The Caxtons, Part 2

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PART II.

CHAPTER I.

When I had reached the age of twelve, I had got to the head of the
preparatory school to which I had been sent. And having thus exhausted
all the oxygen of learning in that little receiver, my parents looked
out for a wider range for my inspirations. During the last two years in
which I had been at school, my love for study had returned; but it was a
vigorous, wakeful, undreamy love, stimulated by competition, and
animated by the practical desire to excel.

My father no longer sought to curb my intellectual aspirings. He had
too great a reverence for scholarship not to wish me to become a scholar
if possible; though he more than once said to me somewhat sadly, "Master
books, but do not let them master you. Read to live, not live to read.
One slave of the lamp is enough for a household; my servitude must not
be a hereditary bondage."

My father looked round for a suitable academy; and the fame of Dr.
Herman's "Philhellenic Institute" came to his ears.

Now, this Dr. Herman was the son of a German music-master who had
settled in England. He had completed his own education at the
University of Bonn; but finding learning too common a drug in that
market to bring the high price at which he valued his own, and having
some theories as to political freedom which attached him to England, he
resolved upon setting up a school, which he designed as an "Era in the
History of the Human Mind." Dr. Herman was one of the earliest of those
new-fashioned authorities in education who have, more lately, spread
pretty numerously amongst us, and would have given, perhaps, a dangerous
shake to the foundations of our great classical seminaries, if those
last had not very wisely, though very cautiously, borrowed some of the
more sensible principles which lay mixed and adulterated amongst the
crotchets and chimeras of their innovating rivals and assailants.

Dr. Herman had written a great many learned works against every pre-
existing method of instruction; that which had made the greatest noise
was upon the infamous fiction of Spelling-Books: "A more lying,
roundabout, puzzle-headed delusion than that by which we Confuse the
clear instincts of truth in our accursed systems of spelling, was never
concocted by the father of falsehood." Such was the exordium of this
famous treatise. "For instance, take the monosyllable Cat. What a
brazen forehead you must have when you say to an infant, c, a, t,--spell
Cat: that is, three sounds, forming a totally opposite compound,--
opposite in every detail, opposite in the whole,--compose a poor little
monosyllable which, if you would but say the simple truth, the child
will learn to spell merely by looking at it! How can three sounds,
which run thus to the ear, see-eh-tee, compose the sound cat? Don't
they rather compose the sound see-eh-te, or ceaty? How can a system of
education flourish that begins by so monstrous a falsehood, which the
sense of hearing suffices to contradict? No wonder that the horn-book
is the despair of mothers! "From this instance the reader will perceive
that Dr. Herman, in his theory of education, began at the beginning,--he
took the bull fairly by the horns. As for the rest, upon a broad
principle of eclecticism, he had combined together every new patent
invention for youthful idea-shooting. He had taken his trigger from
Hofwyl; he had bought his wadding from Hamilton; he had got his copper-
caps from Bell and Lancaster. The youthful idea,--he had rammed it
tight! he had rammed it loose! he had rammed it with pictorial
illustrations! he had rammed it with the monitorial system! he had
rammed it in every conceivable way, and with every imaginable ramrod!
but I have mournful doubts whether he shot the youthful idea an inch
farther than it did under the old mechanism of flint and steel!
Nevertheless, as Dr. Herman really did teach a great many things too
much neglected at schools; as, besides Latin and Greek, he taught a vast
variety in that vague infinite nowadays called "useful knowledge;" as he
engaged lecturers on chemistry, engineering, and natural history; as
arithmetic and the elements of physical science were enforced with zeal
and care; as all sorts of gymnastics were intermingled with the sports
of the playground,--so the youthful idea, if it did not go farther,
spread its shots in a wider direction, and a boy could not stay there
five years without learning something: which is more than can be said of
all schools! He learned at least to use his eyes and his ears and his
limbs; order, cleanliness, exercise, grew into habits; and the school
pleased the ladies and satisfied the gentlemen,--in a word, it thrived;
and Dr. Herman, at the time I speak of, numbered more than one hundred
pupils. Now, when the worthy man first commenced the task of tuition,
he had proclaimed the humanest abhorrence to the barbarous system of
corporal punishment. But alas! as his school increased in numbers, he
had proportionately recanted these honorable and anti-birchen ideas. He
had--reluctantly, perhaps, honestly, no doubt; but with full
determination--come to the conclusion that there are secret springs
which can only be detected by the twigs of the divining-rod; and having
discovered with what comparative ease the whole mechanism of his little
government could be carried on by the admission of the birch-regulator,
so, as he grew richer and lazier and fatter, the Philhellenic Institute
spun along as glibly as a top kept in vivacious movement by the
perpetual application of the lash.

I believe that the school did not suffer in reputation from this sad
apostasy on the part of the head-master; on the contrary, it seemed more
natural and English,--less outlandish and heretical. And it was at the
zenith of its renown when, one bright morning, with all my clothes
nicely mended, and a large plum-cake in my box, I was deposited at its
hospitable gates.

Amongst Dr. Herman's various whimsicalities there was one to which he
had adhered with more fidelity than to the anti-corporal punishment
articles of his creed; and, in fact, it was upon this that he had caused
those imposing words, "Philhellenic Institute," to blaze in gilt
capitals in front of his academy. He belonged to that illustrious class
of scholars who are now waging war on our popular mythologies, and
upsetting all the associations which the Etonians and Harrovians connect
with the household names of ancient history. In a word, he sought to
restore to scholastic purity the mutilated orthography of Greek
appellatives. He was extremely indignant that little boys should be
brought up to confound Zeus with Jupiter, Ares with Mars, Artemis with
Diana,--the Greek deities with the Roman; and so rigidly did he
inculcate the doctrine that these two sets of personages were to be kept
constantly contradistinguished from each other, that his cross-
examinations kept us in eternal confusion.

"Vat," he would exclaim to some new boy fresh from some grammar-school
on the Etonian system--"Vat do you mean by dranslating Zeus Jupiter? Is
dat amatory, irascible, cloud-compelling god of Olympus, vid his eagle
and his aegis, in the smallest degree resembling de grave, formal, moral
Jupiter Optimus Maximus of the Roman Capitol?--a god, Master Simpkins,
who would have been perfectly shocked at the idea of running after
innocent Fraulein dressed up as a swan or a bull! I put dat question to
you vonce for all, Master Simpkins." Master Simpkins took care to agree
with the Doctor. "And how could you," resumed Dr. Herman majestically,
turning to some other criminal alumnus,--"how could you presume to
dranslate de Ares of Homer, sir, by the audacious vulgarism Mars?---
Ares, Master Jones, who roared as loud as ten thousand men when he was
hurt; or as you vill roar if I catch you calling him Mars again?---Ares,
who covered seven plectra of ground? Confound Ares, the manslayer, with
the Mars or Mavors whom de Romans stole from de Sabines!--Mars, de
solemn and calm protector of Rome! Master Jones, Master Jones, you
ought to be ashamed of yourself!" And then waxing enthusiastic, and
warming more and more into German gutturals and pronunciation, the good
Doctor would lift up his hands, with two great rings on his thumbs, and
exclaim: "Und Du! and dou, Aphrodite,--dou, whose bert de seasons vel-
coined! dou, who didst put Atonis into a coffer, and den tid durn him
into an anemone! dou to be called Venus by dat snivel-nosed little
Master Budderfield!--Venus, who presided over Baumgartens and funerals
and nasty tinking sewers!---Venus Cloacina, O mein Gott! Come here,
Master Budderfield: I must flog you for dat; I must indeed, liddle boy!"
As our Philhellenic preceptor carried his archaeological purism into all
Greek proper names, it was not likely that my unhappy baptismal would
escape. The first time I signed my exercise I wrote "Pisistratus
Caxton" in my best round-hand. "And dey call your baba a scholar!" said
the Doctor, contemptuously. "Your name, sir, is Greek; and, as Greek,
you vill be dood enough to write it, vith vat you call an e and an o,--
P,e,i,s,i,s,t,r,a,t,o,s. Vat can you expect for to come to, Master
Caxton, if you don't pay de care dat is proper to your own dood name,--
de e, and de o? Ach? let me see no more of your vile corruptions! Mein
Gott! Pi! ven de name is Pei!"

The next time I wrote home to my father, modestly implying that I was
short of cash, that a trap-bat would be acceptable, and that the
favorite goddess amongst the boys (whether Greek or Roman was very
immaterial) was Diva Moneta, I felt a glow of classical pride in signing
myself "your affectionate Peisistratos." The next post brought a sad
damper to my scholastic exultation. The letter ran thus:--

My Dear Son,--I prefer my old acquaintances Thucydides and
Pisistratus to Thoukudides and Peisistratos. Horace is familiar to
me, but Horatius is only known to me as Cocles. Pisistratus can
play at trap-ball; but I find no authority in pure Greek to allow
me to suppose that that game was known to Peisistratos. I should
be too happy to send you a drachma or so, but I have no coins in my
possession current at Athens at the time when Pisistratus was spelt
Peisistratos.--Your affectionate father,
A. CAXTON.

Verily, here indeed was the first practical embarrassment produced by
that melancholy anachronism which my father had so prophetically
deplored. However, nothing like experience to prove the value of
compromise in this world. Peisistratos continued to write exercises,
and a second letter from Pisistratus was followed by the trap-bat.

CHAPTER II.

I was somewhere about sixteen when, on going home for the holidays, I
found my mother's brother settled among the household Lares. Uncle
Jack, as he was familiarly called, was a light-hearted, plausible,
enthusiastic, talkative fellow, who had spent three small fortunes in
trying to make a large one.

Uncle Jack was a great speculator; but in all his speculations he never
affected to think of himself,--it was always the good of his fellow-
creatures that he had at heart, and in this ungrateful world fellow-
creatures are not to be relied upon! On coining of age, he inherited
L6,000, from his maternal grandfather. It seemed to him then that his
fellow-creatures were sadly imposed upon by their tailors. Those ninth
parts of humanity notoriously eked out their fractional existence by
asking nine times too much for the clothing which civilization, and
perhaps a change of climate, render more necessary to us than to our
predecessors, the Picts. Out of pure philanthropy, Uncle Jack started
a "Grand National Benevolent Clothing Company," which undertook to
supply the public with inexpressibles of the best Saxon cloth at 7s. 6d.
a pair; coats, superfine, L1 18s.; and waistcoats at so much per dozen,
--they were all to be worked off by steam. Thus the rascally tailors
were to be put down, humanity clad, and the philanthropists rewarded
(but that was a secondary consideration) with a clear return of thirty
per cent. In spite of the evident charitableness of this Christian
design, and the irrefragable calculations upon which it was based, this
company died a victim to the ignorance and unthankfulness of our fellow-
creatures; and all that remained of Jack's L6,000, was a fifty-fourth
share in a small steam-engine, a large assortment of ready-made
pantaloons, and the liabilities of the directors.

Uncle Jack disappeared, and went on his travels. The same spirit of
philanthropy which characterized the speculations of his purse attended
the risks of his person. Uncle Jack had a natural leaning towards all
distressed communities: if any tribe, race, or nation was down in the
world, Uncle Jack threw himself plump into the scale to redress the
balance. Poles, Greeks (the last were then fighting the Turks),
Mexicans, Spaniards,--Uncle Jack thrust his nose into all their
squabbles! Heaven forbid I should mock thee, poor Uncle Jack! for those
generous predilections towards the unfortunate; only, whenever a nation
is in a misfortune, there is always a job going on! The Polish cause,
the Greek cause, the Alexican cause, and the Spanish cause are
necessarily mixed up with loans and subscriptions. These Continental
patriots, when they take up the sword with one hand, generally contrive
to thrust their other hand deep into their neighbor's breeches' pockets.
Uncle Jack went to Greece, thence he went to Spain, thence to Mexico.
No doubt he was of great service to those afflicted populations, for he
came back with unanswerable proof of their gratitude in the shape of
L3,000. Shortly after this appeared a prospectus of the "New, Grand,
National, Benevolent Insurance Company, for the Industrial Classes."
This invaluable document, after setting forth the immense benefits to
society arising from habits of providence and the introduction of
insurance companies,--proving the infamous rate of premiums exacted by
the existent offices, and their inapplicability to the wants of the
honest artisan, and declaring that nothing but the purest intentions of
benefiting their fellow-creatures, and raising the moral tone of
society, had led the directors to institute a new society, founded on
the noblest principles and the most moderate calculations,--proceeded to
demonstrate that twenty-four and a half per cent was the smallest
possible return the shareholders could anticipate. The company began
under the fairest auspices; an archbishop was caught as president, on
the condition always that he should give nothing but his name to the
society. Uncle Jack--more euphoniously designated as "the celebrated
philanthropist, John Jones Tibbets, Esquire"--was honorary secretary,
and the capital stated at two millions. But such was the obtuseness of
the industrial classes, so little did they perceive the benefits of
subscribing one-and-ninepence a-week from the age of twenty-one to
fifty, in order to secure at the latter age the annuity of L18, that the
company dissolved into thin air, and with it dissolved also Uncle Jack's
L3,000. Nothing more was then seen or heard of him for three years. So
obscure was his existence that on the death of an aunt, who left him a
small farm in Cornwall, it was necessary to advertise that "If John
Jones Tibbets, Esq., would apply to Messrs. Blunt & Tin, Lothbury,
between the hours of ten and four, he would hear of something to his
advantage." But even as a conjurer declares that he will call the ace
of spades, and the ace of spades, that you thought you had safely under
your foot, turns up on the table,--so with this advertisement suddenly
turned up Uncle Jack. With inconceivable satisfaction did the new
landowner settle himself in his comfortable homestead. The farm, which
was about two hundred acres, was in the best possible condition, and
saving one or two chemical preparations, which cost Uncle Jack, upon the
most scientific principles, thirty acres of buckwheat, the ears of which
came up, poor things, all spotted and speckled as if they had been
inoculated with the small-pox, Uncle Jack for the first two years was a
thriving man. Unluckily, however, one day Uncle Jack discovered a coal-
mine in a beautiful field of Swedish turnips; in another week the house
was full of engineers and naturalists, and in another month appeared; in
my uncle's best style, much improved by practice, a prospectus of the
"Grand National Anti-Monopoly Coal Company, instituted on behalf of the
poor householders of London, and against the Monster Monopoly of the
London Coal Wharves.

"A vein of the finest coal has been discovered on the estates of the
celebrated philanthropist, John Jones Tibbets, Esq. This new mine, the
Molly Wheel, having been satisfactorily tested by that eminent engineer,
Giles Compass, Esq., promises an inexhaustible field to the energies of
the benevolent and the wealth of the capitalist. It is calculated that
the best coals may be delivered, screened, at the mouth of the Thames
for 18s. per load, yielding a profit of not less than forty-eight per
cent to the shareholders. Shares L50, to be paid in five instalments.
Capital to be subscribed, one million. For shares, early application
must be made to Messrs. Blunt & Tin, solicitors, Lothbury."

Here, then, was something tangible for fellow-creatures to go on: there
was land, there was a mine, there was coal, and there actually came
shareholders and capital. Uncle Jack was so persuaded that his fortune
was now to be made, and had, moreover, so great a desire to share the
glory of ruining the monster monopoly of the London wharves, that he
refused a very large offer to dispose of the property altogether,
remained chief shareholder, and removed to London, where he set up his
carriage and gave dinners to his fellow-directors. For no less than
three years did this company flourish, having submitted the entire
direction and working of the mines to that eminent engineer, Giles
Compass. Twenty per cent was paid regularly by that gentleman to the
shareholders, and the shares were at more than cent per cent, when one
bright morning Giles Compass, Esq., unexpectedly removed himself to that
wider field for genius like his, the United States; and it was
discovered that the mine had for more than a year run itself into a
great pit of water, and that Mr. Compass had been paying the
shareholders out of their own capital. My uncle had the satisfaction
this time of being ruined in very good company; three doctors of
divinity, two county members, a Scotch lord, and an East India director
were all in the same boat,--that boat which went down with the coal-mine
into the great water-pit!

It was just after this event that Uncle Jack, sanguine and light-hearted
as ever, suddenly recollected his sister, Mrs. Caxton, and not knowing
where else to dine, thought he would repose his limbs under my father's
trabes citrea, which the ingenious W. S. Landor opines should be
translated "mahogany." You never saw a more charming man than Uncle
Jack.

All plump people are more popular than thin people. There is something
jovial and pleasant in the sight of a round face! What conspiracy could
succeed when its head was a lean and hungry-looking fellow, like
Cassius? If the Roman patriots had had Uncle Jack amongst them, perhaps
they would never have furnished a tragedy to Shakspeare. Uncle Jack was
as plump as a partridge,--not unwieldy, not corpulent, not obese, not
vastus, which Cicero objects to in an orator, but every crevice
comfortably filled up. Like the ocean, "time wrote no wrinkles on his
glassy [or brassy] brow." His natural lines were all upward curves, his
smile most ingratiating, his eye so frank, even his trick of rubbing his
clean, well-feel, English-looking hands, had something about it coaxing
and debonnaire, something that actually decoyed you into trusting your
money into hands so prepossessing. Indeed, to him might be fully
applied the expression--Sedem animce in extremis digitis habet,--"He had
his soul's seat in his finger-ends." The critics observe that few men
have ever united in equal perfection the imaginative with the scientific
faculties. "Happy he," exclaims Schiller, "who combines the
enthusiast's warmth with the worldly man's light:" light and warmth,
Uncle Jack had them both. He was a perfect symphony of bewitching
enthusiasm and convincing calculation. Dicaeopolis in the
"Aeharnenses," in presenting a gentleman called Nicharchus to the
audience, observes: "He is small, I confess, but, there is nothing lost
in him: all is knave that is not fool." Parodying the equivocal
compliment, I may say that though Uncle Jack was no giant, there was
nothing lost in him. Whatever was not philanthropy was arithmetic, and
whatever was not arithmetic was philanthropy. He would have been
equally dear to Howard and to Cocker. Uncle Jack was comely too,--
clear-skinned and florid, had a little mouth, with good teeth, wore no
whiskers, shaved his beard as close as if it were one of his grand
national companies; his hair, once somewhat sandy, was now rather
grayish, which increased the respectability of his appearance; and he
wore it flat at the sides and raised in a peak at the top; his organs of
constructiveness and ideality were pronounced by Mr. Squills to be
prodigious, and those freely developed bumps gave great breadth to his
forehead. Well-shaped, too, was Uncle Jack, about five feet eight,--the
proper height for an active man of business. He wore a black coat; but
to make the nap look the fresher, he had given it the relief of gilt
buttons, on--which were wrought a small crown and anchor; at a distance
this button looked like the king's button, and gave him the air of one
who has a place about Court. He always wore a white neckcloth without
starch, a frill, and a diamond pin, which last furnished him with
observations upon certain mines of Mexico, which he had a great, but
hitherto unsatisfied, desire of seeing worked by a grand National United
Britons Company. His waistcoat of a morning was pale buff--of an
evening, embroidered velvet; wherewith were connected sundry schemes of
an "association for the improvement of native manufactures." His
trousers, matutinally, were of the color vulgarly called "blotting-
paper;" and he never wore boots,--which, he said, unfitted a man for
exercise,--but short drab gaiters and square-toed shoes. His watch-
chain was garnished with a vast number of seals; each seal, indeed,
represented the device of some defunct company, and they might be said
to resemble the scalps of the slain worn by the aboriginal Iroquois,--
concerning whom, indeed, he had once entertained philanthropic designs,
compounded of conversion to Christianity on the principles of the
English Episcopal Church, and of an advantageous exchange of beaver-
skins for Bibles, brandy, and gunpowder.

That Uncle Jack should win my heart was no wonder; my mother's he had
always won, from her earliest recollection of his having persuaded her
to let her great doll (a present from her godmother) be put up to a
raffle for the benefit of the chimney-sweepers. "So like him,--so
good!" she would often say pensively. "They paid sixpence apiece for
the raffle,--twenty tickets,--and the doll cost L2. Nobody was taken
in, and the doll, poor thing (it had such blue eyes!) went for a quarter
of its value. But Jack said nobody could guess what good the ten
shillings did to the chimney-sweepers." Naturally enough, I say, my
mother liked Uncle Jack; but my father liked him quite as well,--and
that was a strong proof of my uncle's powers of captivation. However,
it is noticeable that when some retired scholar is once interested in an
active man of the world, he is more inclined to admire him than others
are. Sympathy with such a companion gratifies at once his curiosity and
his indolence; he can travel with him, scheme with him, fight with him,
go with him through all the adventures of which his own books speak so
eloquently, and all the time never stir from his easy-chair. My father
said "that it was like listening to Ulysses to hear Uncle Jack!" Uncle
Jack, too, had been in Greece and Asia Minor, gone over the site of the
siege of Troy, eaten figs at Marathon, shot hares in the Peloponnesus,
and drunk three pints of brown stout at the top of the Great Pyramid.

Therefore, Uncle Jack was like a book of reference to my father. Verily
at times he looked on him as a book, and took him down after dinner as
he would a volume of Dodwell or Pausanias. In fact, I believe that
scholars who never move from their cells are not the less an eminently
curious, bustling, active race, rightly understood. Even as old Burton
saith of himself--"Though I live a collegiate student, and lead a
monastic life, sequestered from those tumults and troubles of the world,
I hear and see what is done abroad, how others run, ride, turmoil, and
macerate themselves in town and country,"--which citation sufficeth to
show that scholars are naturally the most active men of the world; only
that while their heads plot with Augustus, fight with Julius, sail with
Columbus, and change the face of the globe with Alexander, Attila, or
Mahomet, there is a certain mysterious attraction, which our improved
knowledge of mesmerism will doubtless soon explain to the satisfaction
of science, between that extremer and antipodal part of the human frame,
called in the vulgate "the seat of honor," and the stuffed leather of an
armed chair. Learning somehow or other sinks down to that part into
which it was first driven, and produces therein a leaden heaviness and
weight, which counteract those lively emotions of the brain that might
otherwise render students too mercurial and agile for the safety of
established order. I leave this conjecture to the consideration of
experimentalists in the physics.

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