_Affords a capital illustration of the way of the world. For, whereas
knaves and fools not unusually take precedence of better men, so this
chapter, though placed at the head of a long regiment, is yet inferior
to any one that comes after._
The famous John Bunyan, or Bunion,--for the true orthography of this
renowned name is much doubted amongst the learned of the present
age,--has laid it down as an axiom in that most glorious of all
Progresses, the Pilgrim's Progress, that “He that is down, needs fear
no fall.” And who, in good truth, will undertake to dispute the
good pilgrim's remark? Since nothing can be more clear to an eye as
philosophic as was that of Mr. Bunyan, that if a man be seated on the
ground, he most certainly is not in much danger of slipping through his
chair; or that, being already at the bottom of the water, he “needs fear
no fall” from the yard-arm.
On this assurance, I take courage for Colin Clink. Down in the world
with respect to its goods, down in society, down in the estimation of
his own father and mother, and down in that which our modern political
ragamuffins are pleased to term the “accident” of birth, he assuredly
had not the least occasion for a single instant to trouble his mind with
fears of falling any lower.
From the very earliest, therefore, he had, and could have, but one
prospect before him, and that was, the prospect of rising above his
first condition. To be sure, like Bruce's spider, he afterwards fell
sometimes; but then he reflected that rising and falling, like standing
up and sitting down, constitute a portion of the lot of every man's
life.
It is currently related amongst the good folks of the country-side
wherein our hero first saw the light, that while three or four officious
neighbourly women were stealing noiselessly about the room, attending to
the wants of the sick woman, and while the accoucheur of the parish
was inly congratulating himself on having introduced his round
five-thousandth child to the troublesome pleasures of this world, young
Colin turned from the arms of the nurse who held him, and, as though
even then conscious of the obligation conferred upon him by his
admission to the stage of life, stretched out his hand towards the
astonished surgeon, and in a very audible voice exclaimed, “Thank you,
doctor--thank you!”
I do not vouch for the truth of this anecdote; but this I do
say,--whether or not he had anything to be thankful for will be seen,
much as he himself saw it, during the course of this his own true
history.
That he was lucky in opening his eyes, even though in an humble cottage,
amidst the scenes that nature spread around him, is certain enough. To
be born poor as the spirit of poverty herself, is sufficiently bad; but
far worse is it to be thus born in the bottom of some noisome alley of a
vast town, where a single ray of sunlight never falls, nor a glimpse of
the sky itself is ever caught, beyond what may be afforded by that
small dusky section of it which seems to lie like a dirty ceiling on
the chimney-tops, and even then cannot be seen, unless (to speak like a
geometrician) by raising the face to a horizontal position and the eyes
perpendicularly. Fresh air, fields, rivers, clouds, and sunshine, redeem
half the miseries of want, and make a happy joyful being of him who, in
any other sense, cannot call one single atom of the world his own.
Colin Clink was a native of the village of Bramleigh, about twenty
miles west of that city of law and divinity, of sermons and proctors'
parchment, the silent city of York.
Some time previous to his birth, his mother had taken a fancy,
suggested, very probably, by the powerful pleading of a weak pocket, or,
with equal probability, by something else to the full as argumentative,
to reside in a small cottage, (as rural landowners are in the habit
of terming such residences, though they are known to everybody else as
hovels,) altogether by herself; if I except a little girl, of some
five or six years of age, who accompanied her in the capacity of
embryo housemaid, gruel-maker, and, when strong enough, of nurse to the
expected “little stranger.”
For the discharge of the more important and pressing duties incident
to her situation, she depended upon one or two of those permanently
unemployed old crones, usually to be found in country places, who pass
the greater portion of their time in “preserving” themselves, like red
herrings or hung beef, over the idle smoke of their own scanty fires,
and who, as they are always waiting chances, may be had by asking for
at any moment. Their minimum of wages depended upon a small sum of money
derived by Mistress Clink, the mother of our hero, from a source which,
as she then followed no particular employment, we are compelled to
pronounce obscure.
The sagacious reader may perhaps, in the height of his wisdom, marvel
how so young a child as one of five or six years of age should be
introduced to his notice in the capacity above-mentioned; but the
practice is common enough, and may be accounted for, in the way of cause
and effect, upon the most modern philosophical principles. Thus:--Great
states require great taxes to support them; great taxes produce
political extravagance; political extravagance enforces domestic
economy; and domestic economy in the lowest class, where misery would
seem almost rudely to sever the most endearing ties, now-a-days, demands
that every pair of hands, however small, shall labour for the milk that
supports them; and every little heart, however light, shall be filled
with the pale cares and yearning anxieties which naturally belong only
to mature age.
Of such as these was Mistress Clink's diminutive housemaid, Fanny
Woodruff.
Brought up amidst hardships from the first day of her existence, through
the agency either of the rod, the heavier stick, or of keener hunger,
during at least twelve hours out of every twenty-four that passed over
her head; she presented, at five years of age, the miniature picture,
painted in white and yellow,--for all the carnation had fled from
Nature's palette when she drew this mere sketch of incipient woman,--she
presented, I repeat, the miniature picture, not of what childhood is,
a bright and joyful outburst of fresh life into a new world of strange
attractive things--not of that restless inquiring existence, curious
after every created object, and happy amidst them all; but of a
little, pale, solemn thing, looking as though it had suddenly fallen,
heart-checked, upon a world of evil--as though its eyes had looked only
upon discouragement, and its hands been stretched in love, only to be
repulsed with indifference or with hatred. The picture of a little baby
soul, prematurely forced upon the grown-up anxieties of the world, and
made almost a woman in demeanour, before she knew half the attractive
actions of a child.
Notwithstanding all this, and in spite of the unnatural care-worn
expression of her little melancholy countenance, Fanny's features
retained something of that indefinite quality commonly termed
“interesting.” Two black eyes, which showed nothing but black between
the lids, looked openly but fearfully from beneath the arched browless
bones of the forehead, and, with an irrepressible questioning in the
face of the spectator, seemed ever to be asking doubtfully, whether
there was or was not such a creature as a friend in the world; but her
sunken cheeks and wasted arms belied the happy age of childhood, and
spoke only of hard usage and oft-continued suffering.
On the eventful day that gave young Master Colin Clink to the world, and
about twelve hours previous to the time at which he _should have made_
his actual appearance, Mistress Clink, his mother, was lying upon a bed
in an inner ground-floor room of her cottage, think-ing--if the troubled
and confused ideas that filled her brain might be termed thinking--upon
her coming trials; while little Fanny, taking temporary advantage of
the illness of her mistress, and relaxing, in a moment of happy
forgetfulness, again into a child, was sitting upon the ground near the
door, and noiselessly amusing herself by weighing in a halfpenny pair
of tin scales the sand which had been strown upon the floor by way of
carpet, when the abrupt entrance of some one at the outer door, though
unheard by the sick woman amidst her half-dreaming reveries, so startled
the little offender on the ground, that, in her haste to scramble on to
her feet, and recover all the solemn proprieties and demure looks which,
in a returning moment of infantile nature, had been cast aside, she
upset the last imaginary pound of sand-made sugar that had been heaped
up on a stool beside her, and at the same time chanced to strike her
head against the under side of the little round table which stood at
hand, whereby a bottle of physic was tossed uninjured on to the bed, and
a spoon precipitated to the floor. Her countenance instantly changed
to an expression which told that the crime was of too black a dye to be
forgiven. But patience without tears, and endurance without complaint,
were also as visible; virtues which hard necessity had instilled into
her bosom long before.
Ill as Mistress Clink may readily be presumed to have been, she started
half up in bed, leaning with her elbow upon the pillow, her countenance,
pale and ghastly with sickness, rendered still more pale and horrible
with anger, and gasping for words, which even then came faint in sound
though strong in bitterness, she began to rate the child vehemently for
her accidental disaster.
In another instant a female servant of the squire of the parish stood by
the bedside.
Mistress Clink fell back upon the pillow, while her face for a moment
blushed scarlet, and then became again as white as ashes.
“_Don't_ rate the poor child, if you please, ma'am,” said the woman.
“Poor thing! it's only a bag of bones at best.”
“Oh, I'm ill!” sighed Mistress Clink.
“Ay, dear! you _do_ look ill,” responded the woman. “I 'll run and
fetch the doctor; but, if you please, ma'am, master has sent this little
basket of things for you.”
“What things?” asked the sick woman, slightly rallying, and in an eager
voice.
“Linen, ma'am,” observed the servant, at the same time opening the lid
of the basket.
“How very good of him!” whispered Fanny.
“Yes, child,” replied the serving woman; “he's always very kind to poor
women.”
The invalid was aroused; she almost raised herself again upon her hand.
“Very kind, is he? Yes, yes--say so, say so. But”--and she hesitated,
and passed her hand across her forehead, as though mentally striving to
recall her flitting senses--“Take 'em back--away with 'em--tell him--Oh!
I'm ill, I'm ill!”
[Illustration: 023]
She fell back insensible. The old woman and Fanny screamed first, and
then ran for the surgeon. Within a very brief period Master Colin Clink
appeared before the world, some half a day or so earlier than, to the
best of my belief, nature originally intended he should. But it is the
peculiar faculty of violent tempers to precipitate events, and realize
prospective troubles before their time.
As the reader will subsequently be called upon to make a more close
acquaintance with the professional gentleman now introduced to notice,
it may not be improper briefly to observe, that, amongst many other
recommendations to the notice and favour of the public, the doctor
offered himself as a guardian to “persons of unsound mind,” with, of
course, the kindest and best mode of treatment that could possibly be
adopted. In plain words, he kept a “retreat,” or private madhouse, for
the especial and peculiar accommodation of those eager young gentlemen
who may, perchance, find it more agreeable to shut up their elderly
relations in a lunatic's cell, than to wait until death shall have
relieved them of the antique burthen. The doctor's establishment was one
of the worst of a bad kind; and, as we shall eventually see, he was in
the regular practice of making a very curious application of it.
We may now conclude the chapter.
While Doctor Rowel was preparing for his departure, he chanced, in the
course of some casual chat with one of the old gossips present, to ask
where the sick woman's husband was at this interesting moment of
his life; but, unluckily for his curiosity, all the old women were
immediately seized with a momentary deafness, which totally prevented
them from hearing his question, though it was twice repeated. He then
asked how it came about that the Squire had sent such a pretty basket of
baby-linen to Mistress Clink? But their ears were equally impervious
to the sound of that inquiry as to the other; thus proving to a
demonstration, that while there are some matters which certain ingenious
people imagine they thoroughly understand even from the slightest hints
and innuendoes, which is precisely the case with the good reader himself
at this moment, (so far as our present story is concerned,) there are
other matters that, put them into whatever language you will, can never
be rendered at all comprehensible to discreet grown-up people.
Nevertheless, the doctor did not depart unenlightened. Though the women
were deaf and ignorant, a little child was present who seemed to know
all about it. Finding that nobody else answered the great gentleman,
little Fanny screwed her courage up to the speaking point, and looking
the doctor earnestly in the face, said, “If you please, sir, the lady
that brought the basket said it was because the squire is always so very
kind to poor women.”
The doctor burst into a laugh, though what for nobody present could
imagine, as all the old women, and the child too, looked grave enough in
all conscience.