Later still, he would become sentimental again; and dilate to me on the
joys of his wedded life, on the extraordinary of intellect and beauty of
Mrs. Lintot. First he would describe to me the beauties of her mind, and
compare her to "L.E.L." and Felicia Hemans. Then he would fall back on
her physical perfections; there was nobody worthy to be compared to her
in these--but I draw the veil.
He was very egotistical. Whatever he did, whatever he liked, whatever
belonged to him, was better than anything else in world; and he was
cleverer than any one else, except Mrs. Lintot, to whom he yielded the
palm; and then he would cheer up and become funny again.
In fact his self-satisfaction was quite extraordinary; and what is more
extraordinary still, it was not a bit offensive--at least, to me;
perhaps because he was such a tiny little man; or because much of this
vanity of his seemed to have no very solid foundation, for it was not of
the gifts I most admired in him that he was vainest; or because it came
out most when he was most tipsy, and genial tipsiness redeems so much;
or else because he was most vain about things I should never have been
vain about myself; and the most unpardonable vanity in others is that
which is secretly our own, whether we are conscious of it or not.
[Illustration: "I FELT GRATEFUL TO ADORATION."]
And then he was the first funny man I had ever met. What a gift it is!
He was always funny when he tried to be, whether one laughed with him or
at him, and I loved him for it. Nothing on earth is more pathetically
pitiable than the funny man when he still tries and succeeds no longer.
The moment Lintot's vein was exhausted, he had the sense to leave off
and begin to cry, which was still funny; and then I would jump out of
his clothes and into his bed and be asleep in a second, with the tears
still trickling down his little nose--and even that was funny!
But next morning he was stern and alert and indefatiguable, as though
gin and poetry and conjugal love had never been, and fun were a
capital crime.
Uncle Ibbetson thought highly of him as an architect, but not otherwise;
he simply made use of him.
"He's a terrible little snob, of course, and hasn't got an _h_ in his
head" (as if _that_ were a capital crime); "but he's very clever--look
at that campanile--and then he's cheap, my boy, cheap."
There were several fine houses in fine parks not very far from Ibbetson
Hall; but although Uncle Ibbetson appeared in name and wealth and social
position to be on a par with their owners, he was not on terms of
intimacy with any of them, or even of acquaintance, as far as I know,
and spoke of them with contempt, as barbarians--people with whom he had
nothing in common. Perhaps they, too, had found out this
incompatibility, especially the ladies; for, school-boy as I was, I was
not long in discovering that his manner towards those of the other sex
was not always such as to please either of them or their husbands or
fathers or brothers. The way he looked at them was enough. Indeed, most
of his lady-friends and acquaintances through life had belonged to the
_corps de ballet_, the _demi-monde_, etc.--not, I should imagine, the
best school of manners in the world.
On the other hand, he was very friendly with some families in the town;
the doctor's, the rector's, his own agent's (a broken-down brother
officer and bosom friend, who had ceased to love him since he received
his pay); and he used to take Mr. Lintot and me to parties there; and he
was the life of those parties.
He sang little French songs, with no voice, but quite a good French
accent, and told little anecdotes with no particular point, but in
French and Italian (so that the point was never missed); and we all
laughed and admired without quite knowing why, except that he was the
lord of the manor.
On these festive occasions poor Lintot's confidence and power of amusing
seemed to desert him altogether; he sat glum in a corner.
Though a radical and a sceptic, and a peace-at-any-price man, he was
much impressed by the social status of the army and the church.
Of the doctor, a very clever and accomplished person, and the best
educated man for miles around, he thought little; but the rector, the
colonel, the poor captain, even, now a mere land-steward, seemed to fill
him with respectful awe. And for his pains he was cruelly snubbed by
Mrs. Captain and Mrs. Rector and their plain daughters, who little
guessed what talents he concealed, and thought him quite a common little
man, hardly fit to turn over the leaves of their music.
It soon became pretty evident that Ibbetson was very much smitten with
a Mrs. Deane, the widow of a brewer, a very handsome woman indeed, in
her own estimation and mine, and everybody else's, except Mr. Lintot's,
who said, "Pooh, you should see my wife!"
Her mother, Mrs. Glyn, excelled us all in her admiration of Colonel
Ibbetson.
For instance, Mrs. Deane would play some common little waltz of the
cheap kind that is never either remembered or forgotten, and Mrs. Glyn
would exclaim, "_Is_ not that _lovely_?"
And Ibbetson would say: "Charming! charming! Whose is it? Rossini's?
Mozart's?"
"Why, no, my dear colonel. Don't you remember? _It's your own_!"
"Ah, so it is! I had quite forgotten." And general laughter and applause
would burst forth at such a natural mistake on the part of our
great man.
Well, I could neither play nor sing, and found it far easier by this
time to speak English than French, especially to English people who were
ignorant of any language but their own. Yet sometimes Colonel Ibbetson
would seem quite proud of me.
"Deux mètres, bien sonnés!" he would say, alluding to my stature, "et le
profil d'Antinoüs!" which he would pronounce without the two little dots
on the _u_.
And afterwards, if he had felt his evening a pleasant one, if he had
sung all he knew, if Mrs. Deane had been more than usually loving and
self-surrendering, and I had distinguished myself by skilfully turning
over the leaves when her mother had played the piano, he would tell me,
as we walked home together, that I "did credit to his name, and that I
would make an excellent figure in the world as soon as I had _décrassé_
myself; that I must get another dress-suit from his tailor, just an
eighth of an inch longer in the tails; that I should have a commission
in his old regiment (the Eleventeenth Royal Bounders), a deuced crack
cavalry regiment; and see the world and break a few hearts (it is not
for nothing that our friends have pretty wives and sisters); and finally
marry some beautiful young heiress of title, and make a home for him
when he was a poor solitary old fellow. Very little would do for him: a
crust of bread, a glass of wine and water, and a clean napkin, a couple
of rooms, and an old piano and a few good books. For, of course,
Ibbetson Hall would be mine and every penny he possessed in the world."
[Illustration:]
All this in confidential French--lest the very clouds should hear
us--and with the familiar thee and thou of blood-relationship, which I
did not care to return.
It did not seem to bode very serious intentions towards Mrs. Deane, and
would scarcely have pleased her mother.
Or else, if something had crossed him, and Mrs. Deane had flirted
outrageously with somebody else, and he had not been asked to sing (or
somebody else had), he would assure me in good round English that I was
the most infernal lout that ever disgraced a drawing-room, or ate a man
out of house and home, and that he was sick and ashamed of me. "Why
can't you sing, you d--d French milksop? The d--d roulade-monger of a
father of yours could sing fast enough, if he could do nothing else,
confound him! Why can't you talk French, you infernal British booby? Why
can't you hand round the tea and muffins, confound you! Why, twice Mrs.
Glyn dropped her pocket-handkerchief and had to pick it up herself!
What, 'at the other end of the room,' were you? Well, you should have
skipped _across_ the room, and picked it up, and handed it to her with a
pretty speech, like a gentleman! When I was your age I was _always_ on
the lookout for ladies' pocket-handkerchiefs to drop--or their fans! I
never missed _one_!"
Then he would take me out to shoot with him (for it was quite essential
that an English gentleman should be a sportsman)--a terrible ordeal to
both of us.
A snipe that I did not want to kill in the least would sometimes rise
and fly right and left like a flash of lightning, and I would miss
it--always; and he would d--n me for a son of a confounded French
Micawber, and miss the next himself, and get into a rage and thrash his
dog, a pointer that I was very fond of. Once he thrashed her so cruelly
that I saw scarlet, and nearly yielded to the impulse of emptying both
my barrels in his broad back. If I had done so it would have passed for
a mere mishap, after all, and saved many future complications.
* * * * *
One day he pointed out to me a small bird pecking in a field--an
extremely pretty bird--I think it was a skylark--and whispered to me in
his most sarcastic manner--
"Look here, you Peter without any salt, do you think, if you were to
kneel down and rest your gun comfortably on this gate without making a
noise, and take a careful aim, you could manage to shoot that bird
_sitting_? I've heard of some Frenchmen who would be equal to _that_!"
I said I would try, and, resting my gun as he told me, I carefully aimed
a couple of yards above the bird's head, and mentally ejaculating,
"'_All to thee blythe sperrit_!"
I fired both barrels (for fear of any after-mishap to Ibbetson), and the
bird naturally flew away.
After this he never took me out shooting with him again; and, indeed, I
had discovered to my discomfiture that I, the friend and admirer and
would-be emulator of Natty Bumppo the Deerslayer, I, the familiar of the
last of the Mohicans and his scalp-lifting father, could not bear the
sight of blood--least of all, of blood shed by myself, and for my own
amusement.
The only beast that ever fell to my gun during those shootings with
Uncle Ibbetson was a young rabbit, and that more by accident than
design, although I did not tell Uncle Ibbetson so.
As I picked it off the ground, and felt its poor little warm narrow
chest, and the last beats of its heart under its weak ribs, and saw the
blood on its fur, I was smitten with pity, shame, and remorse; and
settled with myself that I would find some other road to English
gentlemanhood than the slaying of innocent wild things whose happy life
seems so well worth living.
[Illustration: "'AIL TO THEE BLYTHE SPERRIT!"]
I must eat them, I suppose, but I would never shoot them any more; my
hands, at least, should be clean of blood henceforward.
Alas, the irony of fate!
The upshot of all this was that he confided to Mrs. Deane the task of
licking his cub of a nephew into shape. She took me in hand with right
good-will, began by teaching me how to dance, that I might dance with
her at the coming hunt ball; and I did so nearly all night, to my
infinite joy and triumph, and to the disgust of Colonel Ibbetson, who
could dance much better than I--to the disgust, indeed, of many smart
men in red coats and black, for she was considered the belle of
the evening.
[Illustration: THE DANCING LESSON.]
Of course I fell, or fancied I fell, in love with her. To her mother's
extreme distress, she gave me every encouragement, partly for fun,
partly to annoy Colonel Ibbetson, whom she had apparently grown to hate.
And, indeed, from the way he spoke of her to me (this trainer of English
gentlemen), he well deserved that she should hate him. He never had the
slightest intention of marrying her--that is certain; and yet he had
made her the talk of the place.
And here I may state that Ibbetson was one of those singular men who go
through life afflicted with the mania that they are fatally
irresistible to women.
He was never weary of pursuing them--not through any special love of
gallantry for its own sake, I believe, but from the mere wish to appear
as a Don Giovanni in the eyes of others. Nothing made him happier than
to be seen whispering mysteriously in corners with the prettiest woman
in the room. He did not seem to perceive that for one woman silly or
vain or vulgar enough to be flattered by his idiotic persecution, a
dozen would loathe the very sight of him, and show it plainly enough.
This vanity had increased with years and assumed a very dangerous form.
He became indiscreet, and, more disastrous still, he told lies! The very
dead--the honored and irreproachable dead--were not even safe in their
graves. It was his revenge for unforgotten slights.
He who kisses and tells, he who tells even though he has not
kissed--what can be said for him, what should be done to him?
Ibbetson one day expiated this miserable craze with his life, and the
man who took it--more by accident than design, it is true--has not yet
found it in his heart to feel either compunction or regret.
* * * * *
So there was a great row between Ibbetson and myself. He d----d and
confounded and abused me in every way, and my father before me, and
finally struck me; and I had sufficient self-command not to strike him
back, but left him then and there with as much dignity as I
could muster.
Thus unsuccessfully ended my brief experience of English country life--a
little hunting and shooting and fishing, a little dancing and flirting;
just enough of each to show me I was unfit for all.
A bitter-sweet remembrance, full of humiliation, but not altogether
without charm. There was the beauty of sea and open sky and changing
country weather; and the beauty of Mrs. Deane, who made a fool of me to
revenge herself on Colonel Ibbetson for trying to make a fool of her,
whereby he became the laughing-stock of the neighborhood for at least
nine days.
And I revenged myself on both--heroically, as I thought; though where
the heroism comes in, and where the revenge, does not appear
quite patent.
For I ran away to London, and enlisted in her Majesty's Household
Cavalry, where I remained a twelvemonth, and was happy enough, and
learned a great deal more good than harm.
* * * * *
Then I was bought out and articled to Mr. Lintot, architect and
surveyor: a conclave of my relatives agreeing to allow me ninety pounds
a year for three years; then all hands were to be washed of me
altogether.[A]
[Footnote A: _Note_.--I have thought it better to leave out, in its
entirety, my cousin's account of his short career as a private soldier.
It consists principally of personal descriptions that are not altogether
unprejudiced; he seems never to have quite liked those who were placed
in authority above him, either at school or in the army. MADGE PLUNKET.]
* * * * *
So I took a small lodging in Pentonville, to be near Mr. Lintot, and
worked hard at my new profession for three years, during which nothing
of importance occurred in my outer life. After this Lintot employed me
as a salaried clerk, and I do not think he had any reason to complain of
me, nor did he make any complaint. I was worth my hire, I think, and
something over; which I never got and never asked for.
Nor did I complain of him; for with all his little foibles of vanity,
irascibility, and egotism, and a certain close-fistedness, he was a good
fellow and a very clever one.
His paragon of a wife was by no means the beautiful person he had made
her out to be, nor did anybody but he seem to think her so.
She was a little older than himself; very large and massive, with stern
but not irregular features, and a very high forehead; she had a slight
tendency to baldness, and colorless hair that she wore in an austere
curl on each side of her face, and a menacing little topknot on her
occiput. She had been a Unitarian and a governess, was fond of good long
words, like Dr. Johnson, and very censorious.
But one of my husband's intimate friends, General----, who was cornet in
the Life Guards in my poor cousin's time, writes me that "he remembers
him well, as far and away the tallest and handsomest lad in the whole
regiment, of immense physical strength, unimpeachable good conduct, and
a thorough gentleman from top to toe."
Her husband's occasional derelictions in the matter of grammar and
accent must have been very trying to her!
[Illustration: PENTONVILLE.]
She knew her own mind about everything under the sun, and expected that
other people should know it, too, and be of the same mind as herself.
And yet she was not proud; indeed, she was a very dragon of humility,
and had raised injured meekness to the rank of a militant virtue. And
well she knew how to be master and mistress in her own house!
But with all this she was an excellent wife to Mr. Lintot and a devoted
mother to his children, who were very plain and subdued (and adored
their father); so that Lintot, who thought her Venus and Diana and
Minerva in one, was the happiest man in all Pentonville.
And, on the whole, she was kind and considerate to me, and I always did
my best to please her.
Moreover (a gift for which I could never be too grateful), she presented
me with an old square piano, which had belonged to her mother, and had
done duty in her school-room, till Lintot gave her a new one (for she
was a highly cultivated musician of the severest classical type). It
became the principal ornament of my small sitting-room, which it nearly
filled, and on it I tried to learn my notes, and would pick out with one
finger the old beloved melodies my father used to sing, and my mother
play on the harp.
To sing myself was, it seems, out of the question; my voice (which I
trust was not too disagreeable when I was content merely to speak)
became as that of a bull-frog under a blanket whenever I strove to
express myself in song; my larynx refused to produce the notes I held so
accurately in my mind, and the result was disaster.
On the other hand, in my mind I could sing most beautifully. Once on a
rainy day, inside an Islington omnibus, I mentally sang "Adelaida" with
the voice of Mr. Sims Reeves--an unpardonable liberty to take; and
although it is not for me to say so, I sang it even better than he, for
I made myself shed tears--so much so that a kind old gentleman sitting
opposite seemed to feel for me very much.
I also had the faculty of remembering any tune I once heard, and would
whistle it correctly ever after--even one of Uncle Ibbetson's waltzes!
As an instance of this, worth recalling, one night I found myself in
Guildford Street, walking in the same direction as another belated
individual (only on the other side of the road), who, just as the moon
came out of a cloud, was moved to whistle.
He whistled exquisitely, and, what was more, he whistled quite the most
beautiful tune I had ever heard. I felt all its changes and modulations,
its majors and minors, just as if a whole band had been there to play
the accompaniment, so cunning and expressive a whistler was he.
And so entranced was I that I made up my mind to cross over and ask him
what it was--"Your melody or your life!" But he suddenly stopped at No.
48, and let himself in with his key before I could prefer my
humble request.
Well, I went whistling that tune all next day, and for many days after,
without ever finding out what it was; till one evening, happening to be
at the Lintots. I asked Mrs. Lintot (who happened to be at the piano) if
she knew it, and began to whistle it once more. To my delight and
surprise she straightway accompanied it all through (a wonderful
condescension in so severe a purist), and I did not make a single
wrong note.
"Yes," said Mrs. Lintot, "it's a pretty, catchy little tune--of a kind
to achieve immediate popularity."
Now, I apologize humbly to the reader for this digression; but if he be
musical he will forgive me, for that tune was the "Serenade" of
Schubert, and I had never even heard Schubert's name!
And having thus duly apologized, I will venture to transgress and
digress anew, and mention here a kind of melodic malady, a singular
obsession to which I am subject, and which I will call unconscious
musical cerebration.
I am never without some tune running in my head--never for a moment; not
that I am always aware of it; existence would be insupportable if I
were. What part of my brain sings it, or rather in what part of my brain
it sings itself, I cannot imagine--probably in some useless corner full
of cobwebs and lumber that is fit for nothing else.
But it never leaves off; now it is one tune, now another; now a song
_without_ words, now _with_; sometimes it is near the surface, so to
speak, and I am vaguely conscious of it as I read or work, or talk or
think; sometimes to make sure it is there I have to dive for it deep
into myself, and I never fail to find it after a while, and bring it up
to the top. It is the "Carnival of Venice," let us say; then I let it
sink again, and it changes without my knowing; so that when I take
another dive the "Carnival of Venice" has become "Il Mio Tesoro," or the
"Marseillaise," or "Pretty Little Polly Perkins of Paddington Green."
And Heaven knows what tunes, unheard and unperceived, this internal
barrel-organ has been grinding meanwhile.
Sometimes it intrudes itself so persistently as to become a nuisance,
and the only way to get rid of it is to whistle or sing myself. For
instance, I may be mentally reciting for my solace and delectation some
beloved lyric like "The Waterfowl," or "Tears, Idle Tears," or "Break,
Break, Break"; and all the while, between the lines, this fiend of a
subcerebral vocalist, like a wandering minstrel in a distant square,
insists on singing, "Cheer, Boys, Cheer," or, "Tommy, make room for
your uncle" (tunes I cannot abide), with words, accompaniment, and all,
complete, and not quite so refined an accent as I could wish; so that I
have to leave off my recitation and whistle "J'ai du Bon Tabac" in quite
a different key to exorcise it.
But this, at least, I will say for this never still small voice of mine:
its intonation is always perfect; it keeps ideal time, and its quality,
though rather thin and somewhat nasal and quite peculiar, is not
unsympathetic. Sometimes, indeed (as in that Islington omnibus), I can
compel it to imitate, _à s'y méprendre_, the tones of some singer I have
recently heard, and thus make for myself a ghostly music which is not to
be despised.
Occasionally, too, and quite unbidden, it would warble little impromptu
inward melodies of my own composition, which often seemed to me
extremely pretty, old-fashioned, and quaint; but one is not a fair judge
of one's own productions, especially during the heat of inspiration; and
I had not the means of recording them, as I had never learned the
musical notes. What the world has lost!
Now whose this small voice was I did not find out till many years later,
_for it was not mine_!
* * * * *
In spite of such rare accomplishments and resources within myself, I was
not a happy or contented young man; nor had my discontent in it anything
of the divine.
I disliked my profession, for which I felt no particular aptitude, and
would fain have followed another--poetry, science, literature, music,
painting, sculpture; for all of which I most unblushingly thought myself
better fitted by the gift of nature.
I disliked Pentonville, which, although clean, virtuous, and
respectable, left much to be desired on the score of shape, color,
romantic tradition, and local charm; and I would sooner have lived
anywhere else: in the Champs-Élysées, let us say--yes, indeed, even on
the fifth branch of the third tree on the left-hand side as you leave
the Arc de Triomphe, like one of those classical heroes in Henri
Murger's _Vie de Bohème_.
I disliked my brother apprentices, and did not get on well with them,
especially a certain very clever but vicious and deformed youth called
Judkins, who seemed to have conceived an aversion for me from the first;
he is now an associate of the Royal Academy. They thought I gave myself
airs because I did not share in their dissipations; such dissipations as
I could have afforded would have been cheap and nasty indeed.
Yet such pothouse dissipation seemed to satisfy them, since they took
not only a pleasure in it, but a pride.
They even took a pride in a sick headache, and liked it, if it were the
result of a debauch on the previous night; and were as pompously
mock-modest about a black eye, got in a squabble at the Argyll Rooms, as
if it had been the Victoria Cross. To pass the night in a police cell
was such glory that it was worth while pretending they had done so when
it was untrue.
They looked upon me as a muff, a milksop, and a prig, and felt the
greatest contempt for me; and if they did not openly show it, it was
only because they were not quite so fond of black eyes as they made out.
So I left them to their inexpensive joys, and betook myself to pursuits
of my own, among others to the cultivation of my body, after methods I
had learned in the Life Guards. I belonged to a gymnastic and fencing
and boxing club, of which I was a most assiduous frequenter; a more
persevering dumb-beller and Indian-clubber never was, and I became in
time an all-round athlete, as wiry and lean as a greyhound, just under
fifteen stone, and four inches over six feet in height, which was
considered very tall thirty years ago; especially in Pentonville, where
the distinction often brought me more contumely than respect.
Altogether a most formidable person; but that I was of a timid nature,
afraid to hurt, and the peacefulest creature in the world.
My old love for slums revived, and I found out and haunted the worst in
London. They were very good slums, but they were not the slums of
Paris--they manage these things better in France.
Even Cow Cross (where the Metropolitan Railway now runs between King's
Cross and Farringdon Street)--Cow Cross, that whilom labyrinth of
slaughter-houses, gin-shops, and thieves' dens, with the famous Fleet
Ditch running underneath it all the while, lacked the fascination and
mystery of mediaeval romance. There were no memories of such charming
people as Le roi des Truands and Gringoire and Esmeralda; with a sigh
one had to fall back on visions of Fagin and Bill Sykes and Nancy.
_Quelle dégringolade_!
And as to the actual denizens! One gazed with a dull, wondering pity at
the poor, pale, rickety children; the slatternly, coarse women who never
smiled (except when drunk); the dull, morose, miserable men. How they
lacked the grace of French deformity, the ease and lightness of French
depravity, the sympathetic distinction of French grotesqueness. How
unterrible they were, who preferred the fist to the noiseless and
insidious knife! who fought with their hands instead of their feet,
quite loyally; and reserved the kicks of their hobnailed boots for their
recalcitrant wives!
And then there was no Morgue; one missed one's Morgue badly.
And Smithfield! It would split me truly to the heart (as M. le Major
used to say) to watch the poor beasts that came on certain days to make
a short station in that hideous cattle-market, on their way to the
slaughter-house.
What bludgeons have I seen descend on beautiful, bewildered, dazed, meek
eyes, so thickly fringed against the country sun; on soft, moist, tender
nostrils that clouded the poisonous reek with a fragrance of the far-off
fields! What torture of silly sheep and genially cynical pigs!
The very dogs seemed demoralized, and brutal as their masters. And there
one day I had an adventure, a dirty bout at fisticuffs, most humiliating
in the end for me and which showed that chivalry is often its own
reward, like virtue, even when the chivalrous are young and big and
strong, and have learned to box.
A brutal young drover wantonly kicked a sheep, and, as I thought, broke
her hind-leg, and in my indignation I took him by the ear and flung him
round onto a heap of mud and filth. He rose and squared at me in a most
plucky fashion; he hardly came up to my chin, and I refused to fight
him. A crowd collected round us, and as I tried to explain to the
by-standers the cause of our quarrel, he managed to hit me in the face
with a very muddy fist.
"Bravo, little 'un!" shouted the crowd, and he squared up again. I felt
wretchedly ashamed and warded off all his blows, telling him that I
could not hit him or I should kill him.
"Yah!" shouted the crowd again; "go it, little un! Let 'im 'ave it! The
long un's showing the white feather," etc., and finally I gave him a
slight backhander that made his nose bleed and seemed to demoralize him
completely. "Yah!" shouted the crowd; "'it one yer own size!"
I looked round in despair and rage, and picking out the biggest man I
could see, said, "Are _you_ big enough?" The crowd roared with laughter.
"Well, guv'ner, I dessay I might do at a pinch," he replied; and I tried
to slap his face, but missed it, and received such a tremendous box on
the ear that I was giddy for a second or two, and when I recovered I
found him still grinning at me. I tried to hit him again and again, but
always missed; and at last, without doing me any particular damage, he
laid me flat three times running onto the very heap where I had flung
the drover, the crowd applauding madly. Dazed, hatless, and panting, and
covered with filth, I stared at him in hopeless impotence. He put out
his hand, and said, "You're all right, ain't yer, guv'ner? I 'ope I
'aven't 'urt yer! My name's Tom Sayers. If you'd a 'it me, I should 'a'
gone down like a ninepin, and I ain't so sure as I should ever 'ave got
up again."
He was to become the most famous fighting-man in England!
I wrung his hand and thanked him, and offered him a sovereign, which he
refused; and then he led me into a room in a public-house close by,
where he washed and brushed me down, and insisted on treating me to a
glass of brandy-and-water.
I have had a fondness for fighting-men ever since, and a respect for the
noble science I had never felt before. He was many inches shorter than
I, and did not look at all the Hercules he was.
He told me I was the strongest built man for a youngster that he had
ever seen, barring that I was "rather leggy." I do not know if he was
sincere or not, but no possible compliment could have pleased me more.
Such is the vanity of youth.
And here, although it savors somewhat of vaingloriousness, I cannot
resist the temptation of relating another adventure of the same kind,
but in which I showed to greater advantage.
It was on a boxing-day (oddly enough), and I was returning with Lintot
and one of his boys from a walk in the Highgate Fields. As we plodded our
dirty way homeward through the Caledonian Road we were stopped by a
crowd outside a public-house. A gigantic drayman (they always seem
bigger than they really are) was squaring up to a poor drunken lout of a
navvy not half his size, who had been put up to fight him, and who was
quite incapable of even an attempt it self-defence; he could scarcely
lift his arms, I thought at first it was only horse-play; and as little
Joe Lintot wanted to see, I put him up on my shoulder, just as the
drayman, who had been drinking, but was not drunk, and had a most
fiendishly brutal face, struck the poor tipsy wretch with all his might
between the eyes, and felled him (it was like pole-axing a bullock), to
the delight of the crowd.
Little Joe, a very gentle and sensitive boy, began to cry; and his
father, who had the pluck of a bull-terrier, wanted to interfere, in
spite of his diminutive stature. I was also beside myself with
indignation, and pulling off my coat and hat, which I gave to Lintot,
made my way to the drayman, who was offering to fight any three men in
the crowd, an offer that met with no response.
"Now, then, you cowardly skunk!" I said, tucking up my shirt-sleeves;
"stand up, and I will knock every tooth down your ugly throat."
His face went the colors of a mottled Stilton cheese, and he asked what
I meddled with him for. A ring formed itself, and I felt the sympathy of
the crowd _with_ me this time--a very agreeable sensation!
"Now, then, up with your arms! I'm going to kill you!"
"I ain't going to fight you, mister; I ain't going to fight _nobody_.
Just you let me alone!"
[Illustration:]
"Oh yes, you are, or you're going on your marrow-bones to be pardon for
being a brutal, cowardly skunk"; and I gave him a slap on the face that
rang like a pistol-shot--a most finished, satisfactory, and successful
slap this time. My finger-tips tingle at the bare remembrance.
He tried to escape, but was held opposite to me. He began to snivel and
whimper, and said he had never meddled with me, and asked what should I
meddle with him for?
"Then down on your knees--quick--this instant!" and I made as if I were
going to begin serious business at once, and no mistake.
So down he plumped on his knees, and there he actually fainted from
sheer excess of emotion.
As I was helped on with my coat, I tasted, for once in my life the
sweets of popularity, and knew what it was to be the idol of a mob.
Little Joey Lintot and his brothers and sisters, who had never held me
in any particular regard before that I knew of, worshipped me from that
day forward.
And I should be insincere if I did not confess that on that one occasion
I was rather pleased with myself, although the very moment I stood
opposite the huge, hulking, beer-sodden brute (who had looked so
formidable from afar) I felt, with a not unpleasant sense of relief,
that he did not stand a chance. He was only big, and even at that I
beat him.
The real honors of the day belonged to Lintot, who, I am convinced, was
ready to act the David to that Goliath. He had the real stomach for
fighting, which I lacked, as very tall men are often said to do.
And that, perhaps, is why I have made so much of my not very wonderful
prowess on that occasion; not, indeed, that I am physically a coward--at
least, I do not think so. If I thought I were I should avow it with no
more shame than I should avow that I had a bad digestion, or a weak
heart, which makes cowards of us all.
It is that I hate a row, and violence, and bloodshed, even from a
nose--any nose, either my own or my neighbor's.
* * * * *
There are slums at the east end of London that many fashionable people
know something of by this time; I got to know them by heart. In addition
to the charm of the mere slum, there was the eternal fascination of the
seafaring element; of Jack ashore--a lovable creature who touches
nothing but what he adorns it in his own peculiar fashion.
I constantly haunted the docks, where the smell of tar and the sight of
ropes and masts filled me with unutterable longings for the sea--for
distant lands--for anywhere but where it was my fate to be.
I talked to ship captains and mates and sailors, and heard many
marvellous tales, as the reader may well believe, and framed for myself
visions of cloudless skies, and sapphire seas, and coral reefs, and
groves of spice, and dusky youths in painted plumage roving, and
friendly isles where a lovely half-clad, barefooted Neuha would wave her
torch, and lead me, her Torquil, by the hand through caverns of bliss!
Especially did I haunt a wharf by London Bridge, from whence two
steamers--the _Seine_ and the _Dolphin_, I believe--started on alternate
days for Boulogne-sur-Mer.
I used to watch the happy passengers bound for France, some of them, in
their holiday spirits, already fraternizing together on the sunny deck,
and fussing with camp-stools and magazines and novels and bottles
of bitter beer, or retiring before the funnel to smoke the pipe of
peace.
[Illustration: THE BOULOGNE STEAMER.]
The sound of the boiler getting up steam--what delicious music it was!
Would it ever get up steam for me? The very smell of the cabin, the very
feel of the brass gangway and the brass-bound, oil-clothed steps were
delightful; and down-stairs, on the snowy cloth, were the cold beef and
ham, the beautiful fresh mustard, the bottles of pale ale and stout. Oh,
happy travellers, who could afford all this, and France into
the bargain!
Soon would a large white awning make the after-deck a paradise, from
which, by-and-by, to watch the quickly gliding panorama of the Thames.
The bell would sound for non-passengers like me to go ashore--"Que
diable allait-il faire dans cette galère!" as Uncle Ibbetson would have
said. The steamer, disengaging itself from the wharf with a pleasant
yoho-ing of manly throats and a slow, intermittent plashing of the
paddle-wheels, would carefully pick its sunny, eastward way among the
small craft of the river, while a few handkerchiefs were waved in a
friendly, make-believe farewell--_auf wiedersehen_!
Oh, to stand by that unseasonably sou'-westered man at the wheel, and
watch St. Paul's and London Bridge and the Tower of London fade out of
sight--never, never to see them again. No _auf wiedersehen_ for me!
Sometimes I would turn my footsteps westward and fill my hungry, jealous
eyes with a sight of the gay summer procession in Hyde Park, or listen
to the band in Kensington Gardens, and see beautiful, welldressed
women, and hear their sweet, refined voices and happy laughter; and a
longing would come into my heart more passionate than my longing for the
sea and France and distant lands, and quite as unutterable. I would even
forget Neuha and her torch.
After this it was a dreary downfall to go and dine for tenpence all by
myself, and finish up with a book at my solitary lodgings in
Pentonville. The book would not let itself be read; it sulked and had to
be laid down, for "beautiful woman! beautiful girl!" spelled themselves
between me and the printed page. Translate me those words into French, O
ye who can even render Shakespeare into French Alexandrines--"Belle
femme? Belle fille?" Ha! ha!
If you want to get as near it as you can, you will have to write, "Belle
Anglaise," or "Belle Américaine;" only then will you be understood, even
in France!
Ah! elle était bien belle, Madame Seraskier!
At other times, more happily inspired, I would slake my thirst for
nature by long walks into the country. Hampstead was my Passy--the
Leg-of-Mutton Pond my Mare d'Auteuil; Richmond was my St. Cloud, with
Kew Gardens for a Bois de Boulogne; and Hampton Court made a very fair
Versailles--how incomparably fairer, even a pupil of Lintot's
should know.
And after such healthy fatigue and fragrant impressions the tenpenny
dinner had a better taste, the little front parlor in Pentonville was
more like a home, the book more like a friend.
For I read all I could get in English or French.
[Illustration]
Novels, travels, history, poetry, science--everything came as grist to
that most melancholy mill, my mind.
I tried to write; I tried to draw; I tried to make myself an inner life
apart from the sordid, commonplace ugliness of my outer one--a private
oasis of my own; and to raise myself a little, if only mentally, above
the circumstances in which it had pleased the Fates to place me.[A]
[Footnote A: _Note_--It Is with great reluctance that I now come to my
cousin's account of deplorable opinions he held, at that period of his
life, on the most important subject that can ever engross the mind of
man. I have left out _much_, but I feel that in suppressing it
altogether, I should rob his sad story of all its moral significance;
for it cannot be doubted that most of his unhappiness is attributable to
the defective religious training of his childhood, and that his parents
(otherwise the best and kindest people I have ever known) incurred a
terrible responsibility when they determined to leave him "unbiased," as
he calls it, at that tender and susceptible age when the mind is
"Wax to receive, marble to retain."
Madge Plunket.]
* * * * *
It goes without saying that, like many thoughtful youths of a melancholy
temperament, impecunious and discontented with their lot, and much given
to the smoking of strong tobacco (on an empty stomach), I continuously
brooded on the problems of existence--free-will and determinism, the
whence and why and whither of man, the origin of evil, the immortality
of the soul, the futility of life, etc., and made myself very miserable
over such questions.
Often the inquisitive passer-by, had he peeped through the blinds of
No.--Wharton Street, Pentonville, late at night, would have been
rewarded by the touching spectacle of a huge, rawboned ex-private in her
Majesty's Life Guards, with his head bowed over the black and yellow
key-board of a venerable square piano-forte (on which he could not
play), dropping the bitter tear of loneliness and _Weltschmertz_ combined.
[Illustration]
It never once occurred to me to seek relief in the bosom of any Church.
Some types are born and not made. I was a born "infidel;" if ever there
was a congenital agnostic, one agnostically constituted from his very
birth, it was I. Not that I had ever heard such an expression as
agnosticism; it is an invention of late years....
"_J'avais fait de la prose toute ma vie sans le savoir!_"
But almost the first conscious dislike I can remember was for the black
figure of the priest, and there were several of these figures in Passy.
Monsieur le Major called them _maîtres corbeaux_, and seemed to hold
them in light esteem. Dr. Seraskier hated them; his gentle Catholic wife
had grown to distrust them. My loving, heretic mother loved them not; my
father, a Catholic born and bred, had an equal aversion. They had
persecuted his gods--the thinkers, philosophers, and scientific
discoverers--Galileo, Bruno, Copernicus; and brought to his mind the
cruelties of the Holy Inquisition, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew; and
I always pictured them as burning little heretics alive if they had
their will--Eton jackets, white chimney-pot hats, and all!