The Remarkable History of Sir Thomas Upmore, bart., M.P., formerly known as «Tommy Upmore»

Now, in spite of all this, and the spending of every penny that he earned among the poor, the Reverend St. Simon Cope was not loved at all in Kentish Town; except by a few half-starving outcasts, and a good many ladies with nothing to do. And the reason of this was as plain as a pole – he was one of the "High-church parsons," whom the free-will of the Briton will never accept.

Under the care of this excellent man, I got on very fast in "Nescience," (as the Epistemonicon gentlemen called the classics), and history, and theology, and everything else except their own fads. From my very sad deficiency in weight, I never was a fighter, though often tempted grievously; but Jack Windsor was happily enabled to prove, that which has been proved perpetually in Town and Gown disputations, to wit, the clear superiority in conflict of the true Academic element.

For, as we came home about noon of a Saturday, with five days and a half of Greek inside us, – in a place where a bridge was, we were met, only Jack Windsor and myself, by a maniple – if they deserve the term – from the now adulterous Partheneion. These were fellows of the lewder sort, who had taken up gladly with all the new stuff, and were rank with all Chemical mixtures. Without looking twice at them, we could see they desired to give us a hiding. And they began the base unequal conflict, by casting very hard stones at us. With pleasure, and without disgrace (considering the force of numbers against us) we would have fled, by the road that had brought us; but they had provided against this measure, by posting large boys behind us. There was nothing around us, but a world of thumps; and the air was darkened with impending fists.

"Stop a bit; hold hard;" cried Jack Windsor, with his back against the coping of the bridge; "give us fair play, you lot of sneaking cowards. I see a chap, who has been at our house, and squibbed a wasp's nest with me. Let me speak a moment to Bob Stubbs. Now, Bob, I know you were an honourable chap, till you got among dirty foreigners. I don't want to fight you, 'cos we always were good friends. But pick out the biggest of your scientific lot, and let me have a fair turn with him; while Tommy here tackles some fellow of his size. You must all be going to the bad, up there; if you bring a score of fellows to pitch into two. In the old days, we always allowed fair play."

Being English boys, they were moved by this; and after some little talk, two rings were formed – one for Jack and his antagonist, and the other, alas! for me and mine. Loth as I was to fight, it seemed better than to be pounded passively; and so I pulled off my coat, and squared up, as my father had shown me he used to do. And, whether by reason of his ancient system being more practical than the new lights, or whether in virtue of my own quickness, in hopping away when knocked at, I may say, without any exaggeration, that I hit the other fellow more than he hit me; until I was grieved to see him bleed, and then I put down my fists, and shook hands with him.

But my own little combat was no more in comparison with Jack Windsor's, than the skirmish between two charioteers of the "Iliad," while their heroes fight. Jack was in earnest, and knew no remorse. He had been hit on the forehead by a stone, and could swear that the fellow before him was the one who threw it. Moreover, this boy had shouted, "Come on, Suds!" with a most contemptuous toss of his head, being bigger than Jack, though not so strong, for our Jack was built up like a milestone.

"Come on, Suds," he shouted; "come on, my lad of lather!"

"I'll lather you, if I can," said Jack.

The battle was long, and quick with a spirit of trenchant valour, on either side. I did not see the beginning, because I was strenuously occupied with my own engagement; but that being brought to a happy conclusion, the boy I had conquered joined me, with much good will, in observing the other fight. And here let me mention that his name was Bellows, Jeremiah Bellows of Blackpool, a prominent orator, as everybody knows, of the Liberal party, by and by.

When Bellows, and I, came up to look, there was no mistaking the nature of the fray. Very little time had been lost in repose between the rounds, and the action had been so vigorous, and so well sustained, that on either side now it was a harder job to fetch the breath, than to give the blow. Whichever might conquer, there could be no doubt that the fight was a credit to his school.

Happily for us, the "noble science of self-defence" was not yet one of the thirty-two taught by the four Professors. Otherwise Jack would have long been vanquished, for he had not much of polemical skill; and I was astonished at his endurance, having always found him peaceful. But I knew, by the way his lips were set, and his square style of going forward, that his mind was made up, to be knocked to pieces, sooner than knock under.

This was a lesson to me, than which I have never had a better one in all my life. There was scarcely a pin to choose between those two, in the matter of affliction. Jack had got one eye quite bunged up, and his enemy had both eyes half-way closed; the nose of our Jack was gone in at the middle, and that of his adversary at the end; and their other contusions might pretty nearly match. Yet Jack won, all of a heap. And why? Because he would rather be killed, than yield. The other fellow would rather yield, than stand the very smallest chance of being killed.

So when Jack came up for another good round, his enemy sate, and looked at him, and thought it would be wiser to negotiate. He was not by any means whacked, he declared, and he went on to prove it, though still sitting down – as Britannia never lets her tail drop now, without elevating her tongue, to stand for it – but his mind was made up, not to incur further danger of blood-guiltiness.

After all the insults put upon him, Jack would not let him off, without a clearer understanding.

"Either you are whacked, or not," said he; "if you are whacked, say so straightforrard, and I will shake hands with you. If you are not, stand up again."

This was plain English, the only sensible thing in a case of that kind. The other boy looked about; but saw no way to shuffle out of it, having not yet been Prime Minister.

"I don't mean to fight any more," he said, "until I perceive the necessity of it. At the same time, you can see yourself, that I am not a bit afraid of you. Every one who knows me will bear me out in that. I could prove it, if I had time; but there goes the dinner-bell, and we all must run. Not from you, mind, not from you; only because we are obliged to bolt."

Likely enough, there are people who would be glad to make light of this victory; as they do with all those we always lose, while blowing up the trumpet in the very new moon, if ever we cannot help winning one. But Jack, and I, took a natural view of the facts we ourselves had created. Science had bitten the dust before the powers of ancient literature, though the latter had struggled at fearful odds; and seven of the boys, who had seen it, persuaded their parents to take them from the Gorgon, and apprentice them again to the gentle Muse, who only strikes in self-defence. And as soon as my father and mother heard it – by reason of my bruises, one of which required raw beefsteak, – they were for ever confirmed in their perception of their own wisdom.

But alas! I scarcely know how to tell the next event in my sad career. Gladly would I leave it all untold, save by mine enemies; if the latter would only tell it truly, or leave it untold falsely. But this it is hopeless to expect. There is a certain rancour in all persons of loose politics; wherewith – to put it liberally – nature, abhorring a vacuum, has stopped the vast gap of their principles. And this pervasive bitterness, when not obtaining vent enough, as it fairly might do upon one another, sometimes sets them raking up the private life, and domestic history, of those who are not like themselves.

It has been related, some way back, that the great authorities of our parish, having been urged by fussy people – most of whom paid no rates at all – to abate, what they were pleased to call, the nuisance of our wholesome smell, had arrived at last at a resolution, to cure the air of our chimney-tops, by carrying a big culvert through the valley, a hundred yards below. How this was to effect that purpose, none of us clearly understood; but as it would not come near our works, yet saved them from being grumbled at, we accepted the conviction of the public, that it must prove a perfect cure. And reasoning by analogy, we expected no stroke to be struck, for a score of happy years yet to come.

But Joe Cowl, that same chimney-sweep who had tried to summon father, told all his friends, till he quite believed, that he never had been the same man, since the time my father syringed him. If this had been true, how much it would have been to his benefit, and his neighbours'! But being scant of introspection, he positively made a grievance of it! He contrived to push himself on the Committee appointed by the Vestry, for the drainage of Maiden valley, for no other reason in the world, than that he hoped to pester us, by carrying out that noisome scheme. As everybody said, there was no reason for such hurry; the valley had been a valley for more thousands of years than we could count, without wanting a bodkin put along it. In wet weather it drained itself; and in dry weather what was there to drain? The Lord had made it, as seemed Him best; and could any ratepayer improve His works?

Nevertheless, by stirring up, and rushing about with his best clothes on, and grouting (like a pig, with his ring come out) and writing, every other day, to every paper that would print his stuff, Chimney-sweep Cowl robbed all the parish of the pleasure of considering the next thing to be done. For he made them actually begin this job, at very little more than three years from the time of their voting it urgent, and not very much over two years from the time they raised the cash for it. But we let him see, when it was begun, that we were rather pleased than otherwise; and father went down and told Cowl himself, with as pleasant a smile as need be seen, that he would lend them a spare wheel-barrow, if they would put new gudgeons in; and as a large ratepayer of St. Pancras, he would try to keep them to their work. And it is a sad thing now to think of, that if he had been a bad-tempered man, and shunned them altogether, he might have been alive, while I write this.

Perhaps no man in London, except the Reverend St. Simon Cope, worked harder now than my father did. Not from any narrow-minded hankering after bullion; nor the common doom of our species, to find its final cause, as well as case, in specie; but from the stern resolution of a man, to turn out a good article, at a good figure, and to keep his own finger, and no others, in his pie. Mr. John Windsor had been trying very hard, to dip his own ladle into our warm vats; but while father valued him most highly as a friend, and would eagerly have done anything whatever, that lay in his power, to help him; he found it lie more and more beyond his power, to let him come into his yard just now. Plump and portly as Mr. Windsor was, and equally blunt at either end, my father kept calling him – as soon as he was gone – the thin end of the wedge, and telling dear mother to be very careful, not to say a word to let him in. This was exactly in accordance with my mother's own view of the case; and she said, that she first had insisted upon it, and that if Mrs. Windsor came sounding her for ever – as she did, even on a Sunday – it would take her a long time to discover any hollow place in her presence of mind. For she always answered.

"Oh, my dear, what do I care for odious business? You know, how much sooner you would hear me talk, about delightful Happystowe, and the sun coming over the sea, and the shrimps, and the shameful proceedings of the bathing females – for I never can call them ladies – and that dear good Lady Towers-Twentifold, who longed so extremely to make my acquaintance; and has written once more, for my Tommy to go down, and spend the holidays with his old friend, Sir Roland, at Twentifold Towers. What a pity it is, that we live so far asunder!"

"But don't you think, dear," Mrs. Windsor asked demurely, "that when the wind was blowing towards the windows of the Tower, her ladyship might object a little to the – the flavour of Mr. Upmore's operations?"

CHAPTER XVIII.

AH ME!

While a fact is under fifty years of age, surely it is early days to despise it, as if in its dotage, and to traduce it as a mere tradition. Yet this was already, at the time I speak of, done by the wiseacres of Maiden Lane to the great, and well-established fact, that the Cholera, when it first appeared in the year 1832, had avoided – as if it ran away from the feeding smells, and pursued the opposite – every house, where a man could say that he ever tasted our chimney-stack. On the other hand, it had followed strictly, as on any good map can be shown, the main lines of the sewage system, so far as these could yet be traced. For as yet, they were very bold in places, and then vanished, without a mouth.

Now, if there had been any medical man, with power to think for himself – as certainly some do, in every century – he might have chanced to put these two facts together, and breed a conclusion. And the conclusion must have been – increase your chimneys, issuing a fine detergent smell, and abolish all drains, that bottle up and condense destructive odours, sending them out with a fizz at the traps, to rush into first-floor windows. But alas! there was no such man just then; and I fear that even now he is hard to find. Drain, drain, drain, was the cry of the period; and ventilate all your drains, that every one may smell them, and inhale a rich interest for his sewage-rate.

My father had never been blessed with any scientific education. He had thriven most stoutly, as his years increased, by dwelling in a feeding atmosphere. In an unwise moment, he convinced himself, that a change of inhalation would improve his lungs; which were as sound as a bell used to be, in the days when people knew how to cast them. The only fault anywhere near them was, that from the increase of "adipose deposit," they had not the room to swing, that in thinner years they had. But he said to himself, and to my mother too – though she had the sense to say 'nonsense' – that a daily influx of entirely fresh odours would enable him to holloa, as he used to do.

"Did you ever see Tommy look so well," he asked, "as when he came back from the inside of the whale? I require something of that sort; and I shall go, and smoke my pipe, every evening after tea, in the bracing air of Joe Cowl's drain."

"That sounds very well," dear mother answered, "but I do think, Bubbly, that you ought to ask Dr. Flebotham first, what he thinks about it."

To me it seems a sufficient proof, how grand my dear father's constitution was, that for more than two months he pursued this medical course, as he loftily termed it, without any visible harm to himself. And to the last moment of his life – so stout and solid was his faith in his own mind – he declared that his illness had nothing whatever to do with the cause we assigned for it. But after looking blue in the face one Sunday, and suffering from cold hands and feet, he came home at night, with a desperate headache, such as he had never felt before. My mother, in alarm, gave him brandy and salt; but he took the brandy, and left out the salt. On the following day, he was terribly sick, and as blue as the men at the Indigo works; and Dr. Flebotham pronounced it a case of aggravated English Cholera. He ordered strong measures to be taken at once, hot applications, and a bottleful of chalk, with opium in large quantities.

"We must not be nervous, my dear madam," he said to my mother, who was crying sadly; "our dear patient has an iron constitution, and great strength of will, and a rare fund of courage. Why, he won't admit even now, that there is much amiss with him; and nothing will make him stay in bed. The recumbent position is the one he should preserve, to give our therapeutic course fair play; yet he keeps on calling for his boots, and would go to his work without them, if you left the door unlocked. We must humour him, my dear madam; we must tell him that he shall go to-morrow to his most useful, and in many ways I am sure – delightful occupation; without which this neighbourhood would lose one of its most – most pungent associations. Though Mr. Windsor certainly does, in his smaller way, make a much stronger st – stimulate our olfactory powers to even higher action, is what I mean. And it seems to be now very generally admitted, apart from all incontrovertible statistics, I may indeed say that it has been proved, a priori, by our new lights, that the chemical constituents, which you liberate by rapid evaporation, are for hygienic purposes the very ones which Nature has omitted to supply. But bless me, I have a lady doing well with twins! You will remember all my directions. I shall have no time to dine to-day. I hope to look in again, at six o'clock."

He lifted his hat, and had scarcely time for me to run after him, and say, "If you please, sir, mother does so hope that you will not be offended, if we have a roast fowl on the table hot, when you come from the poor lady, with the two babies."

"Tommy," replied Dr. Flebotham; "that is the very first nourishment, your dear father should take, in a solid form. He must not touch it to-day, of course; but a very small slice, quite cold, to-morrow. It should be roasted this afternoon, and it must be excessively tender. It might be as well, for me to judge of that myself. It should be a large one, and yet very young – such as they call capons. Tell your dear mother, that I will try it for him."

"Oh, thank you, sir, thank you! How very kind you are!" I exclaimed, with the tears coming into my eyes. "Only please to be punctual at six o'clock."

He made this promise; and made it good.

"Unless the case becomes complicated," said the Doctor, three days afterwards, "with cardiac symptoms, or pulmonary, or possibly renal derangement, or any other resultant cachexy of the organisms; we may anticipate, my dear madam, a condition of gradual convalescence."

"Why, Doctor, he is ever so much better already!" my mother exclaimed impatiently; "he has ordered our Tommy to go himself, as far as the shop of the famous Mr. Chumps, and to try to be back by twelve o'clock, with three pounds cut thick of tender rumpsteak, and two dozen of oysters from Tester's. And he is coming downstairs, to dine at one o'clock. But he is so weak, that I shall have to help him. Deary me, what a thing to think of! And a week ago, he carried me up, when I slipped, and hurt my ancle. And I am not so light as I was, you know, sir. All that I leave now to my son Tommy. He will never be good weight."

"Very few medical men," replied the Doctor, with a pleasant smile at both of us, "would like to have the question of diet so completely taken out of their own hands. But as soon as therapeusis has reinstated our patients, though it be but a little, they are apt to think themselves quit of us. And then there comes the relapse, my dear madam; then there comes the sad relapse; and the blame of it is cast on us."

"He has taken a great many bottles, sir, such as I never could have believed;" my mother answered sorrowfully, "and it will be a little too hard upon him, not to let him have his change. How much will you please to allow him, sir?"

"Not an ounce, if I could help it – liquid nourishment for three days more. Our poor stomach is still most delicate, and unfitted for solid food. Restrict him, at any rate, to three ounces, and the like number of oysters."

This was easier said than done. My father got through a good pound of steak, and at least a dozen oysters; and after that, he felt so well, that he had a pint of ale, and some of his healthy red returned to him. My mother was so pleased with this, that she came to his chair, and kissed him; and he said,

"My dear, I thought at one time, I never should kiss you no more, nor Tommy neither. But the Lord has shown Himself most merciful. And I don't see, as a pipe would hurt me."

The next day, he was so much better, that at nine o'clock I went back to school, and worked with a light heart; trying to make up for the work I had fallen back with. And Mr. Cope was most kind to me, and said that I did very well.

I was let off, early in the afternoon, as mother had asked that I might be; and with a good wind at my back, I made my way home, at such a pace, that every one turned to look at me; for my lead had been laid aside, through father's illness, which was weight enough. My mother was equally short of breath, with pleasure and excitement, when she ran out to kiss me. And she said,

"Oh, Tommy, your father is as well as ever, I do believe. He came downstairs without a stick, and he wrote for an hour about something; and then he made a capital dinner, and slept a little in the afternoon. And Dr. Flebotham came and saw him, and said, 'My dear sir, not too fast! You are getting well, at a wonderful rate, but you must avoid excitement. You are not quite out of our hands yet.' And then he turned to me, and said, 'We must be careful of the heart, dear madam. The heart has had a sharp trial, and has borne it well; so far as we can see. But we must not be too hard upon it, while its action is so weak. Any sudden shock, for instance, might have very grave results.' Your father began to laugh at this, until he remembered how very kind the doctor had been, and so skilful. And then he begged his pardon, and shook hands with him; and the doctor said, 'Not a bad grip that, Mr. Upmore, for a hand that was like a swab, on Monday. Keep him quiet, and he will do. Ah, I shall boast of this case, a little; and I am sure you will help me, madam.' And so I will, Tommy, though I never can approve of being called 'Madam,' like a Frenchwoman; for your dear father is in such spirits, that he has taken an ounce of bird's-eye with him, and gone to his favourite corner, by the tree; where the wind brings down the smoke so well, and what the people who write in the papers call the 'pestilential fumes.' All he now wants to set him up, is that, and a quart of fresh-drawn stout; and he said, that he would wait for that, till you came home from school to fetch it. So don't stop now, to do anything, my dear, except to put your slop-coat on, but run down to the tree, and here is the eightpence – a couple of Joeys, as you call them – and there's going to be a crab for supper, Tommy; such a beauty, from a friend of yours! I'll tell you all about it, when you come back, and you shall have his toes to suck, while you help me to do his cream."

I did love a crab, I always did. And as the greatest delight in oysters hovers over opening them (for no delight does more than hover), so of a crab, the finest hope is in getting him ready to be eaten, and in tasting stolen bits of him.

"You may look at him, Tommy," my dear mother said; and there he lay among lettuces, with his sweet legs clasped, as if in prayer for some one to come and eat them, and his fat claws crossed, in resignation to the mallet, or the rolling-pin.

It was not a sight to cause depression in the hungry human mind; neither could that effect be got from a very well-browned backstone cake; which mother allowed me to smell, before she put it back, to crisp a bit. Oh, if she had only said, "My dear boy, put your belt on," what a difference it would have made! But she never thought of it, any more than I did; and I always tried not to think of it.

With all these things to set me up, and a holiday and a half to come, out of the two ensuing days – for this was Friday afternoon – I set off, rather at a dance than walk, with my arms thrown up, and lungs expanded; and my broad-brimmed Leghorn giving flips at the wind, like a pigeon's wing; and the tucks, and gathers, and quilted flounces of my blouse lifting, and filling in the air, like clouds; and scarcely so much as a thread of my curls – as mother was fond of expressing it – that did not glisten in the sun, and hover like a crown of golden gossamer. Instead of opening the gate, I flew over it, and could scarcely keep between the walls below, and I heard mother calling,

"Oh, Tommy, dear Tommy, come back for your belt."