Paul Clifford — Complete

“I attempted to falter out something like thanks. ‘Never interrupt me!’ said he. ‘I had two reasons for being glad,—first, because my daughter was the plague of my life, and I wanted some one to take her off my hands; secondly, because I required your assistance on a particular point, and I could not venture to ask it of any one but my son-in-law. In fine, I wish to take you into partnership!’

“‘Partnership!’ cried I, falling on my knees. ‘Noble, generous man!’

“‘Stay a bit,’ continued my father-in-law. ‘What funds do you think requisite for carrying on a bank? You look puzzled! Not a shilling! You will put in just as much as I do. You will put in rather more; for you once put in L500, which has been spent long ago. I don’t put in a shilling of my own. I live on my clients, and I very willingly offer you half of them!’

“Imagine, dear Paul, my astonishment, my dismay! I saw myself married to a hideous shrew,—son-in-law to a penniless scoundrel, and cheated out of my whole fortune! Compare this view of the question with that which had blazed on me when I contemplated being son-in-law to the rich Mr. Asgrave. I stormed at first. Mr. Asgrave took up Bacon ‘On the Advancement of Learning,’ and made no reply till I was cooled by explosion. You will perceive that when passion subsided, I necessarily saw that nothing was left for me but adopting my father-in-law’s proposal. Thus, by the fatality which attended me at the very time I meant to reform, I was forced into scoundrelism, and I was driven into defrauding a vast number of persons by the accident of being son-in-law to a great moralist. As Mr. Asgrave was an indolent man, who passed his mornings in speculations on virtue, I was made the active partner. I spent the day at the counting-house; and when I came home for recreation, my wife scratched my eyes out.”

“But were you never recognized as ‘the stranger’ or ‘the adventurer’ in your new capacity?”

“No; for of course I assumed, in all my changes, both aliases and disguises. And, to tell you the truth, my marriage so altered me that, what with a snuff-coloured coat and a brown scratch wig, with a pen in my right ear, I looked the very picture of staid respectability. My face grew an inch longer every day. Nothing is so respectable as a long face; and a subdued expression of countenance is the surest sign of commercial prosperity. Well, we went on splendidly enough for about a year. Meanwhile I was wonderfully improved in philosophy. You have no idea how a scolding wife sublimes and rarefies one’s intellect. Thunder clears the air, you know! At length, unhappily for my fame (for I contemplated a magnificent moral history of man, which, had she lived a year longer, I should have completed), my wife died in child-bed. My father-in-law and I were talking over the event, and finding fault with civilization for the enervating habits by which women die of their children instead of bringing them forth without being even conscious of the circumstance, when a bit of paper, sealed awry, was given to my partner. He looked over it, finished the discussion, and then told me our bank had stopped payment. ‘Now, Augustus,’ said he, lighting his pipe with the bit of paper, ‘you see the good of having nothing to lose.’

“We did not pay quite sixpence in the pound; but my partner was thought so unfortunate that the British public raised a subscription for him, and he retired on an annuity, greatly respected and very much compassionated. As I had not been so well known as a moralist, and had not the prepossessing advantage of a bald, benevolent head, nothing was done for me, and I was turned once more on the wide world, to moralize on the vicissitudes of fortune. My cousin the bookseller was no more, and his son cut me. I took a garret in Warwick Court, and with a few books, my only consolation, I endeavoured to nerve my mind to the future. It was at this time, Paul, that my studies really availed me. I meditated much, and I became a true philosopher, namely, a practical one. My actions were henceforth regulated by principle; and at some time or other, I will convince you that the road of true morals never avoids the pockets of your neighbour. So soon as my mind had made the grand discovery which Mr. Asgrave had made before me, that one should live according to a system,—for if you do wrong, it is then your system that errs, not you,—I took to the road, without any of those stings of conscience which had hitherto annoyed me in such adventures. I formed one of a capital knot of ‘Free Agents,’ whom I will introduce to you some day or other, and I soon rose to distinction among them. But about six weeks ago, not less than formerly preferring byways to highways, I attempted to possess myself of a carriage, and sell it at discount. I was acquitted on the felony, but sent hither by Justice Burnflat on the misdemeanour. Thus far, my young friend, hath as yet proceeded the life of Augustus Tomlinson.” The history of this gentleman made a deep impression on Paul. The impression was strengthened by the conversations subsequently holden with Augustus. That worthy was a dangerous and subtle persuader. He had really read a good deal of history, and something of morals; and he had an ingenious way of defending his rascally practices by syllogisms from the latter, and examples from the former. These theories he clenched, as it were, by a reference to the existing politics of the day. Cheaters of the public, on false pretences, he was pleased to term “moderate Whigs;” bullying demanders of your purse were “high Tories;” and thieving in gangs was “the effect of the spirit of party.” There was this difference between Augustus Tomlinson and Long Ned,—Ned was the acting knave, Augustus the reasoning one; and we may see therefore, by a little reflection, that Tomlinson was a far more perilous companion than Pepper,—for showy theories are always more seductive to the young and clever than suasive examples, and the vanity of the youthful makes them better pleased by being convinced of a thing than by being enticed to it.

A day or two after the narrative of Mr. Tomlinson, Paul was again visited by Mrs. Lobkins,—for the regulations against frequent visitors were not then so strictly enforced as we understand them to be now; and the good dame came to deplore the ill-success of her interview with Justice Burnflat.

We spare the tender-hearted reader a detail of the affecting interview that ensued. Indeed, it was but a repetition of the one we have before narrated. We shall only say, as a proof of Paul’s tenderness of heart, that when he took leave of the good matron, and bade “God bless her,” his voice faltered, and the tears stood in his eyes,—just as they were wont to do in the eyes of George the Third, when that excellent monarch was pleased graciously to encore “God save the King!”

“I’ll be hanged,” soliloquized our hero, as he slowly bent his course towards the subtle Augustus,—“I’ll be hanged (humph! the denunciation is prophetic), if I don’t feel as grateful to the old lady for her care of me as if she had never ill-used me. As for my parents, I believe I have little to be grateful for or proud of in that quarter. My poor mother, by all accounts, seems scarcely to have had even the brute virtue of maternal tenderness; and in all human likelihood I shall never know whether I had one father or fifty. But what matters it? I rather like the better to be independent; and, after all, what do nine tenths of us ever get from our parents but an ugly name, and advice which, if we follow, we are wretched, and if we neglect, we are disinherited?”

Comforting himself with these thoughts, which perhaps took their philosophical complexion from the conversations he had lately held with Augustus, and which broke off into the muttered air of—

“Why should we quarrel for riches?”

Paul repaired to his customary avocations.

In the third week of our hero’s captivity Tomlinson communicated to him a plan of escape that had occurred to his sagacious brain. In the yard appropriated to the amusements of the gentlemen “misdemeaning,” there was a water-pipe that, skirting the wall, passed over the door through which every morning the pious captives passed in their way to the chapel. By this Tomlinson proposed to escape; for to the pipe which reached from the door to the wall, in a slanting and easy direction, there was a sort of skirting-board; and a dexterous and nimble man might readily, by the help of this board, convey himself along the pipe, until the progress of that useful conductor (which was happily very brief) was stopped by the summit of the wall, where it found a sequel in another pipe, that descended to the ground on the opposite side of the wall. Now, on this opposite side was the garden of the prison; in this garden was a watchman, and this watchman was the hobgoblin of Tomlinson’s scheme,—“For suppose us safe in the garden,” said he, “what shall we do with this confounded fellow?”

“But that is not all,” added Paul; “for even were there no watchman, there is a terrible wall, which I noted especially last week, when we were set to work in the garden, and which has no pipe, save a perpendicular one, that a man must have the legs of a fly to be able to climb!”

“Nonsense!” returned Tomlinson; “I will show you how to climb the stubbornest wall in Christendom, if one has but the coast clear. It is the watchman, the watchman, we must—”

“What?” asked Paul, observing his comrade did not conclude the sentence.

It was some time before the sage Augustus replied; he then said in a musing tone,—

“I have been thinking, Paul, whether it would be consistent with virtue, and that strict code of morals by which all my actions are regulated, to—slay the watchman!”

“Good heavens!” cried Paul, horror-stricken.

“And I have decided,” continued Augustus, solemnly, without regard to the exclamation, “that the action would be perfectly justifiable!”

“Villain!” exclaimed Paul, recoiling to the other end of the stone box—for it was night—in which they were cooped.

“But,” pursued Augustus, who seemed soliloquizing, and whose voice, sounding calm and thoughtful, like Young’s in the famous monologue in “Hamlet,” denoted that he heeded not the uncourteous interruption,—“but opinion does not always influence conduct; and although it may be virtuous to murder the watchman, I have not the heart to do it. I trust in my future history I shall not by discerning moralists be too severely censured for a weakness for which my physical temperament is alone to blame!”

Despite the turn of the soliloquy, it was a long time before Paul could be reconciled to further conversation with Augustus; and it was only from the belief that the moralist had leaned to the jesting vein that he at length resumed the consultation.

The conspirators did not, however, bring their scheme that night to any ultimate decision. The next day Augustus, Paul, and some others of the company were set to work in the garden; and Paul then observed that his friend, wheeling a barrow close by the spot where the watchman stood, overturned its contents. The watchman was good-natured enough to assist him in refilling the barrow; and Tomlinson profited so well by the occasion that that night he informed Paul that they would have nothing to dread from the watchman’s vigilance. “He has promised,” said Augustus, “for certain consi-de-ra-tions, to allow me to knock him down; he has also promised to be so much hurt as not to be able to move until we are over the wall. Our main difficulty now, then, is the first step,—namely, to climb the pipe unperceived!”

“As to that,” said Paul, who developed, through the whole of the scheme, organs of sagacity, boldness, and invention which charmed his friend, and certainly promised well for his future career,—“as to that, I think we may manage the first ascent with less danger than you imagine. The mornings of late have been very foggy; they are almost dark at the hour we go to chapel. Let you and I close the file: the pipe passes just above the door; our hands, as we have tried, can reach it; and a spring of no great agility will enable us to raise ourselves up to a footing on the pipe and the skirting-board.

“The climbing then is easy; and what with the dense fog and our own quickness, I think we shall have little difficulty in gaining the garden. The only precautions we need use are, to wait for a very dark morning, and to be sure that we are the last of the file, so that no one behind may give the alarm—”

“Or attempt to follow our example, and spoil the pie by a superfluous plum!” added Augustus. “You counsel admirably; and one of these days, if you are not hung in the mean while, will, I venture to auger, be a great logician.”

The next morning was clear and frosty; but the day after was, to use Tomlinson’s simile, “as dark as if all the negroes of Africa had been stewed down into air.” “You might have cut the fog with a knife,” as the proverb says. Paul and Augustus could not even see how significantly each looked at the other.

It was a remarkable trait of the daring temperament of the former, that, young as he was, it was fixed that he should lead the attempt. At the hour, then, for chapel the prisoners passed as usual through the door. When it came to Paul’s turn he drew himself by his hands to the pipe, and then creeping along its sinuous course, gained the wall before he had even fetched his breath. Rather more clumsily, Augustus followed his friend’s example. Once his foot slipped, and he was all but over. He extended his hands involuntarily, and caught Paul by the leg. Happily our hero had then gained the wall, to which he was clinging; and for once in a way, one rogue raised himself without throwing over another. Behold Tomlinson and Paul now seated for an instant on the wall to recover breath; the latter then,—the descent to the ground was not very great,—letting his body down by his hands, dropped into the garden.

“Hurt?” asked the prudent Augustus, in a hoarse whisper, before he descended from his “bad eminence,” being even willing—

                   “To bear those ills he had,                     Than fly to others that he knew not of”

“No!” without taking every previous precaution in his power, was the answer in the same voice, and Augustus dropped.

So soon as this latter worthy had recovered the shock of his fall, he lost not a moment in running to the other end of the garden. Paul followed. By the way Tomlinson stopped at a heap of rubbish, and picked up an immense stone. When they came to the part of the wall they had agreed to scale, they found the watchman,—about whom they needed not, by the by, to have concerned themselves; for had it not been arranged that he was to have met them, the deep fog would have effectually prevented him from seeing them. This faithful guardian Augustus knocked down, not with a stone, but with ten guineas; he then drew forth from his dress a thickish cord, which he procured some days before from the turnkey, and fastening the stone firmly to one end, threw that end over the wall. Now the wall had (as walls of great strength mostly have) an overhanging sort of battlement on either side; and the stone, when flung over and drawn to the tether of the cord to which it was attached, necessarily hitched against this projection; and thus the cord was as it were fastened to the wall, and Tomlinson was enabled by it to draw himself up to the top of the barrier. He performed this feat with gymnastic address, like one who had often practised it; albeit the discreet adventurer had not mentioned in his narrative to Paul any previous occasion for the practice. As soon as he had gained the top of the wall, he threw down the cord to his companion, and, in consideration of Paul’s inexperience in that manner of climbing, gave the fastening of the rope an additional security by holding it himself. With slowness and labour Paul hoisted himself up; and then, by transferring the stone to the other side of the wall, where it made of course a similar hitch, our two adventurers were enabled successively to slide down, and consummate their escape from the House of Correction.

“Follow me now!” said Augustus, as he took to his heels; and Paul pursued him through a labyrinth of alleys and lanes, through which he shot and dodged with a variable and shifting celerity that, had not Paul kept close upon him, would very soon, combined with the fog, have snatched him from the eyes of his young ally. Happily the immaturity of the morning, the obscurity of the streets passed through, and above all, the extreme darkness of the atmosphere, prevented that detection and arrest which their prisoner’s garb would otherwise have insured them. At length they found themselves in the fields; and skulking along hedges, and diligently avoiding the highroad, they continued to fly onward, until they had advanced several miles into “the bowels of the land.” At that time “the bowels” of Augustus Tomlinson began to remind him of their demands; and he accordingly suggested the desirability of their seizing the first peasant they encountered, and causing him to exchange clothes with one of the fugitives, who would thus be enabled to enter a public-house and provide for their mutual necessities. Paul agreed to this proposition, and accordingly they watched their opportunity and caught a ploughman. Augustus stripped him of his frock, hat, and worsted stockings; and Paul, hardened by necessity and companionship, helped to tie the poor ploughman to a tree. They then continued their progress for about an hour, and, as the shades of evening fell around them, they discovered a public-house. Augustus entered, and returned in a few minutes laden with bread and cheese, and a bottle of beer. Prison fare cures a man of daintiness, and the two fugitives dined on these homely viands with considerable complacency. They then resumed their journey, and at length, wearied with exertion, they arrived at a lonely haystack, where they resolved to repose for an hour or two.

CHAPTER X

Unlike the ribald, whose licentious jest Pollutes his banquet, and insults his guest, From wealth and grandeur easy to descend, Thou joy’st to lose the master in the friend. We round thy board the cheerful menials see, Gay— with the smile of bland equality; No social care the gracious lord disdains; Love prompts to love, and reverence reverence gains. Translation of LUCAN to Paso, Prefixed to the Twelfth Paper of “The Rambler.”

Coyly shone down the bashful stars upon our adventurers, as, after a short nap behind the haystack, they stretched themselves, and looking at each other, burst into an involuntary and hilarious laugh at the prosperous termination of their exploit.

Hitherto they had been too occupied, first by their flight, then by hunger, then by fatigue, for self-gratulation; now they rubbed their hands, and joked like runaway schoolboys at their escape.

By degrees their thoughts turned from the past to the future; and “Tell me, my dear fellow,” said Augustus, “what you intend to do. I trust I have long ago convinced you that it is no sin ‘to serve our friends’ and to ‘be true to our party;’ and therefore, I suppose, you will decide upon taking to the road.”

“It is very odd,” answered Paul, “that I should have any scruples left after your lectures on the subject; but I own to you frankly that, somehow or other, I have doubts whether thieving be really the honestest profession I could follow.”

“Listen to me, Paul,” answered Augustus; and his reply is not unworthy of notice. “All crime and all excellence depend upon a good choice of words. I see you look puzzled; I will explain. If you take money from the public, and say you have robbed, you have indubitably committed a great crime; but if you do the same, and say you have been relieving the necessities of the poor, you have done an excellent action. If, in afterwards dividing this money with your companions, you say you have been sharing booty, you have committed an offence against the laws of your country; but if you observe that you have been sharing with your friends the gains of your industry, you have been performing one of the noblest actions of humanity. To knock a man on the head is neither virtuous nor guilty, but it depends upon the language applied to the action to make it murder or glory. Why not say, then, that you have testified the courage of a hero, rather than the atrocity of a ruffian? This is perfectly clear, is it not?”

[We observe in a paragraph from an American paper, copied without comment into the “Morning Chronicle,” a singular proof of the truth of Tomlinson’s philosophy!  “Mr. Rowland Stephenson,” so runs the extract, “the celebrated English banker, has just purchased a considerable tract of land,” etc.  Most philosophical of paragraphists!  “Celebrated English banker!”—that sentence is a better illustration of verbal fallacies than all Ben tham’s treatises put together.  “Celebrated!”  O Mercury, what a dexterous epithet!]

“It seems so,” answered Paul.

“It is so self-evident that it is the way all governments are carried on. Wherefore, my good Paul, we only do what all other legislators do. We are never rogues so long as we call ourselves honest fellows, and we never commit a crime so long as we can term it a virtue. What say you now?”

Paul smiled, and was silent a few moments before he replied: “There is very little doubt but that you are wrong; yet if you are, so are all the rest of the world. It is of no use to be the only white sheep of the flock. Wherefore, my dear Tomlinson, I will in future be an excellent citizen, relieve the necessities of the poor, and share the gains of my industry with my friends.”

“Bravo!” cried Tomlinson. “And now that that is settled, the sooner you are inaugurated the better. Since the starlight has shone forth, I see that I am in a place I ought to be very well acquainted with; or, if you like to be suspicious, you may believe that I have brought you purposely in this direction. But first let me ask if you feel any great desire to pass the night by this haystack, or whether you would like a song and the punchbowl almost as much as the open air, with the chance of being eaten up in a pinch of hay by some strolling cow.”

“You may conceive my choice,” answered Paul.

“Well, then, there is an excellent fellow near here, who keeps a public-house, and is a firm ally and generous patron of the lads of the cross. At certain periods they hold weekly meetings at his house: this is one of the nights. What say you? Shall I introduce you to the club?”

“I shall be very glad if they will admit me,” returned Paul, whom many and conflicting thoughts rendered laconic.

“Oh! no fear of that, under my auspices. To tell you the truth, though we are a tolerant set, we welcome every new proselyte with enthusiasm. But are you tired?”

“A little; the house is not far, you say?”

“About a mile off,” answered Tomlinson. “Lean on me.”

Our wanderers now, leaving the haystack, struck across part of Finchley Common; for the abode of the worthy publican was felicitously situated, and the scene in which his guests celebrated their festivities was close by that on which they often performed their exploits.

As they proceeded, Paul questioned his friend touching the name and character of “mine host;” and the all-knowing Augustus Tomlinson answered him, Quaker-like, by a question,—

“Have you never heard of Gentleman George?”

“What! the noted head of a flash public-house in the country? To be sure I have, often; my poor nurse, Dame Lobkins, used to say he was the best-spoken man in the trade!”

“Ay, so he is still. In his youth, George was a very handsome fellow, but a little too fond of his lass and his bottle to please his father,—a very staid old gentleman, who walked about on Sundays in a bob-wig and a gold-headed cane, and was a much better farmer on week-days than he was head of a public-house. George used to be a remarkably smart-dressed fellow, and so he is to this day. He has a great deal of wit, is a very good whist-player, has a capital cellar, and is so fond of seeing his friends drunk, that he bought some time ago a large pewter measure in which six men can stand upright. The girls, or rather the old women, to which last he used to be much more civil of the two, always liked him; they say nothing is so fine as his fine speeches, and they give him the title of ‘Gentleman George.’ He is a nice, kind-hearted man in many things. Pray Heaven we shall have no cause to miss him when he departs! But, to tell you the truth, he takes more than his share of our common purse.”