposition; and by
the pains I had taken, and the labor I had undergone, without flinching,
or growing rash or angry, he was led to believe that I was of a most
persevering, undaunted, and resolute disposition. In a word, he learned
to think me a being more deserving of care and cultivation than he had
previously imagined; that I was not a mere baby to be taught his A B C
in any science, and that there was a soil, beneath the green freshness
of my youth, which might be cultivated to great advantage.
But let us give a slight sketch of the good Father, as he sat with his
little tight-fitting black cap upon his head, looking like one half of a
negro melon. The dress was insignificant—mean—out of the way, which is
worse. The plain cassock and bands, the scapulary and the cross, and the
grand three-cornered hat, had not surely much to recommend the
individual member of the profession. There was no trickery of dress.
There was no superfluous ornament. Even the assumption of manner was
repressed, and, as far as I can recollect, he always seemed to remember
sensitively, that a priest in the chair or the confessional derived
whatever authority he possessed from a higher source, which conferred
none upon him as an individual. The reverse of this feeling is the
crying sin of the priesthood of all the creeds I know, and especially of
his own. Most men would listen reverently to the expounders of God’s
will, when they are expounding his will, if they would not carry their
_cathedra_ into the drawing-room or the parlor with them. It is very
wise, indeed, to make a marked distinction between the minister and the
man, and still more wise to make a marked distinction between the
functions of the minister and the man; for where the two are blended
together—either through the stupidity of the people or the arrogance of
the priest—it will be found nine times out of ten that the weaknesses
of the man (not to notice vices or crimes) overwhelm the qualities of
the teacher. Amongst a nation, indeed, who, as a nation, acknowledge no
authority but themselves, either in matters civil, politic or
religious—where every man is at liberty to set up his own little God
Almighty in his garden, and to worship him after what fashion he
pleases—this distinction is not so necessary; for each minister being
chosen by the flock which he has to instruct, must know beforehand
tolerably well what is the sort of pabula best suited to their palates,
while the flock, on their part, having chosen their man, with their eyes
very wide open, must either stultify themselves, or cry him up as one of
the bright lights of the age. If not, why did they choose him to light
them? They become as much interested in his personal as in his public
character—for it is very disagreeable for an elder of a congregation,
unless he have some personal quarrel with his dear friend, the minister,
to lay his hand upon his heart and say, “I have been grievously
mistaken”—and many a small offense—nay, many a great one in the pastor
is smoothed over and polished with the varnish-vanity of a loving
congregation, who adore themselves in the minister they have selected,
and even in the very church are worshiping themselves, in him, instead
of the Deity. Of all sorts of idolatry in the world—and there are
many—surely the worst in the eyes of a pure Being must be self
idolatry.
I have strayed from my subject; but a bold leap, and we are back again.
See him there, sitting in his easy arm-chair, with the little black cap
upon his head, to cover the work of time rather than the ravages of the
razor, with the soft, silky locks, now almost snow-white, floating from
underneath it, and the dark garments, never laid aside except when at
rest, enveloping the whole figure. Yet what an air of calm and tranquil
dignity in the very disposition of that figure, and in that mild,
benignant face. Where are the cares and sorrows of life? What have
anxious thought, and the arduous duties, well performed, of a laborious
profession done in this case? Where are the pangs, the sicknesses, the
wasting force of disease, the corporeal pains, the uneasy weakness of
senility? They are not there. He rests in his chair as easily as a
child—ay, and as gracefully too. Oh, the balm, the blessed balm, such
as Gilead never knew, of a pure, high, and holy heart, which, preserving
and refreshing continually the spirit that dwells within it, with that
aromatic odor of the tree of life, imparts a portion of the sovereign
antidote even to the frail form of clay, and guards it against the shock
of time, or the wearying war of circumstances! Few of the impatient, the
irritable, the passionate, the children of caprice, the slaves of vice,
the hunters of excitement, ever see the age to which Father Bonneville
had already attained, and those who do, reach it enfeebled, worn out,
toil-broken, and shriveled up by the struggles, and the wanderings, and
the difficult passes, and the burning suns, which they themselves have
sought and found upon the way. Father Bonneville’s had been a quiet and
a placid life—I know nothing of his history—I never heard it—but the
part I speak of was written on his face. Father Bonneville’s had been a
quiet and a placid life—I am quite sure of it: otherwise he could have
never lived to be the calm, happy, benignant old man he was at
sixty-three. On his face you hardly saw his age; for it was as smooth as
a boy’s, but those white hairs, and the necessity of using spectacles
now and then, betrayed the fact that he was not quite so young as he
once had been. His teeth—I recollect them as they were even then, quite
well—were beautifully white and even, but the old man used to say, that
though he hoped his tongue was true, his mouth was an artful hypocrite;
for it put its best arguments forward, and kept all that were worthless
and unserviceable behind; in other words, that the front teeth might be
good enough, but that those hard-working slaves of the stomach, the
grinders, were gone—and this was, probably, the cause of his love of
fish. Heaven bless the finny fellows! they are seldom, any of them,
tough, and the worst one has to fear is a bone or an indigestion; though
it is rather hard, I think, to be pulled out of a fresh stream, and put
upon a gridiron.
Father Bonneville was a very learned man, too, as well as a good one. He
had read very much, for he had much leisure; had studied many languages
and many things, and moreover had reasoned upon what he studied. All
this I found out afterward; for at the time I speak of, though he made a
point of instructing me himself every day, the store of erudition
required for my mental food was but small. His lessons were given in a
very different way from any other lessons that I ever received or ever
heard of. He would sit down and open a book, and then begin to talk to
me upon some apparently indifferent subject; but somehow before five
minutes had passed, he had always contrived to bring the conversation
round to something which the book contained, or which it explained, or
which it elucidated. Then we would read a sentence or two, and then
pause, and comment, and converse, sometimes remarking the language, and
the niceties of style and grammar, sometimes dwelling upon the thoughts
expressed or the facts related. It is wonderful how this course
impressed every thing upon my mind. All that I read seemed to be
surrounded by a sort of artificial memory; for every word was connected
with these conversations, and the one always served to bring the other
to remembrance. It took a little longer time, it is true; I read one
page of Cæsar where another boy might read two; but I both remembered
and understood what I had read, and possibly the other might not; nor am
I at all sure that I did not make as much progress in the end.
Where I got the first rudiments of education I do not know; for I cannot
remember the period that I could not read or write, when I could not add
up a sum with tolerable exactness, or draw helmets, and swords, and
battle-axes, and very ugly faces, and men with enormous pig-tails, on
the first leaf of a spelling-book. I have a faint idea that I was very
ill when I first came to the house of Father Bonneville, and that
illness may probably be the sort of gauze curtain which hangs between
the eye of memory and the period antecedent, not altogether hiding the
figures beyond, but rendering them confused and indistinct.
Having said thus much of my kind friend and preceptor, I must take some
notice of the other tenant—the only other tenant of the house. This was
the good priest’s housekeeper, who was probably some four or five years
older than himself; but yet as busy, bustling, active a little body as
ever was seen, doing every thing and trying to do more. What were the
qualities for which Father Bonneville originally chose her to
superintend his domestic affairs, I really do not know; but it certainly
was not for her beauty—perhaps it might be for the reverse. Nature
intended evidently, at first, to cast her in what I may call the
pippin-headed mould; for her head was as round as a ball, furnished with
two eyes like sloes, and not much larger; but by some freak of nature,
the nose had been infinitely projected. It always seemed to me as if her
parents, or nurses, had been in the custom of lifting her up by it, as a
sort of handle, and it certainly had not decreased in volume in latter
life. She was a little woman too, hardly fitted to carry such a burden,
but strong, well-formed, and neither lean nor fat. Her excellent health
and spirits, she attributed to never having drunk any cider, though she
had lived in the cider provinces.
“No, no,” she said, “I always knew better than that, if cider is dear at
three sous, wine is cheap at ten. It is not much of either that I drink,
as heaven knows and Father Bonneville, but when it is not water, it
shall be wine.”
I must point out to the reader more particularly her manner of
connecting heaven and Father Bonneville together; for it was very
characteristic of her mind, and she did it on all occasions. Indeed the
two ideas seemed so intimately blended in her mind that they could never
be separated. She was a good creature as ever lived, and looked up to
all that was good, and it is probable that as, in her humility, she put
both heaven and Father Bonneville very, very far above herself indeed,
the two objects got confounded in the distance.
She was a very good creature indeed, as I have said, and oh, how I used
to teaze her! She bore it with wonderful patience and good humor,
sometimes laughing with me, sometimes laughing at me, sometimes
affecting to be very angry, but still mending my clothes, setting my
little room to rights, giving me any good thing she could lay her hands
upon, and showing me all the kindness and tenderness of a mother. I am
afraid, however, that there was a more serious storm than usual brewing
about the period I speak of; for I not only continued to teaze poor
Jeanette with my boyish fun, but I had added a great deal to her labors
and embarrassments by leaving fish-hooks, and bits of line, and broken
rods—some of the fish-hooks covered with worms too, in her kitchen, and
her pantry, and the most sacred places of her own particular domain. But
just at that time, came the catching of the trout I have mentioned, and
that immediately cured all grievances. Not that I mean to say, that the
good woman was moved by any peculiar passion for fish herself; for she
would not have deprived Father Bonneville and me of a morsel of it for
the world, but from that moment she became aware that there was some
utility in fish-hooks—that they were made for some other purpose than
running into her hands, or littering her table. I provided in short
something which could gratify the good Father’s taste, and that was
quite sufficient apology for all offenses in the eyes of his worthy
housekeeper.
With these two, such as I have depicted them, I passed several years of
my early life. I must have been about nine when I caught the trout, and
if I ever had been a weak or sickly boy, I certainly was so no longer. I
could not have been ten, I am sure, and I must have been there at this
time for some years—sufficient at least to let the memory of other
scenes fade away. My time passed sweetly and pleasantly. I had plenty of
wholesome food. I had exercise for the mind and exercise for the body.
Quiet and still, the place certainly was. Amusements, for persons of my
age, there were none in the town itself, except when there was some
great Church fete, or when some Italian led through the town a bear or a
monkey, or carried a marmot, or an instrument of music, and when once in
the year the great fair took place, which brightened up the town for
three whole days. Nevertheless, I was very contented. I loved Father
Bonneville sincerely. I loved good Jeanette, too, sincerely; but with
another sort of love—rather, I suspect, with that peculiar kind of
affection with which a child regards a doll, the head of which has been
knocked upon the door till it has neither nose nor eyes. Assuredly I had
not deprived the good housekeeper of those serviceable features, but I
had misused her tenderness, and teazed her till I loved devotedly that
which I teazed. I loved them both, then, and well I might; for two
better people never existed.
The reader, perhaps, may ask, “are we to have nothing but good people in
this book?”
Let him wait a little. We shall find their foil presently, and pray do
not let any one fall into the mistake of supposing that there is any
thing inherently monotonous in goodness. Far from it. It has as infinite
variety as evil. Its scope is as extensive, from the most sublime deed
of devotion or self-sacrifice, to the smallest act of kindness. Nay, it
is more vast than evil; for I cannot but think that goodness embraces
all things, while evil only touches a part. It is because the mind of
man is too small to comprehend the magnitude of goodness that he fancies
it limited, as a child gazing at the sky, thinks that there is a blue
wall to space. It is because his mind is too dim and feeble, too much
accustomed to struggle with impurer things, that he cannot reach its
heights or penetrate its depths, and conceive the infinite variety it
affords. The salmon can leap up the cataract, or dart against the
current of the turbid stream, but he cannot soar into the sky like the
eagle, and at one glance take in a world below. The most sublime thing
in the whole universe is goodness, and it is the sweetest too.
Happy, right happy do I believe myself to have been thus, in youth,
associated with two such good and kindly beings. At that period of life,
the plastic nature of the child receives, in a great degree, its future
shape and form. The impressions are deep, and, once hardened,
ineffaceable: the character receives its bent, the mind its tone and
coloring, and although I may have done many things in life which I
regret, and which they could not have approved, yet their goodness has
been always in my memory as a light-house to show me the way across the
dark and struggling waters of life, and to welcome me home to port,
however far I may have wandered astray.
I cannot conceive any greater blessing can be bestowed on youth than the
companionship of the really good. I speak not of the stiff and rigid. I
speak not of the harsh and the severe. I speak not even of the
self-denying, the sober, and the circumspect. The example of anchorite
or puritan, never effected much upon the heart of youth. But I speak of
the really good, and they are not good if they are not gentle; for the
reverse of gentleness is wrong. I speak of the good who learn from the
fountain of all goodness to be happy, and to make happy; and who know
that it is part of the commandment, to enjoy.