Now the worst was over, and my mother was the most heroic of us all. So
I began to prepare myself in good earnest; and I followed Trevanion's
instructions with a perseverance, which I could never, at that young
day, have thrown into the dead life of books. I was in a good school
amongst our Cumberland sheepwalks, to learn those simple elements
of rural art which belong to the pastoral state. Mr Sidney, in his
admirable _Australian Hand-Book_, recommends young gentlemen who
think of becoming settlers in the Bush to bivouac for three months on
Salisbury Plain. That book was not then written, or I might have taken
the advice; meanwhile I think, with due respect to such authority, that
I went through a preparatory training quite as useful in seasoning
the future emigrant. I associated readily with the kindly peasants
and craftsmen, who became my teachers. With what pride I presented my
father with a desk and my mother with a work-box, fashioned by my own
hands! I made Bolt a lock for his plate-chest. And (that last was _my_
magnum opus, my great masterpiece) I repaired and absolutely set going
an old turret clock in the tower, that had stood at two P.M.
since the memory of man. I loved to think, each time the hour sounded,
that those who heard its deep chime would remember me. But the flocks
were my main care. The sheep that I tended and helped to shear, and
the lamb that I hooked out of the great marsh, and the three venerable
ewes that I nursed through a mysterious sort of murrain, which puzzled
all the neighbourhood--are they not written in thy loving chronicles, O
House of Caxton!
And now, since much of the success of my experiment must depend on
the friendly terms I could establish with my intended partner, I
wrote to Trevanion, begging him to get the young gentleman who was to
join me, and whose capital I was to administer, to come and visit us.
Trevanion complied, and there arrived a tall fellow somewhat more than
six feet high, answering to the name of Guy Bolding, in a cut-away
sporting-coat, with a dog-whistle tied to the button-hole; drab shorts
and gaiters, and a waistcoat with all manner of strange furtive
pockets. Guy Bolding had lived a year and a half at Oxford as a "fast
man;" so "fast" had he lived that there was scarcely a tradesman at
Oxford into whose books he had not contrived to run.
His father was compelled to withdraw him from the university, at which
he had already had the honour of being plucked for the little go: and
the young gentleman, on being asked for what profession he was fit, had
replied with conscious pride, "That he could tool a coach!" In despair,
the sire, who owed his living to Trevanion, had asked the statesman's
advice, and the advice had fixed me with a partner in expatriation.
My first feeling, in greeting the fast man, was certainly that of deep
disappointment and strong repugnance. But I was determined not to be
too fastidious; and, having a lucky knack of suiting myself pretty well
to all tempers, (without which a man had better not think of loadstones
in the great Australasian Bight,) I contrived, before the first week
was out, to establish so many points of connexion between us that we
became the best friends in the world. Indeed, it would have been my
fault if we had not, for Guy Bolding, with all his faults, was one
of those excellent creatures who are nobody's enemies but their own.
His good humour was inexhaustible. Not a hardship or privation came
amiss to him. He had a phrase "Such fun!" that always came to his lips
when another man would have cursed and groaned. If we lost our way in
the great trackless moors, missed our dinner, and were half-famished,
Guy rubbed hands that would have felled an ox, and chuckled out "Such
fun!" If we stuck in a bog, if we were caught in a thunderstorm, if we
were pitched head over heels by the wild colts we undertook to break
in, Guy Bolding's only elegy was "Such fan!" That grand shibboleth
of philosophy only forsook him at the sight of an open book. I don't
think that at that time, he could have found "fun" even in Don Quixote.
This hilarious temperament had no insensibility; a kinder heart never
beat,--but, to be sure, it beat to a strange, restless, tarantula
sort of measure, which kept it in a perpetual dance. It made him one
of those officiously good fellows who are never quiet themselves, and
never let any one else be quiet if they can help it. But Guy's great
fault, in this prudent world, was his absolute incontinence of money.
If you had turned an Euphrates of gold into his pockets at morning, it
would have been as dry as the great Sahara by twelve at noon. What he
did with the money was a mystery as much to himself as to every one
else. His father said in a letter to me, that "he had seen him shying
at sparrows with half-crowns!" That such a young man could come to no
good in England, seemed perfectly clear. Still, it is recorded of many
great men, who did not end their days in a workhouse, that they were
equally non-retentive of money. Schiller, when he had nothing else to
give away, gave the clothes from his back, and Goldsmith the blankets
from his bed. Tender hands found it necessary to pick Beethoven's
pockets at home before he walked out. Great heroes, who have made no
scruple of robbing the whole world, have been just as lavish as poor
poets and musicians. Alexander, in parcelling out his spoils, left
himself "hope!" And as for Julius Cæsar, he was two millions in debt
when he shied his last half-crown at the sparrows in Gaul. Encouraged
by these illustrious examples, I had hopes of Guy Bolding; and the more
as he was so aware of his own infirmity that he was perfectly contented
with the arrangement which made me treasurer of his capital, and
even besought me, on no account, let him beg ever so hard, to permit
his own money to come in his own way. In fact, I contrived to gain a
great ascendency over his simple, generous, thoughtless nature; and
by artful appeals to his affections--to all he owed to his father for
many bootless sacrifices, and to the duty of providing a little dower
for his infant sister, whose meditated portion had half gone to pay his
college debts--I at last succeeded in fixing into his mind an object to
save for.
Three other companions did I select for our Cleruchia. The first was
the son of our old shepherd, who had lately married, but was not yet
encumbered with children,--a good shepherd, and an intelligent, steady
fellow. The second was a very different character; he had been the
dread of the whole squirearchy. A more bold and dexterous poacher
did not exist. Now my acquaintance with this latter person, named
Will Peterson, and more popularly "Will o' the Wisp," had commenced
thus:--Bolt had managed to rear, in a small copse about a mile from the
house--and which was the only bit of ground in my uncle's domains that
might by courtesy be called "a wood"--a young colony of pheasants, that
he dignified by the title of a "preserve." This colony was audaciously
despoiled and grievously depopulated, in spite of two watchers who,
with Bolt, guarded for seven nights successively the slumbers of the
infant settlement. So insolent was the assault that bang, bang went
the felonious gun--behind, before--within but a few yards of the
sentinels--and the gunner was off, and the prey seized, before they
could rush to the spot. The boldness and skill of the enemy soon
proclaimed him, to the experienced watchers, to be Will o' the Wisp;
and so great was the dread of this fellow's strength and courage,
and so complete their despair of being a match for his swiftness and
cunning, that after the seventh night the watchers refused to go out
any longer; and poor Bolt himself was confined to his bed by an attack
of what a doctor would have called rheumatism, and a moralist, rage.
My indignation and sympathy were greatly excited by this mortifying
failure, and my interest romantically aroused by the anecdotes I had
heard of Will o' the Wisp; accordingly, armed with a thick bludgeon,
I stole out at night, and took my way to the copse. The leaves were
not off the trees, and how the poacher contrived to see his victims I
know not; but five shots did he fire, and not in vain, without allowing
me to catch a glimpse of him. I then retreated to the outskirt of the
copse, and waited patiently by an angle, which commanded two sides of
the wood. Just as the dawn began to peep, I saw my man emerge within
twenty yards of me. I held my breath, suffered him to get a few steps
from the wood, crept on so as to intercept his retreat, and then
pounce--such a bound! My hand was on his shoulder--prr, prr--no eel was
ever more lubricate. He slid from me like a thing immaterial, and was
off over the moors with a swiftness which might well have baffled any
clodhopper--a race whose calves are generally absorbed in the soles of
their hobnail shoes. But the Hellenic Institute, with its classical
gymnasia, had trained its pupils in all bodily exercises; and though
the Will o' the Wisp was swift for a clodhopper, he was no match at
running for any youth who has spent his boyhood in the discipline of
cricket, prisoner's bars, and hunt-the-hare. I reached him at length,
and brought him to bay.
"Stand back," said he, panting, and taking aim with his gun; "it is
loaded."
"Yes," said I; "but though you're a brave poacher, you dare not fire at
your fellow man. Give up the gun this instant."
My address took him by surprise; he did not fire. I struck up the
barrel, and closed on him. We grappled pretty tightly, and in the
wrestle the gun went off. The man loosened his hold. "Lord ha' mercy, I
have not hurt you!" he said falteringly.
"My good fellow--no," said I; "and now let us throw aside gun and
bludgeon, and light it out like Englishmen, or else let us sit down and
talk it over like friends."
The Will o' the Wisp scratched its head and laughed.
"Well, you're a queer one," quoth it. And the poacher dropped the gun
and sate down.
We did talk it over, and I obtained Peterson's promise to respect the
preserve henceforth, and we thereon grew so cordial that he walked home
with me, and even presented me, shyly and apologetically, with the
five pheasants he had shot. From that time I sought him out. He was a
young fellow not four-and-twenty, who had taken to poaching from the
wild sport of the thing, and from some confused notions that he had a
license from Nature to poach. I soon found out that he was meant for
better things than to spend six months of the twelve in prison, and
finish his life on the gallows after killing a gamekeeper. That seemed
to me his most probable destiny in the Old World, so I talked him into
a burning desire for the New one: and a most valuable aid in the Bush
he proved too.
My third selection was in a personage who could bring little physical
strength to help us, but who had more mind (though with a wrong twist
in it) than all the others put together.
A worthy couple in the village had a son, who being slight and puny,
compared to the Cumberland breed, was shouldered out of the market of
agricultural labour, and went off, yet a boy, to a manufacturing town.
Now about the age of thirty, this mechanic, disabled for his work by
a long illness, came home to recover; and in a short time we heard
of nothing but the pestilential doctrines with which he was either
shocking or infecting our primitive villagers. According to report,
Corcyra itself never engendered a democrat more awful. The poor man
was really very ill, and his parents very poor; but his unfortunate
doctrines dried up all the streams of charity that usually flowed
through our kindly hamlet. The clergyman (an excellent man, but of the
old school) walked by the house as if it were tabooed. The apothecary
said "Miles Square ought to have wine," but he did not send him any.
The farmers held his name in execration, for he had incited all their
labourers to strike for another shilling a-week. And but for the old
tower, Miles Square would soon have found his way to the only republic
in which he could obtain that democratic fraternisation for which he
sighed--the grave being, I suspect, the sole commonwealth which attains
that dead flat of social equality, that life in its every principle so
heartily abhors.
My uncle went to see Miles Square, and came back the colour of purple.
Miles Square had preached him a long sermon on the unholiness of war.
"Even in defence of your king and country!" had roared the Captain; and
Miles Square had replied with a remark upon kings, in general, that
the Captain could not have repeated without expecting to see the old
tower fall about his ears; and with an observation about the country,
in particular, to the effect that "the country would be much better
off if it _were_ conquered!" On hearing the report of these loyal and
patriotic replies, my father said, "Papæ!" and, roused out of his usual
philosophical indifference, went himself to visit Miles Square. My
father returned as pale as my uncle had been purple. "And to think,"
said he mournfully, "that in the town whence this man comes, there are,
he tells me, ten thousand other of God's creatures who speed the work
of civilisation while execrating its laws!"
But neither father nor uncle made any opposition when, with a basket
laden with wine and arrowroot, and a neat little Bible, bound in brown,
my mother took her way to the excommunicated cottage. Her visit was
as signal a failure as those that preceded it. Miles Square refused
the basket; 'he was not going to accept alms, and eat the bread of
charity;' and on my mother meekly suggesting that, 'if Mr Miles
Square would condescend to look into the Bible, he would see that
even charity was no sin in giver or recipient,' Mr Miles Square had
undertaken to prove 'that, according to the Bible, he had as much a
right to my mother's property as she had--that all things should be in
common--and that, when things were in common, what became of charity?
No; he could not eat my uncle's arrowroot, and drink his wine, while
my uncle was improperly withholding from him and his fellow-creatures
so many unprofitable acres: the land belonged to the people.' It
was now the turn of Pisistratus to go. He went once, and he went
often. Miles Square and Pisistratus wrangled and argued--argued and
wrangled--and ended by taking a fancy to each other; for this poor
Miles Square was not half so bad as his doctrines. His errors arose
from intense sympathy with the sufferings he had witnessed, amidst the
misery which accompanies the reign of _millocratism_, and from the
vague aspirations of a half-taught, impassioned, earnest nature. By
degrees, I persuaded him to drink the wine and eat the arrowroot, _en
attendant_ that millennium which was to restore the land to the people.
And then my mother came again and softened his heart, and, for the
first time in his life, let into its cold crotchets the warm light of
human gratitude. I lent him some books, amongst others a few volumes on
Australia. A passage in one of the latter, in which it was said "that
an intelligent mechanic usually made his way in the colony, even as
a shepherd, better than a dull agricultural labourer," caught hold of
his fancy, and seduced his aspirations into a healthful direction.
Finally, as he recovered, he entreated me to let him accompany me. And
as I may not have to return to Miles Square, I think it right here to
state, that he did go with me to Australia, and did succeed, first as
shepherd, and, on saving money, as landowner; and that, in spite of
his opinions on the unholiness of war, he was no sooner in possession
of a comfortable log homestead, than he defended it with uncommon
gallantry against an attack of the aborigines, whose right to the soil
was, to say the least of it, as good as his claim to my uncle's acres;
that he commemorated his subsequent acquisition of a fresh allotment,
with the stock on it, by a little pamphlet, published at Sydney, on
the _Sanctity of the Rights of Property_; and that, when I left the
colony, having been much pestered by two refractory "helps" that he had
added to his establishment, he had just distinguished himself by a very
anti-levelling lecture upon the duties of servants to their employers.
What would the Old World have done for this man!