Book: Paul Clifford, Volume 1.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> Paul Clifford, Volume 1.




Whether it was that, on discovering these pranks, Mrs. Lobkins trembled
for the future bias of the address they displayed, or whether she thought
that the folly of thieving without gain required speedy and permanent
correction, we cannot decide; but the good lady became at last extremely
anxious to secure for Paul the blessings of a liberal education. The key
of knowledge (the art of reading) she had, indeed, two years prior to the
present date, obtained for him; but this far from satisfied her
conscience,--nay, she felt that if she could not also obtain for him the
discretion to use it, it would have been wise even to have withheld a key
which the boy seemed perversely to apply to all locks but the right one.
In a word, she was desirous that he should receive an education far
superior to those whom he saw around him; and attributing, like most
ignorant persons, too great advantages to learning, she conceived that in
order to live as decorously as the parson of the parish, it was only
necessary to know as much Latin.

One evening in particular, as the dame sat by her cheerful fire, this
source of anxiety was unusually active in her mind, and ever and anon she
directed unquiet and restless glances towards Paul, who sat on a form at
the opposite corner of the hearth, diligently employed in reading the
life and adventures of the celebrated Richard Turpin. The form on which
the boy sat was worn to a glassy smoothness, save only in certain places,
where some ingenious idler or another had amused himself by carving
sundry names, epithets, and epigrammatic niceties of language. It is
said that the organ of carving upon wood is prominently developed on all
English skulls; and the sagacious Mr. Combe has placed this organ at the
back of the head, in juxtaposition to that of destructiveness, which is
equally large among our countrymen, as is notably evinced upon all
railings, seats, temples, and other things-belonging to other people.

Opposite to the fireplace was a large deal table, at which Dummie,
surnamed Dunnaker, seated near the dame, was quietly ruminating over a
glass of hollands and water. Farther on, at another table in the corner
of the room, a gentleman with a red wig, very rusty garments, and linen
which seemed as if it had been boiled in saffron, smoked his pipe, apart,
silent, and apparently plunged in meditation. This gentleman was no
other than Mr. Peter MacGrawler, the editor of a magnificent periodical
entitled "The Asiaeum," which was written to prove that whatever is
popular is necessarily bad,--a valuable and recondite truth, which "The
Asinaeum" had satisfactorily demonstrated by ruining three printers and
demolishing a publisher. We need not add that Mr. MacGrawler was Scotch
by birth, since we believe it is pretty well known that _all_ periodicals
of this country have, from time immemorial, been monopolized by the
gentlemen of the Land of Cakes. We know not how it may be the fashion to
eat the said cakes in Scotland, but _here_ the good emigrators seem to
like them carefully buttered on both sides. By the side of the editor
stood a large pewter tankard; above him hung an engraving of the
"wonderfully fat boar formerly in the possession of Mr. Fattem, grazier."
To his left rose the dingy form of a thin, upright clock in an oaken
case; beyond the clock, a spit and a musket were fastened in parallels to
the wall. Below those twin emblems of war and cookery were four shelves,
containing plates of pewter and delf, and terminating, centaur-like, in a
sort of dresser. At the other side of these domestic conveniences was a
picture of Mrs. Lobkins, in a scarlet body and a hat and plume. At the
back of the fair hostess stretched the blanket we have before mentioned.
As a relief to the monotonous surface of this simple screen, various
ballads and learned legends were pinned to the blanket. There might you
read in verses, pathetic and unadorned, how--

"Sally loved a sailor lad
As fought with famous Shovel!"

There might you learn, if of two facts so instructive you were before
unconscious, that

"Ben the toper loved his bottle,--
Charley only loved the lasses!"

When of these and various other poetical effusions you were somewhat
wearied, the literary fragments in bumbler prose afforded you equal
edification and delight. There might you fully enlighten yourself as to
the "Strange and Wonderful News from Kensington, being a most full and
true Relation how a Maid there is supposed to have been carried away by
an Evil Spirit on Wednesday, 15th of April last, about Midnight." There,
too, no less interesting and no less veracious, was that uncommon
anecdote touching the chief of many-throned powers entitled "The Divell
of Mascon; or, the true Relation of the Chief Things which an Unclean
Spirit did and said at Mascon, in Burgundy, in the house of one Mr.
Francis Pereaud: now made English by one that hath a Particular Knowledge
of the Truth of the Story."

Nor were these materials for Satanic history the only prosaic and
faithful chronicles which the bibliothecal blanket afforded. Equally
wonderful, and equally indisputable, was the account of "a young lady,
the daughter of a duke, with three legs and the face of a porcupine."
Nor less so "The Awful Judgment of God upon Swearers, as exemplified in
the case of John Stiles, who Dropped down dead after swearing a Great
Oath; and on stripping the unhappy man they found 'Swear not at all'
written on the tail of his shirt!"

Twice had Mrs. Lobkins heaved a long sigh, as her eyes turned from Paul
to the tranquil countenance of Dummie Dunnaker, and now, re-settling
herself in her chair, as a motherly anxiety gathered over her visage,--

"Paul, my ben cull," said she, "what gibberish hast got there?"

"Turpin, _the great_ highwayman!" answered the young student, without
lifting his eyes from the page, through which he was spelling his
instructive way.

"Oh! he be's a chip of the right block, dame!" said Mr. Dunnaker, as he
applied his pipe to an illumined piece of paper. "He'll ride a 'oss
foaled by a hacorn yet, I varrants!"

To this prophecy the dame replied only with a look of indignation; and
rocking herself to and fro in her huge chair, she remained for some
moments in silent thought. At last she again wistfully eyed the hopeful
boy, and calling him to her side, communicated some order, in a dejected
whisper. Paul, on receiving it, disappeared behind the blanket, and
presently returned with a bottle and a wineglass. With an abstracted
gesture, and an air that betokened continued meditation, the good dame
took the inspiring cordial from the hand of her youthful cupbearer,--

"And ere a man had power to say 'Behold!'
The jaws of Lobkins had devoured it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion!"

The nectarean beverage seemed to operate cheerily on the matron's system;
and placing her hand on the boy's curly head, she said (like Andromache,
_dakruon gelasasa_, or, as Scott hath it, "With a smile on her cheek, but
a tear in her eye"),--

"Paul, thy heart be good, thy heart be good; thou didst not spill a drop
of the tape! Tell me, my honey, why didst thou lick Tom Tobyson?"

"Because," answered Paul, "he said as how you ought to have been hanged
long ago."

"Tom Tobyson is a good-for-nought," returned the dame, "and deserves to
shove the tumbler [Be whipped at the cart's tail]; I but oh, my child,
be not too venturesome in taking up the sticks for a blowen,--it has
been the ruin of many a man afore you; and when two men goes to quarrel
for a 'oman, they doesn't know the natur' of the thing they quarrels
about. Mind thy latter end, Paul, and reverence the old, without axing
what they has been before they passed into the wale of years. Thou
mayst get me my pipe, Paul,--it is upstairs, under the pillow."

While Paul was accomplishing this errand, the lady of the Mug, fixing her
eyes upon Mr. Dunnaker, said, "Dummie, Dummie, if little Paul should come
to be scragged!"

"Whish!" muttered Dummie, glancing over his shoulder at MacGrawler;
"mayhap that gemman--" Here his voice became scarcely audible even to
Mrs. Lobkins; but his whisper seemed to imply an insinuation that the
illustrious editor of "The Asinaeum" might be either an informer, or one
of those heroes on whom an informer subsists.

Mrs. Lobkins's answer, couched in the same key, appeared to satisfy
Dunnaker, for with a look of great contempt he chucked up his head and
said, "Oho! that be all, be it!"

Paul here reappeared with the pipe; and the dame, having filled the tube,
leaned forward, and lighted the Virginian weed from the blower of Mr.
Dunnaker. As in this interesting occupation the heads of the hostess and
the guest approached each other, the glowing light playing cheerily on
the countenance of each, there was an honest simplicity in the picture
that would have merited the racy and vigorous genius of a Cruikshank. As
soon as the Promethean spark had been fully communicated to the lady's
tube, Mrs. Lobkins, still possessed by the gloomy idea she had conjured
up, repeated,--

"Ah, Dummie, if little Paul should be scragged!"

Dummie, withdrawing the pipe from his mouth, heaved a sympathizing puff,
but remained silent; and Mrs. Lobkins, turning to Paul, who stood with
mouth open and ears erect at this boding ejaculation, said,--

"Dost think, Paul, they'd have the heart to hang thee?"

"I think they'd have the rope, dame!" returned the youth.

"But you need not go for to run your neck into the noose!" said the
matron; and then, inspired by the spirit of moralizing, she turned round
to the youth, and gazing upon his attentive countenance, accosted him
with the following admonitions:--

"Mind thy kittychism, child, and reverence old age. Never steal,
'specially when any one be in the way. Never go snacks with them as be
older than you,--'cause why? The older a cove be, the more he cares for
hisself, and the less for his partner. At twenty, we diddles the public;
at forty, we diddles our cronies! Be modest, Paul, and stick to your
sitivation in life. Go not with fine tobymen, who burn out like a candle
wot has a thief in it,--all flare, and gone in a whiffy! Leave liquor to
the aged, who can't do without it. Tape often proves a halter, and there
be's no ruin like blue ruin! Read your Bible, and talk like a pious 'un.
People goes more by your words than your actions. If you wants what is
not your own, try and do without it; and if you cannot do without it,
take it away by insinivation, not bluster. They as swindles does more
and risks less than they as robs; and if you cheats toppingly, you may
laugh at the topping cheat [Gallows]. And now go play."

Paul seized his hat, but lingered; and the dame, guessing at the
signification of the pause, drew forth and placed in the boy's hand the
sum of five halfpence and one farthing.

"There, boy," quoth she, and she stroked his head fondly when she spoke,
"you does right not to play for nothing,--it's loss of time; but play
with those as be less than yoursel', and then you can go for to beat 'em
if they says you go for to cheat!"

Paul vanished; and the dame, laying her hand on Dummie's shoulder, said,
--

"There be nothing like a friend in need, Dummie; and somehow or other, I
thinks as how you knows more of the horigin of that 'ere lad than any of
us!"

"Me, dame!" exclaimed Dummie, with a broad gaze of astonishment.

"Ah, you! you knows as how the mother saw more of you just afore she died
than she did of 'ere one of us. Noar, now, noar, now! Tell us all about
'un. Did she steal 'un, think ye?"

"Lauk, Mother Margery, dost think I knows? Vot put such a crotchet in
your 'ead?"

"Well!" said the dame, with a disappointed sigh, "I always thought as how
you were more knowing about it than you owns. Dear, dear, I shall never
forgit the night when Judith brought the poor cretur here,--you knows she
had been some months in my house afore ever I see'd the urchin; and when
she brought it, she looked so pale and ghostly that I had not the heart
to say a word, so I stared at the brat, and it stretched out its wee
little hands to me. And the mother frowned at it, and throwed it into my
lap."

"Ah! she was a hawful voman, that 'ere!" said Dummie, shaking his head.
"But howsomever, the hurchin fell into good 'ands; for I be's sure you
'as been a better mother to 'un than the raal 'un!"

"I was always a fool about childer," rejoined Mrs. Lobkins; "and I thinks
as how little Paul was sent to be a comfort to my latter end! Fill the
glass, Dummie."

"I 'as heard as 'ow Judith was once blowen to a great lord!" said Dummie.

"Like enough!" returned Mrs. Lobkins,--"like enough! She was always a
favourite of mine, for she had a spuret [spirit] as big as my own; and
she paid her rint like a decent body, for all she was out of her sinses,
or 'nation like it."

"Ay, I _knows_ as how you liked her,--'cause vy? 'T is not your vay to
let a room to a voman! You says as how 't is not respectable, and you
only likes men to wisit the Mug!"

"And I doesn't like all of them as comes here!" answered the
dame,--"'specially for Paul's sake; but what can a lone 'oman do? Many's
the gentleman highwayman wot comes here, whose money is as good as the
clerk's of the parish. And when a bob [shilling] is in my hand, what does it
sinnify whose hand it was in afore?"

"That's what I call being sinsible and _practical_," said Dummie,
approvingly. "And after all, though you 'as a mixture like, I does not
know a halehouse where a cove is better entertained, nor meets of a
Sunday more illegant company, than the Mug!"

Here the conversation, which the reader must know had been sustained in a
key inaudible to a third person, received a check from Mr. Peter
MacGrawler, who, having finished his revery and his tankard, now rose to
depart. First, however, approaching Mrs. Lobkins, he observed that he
had gone on credit for some days, and demanded the amount of his bill.
Glancing towards certain chalk hieroglyphics inscribed on the wall at the
other side of the fireplace, the dame answered that Mr. MacGrawler was
indebted to her for the sum of one shilling and ninepence three
farthings.

After a short preparatory search in his waistcoat pockets, the critic
hunted into one corner a solitary half-crown, and having caught it
between his finger and thumb, he gave it to Mrs. Lobkins and requested
change.

As soon as the matron felt her hand anointed with what has been called by
some ingenious Johnson of St. Giles's "the oil of palms," her
countenance softened into a complacent smile; and when she gave the
required change to Mr. MacGrawler, she graciously hoped as how he would
recommend the Mug to the public.

"That you may be sure of," said the editor of "The Asinaeum." "There is
not a place where I am so much at home."

With that the learned Scotsman buttoned his coat and went his way.

"How spiteful the world be!" said Mrs. Lobkins, after a pause,
"'specially if a 'oman keeps a fashionable sort of a public! When Judith
died, Joe, the dog's-meat man, said I war all the better for it, and that
she left I a treasure to bring up the urchin. One would think a thumper
makes a man richer,--'cause why? Every man _thumps!_ I got nothing
more than a watch and ten guineas when Judy died, and sure that scarce
paid for the burrel [burial]."

"You forgits the two quids [Guineas] I giv' you for the hold box of rags,--much
of a treasure I found there!" said Dummie, with sycophantic archness.

"Ay," cried the dame, laughing, "I fancies you war not pleased with the
bargain. I thought you war too old a ragmerchant to be so free with the
blunt; howsomever, I supposes it war the tinsel petticoat as took you
in!"

"As it has mony a viser man than the like of I," rejoined Dummie, who to
his various secret professions added the ostensible one of a rag-merchant
and dealer in broken glass.

The recollection of her good bargain in the box of rags opened our
landlady's heart.

"Drink, Dummie," said she, good-humouredly,--"drink; I scorns to score
lush to a friend."

Dummie expressed his gratitude, refilled his glass, and the hospitable
matron, knocking out from her pipe the dying ashes, thus proceeded:

"You sees, Dummie, though I often beats the boy, I loves him as much as
if I war his raal mother,--I wants to make him an honour to his country,
and an ixciption to my family!"

"Who all flashed their ivories at Surgeons' Hall!" added the metaphorical
Dummie.

"True!" said the lady; "they died game, and I be n't ashamed of 'em. But
I owes a duty to Paul's mother, and I wants Paul to have a long life. I
would send him to school, but you knows as how the boys only corrupt one
another. And so, I should like to meet with some decent man, as a tutor,
to teach the lad Latin and vartue!"

"My eyes!" cried Dummie; aghast at the grandeur of this desire.

"The boy is 'cute enough, and he loves reading," continued the dame; but
I does not think the books he gets hold of will teach him the way to grow
old."

"And 'ow came he to read, anyhows?"

"Ranting Rob, the strolling player, taught him his letters, and said he'd
a deal of janius."

"And why should not Ranting Rob tache the boy Latin and vartue?"

"'Cause Ranting Rob, poor fellow, was lagged [Transported for
burglary] for doing a panny!" answered the dame, despondently.

There was a long silence; it was broken by Mr. Dummie. Slapping his
thigh with the gesticulatory vehemence of a Ugo Foscolo, that gentleman
exclaimed,--

"I 'as it,--I 'as thought of a tutor for leetle Paul!"

"Who's that? You quite frightens me; you 'as no marcy on my narves,"
said the dame, fretfully.

"Vy, it be the gemman vot writes," said Dummie, putting his finger to his
nose,--"the gemman vot paid you so flashly!"

"What! the Scotch gemman?"

"The werry same!" returned Dummie.

The dame turned in her chair and refilled her pipe. It was evident from
her manner that Mr. Dunnaker's suggestion had made an impression on her.
But she recognized two doubts as to its feasibility: one, whether the
gentleman proposed would be adequate to the task; the other, whether he
would be willing to undertake it.

In the midst of her meditations on this matter, the dame was interrupted
by the entrance of certain claimants on her hospitality; and Dummie soon
after taking his leave, the suspense of Mrs. Lobkins's mind touching the
education of little Paul remained the whole of that day and night utterly
unrelieved.




CHAPTER III.

I own that I am envious of the pleasure you will have in finding yourself
more learned than other boys,--even those who are older than yourself.
What honour this will do you! What distinctions, what applauses will
follow wherever you go!
--LORD CHESTERFIELD: Letters to his Son.

Example, my boy,--example is worth a thousand precepts.
--MAXIMILIAN SOLEMN.

Tarpeia was crushed beneath the weight of ornaments. The language of the
vulgar is a sort of Tarpeia. We have therefore relieved it of as many
gems as we were able, and in the foregoing scene presented it to the gaze
of our readers _simplex munditiis_. Nevertheless, we could timidly
imagine some gentler beings of the softer sex rather displeased with the
tone of the dialogue we have given, did we not recollect how delighted
they are with the provincial barbarities of the sister kingdom, whenever
they meet them poured over the pages of some Scottish story-teller. As,
unhappily for mankind, broad Scotch is not yet the universal language of
Europe, we suppose our countrywomen will not be much more unacquainted
with the dialect of their own lower orders than with that which breathes
nasal melodies over the paradise of the North.

It was the next day, at the hour of twilight, when Mrs. Margery Lobkins,
after a satisfactory _tete-d-tete_ with Mr. MacGrawler, had the happiness
of thinking that she had provided a tutor for little Paul. The critic
having recited to her a considerable portion of _Propria qum Maribus_,
the good lady had no longer a doubt of his capacities for teaching; and
on the other hand, when Mrs. Lobkins entered on the subject of
remuneration, the Scotsman professed himself perfectly willing to teach
any and every thing that the most exacting guardian could require. It
was finally settled that Paul should attend Mr. MacGrawler two hours a
day; that Mr. MacGrawler should be entitled to such animal comforts of
meat and drink as the Mug afforded, and, moreover, to the weekly stipend
of two shillings and sixpence,--the shillings for instruction in the
classics, and the sixpence for all other humanities; or, as Mrs. Lobkins
expressed it, "two bobs for the Latin, and a site for the vartue."

Let not thy mind, gentle reader, censure us for a deviation from
probability in making so excellent and learned a gentleman as Mr. Peter
MacGrawler the familiar guest of the lady of the Mug. First, thou must
know that our story is cast in a period antecedent to the present, and
one in which the old jokes against the circumstances of author and of
critic had their foundation in truth; secondly, thou must know that by
some curious concatenation of circumstances neither bailiff nor bailiff's
man was ever seen within the four walls continent of Mrs. Margery
Lobkins; thirdly, the Mug was nearer than any other house of public
resort to the abode of the critic; fourthly, it afforded excellent
porter; and fifthly, O reader, thou dost Mrs. Margery Lobkins a grievous
wrong if thou supposest that her door was only open to those mercurial
gentry who are afflicted with the morbid curiosity to pry into the
mysteries of their neighbours' pockets,--other visitors, of fair repute,
were not unoften partakers of the good matron's hospitality; although it
must be owned that they generally occupied the private room in preference
to the public one. And sixthly, sweet reader (we grieve to be so
prolix), we would just hint to thee that Mr. MacGrawler was one of those
vast-minded sages who, occupied in contemplating morals in the great
scale, do not fritter down their intellects by a base attention to minute
details. So that if a descendant of Langfanger did sometimes cross the
venerable Scot in his visit to the Mug, the apparition did not revolt
that benevolent moralist so much as, were it not for the above hint, thy
ignorance might lead thee to imagine.

It is said that Athenodorus the Stoic contributed greatly by his
conversation to amend the faults of Augustus, and to effect the change
visible in that fortunate man after his accession to the Roman empire.
If this be true, it may throw a new light on the character of Augustus,
and instead of being the hypocrite, he was possibly the convert. Certain
it is that there are few vices which cannot be conquered by wisdom; and
yet, melancholy to relate, the instructions of Peter MacGrawler produced
but slender amelioration in the habits of the youthful Paul. That
ingenious stripling had, we have already seen, under the tuition of
Ranting Bob, mastered the art of reading,--nay, he could even construct
and link together certain curious pot-hooks, which himself and Mrs.
Lobkins were wont graciously to term "writing." So far, then, the way of
MacGrawler was smoothed and prepared.

But, unhappily, all experienced teachers allow that the main difficulty
is not to learn, but to unlearn; and the mind of Paul was already
occupied by a vast number of heterogeneous miscellanies which stoutly
resisted the ingress either of Latin or of virtue. Nothing could wean
him from an ominous affection for the history of Richard Turpin; it was
to him what, it has been said, the Greek authors should be to the
Academician,--a study by day, and a dream by night. He was docile enough
during lessons, and sometimes even too quick in conception for the
stately march of Mr. MacGrawler's intellect. But it not unfrequently
happened that when that gentleman attempted to rise, he found himself,
like the Lady in "Comus," adhering to--

"A venomed seat Smeared with gums of glutinous heat;"

or his legs had been secretly united under the table, and the tie was
not to be broken without overthrow to the superior powers. These, and
various other little sportive machinations wherewith Paul was wont to
relieve the monotony of literature, went far to disgust the learned
critic with his undertaking. But "the tape" and the treasury of Mrs.
Lobkins re-smoothed, as it were, the irritated bristles of his mind, and
he continued his labours with this philosophical reflection: "Why fret
myself? If a pupil turns out well, it is clearly to the credit of his
master; if not, to the disadvantage of himself." Of course, a similar
suggestion never forced itself into the mind of Dr. Keate [A celebrated
principal of Eton]. At Eton the very soul of the honest headmaster is
consumed by his zeal for the welfare of the little gentlemen in stiff
cravats.

But to Paul, who was predestined to enjoy a certain quantum of knowledge,
circumstances happened, in the commencement of the second year of his
pupilage, which prodigiously accelerated the progress of his scholastic
career.

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