Chapter Seven.I too have my call—to death’s door—A great rise in life—Brandon allows neither slugs nor sluggards in his sawpit—is ruined, and beats the Reverend Mr Cate.All this was preparatory to an event, to me of the utmost importance, which is, perhaps, at this very moment, influencing imperceptibly my mind, and directing my character. Brandon’s call, in our humble circle, made a great deal of noise. He had taken care that I should know what drunkenness meant. I thought he ought to have been drunk on the afternoon of his election, yet he so well disguised his intoxication that he appeared not to be so. I listened attentively to the sermon of the preacher that followed. I no longer doubted. I could not believe that a grave man in a pulpit could speak anything but truth, when he spoke so loudly, and spoke for two hours. My mind was a chaos of confusion: I began to be very miserable. The next, or one or two Sundays after, produced the crisis. My dress was always much superior to what could have been expected in the son of a mere operative. I was, at that time, a fair and mild-featured child, and altogether remarkable among the set who frequented the meeting-house. Mr Cate had been very powerful indeed in his description of the infernal regions—of the abiding agonies—the level lake that burneth—the tossing of the waves that glow; and, when he had thrown two or three old women into hysterics, and two or three young ones into fainting-fits, amidst the torrent of his oratory, and the groaning, and the “Lord have mercy upon me’s,” of his audience, he made a sudden pause. There was a dead silence for half a minute, then suddenly lifting his voice, he pointed to me, and exclaimed, “Behold that beautiful child—observe the pure blood mantling in his delicate countenance—but what is he after all but a mouthful for the devil? All those torments, all those tortures, that I have told you of, will be his; there, look at him, he will burn and writhe in pain, and consume for ever, and ever, and ever, and never be destroyed, unless the original sin be washed out from him by the ‘call,’ unless he be made, hereafter, one of the ‘elect.’”At this direct address to myself, I neither fainted, shuddered, nor cried—I felt, at the time, a little stupefied: and it was some hours after (the hideous man’s words all the time ringing in my ears) before I fully comprehend my hopeless state of perdition. I looked at the fire as I sat by it, and trembled. I went to bed, but not to sleep. No child ever haunted by a ghost-story was more terrified than myself, as I lay panting on my tear-steeped pillow. At length, imagination began its dreadful charms—the room enlarged itself in its gloom to vast space—I began to hear cries from under my bed. Some dark bodies first of all flitted across the gloaming. My bed began to rock. I tried to sing a hymn. I thought that the words came out of my mouth in flames of bright fire. I then called to mind the offerings from the altars of Cain and Abel. I watched to see if my hymns turned into fire, and ascended up to heaven. I felt a cold horror when I discovered them scattered from my mouth exactly in the same manner that I had seen the flames in the engraving in our large Bible on the altar of Cain. Then there came a huge block of wood, and stationed itself in the air above me, about six inches from my eyes. I remember no more—I was in a raging fever.I was ill for some weeks, and a helpless invalid for many more. When again I enjoyed perception of the things around me, I found myself in a new house in Red Cross Street, near Saint Luke’s. My foster-parents had opened a shop—it had the appearance of a most respectable fruiterer’s. Mr Brandon had become a small timber-merchant, had sawpits in the premises behind the house, and men of his own actually sawing in them. But the most surprising change of all was, that the reverend Mr Cate was domesticated with us. Brandon, as a master, worked harder than ever he did as a man. My nurse became anxious and careworn, and never seemed happy—for my part, I was so debilitated, that I then took but little notice of anything. However, the beautiful lady never called. I used to spend my time thinking upon angels and cherubs, and in learning hymns by heart. I suppose that I, like my foster-father, had had my call, but I am sure that after it, I was as much weaker in mind as I was in body. When I became strong enough to be again able to run about, I was once more sent to a day-school, and all that I remember about the matter was, that every day about eleven o’clock, I was told to run home and get a wigful of potatoes from Brandon’s, the venerable pedagogue coolly taking off his wig, and exchanging it for a red night-cap, until my return with the provender.Things now wore a dismal aspect at home. At length, one day, the broker sent his men into the shop, who threw all the greengrocery about like peelings of onions. They carted away Mr Brandon’s deals and planks, and timber, and, not content with all this, they also took away the best of the household furniture. My nurse called Mr Cate a devil in a white sheet—her husband acted as he always would do when he was offended and found himself strong enough: he gave the reverend gentleman, most irreverently, a tremendous beating. The sheep sadly gored the shepherd. Afterwards, when he had nearly killed his pastor, he seceded from his flock, and gave him, under his own hand, a solemn abjuration of the Caterian tenets. How Brandon came to launch out into this expensive and ill-advised undertaking of green-groceries and sawpits, how he afterwards became involved, and how much the preacher had been guilty in deceiving him, I never clearly understood. However, my nurse never, for a long time after, spoke of the reverend gentleman without applying the corner of her apron to her eyes, or her husband without a hearty malediction. We removed to our old neighbourhood, but, instead of taking a respectable house, we were forced to burrow in mean lodgings.
All this was preparatory to an event, to me of the utmost importance, which is, perhaps, at this very moment, influencing imperceptibly my mind, and directing my character. Brandon’s call, in our humble circle, made a great deal of noise. He had taken care that I should know what drunkenness meant. I thought he ought to have been drunk on the afternoon of his election, yet he so well disguised his intoxication that he appeared not to be so. I listened attentively to the sermon of the preacher that followed. I no longer doubted. I could not believe that a grave man in a pulpit could speak anything but truth, when he spoke so loudly, and spoke for two hours. My mind was a chaos of confusion: I began to be very miserable. The next, or one or two Sundays after, produced the crisis. My dress was always much superior to what could have been expected in the son of a mere operative. I was, at that time, a fair and mild-featured child, and altogether remarkable among the set who frequented the meeting-house. Mr Cate had been very powerful indeed in his description of the infernal regions—of the abiding agonies—the level lake that burneth—the tossing of the waves that glow; and, when he had thrown two or three old women into hysterics, and two or three young ones into fainting-fits, amidst the torrent of his oratory, and the groaning, and the “Lord have mercy upon me’s,” of his audience, he made a sudden pause. There was a dead silence for half a minute, then suddenly lifting his voice, he pointed to me, and exclaimed, “Behold that beautiful child—observe the pure blood mantling in his delicate countenance—but what is he after all but a mouthful for the devil? All those torments, all those tortures, that I have told you of, will be his; there, look at him, he will burn and writhe in pain, and consume for ever, and ever, and ever, and never be destroyed, unless the original sin be washed out from him by the ‘call,’ unless he be made, hereafter, one of the ‘elect.’”
At this direct address to myself, I neither fainted, shuddered, nor cried—I felt, at the time, a little stupefied: and it was some hours after (the hideous man’s words all the time ringing in my ears) before I fully comprehend my hopeless state of perdition. I looked at the fire as I sat by it, and trembled. I went to bed, but not to sleep. No child ever haunted by a ghost-story was more terrified than myself, as I lay panting on my tear-steeped pillow. At length, imagination began its dreadful charms—the room enlarged itself in its gloom to vast space—I began to hear cries from under my bed. Some dark bodies first of all flitted across the gloaming. My bed began to rock. I tried to sing a hymn. I thought that the words came out of my mouth in flames of bright fire. I then called to mind the offerings from the altars of Cain and Abel. I watched to see if my hymns turned into fire, and ascended up to heaven. I felt a cold horror when I discovered them scattered from my mouth exactly in the same manner that I had seen the flames in the engraving in our large Bible on the altar of Cain. Then there came a huge block of wood, and stationed itself in the air above me, about six inches from my eyes. I remember no more—I was in a raging fever.
I was ill for some weeks, and a helpless invalid for many more. When again I enjoyed perception of the things around me, I found myself in a new house in Red Cross Street, near Saint Luke’s. My foster-parents had opened a shop—it had the appearance of a most respectable fruiterer’s. Mr Brandon had become a small timber-merchant, had sawpits in the premises behind the house, and men of his own actually sawing in them. But the most surprising change of all was, that the reverend Mr Cate was domesticated with us. Brandon, as a master, worked harder than ever he did as a man. My nurse became anxious and careworn, and never seemed happy—for my part, I was so debilitated, that I then took but little notice of anything. However, the beautiful lady never called. I used to spend my time thinking upon angels and cherubs, and in learning hymns by heart. I suppose that I, like my foster-father, had had my call, but I am sure that after it, I was as much weaker in mind as I was in body. When I became strong enough to be again able to run about, I was once more sent to a day-school, and all that I remember about the matter was, that every day about eleven o’clock, I was told to run home and get a wigful of potatoes from Brandon’s, the venerable pedagogue coolly taking off his wig, and exchanging it for a red night-cap, until my return with the provender.
Things now wore a dismal aspect at home. At length, one day, the broker sent his men into the shop, who threw all the greengrocery about like peelings of onions. They carted away Mr Brandon’s deals and planks, and timber, and, not content with all this, they also took away the best of the household furniture. My nurse called Mr Cate a devil in a white sheet—her husband acted as he always would do when he was offended and found himself strong enough: he gave the reverend gentleman, most irreverently, a tremendous beating. The sheep sadly gored the shepherd. Afterwards, when he had nearly killed his pastor, he seceded from his flock, and gave him, under his own hand, a solemn abjuration of the Caterian tenets. How Brandon came to launch out into this expensive and ill-advised undertaking of green-groceries and sawpits, how he afterwards became involved, and how much the preacher had been guilty in deceiving him, I never clearly understood. However, my nurse never, for a long time after, spoke of the reverend gentleman without applying the corner of her apron to her eyes, or her husband without a hearty malediction. We removed to our old neighbourhood, but, instead of taking a respectable house, we were forced to burrow in mean lodgings.
Chapter Eight.Another migration—From the ruralities of Cut-throat Lane to the Groves of Academus—I am forced into good clothes and the paths of learning in spite of my teeth, though I use them spitefully.Misfortunes never come single. I don’t know why they should. They are but scarecrow, lean-visaged, miserable associates, and so they arrive in a body to keep each other in countenance. I had been but a few weeks in our present miserable abode, and had fully recovered my health, though I think that I was a little crazed with the prints, and the subjects of them, over which I daily pored in the large Bible, when the greatest misfortune of all came upon the poor Brandons—and that was, to add to their other losses, the loss of my invaluable self.The misery was unexpected—it was sudden—it was overwhelming. Brandon was toeing a chalked line on a heavy log of mahogany, unconscious of the mischief that was working at home. He afterwards told me, and I believe him, that he would have opposed the proceeding by force, if force had been requisite. A plain private or hired carriage drove up to the door, and, after ascertaining that the Brandons lived at the house, a business-like looking, elderly gentleman stepped out, paid every demand immediately, and ordered my best clothes on. When I was thus equipped, my nurse was told that she was perfectly welcome to the remainder of my effects, and that I must get into the carriage.The good woman was thunderstruck. There was a scene. She raved, and I cried, and the four little Brandons, at least three of them, joined in the chorus of lamentation, because the naughty man was going to take brother Ralph away. I had been too well taught by old Ford, not to visit my indignation upon the shins and hands of the carrier away of captives, in well-applied kicks, and almost rabid bites. There was a great disturbance. The neighbours thought it very odd that the mother should allow her eldest son to be, carried off by force, by a stranger, before her eyes, in the middle of the day; but then it was suggested that “nothing could be well termed odd that concerned little Ralph Brandon, for hadn’t he been bit last year by a mad dog, and, when so and so had all died raving, he had never nothing at all happen to him.” When the stranger heard this story of the mad dog (which, by-the-by, was fact, and I have the scars to this day), he shook me off, pale with consternation, and was, no doubt, extremely happy to find that my little teeth had not penetrated the skin. I believe that he heartily repented him of his office. At length he lost all patience. “Woman,” said he, “send these people out of the room.” When they had departed, marvelling, he resumed: “I cannot lose my time in altercation; I am commissioned to tell you, that if you keep the boy in one sense, you’ll have to keep him in all. You may be sure that I would not trouble myself about such a little ill-bred wretch for a moment, if I did not act with authority, and by orders. Give up the child directly (I was now sobbing in her arms), take your last look at him, for you will never see him again. Come, hand the young gentleman into the carriage.”“I won’t go,” I screamed out.“We shall soon see that, Master Rattlin,” said he, dragging me along, resisting. I bawled out, “My name’s not Master Rattlin—you’re a liar—and when father comes from the pit he’ll wop you.”This threat seemed to have an effect the very reverse of what I had intended. Perhaps he thought that he had already enough to contend with, without the addition of the brawny arm of the sawyer. I was forcibly lifted up, placed in the coach, and, as it drove rapidly away, I heard, amidst the rattling of the wheels, the cries of her whom I loved as a mother, exclaiming, “My Ralph—my dear Ralph!”Behold me, then, “hot with the fray, and weeping from the fight,” confined in a locomotive prison with my sullen captor. I blubbered in one corner of the coach, and he surveyed me with stern indifference from the other. I had now fairly commenced my journey through life, but this beginning was anything but auspicious. At length, the carriage stopped at a place I have since ascertained to be near Hatton Garden, on Holborn Hill. We alighted, and walked into a house, between two motionless pages, excessively well dressed. At first, they startled me, but I soon discovered they were immense waxen dolls. It was a ready-made clothes warehouse into which we had entered. We went upstairs, and I was soon equipped with three excellent suits. My grief had now settled down into a sullen resentment, agreeably relieved, at due intervals, by breath-catching sobs. The violence of the storm had passed, but its gloom still remained. Seeing the little gladness that the possession of clothes, the finest I had yet had, communicated to me, my director could not avoid giving himself the pleasurable relief of saying, “Sulky little brute!” A trunk being sent for, and my wardrobe placed in it, we then drove to three or four other shops, not forgetting a hatter’s, and in a very short space of time I had a very tolerable fit-out. During all this time, not a word did my silent companion address to me.At length, the coach no longer rattled over the stones. It now proceeded on more smoothly, and here and there the cheerful green foliage relieved the long lines of houses. After about a half-hour’s ride, we stopped at a large and very old-fashioned house, built in strict conformity with the Elizabethan style of architecture, over the portals of which, upon a deep blue board, in very, very bright gold letters, flashed forth that word so awful to little boys, so big with associations of long tasks and wide-spreading birch, the Greek-derived polysyllable, ACADEMY! Ignorant as I was, I understood it all in a moment. I was struck cold as the dew-damp grave-stone. I almost grew sick with terror. I was kidnapped, entrapped, betrayed. I had before hated school, my horror now was intense of “Academy.” I looked piteously into the face of my persecutor, but I found there no sympathy. “I want to go home,” I roared out, and then burst into a fresh torrent of tears.Home! what solace is there in its very sound! Oh, how that blessed asylum for the wounded spirit encloses within its sacred circle all that is comforting, and sweet, and holy! ’Tis there that the soul coils itself up and nestles like the dove in its own downiness, conscious that everything around breathes of peace, security, and love. Home! henceforward, I was to have none, until, through many, many years of toil and misery, I should create one for myself. Henceforth, the word must bring to me only the bitterness of regret—henceforth I was to associate with hundreds who had that temple in which to consecrate their household affections—but was, myself, doomed to be unowned, unloved, and homeless.“I want to go home,” I blubbered forth with the pertinacity of anguish, as I was constrained into the parlour of the truculent, rod-bearing, ferula-wielding Mr Root. I must have been a strange figure. I was taken from my nurse’s in a hurry, and, though my clothes were quite new, my face entitled me to rank among the much vituperated unwashed. When a little boy has very dirty hands, with which he rubs his dirty, tearful face, it must be confessed that grief does not, in his person, appear under a very lovely form. The first impression that I made on him who was to hold almost everything that could constitute my happiness in his power, was the very reverse of, favourable. My continued iteration of “I want to go home,” was anything but pleasing to the pedagogue. The sentence itself is not music to a man keeping a boarding-school. With the intuitive perception of childhood, through my tears, my heart acknowledged an enemy. What my conductor said to him, did not tend to soften his feelings towards me. I did not understand the details of his communication, but I knew that I was as a captive, bound hand and foot, and delivered over to a foreign bondage. The interview between the contracting parties was short, and when over, my conductor departed without deigning to bestow the smallest notice upon the most important personage of this history. I was then rather twitched by the hand, than led, by Mr Root, into the middle of his capacious school-room, and in the midst of more than two hundred and fifty boys: my name was merely mentioned to one of the junior ushers, and the master left me. Well might I then apply that blundering, Examiner-be-praised line of Keats to myself, for like Ruth:—“I stood all tears among the alien corn.”A few boys came and stared at me, but I attracted the kindness of none. There can be no doubt but that I was somewhat vulgar in my manners, and my carriage was certainly quite unlike that of my companions. Some of them even jeered me, but I regarded them not. A real grief is armour-proof against ridicule. In a short time, it being six o’clock, the supper was served out, consisting of a round of bread, all the moisture of which had been allowed to evaporate, and an oblong, diaphanous, yellow substance, one inch and a half by three, that I afterwards learned might be known among the initiated as single Gloucester. There was also a pewter mug for each, three-parts filled with small beer. It certainly gave me, it was so small, a very desponding idea of the extent to which littleness might be carried; and it would have been too vapid for the toleration of any palate, had it not been so sour. As I sat regardless before this repast, in abstracted grief, I underwent the first of the thousand practical jokes that were hereafter to familiarise me with manual jocularity. My right-hand neighbour, jerking me by the elbow, exclaimed, “Hollo, you sir, there’s Jenkins, on the other side of you, cribbing your bread.” I turned towards the supposed culprit, and discovered that my informant had fibbed, but the informed against told me to look round and see where my cheese was. I did; it was between the mandibles of my kind neighbour on my right, and when I turned again to the left for an explanation, the rogue there had stripped my round of bread of all the crust. I cared not then for this double robbery, but having put the liquid before me, incautiously to my lips, sorrowful as I was, I cared for that. Joe Brandon never served me so. I drank that evening as little as I ate.
Misfortunes never come single. I don’t know why they should. They are but scarecrow, lean-visaged, miserable associates, and so they arrive in a body to keep each other in countenance. I had been but a few weeks in our present miserable abode, and had fully recovered my health, though I think that I was a little crazed with the prints, and the subjects of them, over which I daily pored in the large Bible, when the greatest misfortune of all came upon the poor Brandons—and that was, to add to their other losses, the loss of my invaluable self.
The misery was unexpected—it was sudden—it was overwhelming. Brandon was toeing a chalked line on a heavy log of mahogany, unconscious of the mischief that was working at home. He afterwards told me, and I believe him, that he would have opposed the proceeding by force, if force had been requisite. A plain private or hired carriage drove up to the door, and, after ascertaining that the Brandons lived at the house, a business-like looking, elderly gentleman stepped out, paid every demand immediately, and ordered my best clothes on. When I was thus equipped, my nurse was told that she was perfectly welcome to the remainder of my effects, and that I must get into the carriage.
The good woman was thunderstruck. There was a scene. She raved, and I cried, and the four little Brandons, at least three of them, joined in the chorus of lamentation, because the naughty man was going to take brother Ralph away. I had been too well taught by old Ford, not to visit my indignation upon the shins and hands of the carrier away of captives, in well-applied kicks, and almost rabid bites. There was a great disturbance. The neighbours thought it very odd that the mother should allow her eldest son to be, carried off by force, by a stranger, before her eyes, in the middle of the day; but then it was suggested that “nothing could be well termed odd that concerned little Ralph Brandon, for hadn’t he been bit last year by a mad dog, and, when so and so had all died raving, he had never nothing at all happen to him.” When the stranger heard this story of the mad dog (which, by-the-by, was fact, and I have the scars to this day), he shook me off, pale with consternation, and was, no doubt, extremely happy to find that my little teeth had not penetrated the skin. I believe that he heartily repented him of his office. At length he lost all patience. “Woman,” said he, “send these people out of the room.” When they had departed, marvelling, he resumed: “I cannot lose my time in altercation; I am commissioned to tell you, that if you keep the boy in one sense, you’ll have to keep him in all. You may be sure that I would not trouble myself about such a little ill-bred wretch for a moment, if I did not act with authority, and by orders. Give up the child directly (I was now sobbing in her arms), take your last look at him, for you will never see him again. Come, hand the young gentleman into the carriage.”
“I won’t go,” I screamed out.
“We shall soon see that, Master Rattlin,” said he, dragging me along, resisting. I bawled out, “My name’s not Master Rattlin—you’re a liar—and when father comes from the pit he’ll wop you.”
This threat seemed to have an effect the very reverse of what I had intended. Perhaps he thought that he had already enough to contend with, without the addition of the brawny arm of the sawyer. I was forcibly lifted up, placed in the coach, and, as it drove rapidly away, I heard, amidst the rattling of the wheels, the cries of her whom I loved as a mother, exclaiming, “My Ralph—my dear Ralph!”
Behold me, then, “hot with the fray, and weeping from the fight,” confined in a locomotive prison with my sullen captor. I blubbered in one corner of the coach, and he surveyed me with stern indifference from the other. I had now fairly commenced my journey through life, but this beginning was anything but auspicious. At length, the carriage stopped at a place I have since ascertained to be near Hatton Garden, on Holborn Hill. We alighted, and walked into a house, between two motionless pages, excessively well dressed. At first, they startled me, but I soon discovered they were immense waxen dolls. It was a ready-made clothes warehouse into which we had entered. We went upstairs, and I was soon equipped with three excellent suits. My grief had now settled down into a sullen resentment, agreeably relieved, at due intervals, by breath-catching sobs. The violence of the storm had passed, but its gloom still remained. Seeing the little gladness that the possession of clothes, the finest I had yet had, communicated to me, my director could not avoid giving himself the pleasurable relief of saying, “Sulky little brute!” A trunk being sent for, and my wardrobe placed in it, we then drove to three or four other shops, not forgetting a hatter’s, and in a very short space of time I had a very tolerable fit-out. During all this time, not a word did my silent companion address to me.
At length, the coach no longer rattled over the stones. It now proceeded on more smoothly, and here and there the cheerful green foliage relieved the long lines of houses. After about a half-hour’s ride, we stopped at a large and very old-fashioned house, built in strict conformity with the Elizabethan style of architecture, over the portals of which, upon a deep blue board, in very, very bright gold letters, flashed forth that word so awful to little boys, so big with associations of long tasks and wide-spreading birch, the Greek-derived polysyllable, ACADEMY! Ignorant as I was, I understood it all in a moment. I was struck cold as the dew-damp grave-stone. I almost grew sick with terror. I was kidnapped, entrapped, betrayed. I had before hated school, my horror now was intense of “Academy.” I looked piteously into the face of my persecutor, but I found there no sympathy. “I want to go home,” I roared out, and then burst into a fresh torrent of tears.
Home! what solace is there in its very sound! Oh, how that blessed asylum for the wounded spirit encloses within its sacred circle all that is comforting, and sweet, and holy! ’Tis there that the soul coils itself up and nestles like the dove in its own downiness, conscious that everything around breathes of peace, security, and love. Home! henceforward, I was to have none, until, through many, many years of toil and misery, I should create one for myself. Henceforth, the word must bring to me only the bitterness of regret—henceforth I was to associate with hundreds who had that temple in which to consecrate their household affections—but was, myself, doomed to be unowned, unloved, and homeless.
“I want to go home,” I blubbered forth with the pertinacity of anguish, as I was constrained into the parlour of the truculent, rod-bearing, ferula-wielding Mr Root. I must have been a strange figure. I was taken from my nurse’s in a hurry, and, though my clothes were quite new, my face entitled me to rank among the much vituperated unwashed. When a little boy has very dirty hands, with which he rubs his dirty, tearful face, it must be confessed that grief does not, in his person, appear under a very lovely form. The first impression that I made on him who was to hold almost everything that could constitute my happiness in his power, was the very reverse of, favourable. My continued iteration of “I want to go home,” was anything but pleasing to the pedagogue. The sentence itself is not music to a man keeping a boarding-school. With the intuitive perception of childhood, through my tears, my heart acknowledged an enemy. What my conductor said to him, did not tend to soften his feelings towards me. I did not understand the details of his communication, but I knew that I was as a captive, bound hand and foot, and delivered over to a foreign bondage. The interview between the contracting parties was short, and when over, my conductor departed without deigning to bestow the smallest notice upon the most important personage of this history. I was then rather twitched by the hand, than led, by Mr Root, into the middle of his capacious school-room, and in the midst of more than two hundred and fifty boys: my name was merely mentioned to one of the junior ushers, and the master left me. Well might I then apply that blundering, Examiner-be-praised line of Keats to myself, for like Ruth:—
“I stood all tears among the alien corn.”
“I stood all tears among the alien corn.”
A few boys came and stared at me, but I attracted the kindness of none. There can be no doubt but that I was somewhat vulgar in my manners, and my carriage was certainly quite unlike that of my companions. Some of them even jeered me, but I regarded them not. A real grief is armour-proof against ridicule. In a short time, it being six o’clock, the supper was served out, consisting of a round of bread, all the moisture of which had been allowed to evaporate, and an oblong, diaphanous, yellow substance, one inch and a half by three, that I afterwards learned might be known among the initiated as single Gloucester. There was also a pewter mug for each, three-parts filled with small beer. It certainly gave me, it was so small, a very desponding idea of the extent to which littleness might be carried; and it would have been too vapid for the toleration of any palate, had it not been so sour. As I sat regardless before this repast, in abstracted grief, I underwent the first of the thousand practical jokes that were hereafter to familiarise me with manual jocularity. My right-hand neighbour, jerking me by the elbow, exclaimed, “Hollo, you sir, there’s Jenkins, on the other side of you, cribbing your bread.” I turned towards the supposed culprit, and discovered that my informant had fibbed, but the informed against told me to look round and see where my cheese was. I did; it was between the mandibles of my kind neighbour on my right, and when I turned again to the left for an explanation, the rogue there had stripped my round of bread of all the crust. I cared not then for this double robbery, but having put the liquid before me, incautiously to my lips, sorrowful as I was, I cared for that. Joe Brandon never served me so. I drank that evening as little as I ate.
Chapter Nine.I prove to be, not one in a thousand, but one in a quarter of that number, to whom no quarter was shown—In spite of my entreaties I am evil entreated, and am not only placed on the lowest form, but made excessively uncomfortable on my seat of honour.Heroes, statesmen, philosophers, must bend to circumstances, and so must little boys at boarding-school. I went to bed with the rest, and, like the rest, had my bed-fellow. Miserable and weary was that night to my infant heart. When I found I could do so unobserved, I buried my face in the pillow, and wept with a perfect passion of wretchedness.I had a hard, a cruel life at that school. When I lived with my nurse, the boys in the street used to beat me because I was too much of the gentleman, and now the young gentlemen thrashed me for not coming up to their standard of gentility. I saw a tyrant in every urchin that was stronger than myself, and a derider in him that was weaker. The next morning after my arrival, a fellow a little bigger than myself, came up, and standing before me, gave me very deliberately as hard a slap in the face as his strength would permit. Half crying with the pain, and yet not wishing to be thought quarrelsome, I asked, with good-natured humility, whether that was done in jest or in earnest. The little insolent replied, in his school-boy wit, “Betwixt and between.” I couldn’t stand that; my passion and my fist rose together, and hitting my oppressor midway between the eyes, “There’s my betwixt and between,” said I. His nose began to bleed, and when I went down into the school-room, the “new boy” had his hands well warmed with the ruler for fighting.Alas! the first year of my academic life was one of unqualified wretchedness. For the two or three initiatory months, uncouth in speech, and vulgar in mien, with no gilded toy, rich plum-cake, or mint-new shilling to conciliate, I was despised and ridiculed; and when it was ascertained by my own confession that I was the son of a day-labourer, I was shunned by the aristocratic progeny of butchers, linen-drapers, and hatters. It took, at least, a half-dozen floggings to cure me of the belief that Joseph Brandon and his wife were my parents. It was the shortest road to conviction, and Mr Root prided himself upon shortcutsin imparting knowledge. I assure my readers they were severe ones.Mr Root, the pedagogue of this immense school, which was situated in the vicinity of Islington, was a very stout and very handsome man, of about thirty. He had formerly been a subordinate where he now commanded, and his good looks had gained him the hand of the widow of his predecessor. He was very florid, with a cold dark eye; but his face was the most physical that I ever beheld. From the white, low forehead, to the well-formed chin, there was nothing on which the gazer could rest that spoke of intellectuality. There was “speculation in his eye,” but it was the calculation of farthings. There was a pure ruddiness in his cheek, but it was the glow of matter, not that of mind. His mouth was well formed, yet pursed up with an expression of mingled vanity and severity. He was very robust, and his arm exceedingly powerful. With all these personal advantages, he had a shrill, girlish voice, that made him, in the execution of his cruelties, actually hideous. I believe, and I make the assertion in all honesty, that he received a sensual enjoyment by the act of inflicting punishment. He attended to no department of the school but the flagellative. He walked in about twelve o’clock, had all on the list placed on a form, his man-servant was called in, the lads horsed, and he, in general, found ample amusement till one. He used to make it his boast that he never allowed any of his ushers to punish. The hypocrite! the epicure! he reserved all that luxury for himself. Add to this, that he was very ignorant out of the Tutor’s Assistant, and that he wrote a most abominably good hand (that usual sign of a poor and trifle-occupied mind), and now you have a very fair picture of Mr Root. I have said that he was a most cruel tyrant: yet Nero himself ought not to be blackened; and I must say this for my master’s humanity, that I had been at school two days before I was flogged; and then it was for the enormity of not knowing my own name. “Rattlin,” said the pedagogue. No reply. “Master Rattlin,” in a shriller tone. Answer there was none. “Master Ralph Rattlin.” Many started, but “Ralph Brandon” thought it concerned not him. But it did indeed. I believe that I had been told my new name, but I had forgotten it in my grief, and now in grief and in pain I was again taught it. When, for the first time, in reality, I tasted that acid and bitter fruit of the tree of knowledge, old Isaac’s (my soldier schoolmaster) mock brushings were remembered with heartfelt regret.At that time the road to learning was strewed neither with flowers nor palm-leaves, but with the instigating birch. The schoolmaster had not yet gone abroad, but he flogged most diligently at home, and, verily, I partook amply of that diligence. I was flogged full, and I was flogged fasting; when I deserved it, and when I did not; I was flogged for speaking too loudly, and for not speaking loud enough, and for holding my tongue. Moreover, one morning I rode the horse without the saddle, because my face was dirty, and the next, because I pestered the maid-servant to wash it clean. I was flogged because my shoes were dirty, and again because I attempted to wipe them clean with my pocket-handkerchief. I was flogged for playing, and for staying in the school-room and not going out to play. The bigger boys used to beat me, and I was then flogged for fighting. It is hard to say for what I was not flogged. Things, the most contradictory, all tended to one end, and that was my own. At length, he flogged me into serious ill-health, and then he stayed his hand, and I found relief on a bed of sickness. Even now I look back to those days of persecution with horror. Those were the times of large schools, rods steeped in brine (actual fact), intestine insurrections, the bumping of obnoxious ushers, and the “barring out” of tyrannical masters. A school of this description was a complete place of torment for the orphan, the unfriended, and the deserted. Lads then stayed at school till they were eighteen and even twenty, and fagging flourished in all its atrocious oppression.
Heroes, statesmen, philosophers, must bend to circumstances, and so must little boys at boarding-school. I went to bed with the rest, and, like the rest, had my bed-fellow. Miserable and weary was that night to my infant heart. When I found I could do so unobserved, I buried my face in the pillow, and wept with a perfect passion of wretchedness.
I had a hard, a cruel life at that school. When I lived with my nurse, the boys in the street used to beat me because I was too much of the gentleman, and now the young gentlemen thrashed me for not coming up to their standard of gentility. I saw a tyrant in every urchin that was stronger than myself, and a derider in him that was weaker. The next morning after my arrival, a fellow a little bigger than myself, came up, and standing before me, gave me very deliberately as hard a slap in the face as his strength would permit. Half crying with the pain, and yet not wishing to be thought quarrelsome, I asked, with good-natured humility, whether that was done in jest or in earnest. The little insolent replied, in his school-boy wit, “Betwixt and between.” I couldn’t stand that; my passion and my fist rose together, and hitting my oppressor midway between the eyes, “There’s my betwixt and between,” said I. His nose began to bleed, and when I went down into the school-room, the “new boy” had his hands well warmed with the ruler for fighting.
Alas! the first year of my academic life was one of unqualified wretchedness. For the two or three initiatory months, uncouth in speech, and vulgar in mien, with no gilded toy, rich plum-cake, or mint-new shilling to conciliate, I was despised and ridiculed; and when it was ascertained by my own confession that I was the son of a day-labourer, I was shunned by the aristocratic progeny of butchers, linen-drapers, and hatters. It took, at least, a half-dozen floggings to cure me of the belief that Joseph Brandon and his wife were my parents. It was the shortest road to conviction, and Mr Root prided himself upon shortcutsin imparting knowledge. I assure my readers they were severe ones.
Mr Root, the pedagogue of this immense school, which was situated in the vicinity of Islington, was a very stout and very handsome man, of about thirty. He had formerly been a subordinate where he now commanded, and his good looks had gained him the hand of the widow of his predecessor. He was very florid, with a cold dark eye; but his face was the most physical that I ever beheld. From the white, low forehead, to the well-formed chin, there was nothing on which the gazer could rest that spoke of intellectuality. There was “speculation in his eye,” but it was the calculation of farthings. There was a pure ruddiness in his cheek, but it was the glow of matter, not that of mind. His mouth was well formed, yet pursed up with an expression of mingled vanity and severity. He was very robust, and his arm exceedingly powerful. With all these personal advantages, he had a shrill, girlish voice, that made him, in the execution of his cruelties, actually hideous. I believe, and I make the assertion in all honesty, that he received a sensual enjoyment by the act of inflicting punishment. He attended to no department of the school but the flagellative. He walked in about twelve o’clock, had all on the list placed on a form, his man-servant was called in, the lads horsed, and he, in general, found ample amusement till one. He used to make it his boast that he never allowed any of his ushers to punish. The hypocrite! the epicure! he reserved all that luxury for himself. Add to this, that he was very ignorant out of the Tutor’s Assistant, and that he wrote a most abominably good hand (that usual sign of a poor and trifle-occupied mind), and now you have a very fair picture of Mr Root. I have said that he was a most cruel tyrant: yet Nero himself ought not to be blackened; and I must say this for my master’s humanity, that I had been at school two days before I was flogged; and then it was for the enormity of not knowing my own name. “Rattlin,” said the pedagogue. No reply. “Master Rattlin,” in a shriller tone. Answer there was none. “Master Ralph Rattlin.” Many started, but “Ralph Brandon” thought it concerned not him. But it did indeed. I believe that I had been told my new name, but I had forgotten it in my grief, and now in grief and in pain I was again taught it. When, for the first time, in reality, I tasted that acid and bitter fruit of the tree of knowledge, old Isaac’s (my soldier schoolmaster) mock brushings were remembered with heartfelt regret.
At that time the road to learning was strewed neither with flowers nor palm-leaves, but with the instigating birch. The schoolmaster had not yet gone abroad, but he flogged most diligently at home, and, verily, I partook amply of that diligence. I was flogged full, and I was flogged fasting; when I deserved it, and when I did not; I was flogged for speaking too loudly, and for not speaking loud enough, and for holding my tongue. Moreover, one morning I rode the horse without the saddle, because my face was dirty, and the next, because I pestered the maid-servant to wash it clean. I was flogged because my shoes were dirty, and again because I attempted to wipe them clean with my pocket-handkerchief. I was flogged for playing, and for staying in the school-room and not going out to play. The bigger boys used to beat me, and I was then flogged for fighting. It is hard to say for what I was not flogged. Things, the most contradictory, all tended to one end, and that was my own. At length, he flogged me into serious ill-health, and then he stayed his hand, and I found relief on a bed of sickness. Even now I look back to those days of persecution with horror. Those were the times of large schools, rods steeped in brine (actual fact), intestine insurrections, the bumping of obnoxious ushers, and the “barring out” of tyrannical masters. A school of this description was a complete place of torment for the orphan, the unfriended, and the deserted. Lads then stayed at school till they were eighteen and even twenty, and fagging flourished in all its atrocious oppression.
Chapter Ten.I grow egotistical, and being pleased with myself, give good advice—A visit; and a strange jumble of tirades, tears, tutors, tenderness, and a tea-kettle.Let me now describe the child of nine years and a half old, that was forced to undergo this terrible ordeal. We will suppose that, by the aid of the dancing-master and the drill-sergeant, I have been cured of my vulgar gait, and that my cockney accent has disappeared. Children of the age above-mentioned soon assimilate their tone and conversation with those around them. I was tall for my years, with a very light and active frame, and a countenance, the complexion of which was of the most unstained fairness. My hair light, glossy, and naturally, but not universally, curling. To make it appear in ringlets all over my head, would have been the effect of art; yet, without art it was wavy, and at the temples, forehead, and the back of the head, always in full circlets. My face presented a perfect oval, and my features were classically regular. I had a good natural colour, the intensity of which ebbed and flowed with every passing emotion. I was one of those dangerous subjects whom anger always makes pale. My eyes were decidedly blue, everything else that may be said to the contrary notwithstanding. The whole expression of my countenance was very feminine, but not soft. It was always the seat of some sentiment or passion, and in its womanly refinement gave to me an appearance of constitutional delicacy and effeminacy, that I certainly did not possess. I was decidedly a very beautiful child, and a child that seemed formed to kindle and return a mother’s love, yet the maternal caress never blessed me; but I was abandoned to the tender mercies of a number of he-beings, by many of whom my vivacity was checked, my spirit humbled, and my flesh cruelly lacerated.I dwell thus particularly on my school-day life, in order, in the first place, to prepare the reader for the singular events that follow; and in the second (and which forms by far the most important consideration, as I trust I am believed, and iftruthdeserves credence, believed I am), to caution parents from trusting to the specious representations of any schoolmaster, to induce them to examine carefully and patiently into every detail of the establishment, or they may become a party to a series of cruelties, that may break the spirit, and, perhaps, shorten the life of their children. Unfortunately, the most promising minds are those that soonest yield to the effect of harsh discipline. The phlegmatic, the dull, and the commonplace vegetate easily through this state of probation. The blight that will destroy the rose, passes ever harmlessly over the tough and earth-embracing weed.I stayed at Mr Root’s school for very nearly three years, and I shall divide that memorable period into three distinct epochs—the desponding, the devotional, and the mendacious. After I had been flogged into uncertain health, I was confined, for at least six weeks, to my room, and, when I was convalescent, it was hinted by the surgeon, in not unintelligible terms, to Mr Root, that if I did not experience the gentlest treatment, I might lose my life; which would have been very immaterial to Mr Root, had it not been a mathematical certainty that he would lose a good scholar at the same time. By-the-by, the meaning that a schoolmaster attaches to the words “good scholar,” is one for whom he is paid well. Thus I was emphatically a good scholar; no doubt his very best. I was taught everything—at least his bill said so. He provided everything for me, and I stayed with him during the holidays. He, therefore, ceased to confer upon me his cruel attentions; and abandoned me to a neglect hardly less cruel. The boys were strictly enjoined to leave me alone, and they obeyed. I found a solitude in the midst of society.A loneliness came over my young spirit. I was aweary, and I drooped like the tired bird, that alights on the ship, “far, far at sea.” As that poor bird folds its wings, and sinks into peaceful oblivion, I could have folded my arms and have lain down to die with pleasure. My heart exhausted itself with an intense longing for a companion to love. It wasted away all its substance in flinging out fibres to catch hold of that with which it might beat in unison. As turn the tendrils of the vine hither and thither to clasp something to adorn, and to repay support by beauty, so I wore out my young energies in a fruitless search for sympathy. I had nothing to love me, though I would have loved many if I had dared. There were many sweet faces among my school-fellows, to which I turned with a longing look, and a tearful eye. How menial I have been to procure a notice, a glance of kindness! I had nothing to give wherewith to bribe affection but services and labour, and those were either refused, or perhaps accepted with scorn. I was the only pariah among two hundred and fifty. There was a mystery and an obloquy attached to me, and the master had, by his interdiction, completely put me without the pale of society. I now said my lessons to the ushers with indifference—if I acquitted myself ill, I was unpunished—if well, unnoticed. My spirits began to give way fast, and I was beginning to feel the pernicious patronage of the servants. They would call me off the play-ground, on which I moped, send me on some message, or employ me in some light service. All this was winked at by the master, and as for the mistress, she never let me know that it occurred to her that I was in existence. It was evident that Mr Root had no objection to all this, for, in consideration of the money paid to him for my education, he was graciously pleased to permit me to fill the office of his kitchen-boy. But, before I became utterly degraded into the menial of the menials, a fortunate occurrence happened that put an end to my culinary servitude. To the utter surprise of Mr and Mrs Root, who expected nothing of the kind, a lady came to see me. What passed between the parties, before I was ushered into the parlour appropriated to visitors, I know not; it was some time before I was brought in, as preparatory ablutions were made, and my clothes changed. When I entered, I found that it was “the lady.” I remember that she was very superbly dressed, and I thought, too, the most beautiful apparition that I had ever beheld. The scene that took place was a little singular, and I shall relate it at full.As I have rigidly adhered to truth, I have been compelled to state what I have to say in a form almost entirely narrative; and have not imitated those great historians, who put long speeches into the mouths of their kings and generals, very much suited to the occasions undoubtedly, and deficient only in one point—that is, accuracy. I have told only of facts and impressions, and not given speeches that it would have been impossible for me to have remembered. Yet, in this interview there was something so striking to my young imagination, that my memory preserved many sentences, and all the substance of what took place. There was wine and cake upon the table, and the lady looked a little flustered. Mr Root was trying with a forty Chesterfieldean power to look amiable. Mrs Root was very fidgety. As I appeared at the door timorously, the lady said to me, without rising, but extending her delicate white hand, “Come here to me, Ralph; do you not know me?”I could get no further than the middle of the room, where I stood still, and burst out into a passion of tears. Those sweet tones of tenderness, the first I had heard for nine months, thrilled like fire through my whole frame. It was a feeling so intense, that, had it not been agony, it would have been bliss.“Good God!” said she, deeply agitated; “my poor boy, why do you cry?”“Because—because you are so kind,” said I, rushing forward to her extended arms; and, falling on my knees at her feet, I buried my face in her lap, and felt all happiness amidst my sobbings. She bent over me, and her tears trickled upon my neck. This did not last long. She placed me upon my feet, and drawing me to her side, kissed my cheeks, and my eyes, and my forehead. Her countenance soon became serene; and turning to my master, she said, quietly, “This, sir, is very singular.”“Yes, ma’am, Master Rattlinisvery singular. All clever boys are. He knows already his five declensions, and the four conjugations, active and passive. Come, Master Rattlin, decline for the lady the adjective felix—come, begin, nominative hic et haec et hoc felix.”“I don’t know anything about it,” said I, doggedly.“I told you he was asingularchild,” resumed the pedagogue, with a most awkward attempt at a smile.“The singularity to which I allude,” said the lady, “is his finding kindness so singular.”“Kind! bless you, my dear madam,” said they both together; “you can’t conceive how much we love the little dear.”“It was but yesterday,” said Mrs Root, “that I was telling the lady of Mr Alderman Jenkins—we have the five Jenkinses, ma’am—that Master Rattlin was the sweetest, genteelist, and beautifullest boy in the whole school.”“It was but yesterday,” said Mr Root, “that I was saying to Doctor Duncan (our respected rector, madam), that Master Rattlin had evinced such an uncommon talent, that we might, by-and-by, expect the greatest things from him. Not yet ten months with me, madam. Already in Phaedrus—the rule of three—and his French master gives the best account of him. He certainly has not begun to speak it yet, though he has made a vast progress in the French language. But it is Monsieur le Gros’s system to make his pupils thoroughly master of the language before they attempt to converse in it. And his dancing, my dear madam—Oh, it would do your heart good to see him dance. Such grace, such elasticity, and such happiness in his manner!”A pause—and then they exclaimed together, with a long-drawn sentimental sigh, “And we both love him so.”“I am glad to hear so good an account of him,” said the lady. “I hope, Ralph, that you love Mr and Mrs Root, for they seem very kind to you.”“No, I don’t.”Mr and Mrs Root lifted their hands imploringly to heaven. “Not love me!” they both exclaimed together, with a tone of heartfelt surprise and wounded sensibility, that would have gone far to have made the fortune of a sentimental actor.“Come here, sir, directly,” said Mr Root. “Look me full in the face, sir. You are a singular boy, yet Ididthink you loved me. Don’t be frightened, Ralph, I would not give youpainon any account; and you know I never did. Now tell me, my dear boy,” gradually softening from the terrible to the tender, “tell me, my dear boy, why you fancy you do not love me. You see, madam, that I encourage sincerity—and like, at all times, the truth to be spoken out. Why don’t you love me, Ralph dear?” pinching my ear with a spiteful violence, that was meant for gracious playfulness in the eyes of the lady, and an intelligible hint for myself. I was silent.“Come, Ralph, speak your mind freely. No one will do you any harm for it, I am sure. Why don’t you love Mr Root?” said the lady.I was ashamed to speak of my floggings, and I looked upon his late abandonment and negligence as kindness. I knew not what to say, yet I knew I hated him most cordially. I stammered, and at last I brought out this unfortunate sentence, “Because he has got such an ugly, nasty voice.”Mr and Mrs Root burst out into a long and, for the time, apparently uncontrollable laughter. When it had somewhat subsided, the schoolmaster exclaimed, “There, madam, didn’t I tell you he was a singular lad? Come here, you little wag, I must give you a kiss for your drollery.” And the monster hauled me to him, and when his face was close to mine, I saw a wolfish glare in his eyes, that made me fear that he was going to bite my nose off. The lady did not at all participate in the joviality; and, as it is difficult to keep up mirth entirely upon one’s own resources, we were beginning to be a gloomy party. What I had unconsciously said regarding my master’s voice, was wormwood to him. He had long been the butt of all his acquaintance respecting it, and what followed was the making that unbearable which was before too bitter. Many questions were put by the visitor, and the answers appeared to grow more and more unsatisfactory as they were elicited. The lady was beginning to look unhappy, when a sudden brightness came over her lovely countenance, and, with the most polished and kindly tone, she asked to see Mr Root’s own children. Mr Root looked silly, and Mrs Root distressed. The vapid and worn-out joke that their family was so large, that it boasted of the number of two hundred and fifty, fell spiritless to the ground; and disappointment, and even a slight shade of despondence, came over the lady’s features.“Where were you, Ralph, when I came?” said she; “I waited for you long.”“I was being washed, and putting on my second best.”“But why washed at this time of day—and why put on your second best?”“Because I had dirtied my hands, and my other clothes, carrying up the tea-kettle to Mr Matthews’s room.”Mr and Mrs Root again held up their hands in astonishment.“And who is Mr Matthews?” continued the lady.“Second Latin master, and ill abed in the garret.”“From whence did you take the tea-kettle?”“From the kitchen.”“And who gave it you?”“Molly, one of the maids.”At this disclosure Mr Root fell into the greatest of all possible rages, and, as we like a figure of speech called a climax, we must say, that Mrs Root fell into a much greater. They would turn the hussey out of the house that instant; they would do that, they would do this, and they would do the other. At length, the lady, with calm severity, requested them to do nothing at all.“There has been,” said she, “some mistake here. There is nothing very wrong, or disgraceful in Ralph attending to the wants of his sick master, though he does lie in the garret. I would rather see in his disposition a sympathy for suffering encouraged. God knows, there is in this world too much of the latter, and too little of the former. Yet I certainly think that there could have been a less degrading method pointed out to him of showing attention. But we will let this pass, as I know it will never happen again. You see, Mr and Mrs Root, that this poor child is rather delicate in appearance; he is much grown certainly; much more than I expected, or wished—but he seems both shy and dejected. I was in hopes that you had been yourselves blessed with a family. A mother can trust to a mother. Though you are not parents, you have known a parent’s love. I have no doubt that you are fond of children—(‘Very,’ both in a breath)—from the profession you have chosen. I am the godmother of this boy. Alas! I am afraid no nearer relation will ever appear to claim him. He has no mother, Mrs Root, without you will be to him as one; and I conjure you, sir, to let the fatherless find in the preceptor, a father. Let him only meet for a year or two with kindness, and I will cheerfully trust to Providence for the rest. Though I detest the quackery of getting up a scene, I wish to be as impressive as I can, as I am sorry to say, more than a year will unavoidably pass before I can see this poor youth again. Let me, at that time, I conjure you, see him in health and cheerfulness. Will you permit me now to say farewell? as I wish to say a few words of adieu to my godson, and should I cry over him for his mother’s sake, you know that a lady does not like to be seen with red eyes.”The delicacy of this sickly attempt at pleasantry was quite lost upon the scholastic pair. They understood her literally; and Mrs Root began, “My eye-water—” However, leave was taken, and I was left with the lady. She took me on her lap, and a hearty hug we had together. She then rang for Molly. She spoke to the girl kindly, asked no questions of her that might lead her to betray her employers, but, giving her half a guinea not to lose sight of me in the multitude, and, to prove her gratitude, never to suffer me again to enter the kitchen, she promised to double the gratuity when she again saw me, if she attended to her request. The girl, evidently affected as much by her manner as her gift, curtseyed and withdrew. While she remained at the school she complied with my godmother’s request most punctually.
Let me now describe the child of nine years and a half old, that was forced to undergo this terrible ordeal. We will suppose that, by the aid of the dancing-master and the drill-sergeant, I have been cured of my vulgar gait, and that my cockney accent has disappeared. Children of the age above-mentioned soon assimilate their tone and conversation with those around them. I was tall for my years, with a very light and active frame, and a countenance, the complexion of which was of the most unstained fairness. My hair light, glossy, and naturally, but not universally, curling. To make it appear in ringlets all over my head, would have been the effect of art; yet, without art it was wavy, and at the temples, forehead, and the back of the head, always in full circlets. My face presented a perfect oval, and my features were classically regular. I had a good natural colour, the intensity of which ebbed and flowed with every passing emotion. I was one of those dangerous subjects whom anger always makes pale. My eyes were decidedly blue, everything else that may be said to the contrary notwithstanding. The whole expression of my countenance was very feminine, but not soft. It was always the seat of some sentiment or passion, and in its womanly refinement gave to me an appearance of constitutional delicacy and effeminacy, that I certainly did not possess. I was decidedly a very beautiful child, and a child that seemed formed to kindle and return a mother’s love, yet the maternal caress never blessed me; but I was abandoned to the tender mercies of a number of he-beings, by many of whom my vivacity was checked, my spirit humbled, and my flesh cruelly lacerated.
I dwell thus particularly on my school-day life, in order, in the first place, to prepare the reader for the singular events that follow; and in the second (and which forms by far the most important consideration, as I trust I am believed, and iftruthdeserves credence, believed I am), to caution parents from trusting to the specious representations of any schoolmaster, to induce them to examine carefully and patiently into every detail of the establishment, or they may become a party to a series of cruelties, that may break the spirit, and, perhaps, shorten the life of their children. Unfortunately, the most promising minds are those that soonest yield to the effect of harsh discipline. The phlegmatic, the dull, and the commonplace vegetate easily through this state of probation. The blight that will destroy the rose, passes ever harmlessly over the tough and earth-embracing weed.
I stayed at Mr Root’s school for very nearly three years, and I shall divide that memorable period into three distinct epochs—the desponding, the devotional, and the mendacious. After I had been flogged into uncertain health, I was confined, for at least six weeks, to my room, and, when I was convalescent, it was hinted by the surgeon, in not unintelligible terms, to Mr Root, that if I did not experience the gentlest treatment, I might lose my life; which would have been very immaterial to Mr Root, had it not been a mathematical certainty that he would lose a good scholar at the same time. By-the-by, the meaning that a schoolmaster attaches to the words “good scholar,” is one for whom he is paid well. Thus I was emphatically a good scholar; no doubt his very best. I was taught everything—at least his bill said so. He provided everything for me, and I stayed with him during the holidays. He, therefore, ceased to confer upon me his cruel attentions; and abandoned me to a neglect hardly less cruel. The boys were strictly enjoined to leave me alone, and they obeyed. I found a solitude in the midst of society.
A loneliness came over my young spirit. I was aweary, and I drooped like the tired bird, that alights on the ship, “far, far at sea.” As that poor bird folds its wings, and sinks into peaceful oblivion, I could have folded my arms and have lain down to die with pleasure. My heart exhausted itself with an intense longing for a companion to love. It wasted away all its substance in flinging out fibres to catch hold of that with which it might beat in unison. As turn the tendrils of the vine hither and thither to clasp something to adorn, and to repay support by beauty, so I wore out my young energies in a fruitless search for sympathy. I had nothing to love me, though I would have loved many if I had dared. There were many sweet faces among my school-fellows, to which I turned with a longing look, and a tearful eye. How menial I have been to procure a notice, a glance of kindness! I had nothing to give wherewith to bribe affection but services and labour, and those were either refused, or perhaps accepted with scorn. I was the only pariah among two hundred and fifty. There was a mystery and an obloquy attached to me, and the master had, by his interdiction, completely put me without the pale of society. I now said my lessons to the ushers with indifference—if I acquitted myself ill, I was unpunished—if well, unnoticed. My spirits began to give way fast, and I was beginning to feel the pernicious patronage of the servants. They would call me off the play-ground, on which I moped, send me on some message, or employ me in some light service. All this was winked at by the master, and as for the mistress, she never let me know that it occurred to her that I was in existence. It was evident that Mr Root had no objection to all this, for, in consideration of the money paid to him for my education, he was graciously pleased to permit me to fill the office of his kitchen-boy. But, before I became utterly degraded into the menial of the menials, a fortunate occurrence happened that put an end to my culinary servitude. To the utter surprise of Mr and Mrs Root, who expected nothing of the kind, a lady came to see me. What passed between the parties, before I was ushered into the parlour appropriated to visitors, I know not; it was some time before I was brought in, as preparatory ablutions were made, and my clothes changed. When I entered, I found that it was “the lady.” I remember that she was very superbly dressed, and I thought, too, the most beautiful apparition that I had ever beheld. The scene that took place was a little singular, and I shall relate it at full.
As I have rigidly adhered to truth, I have been compelled to state what I have to say in a form almost entirely narrative; and have not imitated those great historians, who put long speeches into the mouths of their kings and generals, very much suited to the occasions undoubtedly, and deficient only in one point—that is, accuracy. I have told only of facts and impressions, and not given speeches that it would have been impossible for me to have remembered. Yet, in this interview there was something so striking to my young imagination, that my memory preserved many sentences, and all the substance of what took place. There was wine and cake upon the table, and the lady looked a little flustered. Mr Root was trying with a forty Chesterfieldean power to look amiable. Mrs Root was very fidgety. As I appeared at the door timorously, the lady said to me, without rising, but extending her delicate white hand, “Come here to me, Ralph; do you not know me?”
I could get no further than the middle of the room, where I stood still, and burst out into a passion of tears. Those sweet tones of tenderness, the first I had heard for nine months, thrilled like fire through my whole frame. It was a feeling so intense, that, had it not been agony, it would have been bliss.
“Good God!” said she, deeply agitated; “my poor boy, why do you cry?”
“Because—because you are so kind,” said I, rushing forward to her extended arms; and, falling on my knees at her feet, I buried my face in her lap, and felt all happiness amidst my sobbings. She bent over me, and her tears trickled upon my neck. This did not last long. She placed me upon my feet, and drawing me to her side, kissed my cheeks, and my eyes, and my forehead. Her countenance soon became serene; and turning to my master, she said, quietly, “This, sir, is very singular.”
“Yes, ma’am, Master Rattlinisvery singular. All clever boys are. He knows already his five declensions, and the four conjugations, active and passive. Come, Master Rattlin, decline for the lady the adjective felix—come, begin, nominative hic et haec et hoc felix.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” said I, doggedly.
“I told you he was asingularchild,” resumed the pedagogue, with a most awkward attempt at a smile.
“The singularity to which I allude,” said the lady, “is his finding kindness so singular.”
“Kind! bless you, my dear madam,” said they both together; “you can’t conceive how much we love the little dear.”
“It was but yesterday,” said Mrs Root, “that I was telling the lady of Mr Alderman Jenkins—we have the five Jenkinses, ma’am—that Master Rattlin was the sweetest, genteelist, and beautifullest boy in the whole school.”
“It was but yesterday,” said Mr Root, “that I was saying to Doctor Duncan (our respected rector, madam), that Master Rattlin had evinced such an uncommon talent, that we might, by-and-by, expect the greatest things from him. Not yet ten months with me, madam. Already in Phaedrus—the rule of three—and his French master gives the best account of him. He certainly has not begun to speak it yet, though he has made a vast progress in the French language. But it is Monsieur le Gros’s system to make his pupils thoroughly master of the language before they attempt to converse in it. And his dancing, my dear madam—Oh, it would do your heart good to see him dance. Such grace, such elasticity, and such happiness in his manner!”
A pause—and then they exclaimed together, with a long-drawn sentimental sigh, “And we both love him so.”
“I am glad to hear so good an account of him,” said the lady. “I hope, Ralph, that you love Mr and Mrs Root, for they seem very kind to you.”
“No, I don’t.”
Mr and Mrs Root lifted their hands imploringly to heaven. “Not love me!” they both exclaimed together, with a tone of heartfelt surprise and wounded sensibility, that would have gone far to have made the fortune of a sentimental actor.
“Come here, sir, directly,” said Mr Root. “Look me full in the face, sir. You are a singular boy, yet Ididthink you loved me. Don’t be frightened, Ralph, I would not give youpainon any account; and you know I never did. Now tell me, my dear boy,” gradually softening from the terrible to the tender, “tell me, my dear boy, why you fancy you do not love me. You see, madam, that I encourage sincerity—and like, at all times, the truth to be spoken out. Why don’t you love me, Ralph dear?” pinching my ear with a spiteful violence, that was meant for gracious playfulness in the eyes of the lady, and an intelligible hint for myself. I was silent.
“Come, Ralph, speak your mind freely. No one will do you any harm for it, I am sure. Why don’t you love Mr Root?” said the lady.
I was ashamed to speak of my floggings, and I looked upon his late abandonment and negligence as kindness. I knew not what to say, yet I knew I hated him most cordially. I stammered, and at last I brought out this unfortunate sentence, “Because he has got such an ugly, nasty voice.”
Mr and Mrs Root burst out into a long and, for the time, apparently uncontrollable laughter. When it had somewhat subsided, the schoolmaster exclaimed, “There, madam, didn’t I tell you he was a singular lad? Come here, you little wag, I must give you a kiss for your drollery.” And the monster hauled me to him, and when his face was close to mine, I saw a wolfish glare in his eyes, that made me fear that he was going to bite my nose off. The lady did not at all participate in the joviality; and, as it is difficult to keep up mirth entirely upon one’s own resources, we were beginning to be a gloomy party. What I had unconsciously said regarding my master’s voice, was wormwood to him. He had long been the butt of all his acquaintance respecting it, and what followed was the making that unbearable which was before too bitter. Many questions were put by the visitor, and the answers appeared to grow more and more unsatisfactory as they were elicited. The lady was beginning to look unhappy, when a sudden brightness came over her lovely countenance, and, with the most polished and kindly tone, she asked to see Mr Root’s own children. Mr Root looked silly, and Mrs Root distressed. The vapid and worn-out joke that their family was so large, that it boasted of the number of two hundred and fifty, fell spiritless to the ground; and disappointment, and even a slight shade of despondence, came over the lady’s features.
“Where were you, Ralph, when I came?” said she; “I waited for you long.”
“I was being washed, and putting on my second best.”
“But why washed at this time of day—and why put on your second best?”
“Because I had dirtied my hands, and my other clothes, carrying up the tea-kettle to Mr Matthews’s room.”
Mr and Mrs Root again held up their hands in astonishment.
“And who is Mr Matthews?” continued the lady.
“Second Latin master, and ill abed in the garret.”
“From whence did you take the tea-kettle?”
“From the kitchen.”
“And who gave it you?”
“Molly, one of the maids.”
At this disclosure Mr Root fell into the greatest of all possible rages, and, as we like a figure of speech called a climax, we must say, that Mrs Root fell into a much greater. They would turn the hussey out of the house that instant; they would do that, they would do this, and they would do the other. At length, the lady, with calm severity, requested them to do nothing at all.
“There has been,” said she, “some mistake here. There is nothing very wrong, or disgraceful in Ralph attending to the wants of his sick master, though he does lie in the garret. I would rather see in his disposition a sympathy for suffering encouraged. God knows, there is in this world too much of the latter, and too little of the former. Yet I certainly think that there could have been a less degrading method pointed out to him of showing attention. But we will let this pass, as I know it will never happen again. You see, Mr and Mrs Root, that this poor child is rather delicate in appearance; he is much grown certainly; much more than I expected, or wished—but he seems both shy and dejected. I was in hopes that you had been yourselves blessed with a family. A mother can trust to a mother. Though you are not parents, you have known a parent’s love. I have no doubt that you are fond of children—(‘Very,’ both in a breath)—from the profession you have chosen. I am the godmother of this boy. Alas! I am afraid no nearer relation will ever appear to claim him. He has no mother, Mrs Root, without you will be to him as one; and I conjure you, sir, to let the fatherless find in the preceptor, a father. Let him only meet for a year or two with kindness, and I will cheerfully trust to Providence for the rest. Though I detest the quackery of getting up a scene, I wish to be as impressive as I can, as I am sorry to say, more than a year will unavoidably pass before I can see this poor youth again. Let me, at that time, I conjure you, see him in health and cheerfulness. Will you permit me now to say farewell? as I wish to say a few words of adieu to my godson, and should I cry over him for his mother’s sake, you know that a lady does not like to be seen with red eyes.”
The delicacy of this sickly attempt at pleasantry was quite lost upon the scholastic pair. They understood her literally; and Mrs Root began, “My eye-water—” However, leave was taken, and I was left with the lady. She took me on her lap, and a hearty hug we had together. She then rang for Molly. She spoke to the girl kindly, asked no questions of her that might lead her to betray her employers, but, giving her half a guinea not to lose sight of me in the multitude, and, to prove her gratitude, never to suffer me again to enter the kitchen, she promised to double the gratuity when she again saw me, if she attended to her request. The girl, evidently affected as much by her manner as her gift, curtseyed and withdrew. While she remained at the school she complied with my godmother’s request most punctually.
Chapter Eleven.Containeth a lecture on love from a personification of loveliness—And showeth that superstition has its sweets as well as its horrors—And also how to avoid the infection of the evil eye.When we were alone, she examined me carefully, to ascertain if I were perfectly clean. It would have, perhaps, been for me a happy circumstance, if Mr Root had flogged me this day, or even a fortnight previously. The marks that he left were not very ephemeral. I don’t know whether a flogging a month old would not equally well have served my purpose. He certainly wrote a strong bold hand, in red ink, not easily obliterated. However, as he had not noticed me since my illness, I had no marks to show.When she had readjusted my dress, she lugged me to her side, and we looked, for a long while, in each other’s eyes in silence.“Ralph,” said she, at length, forgetting that the fault was mutual, “do you know that it is very rude to look so hard into people’s faces; why do you do it, my boy?”“Because you are so very, very, very pretty, and your voice is so soft: and because I do love you so.”“But you must not love me too much, my sweet child: because I can’t be with you to return your love.”“O dear, I’m so sorry; because—because—if you don’t love me, nobody will. Master don’t love me, nor the ushers, nor the boys; and they keep calling me the—”“Hush, Ralph! hush, my poor boy,” said she, colouring to her very forehead. “Never tell me what they call you. Little boys who call names are wicked boys, and are very false boys too. Hear me, Ralph! You are nearly ten years old. You must be a man, and not love anyone too much—not even me—for it makes people very unhappy to love too much. Do you understand me, Ralph? You must be kind to all, and all will be kind to you: but it is best not to love anything violently—excepting, Ralph, Him who will love you when all hate you—who will care for you, when all desert you—your God!”“I don’t know too much about that,” was my answer. “Mr Root tells us once every week to trust in God, and that God will protect the innocent, and all that: and then flogs me for nothing at all, though I trust all I can; and I’m sure that I’m innocent.”My good godmother was a little shocked at this, and endeavoured to convince me that such expressions were impious, by assuring me that everything was suffered for the best; and that, if Mr Foot flogged me unjustly and wickedly, I should be rewarded, and my master punished for it hereafter; which assurance did not much mend my moral feelings, as I silently resolved to put myself in the way of a few extra unjust chastisements, in order that my master might receive the full benefit of them in a future state.Moral duties should be inculcated in the earliest youth; but the mysteries of religion should be left to a riper age. After many endearments, and much good advice, that I thought most beautiful, from the tenderness of tone in which it was given, I requested the lady, with all my powers of entreaty, and amidst a shower of kisses, to take me home to my mother.“Alas! my dear boy,” was the reply, “Mrs Brandon is not your mother.”“Well, I couldn’t believe that before—never mind—I love her just as well. But who is my mother? If you were not so pretty, and so fine, I would ask you to be my mother; all the other boys have got a mother, and a father too.”The lady caught me to her bosom, and kissing me amidst her tears, said, “Ralph, I will be your mother, though you must only look upon me as your godmamma.”“Oh, I’m so glad of that! and what shall I call you?”“Mamma, my dear child.”“Well, mamma, won’t you take me home? I don’t mean now, but at the holidays, when all the others go to their mammas? I’ll be so good. Won’t you, mamma?”“Come here, Ralph. I was wrong. You must not call me mamma, I can’t bear it. I was never a mother to you, my poor boy. I cannot have you home. By-and-by, perhaps. Do not think about me too much, and do not think that you are not loved. Oh! you are loved, very much indeed; but now you must make your schoolfellows love you. I have told Mr Root to allow you sixpence a week, and there are eight shillings for you, and a box of playthings, in the hall, and a large cake in the box; lend the playthings, and share the cake. Now, my dear boy, I must leave you. Do not think that I am your mother, but your very good friend. Now, may God bless you and watch over you. Keep up your spirits, and remember that you are cared for, and loved—O, how fondly loved!”With a fervent blessing, and an equally fervent embrace, she parted from me; and, when I looked round and found that she had gone from the room, I actually experienced the sensation as if the light of the sun had been suddenly with drawn, and that I walked forth in twilight.When I went up melancholy to my bed, and crept sorrowfully under the clothes, I felt a protection round me in that haunted chamber, in the very fact of having again seen her. This house, that had now been converted into a large school, had formerly been one of the suburban palaces of Queen Elizabeth; it was very spacious and rambling; some of the rooms had been modernised, and some remained as they had been for centuries. The room in which I slept was one of the smallest, and contained only two beds, one of which was occupied by the housekeeper, a very respectable old lady, and the other by myself. Sometimes I had a bedfellow, and sometimes not. This room had probably been a vestibule, or the ante-chamber to some larger apartment, and it now formed an abutment to the edifice, all on one side of it being ancient, and the other modern. It was lighted by one narrow, high, Gothic window, the panes of which were very small, lozenged, and many of them still stained. The roof was groined and concave, and still gay with tarnished gold. The mouldings and traceries sprang up from the four corners, and all terminated in the centre, in which grinned a Medusa’s head, with her circling snakes, in high preservation, and of great and ghastly beauty. There were other grotesque visages, sprinkled here and there over that elaborate roof; but look at that Medusa from what point you might, the painted wooden eyes were cast with a stolid sternness upon you. When I had a bedfellow, it was always some castaway like myself—some poor wretch who could not go home and complain that he was put to sleep in the “haunted chamber.” The boys told strange tales of that room, and they all believed that the floor was stained with blood. I often examined it, both by day and by candle-light; it was very old, and of oak, dark, and much discoloured. But even my excited fancy could discover nothing like blood-spots upon it. After all, when I was alone in that bed-chamber, for the housekeeper seldom entered before midnight, and the flickering and feeble oil-lamp, that always burned upon her table, threw its uncertain rays upwards, and made the central face quiver as it were into life, I would shrink, horror-stricken, under the clothes, and silently pray for the morning. It was certainly a fearful room for a visionary child like myself, with whom the existence of ghosts made an article of faith, and who had been once before frightened even unto the death, by supernatural terrors.But of all this I never complained. I have not merit enough to boast that I am proud, for pride has always something ennobling about it: but I was vain, and vanity enabled me to put on the appearance of courage. When questioned by the few schoolfellows who would speak to me, I acknowledged no ghosts, and would own to no fear. All this, in the sequel, was remembered to my honour. Besides, I had found a singular antidote against the look of the evil eye in the ceiling. What I am going to relate may be startling, and for a child ten years old, appear incredible; but it is the bare unembellished truth. This was my antidote alluded to. In the church where we went, there was a strongly painted altar-piece. The Virgin Mother bent, with ineffable sweetness, over the sleeping Jesus. The pew in which I sat was distant enough to give the full force of illusion to the power of the artist, and the glory round the Madonna much assisted my imagination. I certainly attended to that face, and to that beneficent attitude, more than to be service. When the terrors of my desolate situation used to begin to creep over me in my lonely bed, I could, without much effort of imagination, bring that sweet motherly face before me, and view it visibly in the gloom of the room, and thus defy the dread glance of the visage above me. I used to whisper to myself these words—“Lady with the glory, come an sit by me.” And I could then close my eyes, and fancy, nay, almost feel assured of her presence, and sleep in peace.But, in the night that I had seen my godmother, when I crept under my clothes disconsolately, I no longer whispered for the lady with the glory; it was for my sweet mamma. And she, too, came and blessed my gentle slumbers. Surely, that beautiful creature must have been my mother, for long did she come and play the seraph’s part over her child, and watched by his pillow, till he sank in the repose of innocence.Lately, at the age of forty, I visited that church. I looked earnestly at the altar-piece. I was astonished, hurt, disgusted. It was a coarse daub. The freshness of the painting had been long changed by the dark tarnish of years, and the blighting of damp atmosphere. There were some remains of beauty in the expression, and elegance in the attitude; but, as a piece of art it was but a second-rate performance. Age dispels many illusions, and suffers for it. Truly youth and enthusiasm are the best painters.
When we were alone, she examined me carefully, to ascertain if I were perfectly clean. It would have, perhaps, been for me a happy circumstance, if Mr Root had flogged me this day, or even a fortnight previously. The marks that he left were not very ephemeral. I don’t know whether a flogging a month old would not equally well have served my purpose. He certainly wrote a strong bold hand, in red ink, not easily obliterated. However, as he had not noticed me since my illness, I had no marks to show.
When she had readjusted my dress, she lugged me to her side, and we looked, for a long while, in each other’s eyes in silence.
“Ralph,” said she, at length, forgetting that the fault was mutual, “do you know that it is very rude to look so hard into people’s faces; why do you do it, my boy?”
“Because you are so very, very, very pretty, and your voice is so soft: and because I do love you so.”
“But you must not love me too much, my sweet child: because I can’t be with you to return your love.”
“O dear, I’m so sorry; because—because—if you don’t love me, nobody will. Master don’t love me, nor the ushers, nor the boys; and they keep calling me the—”
“Hush, Ralph! hush, my poor boy,” said she, colouring to her very forehead. “Never tell me what they call you. Little boys who call names are wicked boys, and are very false boys too. Hear me, Ralph! You are nearly ten years old. You must be a man, and not love anyone too much—not even me—for it makes people very unhappy to love too much. Do you understand me, Ralph? You must be kind to all, and all will be kind to you: but it is best not to love anything violently—excepting, Ralph, Him who will love you when all hate you—who will care for you, when all desert you—your God!”
“I don’t know too much about that,” was my answer. “Mr Root tells us once every week to trust in God, and that God will protect the innocent, and all that: and then flogs me for nothing at all, though I trust all I can; and I’m sure that I’m innocent.”
My good godmother was a little shocked at this, and endeavoured to convince me that such expressions were impious, by assuring me that everything was suffered for the best; and that, if Mr Foot flogged me unjustly and wickedly, I should be rewarded, and my master punished for it hereafter; which assurance did not much mend my moral feelings, as I silently resolved to put myself in the way of a few extra unjust chastisements, in order that my master might receive the full benefit of them in a future state.
Moral duties should be inculcated in the earliest youth; but the mysteries of religion should be left to a riper age. After many endearments, and much good advice, that I thought most beautiful, from the tenderness of tone in which it was given, I requested the lady, with all my powers of entreaty, and amidst a shower of kisses, to take me home to my mother.
“Alas! my dear boy,” was the reply, “Mrs Brandon is not your mother.”
“Well, I couldn’t believe that before—never mind—I love her just as well. But who is my mother? If you were not so pretty, and so fine, I would ask you to be my mother; all the other boys have got a mother, and a father too.”
The lady caught me to her bosom, and kissing me amidst her tears, said, “Ralph, I will be your mother, though you must only look upon me as your godmamma.”
“Oh, I’m so glad of that! and what shall I call you?”
“Mamma, my dear child.”
“Well, mamma, won’t you take me home? I don’t mean now, but at the holidays, when all the others go to their mammas? I’ll be so good. Won’t you, mamma?”
“Come here, Ralph. I was wrong. You must not call me mamma, I can’t bear it. I was never a mother to you, my poor boy. I cannot have you home. By-and-by, perhaps. Do not think about me too much, and do not think that you are not loved. Oh! you are loved, very much indeed; but now you must make your schoolfellows love you. I have told Mr Root to allow you sixpence a week, and there are eight shillings for you, and a box of playthings, in the hall, and a large cake in the box; lend the playthings, and share the cake. Now, my dear boy, I must leave you. Do not think that I am your mother, but your very good friend. Now, may God bless you and watch over you. Keep up your spirits, and remember that you are cared for, and loved—O, how fondly loved!”
With a fervent blessing, and an equally fervent embrace, she parted from me; and, when I looked round and found that she had gone from the room, I actually experienced the sensation as if the light of the sun had been suddenly with drawn, and that I walked forth in twilight.
When I went up melancholy to my bed, and crept sorrowfully under the clothes, I felt a protection round me in that haunted chamber, in the very fact of having again seen her. This house, that had now been converted into a large school, had formerly been one of the suburban palaces of Queen Elizabeth; it was very spacious and rambling; some of the rooms had been modernised, and some remained as they had been for centuries. The room in which I slept was one of the smallest, and contained only two beds, one of which was occupied by the housekeeper, a very respectable old lady, and the other by myself. Sometimes I had a bedfellow, and sometimes not. This room had probably been a vestibule, or the ante-chamber to some larger apartment, and it now formed an abutment to the edifice, all on one side of it being ancient, and the other modern. It was lighted by one narrow, high, Gothic window, the panes of which were very small, lozenged, and many of them still stained. The roof was groined and concave, and still gay with tarnished gold. The mouldings and traceries sprang up from the four corners, and all terminated in the centre, in which grinned a Medusa’s head, with her circling snakes, in high preservation, and of great and ghastly beauty. There were other grotesque visages, sprinkled here and there over that elaborate roof; but look at that Medusa from what point you might, the painted wooden eyes were cast with a stolid sternness upon you. When I had a bedfellow, it was always some castaway like myself—some poor wretch who could not go home and complain that he was put to sleep in the “haunted chamber.” The boys told strange tales of that room, and they all believed that the floor was stained with blood. I often examined it, both by day and by candle-light; it was very old, and of oak, dark, and much discoloured. But even my excited fancy could discover nothing like blood-spots upon it. After all, when I was alone in that bed-chamber, for the housekeeper seldom entered before midnight, and the flickering and feeble oil-lamp, that always burned upon her table, threw its uncertain rays upwards, and made the central face quiver as it were into life, I would shrink, horror-stricken, under the clothes, and silently pray for the morning. It was certainly a fearful room for a visionary child like myself, with whom the existence of ghosts made an article of faith, and who had been once before frightened even unto the death, by supernatural terrors.
But of all this I never complained. I have not merit enough to boast that I am proud, for pride has always something ennobling about it: but I was vain, and vanity enabled me to put on the appearance of courage. When questioned by the few schoolfellows who would speak to me, I acknowledged no ghosts, and would own to no fear. All this, in the sequel, was remembered to my honour. Besides, I had found a singular antidote against the look of the evil eye in the ceiling. What I am going to relate may be startling, and for a child ten years old, appear incredible; but it is the bare unembellished truth. This was my antidote alluded to. In the church where we went, there was a strongly painted altar-piece. The Virgin Mother bent, with ineffable sweetness, over the sleeping Jesus. The pew in which I sat was distant enough to give the full force of illusion to the power of the artist, and the glory round the Madonna much assisted my imagination. I certainly attended to that face, and to that beneficent attitude, more than to be service. When the terrors of my desolate situation used to begin to creep over me in my lonely bed, I could, without much effort of imagination, bring that sweet motherly face before me, and view it visibly in the gloom of the room, and thus defy the dread glance of the visage above me. I used to whisper to myself these words—“Lady with the glory, come an sit by me.” And I could then close my eyes, and fancy, nay, almost feel assured of her presence, and sleep in peace.
But, in the night that I had seen my godmother, when I crept under my clothes disconsolately, I no longer whispered for the lady with the glory; it was for my sweet mamma. And she, too, came and blessed my gentle slumbers. Surely, that beautiful creature must have been my mother, for long did she come and play the seraph’s part over her child, and watched by his pillow, till he sank in the repose of innocence.
Lately, at the age of forty, I visited that church. I looked earnestly at the altar-piece. I was astonished, hurt, disgusted. It was a coarse daub. The freshness of the painting had been long changed by the dark tarnish of years, and the blighting of damp atmosphere. There were some remains of beauty in the expression, and elegance in the attitude; but, as a piece of art it was but a second-rate performance. Age dispels many illusions, and suffers for it. Truly youth and enthusiasm are the best painters.
Chapter Twelve.Ralph lectureth on divinity and little boys’ nether garments—Despondeth exceedingly—And being the weakest goeth to the wall, and there findeth consolation—An old friend with an old face and excellent provent.The next morning I arose the possessor of eight shillings, a box of playthings, a plum-cake, and a heavy heart. It is most true, that which Wordsworth hath said or sung, “The boy’s the father of the man.” When I mingled with my schoolmates, and the unexpected possession of my various wealth had transpired, I found many of them very kind andfatherlyindeed, for they borrowed my money, ate my cake, broke my playthings, and my heart they left just in the same state as it as before.But I will no longer dwell upon the portraiture of that saddest of all created things, the despised of many. I was taught the hard lesson of looking upon cruelty as my daily bread, tears as my daily drink, and scorn as my natural portion. Had not my heart hardened, it must have broken. But before I leave what I call the desponding epoch of my schoolboy days, I must not omit to mention a species of impious barbarity, that had well-nigh alienated my heart for ever from religion, and which made me for the time detest the very name of church. Christianity is most eminently a religion of kindness; and through the paths of holy love only, should the young heart be conducted to the throne of grace, for we have it from the highest authority that the worship of little children is an acceptable offering and may well mingle with the sweetest symphonies that ascend from the lips of seraphs to the footstool of the Everlasting. Our God is not a God of terrors, and when he is so represented, or is made so by any flint-hearted pedagogue to the infant pupil, that man has to answer for the almost unpardonable sin of perilling a soul. Let parents and guardians look to it. Let them mark well the unwilling files that are paraded by boarding-school keepers into the adjacent church or chapel, bringing a mercenary puff up to the very horns of the altar, and let them inquire how many are then flogged, or beaten, or otherwise evil-entreated, because they have flagged in an attention impossible in the days of childhood, and have not remembered a text, perhaps indistinctly or inaudibly given—let those parents or guardians, I say, inquire, and if but one poor youth has so suffered, let them be fully assured that that master, whatever may be his diligence, whatever may be his attainments, however high his worldly character may stand, is not fit to be the modeller of the youthful mind, and only wants the opportunity to betray that bigotry which would gladly burn his dissenting neighbour at the stake, or lash a faith, with exquisite tortures, into the children of those whom, in his saintly pride, he may call heretical.At church we occupied, at least, one-third of the whole of one side of the gallery. Two hundred and fifty boys and young men, with their attending masters and ushers, could not but fill a large space, and, of course, would form no unimportant feature in the audience. Mr Root and the little boys were always placed in the lower and front seats. There we sat, poor dear little puppets, with our eyes strained on the prayerbooks, always in the wrong place, during the offertory, and, after the sermon had begun, repeating the text over and over again, whilst the preaching continued, lest we should forget it; whilst all this time the bigger boys in the rear were studying novels, or playing at odd-and-even for nuts, marbles, or halfpence. I well know that the mathematical master used, invariably, to solve his hard problems on fly-leaves in his prayer-book during service, for I have repeatedly seen there his laborious calculations in minutely small figures; and he never opened his prayer-book but at church—as perhaps he thought, with the old woman of Smollett, that it was a species of impiety to study such works anywhere else. Whilst all this was going on in the back rows, Mr Root, in the full-blown glory of his Sunday paraphernalia, and well powdered, attended exclusively to the holiness and devout comportment of his little chapter of innocents. Tablet in hand, every wandering look was noted down; and alas the consequences to me were dreadfully painful.The absolution absolved me not. The “Te Deum laudamus” was to me more a source of tears than of praise; and the “O be joyful in the Lord” has often made me intensely sorrowful in the school-room. In all honesty, I don’t think that, for a whole half-year, I once escaped my Sunday flogging. It came as regularly as the baked rice-puddings. I began to look upon the thing as a matter of course; and, if any person should doubt the credibility of this, or any other account of these my school-boy days, happily there are several now living who can vouch for its veracity, and if I am dared to the proof by anyone by whose conviction I should feel honoured, that proof will I most certainly give.I have stated all this, from what I believe to be a true reverence for worship, to make the offices of religion a balm and a blessing, to prove that there is a cherishing warmth in the glory of light that surrounds the throne of Exhaustless Benevolence, and that the Deity cannot be worthily called upon by young hearts stricken by degrading fears, and fainting under a Moloch-inspired dread. Notwithstanding my eccentric life, I have ever been the ardent, the unpretending, though the unworthy adorer of the Great Being, whose highest attribute is the “Good.” I have had reason to be so.The man who has acknowledged his Creator amidst his most stupendous works, who has recognised his voice in the ocean storm, who has confessed his providence amidst the slaughter of battle, and witnessed the awful universality of that adoration that is wafted to Him from all nations, under all forms, from the simple smiting of the breast of the penitent solitary one, to the sublime pealings of the choral hymn, buoyed upon the resounding notes of the thunder-tongued organ in the high and dim cathedral,—the man who has witnessed and acutely felt all this, and has no feelings of piety, or deference to religion, must be endued with a heart hardened beyond the flintiness, as the Scriptures beautifully express it, “of the nether millstone.”But myforteis not the serious. I am intent, and quiet, and thoughtful, only under the influence of great enjoyment. When I have most cause to deem myself blessed, or to call myself triumphant, it is then that I am stricken with a feeling of undesert, that I am grave with humility, or sad with the thought of human instability. But, on the eve of battle, on the yardarm in the tempest, or amidst the dying in the pest-house, say, O ye companions of my youth, whose jest was the most constant, whose laugh the loudest? Yet the one feeling was not real despondence, nor the other real courage. In the first place, it is no more than the soul looking beyond this world for the real; in the second, she is trifling in this world with the ideal. However, as in these pages I intend to attempt to be tolerably gay, it may be fairly presumed that I am very considerably unhappy, and dull, perhaps, as the perusal of these memoirs may make my readers.As such great pains weretaken, at least by me, in my religious education, it is not to be wondered at that I should not feel at all sedentary on the Sunday afternoons after church-time. In fact, I affected any position rather than the sitting one. But all the Sundays were not joyless to me. One, in particular, though the former part of it had been passed in sickening fear, and the middle in torturing pain, its termination was marked with a heartfelt joyousness, the cause of which I must record as a tribute of gratitude due to one of the “not unwashed,” but muddy-minded multitude.I was stealing along mournfully under the play-ground wall with no hasty or striding step, not particularly wishing any rough or close contact of certain parts of my dress with my person, my passing schoolmates looking upon me in the manner that Shakespeare so beautifully describes the untouched deer regard the stricken hart. My soul was very heavy, and full of dark wonder. The sun was setting, and, to all living, it is either a time of solemn peace, or of instinctive melancholy when looked upon by the solitary one. Of a sudden I was roused from my gloom by the well-known, yet long missed shout of “Ralph! Ralph!” and, looking up, I discovered the hard-featured, grinning physiognomy of Joe Brandon, actually beaming with pleasure, on the top of the wall. How glad he was! How glad I was! He had found me! Instead of seeking the Lord in his various conventicles on the Sunday, he had employed that day, invariably, after I had been taken from his house, in reconnoitring the different boarding-schools in the vicinity, and at some distance from the metropolis. To this, no doubt, he was greatly instigated by the affection of my nurse, but I give his own heart the credit of its being a labour of love. The wall being too high to permit us to shake hands, at my earnest entreaty, he went round to the front; but, after having made known his desire,—literally, “a pampered menial drove him from the door.” Well, the wall, if not open to him, was still before and above him, and he again mounted it. Our words were few, as the boys began to cluster around me. He let drop to me fourpence-halfpenny, folded in a piece of brown paper, and disappeared. Oh, how I prize that pilgrim visit! Forget it, I never can! That meeting was to me a one bright light on my dark and dreary path. It enabled me to go forward; there was not much gloom between me and happier days—perhaps the light of joy that that occurrence shed enabled me to pass over the trial. It might have been that, at that period, I could have borne no more, and should have sunk under my accumulated persecutions. I will not say that so it was, for there is an elasticity in early youth that recovers itself against much—yet I was at that time heavy indeed with exceeding hopelessness. All I can say to the sneerer is, I wish, that at the next conclave of personages who may be assembled to discuss the destinies of nations, there may be as much of the milk of human kindness and right feelings among them as there was between me and the labouring sawyer, Joe Brandon, the one being at the top, and the other at the bottom of the wall.The next Sunday, Brandon was again on the wall with a prodigious plum-cake. A regular cut-and-come-again affair: it fell to the ground with a heaviness of sound that beat the falling of Corporal Trim’s hat all to ribbons. To be sure, the corporal’s fell as if there had been a quantity of “clay kneaded in the crown of it,” whilst mine was kneaded with excellent dough. The Sunday after, there was the same appearance, varied with gingerbread, and then—for years, I neither saw, nor heard of him. Poor Joseph was threatened with the constable, and was put to no more expense for cakes for his foster-son.
The next morning I arose the possessor of eight shillings, a box of playthings, a plum-cake, and a heavy heart. It is most true, that which Wordsworth hath said or sung, “The boy’s the father of the man.” When I mingled with my schoolmates, and the unexpected possession of my various wealth had transpired, I found many of them very kind andfatherlyindeed, for they borrowed my money, ate my cake, broke my playthings, and my heart they left just in the same state as it as before.
But I will no longer dwell upon the portraiture of that saddest of all created things, the despised of many. I was taught the hard lesson of looking upon cruelty as my daily bread, tears as my daily drink, and scorn as my natural portion. Had not my heart hardened, it must have broken. But before I leave what I call the desponding epoch of my schoolboy days, I must not omit to mention a species of impious barbarity, that had well-nigh alienated my heart for ever from religion, and which made me for the time detest the very name of church. Christianity is most eminently a religion of kindness; and through the paths of holy love only, should the young heart be conducted to the throne of grace, for we have it from the highest authority that the worship of little children is an acceptable offering and may well mingle with the sweetest symphonies that ascend from the lips of seraphs to the footstool of the Everlasting. Our God is not a God of terrors, and when he is so represented, or is made so by any flint-hearted pedagogue to the infant pupil, that man has to answer for the almost unpardonable sin of perilling a soul. Let parents and guardians look to it. Let them mark well the unwilling files that are paraded by boarding-school keepers into the adjacent church or chapel, bringing a mercenary puff up to the very horns of the altar, and let them inquire how many are then flogged, or beaten, or otherwise evil-entreated, because they have flagged in an attention impossible in the days of childhood, and have not remembered a text, perhaps indistinctly or inaudibly given—let those parents or guardians, I say, inquire, and if but one poor youth has so suffered, let them be fully assured that that master, whatever may be his diligence, whatever may be his attainments, however high his worldly character may stand, is not fit to be the modeller of the youthful mind, and only wants the opportunity to betray that bigotry which would gladly burn his dissenting neighbour at the stake, or lash a faith, with exquisite tortures, into the children of those whom, in his saintly pride, he may call heretical.
At church we occupied, at least, one-third of the whole of one side of the gallery. Two hundred and fifty boys and young men, with their attending masters and ushers, could not but fill a large space, and, of course, would form no unimportant feature in the audience. Mr Root and the little boys were always placed in the lower and front seats. There we sat, poor dear little puppets, with our eyes strained on the prayerbooks, always in the wrong place, during the offertory, and, after the sermon had begun, repeating the text over and over again, whilst the preaching continued, lest we should forget it; whilst all this time the bigger boys in the rear were studying novels, or playing at odd-and-even for nuts, marbles, or halfpence. I well know that the mathematical master used, invariably, to solve his hard problems on fly-leaves in his prayer-book during service, for I have repeatedly seen there his laborious calculations in minutely small figures; and he never opened his prayer-book but at church—as perhaps he thought, with the old woman of Smollett, that it was a species of impiety to study such works anywhere else. Whilst all this was going on in the back rows, Mr Root, in the full-blown glory of his Sunday paraphernalia, and well powdered, attended exclusively to the holiness and devout comportment of his little chapter of innocents. Tablet in hand, every wandering look was noted down; and alas the consequences to me were dreadfully painful.
The absolution absolved me not. The “Te Deum laudamus” was to me more a source of tears than of praise; and the “O be joyful in the Lord” has often made me intensely sorrowful in the school-room. In all honesty, I don’t think that, for a whole half-year, I once escaped my Sunday flogging. It came as regularly as the baked rice-puddings. I began to look upon the thing as a matter of course; and, if any person should doubt the credibility of this, or any other account of these my school-boy days, happily there are several now living who can vouch for its veracity, and if I am dared to the proof by anyone by whose conviction I should feel honoured, that proof will I most certainly give.
I have stated all this, from what I believe to be a true reverence for worship, to make the offices of religion a balm and a blessing, to prove that there is a cherishing warmth in the glory of light that surrounds the throne of Exhaustless Benevolence, and that the Deity cannot be worthily called upon by young hearts stricken by degrading fears, and fainting under a Moloch-inspired dread. Notwithstanding my eccentric life, I have ever been the ardent, the unpretending, though the unworthy adorer of the Great Being, whose highest attribute is the “Good.” I have had reason to be so.
The man who has acknowledged his Creator amidst his most stupendous works, who has recognised his voice in the ocean storm, who has confessed his providence amidst the slaughter of battle, and witnessed the awful universality of that adoration that is wafted to Him from all nations, under all forms, from the simple smiting of the breast of the penitent solitary one, to the sublime pealings of the choral hymn, buoyed upon the resounding notes of the thunder-tongued organ in the high and dim cathedral,—the man who has witnessed and acutely felt all this, and has no feelings of piety, or deference to religion, must be endued with a heart hardened beyond the flintiness, as the Scriptures beautifully express it, “of the nether millstone.”
But myforteis not the serious. I am intent, and quiet, and thoughtful, only under the influence of great enjoyment. When I have most cause to deem myself blessed, or to call myself triumphant, it is then that I am stricken with a feeling of undesert, that I am grave with humility, or sad with the thought of human instability. But, on the eve of battle, on the yardarm in the tempest, or amidst the dying in the pest-house, say, O ye companions of my youth, whose jest was the most constant, whose laugh the loudest? Yet the one feeling was not real despondence, nor the other real courage. In the first place, it is no more than the soul looking beyond this world for the real; in the second, she is trifling in this world with the ideal. However, as in these pages I intend to attempt to be tolerably gay, it may be fairly presumed that I am very considerably unhappy, and dull, perhaps, as the perusal of these memoirs may make my readers.
As such great pains weretaken, at least by me, in my religious education, it is not to be wondered at that I should not feel at all sedentary on the Sunday afternoons after church-time. In fact, I affected any position rather than the sitting one. But all the Sundays were not joyless to me. One, in particular, though the former part of it had been passed in sickening fear, and the middle in torturing pain, its termination was marked with a heartfelt joyousness, the cause of which I must record as a tribute of gratitude due to one of the “not unwashed,” but muddy-minded multitude.
I was stealing along mournfully under the play-ground wall with no hasty or striding step, not particularly wishing any rough or close contact of certain parts of my dress with my person, my passing schoolmates looking upon me in the manner that Shakespeare so beautifully describes the untouched deer regard the stricken hart. My soul was very heavy, and full of dark wonder. The sun was setting, and, to all living, it is either a time of solemn peace, or of instinctive melancholy when looked upon by the solitary one. Of a sudden I was roused from my gloom by the well-known, yet long missed shout of “Ralph! Ralph!” and, looking up, I discovered the hard-featured, grinning physiognomy of Joe Brandon, actually beaming with pleasure, on the top of the wall. How glad he was! How glad I was! He had found me! Instead of seeking the Lord in his various conventicles on the Sunday, he had employed that day, invariably, after I had been taken from his house, in reconnoitring the different boarding-schools in the vicinity, and at some distance from the metropolis. To this, no doubt, he was greatly instigated by the affection of my nurse, but I give his own heart the credit of its being a labour of love. The wall being too high to permit us to shake hands, at my earnest entreaty, he went round to the front; but, after having made known his desire,—literally, “a pampered menial drove him from the door.” Well, the wall, if not open to him, was still before and above him, and he again mounted it. Our words were few, as the boys began to cluster around me. He let drop to me fourpence-halfpenny, folded in a piece of brown paper, and disappeared. Oh, how I prize that pilgrim visit! Forget it, I never can! That meeting was to me a one bright light on my dark and dreary path. It enabled me to go forward; there was not much gloom between me and happier days—perhaps the light of joy that that occurrence shed enabled me to pass over the trial. It might have been that, at that period, I could have borne no more, and should have sunk under my accumulated persecutions. I will not say that so it was, for there is an elasticity in early youth that recovers itself against much—yet I was at that time heavy indeed with exceeding hopelessness. All I can say to the sneerer is, I wish, that at the next conclave of personages who may be assembled to discuss the destinies of nations, there may be as much of the milk of human kindness and right feelings among them as there was between me and the labouring sawyer, Joe Brandon, the one being at the top, and the other at the bottom of the wall.
The next Sunday, Brandon was again on the wall with a prodigious plum-cake. A regular cut-and-come-again affair: it fell to the ground with a heaviness of sound that beat the falling of Corporal Trim’s hat all to ribbons. To be sure, the corporal’s fell as if there had been a quantity of “clay kneaded in the crown of it,” whilst mine was kneaded with excellent dough. The Sunday after, there was the same appearance, varied with gingerbread, and then—for years, I neither saw, nor heard of him. Poor Joseph was threatened with the constable, and was put to no more expense for cakes for his foster-son.