Literature.
Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit.Edited by “Boz.” London: Chapman and Hall.
Although it is a part of our plan, in the conduct of this Journal, to give it that varied character which shall constitute it the universal medium of instruction, information, and amusement for the class to which it is addressed, and therefore it needs no apology from us for introducing to our pages extracts from the writings of popular authors, such as those of the inimitable Dickens, yet we are impelled by a two-fold consideration to select from that source in this particular instance. That vein of withering satire in which the author has hitherto indulged in drawing out the character of Squeers, the Yorkshire school-master, is now, it seems, to flow afresh, in the delineation of Mr. Pecksniff, a Wiltshire architect. The broad dash of caricature with which he invests the portrait, is a peculiarity of the author that has no harm in it, since it is directed against a vicious practice, which deserves the strongest reprobation, and of which, as well as of the character of Pecksniff generally, it may be expected that our readers in particular will take an anxious cognizance. The very circumstance of the introduction of this worthy and his simple-minded pupil Pinch into the novel of Martin Chuzzlewit (for novel we suppose we must call it), will make us, and thousands of our class his readers, and eager expectants of the monthly issue which is to develope the workings of the miserable genius of Master Pecksniff. With this preface, we proceed with our purpose of drawing attention to the strong lights and shadows of the picture which arrests the eye of the architectural observer.
“Come, Mr. Pecksniff,” he said with a smile, “don’t let there be any ill-blood between us, pray. I am sorry we have ever differed, and extremely sorry I have ever given you offence. Bear me no ill-will at parting, sir.”
“I bear,” answered Mr. Pecksniff, mildly, “no ill-will to any man on earth.”
“I told you he didn’t,” said Pinch in an under-tone; “I knew he didn’t! He always says he don’t.”
“Then you will shake hands, sir?” cried Westlock, advancing a step or two, and bespeaking Mr. Pinch’s close attention by a glance.
“Umph!” said Mr. Pecksniff, in his most winning tone.
“You will shake hands, sir?”
“No, John,” said Mr. Pecksniff, with a calmness quite ethereal; “no, I will not shake hands, John. I have forgiven you. I had already forgiven you, even before you ceased to reproach and taunt me. I have embraced you in the spirit, John, which is better than shaking hands.”
“Pinch,” said the youth, turning towards him, with a hearty disgust of his late master, “what did I tell you?”
Poor Pinch looked down uneasily at Mr. Pecksniff, whose eye was fixed upon him as it had been from the first: and looking up at the ceiling again, made no reply.
“As to your forgiveness, Mr. Pecksniff,” said the youth, “I’ll not have it upon such terms. I won’t be forgiven.”
“Won’t you, John?” retorted Mr. Pecksniff with a smile. “You must. You can’t help it. Forgiveness is a high quality; an exalted virtue far aboveyourcontrol or influence, John. Iwillforgive you. You cannot move me to remember any wrong you have ever done me, John.”
“Wrong!” said the other, with all the heat and impetuosity of his age. “Here’s a pretty fellow! Wrong! Wrong I have done him! He’ll not even remember the five hundred pounds he had with me under false pretences; or the seventy pounds a-year for board and lodgings that would have been dear at seventeen! Here’s a martyr!”
“Money, John,” said Mr. Pecksniff, “is the root of all evil. I grieve to see that it is already bearing evil fruit in you. But I will not remember its existence. I will not even remember the conduct of that misguided person”—and here, although he spoke like one at peace with all the world, he used an emphasis that plainly said ‘I have my eye upon the rascal now’—“that misguided person who has brought you here to-night, seeking to disturb (it is a happiness to say in vain) the heart’s repose and peace of one who would have shed his dearest blood to serve him.”
The voice of Mr. Pecksniff trembled as he spoke, and sobs were heard from his daughters. Sounds floated on the air, moreover, as if two spirit voices had exclaimed: one, “Beast!” the other, “Savage!”
“Forgiveness,” said Mr. Pecksniff, “entire and pure forgiveness is not incompatible with a wounded heart; perchance when the heart is wounded, it becomes a greater virtue. With my breast still wrung and grieved to its inmost core by the ingratitude of that person, I am proud and glad to say, that I forgive him. Nay! I beg,” cried Mr. Pecksniff, raising his voice as Pinch appeared about to speak, “I beg that individual not to offer a remark; he will truly oblige me by not uttering one word: just now. I am not sure that I am equal to the trial. In a very short space of time I shall have sufficient fortitude, I trust, to converse with him as if these events had never happened. But not,” said Mr. Pecksniff, turning round again towards the fire, and waving his hand in the direction of the door, “not now.”
“Bah!” cried John Westlock, with the utmost disgust and disdain the monosyllable is capable of expressing. “Ladies, good evening. Come, Pinch, it’s not worth thinking of. I was right and you were wrong. That’s a small matter; you’ll be wiser another time.”
So saying, he clapped that dejected companion on the shoulder, turned upon his heel, and walked out into the passage, whither poor Mr. Pinch, after lingering irresolutely in the parlour for a few seconds, expressing in his countenance the deepest mental misery and gloom, followed him. They then took up the box between them, and sallied out to meet the mail.
That fleet conveyance passed, every night, the corner of a lane at some distance; towards which point they bent their steps. For some minutes they walked along in silence, until at length young Westlock burst into a loud laugh, and at intervals into another and another. Still there was no response from his companion.
“I’ll tell you what Pinch!” he said abruptly, after another lengthened silence—“You haven’t half enough of the devil in you. Half enough! You haven’t any.”
“Well!” said Pinch with a sigh, “I don’t know, I’m sure. It’s a compliment to say so. If I haven’t, I suppose I’m all the better for it.”
“All the better!” repeated his companion tartly: “All the worse, you mean to say.”
“And yet,” said Pinch, pursuing his own thoughts and not the last remark on the part of his friend, “I must have a good deal of what you call the devil in me, too, or how could I make Pecksniff so uncomfortable? I wouldn’t have occasioned him so much distress—don’t laugh, please—for a mine of money: and Heaven knows I could find good use for it, too, John. How grieved he was!”
“Hegrieved!” returned the other.
“Why didn’t you observe that the tears were almost starting out of his eyes!” cried Pinch. “Bless my soul, John, is it nothing to see a man moved to that extent and know one’s self to be the cause! And did you hear him say that he could have shed his blood for me?”
“Do youwantany blood shed for you?” returned his friend, with considerable irritation. “Does he shed any thing for you that youdowant? Does he shed employment for you, instruction for you, pocket-money for you? Does he shed even legs of mutton for you in a decent proportion to potatoes and garden stuff?”
“I am afraid,” said Pinch, sighing again, “that I’m a great eater: I can’t disguise from myself that I’m a great eater. Now you know that, John.”
“Youa great eater!” retorted his companion, with no less indignation than before. “How do you know you are?”
There appeared to be forcible matter in this inquiry, for Mr. Pinch only repeated in an under-tone that he had a strong misgiving on the subject, and that he greatly feared he was.
“Besides, whether I am or no,” he added “that has little or nothing to do with his thinking me ungrateful. John, there is scarcely a sin in the world that is in my eyes such a crying one as ingratitude; and when he taxes me with that, and believes me to be guilty of it, he makes me miserable and wretched.”
“Do you think he don’t know that?” returned the other scornfully. “But come, Pinch, before I say any more to you, just run over the reasons you have for being grateful to him at all, will you? change hands first, for the box is heavy. That’ll do. Now, go on.”
“In the first place,” said Pinch, “he took me as his pupil for much less than he asked.”
“Well,” rejoined his friend, perfectly unmoved by this instance of generosity. “What in the second place?”
“What in the second place!” cried Pinch, in a sort of desperation, “why, every thing in the second place. My poor old grandmother died happy to think she had put me with such an excellent man. I have grown up in his house, I am in his confidence, I am his assistant, he allows me a salary: when his business improves, my prospects are to improve too. All this, and a great deal more, is in the second place. And in the very prologue and preface to the first place, John, you must consider this, which nobody knows better than I: that I was born for much plainer and poorer things, that I am not a good hand at his kind of business, and have no talent for it, or indeed for any thing else but odds and ends that are of no use or service to anybody.”
He said this with so much earnestness, and in a tone so full of feeling, that his companion instinctively changed his manner as he sat down on the box (they had by this time reached the finger-post at the end of the lane); motioned him to sit down beside him; and laid his hand upon his shoulder.
“I believe you are one of the best fellows in the world,” he said, “Tom Pinch.”
“Not at all,” rejoined Tom. “If you only knew Pecksniff as well as I do, you might say it of him, indeed, and say it truly.”
“I’ll say any thing of him you like,” returned the other, “and not another word to his disparagement.”
“It’s for my sake then; not his, I am afraid,” said Pinch, shaking his head gravely.
“For whose you please, Tom, so that it does please you. Oh! He’s a famous fellow!Henever scraped and clawed into his pouch all your poor grandmother’s hard savings—she was a housekeeper, wasn’t she, Tom?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Pinch, nursing one of his large knees, and nodding his head: “a gentleman’s housekeeper.”
“Henever scraped and clawed into his pouch all her hard savings; dazzling her with prospects of your happiness and advancement, which he knew (and no man better) never would be realized!Henever speculated and traded on her pride in you, and her having educated you, and on her desire that you at least should live to be a gentleman. Not he, Tom!”
“No,” said Tom, looking into his friend’s face, as if he were a little doubtful of his meaning; “of course not.”
“So say I,” returned the youth, “of course he never did.Hedidn’t take less than he had asked, because that less was all she had, and more than he expected: not he, Tom! he doesn’t keep you as his assistant because you are of any use to him; because your wonderful faith in his pretensions is of inestimable service in all his mean disputes; because your honesty reflects honesty on him; because your wandering about this little place all your spare hours, reading in ancient books and foreign tongues, gets noised abroad, even as far as Salisbury, making of him, Pecksniff, the master, a man of learning and of vast importance.Hegets no credit from you, Tom, not he.”
“Why, of course he don’t,” said Pinch, gazing at his friend with a more troubled aspect than before. “Pecksniff get credit fromme! Well!”
“Don’t I say that it’s ridiculous,” rejoined the other, “even to think of such a thing?”
“Why, its madness,” said Tom.
“Madness!” returned young Westlock. “Certainly, it’s madness. Who but a madman would suppose he cares to hear it said on Sundays, that the volunteer who plays the organ in the church, and practises on summer evenings in the dark, is Mr. Pecksniff’s young man, eh, Tom? Who but a madman would suppose that it is the game of such a man as he, to have his name in everybody’s mouth, connected with the thousand useless odds and ends you do (and which, of course, he taught you), eh, Tom? Who but a madman would suppose you advertise him hereabouts, much cheaper and much better than a chalker on the walls could, eh, Tom? As well might one suppose that he doesn’t on all occasions pour out his whole heart and soul to you; that he doesn’t make you a very liberal and indeed rather extravagant allowance; or, to be more wild and monstrous still, if that be possible, as well might one suppose,” and here, at every word, he struck him lightly on the breast, “that Pecksniff traded in your nature, and that your nature was, to be timid and distrustful of yourself, and trustful of all other men, but most of all of him who least deserves it. There would be madness, Tom!”
Mr. Pinch had listened to all this with looks of bewilderment, which seemed to be in part occasioned by the matter of his companion’s speech, and in part by his rapid and vehement manner. Now that he had come to a close, he drew a very long breath: and gazing wistfully in his face as if he were unable to settle in his own mind what expression it wore, and were desirous to draw from it as good a clue to his real meaning as it was possible to obtain in the dark, was about to answer, when the sound of the mail-guard’s horn came cheerily upon their ears, putting an immediate end to the conference: greatly as it seemed to the satisfaction of the younger man, who jumped up briskly, and gave his hand to his companion.
“Both hands, Tom. I shall write to you from London, mind!”
“Yes,” said Pinch. “Yes. Do, please. Good bye. Good bye. I can hardly believe you’re going. It seems now but yesterday that you came. Good bye! my dear old fellow!”
John Westlock returned his parting words with noless heartiness of manner, and sprung up to his seat upon the roof. Off went the mail at a canter down the dark road: the lamps gleaming brightly, and the horn awakening all the echoes, far and wide.
“Go your ways,” said Pinch, apostrophizing the coach; “I can hardly persuade myself but you’re alive, and are some great monster who visits this place at certain intervals, to bear my friends away into the world. You’re more exulting and rampant than usual to-night, I think: and you may well crow over your prize; for he is a fine lad, an ingenuous lad, and has but one fault that I know of: he don’t mean it, but he is most cruelly unjust to Pecksniff!”