Paul Clifford — Complete

I never robbed a single coach But with a lover's air; And though you might my course reproach, You never could my hair. Rise at six, dine at two, Rob your man without ado, Such my maxims; if you doubt Their wisdom, to the right-about! ( Signing to a sallow gentleman on the same side of the table to send up the brandy bowl.) Pass round the bingo,--of a gun, You musty, dusky, husky son! John Bull, who loves a harmless joke, Is apt at me to grin; But why be cross with laughing folk, Unless they laugh and win? John Bull has money in his box; And though his wit's divine, Yet let me laugh at Johnny's locks, And John may laugh at mine [Much of whatever amusement might be occasioned by the not (we trust) ill-natured travesties of certain eminent characters in this part of our work when first published, like all political allusions, loses point and becomes obscure as the applications cease to be familiar. It is already necessary, perhaps, to say that Fighting Attie herein typifies or illustrates the Duke of Wellington's abrupt dismissal of Mr. Huskisson.] THE SALLOW GENTLEMAN (in a hoarse voice). Attie, the bingo's now with me; I can't resign it yet, d' ye see! ATTIE (seizing the bowl). Resign, resign it,--cease your dust! (Wresting it away and fiercely regarding the sallow gentleman.) You have resigned it, and you must. CHORUS. You have resigned it, and you must. While the chorus, laughing at the discomfited tippler, yelled forth the emphatic words of the heroic Attie, that personage emptied the brandy at a draught, resumed his pipe, and in as few words as possible called on Bagshot for a song. The excellent old highwayman, with great diffidence, obeyed the request, cleared his throat, and struck off with a ditty somewhat to the tune of “The Old Woman.” OLD BAGS'S SONG. Are the days then gone, when on Hounslow Heath We flashed our nags, When the stoutest bosoms quailed beneath The voice of Bags? Ne'er was my work half undone, lest I should be nabbed Slow was old Bags, but he never ceased Till the whole was grabbed. CHORUS. Till the whole was grabbed. When the slow coach paused, and the gemmen stormed, I bore the brunt; And the only sound which my grave lips formed Was “blunt,”--still “blunt”! Oh, those jovial days are ne'er forgot! But the tape lags-- When I be's dead, you'll drink one pot To poor old Bags! CHORUS. To poor old Bags! “Ay, that we will, my dear Bagshot,” cried Gentleman George, affectionately; but observing a tear in the fine old fellow's eye, he added: “Cheer up! What, ho! cheer up! Times will improve, and Providence may yet send us one good year, when you shall be as well off as ever. You shakes your poll. Well, don't be humdurgeoned, but knock down a gemman.” Dashing away the drop of sensibility, the veteran knocked down Gentleman George himself. “Oh, dang it!” said George, with an air of dignity, “I ought to skip, since I finds the lush; but howsomever here goes.” GENTLEMAN GEORGE'S SONG. Air: “Old King Cole.” I be's the cove, the merry old cove, Of whose max all the rufflers sing; And a lushing cove, I thinks, by Jove, Is as great as a sober king! CHORUS. Is as great as a sober king! Whatever the noise as is made by the boys At the bar as they lush away, The devil a noise my peace alloys As long as the rascals pay! CHORUS. As long as the rascals pay! What if I sticks my stones and my bricks With mortar I takes from the snobbish? All who can feel for the public weal Likes the public-house to be bobbish. CHORUS. Likes the public-house to be bobbish. “There, gemmen!” said the publican, stopping short, “that's the pith of the matter, and split my wig but I'm short of breath now. So send round the brandy, Augustus; you sly dog, you keeps it all to yourself.” By this time the whole conclave were more than half-seas over, or, as Augustus Tomlinson expressed it, “their more austere qualities were relaxed by a pleasing and innocent indulgence.” Paul's eyes reeled, and his tongue ran loose. By degrees the room swam round, the faces of his comrades altered, the countenance of Old Bags assumed an awful and menacing air. He thought Long Ned insulted him, and that Old Bags took the part of the assailant, doubled his fist, and threatened to put the plaintiff's nob into chancery if he disturbed the peace of the meeting. Various other imaginary evils beset him. He thought he had robbed a mail-coach in company with Pepper; that Tomlinson informed against him, and that Gentleman George ordered him to be hanged; in short, he laboured under a temporary delirium, occasioned by a sudden reverse of fortune,--from water to brandy; and the last thing of which he retained any recollection, before he sank under the table, in company with Long Ned, Scarlet Jem, and Old Bags, was the bearing his part in the burden of what appeared to him a chorus of last dying speeches and confessions, but what in reality was a song made in honour of Gentleman George, and sung by his grateful guests as a finale of the festivities. It ran thus:-- THE ROBBER'S GRAND TOAST. A tumbler of blue ruin, fill, fill for me! Red tape those as likes it may drain; But whatever the lush, it a bumper must be, If we ne'er drinks a bumper again! Now--now in the crib, where a ruffler may lie, Without fear that the traps should distress him, With a drop in the mouth, and a drop in the eye, Here's to Gentleman George,--God bless him! God bless him, God bless him! Here's to Gentleman George,--God bless him! 'Mong the pals of the prince I have heard it's the go, Before they have tippled enough, To smarten their punch with the best curagoa, More conish to render the stuff. I boast not such lush; but whoever his glass Does not like, I'll be hanged if I press him! Upstanding, my kiddies,--round, round let it pass! Here's to Gentleman George,--God bless him! God bless him, God bless him! Here's to Gentleman George,-God bless him! See, see, the fine fellow grows weak on his stumps; Assist him, ye rascals, to stand! Why, ye stir not a peg! Are you all in the dumps? Fighting Attie, go, lend him a hand! (The robbers crowd around Gentleman George, each, under pretence of supporting him, pulling him first one way and then another.) Come, lean upon me,--at your service I am! Get away from his elbow, you whelp! him You'll only upset,--them 'ere fellows but sham! Here's to Gentleman George,--God help him! God help him, God help him! Here's to Gentleman George, God help him! CHAPTER XI. I boast no song in magic wonders rife; But yet, O Nature! is there nought to prize, Familiar in thy bosom scenes of life? And dwells in daylight truth's salubrious skies No form with which the soul may sympathize? Young, innocent, on whose sweet forehead mild The parted ringlet shone in simplest guise, An inmate in the home of Albert smiled, Or blessed his noonday walk,--she was his only child. Gertrude of Wyoming. O time, thou hast played strange tricks with us; and we bless the stars that made us a novelist, and permit us now to retaliate. Leaving Paul to the instructions of Augustus Tomlinson and the festivities of the Jolly Angler, and suffering him, by slow but sure degrees, to acquire the graces and the reputation of the accomplished and perfect appropriator of other men's possessions, we shall pass over the lapse of years with the same heedless rapidity with which they have glided over us, and summon our reader to a very different scene from those which would be likely to greet his eyes, were he following the adventures of our new Telemachus. Nor wilt thou, dear reader, whom we make the umpire between ourself and those who never read,--the critics; thou who hast, in the true spirit of gentle breeding, gone with us among places where the novelty of the scene has, we fear, scarcely atoned for the coarseness, not giving thyself the airs of a dainty abigail,--not prating, lacquey-like, on the low company thou has met,--nor wilt thou, dear and friendly reader, have cause to dread that we shall weary thy patience by a “damnable iteration” of the same localities. Pausing for a moment to glance over the divisions of our story, which lies before us like a map, we feel that we may promise in future to conduct thee among aspects of society more familiar to thy habits; where events flow to their allotted gulf through landscapes of more pleasing variety and among tribes of a more luxurious civilization. Upon the banks of one of fair England's fairest rivers, and about fifty miles distant from London, still stands an old-fashioned abode, which we shall here term Warlock Manorhouse. It is a building of brick, varied by stone copings, and covered in great part with ivy and jasmine. Around it lie the ruins of the elder part of the fabric; and these are sufficiently numerous in extent and important in appearance to testify that the mansion was once not without pretensions to the magnificent. These remains of power, some of which bear date as far back as the reign of Henry the Third, are sanctioned by the character of the country immediately in the vicinity of the old manor-house. A vast tract of waste land, interspersed with groves of antique pollards, and here and there irregular and sinuous ridges of green mound, betoken to the experienced eye the evidence of a dismantled chase or park, which must originally have been of no common dimensions. On one side of the house the lawn slopes towards the river, divided from a terrace, which forms the most important embellishment of the pleasure-grounds, by that fence to which has been given the ingenious and significant name of “ha-ha!” A few scattered trees of giant growth are the sole obstacles that break the view of the river, which has often seemed to us, at that particular passage of its course, to glide with unusual calmness and serenity. On the opposite side of the stream there is a range of steep hills, celebrated for nothing more romantic than their property of imparting to the flocks that browse upon that short and seemingly stinted herbage a