Paul Clifford — Complete
out of the house.
CHAPTER II.
Imagination fondly stoops to trace
The parlor splendours of that festive place.
Deserted Village.
There is little to interest in a narrative of early childhood, unless,
indeed, one were writing on education. We shall not, therefore, linger
over the infancy of the motherless boy left to the protection of Mrs.
Margery Lobkins, or, as she was sometimes familiarly called, Peggy, or
Piggy, Lob. The good dame, drawing a more than sufficient income from
the profits of a house which, if situated in an obscure locality,
enjoyed very general and lucrative repute, and being a lone widow
without kith or kin, had no temptation to break her word to the
deceased, and she suffered the orphan to wax in strength and
understanding until the age of twelve,--a period at which we are now
about to reintroduce him to our readers.
The boy evinced great hardihood of temper, and no inconsiderable
quickness of intellect. In whatever he attempted, his success was rapid,
and a remarkable strength of limb and muscle seconded well the dictates
of an ambition turned, it must be confessed, rather to physical than
mental exertion. It is not to be supposed, however, that his boyish life
passed in unbroken tranquillity. Although Mrs. Lobkins was a good woman
on the whole, and greatly attached to her protegee, she was violent and
rude in temper, or, as she herself more flatteringly expressed it,
“her feelings were unkimmonly strong;” and alternate quarrel and
reconciliation constituted the chief occupations of the protegee's
domestic life. As, previous to his becoming the ward of Mrs. Lobkins, he
had never received any other appellation than “the child,” so the duty
of christening him devolved upon our hostess of the Mug; and after some
deliberation, she blessed him with the name of Paul. It was a name of
happy omen, for it had belonged to Mrs. Lobkins's grandfather, who had
been three times transported and twice hanged (at the first occurrence
of the latter description, he had been restored by the surgeons, much
to the chagrin of a young anatomist who was to have had the honour of
cutting him up). The boy did not seem likely to merit the distinguished
appellation he bore, for he testified no remarkable predisposition to
the property of other people. Nay, although he sometimes emptied the
pockets of any stray visitor to the coffee-room of Mrs. Lobkins, it
appeared an act originating rather in a love of the frolic than a desire
of the profit; for after the plundered person had been sufficiently
tormented by the loss, haply, of such utilities as a tobacco-box or
a handkerchief; after he had, to the secret delight of Paul, searched
every corner of the apartment, stamped, and fretted, and exposed himself
by his petulance to the bitter objurgation of Mrs. Lobkins, our young
friend would quietly and suddenly contrive that the article missed
should return of its own accord to the pocket from which it had
disappeared. And thus, as our readers have doubtless experienced when
they have disturbed the peace of a whole household for the loss of some
portable treasure which they themselves are afterwards discovered to
have mislaid, the unfortunate victim of Paul's honest ingenuity, exposed
to the collected indignation of the spectators, and sinking from the
accuser into the convicted, secretly cursed the unhappy lot which not
only vexed him with the loss of his property, but made it still more
annoying to recover it.
Whether it was that, on discovering these pranks, Mrs. Lobkins trembled
for the future bias of the address they displayed, or whether she
thought that the folly of thieving without gain required speedy and
permanent correction, we cannot decide; but the good lady became at
last extremely anxious to secure for Paul the blessings of a liberal
education. The key of knowledge (the art of reading) she had, indeed,
two years prior to the present date, obtained for him; but this far
from satisfied her conscience,--nay, she felt that if she could not also
obtain for him the discretion to use it, it would have been wise even
to have withheld a key which the boy seemed perversely to apply to all
locks but the right one. In a word, she was desirous that he should
receive an education far superior to those whom he saw around him;
and attributing, like most ignorant persons, too great advantages to
learning, she conceived that in order to live as decorously as the
parson of the parish, it was only necessary to know as much Latin.
One evening in particular, as the dame sat by her cheerful fire, this
source of anxiety was unusually active in her mind, and ever and anon
she directed unquiet and restless glances towards Paul, who sat on
a form at the opposite corner of the hearth, diligently employed in
reading the life and adventures of the celebrated Richard Turpin. The
form on which the boy sat was worn to a glassy smoothness, save only in
certain places, where some ingenious idler or another had amused
himself by carving sundry names, epithets, and epigrammatic niceties of
language. It is said that the organ of carving upon wood is prominently
developed on all English skulls; and the sagacious Mr. Combe has
placed this organ at the back of the head, in juxtaposition to that
of destructiveness, which is equally large among our countrymen, as
is notably evinced upon all railings, seats, temples, and other
things-belonging to other people.
Opposite to the fireplace was a large deal table, at which Dummie,
surnamed Dunnaker, seated near the dame, was quietly ruminating over a
glass of hollands and water. Farther on, at another table in the corner
of the room, a gentleman with a red wig, very rusty garments, and linen
which seemed as if it had been boiled in saffron, smoked his pipe,
apart, silent, and apparently plunged in meditation. This gentleman
was no other than Mr. Peter MacGrawler, the editor of a magnificent
periodical entitled “The Asiaeum,” which was written to prove that
whatever is popular is necessarily bad,--a valuable and recondite truth,
which “The Asinaeum” had satisfactorily demonstrated by ruining
three printers and demolishing a publisher. We need not add that Mr.
MacGrawler was Scotch by birth, since we believe it is pretty well known
that all periodicals of this country have, from time immemorial, been
monopolized by the gentlemen of the Land of Cakes. We know not how it
may be the fashion to eat the said cakes in Scotland, but here the good
emigrators seem to like them carefully buttered on both sides. By the
side of the editor stood a large pewter tankard; above him hung an
engraving of the “wonderfully fat boar formerly in the possession of
Mr. Fattem, grazier.” To his left rose the dingy form of a thin, upright
clock in an oaken case; beyond the clock, a spit and a musket were
fastened in parallels to the wall. Below those twin emblems of war and
cookery were four shelves, containing plates of pewter and delf, and
terminating, centaur-like, in a sort of dresser. At the other side of
these domestic conveniences was a picture of Mrs. Lobkins, in a scarlet
body and a hat and plume. At the back of the fair hostess stretched the
blanket we have before mentioned. As a relief to the monotonous surface
of this simple screen, various ballads and learned legends were pinned
to the blanket. There might you read in verses, pathetic and unadorned,
how--
“Sally loved a sailor lad
As fought with famous Shovel!”
There might you learn, if of two facts so instructive you were before
unconscious, that--
“Ben the toper loved his bottle,--Charley only loved the lasses!”
When of these and various other poetical effusions you were somewhat
wearied, the literary fragments in bumbler prose afforded you equal
edification and delight. There might you fully enlighten yourself as to
the “Strange and Wonderful News from Kensington, being a most full and
true Relation how a Maid there is supposed to have been carried away by
an Evil Spirit on Wednesday, 15th of April last, about Midnight.”
There, too, no less interesting and no less veracious, was that uncommon
anecdote touching the chief of many-throned powers entitled “The Divell
of Mascon; or, the true Relation of the Chief Things which an Unclean
Spirit did and said at Mascon, in Burgundy, in the house of one
Mr. Francis Pereaud: now made English by one that hath a Particular
Knowledge of the Truth of the Story.”
Nor were these materials for Satanic history the only prosaic and
faithful chronicles which the bibliothecal blanket afforded. Equally
wonderful, and equally indisputable, was the account of “a young lady,
the daughter of a duke, with three legs and the face of a porcupine.”
Nor less so “The Awful Judgment of God upon Swearers, as exemplified in
the case of John Stiles, who Dropped down dead after swearing a Great
Oath; and on stripping the unhappy man they found 'Swear not at all'
written on the tail of his shirt!”
Twice had Mrs. Lobkins heaved a long sigh, as her eyes turned from Paul
to the tranquil countenance of Dummie Dunnaker, and now, re-settling
herself in her chair, as a motherly anxiety gathered over her visage,--
“Paul, my ben cull,” said she, “what gibberish hast got there?”
“Turpin, the great highwayman!” answered the young student, without
lifting his eyes from the page, through which he was spelling his
instructive way.
“Oh! he be's a chip of the right block, dame!” said Mr. Dunnaker, as
he applied his pipe to an illumined piece of paper. “He'll ride a 'oss
foaled by a hacorn yet, I varrants!”
To this prophecy the dame replied only with a look of indignation; and
rocking herself to and fro in her huge chair, she remained for some
moments in silent thought. At last she again wistfully eyed the hopeful
boy, and calling him to her side, communicated some order, in a dejected
whisper. Paul, on receiving it, disappeared behind the blanket, and
presently returned with a bottle and a wineglass. With an abstracted
gesture, and an air that betokened continued meditation, the good dame
took the inspiring cordial from the hand of her youthful cupbearer,--
“And ere a man had power to say 'Behold!' The jaws of Lobkins had
devoured it up: So quick bright things come to confusion!”
The nectarean beverage seemed to operate cheerily on the matron's
system; and placing her hand on the boy's curly head, she said (like
Andromache, dakruon gelasasa, or, as Scott hath it, “With a smile on her
cheek, but a tear in her eye”),--
“Paul, thy heart be good, thy heart be good; thou didst not spill a drop
of the tape! Tell me, my honey, why didst thou lick Tom Tobyson?”
“Because,” answered Paul, “he said as how you ought to have been hanged
long ago.”
“Tom Tobyson is a good-for-nought,” returned the dame, “and deserves to
shove the tumbler [Be whipped at the cart's tail]; I but oh, my child,
be not too venturesome in taking up the sticks for a blowen,--it has
been the ruin of many a man afore you; and when two men goes to quarrel
for a 'oman, they doesn't know the natur' of the thing they quarrels
about. Mind thy latter end, Paul, and reverence the old, without axing
what they has been before they passed into the wale of years. Thou mayst
get me my pipe, Paul,--it is upstairs, under the pillow.”
While Paul was accomplishing this errand, the lady of the Mug, fixing
her eyes upon Mr. Dunnaker, said, “Dummie, Dummie, if little Paul should
come to be scragged!”
“Whish!” muttered Dummie, glancing over his shoulder at MacGrawler;
“mayhap that gemman--” Here his voice became scarcely audible even to
Mrs. Lobkins; but his whisper seemed to imply an insinuation that the
illustrious editor of “The Asinaeum” might be either an informer, or one
of those heroes on whom an informer subsists.