The Caxtons, Part 1
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Edward Bulwer Lytton >> The Caxtons, Part 1
"Why, then, Squills," said my father, familiarly, "you son would know
that though a scholar is often a fool, he is never a fool so supreme, so
superlative, as when he is defacing the first unsullied page of the
human history by entering into it the commonplaces of his own pedantry.
A scholar, sir,--at least one like me,--is of all persons the most unfit
to teach young children. A mother, sir,--a simple, natural, loving
mother,--is the infant's true guide to knowledge."
"Egad! Mr. Caxton,--in spite of Helvetius, whom you quoted the night the
boy was born,--egad! I believe you are right."
"I am sure of it," said my father,--"at least as sure as a poor mortal
can be of anything. I agree with Helvetius, the child should be
educated from its birth; but how? There is the rub: send him to school
forthwith! Certainly, he is at school already with the two great
teachers,--Nature and Love. Observe, that childhood and genius have the
same master-organ in common,--inquisitiveness. Let childhood have its
way, and as it began where genius begins, it may find what genius finds.
A certain Greek writer tells us of some man who, in order to save his
bees a troublesome flight to Hymettus, cut their wings, and placed
before them the finest flowers he could select. The poor bees made no
honey. Now, sir, if I were to teach my boy, I should be cutting his
wings and giving him the flowers he should find himself. Let us leave
Nature alone for the present, and Nature's loving proxy, the watchful
mother."
Therewith my father pointed to his heir sprawling on the grass and
plucking daisies on the lawn, while the young mother's voice rose
merrily, laughing at the child's glee.
"I shall make but a poor bill out of your nursery, I see," said Mr.
Squills.
Agreeably to these doctrines, strange in so learned a father, I thrived
and flourished, and learned to spell, and make pot-hooks, under the
joint care of my mother and Dame Primmins. This last was one of an old
race fast dying away,--the race of old, faithful servants; the race of
old, tale-telling nurses. She had reared my mother before me; but her
affection put out new flowers for the new generation. She was a
Devonshire woman; and Devonshire women, especially those who have passed
their youth near the sea-coast, are generally superstitious. She had a
wonderful budget of fables. Before I was six years old, I was erudite
in that primitive literature in which the legends of all nations are
traced to a common fountain,--Puss in Boots, Tom Thumb, Fortunio,
Fortunatus, Jack the Giant-Killer; tales, like proverbs, equally
familiar, under different versions, to the infant worshippers of Budh
and the hardier children of Thor. I may say, without vanity, that in an
examination in those venerable classics I could have taken honors!
My dear mother had some little misgivings as to the solid benefit to be
derived from such fantastic erudition, and timidly consulted my father
thereon.
"My love," answered my father, in that tone of voice which always
puzzled even my mother to be sure whether he was in jest or earnest, "in
all these fables certain philosophers could easily discover symbolic
significations of the highest morality. I have myself written a
treatise to prove that Puss in Boots is an allegory upon the progress of
the human understanding, having its origin in the mystical schools of
the Egyptian priests, and evidently an illustration of the worship
rendered at Thebes and Memphis to those feline quadrupeds of which they
make both religious symbols and elaborate mummies."
"My dear Austin," said my mother, opening her blue eyes, "you don't
think that Sisty will discover all those fine things in Puss in Boots!"
"My dear Kitty," answered my father, "you don't think, when you were
good enough to take up with me, that you found in me all the fine things
I have learned from books. You knew me only as a harmless creature who
was happy enough to please your fancy. By and by you discovered that I
was no worse for all the quartos that have transmigrated into ideas
within me,--ideas that are mysteries even to myself. If Sisty, as you
call the child (plague on that unlucky anachronism! which you do well to
abbreviate into a dissyllable),--if Sisty can't discover all the wisdom
of Egypt in Puss in Boots, what then? Puss in Boots is harmless, and it
pleases his fancy. All that wakes curiosity is wisdom, if innocent; all
that pleases the fancy now, turns hereafter to love or to knowledge.
And so, my dear, go back to the nursery."
But I should wrong thee, O best of fathers! if I suffered the reader to
suppose that because thou didst seem so indifferent to my birth, and so
careless as to my early teaching, therefore thou wert, at heart,
indifferent to thy troublesome Neogilos. As I grew older, I became more
sensibly aware that a father's eye was upon me. I distinctly remember
one incident, that seems to me, in looking back, a crisis in my infant
life, as the first tangible link between my own heart and that calm
great soul.
My father was seated on the lawn before the house, his straw hat over
his eyes (it was summer), and his book on his lap. Suddenly a beautiful
delf blue-and-white flower-pot, which had been set on the window-sill of
an upper story, fell to the ground with a crash, and the fragments
spluttered up round my father's legs. Sublime in his studies as
Archimedes in the siege, he continued to read,--Impavidum ferient
ruince!
"Dear, dear!" cried my mother, who was at work in the porch, "my poor
flower-pot that I prized so much! Who could have done this? Primmins,
Primmins!"
Mrs. Primmins popped her head out of the fatal window, nodded to the
summons, and came down in a trice, pale and breathless.
"Oh!" said my mother, Mournfully, "I would rather have lost all the
plants in the greenhouse in the great blight last May,--I would rather
the best tea-set were broken! The poor geranium I reared myself, and
the dear, dear flower-pot which Mr. Caxton bought for me my last
birthday! That naughty child must have done this!"
Mrs. Primmins was dreadfully afraid of my father,--why, I know not,
except that very talkative social persons are usually afraid of very
silent shy ones. She cast a hasty glance at her master, who was
beginning to evince signs of attention, and cried promptly, "No, ma'am,
it was not the dear boy, bless his flesh, it was I!"
"You? How could you be so careless? and you knew how I prized them
both. Oh, Primmins!" Primmins began to sob.
"Don't tell fibs, nursey," said a small, shrill voice; and Master Sisty,
coming out of the house as bold as brass, continued rapidly--"don't
scold Primmins, mamma: it was I who pushed out the flower-pot."
"Hush!" said nurse, more frightened than ever, and looking aghast
towards my father, who had very deliberately taken off his hat, and was
regarding the scene with serious eyes wide awake. "Hush! And if he did
break it, ma'am, it was quite an accident; he was standing so, and he
never meant it. Did you, Master Sisty? Speak!" this in a whisper, "or
Pa will be so angry."
"Well," said my mother, "I suppose it was an accident; take care in
future, my child. You are sorry, I see, to have grieved me. There's a
kiss; don't fret."
"No, mamma, you must not kiss me; I don't deserve it. I pushed out the
flower-pot on purpose."
"Ha! and why?" said my father, walking up.
Mrs. Primmins trembled like a leaf.
"For fun!" said I, hanging my head,--"just to see how you'd look, papa;
and that's the truth of it. Now beat me, do beat me!"
My father threw his book fifty yards off, stooped down, and caught me to
his breast. "Boy," he said, "you have done wrong: you shall repair it
by remembering all your life that your father blessed God for giving him
a son who spoke truth in spite of fear! Oh! Mrs. Primmins, the next
fable of this kind you try to teach him, and we part forever!"
From that time I first date the hour when I felt that I loved my father,
and knew that he loved me; from that time, too, he began to converse
with me. He would no longer, if he met me in the garden, pass by with a
smile and nod; he would stop, put his book in his pocket, and though his
talk was often above my comprehension, still somehow I felt happier and
better, and less of an infant, when I thought over it, and tried to
puzzle out the meaning; for he had away of suggesting, not teaching,
putting things into my head, and then leaving them to work out their own
problems. I remember a special instance with respect to that same
flower-pot and geranium. Mr. Squills, who was a bachelor, and well-to-
do in the world, often made me little presents. Not long after the
event I have narrated, he gave me one far exceeding in value those
usually bestowed on children,--it was a beautiful large domino-box in
cut ivory, painted and gilt. This domino-box was my delight. I was
never weary of playing, at dominos with Mrs. Primmins, and I slept with
the box under my pillow.
"Ah!" said my father one day, when he found me ranging the ivory
parallelograms in the parlor, "ah! you like that better than all your
playthings, eh?"
"Oh, yes, papa!"
"You would be very sorry if your mamma were to throw that box out of the
window and break it for fun." I looked beseechingly at my father, and
made no answer.
"But perhaps you would be very glad," he resumed, "if suddenly one of
those good fairies you read of could change the domino-box into a
beautiful geranium in a beautiful blue-and-white flower-pot, and you
could have the pleasure of putting it on your mamma's window-sill."
"Indeed I would!" said I, half-crying.
"My dear boy, I believe you; but good wishes don't mend bad actions:
good actions mend bad actions."
So saying, he shut the door and went out. I cannot tell you how puzzled
I was to make out what my father meant by his aphorism. But I know that
I played at dominos no more that day. The next morning my father found
me seated by myself under a tree in the garden; he paused, and looked at
me with his grave bright eyes very steadily.
"My boy," said he, "I am going to walk to--,"a town about two miles off:
"will you come? And, by the by, fetch your domino-box. I should like
to show it to a person there." I ran in for the box, and, not a little
proud of walking with my father upon the high-road, we set out.
"Papa," said I by the way, "there are no fairies now."
"What then, my child?"
"Why, how then can my domino-box be changed into a geranium and a blue-
and-white flower-pot?"
"My dear," said my father, leaning his hand on my shoulder, "everybody
who is in earnest to be good, carries two fairies about with him,--one
here," and he touched my heart, "and one here," and he touched my
forehead.
"I don't understand, papa."
"I can wait till you do, Pisistratus. What a name!"
My father stopped at a nursery gardener's, and after looking over the
flowers, paused before a large double geranium. "Ah! this is finer than
that which your mamma was so fond of. What is the cost, sir?"
"Only 7s. 6d.," said the gardener.
My father buttoned up his pocket. "I can't afford it to-day," said he,
gently, and we walked out.
On entering the town, we stopped again at a china warehouse. "Have you
a flower-pot like that I bought some months ago? Ah! here is one,
marked 3s. 6d. Yes, that is the price. Well; when your mamma's
birthday comes again, we must buy her another. That is some months to
wait. And we can wait, Master Sisty. For truth, that blooms all the
year round, is better than a poor geranium; and a word that is never
broken, is better than a piece of delf."
My head, which had drooped before, rose again; but the rush of joy at my
heart almost stifled me.
"I have called to pay your little bill," said my father, entering the
shop of one of those fancy stationers common in country towns, and who
sell all kinds of pretty toys and knick-knacks. "And by the way," he
added, as the smiling shopman looked over his books for the entry, "I
think my little boy here can show you a much handsomer specimen of
French workmanship than that work-box which you enticed Mrs. Caxton into
raffling for, last winter. Show your domino-box, my dear."
I produced my treasure, and the shopman was liberal in his
commendations. "It is always well, my boy, to know what a thing is
worth, in case one wishes to part with it. If my young gentleman gets
tired of his plaything, what will you give him for it?"
"Why, sir," said the shopman, "I fear we could not afford to give more
than eighteen shillings for it, unless the young gentleman took some of
these pretty things in exchange."
"Eighteen shillings!" said my father; "you would give that sum! Well,
my boy, whenever you do grow tired of your box, you have my leave to
sell it."
My father paid his bill and went out. I lingered behind a few moments,
and joined him at the end of the street.
"Papa, papa," I cried, clapping my hands, "we can buy the geranium; we
can buy the flower-pot." And I pulled a handful of silver from my
pockets.
"Did I not say right?" said my father, passing his handkerchief over his
eyes. "You have found the two fairies!"
Oh! how proud, how overjoyed I was when, after placing vase and flower
on the window-sill, I plucked my mother by the gown and made her follow
me to the spot.
"It is his doing and his money!" said my father; "good actions have
mended the bad."
"What!" cried my mother, when she had learned all; "and your poor
domino-box that you were so fond of! We will go back to-morrow and buy
it back, if it costs us double."
"Shall we buy it back, Pisistratus?" asked my father.
"Oh, no--no--no! It would spoil all," I cried, burying my face on my
father's breast.
"My wife," said my father, solemnly, "this is my first lesson to our
child,--the sanctity and the happiness of self-sacrifice; undo not what
it should teach to his dying day."
CHAPTER V.
When I was between my seventh and my eighth year, a change came over me,
which may perhaps be familiar to the notice of those parents who boast
the anxious blessing of an only child. The ordinary vivacity of
childhood forsook me; I became quiet, sedate, and thoughtful. The
absence of play-fellows of my own age, the companionship of mature
minds, alternated only by complete solitude, gave something precocious,
whether to my imagination or my reason. The wild fables muttered to me
by the old nurse in the summer twilight or over the winter's hearth,--
the effort made by my struggling intellect to comprehend the grave,
sweet wisdom of my father's suggested lessons,--tended to feed a passion
for revery, in which all my faculties strained and struggled, as in the
dreams that come when sleep is nearest waking. I had learned to read
with ease, and to write with some fluency, and I already began to
imitate, to reproduce. Strange tales akin to those I had gleaned from
fairy-land, rude songs modelled from such verse-books as fell into my
hands, began to mar the contents of marble-covered pages designed for
the less ambitious purposes of round text and multiplication. My mind
was yet more disturbed by the intensity of my home affections. My love
for both my parents had in it something morbid and painful. I often
wept to think how little I could do for those I loved so well. My
fondest fancies built up imaginary difficulties for them, which my arm
was to smooth. These feelings, thus cherished, made my nerves over-
susceptible and acute. Nature began to affect me powerfully; and, from
that affection rose a restless curiosity to analyze the charms that so
mysteriously moved me to joy or awe, to smiles or tears. I got my
father to explain to me the elements of astronomy; I extracted from
Squills, who was an ardent botanist, some of the mysteries in the life
of flowers. But music became my darling passion. My mother (though the
daughter of a great scholar,--a scholar at whose name my father raised
his hat if it happened to be on his head) possessed, I must own it
fairly, less book-learning than many a humble tradesman's daughter can
boast in this more enlightened generation; but she had some natural
gifts which had ripened, Heaven knows how! into womanly accomplishments.
She drew with some elegance, and painted flowers to exquisite
perfection. She played on more than one instrument with more than
boarding-school skill; and though she sang in no language but her own,
few could hear her sweet voice without being deeply touched. Her music,
her songs, had a wondrous effect on me. Thus, altogether, a kind of
dreamy yet delightful melancholy seized upon my whole being; and this
was the more remarkable because contrary to my early temperament, which
was bold, active, and hilarious. The change in my character began to
act upon my form. From a robust and vigorous infant, I grew into a pale
and slender boy. I began to ail and mope. Mr. Squills was called in.
"Tonics!" said Mr. Squills; "and don't let him sit over his book. Send
him out in the air; make him play. Come here, my boy: these organs are
growing too large;" and Mr. Squills, who was a phrenologist, placed his
hand on my forehead. "Gad, sir, here's an ideality for you; and, bless
my soul, what a, constructiveness!"
My father pushed aside his papers, and walked to and fro the room with
his hands behind him; but he did not say a word till Mr. Squills was
gone.
"My dear," then said he to my mother, on whose breast I was leaning my
aching ideality--"my dear, Pisistratus must go to school in good
earnest."
"Bless me, Austin!--at his age?"
"He is nearly eight years old."
"But he is so forward."
"It is for that reason he must go to school."
"I don't quite understand you, my love. I know he is getting past me;
but you who are so clever--"
My father took my mother's hand: "We can teach him nothing now, Kitty.
We send him to school to be taught--"
"By some schoolmaster who knows much less than you do--"
"By little schoolboys, who will make him a boy again," said my father,
almost sadly. "My dear, you remember that when our Kentish gardener
planted those filbert-trees, and when they were in their third year, and
you began to calculate on what they would bring in, you went out one
morning, and found he had cut them down to the ground. You were vexed,
and asked why. What did the gardener say? 'To prevent their bearing
too soon.' There is no want of fruitfulness here: put back the hour of
produce, that the plant may last."
"Let me go to school," said I, lifting my languid head and smiling on my
father. I understood him at once, and it was as if the voice of my life
itself answered him.
CHAPTER VI.
A year after the resolution thus come to, I was at home for the
holidays.
"I hope," said my mother, "that they are doing Sisty justice. I do
think he is not nearly so quick a child as he was before he went to
school. I wish you would examine him, Austin."
"I have examined him, my dear. It is just as I expected; and I am quite
satisfied."
"What! you really think he has come on?" said my mother, joyfully.
"He does not care a button for botany now," said Mr. Squills.
"And he used to be so fond of music, dear boy!" observed my mother, with
a sigh. "Good gracious, what noise is that?"
"Your son's pop-gun against the window," said my father. "It is lucky
it is only the window; it would have made a less deafening noise,
though, if it had been Mr. Squills's head, as it was yesterday morning."
"The left ear," observed Squills; "and a very sharp blow it was too.
Yet you are satisfied, Mr. Caxton?"
"Yes; I think the boy is now as great a blockhead as most boys of his
age are," observed my father with great complacency.
"Dear me, Austin,--a great blockhead?"
"What else did he go to school for?" asked my father.
And observing a certain dismay in the face of his female audience, and a
certain surprise in that of his male, he rose and stood on the hearth,
with one hand in his waistcoat, as was his wont when about to
philosophize in more detail than was usual to him.
"Mr. Squills," said he, "you have had great experience in families."
"As good a practice as any in the county," said Mr. Squills, proudly;
"more than I can manage. I shall advertise for a partner."
"And," resumed my father, "you must have observed almost invariably that
in every family there is what father, mother, uncle, and aunt pronounce
to be one wonderful child."
"One at least," said Mr. Squills, smiling.
"It is easy," continued my father, "to say this is parental partiality;
but it is not so. Examine that child as a stranger, and it will startle
yourself. You stand amazed at its eager curiosity, its quick
comprehension, its ready wit, its delicate perception. Often, too, you
will find some faculty strikingly developed. The child will have a turn
for mechanics, perhaps, and make you a model of a steamboat; or it will
have an ear tuned to verse, and will write you a poem like that it has
got by heart from 'The Speaker;' or it will take to botany (like
Pisistratus), with the old maid its aunt; or it will play a march on its
sister's pianoforte. In short, even you, Squills, will declare that it
is really a wonderful child."
"Upon my word," said Mr. Squills, thoughtfully, "there's a great deal of
truth in what you say. Little Tom Dobbs is a wonderful child; so is
Frank Stepington--and as for Johnny Styles, I must bring him here for
you to hear him prattle on Natural History, and see how well he handles
his pretty little microscope."
"Heaven forbid!" said my father. "And now let me proceed. These
thaumata, or wonders, last till when, Mr. Squills?--last till the boy
goes to school; and then, somehow or other, the thaumata vanish into
thin air, like ghosts at the cockcrow. A year after the prodigy has
been at the academy, father and mother, uncle and aunt, plague you no
more with his doings and sayings: the extraordinary infant has become a
very ordinary little boy. Is it not so, Mr. Squills?"
"Indeed you are right, sir. How did you come to be so observant? You
never seem to--"
"Hush!" interrupted my father; and then, looking fondly at my mother's
anxious face, he said soothingly: "Be comforted; this is wisely
ordained, and it is for the best."
"It must be the fault of the school," said my mother, shaking her head.
"It is the necessity of the school, and its virtue, my Kate. Let any
one of these wonderful children--wonderful as you thought Sisty himself-
-stay at home, and you will see its head grow bigger and bigger, and its
body thinner and thinner--eh, Mr. Squills?--till the mind take all
nourishment from the frame, and the frame, in turn, stint or make sickly
the mind. You see that noble oak from the window. If the Chinese had
brought it up, it would have been a tree in miniature at five years old,
and at a hundred, you would have set it in a flowerpot on your table, no
bigger than it was at five,--a curiosity for its maturity at one age; a
show for its diminutiveness at the other. No! the ordeal for talent is
school; restore the stunted mannikin to the growing child, and then let
the child, if it can, healthily, hardily, naturally, work its slow way
up into greatness. If greatness be denied it, it will at least be a
man; and that is better than to be a little Johnny Styles all its life,-
-an oak in a pill-box."
At that moment I rushed into the room, glowing and panting, health on my
cheek, vigor in my limbs, all childhood at my heart. "Oh, mamma, I have
got up the kite--so high Come and see. Do come, papa!"
"Certainly," said my father; "only don't cry so loud,--kites make no
noise in rising; yet, you see how they soar above the world. Come,
Kate. Where is my hat? Ah!--thank you, my boy."
"Kitty," said my father, looking at the kite, which, attached by its
string to the peg I had stuck into the ground, rested calm in the sky,
"never fear but what our kite shall fly as high; only, the human soul
has stronger instincts to mount upward than a few sheets of paper on a
framework of lath. But observe that to prevent its being lost in the
freedom of space,--we must attach it lightly to earth; and observe
again, my dear, that the higher it soars, the more string we must give
it."