INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE.
So, then, one chapter in my life had finished. Already, before the
completion of my sixth year, this first chapter had run its circle,
had rendered up its music to the final chord--might seem even, like
ripe fruit from a tree, to have detached itself forever from all the
rest of the arras that was shaping itself within my loom of life. No
Eden of lakes and forest lawns, such as the _mirage_ suddenly evokes
in Arabian sands,--no pageant of air-built battlements and towers,
that ever burned in dream-like silence amongst the vapors of summer
sunsets, mocking and repeating with celestial pencil "the fuming
vanities of earth,"--could leave behind it the mixed impression of so
much truth combined with so much absolute delusion. Truest of all
things it seemed by the excess of that happiness which it had sustained:
most fraudulent it seemed of all things, when looked back upon as some
mysterious parenthesis in the current of life, "self-withdrawn into
a wonderous depth," hurrying as if with headlong malice to extinction,
and alienated by _every_ feature from the new aspects of life that
seemed to await me. Were it not in the bitter corrosion of heart that
I was called upon to face, I should have carried over to the present
no connecting link whatever from the past. Mere reality in this
fretting it was, and the undeniableness of its too potent remembrances,
that forbade me to regard this burned-out inaugural chapter of my life
as no chapter at all, but a pure exhalation of dreams. Misery is a
guaranty of truth too substantial to be refused; else, by its
determinate evanescence, the total experience would have worn the
character of a fantastic illusion.
Well it was for me at this period, if well it were for me to live at
all, that from any continued contemplation of my misery I was forced
to wean myself, and suddenly to assume the harness of life. Else under
the morbid languishing of grief, and of what the Romans called
_desiderium_, (the yearning too obstinate after one irrecoverable
face,) too probably I should have pined away into an early grave. Harsh
was my awaking; but the rough febrifuge which this awaking administered
broke the strength of my sickly reveries through a period of more than
two years; by which time, under the natural expansion of my bodily
strength, the danger had passed over.
In the first chapter I have rendered solemn thanks for having been
trained amongst the gentlest of sisters, and not under "horrid
pugilistic brothers." Meantime, one such brother I had, senior by much
to myself, and the stormiest of his class: him I will immediately
present to the reader; for up to this point of my narrative he may be
described as a stranger even to myself. Odd as it sounds, I had at
this time both a brother and a father, neither of whom would have been
able to challenge me as a relative, nor I _him_, had we happened to
meet on the public roads.
In my father's case, this arose from the accident of his having lived
abroad for a space that, measured against _my_ life, was a very long
one. First, he lived for months in Portugal, at Lisbon, and at Cintra;
next in Madeira; then in the West Indies; sometimes in Jamaica,
sometimes in St. Kitt's; courting the supposed benefit of hot climates
in his complaint of pulmonary consumption. He had, indeed, repeatedly
returned to England, and met my mother at watering-places on the south
coast of Devonshire, &c. But I, as a younger child, had not been one
of the party selected for such excursions from home. And now, at last,
when all had proved unavailing, he was coming home to die amongst his
family, in his thirty-ninth year. My mother had gone to await his
arrival at the port (whatever port) to which the West India packet
should bring him; and amongst the deepest recollections which I connect
with that period, is one derived from the night of his arrival at
Greenhay.
It was a summer evening of unusual solemnity. The servants, and four
of us children, were gathered for hours, on the lawn before the house,
listening for the sound of wheels. Sunset came--nine, ten, eleven
o'clock, and nearly another hour had passed--without a warning sound;
for Greenhay, being so solitary a house, formed a _terminus ad quem_,
beyond which was nothing but a cluster of cottages, composing the
little hamlet of Greenhill; so that any sound of wheels coming from
the winding lane which then connected us with the Rusholme Road, carried
with it, of necessity, a warning summons to prepare for visitors at
Greenhay. No such summons had yet reached us; it was nearly midnight;
and, for the last time, it was determined that we should move in a
body out of the grounds, on the chance of meeting the travelling party,
if, at so late an hour, it could yet be expected to arrive. In fact,
to our general surprise, we met it almost immediately, but coming at
so slow a pace, that the fall of the horses' feet was not audible until
we were close upon them. I mention the case for the sake of the undying
impressions which connected themselves with the circumstances. The
first notice of the approach was the sudden emerging of horses' heads
from the deep gloom of the shady lane; the next was the mass of white
pillows against which the dying patient was reclining. The hearse-like
pace at which the carriage moved recalled the overwhelming spectacle
of that funeral which had so lately formed part in the most memorable
event of my life. But these elements of awe, that might at any rate
have struck forcibly upon the mind of a child, were for me, in my
condition of morbid nervousness, raised into abiding grandeur by the
antecedent experiences of that particular summer night. The listening
for hours to the sounds from horses' hoofs upon distant roads, rising
and falling, caught and lost, upon the gentle undulation of such fitful
airs as might be stirring--the peculiar solemnity of the hours
succeeding to sunset--the glory of the dying day--the gorgeousness
which, by description, so well I knew of sunset in those West Indian
islands from which my father was returning--the knowledge that he
returned only to die--the almighty pomp in which this great idea of
Death apparelled itself to my young sorrowing heart--the corresponding
pomp in which the antagonistic idea, not less mysterious, of life,
rose, as if on wings, amidst tropic glories and floral pageantries
that seemed even _more_ solemn and pathetic than the vapory plumes and
trophies of mortality,--all this chorus of restless images, or of
suggestive thoughts, gave to my father's return, which else had been
fitted only to interpose one transitory red-letter day in the calendar
of a child, the shadowy power of an ineffaceable agency among my dreams.
This, indeed, was the one sole memorial which restores my father's
image to me as a personal reality; otherwise he would have been for
me a bare _nominis umbra_. He languished, indeed, for weeks upon a
sofa; and, during that interval, it happened naturally, from my repose
of manners, that I was a privileged visitor to him throughout his
waking hours. I was also present at his bedside in the closing hour
of his life, which exhaled quietly, amidst snatches of delirious
conversation with some imaginary visitors.
My brother was a stranger from causes quite as little to be foreseen,
but seeming quite as natural after they had really occurred. In an
early stage of his career, he had been found wholly unmanageable. His
genius for mischief amounted to inspiration; it was a divine _afflatus_
which drove him in that direction; and such was his capacity for riding
in whirlwinds and directing storms, that he made it his trade to create
them, as a _nephelaegereta Zeus_, a cloud-compelling Jove, in order that
he _might_ direct them. For this, and other reasons, he had been sent to
the Grammar School of Louth, in Lincolnshire--one of those many old
classic institutions which form the peculiar [1] glory of England. To
box, and to box under the severest restraint of honorable laws, was in
those days a mere necessity of schoolboy life at _public_ schools; and
hence the superior manliness, generosity, and self-control of those
generally who had benefited by such discipline--so systematically hostile
to all meanness, pusillanimity, or indirectness. Cowper, in his
"Tyrocinium," is far from doing justice to our great public schools.
Himself disqualified, by a delicacy of temperament, for reaping the
benefits from such a warfare, and having suffered too much in his own
Westminster experience, he could not judge them from an impartial
station; but I, though ill enough adapted to an atmosphere so stormy, yet
having tried both classes of schools, public and private, am compelled in
mere conscience to give my vote (and, if I had a thousand votes, to give
_all_ my votes) for the former.
Fresh from such a training as this, and at a time when his additional
five or six years availed nearly to make _his_ age the double of mine,
my brother very naturally despised me; and, from his exceeding
frankness, he took no pains to conceal that he did. Why should he? Who
was it that could have a right to feel aggrieved by this contempt?
Who, if not myself? But it happened, on the contrary, that I had a
perfect craze for being despised. I doted on it, and considered contempt
a sort of luxury that I was in continual fear of losing. Why not?
Wherefore should any rational person shrink from contempt, if it happen
to form the tenure by which he holds his repose in life? The cases
which are cited from comedy of such a yearning after contempt, stand
upon a footing altogether different: _there_ the contempt is wooed as
a serviceable ally and tool of religious hypocrisy. But to me, at that
era of life, it formed the main guaranty of an unmolested repose; and
security there was not, on any lower terms, for the _latentis semita
vitae_. The slightest approach to any favorable construction of my
intellectual pretensions alarmed me beyond measure; because it pledged
me in a manner with the hearer to support this first attempt by a
second, by a third, by a fourth--O Heavens! there is no saying how far
the horrid man might go in his unreasonable demands upon me. I groaned
under the weight of his expectations; and, if I laid but the first
round of such a staircase, why, then, I saw in vision a vast Jacob's
ladder towering upwards to the clouds, mile after mile, league after
league; and myself running up and down this ladder, like any fatigue
party of Irish hodmen, to the top of any Babel which my wretched admirer
might choose to build. But I nipped the abominable system of extortion
in the very bud, by refusing to take the first step. The man could
have no pretence, you know, for expecting me to climb the third or
fourth round, when I had seemed quite unequal to the first. Professing
the most absolute bankruptcy from the very beginning, giving the man
no sort of hope that I would pay even one farthing in the pound, I
never could be made miserable by unknown responsibilities.
Still, with all this passion for being despised, which was so essential
to my peace of mind, I found at times an altitude--a starry
altitude--in the station of contempt for me assumed by my brother that
nettled me. Sometimes, indeed, the mere necessities of dispute carried
me, before I was aware of my own imprudence, so far up the staircase
of Babel, that my brother was shaken for a moment in the infinity of
his contempt; and before long, when my superiority in some bookish
accomplishments displayed itself, by results that could not be entirely
dissembled, mere foolish human nature forced me into some trifle of
exultation at these retributory triumphs. But more often I was disposed
to grieve over them. They tended to shake that solid foundation of
utter despicableness upon which I relied so much for my freedom from
anxiety; and therefore, upon the whole, it was satisfactory to my mind
that my brother's opinion of me, after any little transient oscillation,
gravitated determinately back towards that settled contempt which had
been the result of his original inquest. The pillars of Hercules, upon
which rested the vast edifice of his scorn, were these two--1st, my
physics; he denounced me for effeminacy; 2d, he assumed, and even
postulated as a _datum_, which I myself could never have the face to
refuse, my general idiocy. Physically, therefore, and intellectually,
he looked upon me as below notice; but, _morally_, he assured me that
he would give me a written character of the very best description,
whenever I chose to apply for it. "You're honest," he said; "you're
willing, though lazy; you _would_ pull, if you had the strength of a
flea; and, though a monstrous coward, you don't run away." My own
demurs to these harsh judgments were not so many as they might have
been. The idiocy I confessed; because, though positive that I was not
uniformly an idiot, I felt inclined to think that, in a majority of
cases, I really _was_; and there were more reasons for thinking so
than the reader is yet aware of. But, as to the effeminacy, I denied
it _in toto_; and with good reason, as will be seen. Neither did my
brother pretend to have any experimental proofs of it. The ground he
went upon was a mere _a priori_ one, viz., that I had always been tied
to the apron string of women or girls; which amounted at most to
this--that, by training and the natural tendency of circumstances, I
_ought_ to be effeminate; that is, there was reason to expect beforehand
that I _should_ be so; but, then, the more merit in me, if, in spite
of such reasonable presumptions, I really were _not_. In fact, my
brother soon learned, by a daily experience, how entirely he might
depend upon me for carrying out the most audacious of his own warlike
plans--such plans, it is true, that I abominated; but _that_ made no
difference in the fidelity with which I tried to fulfil them.
This eldest brother of mine was in all respects a remarkable boy. Haughty
he was, aspiring, immeasurably active; fertile in resources as Robinson
Crusoe; but also full of quarrel as it is possible to imagine; and, in
default of any other opponent, he would have fastened a quarrel upon his
own shadow for presuming to run before him when going westwards in the
morning, whereas, in all reason, a shadow, like a dutiful child, ought to
keep deferentially in the rear of that majestic substance which is the
author of its existence. Books he detested, one and all, excepting only
such as he happened to write himself. And these were not a few. On all
subjects known to man, from the Thirty-nine Articles of our English
church down to pyrotechnics, legerdemain, magic, both black and white,
thaumaturgy, and necromancy, he favored the world (which world was the
nursery where I lived amongst my sisters) with his select opinions. On
this last subject especially--of necromancy--he was very great: witness
his profound work, though but a fragment, and, unfortunately, long since
departed to the bosom of Cinderella, entitled "How to raise a Ghost; and
when you've got him down, how to keep him down." To which work he assured
us that some most learned and enormous man, whose name was a foot and a
half long, had promised him an appendix, which appendix treated of the
Red Sea and Solomon's signet ring, with forms of _mittimus_ for ghosts
that might be refractory, and probably a riot act, for any _émeute_
amongst ghosts inclined to raise barricades; since he often thrilled our
young hearts by supposing the case, (not at all unlikely, he affirmed,)
that a federation, a solemn league and conspiracy, might take place
amongst the infinite generations of ghosts against the single generation
of men at any one time composing the garrison of earth. The Roman phrase
for expressing that a man had died, viz., "_Abiit ad plures_" (He has
gone over to the majority,) my brother explained to us; and we easily
comprehended that any one generation of the living human race, even if
combined, and acting in concert, must be in a frightful minority, by
comparison with all the incalculable generations that had trot this earth
before us. The Parliament of living men, Lords and Commons united, what a
miserable array against the Upper and Lower House composing the
Parliament of ghosts! Perhaps the Pre-Adamites would constitute one wing
in such a ghostly army. My brother, dying in his sixteenth year, was far
enough from seeing or foreseeing Waterloo; else he might have illustrated
this dreadful duel of the living human race with its ghostly
predecessors, by the awful apparition which at three o'clock in the
afternoon, on the 18th of June, 1815, the mighty contest at Waterloo must
have assumed to eyes that watched over the trembling interests of man.
The English army, about that time in the great agony of its strife, was
thrown into squares; and under that arrangement, which condensed and
contracted its apparent numbers within a few black geometrical diagrams,
how frightfully narrow, how spectral, did its slender quadrangels appear
at a distance, to any philosophic spectators that knew about the amount
of human interests confided to that army, and the hopes for Christendom
that even then were trembling in the balance! Such a disproportion, it
seems, might exist, in the case of a ghostly war, between the harvest of
possible results and the slender band of reapers that were to gather it.
And there was even a worse peril than any analogous one that has been
_proved_ to exist at Waterloo. A British surgeon, indeed, in a work of
two octavo volumes, has endeavored to show that a conspiracy was traced
at Waterloo, between two or three foreign regiments, for kindling a panic
in the heat of battle, by flight, and by a sustained blowing up of
tumbrils, under the miserable purpose of shaking the British steadiness.
But the evidences are not clear; whereas my brother insisted that the
presence of sham men, distributed extensively amongst the human race, and
meditating treason against us all, had been demonstrated to the
satisfaction of all true philosophers. Who were these shams and make-
believe men? They were, in fact, people that had been dead for centuries,
but that, for reasons best known to themselves, had returned to this
upper earth, walked about amongst us, and were undistinguishable, except
by the most learned of necromancers, from authentic men of flesh and
blood. I mention this for the sake of illustrating the fact, of which the
reader will find a singular instance in the foot note attached, that the
same crazes are everlastingly revolving upon men. [2]
This hypothesis, however, like a thousand others, when it happened
that they engaged no durable sympathy from his nursery audience, he
did not pursue. For some time he turned his thoughts to philosophy,
and read lectures to us every night upon some branch or other of
physics. This undertaking arose upon some one of us envying or admiring
flies for their power of walking upon the ceiling. "Poh!" he said,
"they are impostors; they pretend to do it, but they can't do it as
it ought to be done. Ah! you should see _me_ standing upright on the
ceiling, with my head downwards, for half an hour together, and
meditating profoundly." My sister Mary remarked, that we should all
be very glad to see him in that position. "If that's the case," he
replied, "it's very well that all is ready, except as to a strap or
two." Being an excellent skater, he had first imagined that, if held
up until he had started, he might then, by taking a bold sweep ahead,
keep himself in position through the continued impetus of skating. But
this he found not to answer; because, as he observed, "the friction
was too retarding from the plaster of Paris, but the case would be
very different if the ceiling were coated with ice." As it was _not_,
he changed his plan. The true secret, he now discovered, was this: he
would consider himself in the light of a humming top; he would make
an apparatus (and he made it) for having himself launched, like a top,
upon the ceiling, and regularly spun. Then the vertiginous motion of
the human top would overpower the force of gravitation. He should, of
course, spin upon his own axis, and sleep upon his own axis--perhaps
he might even dream upon it; and he laughed at "those scoundrels, the
flies," that never improved in their pretended art, nor made any thing
of it. The principle was now discovered; "and, of course," he said,
if a man can keep it up for five minutes, what's to hinder him from
doing so for five months?" "Certainly, nothing that I can think of,"
was the reply of my sister, whose scepticism, in fact, had not settled
upon the five months, but altogether upon the five minutes. The
apparatus for spinning him, however, perhaps from its complexity, would
not work--a fact evidently owing to the stupidity of the gardener. On
reconsidering the subject, he announced, to the disappointment of some
amongst us, that, although the physical discovery was now complete,
he saw a moral difficulty. It was not a _humming_ top that was required,
but a peg top. Now, this, in order to keep up the _vertigo_ at full
stretch, without which, to a certainty, gravitation would prove too
much for him, needed to be whipped incessantly. But that was precisely
what a gentleman ought not to tolerate: to be scourged unintermittingly
on the legs by any grub of a gardener, unless it were father Adam
himself, was a thing that he could not bring his mind to face. However,
as some compensation, he proposed to improve the art of flying, which
was, as every body must acknowledge, in a condition disgraceful to
civilized society. As he had made many a fire balloon, and had succeeded
in some attempts at bringing down cats by _parachutes_, it was not
very difficult to fly downwards from moderate elevations. But, as he
was reproached by my sister for never flying back again,--which,
however, was a far different thing, and not even attempted by the
philosopher in "Rasselas,"--(for
"Revocare gradum, et _superas_ evadere ad auras
Hic labor, hoc opus est,")
he refused, under such poor encouragement, to try his winged parachutes
any more, either "aloft or alow," till he had thoroughly studied Bishop
Wilkins [3] on the art of translating right reverend gentlemen to the
moon; and, in the mean time, he resumed his general lectures on physics.
From these, however, he was speedily driven, or one might say shelled
out, by a concerted assault of my sister Mary's. He had been in the habit
of lowering the pitch of his lectures with ostentatious condescension to
the presumed level of our poor understandings. This superciliousness
annoyed my sister; and accordingly, with the help of two young female
visitors, and my next younger brother,--in subsequent times a little
middy on board many a ship of H. M., and the most predestined rebel upon
earth against all assumptions, small or great, of superiority,--she
arranged a mutiny, that had the unexpected effect of suddenly
extinguishing the lectures forever. He had happened to say, what was no
unusual thing with him, that he flattered himself he had made the point
under discussion tolerably clear; "clear," he added, bowing round the
half circle of us, the audience, "to the meanest of capacities;" and then
he repeated, sonorously, "clear to the most excruciatingly mean of
capacities." Upon which, a voice, a female voice,--but whose voice, in
the tumult that followed, I did not distinguish,--retorted, "No, you
haven't; it's as dark as sin; "and then, without a moment's interval, a
second voice exclaimed, "Dark as night;" then came my young brother's
insurrectionary yell, "Dark as midnight;" then another female voice
chimed in melodiously, "Dark as pitch;" and so the peal continued to come
round like a catch, the whole being so well concerted, and the rolling
fire so well sustained, that it was impossible to make head against it;
whilst the abruptness of the interruption gave to it the protecting
character of an oral "round robin," it being impossible to challenge any
one in particular as the ringleader. Burke's phrase of "the swinish
multitude," applied to mobs, was then in every body's mouth; and,
accordingly, after my brother had recovered from his first astonishment
at this audacious mutiny, he made us several sweeping bows that looked
very much like tentative rehearsals of a sweeping _fusillade_, and then
addressed us in a very brief speech, of which we could distinguish the
words _pearls_ and _swinish multitude_, but uttered in a very low key,
perhaps out of some lurking consideration for the two young strangers. We
all laughed in chorus at this parting salute; my brother himself
condescended at last to join us; but there ended the course of lectures
on natural philosophy.
As it was impossible, however, that he should remain quiet, he announced
to us, that for the rest of his life he meant to dedicate himself to
the intense cultivation of the tragic drama. He got to work instantly;
and very soon he had composed the first act of his "Sultan Selim;"
but, in defiance of the metre, he soon changed the title to "Sultan
Amurath," considering _that_ a much fiercer name, more bewhiskered and
beturbaned. It was no part of his intention that we should sit lolling
on chairs like ladies and gentleman that had paid opera prices for
private boxes. He expected every one of us, he said, to pull an oar.
We were to _act_ the tragedy. But, in fact, we had many oars to pull.
There were so many characters, that each of us took four at the least,
and the future middy had six. He, this wicked little middy, [4] caused
the greatest affliction to Sultan Amurath, forcing him to order the
amputation of his head six several times (that is, once in every one of
his six parts) during the first act. In reality, the sultan, though
otherwise a decent man, was too bloody. What by the bowstring, and what
by the cimeter, he had so thinned the population with which he commenced
business, that scarcely any of the characters remained alive at the
end of act the first. Sultan Amurath found himself in an awkward
situation. Large arrears of work remained, and hardly any body to do
it but the sultan himself. In composing act the second, the author had
to proceed like Deucalion and Pyrrha, and to create an entirely new
generation. Apparently this young generation, that ought to have been
so good, took no warning by what had happened to their ancestors in
act the first: one must conclude that they were quite as wicked, since
the poor sultan had found himself reduced to order them all for
execution in the course of this act the second. To the brazen age had
succeeded an iron age; and the prospects were becoming sadder and
sadder as the tragedy advanced. But here the author began to hesitate.
He felt it hard to resist the instinct of carnage. And was it right
to do so? Which of the felons whom he had cut of prematurely could
pretend that a court of appeal would have reversed his sentence? But
the consequences were distressing. A new set of characters in every
act brought with it the necessity of a new plot; for people could not
succeed to the arrears of old actions, or inherit ancient motives,
like a landed estate. Five crops, in fact, must be taken off the ground
in each separate tragedy, amounting, in short, to five tragedies
involved in one.
Such, according to the rapid sketch which at this moment my memory
furnishes, was the brother who now first laid open to me the gates of
war. The occasion was this. He had resented, with a shower of stones, an
affront offered to us by an individual boy, belonging to a cotton
factory: for more than two years afterwards this became the _teterrima
causa_ of a skirmish or a battle as often as we passed the factory; and,
unfortunately, _that_ was twice a day on every day except Sunday. Our
situation in respect to the enemy was as follows: Greenhay, a country
house newly built by my father, at that time was a clear mile from the
outskirts of Manchester; but in after years Manchester, throwing out the
_tentacula_ of its vast expansions, absolutely enveloped Greenhay; and,
for any thing I know, the grounds and gardens which then insulated the
house may have long disappeared. Being a modest mansion, which (including
hot walls, offices, and gardener's house) had cost only six thousand
pounds, I do not know how it should have risen to the distinction of
giving name to a region of that great town; however, it _has_ done so;
[5] and at this time, therefore, after changes so great, it will be
difficult for the _habitué_ of that region to understand how my brother
and myself could have a solitary road to traverse between Greenhay and
Princess Street, then the termination, on that side, of Manchester. But
so it was. Oxford _Street_, like its namesake in London, was then called
the Oxford _Road_; and during the currency of our acquaintance with it,
arose the first three houses in its neighborhood; of which the third was
built for the Rev. S. H., one of our guardians, for whom his friends had
also built the Church of St. Peter's--not a bowshot from the house. At
present, however, he resided in Salford, nearly two miles from Greenhay;
and to him we went over daily, for the benefit of his classical
instructions. One sole cotton factory had then risen along the line of
Oxford Street; and this was close to a bridge, which also was a new
creation; for previously all passengers to Manchester went round by
Garrat. This factory became to us the _officina gentium_, from which
swarmed forth those Goths and Vandals that continually threatened our
steps; and this bridge became the eternal arena of combat, we taking good
care to be on the right side of the bridge for retreat, _i.e._, on the
town side, or the country side, accordingly as we were going out in the
morning, or returning in the afternoon. Stones were the implements of
warfare; and by continual practice both parties became expert in throwing
them.
The origin of the feud it is scarcely requisite to rehearse, since the
particular accident which began it was not the true efficient cause
of our long warfare, but simply the casual occasion. The cause lay in
our aristocratic dress. As children of an opulent family, where all
provisions were liberal, and all appointments elegant, we were uniformly
well dressed; and, in particular, we wore troussers, (at that time
unheard of, except among sailors,) and we also wore Hessian boots--a
crime that could not be forgiven in the Lancashire of that day, because
it expressed the double offence of being aristocratic and being
outlandish. We were aristocrats, and it was vain to deny it; could
we deny our boots? whilst our antagonists, if not absolutely _sans
culottes_, were slovenly and forlorn in their dress, often unwashed,
with hair totally neglected, and always covered with flakes of cotton.
Jacobins they were not, as regarded any sympathy with the Jacobinism
that then desolated France; for, on the contrary, they detested every
thing French, and answered with brotherly signals to the cry of "Church
and king," or "King and constitution." But, for all that, as they were
perfectly independent, getting very high wages, and these wages in a
mode of industry that was then taking vast strides ahead, they contrived
to reconcile this patriotic anti-Jacobinism with a personal Jacobinism
of that sort which is native to the heart of man, who is by natural
impulse (and not without a root of nobility, though also of base envy)
impatient of inequality, and submits to it only through a sense of
its necessity, or under a long experience of its benefits.
It was on an early day of our new _tyrocinium_, or perhaps on the very
first, that, as we passed the bridge, a boy happening to issue from
the factory [6] sang out to us derisively, "Hollo, bucks!" In this the
reader may fail to perceive any atrocious insult commensurate to the long
war which followed. But the reader is wrong. The word "_dandies_" [7]
which was what the villain meant, had not then been born, so that he
could not have called us by that name, unless through the spirit of
prophecy. _Buck_ was the nearest word at hand in his Manchester
vocabulary: he gave all he could, and let us dream the rest. But in the
next moment he discovered our boots, and he consummated his crime by
saluting us as "Boots! boots!" My brother made a dead stop, surveyed him
with intense disdain, and bade him draw near, that he might "give his
flesh to the fowls of the air." The boy declined to accept this
liberal invitation, and conveyed his answer by a most contemptuous and
plebian gesture, [8] upon which my brother drove him in with a shower
of stones.
During this inaugural flourish of hostilities, I, for my part, remained
inactive, and therefore apparently neutral. But this was the last time
that I did so: for the moment, indeed, I was taken by surprise. To be
called a _buck_ by one that had it in his choice to have called me a
coward, a thief, or a murderer, struck me as a most pardonable offence;
and as to _boots_, that rested upon a flagrant fact that could not be
denied; so that at first I was green enough to regard the boy as very
considerate and indulgent. But my brother soon rectified my views; or,
if any doubts remained, he impressed me, at least, with a sense of my
paramount duty to himself, which was threefold. First, it seems that
I owed military allegiant to _him_, as my commander-in-chief, whenever
we "took the field;" secondly, by the law of nations, I, being a cadet
of my house, owed suit and service to him who was its head; and he
assured me, that twice in a year, on _my_ birthday and on _his_, he
had a right, strictly speaking, to make me lie down, and to set his
foot upon my neck; lastly, by a law not so rigorous, but valid amongst
gentlemen,--viz., "by the _comity_ of nations,"--it seems I owed eternal
deference to one so much older than myself, so much wiser, stronger,
braver, more beautiful, and more swift of foot. Something like all
this in tendency I had already believed, though I had not so minutely
investigated the modes and grounds of my duty. By temperament, and
through natural dedication to despondency, I felt resting upon me
always too deep and gloomy a sense of obscure duties attached to life,
that I never _should_ be able to fulfil; a burden which I could not
carry, and which yet I did not know how to throw off. Glad, therefore,
I was to find the whole tremendous weight of obligations--the law and
the prophets--all crowded into this one pocket command, "Thou shalt
obey thy brother as God's vicar upon earth." For now, if, by any future
stone levelled at him who had called me a "buck," I should chance to
draw blood, perhaps I might not have committed so serious a trespass
on any rights which he could plead; but if I _had_, (for on this subject
my convictions were still cloudy,) at any rate, the duty I might have
violated in regard to this general brother, in right of Adam, was
cancelled when it came into collision with my paramount duty to this
liege brother of my own individual house.
From this day, therefore, I obeyed all my brother's military commands
with the utmost docility; and happy it made me that every sort of
doubt, or question, or opening for demur was swallowed up in the unity
of this one papal principle, discovered by my brother, viz., that all
rights and duties of casuistry were transferred from me to himself.
_His_ was the judgment--_his_ was the responsibility; and to me belonged
only the sublime obligation of unconditional faith in _him_. That faith
I realized. It is true that he taxed me at times, in his reports of
particular fights, with "horrible cowardice," and even with "a cowardice
that seemed inexplicable, except on the supposition of treachery." But
this was only a _façon de parler_ with him: the idea of secret perfidy,
that was constantly moving under ground, gave an interest to the
progress of the war, which else tended to the monotonous. It was a
dramatic artifice for sustaining the interest, where the incidents
might happen to be too slightly diversified. But that he did not believe
his own charges was clear, because he never repeated them in his
"General History of the Campaigns," which was a _resumé_, or
recapitulating digest, of his daily reports.
We fought every day, and, generally speaking, _twice_ every day; and
the result was pretty uniform, viz., that my brother and I terminated
the battle by insisting upon our undoubted right to run away. _Magna
Charta_, I should fancy, secures that great right to every man; else,
surely, it is sadly defective. But out of this catastrophe to most of
our skirmishes, and to all our pitched battles except one, grew a
standing schism between my brother and myself. My unlimited obedience
had respect to action, but not to opinion. Loyalty to my brother did
not rest upon hypocrisy: because I was faithful, it did not follow
that I must be false in relation to his capricious opinions. And these
opinions sometimes took the shape of acts. Twice, at the least, in
every week, but sometimes every night, my brother insisted on singing
"Te Deum" for supposed victories which he had won; and he insisted
also on my bearing a part in these "Te Deums." Now, as I knew of no
such victories, but resolutely asserted the truth,--viz., that we ran
away,--a slight jar was thus given to the else triumphal effect of
these musical ovations. Once having uttered my protest, however,
willingly I gave my aid to the chanting; for I loved unspeakably the
grand and varied system of chanting in the Romish and English churches.
And, looking back at this day to the ineffable benefits which I derived
from the church of my childhood, I account among the very greatest
those which reached me through the various chants connected with the
"O, Jubilate," the "Magnificat," the "Te Deum," the "Benedicite," &c.
Through these chants it was that the sorrow which laid waste my infancy,
and the devotion which nature had made a necessity of my being, were
profoundly interfused: the sorrow gave reality and depth to the
devotion; the devotion gave grandeur and idealization to the sorrow.
Neither was my love for chanting altogether without knowledge. A son
of my reverend guardian, much older than myself, who possessed a
singular faculty of producing a sort of organ accompaniment with one
half of his mouth, whilst he sang with the other half, had given me
some instructions in the art of chanting; and, as to my brother, he,
the hundred-handed Briareus, could do all things; of course, therefore,
he could chant.
Once having begun, it followed naturally that the war should deepen
in bitterness. Wounds that wrote memorials in the flesh, insults that
rankled in the heart,--these were not features of the case likely to
be forgotten by our enemies, and far less by my fiery brother. I, for
my part, entered not into any of the passions that war may be supposed
to kindle, except only the chronic passion of anxiety. _Fear_ it was
not; for experience had taught me that, under the random firing of our
undisciplined enemies, the chances were not many of being wounded. But
the uncertainties of the war; the doubts in every separate action
whether I could keep up the requisite connection with my brother, and,
in case I could not, the utter darkness that surrounded my fate;
whether, as a trophy won from Israel, I should be dedicated to the
service of some Manchester Dagon, or pass through fire to Moloch,--all
these contingencies, for me that had no friend to consult, ran too
violently into the master current of my constitutional despondency
ever to give way under any casual elation of success. Success, however,
we really had at times; in slight skirmishes pretty often; and once,
at least, as the reader will find to his mortification, if he is wicked
enough to take the side of the Philistines, a most smashing victory
in a pitched battle. But even then, and whilst the hurrahs were yet
ascending from our jubilating lips, the freezing remembrance came back
to my heart of that deadly depression which, duly at the coming round
of the morning and evening watches, travelled with me like my shadow
on our approach to the memorable bridge. A bridge of sighs [9] too surely
it was for me; and even for my brother it formed an object of fierce yet
anxious jealousy, that he could not always disguise, as we first came in
sight of it; for, if it happened to be occupied in strength, there was an
end of all hope that we could attempt the passage; and _that_ was a
fortunate solution of the difficulty, as it imposed no evil beyond a
circuit; which, at least, was safe, if the world should choose to call it
inglorious. Even this shade of ignominy, however, my brother contrived
to color favorably, by calling us--that is, me and himself--"a corps
of observation;" and he condescendingly explained to me, that, although
making "a lateral movement," he had his eye upon the enemy, and "might
yet come round upon his left flank in a way that wouldn't, perhaps,
prove very agreeable." This, from the nature of the ground, never
happened. We crossed the river at Garrat, out of sight from the enemy's
position; and, on our return in the evening, when we reached that point
of our route from which the retreat was secure to Greenhay, we took
such revenge for the morning insult as might belong to extra liberality
in our stone donations. On this line of policy there was, therefore,
no cause for anxiety; but the common case was, that the numbers might
not be such as to justify this caution, and yet quite enough for
mischief. To my brother, however, stung and carried headlong into
hostility by the martial instincts of his nature, the uneasiness of
doubt or insecurity was swallowed up by his joy in the anticipation
of victory, or even of contest; whilst to myself, whose exultation was
purely official and ceremonial, as due by loyalty from a cadet to the
head of his house, no such compensation existed. The enemy was no enemy
in _my_ eyes; his affronts were but retaliations; and his insults
were so inapplicable to my unworthy self, being of a calibre exclusively
meant for the use of my brother, that from me they recoiled, one and
all, as cannon shot from cotton bags.
The ordinary course of our day's warfare was this: between nine and
ten in the morning occurred our first transit, and, consequently, our
earliest opportunity for doing business. But at this time the great
sublunary interest of breakfast, which swallowed up all nobler
considerations of glory and ambition, occupied the work people of the
factory, (or what in the pedantic diction of this day are termed the
"operatives,") so that very seldom any serious business was transacted.
Without any formal armistice, the paramount convenience of such an
arrangement silently secured its own recognition. Notice there needed
none of truce, when the one side yearned for breakfast, and the other
for a respite: the groups, therefore, on or about the bridge, if any
at all, were loose in their array, and careless. We passed through
them rapidly, and, on my part, uneasily; exchanging a few snarls,
perhaps, but seldom or ever snapping at each other. The tameness was
almost shocking of those who, in the afternoon, would inevitably resume
their natural characters of tiger cats and wolves. Sometimes, however,
my brother felt it to be a duty that we should fight in the morning;
particularly when any expression of public joy for a victory,--bells
ringing in the distance,--or when a royal birthday, or some traditional
commemoration of ancient feuds, (such as the 5th of November,) irritated
his martial propensities. Some of these being religious festivals,
seemed to require of us an _extra_ homage, for which we knew not how
to find any natural or significant expression, except through sharp
discharges of stones, that being a language older than Hebrew or
Sanscrit, and universally intelligible. But, excepting these high
days of religious solemnity, when a man is called upon to show that
he is not a pagan or a miscreant in the eldest of senses, by thumping,
or trying to thump, somebody who is accused or accusable of being
heterodox, the great ceremony of breakfast was allowed to sanctify the
hour. Some natural growls we uttered, but hushed them soon, regardless
"Of the sweeping whirlpool's sway,
That, hushed in grim repose, looked for his evening prey."
_That_ came but too surely. Yes, evening never forgot to come; this
odious necessity of fighting never missed its road back, or fell asleep,
or loitered by the way, more than a bill of exchange or a tertian
fever. Five times a week (Saturday sometimes, and Sunday always, were
days of rest) the same scene rehearsed itself in pretty nearly the
same succession of circumstances. Between four and five o'clock we had
crossed the bridge to the safe, or Greenhay side; then we paused, and
waited for the enemy. Sooner or later a bell rang, and from the smoky
hive issued the hornets that night and day stung incurably my peace
of mind. The order and procession of the incidents after this were
odiously monotonous. My brother occupied the main high road, precisely
at the point where a very gentle rise of the ground attained its summit;
for the bridge lay in a slight valley, and the main military position
was fifty or eighty yards above the bridge: then--but having first
examined my pockets, in order to be sure that my stock of ammunition,
stones, fragments of slate, with a reasonable proportion of brickbats,
was all correct and ready for action--he detached me about forty yards
to the right, my orders being invariable, and liable to no doubts or
"quibbling." Detestable in _my_ ears was that word "_quibbling_," by
which, for a thousand years, if the war had happened to last so long,
he would have fastened upon me the imputation of meaning, or wishing,
at least, to do what he called "pettifogulizing"--that is, to plead
some distinction, or verbal demur, in bar of my orders, under some
colorable pretence that, according to their literal construction, they
really did not admit of being fulfilled, or perhaps that they admitted
it too much as being capable of fulfilment in two senses, either of
them a practicable sense. True it was that my eye was preternaturally
keen for flaws of language, not from pedantic exaction of superfluous
accuracy, but, on the contrary, from too conscientious a wish to escape
the mistakes which language not rigorous is apt to occasion. So far
from seeking to "pettifogulize"--_i.e._, to find evasions for any
purpose in a trickster's minute tortuosities of construction--exactly
in the opposite direction, from mere excess of sincerity, most
unwillingly I found, in almost every body's words, an unintentional
opening left for double interpretations. Undesigned equivocation
prevails every where; [10] and it is not the cavilling hair splitter,
but, on the contrary, the single-eyed servant of truth, that is most
likely to insist upon the limitation of expressions too wide or too
vague, and upon the decisive election between meanings potentially
double. Not in order to resist or evade my brother's directions, but for
the very opposite purpose--viz., that I might fulfil them to the letter;
thus and no otherwise it happened that I showed so much scrupulosity
about the exact value and position of his words, as finally to draw upon
myself the vexatious reproach of being habitually a "pettifogulizer."
Meantime, our campaigning continued to rage. Overtures of pacification
were never mentioned on either side. And I, for _my_ part, with the
passions only of peace at my heart, did the works of war faithfully
and with distinction. I presume so, at least, from the results. It is
true, I was continually falling into treason, without exactly knowing
how I got into it, or how I got out of it. My brother also, it is true,
sometimes assured me that he could, according to the rigor of martial
justice, have me hanged on the first tree we passed; to which my prosaic
answer had been, that of trees there _were_ none in Oxford
Street--[which, in imitation of Von Troil's famous chapter on the
snakes of Lapland, the reader may accept, if he pleases, as a complete
course of lectures on the "dendrology" of Oxford Street.] But,
notwithstanding such little stumblings in my career, I continued to
ascend in the service; and, I am sure, it will gratify my friendly
readers to hear, that, before my eighth birthday, I was promoted to
the rank of major general. Over this sunshine, however, soon swept a
train of clouds. Three times I was taken prisoner, and with different
results. The first time I was carried to the rear, and not molested
in any way. Finding myself thus ignominiously neglected, I watched my
opportunity; and, by making a wide circuit, easily effected my escape.
In the next case, a brief council was held over me; but I was not
allowed to hear the deliberations; the result only being communicated
to me--which result consisted in a message not very complimentary to
my brother, and a small present of kicks to myself. This present was
paid down without any discount, by means of a general subscription
amongst the party surrounding me--that party, luckily, not being very
numerous; besides which, I must, in honesty, acknowledge myself,
generally speaking, indebted to their forbearance. They were not
disposed to be too hard upon me. But, at the same time, they clearly
did not think it right that I should escape altogether from tasting
the calamities of war. And this translated the estimate of my guilt
from the public jurisdiction to that of the individual, sometimes
capricious and harsh, and carrying out the public award by means of
legs that ranged through all gradations of weight and agility. One
kick differed exceedingly from another kick in dynamic value; and, in
some cases, this difference was so distressingly conspicuous as to
imply special malice, unworthy, I conceive, of all generous soldiership.
On returning to our own frontiers, I had an opportunity of displaying
my exemplary greenness. That message to my brother, with all its
_virus_ of insolence I repeated as faithfully for the spirit as, and
as literally for the expressions, as my memory allowed me to do; and
in that troublesome effort, simpleton that I was, fancied myself
exhibiting a soldier's loyalty to his commanding officer. My brother
thought otherwise: he was more angry with me than with the enemy. I
ought, he said, to have refused all participation in such _sans
cullotes_ insolence; to carry it was to acknowledge it as fit to be
carried. One, grows wiser every day; and on this particular day I made
a resolution that, if again made prisoner, I would bring no more "jaw"
(so my brother called it) from the Philistines. If these people _would_
send "jaw," I settled that, henceforwards, it must go through the post
office.
In my former captures, there had been nothing special or worthy of
commemoration in the circumstances. Neither was there in the third,
excepting that, by accident, in the second stage of the case, I was
delivered over to the custody of young women and girls; whereas the
ordinary course would have thrown me upon the vigilant attentions
(relieved from monotony by the experimental kicks) of boys. So far,
the change was very much for the better. I had a feeling myself, on
first being presented to my new young mistresses, of a distressing
sort. Having always, up to the completion of my sixth year, been a
privileged pet, and almost, I might say, ranking amongst the sanctities
of the household, with all its female sections, whether young or old,
(an advantage which I owed originally to a long illness, an ague,
stretching over two entire years of my infancy,) naturally I had learned
to appreciate the indulgent tenderness of women; and my heart thrilled
with love and gratitude, as often as they took me up into their arms
and kissed me. Here it would have been as every where else; but,
unfortunately, my introduction to these young women was in the very
worst of characters. I had been taken in arms--in arms against their
own brothers, cousins, sweethearts, and on pretexts too frivolous to
mention. If asked the question, it would be found that I should not
myself deny the fact of being at war with their whole order. What was
the meaning of _that_? What was it to which war pledged a man? It
pledged him, in case of opportunity, to burn, ravage, and depopulate
the houses and lands of the enemy; which enemy was these fair girls.
The warrior stood committed to universal destruction. Neither sex nor
age, neither the smiles of unoffending infancy nor the gray hairs of
the venerable patriarch, neither the sanctity of the matron nor the
loveliness of the youthful bride, would confer any privilege with the
warrior, consequently not with me.
Many other hideous features in the military character will be found
in books innumerable--levelled at those who make war, and therefore
at myself. And it appears finally by these books, that, as one of my
ordinary practices, I make a wilderness, and call it a pacification;
that I hold it a duty to put people to the sword; which done, to plough
up the foundations of their hearths and altars, and then to sow the
ground with salt.
All this passing through my brain, when suddenly one young woman
snatched me up in her arms, and kissed me: from _her_, I was passed
round to others of the party, who all in turn caressed me, with no
allusion to that warlike mission against them and theirs, which only
had procured me the honor of an introduction to themselves in the
character of captive. The too palpable fact that I was not the person
meant by nature to exterminate their families, or to make wildernesses,
and call them pacifications, had withdrawn from their minds the
counterfact--that whatever had been my performances, my intentions had
been hostile, and that in such a character only I could have become
their prisoner. Not only did these young people kiss me, but I (seeing
no military reason against it) kissed _them_. Really, if young women
will insist on kissing major generals, they must expect that the
generals will retaliate. One only of the crowd adverted to the character
in which I came before them: to be a lawful prisoner, it struck her
too logical mind that I must have been caught in some aggressive
practices. "Think," she said, "of this little dog fighting, and fighting
our Jack." "But," said another in a propitiatory tone, "perhaps he'll
not do so any more." I was touched by the kindness of her suggestion,
and the sweet, merciful sound of that same "_Not do so any more_" which
really was prompted, I fear, much more by that charity in her which
hopeth all things than by any signs of amendment in myself. Well was
it for me that no time was allowed for an investigation into my morals
by point-blank questions as to my future intentions. In which case it
would have appeared too undeniably, that the same sad necessity which
had planted me hitherto in a position of hostility to their estimable
families would continue to persecute me; and that, on the very next
day, duty to my brother, howsoever it might struggle with gratitude
to themselves, would range me in martial attitude, with a pocketful
of stones, meant, alas! for the exclusive use of their respectable
kinsmen. Whilst I was preparing myself, however, for this painful
exposition, my female friends observed issuing from the factory a crowd
of boys not likely at all to improve my prospects. Instantly setting
me down on my feet, they formed a sort of _cordon sanitaire_ behind
me, by stretching out their petticoats or aprons, as in dancing, so
as to touch; and then crying out, "Now, little dog, run for thy life,"
prepared themselves (I doubt not) for rescuing me, should my recapture
be effected.
But this was not effected, although attempted with an energy that
alarmed me, and even perplexed me with a vague thought (far too
ambitious for my years) that one or two of the pursuing party might
be possessed by some demon of jealousy, as eye witnesses to my revelling
amongst the lips of that fair girlish bevy, kissing and being kissed,
loving and being loved; in which case, from all that ever I had read
about jealousy, (and I had read a great deal--viz., "Othello," and
Collins's "Ode to the Passions,") I was satisfied that, if again
captured, I had very little chance for my life. That jealousy was a
green-eyed monster, nobody could know better than _I_ did. "O, my lord,
beware of jealousy!" Yes; and my lord couldn't possibly have more
reason for bewaring of it than myself; indeed, well it would have been
had his lordship run away from all the ministers of jealousy--Iago,
Cassio, and embroidered handkerchiefs--at the same pace of six miles
an hour which kept me ahead of my infuriated pursuers. Ah, that maniac,
white as a leper with flakes of cotton, can I ever forget him--_him_
that ran so far in advance of his party? What passion but jealousy
could have sustained him in so hot a chase? There were some lovely
girls in the fair company that had so condescendingly caressed me;
but, doubtless, upon that sweet creature his love must have settled,
who suggested, in her soft, relenting voice, a penitence in me that,
alas! had not dawned, saying, "_Yes; but perhaps he will not do so any
more._" Thinking, as I ran, of her beauty, I felt that this jealous
demoniac must fancy himself justified in committing seven times seven
murders upon me, if he should have it in his power. But, thank Heaven,
if jealousy can run six miles an hour, there are other passions--as,
for instance, panic--that can run, upon occasion, six and a half; so,
as I had the start of him, (you know, reader,) and not a very short
start,--thanks be to the expanded petticoats of my dear female
friends!--naturally it happend that the green-eyed monster came in
second best. Time, luckily, was precious with _him_; and, accordingly,
when he had chased me into the by-road leading down to Greenhay, he
turned back. For the moment, therefore, I found myself suddenly released
from danger. But this counted for nothing. The same scene would probably
revolve upon me continually; and, on the next rehearsal, Green-eyes
might have better luck. It saddened me, besides, to find myself under
the political necessity of numbering amongst the Philistines, and as
daughters of Gath, so many kind-hearted girls, whom, by personal proof,
I knew to be such. In the profoundest sense, I was unhappy; and, not
from any momentary accident of distress, but from deep glimpses which
now, and heretofore, had opened themselves, as occassions arose, into
the inevitable conflicts of life. One of the saddest among such
conflicts is the necessity, wheresoever it occurs, of adopting--though
the heart should disown--the enmities of one's own family, or country,
or religious sect. In forms how afflicting must that necessity have
sometimes occurred during the Parliamentary war! And, in after years,
amongst our beautiful old English metrical romances, I found the same
impassioned complaint uttered by a knight, Sir Ywain, as early as A.D.
1240--
"But now, where'er I stray or go,
My heart SHE has that is my foe!"
I knew--I anticipated to a certainty--that my brother would not hear
of any merit belonging to the factory population whom every day we had
to meet in battle; on the contrary, even submission on _their_ part,
and willingness to walk penitentially through the _Furcae Caudinae_,
would hardly have satisfied his sense of their criminality. Often,
indeed, as we came in view of the factory, he would shake his fist at
it, and say, in a ferocious tone of voice, "_Delenda est Carthago!_"
And certainly, I thought to myself, it must be admitted by every body,
that the factory people are inexcusable in raising a rebellion against
my brother. But still rebels were men, and sometimes were women; and
rebels, that stretch out their petticoats like fans for the sake of
screening one from the hot pursuit of enemies with fiery eyes, (green
or otherwise,) really are not the sort of people that one wishes to
hate.
Homewards, therefore, I drew in sadness, and little doubting that
_hereafter_ I might have verbal feuds with my brother on behalf of my
fair friends, but not dreaming how much displeasure I had already
incurred by my treasonable collusion with their caresses. That part
of the affair he had seen with his own eyes, from his position on the
field; and then it was that he left me indignantly to my fate, which,
by my first reception, it was easy to see would not prove very gloomy.
When I came into our own study, I found him engaged in preparing a
_bulletin_, (which word was just then travelling into universal use,)
reporting briefly the events of the day. The art of drawing, as I shall
again have occasion to mention, was amongst his foremost accomplishments;
and round the margin of the border ran a black border, ornamented with
cyprus and other funereal emblems. When finished, it was carried into the
room of Mrs. Evans. This Mrs. Evans was an important person in our
affairs. My mother, who never chose to have any direct communication with
her servants, always had a housekeeper for the regulation of all domestic
business; and the housekeeper, for some years, was this Mrs. Evans. Into
her private parlor, where she sat aloof from the under servants, my
brother and I had the _entrée_ at all times, but upon very different
terms of acceptance: he as a favorite of the first class; _I_, by
sufferance, as a sort of gloomy shadow that ran after _his_ person, and
could not well be shut out if _he_ were let in. Him she admired in the
very highest degree; myself, on the contrary, she detested, which made me
unhappy. But then, in some measure, she made amends for this, by
despising me in extremity; and for _that_ I was truly thankful--I need
not say _why_, as the reader already knows. Why she detested me, so far
as I know, arose in part out of my thoughtfulness indisposed to
garrulity, and in part out of my savage, Orson-like sincerity. I had a
great deal to say, but then I could say it only to a very few people,
amongst whom Mrs. Evans was certainly not one; and, when I _did_ say any
thing, I fear that dire ignorance prevented my laying the proper
restraints upon my too liberal candor; and _that could not prove
acceptable to one who thought nothing of working for any purpose, or for
no purpose, by petty tricks, or even falsehoods--all which I held in
stern abhorrence that I was at no pains to conceal. The _bulletin_ on
this occasion, garnished with this pageantry of woe, cypress wreaths, and
arms reversed, was read aloud to Mrs. Evans, indirectly, therefore, to
me. It communicated with Spartan brevity, the sad intelligence (but not
sad to Mrs. E.) "that the major general had forever disgraced himself, by
submitting to the ........ caresses of the enemy." I leave a blank for
the epithet affixed to "caresses," not because there _was_ any blank,
but, on the contrary, because my brother's wrath had boiled over in such
a hubble-bubble of epithets, some only half erased, some doubtfully
erased, that it was impossible, out of the various readings, to pick
out the true classical text. "Infamous," "disgusting," and "odious"
struggled for precedency; and _infamous_ they might be; but on the
other affixes I held my own private opinions. For some days my brother's
displeasure continued to roll in reverberating thunders; but at length
it growled itself to rest; and at last he descended to mild
expostulations with me, showing clearly, in a series of general orders,
what frightful consequences must ensue, if major generals (as a general
principle) should allow themselves to be kissed by the enemy.
About this time my brother began to issue, instead of occasional
bulletins, through which hitherto he had breathed his opinions into
the ear of the public, (viz., of Mrs. Evans,) a regular gazette, which,
in imitation of the London Gazette, was published twice a week. I
suppose that no creature ever led such a life as _I_ did in that
gazette. Run up to the giddiest heights of promotion on on day, for
merits which I could not myself discern, in a week or two I was brought
to a court martial for offenses equally obscure. I was cashiered; I
was restored "on the intercession of a distinguished lady;" (Mrs.
Evans, to wit;) I was threatened with being drummed out of the army,
to the music of the "Rogue's March;" and then, in the midst of all
this misery and degradation, upon the discovery of some supposed energy
that I had manifested, I was decorated with the Order of the Bath. My
reading had been extensive enough to give me some vague aerial sense
of the honor involved in such a decoration, whilst I was profoundly
ignorant of the channels through which it could reach an individual,
and of the sole fountain from which it could flow. But, in this enormity
of disproportion between the cause and the effect, between the agency
and the result, I saw nothing more astonishing than I had seen in many
other cases confessedly true. Thousands of vast effects, by all that
I had heard, linked themselves to causes apparently trivial. The
dreadful taint of scrofula, according to the belief of all Christendom,
fled at the simple touch of a Stuart [11] sovereign: no miracle in the
Bible, from Jordan or from Bethesda, could be more sudden or more
astoundingly victorious. By my own experience, again, I knew that a
_styan_ (as it is called) upon the eyelid could be easily reduced, though
not instantaneously, by the slight application of any golden trinket.
Warts upon the fingers of children I had myself known to vanish under the
_verbal_ charm of a gypsy woman, without any medicinal application
whatever. And I well knew, that almost all nations believed in the
dreadful mystery of the _evil eye_; some requiring, as a condition of the
evil agency, the co-presence of malice in the agent; but others, as
appeared from my father's Portuguese recollections, ascribing the same
horrid power to the eye of certain select persons, even though innocent
of all malignant purpose, and absolutely unconscious of their own fatal
gift, until awakened to it by the results. Why, therefore, should there
be any thing to shock, or even to surprise, in the power claimed by my
brother, as an attribute inalienable from primogeniture in certain select
families, of conferring knightly honors? The red ribbon of the Bath he
certainly _did_ confer upon me; and once, in a paroxysm of imprudent
liberality, he promised me at the end of certain months, supposing that I
swerved from my duty by no atrocious delinquency, the Garter itself.
This, I knew, was a far loftier distinction than the Bath. Even then it
was so; and since those days it has become much more so; because the long
roll of martial services in the great war with Napoleon compelled our
government greatly to widen the basis of the Bath. This promise was never
fulfilled; but not for any want of clamorous persecution on my part
addressed to my brother's wearied ear and somewhat callous sense of
honor. Every fortnight, or so, I took care that he should receive a
"refresher," as lawyers call it,--a new and revised brief,--memorializing
my pretensions. These it was my brother's policy to parry, by alleged
instances of recent misconduct on my part. But all such offences, I
insisted, were thoroughly washed away by subsequent services in moments
of peril, such as he himself could not always deny. In reality, I
believe his real motive for withholding the Garter was, that he had
nothing better to bestow upon himself.
"Now, look here," he would say, appealing to Mrs. Evans; "I suppose
there's a matter of half a dozen kings on the continent, that would
consent to lose three of their fingers, if by such a sacrifice they
could purchase the blue ribbon; and here is this little scamp,
conceiting himself entitled to it before he has finished two campaigns.
"But I was not the person to be beaten off in this fashion. I took my
stand upon the promise. A promise _was_ a promise, even if made to a
scamp; and then, besides--but there I hesitated; awful thoughts
interposed to check me; else I wished to suggest that, perhaps, some
two or three among that half dozen kings might also be scamps. However,
I reduced the case to this plain dilemma: These six kings had received
a promise, or they had not. If they had not, my case was better than
theirs; if they _had_, then, said I, "all seven of us"--I was going
to add, "are sailing in the same boat," or something to that effect,
though not so picturesquely expressed; but I was interrupted by his
deadly frown at my audacity in thus linking myself on as a seventh to
this _attelage_ of kings, and that such an absolute grub should dream
of ranking as one in a bright pleiad of pretenders to the Garter. I
had not particularly thought of that; but now, that such a demur was
offered to my consideration, I thought of reminding him that, in a
certain shadowy sense, I also might presume to class myself as a king,
the meaning of which was this: Both my brother and myself, for the
sake of varying our intellectual amusements, occupied ourselves at
times in governing imaginary kingdoms. I do not mention this as any
thing unusual; it is a common resource of mental activity and of
aspiring energies amongst boys. Hartley Coleridge, for example, had
a kingdom which he governed for many years; whether well or ill, is
more than I can say. Kindly, I am sure, he would govern it; but, unless
a machine had been invented for enabling him to write without effort,
(as was really done for our fourth George during the pressure of
illness,) I fear that the public service must have languished deplorably
for want of the royal signature. In sailing past his own dominions,
what dolorous outcries would have saluted him from the shore--"Hollo,
royal sir! here's the deuse to pay: a perfect lock there is, as tight
as locked jaw, upon the course of our public business; throats there
are to be cut, from the product of ten jail deliveries, and nobody
dares to cut them, for want of the proper warrant; archbishoprics there
are to be filled; and, because they are _not_ filled, the whole nation
is running helter skelter into heresy--and all in consequence of your
majesty's sacred laziness." _Our_ governments were less remissly
administered; since each of us, by continued reports of improvements
and gracious concessions to the folly or the weakness of our subjects,
stimulated the zeal of his rival. And here, at least, there seemed to
be no reason why I should come into collision with my brother. At any
rate, I took pains _not_ to do so. But all was in vain. My destiny
was, to live in one eternal element of feud.
My own kingdom was an island called Gombroon. But in what parallel of
north or south latitude it lay, I concealed for a time as rigorously
as ancient Rome through every century concealed her real name.
[12] The object in this provisional concealment was, to regulate
the position of my own territory by that of my brother's; for I was
determined to place a monstrous world of waters between us as the only
chance (and a very poor one it proved) for compelling my brother to
keep the peace. At length, for some reason unknown to me, and much to
my astonishment, he located his capital city in the high latitude of
65 deg. N. That fact being once published and settled, instantly I
smacked my little kingdom of Gombroon down into the tropics, 10 deg.,
I think, south of the line. Now, at least, I was on the right side of
the hedge, or so I flattered myself; for it struck me that my brother
never would degrade himself by fitting out a costly nautical expedition
against poor little Gombroon; and how else could he get at me? Surely
the very fiend himself, if he happened to be in a high arctic latitude,
would not indulge his malice so far as to follow its trail into the
tropic of Capricorn. And what was to be got by such a freak? There was
no Golden Fleece in Gombroon. If the fiend or my brother fancied _that_,
for once they were in the wrong box; and there was no variety of
vegetable produce, for I never denied that the poor little island was
only 270 miles in circuit. Think, then, of sailing through 75 deg. of
latitude only to crack such a miserable little filbert as that. But
my brother stunned me by explaining, that, although his capital lay
in lat. 65 deg. N., not the less his dominions swept southwards through
a matter of 80 or 90 deg.; and as to the tropic of Capricorn, much of
it was his own private property. I was aghast at hearing _that_. It
seemed that vast horns and promontories ran down from all parts of his
dominions towards any country whatsoever, in either hemisphere,--empire
or republic, monarchy, polyarchy, or anarchy,--that he might have
reasons for assaulting.
Here in one moment vanished all that I had relied on for protection:
distance I had relied on, and suddenly I was found in close neighborhood
to my most formidable enemy. Poverty I had rolled on, and _that_ was
not denied: he granted the poverty, but it was dependent on the
barbarism of the Gombroonians. It seems that in the central forests
of Gombroonia there were diamond mines, which my people, from their
low condition of civilization, did not value, nor had any means of
working. Farewell, therefore, on _my_ side, to all hopes of enduring
peace, for here was established, in legal phrase, _a lien_ forever
upon my island, and not upon its margin, but its very centre, in favor
of any invaders better able than the natives to make its treasures
available. For, of old, it was an article in my brother's code of
morals, that, supposing a contest between any two parties, of which
one possessed an article, whilst the other was better able to use it,
the rightful property vested in the latter. As if you met a man with
a musket, then you might justly challenge him to a trial in the art
of making gunpowder; which if you _could_ make, and he could _not_,
in that case the musket was _de jure_ yours. For what shadow of a right
had the fellow to a noble instrument which he could not "maintain" in
a serviceable condition, and "feed" with its daily rations of powder
and shot? Still, it may be fancied that, since all the relations between
us as independent sovereigns (whether of war, or peace, or treaty)
rested upon our own representations and official reports, it was surely
within my competence to deny or qualify as much as within his to assert.
But, in reality, the _law_ of the contest between us, as suggested by
some instinct of propriety in my own mind, would not allow me to proceed
in such a method. What he said was like a move at chess or draughts,
which it was childish to dispute. The move being made, my business
was--to face it, to parry it, to evade it, and, if I could, to overthrow
it. I proceeded as a lawyer who moves as long as he can, not by blank
denial of facts, (or _coming to an issue_,) but by _demurring_, (_i.e._,
admitting the allegations of fact, but otherwise interpreting their
construction.) It was the understood necessity of the case that I must
passively accept my brother's statements so far as regarded their verbal
expression; and, if _I_ would extricate my poor islanders from their
troubles, it must be by some distinction or evasion lying _within_ this
expression, or not blankly contradicting it.
"How, and to what extent," my brother asked, "did I raise taxes upon
my subjects?" My first impulse was to say, that I did not tax them at
all, for I had a perfect horror of doing so; but prudence would not
allow of my saying _that_; because it was too probable he would demand
to know how, in that case, I maintained a standing army; and if I once
allowed it to be supposed that I had none, there was an end forever
to the independence of my people. Poor things! they would have been
invaded and dragooned in a month. I took some days, therefore, to
consider that point; but at last replied, that my people, being
maritime, supported themselves mainly by a herring fishery, from which
I deducted a part of the produce, and afterwards sold it for manure
to neighboring nations. This last hint I borrowed from the conversation
of a stranger who happened to dine one day at Greenhay, and mentioned
that in Devonshire, or at least on the western coast of that county,
near Ilfracombe, upon any excessive take of herrings, beyond what the
markets could absorb, the surplus was applied to the land as a valuable
dressing. It might be inferred from this account, however, that the
arts must be in a languishing state amongst a people that did not
understand the process of salting fish; and my brother observed
derisively, much to my grief, that a wretched ichthyophagous people
must make shocking soldiers, weak as water, and liable to be knocked
over like ninepins; whereas, in _his_ army, not a man ever ate
herrings, pilchards, mackerels, or, in fact, condescended to any thing
worse than surloins of beef.
At every step I had to contend for the honor and independence of my
islanders; so that early I came to understand the weight of Shakspeare's
sentiment--
"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown!"