Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 65, No. 402, April, 1849

In one corner are piled up cases, and military-looking trunks of outlandish aspect, with R. D. C. in brass nails on their sides. From these we turn with involuntary respect, and call off Juba, who has wedged himself behind in pursuit of some imaginary mouse. But in the other corner is what seems to me a child's cradle – not an English one evidently – it is of wood, seemingly Spanish rosewood, with a rail-work at the back, of twisted columns; and I should scarcely have known it to be a cradle but for the fairy-like quilt and the tiny pillows, which proclaimed its uses.

On the wall above the cradle were arranged sundry little articles, that had, perhaps, once made the joy of a child's heart – broken toys with the paint rubbed off, a tin sword and trumpet, and a few tattered books, mostly in Spanish – by their shape and look, doubtless, children's books. Near these stood, on the floor, a picture with its face to the wall. Juba had chased the mouse that his fancy still insisted on creating, behind this picture, and, as he abruptly drew back, it fell into the hands I stretched forth to receive it. I turned the face to the light, and was surprised to see merely an old family portrait; it was that of a gentleman in the flowered vest and stiff ruff which referred the date of his existence to the reign of Elizabeth – a man with a bold and noble countenance. On the corner was placed a faded coat of arms, beneath which was inscribed, "Herbert de Caxton, Eq: Aur: Ætat: 35."

On the back of the canvass I observed, as I now replaced the picture against the wall, a label in Roland's handwriting, though in a younger and more running hand than he now wrote. The words were these: – "The best and bravest of our line. He charged by Sidney's side on the field of Zutphen; he fought in Drake's ship against the armament of Spain. If ever I have a – " The rest of the label seemed to have been torn off.

I turned away, and felt a remorseful shame that I had so far gratified my curiosity, – if by so harsh a name the powerful interest that had absorbed me must be called. I looked round for Blanche; she had retreated from my side to the door, and, with her hands before her eyes, was weeping. As I stole towards her, my glance fell on a book that lay on a chair near the casement, and beside those relics of an infancy once pure and serene. By the old-fashioned silver clasps I recognised Roland's bible. I felt almost as if I had been guilty of profanation in my thoughtless intrusion. I drew away Blanche, and we descended the stairs noiselessly, and not till we were on our favourite spot, amidst a heap of ruins on the feudal justice-hill, did I seek to kiss away her tears and ask the cause.

"My poor brother," sobbed Blanche; "they must have been his – and we shall never, never see him again! – and poor papa's bible, which he reads when he is very, very sad! I did not weep enough when my brother died. I know better what death is now! Poor papa, poor papa! Don't die, too, Sisty!"

There was no running after butterflies that morning; and it was long before I could soothe Blanche. Indeed, she bore the traces of dejection in her soft looks for many, many days; and she often asked me, sighingly, "Don't you think it was very wrong in me to take you there?" Poor little Blanche, true daughter of Eve, she would not let me bear my due share of the blame; she would have it all in Adam's primitive way of justice, – "The woman tempted me, and I did eat." And since then Blanche has seemed more fond than ever of Roland, and comparatively deserts me, to nestle close to him, and closer, till he looks up and says, "My child, you are pale; go and run after the butterflies;" and she says now to him, not to me, – "Come too!" drawing him out into the sunshine with a hand that will not loose its hold.

Of all Roland's line this Herbert de Caxton was "the best and bravest!" yet he had never named that ancestor to me – never put any forefather in comparison with the dubious and mythical Sir William. I now remembered once, that, in going over the pedigree, I had been struck by the name of Herbert – the only Herbert in the scroll – and had asked, "What of him, uncle?" and Roland had muttered something inaudible and turned away. And I remembered also, that in Roland's room there was the mark in the wall where a picture of that size had once hung. It had been removed thence before we first came, but must have hung there for years to have left that mark on the wall; – perhaps suspended by Bolt, during Roland's long Continental absence. "If ever I have a – ." What were the missing words? Alas, did they not relate to the son – missed for ever, evidently not forgotten still?

CHAPTER LXII

My uncle sate on one side the fireplace, my mother on the other; and I, at a small table between them, prepared to note down the results of their conference; for they had met in high council, to assess their joint fortunes – determine what should be brought into the common stock, and set apart for the civil list, and what should be laid aside as a sinking fund. Now my mother, true woman as she was, had a womanly love of show in her own quiet way – of making "a genteel figure" in the eyes of the neighbourhood – of seeing that sixpence not only went as far as sixpence ought to go, but that, in the going, it should emit mild but imposing splendour – not, indeed, a gaudy flash – a startling Borealian coruscation, which is scarcely within the modest and placid idiosyncrasies of sixpence – but a gleam of gentle and benign light, just to show where a sixpence had been, and allow you time to say, "Behold," before

"The jaws of darkness did devour it up."

Thus, as I once before took occasion to apprise the reader, we had always held a very respectable position in the neighbourhood round our square brick house; been as sociable as my father's habits would permit; given our little tea-parties, and our occasional dinners, and, without attempting to vie with our richer associates, there had always been so exquisite a neatness, so notable a house-keeping, so thoughtful a disposition, in short, of all the properties indigenous to a well-spent sixpence, in my mother's management, that there was not an old maid within seven miles of us who did not pronounce our tea-parties to be perfect; and the great Mrs Rollick, who gave forty guineas a-year to a professed cook and housekeeper, used regularly, whenever we dined at Rollick Hall, to call across the table to my mother, (who therewith blushed up to her ears,) to apologise for the strawberry jelly. It is true that when, on returning home, my mother adverted to that flattering and delicate compliment, in a tone that revealed the self-conceit of the human heart, my father – whether to sober his Kitty's vanity into a proper and Christian mortification of spirit, or from that strange shrewdness which belonged to him – would remark that Mrs Rollick was of a querulous nature; that the compliment was meant not to please my mother, but to spite the professed cook and housekeeper, to whom the butler would be sure to repeat the invidious apology.

In settling at the tower, and assuming the head of its establishment, my mother was naturally anxious that, poor battered invalid though the tower was, it should still put its best leg foremost. Sundry cards, despite the thinness of the neighbourhood, had been left at the door; various invitations, which my uncle had hitherto declined, had greeted his occupation of the ancestral ruin, and had become more numerous since the news of our arrival had gone abroad; so that my mother saw before her a very suitable field for her hospitable accomplishments – a reasonable ground for her ambition that the tower should hold up its head, as became a tower that held the head of the family.

But not to wrong thee, O dear mother, as thou sittest there, opposite the grim captain, so fair and so neat, – with thine apron as white, and thy hair as trim and as sheen, and thy morning cap, with its ribbons of blue, as coquettishly arranged as if thou hadst a fear that the least negligence on thy part might lose thee the heart of thine Austin – not to wrong thee by setting down to frivolous motives alone thy feminine visions of the social amenities of life, I know that thine heart, in its provident tenderness, was quite as much interested as ever thy vanities could be, in the hospitable thoughts on which thou wert intent. For, first and foremost, it was the wish of thy soul that thine Austin might, as little as possible, be reminded of the change in his fortunes, – might miss as little as possible those interruptions to his abstracted scholarly moods, at which, it is true, he used to fret and to pshaw and to cry Papæ! but which nevertheless always did him good, and freshened up the stream of his thoughts. And, next, it was the conviction of thine understanding that a little society, and boon companionship, and the proud pleasure of showing his ruins, and presiding at the hall of his forefathers, would take Roland out of those gloomy reveries into which he still fell at times. And, thirdly, for us young people, ought not Blanche to find companions in children of her own sex and age? Already in those large black eyes there was something melancholy and brooding, as there is in the eyes of all children who live only with their elders; and for Pisistratus, with his altered prospects, and the one great gnawing memory at his heart – which he tried to conceal from himself, but which a mother (and a mother who had loved) saw at a glance – what could be better than such union and interchange with the world around us, small as that world might be, which woman, sweet binder and blender of all social links, might artfully effect? – So that thou didst not go like the awful Florentine,

"Sopra lor vanita che par persona,'

over thin shadows that mocked the substance of real forms,' but rather it was the real forms that appeared as shadows or vanita.

What a digression! – can I never tell my story in a plain straightforward way? Certainly I was born under the Cancer, and all my movements are circumlocutory, sideways, and crab-like.

CHAPTER LXIII

"I think, Roland," said my mother, "that the establishment is settled. Bolt, who is equal to three men at least; Primmins, cook and housekeeper; Molly a good stirring girl – and willing, (though I've had some difficulty in persuading her, poor thing, to submit not to be called Anna Maria!) Their wages are but a small item, my dear Roland."

"Hem!" said Roland, "since we can't do with fewer servants at less wages, I suppose we must call it small – "

"It is so," said my mother with mild positiveness. "And, indeed, what with the game and fish, and the garden and poultry-yard, and your own mutton, our housekeeping will be next to nothing."

"Hem!" again said the thrifty Roland, with a slight inflection of the beetle brows. "It may be next to nothing, ma'am – sister – just as a butcher's shop may be next to Northumberland House, but there is a vast deal between nothing and that next neighbour you have given it."

This speech was so like one of my father's; – so naïve an imitation of that subtle reasoner's use of the rhetorical figure called ANTANACLASIS, (or repetition of the same words in a different sense,) that I laughed and my mother smiled. But she smiled reverently, not thinking of the ANTANACLASIS, as, laying her hand on Roland's arm, she replied in the yet more formidable figure of speech called EPIPHONEMA, (or exclamation,) "Yet, with all your economy, you would have had us – "

"Tut!" cried my uncle, parrying the EPIPHONEMA with a masterly APOSIOPESIS (or breaking off;) "tut! if you had done what I wished, I should have had more pleasure for my money!"

My poor mother's rhetorical armoury supplied no weapon to meet that artful APOSIOPESIS, so she dropped the rhetoric altogether, and went on with that "unadorned eloquence" natural to her, as to other great financial reformers: – "Well, Roland, but I am a good housewife, I assure you, and – don't scold; but that you never do, – I mean don't look as if you would like to scold; the fact is, that, even after setting aside £100 a-year for our little parties – "

"Little parties! – a hundred a-year!" cried the Captain aghast.

My mother pursued her way remorselessly, – "Which we can well afford; and without counting your half-pay, which you must keep for pocket-money and your wardrobe and Blanche's, I calculate that we can allow Pisistratus £150 a-year, which, with the scholarship he is to get, will keep him at Cambridge," (at that, seeing the scholarship was as yet amidst the Pleasures of Hope, I shook my head doubtfully;) "and," continued my mother, not heeding that sign of dissent, "we shall still have something to lay by."

The Captain's face assumed a ludicrous expression of compassion and horror; he evidently thought my mother's misfortunes had turned her head.

His tormentor continued.

"For," said my mother, with a pretty calculating shake of her head, and a movement of the right forefinger towards the five fingers of the left hand, "three hundred and seventy pounds – the interest of Austin's fortune – and fifty pounds that we may reckon for the rent of our house, make £420 a-year. Add your £330 a-year from the farm, sheep-walk, and cottages that you let, and the total is £750. Now with all we get for nothing for our housekeeping, as I said before, we can do very well with five hundred a-year, and indeed make a handsome figure. So, after allowing Sisty £150, we still have £100 to lay by for Blanche."

"Stop, stop, stop!" cried the Captain, in great agitation; "who told you that I had £330 a-year?"

"Why, Bolt – don't be angry with him."

"Bolt is a blockhead. From £330 a-year take £200, and the remainder is all my income, besides my half-pay."

My mother opened her eyes, and so did I.

"To that £130 add, if you please, £130 of your own. All that you have over, my dear sister, is yours or Austin's, or your boy's; but not a shilling can go to give luxuries to a miserly, battered old soldier. Do you understand me?"

"No, Roland," said my mother, "I don't understand you at all. Does not your property bring in £330 a-year?"

"Yes, but it has a debt of £200 a-year on it," said the Captain, gloomily and reluctantly.

"Oh, Roland!" cried my mother tenderly, and approaching so near that, had my father been in the room, I am sure she would have been bold enough to kiss the stern Captain, though I never saw him look sterner and less kissable. "Oh, Roland!" cried my mother, concluding that famous EPIPHONEMA which my uncle's APOSIOPESIS had before nipped in the bud, "and yet you would have made us, who are twice as rich, rob you of this little all!"

"Ah!" said Roland, trying to smile, "but I should have had my own way then, and starved you shockingly. No talk then of 'little parties,' and suchlike. But you must not now turn the tables against me, nor bring your £420 a-year as a set-off to my £130."

"Why," said my mother generously, "you forget the money's worth that you contribute – all that your grounds supply, and all that we save by it. I am sure that that's worth a yearly £300 at the least."

"Madam – sister," said the Captain, "I'm sure you don't want to hurt my feelings. All I have to say is, that, if you add to what I bring an equal sum – to keep up the poor old ruin – it is the utmost that I can allow, and the rest is not more than Pisistratus can spend."

So saying, the Captain rose, bowed, and before either of us could stop him, hobbled out of the room.

"Dear me, Sisty!" said my mother, wringing her hands, "I have certainly displeased him. How could I guess he had so large a debt on the property?"

"Did not he pay his son's debts? Is not that the reason that – "

"Ah," interrupted my mother, almost crying, "and it was that which ruffled him, and I not to guess it? What shall I do?"

"Set to work at a new calculation, dear mother, and let him have his own way."

"But then," said my mother, "your uncle will mope himself to death, and your father will have no relaxation, while you see that he has lost his former object in his books. And Blanche – and you too. If we were only to contribute what dear Roland does, I do not see how, with £260 a-year, we could ever bring our neighbours round us! I wonder what Austin would say! I have half a mind – no, I'll go and look over the week-books with Primmins."

My mother went her way sorrowfully, and I was left alone.

Then I looked on the stately old hall, grand in its forlorn decay. And the dreams I had begun to cherish at my heart swept over me, and hurried me along, far, far away into the golden land, whither Hope beckons Youth. To restore my father's fortunes – reweave the links of that broken ambition which had knit his genius with the world – rebuild these fallen walls – cultivate those barren moors – revive the ancient name – glad the old soldier's age – and be to both the brothers what Roland had lost – a son! These were my dreams; and when I woke from them, lo! they had left behind an intense purpose, a resolute object. Dream, O youth – dream manfully and nobly, and thy dreams shall be prophets!

CHAPTER LXIV

LETTER FROM PISISTRATUS CAXTON, TO ALBERT TREVANION, ESQ., M. P(The confession of a youth who, in the Old World, finds himself one too many.)

"My dear Mr Trevanion, – I thank you cordially, and so we do all, for your reply to my letter, informing you of the villanous traps through which we have passed not indeed with whole skins, but still whole in life and limb – which considering that the traps were three, and the teeth sharp, was more than we could reasonably expect. We have taken to the wastes, like wise foxes as we are, and I do not think a bait can be found that will again snare the fox paternal. As for the fox filial, it is different, and I am about to prove to you that he is burning to redeem the family disgrace. Ah! my dear Mr Trevanion, if you are busy with 'blue books' when this letter reaches you, stop here, and put it aside for some rare moment of leisure. I am about to open my heart to you, and ask you, who know the world so well, to aid me in an escape from those flammantia mænia, wherewith I find that world begirt and enclosed. For look you, sir, you and my father were right when you both agreed that the mere book life was not meant for me. And yet what is not book life, to a young man who would make his way through the ordinary and conventional paths to fortune? All the professions are so book-lined, book-hemmed, book-choked, that wherever these strong hands of mine stretch towards action, they find themselves met by octavo ramparts, flanked with quarto crenellations. For first, this college life, opening to scholarships, and ending, perchance, as you political economists would desire, in Malthusian fellowships – premiums for celibacy – consider what manner of thing it is!

"Three years, book upon book, – a great Dead Sea before one, three years long, and all the apples that grow on the shore full of the ashes of pica and primer! Those three years ended, the fellowship, it may be, won, – still books – books – if the whole world does not close at the college gates. Do I, from scholar, effloresce into literary man, author by profession? – books – books! Do I go into the law? – books – books. Ars longa, vita brevis, which, paraphrased, means that it is slow work before one fags one's way to a brief! Do I turn doctor? Why, what but books can kill time, until, at the age of forty, a lucky chance may permit me to kill something else? The church? (for which, indeed, I don't profess to be good enough,) – that is book life par excellence, whether, inglorious and poor, I wander through long lines of divines and fathers; or, ambitious of bishopricks, I amend the corruptions, not of the human heart, but of a Greek text, and through defiles of scholiasts and commentators win my way to the See. In short, barring the noble profession of arms – which you know, after all, is not precisely the road to fortune – can you tell me any means by which one may escape these eternal books, this mental clockwork, and corporeal lethargy. Where can this passion for life that runs riot through my veins find its vent? Where can these stalwart limbs, and this broad chest, grow of value and worth, in this hot-bed of cerebral inflammation and dyspeptic intellect? I know what is in me; I know I have the qualities that should go with stalwart limbs and broad chest. I have some plain common sense, some promptitude and keenness, some pleasure in hardy danger, some fortitude in bearing pain – qualities for which I bless Heaven, for they are qualities good and useful in private life. But in the forum of men, in the market of fortune, are they not flocci, nauci, nihili?

"In a word, dear sir and friend, in this crowded Old World, there is not the same room that our bold forefathers found for men to walk about, and jostle their neighbours. No; they must sit down like boys at their form, and work out their tasks, with rounded shoulders and aching fingers. There has been a pastoral age, and a hunting age, and a fighting age. Now we have arrived at the age sedentary. Men who sit longest carry all before them: puny delicate fellows, with hands just strong enough to wield a pen, eyes so bleared by the midnight lamp that they see no joy in that buxom sun, (which draws me forth into the fields, as life draws the living,) and digestive organs worn and macerated by the relentless flagellation of the brain. Certainly, if this is to be the Reign of Mind, it is idle to repine, and kick against the pricks; but is it true that all these qualities of action that are within me are to go for nothing! If I were rich, and happy in mind and circumstance, well and good; I should shoot, hunt, farm, travel, enjoy life, and snap my fingers at ambition. If I were so poor and so humbly bred that I could turn gamekeeper or whipper-in, as pauper gentlemen virtually did of old, well and good too; I should exhaust this troublesome vitality of mine, by nightly battles with poachers, and leaps over double dykes and stone walls. If I were so depressed of spirit that I could live without remorse on my father's small means, and exclaim with Claudian, 'The earth gives me feasts that cost nothing,' well and good too; it were a life to suit a vegetable, or a very minor poet. But as it is! – here I open another leaf of my heart to you! To say that, being poor, I want to make a fortune, is to say that I am an Englishman. To attach ourselves to a thing positive, belongs to our practical race. Even in our dreams, if we build castles in the air, they are not Castles of Indolence, – indeed they have very little of the castle about them, and look much more like Hoare's Bank on the east side of Temple Bar! I desire, then, to make a fortune. But I differ from my countrymen, first, by desiring only what you rich men would call but a small fortune; secondly, in wishing that I may not spend my whole life in that said fortune-making. Just see, now, how I am placed.

"Under ordinary circumstances, I must begin by taking from my father a large slice of an income that will ill spare paring. According to my calculation, my parents and my uncle want all they have got – and the subtraction of the yearly sum on which Pisistratus is to live, till he can live by his own labours, would be so much taken from the decent comforts of his kindred. If I return to Cambridge, with all economy, I must thus narrow still more the res angusta domi– and when Cambridge is over, and I am turned loose upon the world – failing, as is likely enough, of the support of a fellowship – how many years must I work, or rather, alas! not work, at the bar (which, after all, seems my best calling) before I can in my turn provide for those who, till then, rob themselves for me? – till I have arrived at middle life, and they are old and worn out – till the chink of the golden bowl sounds but hollow at the ebbing well! I would wish that, if I can make money, those I love best may enjoy it while enjoyment is yet left to them; that my father shall see The History of Human Error, complete, bound in Russia on his shelves; that my mother shall have the innocent pleasures that content her, before age steals the light from her happy smile; that before Roland's hair is snow-white, (alas! the snows there thicken fast,) he shall lean on my arm, while we settle together where the ruin shall be repaired or where left to the owls; and where the dreary bleak waste around shall laugh with the gleam of corn: – for you know the nature of this Cumberland soil – you, who possess much of it, and have won so many fair acres from the wild; – you know that my uncle's land, now (save a single farm) scarce worth a shilling an acre, needs but capital to become an estate more lucrative than ever his ancestors owned. You know that, for you have applied your capital to the same kind of land, and, in doing so, what blessings – which you scarcely think of in your London library – you have effected! – what mouths you feed, what hands you employ! I have calculated that my uncle's moors, which now scarce maintain two or three shepherds, could, manured by money, maintain two hundred families by their labour. All this is worth trying for! therefore Pisistratus wants to make money. Not so much! he does not require millions – a few spare thousand pounds would go a long way; and with a modest capital to begin with, Roland should become a true squire, a real landowner, not the mere lord of a desert. Now then, dear sir, advise me how I may, with such qualities as I possess, arrive at that capital – ay, and before it is too late – so that money-making may not last till my grave.