Book: Paul Clifford, Volume 1.

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




Perhaps (for we must now direct a glance towards his domestic concerns)
one great cause which drove Paul to Fish Lane was the uncomfortable life
he led at home. For though Mrs. Lobkins was extremely fond of her
_protege_, yet she was possessed, as her customers emphatically remarked,
"of the devil's own temper;" and her native coarseness never having been
softened by those pictures of gay society which had, in many a novel and
comic farce, refined the temperament of the romantic Paul, her manner of
venting her maternal reproaches was certainly not a little revolting to a
lad of some delicacy of feeling. Indeed, it often occurred to him to
leave her house altogether, and seek his fortunes alone, after the manner
of the ingenious Gil Blas or the enterprising Roderick Random; and this
idea, though conquered and reconquered, gradually swelled and increased
at his heart, even as swelleth that hairy ball found in the stomach of
some suffering heifer after its decease. Among these projects of
enterprise the reader will hereafter notice that an early vision of the
Green Forest Cave, in which Turpin was accustomed, with a friend, a ham,
and a wife, to conceal himself, flitted across his mind. At this time he
did not, perhaps, incline to the mode of life practised by the hero of
the roads; but he certainly clung not the less fondly to the notion of
the cave.

The melancholy flow of our hero's life was now, however, about to be
diverted by an unexpected turn, and the crude thoughts of boyhood to
burst, "like Ghilan's giant palm," into the fruit of a manly resolution.

Among the prominent features of Mrs. Lobkins's mind was a sovereign
contempt for the unsuccessful. The imprudence and ill-luck of Paul
occasioned her as much scorn as compassion; and when for the third time
within a week he stood, with a rueful visage and with vacant pockets, by
the dame's great chair, requesting an additional supply, the tides of her
wrath swelled into overflow.

"Look you, my kinchin cove," said she,--and in order to give peculiar
dignity to her aspect, she put on while she spoke a huge pair of tin
spectacles,--"if so be as how you goes for to think as how I shall go for
to supply your wicious necessities, you will find yourself planted in
Queer Street. Blow me tight, if I gives you another mag."

"But I owe Long Ned a guinea," said Paul; "and Dummie Dunnaker lent me
three crowns. It ill becomes your heir apparent, my dear dame, to fight
shy of his debts of honour."

"Taradididdle, don't think for to wheedle me with your debts and your
honour," said the dame, in a passion. "Long Ned is as long in the forks
[fingers] as he is in the back; may Old Harry fly off with him! And as
for Durnmie Dunnaker, I wonders how you, brought up such a swell, and
blest with the wery best of hedications, can think of putting up with
such wulgar 'sociates. I tells you what, Paul, you'll please to break
with them, smack and at once, or devil a brad you'll ever get from Peg
Lobkins." So saying, the old lady turned round in her chair, and helped
herself to a pipe of tobacco.

Paul walked twice up and down the apartment, and at last stopped opposite
the dame's chair. He was a youth of high spirit; and though he was
warm-hearted, and had a love for Mrs. Lobkins, which her care and
affection for hire well deserved, yet he was rough in temper, and not
constantly smooth in speech. It is true that his heart smote him
afterwards, whenever he had said anything to annoy Mrs. Lobkins, and he
was always the first to seek a reconciliation; but warm words produce
cold respect, and sorrow for the past is not always efficacious in
amending the future. Paul then, puffed up with the vanity of his genteel
education, and the friendship of Long Ned (who went to Ranelagh, and wore
silver clocked stockings), stopped opposite to Mrs. Lobkins's chair, and
said with great solemnity,--

"Mr. Pepper, madam, says very properly that I must have money to support
myself like a gentleman; and as you won't give it me, I am determined,
with many thanks for your past favours, to throw myself on the world, and
seek my fortune."

If Paul was of no oily and bland temper, Dame Margaret Lobkins, it has
been seen, had no advantage on that score. (We dare say the reader has
observed that nothing so enrages persons on whom one depends as any
expressed determination of seeking independence.) Gazing therefore for
one moment at the open but resolute countenance of Paul, while all the
blood of her veins seemed gathering in fire and scarlet to her enlarging
cheeks, Dame Lobkins said,--

"Ifeaks, Master Pride-in-duds! seek your fortune yourself, will you?
This comes of my bringing you up, and letting you eat the bread of
idleness and charity, you toad of a thousand! Take that and be d--d to
you!" and, suiting the action to the word, the tube which she had
withdrawn from her mouth in order to utter her gentle rebuke whizzed
through the air, grazed Paul's cheek, and finished its earthly career by
coming in violent contact with the right eye of Duinmie Dunnaker, who at
that exact moment entered the room.

Paul had winced for a moment to avoid the missive; in the next he stood
perfectly upright. His cheeks glowed, his chest swelled; and the
entrance of Dummie Dunuaker, who was thus made the spectator of the
affront he had received, stirred his blood into a deeper anger and a more
bitter self-humiliation. All his former resolutions of departure, all
the hard words, the coarse allusions, the practical insults he had at any
time received, rushed upon him at once. He merely cast one look at the
old woman, whose rage was now half subsided, and turned slowly and in
silence to the door.

There is often something alarming in an occurrence merely because it is
that which we least expect. The astute Mrs. Lobkins, remembering the
hardy temper and fiery passions of Paul, had expected some burst of rage,
some vehement reply; and when she caught with one wandering eye his
parting look, and saw him turn so passively and mutely to the door, her
heart misgave her, she raised herself from her chair, and made towards
him. Unhappily for her chance of reconciliation, she had that day
quaffed more copiously of the bowl than usual; and the signs of
intoxication visible in her uncertain gait, her meaningless eye, her
vacant leer, her ruby cheek, all inspired Paul with feelings which at the
moment converted resentment into something very much like aversion. He
sprang from her grasp to the threshold.

"Where be you going, you imp of the world?" cried the dame. "Get in with
you, and say no more on the matter; be a bob-cull,--drop the bullies, and
you shall have the blunt!"

But Paul heeded not this invitation.

"I will eat the bread of idleness and charity no longer," said he,
sullenly. "Good-by; and if ever I can pay you what I have cost you, I
will."

He turned away as he spoke; and the dame, kindling with resentment at his
unseemly return to her proffered kindness, hallooed after him, and bade
that dark-coloured gentleman who keeps the _fire-office_ below go along
with him.

Swelling with anger, pride, shame, and a half-joyous feeling of
emancipated independence, Paul walked on, he knew not whither, with his
head in the air, and his legs marshalling themselves into a military gait
of defiance. He had not proceeded far before he heard his name uttered
behind him; he turned, and saw the rueful face of Dummie Dunnaker.

Very inoffensively had that respectable person been employed during the
last part of the scene we have described in caressing his afflicted eye,
and muttering philosophical observations on the danger incurred by all
those who are acquainted with ladies of a choleric temperament; when Mrs.
Lobkins, turning round after Paul's departure, and seeing the pitiful
person of that Dummie Dunnaker, whose name she remembered Paul had
mentioned in his opening speech, and whom, therefore, with an illogical
confusion of ideas, she considered a party in the late dispute, exhausted
upon him all that rage which it was necessary for her comfort that she
should unburden somewhere.

She seized the little man by the collar,--the tenderest of all places in
gentlemen similarly circumstanced with regard to the ways of life,--and
giving him a blow, which took effect on his other and hitherto undamaged
eye, cried out,--

"I'll teach you, you blood-sucker [that is, parasite], to sponge upon
those as has expectations! I'll teach you to cozen the heir of the Mug,
you snivelling, whey-faced ghost of a farthing rushlight! What! you'll
lend my Paul three crowns, will you, when you knows as how you told me
you could not pay me a pitiful tizzy? Oh, you're a queer one, I
warrants; but you won't queer Margery Lobkins. Out of my ken, you cur of
the mange!--out of my ken; and if ever I claps my sees on you again, or
if ever I knows as how you makes a flat of my Paul, blow me tight but
I'll weave you a hempen collar,--I'll hang you, you dog, I will. What!
you will answer me, will you? Oh, you viper, budge and begone!"

It was in vain that Dummie protested his innocence. A violent
_coup-de-pied_ broke off all further parlance. He made a clear house of
the Mug; and the landlady thereof, tottering back to her elbow-chair,
sought out another pipe, and, like all imaginative persons when the world
goes wrong with them, consoled herself for the absence of realities by
the creations of smoke.

Meanwhile Dummie Dunnaker, muttering and murmuring bitter fancies,
overtook Paul, and accused that youth of having been the occasion of the
injuries he had just undergone. Paul was not at that moment in the
humour best adapted for the patient bearing of accusations. He answered
Mr. Dunnaker very shortly; and that respectable individual, still
smarting under his bruises, replied with equal tartness. Words grew
high, and at length Paul, desirous of concluding the conference, clenched
his fist, and told the redoubted Dummie that he would "knock him down."
There is something peculiarly harsh and stunning in those three hard,
wiry, sturdy, stubborn monosyllables. Their very sound makes you double
your fist if you are a hero, or your pace if you are a peaceable man.
They produced an instant effect upon Dummie Dunnaker, aided as they were
by the effect of an athletic and youthful figure, already fast
approaching to the height of six feet, a flushed cheek, and an eye that
bespoke both passion and resolution. The rag-merchant's voice sank at
once, and with the countenance of a wronged Cassius he whimpered forth,--

"Knock me down? 0 leetle Paul, vot wicked vhids are those! Vot! Dummie
Dunnaker, as has dandled you on his knee mony's a time and oft! Vy, the
cove's 'art is as 'ard as junk, and as proud as a gardener's dog vith a
nosegay tied to his tail." This pathetic remonstrance softened Paul's
anger.

"Well, Dummie," said he, laughing, "I did not mean to hurt you, and
there's an end of it; and I am very sorry for the dame's ill-conduct; and
so I wish you a good-morning."

"Vy, vere be you trotting to, leetle Paul?" said Dummie, grasping him by
the tail of the coat.

"The deuce a bit I know," answered our hero; "but I think I shall drop a
call on Long Ned."

"Avast there!" said Dummie, speaking under his breath; "if so be as you
von't blab, I'll tell you a bit of a secret. I heered as 'ow Long Ned
started for Hampshire this werry morning on a toby [Highway expedition]
consarn!"

"Ha!" said Paul, "then hang me if I know what to do!"

As he uttered these words, a more thorough sense of his destitution (if
he persevered in leaving the Mug) than he had hitherto felt rushed upon
him; for Paul had designed for a while to throw himself on the
hospitality of his Patagonian friend, and now that he found that friend
was absent from London and on so dangerous an expedition, he was a little
puzzled what to do with that treasure of intellect and wisdom which he
carried about upon his legs. Already he had acquired sufficient
penetration (for Charles Trywit and Harry Finish were excellent masters
for initiating a man into the knowledge of the world) to perceive that a
person, however admirable may be his qualities, does not readily find a
welcome without a penny in his pocket. In the neighbourhood of Thames
Court he had, indeed, many acquaintances; but the fineness of his
language, acquired from his education, and the elegance of his air, in
which he attempted to blend in happy association the gallant effrontery
of Mr. Long Ned with the graceful negligence of Mr. Augustus Tomlinson,
had made him many enemies among those acquaintances; and he was not
willing--so great was our hero's pride--to throw himself on the chance of
their welcome, or to publish, as it were, his exiled and crestfallen
state. As for those boon companions who had assisted him in making a
wilderness of his pockets, he had already found that that was the only
species of assistance which they were willing to render him. In a word,
he could not for the life of him conjecture in what quarter he should
find the benefits of bed and board. While he stood with his finger to
his lip, undecided and musing, but fully resolved at least on one
thing,--not to return to the Mug,--little Dummie, who was a good-natured
fellow at the bottom, peered up in his face, and said,--

"Vy, Paul, my kid, you looks down in the chops; cheer up,--care killed a
cat!"

Observing that this appropriate and encouraging fact of natural history
did not lessen the cloud upon Paul's brow, the acute Dummie Dunnaker
proceeded at once to the grand panacea for all evils, in his own profound
estimation.

"Paul, my ben cull," said he, with a knowing wink, and nudging the young
gentleman in the left side, "vot do you say to a drop o' blue ruin? or,
as you likes to be conish [genteel], I does n't care if I sports you a
glass of port!" While Dunnaker was uttering this invitation, a sudden
reminiscence flashed across Paul: he bethought him at once of MacGrawler;
and he resolved forthwith to repair to the abode of that illustrious
sage, and petition at least for accommodation for the approaching night.
So soon as he had come to this determination, he shook off the grasp of
the amiable Dummie, and refusing with many thanks his hospitable
invitation, requested him to abstract from the dame's house, and lodge
within his own until called for, such articles of linen and clothing as
belonged to Paul and could easily be laid hold of, during one of the
matron's evening _siestas_, by the shrewd Dunnaker. The merchant
promised that the commission should be speedily executed; and Paul,
shaking hands with him, proceeded to the mansion of MacGrawler.

We must now go back somewhat in the natural course of our narrative, and
observe that among the minor causes which had conspired with the great
one of gambling to bring our excellent Paul to his present situation, was
his intimacy with MacGrawler; for when Paul's increasing years and roving
habits had put an end to the sage's instructions, there was thereby
lopped off from the preceptor's finances the weekly sum of two shillings
and sixpence, as well as the freedom of the dame's cellar and larder; and
as, in the reaction of feeling, and the perverse course of human affairs,
people generally repent the most of those actions once the most ardently
incurred, so poor Mrs. Lobkins, imagining that Paul's irregularities were
entirely owing to the knowledge he had acquired from MacGrawler's
instructions, grievously upbraided herself for her former folly in
seeking for a superior education for her _protege_; nay, she even vented
upon the sacred head of MacGrawler himself her dissatisfaction at the
results of his instructions. In like manner, when a man who can spell
comes to be hanged, the anti-educationists accuse the spelling-book of
his murder. High words between the admirer of ignorant innocence and the
propagator of intellectual science ensued, which ended in MacGrawler's
final expulsion from the Mug.

There are some young gentlemen of the present day addicted to the
adoption of Lord Byron's poetry, with the alteration of new rhymes, who
are pleased graciously to inform us that they are born to be the ruin of
all those who love them,--an interesting fact, doubtless, but which they
might as well keep to themselves. It would seem by the contents of this
chapter as if the same misfortune were destined to Paul. The exile of
MacGrawler, the insults offered to Dummie Dunnaker,--alike occasioned by
him,--appear to sanction that opinion. Unfortunately, though Paul was a
poet, he was not much of a sentimentalist; and he has never given us the
edifying ravings of his remorse on those subjects. But MacGrawler, like
Dunnaker, was resolved that our hero should perceive the curse of his
fatality; and as he still retained some influence over the mind of his
quondam pupil, his accusations against Paul, as the origin of his
banishment, were attended with a greater success than were the complaints
of Dummie Dunnaker on a similar calamity. Paul, who, like most people
who are good for nothing, had an excellent heart, was exceedingly grieved
at MacGrawler's banishment on his account; and he endeavoured to atone
for it by such pecuniary consolations as he was enabled to offer. These
MacGrawler (purely, we may suppose, from a benevolent desire to lessen
the boy's remorse) scrupled not to accept; and thus, so similar often are
the effects of virtue and of vice, the exemplary MacGrawler conspired
with the unprincipled Long Ned and the heartless Henry Finish in
producing that unenviable state of vacuity which now saddened over the
pockets of Paul.

As our hero was slowly walking towards the sage's abode, depending on his
gratitude and friendship for a temporary shelter, one of those lightning
flashes of thought which often illumine the profoundest abyss of
affliction darted across his mind. Recalling the image of the critic, he
remembered that he had seen that ornament of "The Asinaeum" receive
sundry sums for his critical lucubrations.

"Why," said Paul, seizing on that fact, and stopping short in the
street,--"why should I not turn critic myself?"

The only person to whom one ever puts a question with a tolerable
certainty of receiving a satisfactory answer is one's self. The moment
Paul started this luminous suggestion, it appeared to him that he had
discovered the mines of Potosi. Burning with impatience to discuss with
the great MacGrawler the feasibility of his project, he quickened his
pace almost into a run, and in a very few minutes, having only overthrown
one chimney-sweeper and two apple-women by the way, he arrived at the
sage's door.




CHAPTER V.

Ye realms yet unrevealed to human sight,
Ye canes athwart the hapless hands that write,
Ye critic chiefs,-permit me to relate
The mystic wonders of your silent state!

VIRGIL, _AEneid_, book vi.

Fortune had smiled upon Mr. MacGrawler since he first undertook the
tuition of Mrs. Lobkins's _protege_. He now inhabited a second-floor,
and defied the sheriff and his evil spirits. It was at the dusk of
evening that Paul found him at home and alone.

Before the mighty man stood a pot of London porter; a candle, with an
unregarded wick, shed its solitary light upon his labours; and an infant
cat played sportively at his learned feet, beguiling the weary moments
with the remnants of the spiral cap wherewith, instead of laurel, the
critic had hitherto nightly adorned his brows.

So soon as MacGrawler, piercing through the gloomy mist which hung about
the chamber, perceived the person of the intruder, a frown settled upon
his brow.

"Have I not told you, youngster," he growled, "never to enter a
gentleman's room without knocking? I tell you, sir, that manners are no
less essential to human happiness than virtue; wherefore, never disturb a
gentleman in his avocations, and sit yourself down without molesting the
cat!"

Paul, who knew that his respected tutor disliked any one to trace the
source of the wonderful spirit which he infused into his critical
compositions, affected not to perceive the pewter Hippocrene, and with
many apologies for his want of preparatory politeness, seated himself as
directed. It was then that the following edifying conversation ensued.

"The ancients," quoth Paul, "were very great men, Mr. MacGrawler."

"They were so, sir," returned the critic; "we make it a rule in our
profession to assert that fact."

"But, sir," said Paul, "they were wrong now and then."

"Never, Ignoramus; never!"

"They praised poverty, Mr. MacGrawler!" said Paul, with a sigh.

"Hem!" quoth the critic, a little staggered; but presently recovering his
characteristic, acumen, he observed, "It is true, Paul; but that was the
poverty of other people."

There was a slight pause. "Criticism," renewed Paul, "must be a most
difficult art."

"A-hem! And what art is there, sir, that is not difficult,--at least, to
become master of?"

"True," sighed Paul; "or else--"

"Or else what, boy?" repeated Mr. MacGrawler, seeing that Paul hesitated,
either from fear of his superior knowledge, as the critic's vanity
suggested, or from (what was equally likely) want of a word to express
his meaning.

"Why, I was thinking, sir," said Paul, with that desperate courage which
gives a distinct and loud intonation to the voice of all who set, or
think they set, their fate upon a cast,--"I was thinking that I should
like to become a critic myself!"

"W-h-e-w!" whistled MacGrawler, elevating his eyebrows; "w-h-e-w! great
ends have come of less beginnings!"

Encouraging as this assertion was, coming as it did from the lips of so
great a man and so great a critic, at the very moment too when nothing
short of an anathema against arrogance and presumption was expected to
issue from those portals of wisdom, yet such is the fallacy of all human
hopes, that Paul's of a surety would have been a little less elated, had
he, at the same time his ears drank in the balm of these gracious words,
been able to have dived into the source whence they emanated.

"Know thyself!" was a precept the sage MacGrawler had endeavoured to
obey; consequently the result of his obedience was that even by himself
he was better known than trusted. Whatever he might appear to others, he
had in reality no vain faith in the infallibility of his own talents and
resources; as well might a butcher deem himself a perfect anatomist from
the frequent amputation of legs of mutton, as the critic of "The
Asinaeum" have laid "the flattering unction to his soul" that he was
really skilled in the art of criticism, or even acquainted with one of
its commonest rules, because he could with all speed cut up and disjoint
any work, from the smallest to the greatest, from the most superficial to
the most superior; and thus it was that he never had the want of candour
to deceive himself as to his own talents. Paul's wish therefore was no
sooner expressed than a vague but golden scheme of future profit
illumined the brain of MacGrawler,--in a word, he resolved that Paul
should henceforward share the labour of his critiques; and that he,
MacGrawler, should receive the whole profits in return for the honour
thereby conferred on his coadjutor.

Looking therefore at our hero with a benignant air, Mr. MacGrawler thus
continued:--

"Yes, I repeat,--great ends have come from less beginnings! Rome was not
built in a day; and I, Paul, I myself was not always the editor of 'The
Asinaeum.' You say wisely, criticism is a great science, a very great
science; and it maybe divided into three branches,--namely, 'to tickle,
to slash, and to plaster.' In each of these three I believe without
vanity I am a profound adept! I will initiate you into all. Your
labours shall begin this very evening. I have three works on my table;
they must be despatched by tomorrow night. I will take the most arduous;
I abandon to you the others. The three consist of a Romance, an Epic in
twelve books, and an Inquiry into the Human Mind, in three volumes. I,
Paul, will tickle the Romance; you this very evening shall plaster the
Epic, and slash the Inquiry!"

"Heavens, Mr. MacGrawler!" cried Paul, in consternation, "what do you
mean? I should never be able to read an epic in twelve books, and I
should fall asleep in the first page of the Inquiry. No, no, leave me
the Romance, and take the other two under your own protection!"

Although great genius is always benevolent, Mr. MacGrawler could not
restrain a smile of ineffable contempt at the simplicity of his pupil.

"Know, young gentleman," said he, solemnly, "that the Romance in question
must be tickled; it is not given to raw beginners to conquer that great
mystery of our science."

"Before we proceed further, explain the words of the art," said Paul,
impatiently.

"Listen, then," rejoined MacGrawler; and as he spoke, the candle cast an
awful glimmering on his countenance. "To slash is, speaking
grammatically, to employ the accusative, or accusing case; you must cut
up your book right and left, top and bottom, root and branch. To plaster
a book is to employ the dative, or giving case; and you must bestow on
the work all the superlatives in the language,--you must lay on your
praise thick and thin, and not leave a crevice untrowelled. But to
tickle, sir, is a comprehensive word, and it comprises all the infinite
varieties that fill the interval between slashing and plastering. This
is the nicety of the art, and you can only acquire it by practice; a few
examples will suffice to give you an idea of its delicacy.

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