THE CAXTONS—A FAMILY PICTURE.
“Sir—sir—it is a boy!”
“A boy,” said my father, looking up from his book, and evidently much puzzled; “what is a boy?”
Now, my father did not mean by that interrogatory to challenge philosophical inquiry, nor to demand of the honest but unenlightened woman who had just rushed into his study, a solution of that mystery, physiological and psychological, which has puzzled so many curious sages, and lies still involved in the question, “What is man?” For, as we need not look farther than Dr Johnson’s Dictionary to know that a boy is “a male child”—i. e., the male young of man; so he who would go to the depth of things, and know scientifically what is a boy, must be able first to ascertain “what is a man?” But, for aught I know, my father may have been satisfied with Buffon on that score, or he may have sided with Monboddo. He may have agreed with Bishop Berkeley—he may have contented himself with Professor Combe—he may have regarded the genus spiritually, like Zeno, or materially, like Epicurus. Grant that boy is the male young of man, and he would have had plenty of definitions to choose from. He might have said, “Man is a stomach—ergo, boy a male young stomach. Man is a brain,—boy a male young brain. Man is a bundle of habits—boy a male young bundle of habits. Man is a machine—boy a male young machine. Man is a tail-less monkey—boy a male young tail-less monkey. Man is a combination of gases—boy a male young combination of gases. Man is an appearance—boy a male young appearance,” &c. &c., and etcetera,ad infinitum! And if none of these definitions had entirely satisfied my father, I am perfectly persuaded that he would never have come to Mrs Primmins for a new one.
But it so happened that my father was at that moment engaged in the important consideration whether the Iliad was written by one Homer—or was rather a collection of sundry ballads, done into Greek by divers hands, and finally selected, compiled, and reduced into a whole by a Committee of Taste, under that elegant old tyrant Pisistratus; and the sudden affirmation “It is a boy,” did not seem to him pertinent to the thread of the discussion. Therefore he asked, “What is a boy?”—vaguely, and, as it were, taken by surprise.
“Lord, sir!” said Mrs Primmins, “what is a boy? Why, the baby!”
“The baby!” repeated my father, rising. “What, you don’t mean to say that Mrs Caxton is—eh—?”
“Yes I do,” said Mrs Primmins, dropping a curtsey; “and as fine a little rogue as ever I set eyes upon.”
“Poor, dear woman!” said my father with great compassion. “So soon too—so rapidly!” he resumed in a tone of musing surprise. “Why, it is but the other day we were married!”
“Bless my heart, sir,” said Mrs Primmins, much scandalised, “it is ten months and more.”
“Ten months!” said my father with a sigh. “Ten months! and I have not finished fifty pages of my refutation of Wolfe’s monstrous theory! In ten months a child!—and I’ll be bound complete—hands, feet, eyes, ears, and nose!—and not like this poor Infant of Mind (and my father pathetically placed his hand on the treatise)—of which nothing is formed and shaped—not even the first joint of the little finger! Why, my wife is a precious woman! Well, keep her quiet. Heaven preserve her, and send me strength—to support this blessing!”
“But your honour will look at the baby?—come, sir!” and Mrs Primmins laid hold of my father’s sleeve coaxingly.
“Look at it—to be sure,” said my father kindly; “look at it, certainly, it is but fair to poor Mrs Caxton; after taking so much trouble, dear soul!”
Therewith my father, drawing his dressing robe round him in more stately folds, followed Mrs Primmins up stairs, into a room very carefully darkened.
“How are you, my dear?” said my father, with compassionate tenderness, as he groped his way to the bed.
A faint voice muttered, “Better now,—and so happy!” And, at the same moment, Mrs Primmins pulled my father away, lifted a coverlid from a small cradle, and, holding a candle within an inch of an undeveloped nose, cried emphatically, “There—bless it!”
“Of course, ma’am, I bless it,” said my father rather peevishly. “It is my duty to bless it;—Bless it!And this, then, is the way we come into the world!—red, very red,—blushing for all the follies we are destined to commit.”
My father sat down on the nurse’s chair, the women grouped round him. He continued to gaze on the contents of the cradle, and at length said musingly:—“And Homer was once like this!”
At this moment—and no wonder, considering the propinquity of the candle to his visual organs—Homer’s infant likeness commenced the first untutored melodies of nature.
“Homer improved greatly in singing as he grew older,” observed Mr Squills, the accoucheur, who was engaged in some mysteries in a corner of the room.
My father stopped his ears:—“Little things can make a great noise,” said he, philosophically; “and the smaller the thing the greater noise it can make.”
So saying, he crept on tiptoe to the bed, and, clasping the pale hand held out to him, whispered some words that no doubt charmed and soothed the ear that heard them, for that pale hand was suddenly drawn from his own, and thrown tenderly round his neck. The sound of a gentle kiss was heard through the stillness.
“Mr Caxton, sir,” cried Mr Squills, in rebuke, “you agitate my patient—you must retire.”
My father raised his mild face, looked round apologetically, brushed his eyes with the back of his hand, stole to the door, and vanished.
“I think,” said a kind gossip seated at the other side of my mother’s bed, “I think, my dear, that Mr Caxton might have shown more joy,—more natural feeling, I may say,—at the sight of the baby: and such a baby! But all men are just the same, my dear—brutes—all brutes, depend upon it.”
“Poor Austin!” sighed my mother feebly—“how little you understand him.”
“And now I shall clear the room,” said Mr Squills.—“Go to sleep, Mrs Caxton.”
“Mr Squills,” exclaimed my mother, and the bed-curtains trembled, “pray see that Mr Caxton does not set himself on fire;—and, Mr Squills, tell him not to be vexed and miss me.—I shall be down very soon—shan’t I?”
“If you keep yourself easy you will, ma’am.”
“Pray say so;—and, Primmins,—”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Every one, I fear, is neglecting your master. Be sure,—(and my mother’s lips approached close to Mrs Primmins’ ear,)—be sure that you—air his nightcap yourself.”
“Tender creatures those women,” soliloquised Mr Squills, as, after clearing the room of all present, save Mrs Primmins and the nurse, he took his way towards my father’s study. Encountering the footman in the passage,—“John,” said he, “take supper into your master’s room—and make us some punch, will you?—stiffish!”
“Mr Caxton, how on earth did you ever come to marry?” asked Mr Squills, abruptly, with his feet on the hob, while stirring up his punch.
That was a home question, which many men might reasonably resent. But my father scarcely knew what resentment was.
“Squills,” said he, turning round from his books, and laying one finger on the surgeon’s arm confidentially,—“Squills,” said he, “I should be glad to know myself how I came to be married.”
Mr Squills was a jovial good-hearted man—stout, fat, and with fine teeth, that made his laugh pleasant to look at as well as to hear. Mr Squills, moreover, was a bit of a philosopher in his way;—studied human nature in curing its diseases;—and was accustomed to say, that Mr Caxton was a better book in himself than all he had in his library. Mr Squills laughed and rubbed his hands.
My father resumed thoughtfully, and in the tone of one who moralises:—
“There are three great events in life, sir; birth, marriage, and death. None know how they are born, few know how they die. But I suspect that many can account for the intermediate phenomenon—I cannot.”
“It was not for money,—it must have been for love,” observed Mr Squills; “and your young wife is as pretty as she is good.”
“Ha!” said my father, “I remember.”
“Do you, sir?” exclaimed Squills, highly amused. “How was it?”
My father, as was often the case with him, protracted his reply, and then seemed rather to commune with himself than to answer Mr Squills.
“The kindest, the best of men,” he murmured,—“Abyssus Eruditionis: and to think that he bestowed on me the only fortune he had to leave, instead of to his own flesh and blood, Jack and Kitty. All at least that I could graspdeficiente manu, of his Latin, his Greek, his Orientals. What do I not owe to him!”
“To whom?” asked Squills. “Good Lord, what’s the man talking about?”
“Yes, sir,” said my father rousing himself, “such was Giles Tibbets, M.A.,Sol Scientiarum, tutor to the humble scholar you address, and father to poor Kitty. He left me his Elzevirs; he left me also his orphan daughter.”
“Oh! as a wife—”
“No, as a ward. So she came to live here. I am sure there was no harm in it. But my neighbours said there was, and the widow Weltraum told me the girl’s character would suffer. What could I do?—Oh yes, I recollect all now! I married her, that my old friend’s child might have a roof to her head, and come to no harm. You see I was forced to do her that injury, for after all, poor young creature, it was a sad lot for her. A dull book-worm like me—cochleæ vitam agens, Mr Squills—leading the life of a snail. But my shell was all I could offer to my poor friend’s orphan.”
“Mr Caxton, I honour you,” said Squills emphatically, jumping up and spilling half a tumbler-full of scalding punch over my father’s legs. “You have a heart, sir! and I understand why your wife loves you. You seem a cold man; but you have tears in your eyes at this moment.”
“I dare say I have,” said my father, rubbing his shins: “it was boiling!”
“And your son will be a comfort to you both,” said Mr Squills, reseating himself, and, in his friendly emotion, wholly abstracted from all consciousness of the suffering he had inflicted. “He will be a dove of peace to your ark.”
“I don’t doubt it,” said my father ruefully, “only those doves, when they are small, are a very noisy sort of birds—non talium avium cantus somnum reducunt. However, it might have been worse. Leda had twins.”
“So had Mrs Barnabas last week,” rejoined the accoucheur. “Who knows what may be in store for you yet? Here’s a health to Master Caxton, and lots of brothers and sisters to him!”
“Brothers and sisters! I am sure Mrs Caxton will never think of such a thing, sir,” said my father almost indignantly. “She’s much too good a wife to behave so. Once, in a way, it is all very well; but twice—and as it is, not a paper in its place, nor a pen mended the last three days: I, too, who can only write ‘cuspide duriusculâ’—and the Baker coming twice to me for his bill too! The Ilithyiæ are troublesome deities, Mr Squills.”
“Who are the Ilithyiæ,” asked the accoucheur.
“You ought to know,” answered my father, smiling. “The female dæmons who presided over the Neogilos or New-born. They take the name from Juno. See Homer, book XI. By the bye, will my Neogilos be brought up like Hector or Astyanax,—videlicet, nourished by its mother or by a nurse?”
“Which do you prefer, Mr Caxton?” asked Mr Squills, breaking the sugar in his tumbler. “In this I always deem it my duty to consult the wishes of the gentleman.”
“A nurse by all means, then,” said my father. “And let her carry himupo kolpo, next to her bosom. I know all that has been said about mothers nursing their own infants, Mr Squills; but poor Kitty is so sensitive, that I think a stout healthy peasant woman will be best for the boy’s future nerves, and his mother’s nerves, present and future too. Heigh-ho!—I shall miss the dear woman very much; when will she be up, Mr Squills?”
“Oh, in less than a fortnight!”
“And then the Neogilos shall go to school!upo kolpo—the nurse with him, and all will be right again,” said my father, with a look of sly mysterious humour, which was peculiar to him.
“School! when he’s just born?”
“Can’t begin too soon,” said my father positively; “that’s Helvetius’ opinion, and it’s mine too!”
That I was a very wonderful child, I take for granted; but, nevertheless, it was not of my own knowledge that I came into possession of the circumstances set down in my former chapters. But my father’s conduct on the occasion of my birth made a notable impression upon all who witnessed it; and Mr Squills and Mrs Primmins have related the facts to me sufficiently often, to make me as well acquainted with them as those worthy witnesses themselves. I fancy I see my father before me, in his dark-gray dressing-gown, and with his odd, half sly, half innocent twitch of the mouth, and peculiar puzzling look, from two quiet, abstracted, indolently handsome eyes, at the moment he agreed with Helvetius on the propriety of sending me to school as soon as I was born. Nobody knew exactly what to make of my father—his wife excepted. Some set him down as a sage, some as a fool. As Hippocrates, in his well-known letter to Damagetes, saith of the great Democritus, he wascontemptu et admiratione habitus—accustomed both to contempt and admiration. The neighbouring clergy respected him as a scholar, “breathing libraries;” the ladies despised him as an absent pedant, who had no more gallantry than a stock or a stone. The poor loved him for his charities, but laughed at him as a weak sort of man, easily taken in. Yet the squires and farmers found that, in their own matters of rural business, he had always a fund of curious information to impart; and whoever, young or old, gentle or simple, learned or ignorant, asked his advice, it was given with not more humility than wisdom. In the common affairs of life, he seemed incapable of acting for himself; he left all to my mother; or, if taken unawares, was pretty sure to be the dupe. But in those very affairs—ifanotherconsulted him—his eye brightened, his brow cleared, the desire of serving made him a new being: cautious, profound, practical. Too lazy or too languid where only his own interests were at stake—touch his benevolence, and all the wheels of the clockwork felt the impetus of the master-spring. No wonder that, to others, the nut of such a character was hard to crack! But, in the eyes of my poor mother, Augustine (familiarly Austin) Caxton was the best and the greatest of human beings; and certainly she ought to have known him well, for she studied him with her whole heart, knew every trick of his face, and, nine times out of ten, divined what he was going to say, before he opened his lips. Yet certainly there were deeps in his nature which the plummet of her tender woman’s wit had never sounded; and, certainly, it sometimes happened that, even in his most domestic colloquialisms, my mother was in doubt whether he was the simple straightforward person he was mostly taken for. There was, indeed, a kind of suppressed subtle irony about him, too unsubstantial to be popularly called humour, but dimly implying some sort of jest, which he kept all to himself; and this was only noticeable when he said something that sounded very grave, or appeared to the grave very silly and irrational.
That I did not go to school—at least to what Mr Squills understood by the word school—quite so soon as intended, I need scarcely observe. In fact, my mother managed so well—my nursery, by means of double doors, was so placed out of hearing—that my father, for the most part, was privileged, if he so pleased, to forget my existence. He was once dimly recalled to it on the occasion of my christening. Now, my father was a shy man, and he particularly hated all ceremonies and public spectacles. He became uneasily aware that a great ceremony, in which he might be called upon to play a prominent part, was at hand. Abstracted as he was, and conveniently deaf at times, he had heard significant whispers about “taking advantage of the bishop’s being in the neighbourhood,” and “twelve new jelly glasses being absolutely wanted,” to be sure that some deadly festivity was in the wind. And, when the question of godmother and godfather was fairly put to him, coupled with the remark that this was a fine opportunity to return the civilities of the neighbourhood, he felt that a strong effort at escape was the only thing left. Accordingly, having, seemingly without listening, heard the day fixed, and seen, as they thought, without observing, the chintz chairs in the best drawing-room uncovered, (my dear mother was the tidiest woman in the world,) my father suddenly discovered that there was to be a great book sale, twenty miles off, which would last four days, and attend it he must. My mother sighed; but she never contradicted my father, even when he was wrong, as he certainly was in this case. She only dropped a timid intimation that she feared “It would look odd, and the world might misconstrue my father’s absence—had not she better put off the christening?”
“My dear,” answered my father, “it will bemyduty, by-and-by, to christen the boy—a duty not done in a day. At present, I have no doubt that the bishop will do very well without me. Let the day stand, or, if you put it off, upon my word and honour I believe that the wicked auctioneer will put off the book sale also. Of one thing I am quite sure, that the sale and the christening will take place at the same time.”
There was no getting over this; but I am certain my dear mother had much less heart than before in uncovering the chintz chairs, in the best drawing-room. Five years later this would not have happened. My mother would have kissed my father and said “Stay,” and he would have staid. But she was then very young and timid; and he, wild man, not of the woods but the cloisters, nor yet civilised into the tractabilities of home. In short, the post-chaise was ordered and the carpet-bag packed.
“My love,” said my mother, the night before this Hegira, looking up from her work—“my love, there is one thing you have quite forgot to settle—I beg pardon for disturbing you, but it is important!—baby’s name; shan’t we call him Augustine?”
“Augustine,” said my father, dreamily; “why, that name’s mine.”
“And you would like your boy’s to be the same?”
“No,” said my father, rousing himself. “Nobody would know which was which. I should catch myself learning the Latin accidence or playing at marbles. I should never know my own identity, and Mrs Primmins would be giving me pap.”
My mother smiled; and, putting her hand, which was a very pretty one, on my father’s shoulder, and looking at him tenderly, she said, “There’s no fear of mistaking you for any other, even your son, dearest. Still, if you prefer another name, what shall it be?”
“Samuel,” said my father. “Dr Parr’s name is Samuel.”
“La, my love! Samuel is the ugliest name—”
My father did not hear the exclamation, he was again deep in his books; presently he started up:—“Barnes says Homer is Solomon. Read Omeros backwards, in the Hebrew manner—”
“Yes, my love,” interrupted my mother. “But baby’s christian name?”
“Omeros—Soremo—Solemo—Solomo!”
“Solomo! shocking,” said my mother.
“Shocking, indeed,” echoed my father; “an outrage to common sense.” Then, after glancing again over his books, he broke out musingly—“But, after all, it is nonsense to suppose that Homer was not settled tillhistime.”
“Whose?” asked my mother, mechanically.
My father lifted up his finger.
My mother continued, after a short pause, “Arthur is a pretty name. Then there’s William—Henry—Charles—Robert. What shall it be, love?”
“Pisistratus?” said my father, (who had hung fire till then,) in a tone of contempt—“Pisistratus indeed!”
“Pisistratus! a very fine name,” said my mother joyfully—“Pisistratus Caxton. Thank you, my love: Pisistratus it shall be.”
“Do you contradict me? Do you side with Wolf and Heyne, and that pragmatical fellow Vico? Do you mean to say that the Rhapsodists?”—
“No, indeed,” interrupted my mother. “My dear, you frighten me.”
My father sighed, and threw himself back in his chair. My mother took courage and resumed.
“Pisistratus is a long name too! Still, one could call him Sisty.”
“Siste, Viator,” muttered my father; “that’s trite!”
“No, Sisty by itself—short. Thank you, my dear.”
Four days afterwards, on his return from the book sale, to my father’s inexpressible bewilderment, he was informed that “Pisistratus was growing quite the image of him.”
When at length the good man was made thoroughly aware of the fact, that his son and heir boasted a name so memorable in history as that borne by the enslaver of Athens, and the disputed arranger of Homer—and it was insisted that it was a name he himself had suggested—he was as angry as so mild a man could be. “But it is infamous!” he exclaimed. “Pisistratus christened! Pisistratus! who lived six hundred years before Christ was born. Good heavens, madam! You have made me the father of an anachronism.”
My mother burst into tears. But the evil was irremediable. An anachronism I was, and an anachronism I must continue to the end of the chapter.
“Of course, sir, you will begin soon to educate your son yourself?” said Mr Squills.
“Of course, sir,” said my father, “you have read Martinus Scriblerus?”
“I don’t understand you, Mr Caxton.”
“Then you havenotread Martinus Scriblerus, Mr Squills!”
“Consider that I have read it, and what then?”
“Why then, Squills,” said my father familiarly, “you would know, that though a scholar is often a fool, he is never a fool so supreme, so superlative, as when he is defacing the first unsullied page of the human history, by entering into it the commonplaces of his own pedantry. A scholar, sir, at least one like me, is of all persons the most unfit to teach young children. A mother, sir, a simple, natural, loving mother, is the infant’s true guide to knowledge.”
“Egad, Mr Caxton, in spite of Helvetius, whom you quoted the night the boy was born—egad, I believe you are right!”
“I am sure of it,” said my father; “at least as sure as a poor mortal can be of any thing. I agree with Helvetius, the child should be educated from its birth; but how?—there is the rub: send him to school forthwith! Certainly he is at school already with the two great principles, Nature and Love. Observe, that childhood and genius have the same master organ in common—inquisitiveness. Let childhood have its way, and as it began where genius begins, it may find what genius finds. A certain Greek writer tells us of some man, who, in order to save his bees a troublesome flight to Hymettus, cut their wings, and placed before them the finest flowers he could select. The poor bees made no honey. Now, sir, if I were to teach my boy, I should be cutting his wings and giving him the flowers he should find himself. Let us leave Nature alone for the present, and Nature’s living proxy, the watchful mother.”
Therewith my father pointed to his heir sprawling on the grass and plucking daisies on the lawn; while the young mother’s voice rose merrily, laughing at the child’s glee.
“I shall make but a poor bill out of your nursery, I see,” said Mr Squills.
Agreeably to these doctrines, strange in so learned a father, I thrived and flourished, and learned to spell, and make pothooks, under the joint care of my mother and Dame Primmins. This last was one of an old race fast dying away—the race of old faithful servants—the race of old tale-telling nurses. She had reared my mother before me; but her affection put out new flowers for the new generation. She was a Devonshire woman—and Devonshire women, especially those who have passed their youth near the sea-coast, are generally superstitious. She had a wonderful budget of fables. Before I was six years old, I was erudite in that primitive literature, in which the legends of all nations are traced to a common fountain—Puss in Boots,Tom Thumb,Fortunio,Fortunatus,Jack the Giant-killer—tales like proverbs, equally familiar, under different versions, to the infant worshipper of Budh and the hardier children of Thor. I may say, without vanity, that in an examination in such works of imagination, I could have taken honours!
My dear mother had some little misgivings as to the solid benefit to be derived from such fantastic erudition, and timidly consulted my father therein.
“My love,” answered my father, in that tone of voice which always puzzled even my mother, to be sure whether he was in jest or earnest—“in all these fables, certain philosophers could easily discover symbolical significations of the highest morality. I have myself written a treatise to prove thatPuss in Bootsis an allegory upon the progress of the human understanding, having its origin in the mystical schools of the Egyptian priests, and evidently an illustration of the worship rendered at Thebes and Memphis to those feline quadrupeds, of which they made both religious symbols and elaborate mummies.”
“My dear Austin,” said my mother opening her blue eyes, “you don’t think that Sisty will discover all those fine things inPuss in Boots!”
“My dear Kitty,” answered my father, “you don’t think, when you were good enough to take up with me, that you found in me all the fine things I have learned from books. You knew me only as a harmless creature, who was happy enough to please your fancy. By-and-by you discovered that I was no worse for all the quartos that have transmigrated into ideas within me—ideas that are mysteries even to myself. If Sisty, as you call the child, (plague on that unlucky anachronism! which you do well to abbreviate into a dissyllable,) if Sisty can’t discover all the wisdom of Egypt inPuss in Boots, what then?Puss in Bootsis harmless, and it pleases his fancy. All that wakes curiosity is wisdom, if innocent—all that pleases the fancy now, turns hereafter to love or to knowledge. And so, my dear, go back to the nursery.”
But I should wrong thee, O best of fathers, if I suffered the reader to suppose, that because thou didst seem so indifferent to my birth, and so careless as to my early teaching, therefore thou wert, at heart, indifferent to thy troublesome Neogilos. As I grew older, I became more sensibly aware that a father’s eye was upon me. I distinctly remember one incident, that seems to me, in looking back, a crisis in my infant life, as the first tangible link between my own heart and that calm great soul.
My father was seated on the lawn before the house, his straw hat over his eyes (it was summer) and his book on his lap. Suddenly a beautiful delf blue-and-white flower-pot, which had been set on the window-sill of an upper storey, fell to the ground with a crash, and the fragments spluttered up round my father’s legs. Sublime in his studies as Archimedes in the siege, he continued to read “Impavidum feriunt ruinæ!”
“Dear, dear!” cried my mother, who was at work in the porch, “my poor flower-pot that I prized so much! Who could have done this? Primmins, Primmins!”
Mrs Primmins popped her head out of the fatal window, nodded to the summons, and came down in a trice, pale and breathless.
“Oh!” said my mother, mournfully, “I would rather have lost all the plants in the greenhouse in the great blight last May,—I would rather the best tea-set were broken! The poor geranium I reared myself, and the dear, dear flower-pot which Mr Caxton bought for me my last birth-day! That naughty child must have done this!”
Mrs Primmins was dreadfully afraid of my father—why, I know not, except that very talkative social persons are usually afraid of very silent shy ones. She cast a hasty glance at her master, who was beginning to evince signs of attention, and cried promptly, “No, ma’am, it was not the dear boy, bless his flesh, it was I!”
“You! how could you be so careless? and you knew how I prized them both. Oh, Primmins!”
Primmins began to sob.
“Don’t tell fibs, nursey,” said a small shrill voice; and Master Sisty (coming out of the house as bold as brass) continued rapidly—“don’t scold Primmins, mamma: it was I who pushed out the flower-pot.”
“Hush!” said nurse, more frightened than ever, and looking aghast towards my father, who had very deliberately taken off his hat, and was regarding the scene with serious eyes wide awake.
“Hush! And if he did break it, ma’am, it was quite an accident; he was standing so, and he never meant it. Did you, Master Sisty? Speak! (this in a whisper) or Pa will be so angry.”
“Well,” said my mother, “I suppose it was an accident; take care in future, my child. You are sorry, I see, to have grieved me. There’s a kiss, don’t fret.”
“No, mamma, you must not kiss me, I don’t deserve it. I pushed out the flower-pot on purpose.”
“Ha! and why?” said my father, walking up.
Mrs Primmins trembled like a leaf.
“For fun!” said I, hanging my head—“just to see how you’d look, papa; and that’s the truth of it. Now beat me, do beat me!”
My father threw his book fifty yards off, stooped down, and caught me to his breast. “Boy,” he said, “you have done wrong: you shall repair it by remembering all your life that your father blessed God for giving him a son who spoke truth in spite of fear! Oh! Mrs Primmins, the next fable of this kind you try to teach him, and we part for ever!”
From that time I first date the hour when I felt that I loved my father, and knew that he loved me; from that time too, he began toconversewith me. He would no longer, if he met me in the garden, pass by with a smile and nod; he would stop, put his book in his pocket, and though his talk was often above my comprehension, still somehow I felt happier and better, and less of an infant, when I thought over it, and tried to puzzle out the meaning; for he had a way of suggesting, not teaching, putting things into my head, and then leaving them to work out their own problems. I remember a special instance with respect to that same flower-pot and geranium. Mr Squills, who was a bachelor, and well to do in the world, often made me little presents. Not long after the event I have narrated, he gave me one far exceeding in value those usually bestowed on children,—it was a beautiful large domino-box in cut ivory, painted and gilt. This domino-box was my delight. I was never weary of playing at dominoes with Mrs Primmins, and I slept with the box under my pillow.
“Ah!” said my father one day when he found me ranging the ivory squares in the parlour, “ah! you like that better than all your playthings, eh?”
“Oh yes, papa.”
“You would be very sorry if your mamma was to throw that box out of the window, and break it for fun.” I looked beseechingly at my father, and made no answer.
“But perhaps you would be very glad,” he resumed, “if suddenly one of these good fairies you read of could change the domino-box into a beautiful geranium in a beautiful blue-and-white flower-pot, and that you could have the pleasure of putting it on your mamma’s window-sill.”
“Indeed I would!” said I, half crying.
“My dear boy, I believe you; but good wishes don’t mend bad actions,—good actions mend bad actions.”
So saying, he shut the door and went out. I cannot tell you how puzzled I was to make out what my father meant by his aphorism. But I know that I played at dominoes no more that day. The next morning my father found me seated by myself under a tree in the garden; he paused and looked at me with his grave bright eyes very steadily.
“My boy,” said he, “I am going to walk to —— (a town about two miles off,) will you come? and, by the bye, fetch your domino-box: I should like to show it to a person there.” I ran in for the box, and, not a little proud of walking with my father upon the high-road, we set out.
“Papa,” said I by the way, “there are no fairies now.”
“What then, my child?”
“Why—how then can my domino-box be changed into a geranium and a blue-and-white flower-pot?”
“My dear,” said my father, leaning his hand on my shoulder, “every body who is in earnest to be good, carries two fairies about with him—one here,” and he touched my heart; “and one here,” and he touched my forehead.
“I don’t understand, papa.”
“I can wait till you do, Pisistratus! What a name!”
My father stopped at a nursery gardener’s, and, after looking over the flowers, paused before a large double geranium. “Ah, this is finer than that which your mamma was so fond of. What is the cost, sir?”
“Only 7s. 6d.,” said the gardener.
My father buttoned up his pocket.
“I can’t afford it to-day,” said he gently, and we walked out.
On entering the town, we stopped again at a china-warehouse. “Have you a flower-pot like that I bought some months ago? Ah, here is one, marked 3s. 6d. Yes, that is the price. Well, when your mamma’s birth-day comes again, we must buy her another. That is some months to wait. And we can wait, Master Sisty. For truth, that blooms all the year round, is better than a poor geranium; and a word that is never broken, is better than a piece of delf.”
My head, which had drooped before, rose again; but the rush of joy at my heart almost stifled me.
“I have called to pay your little bill,” said my father, entering the shop of one of those fancy stationers common in country towns, and who sell all kinds of pretty toys and nicknacks. “And by the way,” he added, as the smiling shopman looked over his books for the entry, “I think my little boy here can show you a much handsomer specimen of French workmanship than that work-box which you enticed Mrs Caxton into raffling for, last winter. Show your domino-box, my dear.”
I produced my treasure, and the shopman was liberal in his commendations. “It is always well, my boy, to know what a thing is worth, in case one wishes to part with it. If my young gentleman gets tired of his plaything, what will you give him for it?”
“Why, sir,” said the shopman, “I fear we could not afford to give more than eighteen shillings for it, unless the young gentleman took some of these pretty things in exchange.”
“Eighteen shillings!” said my father; “you would givethat. Well, my boy, whenever you do grow tired of your box, you have my leave to sell it.”
My father paid his bill, and went out. I lingered behind a few moments, and joined him at the end of the street.
“Papa, papa!” I cried, clapping my hands, “we can buy the geranium—we can buy the flower-pot.” And I pulled a handful of silver from my pockets.
“Did I not say right?” said my father, passing his handkerchief over his eyes—“You have found the two fairies!”
Oh! how proud, how overjoyed I was, when, after placing vase and flower on the window-sill, I plucked my mother by the gown, and made her follow me to the spot.
“It is his doing, and his money!” said my father; “good actions have mended the bad.”
“What!” cried my mother, when she had learned all; “and your poor domino-box that you were so fond of! We will go back to-morrow, and buy it back, if it costs us double.”
“Shall we buy it back, Pisistratus?” asked my father.
“Oh no—no—no! It would spoil all,” I cried, burying my face on my father’s breast.
“My wife,” said my father solemnly, “this is my first lesson to our child—the sanctity and the happiness of self-sacrifice—undo not what it should teach to his dying day!”
And that is the history of the broken flower-pot.
When I was between my seventh and my eighth year, a change came over me, which may perhaps be familiar to the notice of those parents who boast the anxious blessing of an only child. The ordinary vivacity of childhood forsook me; I became quiet, sedate, and thoughtful. The absence of playfellows of my own age, the companionship of mature minds alternated only by complete solitude, gave something precocious, whether to my imagination or my reason. The wild fables muttered to me by the old nurse in the summer twilight, or over the winter’s hearth—the effort made by my struggling intellect to comprehend the grave, sweet wisdom of my father’s suggested lessons—tended to feed a passion for reverie, in which all my faculties strained and struggled, as in the dreams that come when sleep is nearest waking. I had learned to read with ease, and to write with some fluency, and I already began to imitate, to reproduce. Strange tales, akin to those I had gleaned from fairyland—rude songs, modelled from such verse-books as fell into my hands, began to mar the contents of marble-covered pages, designed for the less ambitious purposes of round text and multiplication. My mind was yet more disturbed by the intensity of my home affections. My love for both my parents had in it something morbid and painful. I often wept to think how little I could do for those I loved so well. My fondest fancies built up imaginary difficulties for them, which my arm was to smoothe. These feelings, thus cherished, made my nerves over-susceptible and acute. Nature began to affect me powerfully; and from that affection rose a restless curiosity to analyse the charms that so mysteriously moved me to joy or awe, to smiles or tears. I got my father to explain to me the elements of astronomy; I extracted from Squills, who was an ardent botanist, some of the mysteries in the life of flowers. But music became my darling passion. My mother (though the daughter of a great scholar—a scholar at whose name my father raised his hat, if it happened to be on his head) possessed, I must own it fairly, less book-learning than many a humble tradesman’s daughter can boast in this more enlightened generation; but she had some natural gifts which had ripened, Heaven knows how! into womanly accomplishments. She drew with some elegance, and painted flowers to exquisite perfection. She played on more than one instrument with more than boarding-school skill; and though she sang in no language but her own, few could hear her sweet voice without being deeply touched. Her music, her songs, had a wondrous effect on me. Thus, altogether, a kind of dreamy yet delightful melancholy seized upon my whole being; and this was the more remarkable, because contrary to my earlier temperament, which was bold, active, and hilarious. The change in my character began to act upon my form. From a robust and vigorous infant, I grew into a pale and slender boy. I began to ail and mope. Mr Squills was called in.
“Tonics!” said Mr Squills; “and don’t let him sit over his book. Send him out in the air—make him play. Come here, my boy—these organs are growing too large;” and Mr Squills, who was a phrenologist, placed his hand on my forehead. “Gad, sir, here’s an ideality for you; and, bless my soul, what a constructiveness!”
My father pushed aside his papers, and walked to and fro the room with his hands behind him; but he did not say a word till Mr Squills was gone.
“My dear,” then said he to my mother, on whose breast I was leaning my aching ideality—“my dear, Pisistratus must go to school in good earnest.”
“Bless me, Austin!—at his age?”
“He is nearly eight years old.”
“But he is so forward.”
“It is for that reason he must go to school.”
“I don’t quite understand you, my love. I know he is getting past me; but you who are so clever—”
My father took my mother’s hand—“We can teach him nothing now, Kitty. We send him to school to be taught—”
“By some schoolmaster who knows much less than you do—”
“By little schoolboys, who will make him a boy again,” said my father, almost sadly. “My dear, you remember that, when our Kentish gardener planted those filbert-trees, and when they were in their third year, and you began to calculate on what they would bring in, you went out one morning, and found he had cut them down to the ground. You were vexed, and asked why. What did the gardener say? ‘To prevent their bearing too soon.’ There is no want of fruitfulness here—put back the hour of produce, that the plant may last.”
“Let me go to school,” said I, lifting my languid head, and smiling on my father. I understood him at once, and it was as if the voice of my life itself answered to him.
A year after the resolution thus come to, I was at home for the holidays.
“I hope,” said my mother, “that they are doing Sisty justice. I do think he is not nearly so quick a child as he was before he went to school. I wish you would examine him, Austin.”
“I have examined him, my dear. It is just as I expected; and I am quite satisfied.”
“What! you really think he has come on?” said my mother joyfully.
“He does not care a button for botany now,” said Mr Squills.
“And he used to be so fond of music, dear boy!” observed my mother with a sigh. “Good gracious! what noise is that?”
“Your son’s pop-gun against the window,” said my father. “It is lucky it is only the window; it would have made a less deafening noise, though, if it had been Mr Squills’ head, as it was yesterday morning.”
“The left ear,” observed Squills; “and a very sharp blow it was, too. Yet you are satisfied, Mr Caxton?”
“Yes; I think the boy is now as great a blockhead as most boys of his age are,” observed my father with great complacency.
“Dear me, Austin—a great blockhead!”
“What else did he go to school for?” asked my father; and observing a certain dismay in the face of his female audience, and a certain surprise in that of his male, he rose and stood on the hearth, with one hand in his waistcoat, as was his wont when about to philosophise in more detail than was usual to him.
“Mr Squills,” said he, “you have had great experience in families.”
“As good a practice as any in the county,” said Mr Squills proudly: “more than I can manage. I shall advertise for a partner.”
“And,” resumed my father, “you must have observed almost invariably that, in every family, there is what father, mother, uncle and aunt, pronounce to be one wonderful child.”
“One at least,” said Mr Squills, smiling.
“It is easy,” continued my father, “to say this is parental partiality,—but it is not so. Examine that child as a stranger, and it will startle yourself. You stand amazed at its eager curiosity, its quick comprehension, its ready wit, its delicate perception. Often, too, you will find some faculty strikingly developed; the child will have a turn for mechanics, perhaps, and make you a model of a steamboat,—or it will have an ear tuned to verse, and will write you a poem like that it has got by heart from ‘The Speaker,’—or it will take to botany, (like Pisistratus) with the old maid its aunt,—or it will play a march onits sister’s pianoforte. In short, even you, Squills, will declare that it is really a wonderful child.”
“Upon my word,” said Mr Squills thoughtfully, “there’s a great deal of truth in what you say; little Tom Dobbsisa wonderful child—so is Frank Steppington—and as for Johnny Styles, I must bring him here for you to hear him prattle on Natural History, and see how well he handles his pretty little microscope.”
“Heaven forbid!” said my father. “And now let me proceed. Thesethaumataor wonders last till when, Mr Squills?—last till the boy goes to school, and then, somehow or other, thethaumatavanish into thin air, like ghosts at the cockcrow. A year after the prodigy has been at the academy, father and mother, uncle and aunt, plague you no more with his doings and sayings; the extraordinary infant has become a very ordinary little boy. Is it not so, Mr Squills?”
“Indeed you are right, sir. How did you come to be so observant; you never seem to—”
“Hush!” interrupted my father; and then, looking fondly at my mother’s anxious face, he said, soothingly—“be comforted: this is wisely ordained—and it is for the best.”
“It must be the fault of the school,” said my mother, shaking her head.
“It is the necessity of the school, and its virtue, my Kate. Let any one of these wonderful children—wonderful as you thought Sisty himself—stay at home, and you will see its head grow bigger and bigger, and its body thinner and thinner—Eh, Mr Squills?—till the mind take all nourishment from the frame, and the frame, in turn, stint or make sickly the mind. You see that noble oak from the window—if the Chinese had brought it up, it would have been a tree in miniature at five years old, and at an hundred, you would have set it in a flower-pot on your table, no bigger than it was at five—a curiosity for its matureness at one age—a show for its diminutiveness at the other. No! the ordeal for talent is school; restore the stunted mannikin to the growing child, and then let the child if it can, healthily, hardily, naturally, work its slow way up into greatness. If greatness be denied it, it will at least be a man, and that is better than to be a little Johnny Styles all its life—an oak in a pill-box.”
At that moment I rushed into the room, glowing and panting, health on my cheek, vigour in my limbs—all childhood at my heart. “Oh! mamma, I have got up the kite—so high!—come and see. Do come, papa.”
“Certainly,” said my father; “only, don’t cry so loud—kites make no noise in rising—yet, you see how they soar above the world. Come, Kate, where is my hat? Ah—thank you, my boy.”
“Kitty,” said my father, looking at the kite which, attached by its string to the peg I had stuck into the ground, rested calm in the sky, “never fear but what our kite shall fly as high; only, the human soul has stronger instincts to mount upward than a few sheets of paper on a framework of lath. But, observe, that to prevent its being lost in the freedom of space, we must attach it lightly to earth; and, observe again, my dear, that the higher it soars, the more string we must give it.”