The Remarkable History of Sir Thomas Upmore, bart., M.P., formerly known as «Tommy Upmore»

"My views are of very little moment," mother answered quietly, as she came in, with a bottle of cherry-brandy in her hand; "Bucephalus is so bigoted. But I love to see the sun rise over the sea from the window, and then go to bed again."

"Your taste, ma'am, is of the very highest order," said Mr. Windsor, who never could persuade his wife to turn her hand to pickles, and bottled fruit, and gravies; "and many a time have I enjoyed the fine results that comes of it. To see the sun rise over the sea, and the poor fellows shaking about in their boats, and then to go to bed again, while they are catching fish enough for your breakfast, prawns, and lobsters, and a sole with egg and breadcrumbs, and perhaps (if they are lucky) just a salmon-collop – ah, that is what I call seaside! And then, you lounge about, and see fine ladies jumping up and down, as the white waves knock them; and then you have a pipe, and smell fine smells, and talk to an old salt, as if you were his captain; and he shows you, through his spy-glass, how rough it is outside, with the people in the vessels looking enviously at you; and by that time, Bubbly, why you want your dinner; and you eat it, as if you was made for nothing else."

"I don't remember much about it," answered father, though evidently struck by this description; "why, it must be thirty years since I saw the sea. Ah, how we go up and down in life! I dare say I was no bigger than that little shrimp there."

"Mr. Upmore!" exclaimed Mrs. Windsor, whose manner, we were told, was more aristocratic than anything on our side of King's Cross; "Mr. Upmore, with all your opportunities, is it possible that you have not ever felt it your very first duty, to take your dear wife, and your Tommy, to the sea? Whatever should we do, without the sea? A great part of our commerce comes over it, and my Johnny can very nearly swim! Dear Mrs. Upmore, you should not lose a minute, in taking your darling boy to the sea. It seems to be considered so essential now, that all young persons should be taught to swim."

"My Tommy can fly, ma'am," replied dear mother; "and what is swimming to compare with that?"

"I'll tell you what," said Mr. Windsor, "if you want to see the sun rise over the sea, the best chance for it is on the east coast. I'm very partial to Brighton myself, not being so exclusive as Mrs. W. about a little smell here, or a sort of odour there. That feeling of the higher orders seems to be cutaneous."

"Spontaneous, you mean, Mr. Windsor, or perhaps contagious, or indigenous."

"I mean what I say, my dear. And what I say is this – to the best of my knowledge, the sun don't get up out of the sea, at Brighton, though he does come over it, in fine weather, by the time the upper classes are looking about. But I won't pretend to speak positive, because I never got up to look for him. Only this I do say, and it stands to reason, – if you want to compel him to get up there, you had better go where the sea runs east."

"To be sure, I see!" my father answered; "I am not sure, that I should have thought of that. John, you are a clever fellow, after all."

"I should hope that he was;" cried Mrs. Windsor; "because you have made yourself famous, Mr. Upmore, with my husband to stand in front of you, are you going to begin to look down upon us?"

"Don't be so hot, my dear. I assure you, Bubbly, that she means it for the moment; but it goes in two seconds, like a spurt of steam. Now, I happen to know a very nice little place, on the east coast, Norfolk or Suffolk, I believe, for I never can carry all the counties in my head. Happystowe-on-Sea is the name of it; none of your blessed sewers there. I know a man who boils there, twice a week; he would let you in as a visitor, of course, and you would get the nourishment of his air. Barlow his name is, Billy Barlow; a rising man in compos, and cocoa; he has found a way to make one out of the other, and both of them out of old shoes, I believe; and I thought of running down to him, to get a wrinkle; but Mrs. W. seemed to think there was something infra dig in it."

"We cannot be too particular, in my humble opinion," said Mrs. Windsor, "not only not to admit any shadow of fraud, into our own transactions, but in no way to countenance any one tainted with secrets, however lucrative."

"That is the true way of looking at things; all on the square, ma'am, and all above board. And nothing else answers in the long run, does it? However," continued my father, "if I should by any chance be down that way, I might like to look in at Barlow's works, – without letting him know who I was, of course. I should understand all his devices, at a glance."

"He would know me in a moment, if I went down;" Mr. Windsor was trying not to wink at father; "but he never would guess that you were in the trade, if you wear your blue coat, and brass buttons, the one that makes the boys call you 'the Admiral.' And by the sea-side, that would be the proper thing. Only fair play, Bubbly, and honour bright. Snacks – as our Jack says – in whatever you find out."

"Pooh!" cried father; "after all our experience, what could a country bumpkin teach us? Ah, Mrs. Windsor, what things we could tell you, if ladies' nerves were stronger! But, John, I've a great mind to take your advice, and encourage the policy of our noble Government, in doing me a good turn, as early as they can. We will get away before those unprincipled Rads can serve their skulking summons. That Joe Cowl means to get up to-morrow, after shamming to be dead for a fortnight, – a Conservative sweep would have cured his cold, by stopping up a chimney – and on Friday he goes for his summons, I hear. The Beak is a Rad, and will let him have it. I shall trust you to keep it all dark about us, and mum's the address of our luggage, and letters. But Friday will find all the Upmore family stowed away happy, at Happystowe."

My father was ever a man of his word. He made his arrangements for half-time boiling, and the completion of all contracts, and left money enough for a fortnight's work, and then we set off in the soap-van; with old Jerry in the shafts, and a hamper of good things, and our best clothes on, and Grip sitting up in front, and the tilt hanging down, as if by accident, over the third hoop from the back, so that nobody could tell that we had got a bit of luggage. And we jogged along up the Lane first towards Hampstead, so that all the neighbours thought we were going for a pic-nic, as indeed we thoroughly deserved to do, and they wished us a pleasant day and no rain; for they all had a kindly will to us. But as soon as we had thanked them, and got them out of sight, what did father do but turn old Jerry, and take the shortest cut to Shoreditch?

At that time, London was not such a thorough rat-warren of railways as it is now; and although I had travelled by steam before, it was new enough to be delightful. We were going by a line, which was then considered the most dangerous in Great Britain; and this made my mother put her head out of the window, in her anxiety about me, and father, whenever there was anything at all to see. We wanted to look out for ourselves; but she declared that she understood things best; and there was no chance of getting at the other window, because four people put a cloth along their knees, and went on eating, for leagues, and hours. So my father went to sleep, and I tried to get peeps (behind dear mother's bonnet) of the far world flying by. With all my heart I longed to see the sea, of which I had heard so many things, wonderful, terrible, and enchanting. My mother had bought me a straw-hat, with a blue ribbon on it, like a gallant sailor's; and she should have endeavoured, after that, to show me the sea, if it ever came in sight. But nothing that I could say – though I never stopped bothering, as she called it – would keep her attention to that point; and I found out afterwards the reason for it; she was not at all sure about knowing the sea, when she saw it, and was afraid of making some mistake.

"What do I care about the sea?" said father, rather grumpily, when I pestered him. "People call it the sea, because you can't see it. Or if you do, you can't see anything else. I would much rather have a good London fog. Go to sleep, boy; and don't keep jerking at my legs so."

My father had been out of sorts for some time, which had made it desirable that he should come away, even without any summons against him. His appetite was queer, and he wanted setting up. Before Mr. Windsor came urging him so, I heard him say to mother,

"A leg of mutton goes twice with me now; and I call that a very serious sign."

"Then be more free-handed with your money," answered mother.

And now he was touchy, because poor Grip though accustomed to living in a tub at school, was aggrieved at the box which the Company provided for dogs on their travels, and expressed his grief in a howl, that out-howled the engine. His chest was capacious, and his lungs elastic, his heart also of the finest order; and for these gifts of nature, my father condemned him!

"Now, rouse up, rouse up, everybody;" father shouted, as if we had all been asleep – which he alone had been, in spite of Grip– when the bus from the "Happystowe Road," (which was five or six miles from the genuine Happystowe) pulled up, in a ring of newly planted trees, and in front of a porch with square pillars to it. "Tommy, look sharp, and count all our boxes in. Put them down in Latin, if it comes more easy. Sophy, accept my arm, up the steps; never pretend to be younger than you are. Mrs. Roaker, we are come to spend a week with you if agreeable, and not too expensive."

"Mr. Upmore!" said mother, in a tone of quiet dignity, such as she had heard Mrs. Windsor use; "as if a few pounds made any difference to you! We are out for the holidays, and we mean to have them."

"Then the thing to begin with is a rattling good dinner," father answered, without any dignity at all; "bless my – something the dinner goes into, Mrs. Roaker, – if it isn't going on for seven o'clock! And nothing all the way, but hard boiled eggs, and a cold duck, and ham sandwiches. I never was so hungry in all my life; starving is the proper word for it. What can we have for dinner, ma'am, and what is the shortest time for it?"

"Anything you please to name, sir;" said the landlady, who understood things; "and the time will naturally depend upon the nature of the plats you order."

"No foreign kickshaws, and no French plates, for me, ma'am! A pair of fried soles, and a bit of roast mutton, hot from the fire, and a cold apple-pie. Sophy, can you think of anything else you want?"

"Can we have a bedroom with a fine sea view?" My mother had been pensive all day, and religious, because of leaving home, and of the dangers of the train. "We have not seen the sea yet, Mrs. Roaker, to our certain knowledge. You must not suppose us to be any sort of Cockneys; and indeed we live quite outside of London, in a beautiful place, with green fields round it; still we are what you may call inlanders, and we feel a kind of interest in the sea."

"Sophy, you had better order dinner, after that;" said my father, very shortly; "now, Tommy, you be off. I am not going out, till I've had my dinner. But I can't stand any more of your plague about the sea. Find somebody to show you where it is; or you ought to find it out, by the row it makes. I hear a noise now, like an engine with the steam slack. But don't tumble into it, when you find it; though you never were born to be drowned, that I'll swear."

Without any answer to this cut at me, – which I did not deserve, as old Rum could have told him – I whistled for Grip, who was looking about, after running all the way from the station, for any dog anxious to insult him; and as soon as he came, and made a jump at me, we set off together without more ado, to find out where the sea was, by the noise it made; of which I was beginning now to read in Homer.

CHAPTER IX.

THALATTA!

It was five years now, since I had first gone up, (without any intention of doing so) from the surface of the earth into the regions of the air, through the sudden expansion of my heart and system, at the thought of three days' holiday. In the interval, there had been times of elation and elevation, when it was difficult for me to keep down, and the mere shake of an elbow would have sent me up. And among them, I recollect one Christmas-eve, when there was a hard frost on, and the people at the Hampstead ponds were skating, and the ice was all green for boys to slide on, and the trees on the hill were all feathered with snow, and Jack Windsor came up to me, and said, "plum-pudding for dinner, at your house, Tommy; I smelled it, as I came up the Lane" – I was all on the flutter to fly, and astonish the people, who were putting skates on; and I could not have helped it – for there was nothing to lay hold of – if Grip (who was full of my bodily welfare) had not laid hold of me by the tails of the scarlet comforter, which mother had knotted so tightly, that I could not get it off.

"Get away, you vile dog! Go up, Tommy," Jack Windsor cried, and would gladly have kicked Grip, if prudence had permitted it; "oh, Tommy, do go up; I have heard so much about it, and I'd give anything to see you fly!"

For my part, I was not at all afraid; my feet were off the ground, and there is very little doubt, that I should have escaped from the comforter, and Grip, if Jack had not made such a stupid fuss about it.

"Halloa there! What are you boys doing?" A heavy policeman came grumbling along, without any sense of the situation; "if you don't move on, and take that beast of a dog further, I'll walk you pretty quick to the station."

"331 V.," answered Jack, who inherited his mother's lofty style, "if you knew who we are, you'd employ your cheek to keep your tongue in, and save me the trouble of reporting you."

The constable pretended not to hear him; but the whole of my volatile power was gone – so sensitive has it always been – and instead of going up to the sky, I was glad to sit down upon the broad back of the faithful dog.

And now, I can assure you, and you will readily believe it, that having been plagued so long by boys, (and grown-up people, quite as troublesome, at times) concerning what had happened to me, at an early age, and being rebuked, and jeered, and scoffed at – sometimes for having this gift, and sometimes for not making more of it, and sometimes for setting up a false claim to it – young as I was, I had thought a good deal, and made up my mind, in fifty different ways, about it.

But though my conclusions perpetually varied, there was one grain of wisdom to be found in all. It had pleased Heaven, to afflict me with an unusually light corporeal part, and then to relieve that affliction, in some measure, by the gift of a buoyant and complacent mind; so that I was able – unless a bad cold, or measles, or mumps, or chilblains stopped me – to be hopeful that all would turn out for the best, and to keep my nature boyish, throughout a boyhood of some perplexity.

Grip, though faithful, and sage, as almost all the patriarchs put together, might still be considered a juvenile dog, by those who dwell chiefly on the right side of things. To say that his heart was still in the right place, would be little less than an insult to him, and to the great race of which he was one; but it is not so wholly a matter of course, that his mind was still ardent, and his spirit lofty. Very few "Scientists" of any candour could have looked at Grip, when prepared for battle (with his ears pricked up, and his neck on the rasp, and his tail set with stiffening bulges) without finding a nobler result of evolution, and a likelier survival, than their own.

His thankful spirit had not yet exhausted the joys of freedom from the Railway box; and perhaps – though it is not for me to say it – the Happystowe air was more mercurial than that of our works, which confined his meditations too persistently to one theme – bone. But let that pass; it is quite impossible to explain everything that happens; all I know is that Grip set off from the porch of the Twentifold Arms Hotel, with a flourish, and a scurry, and a gambol of delight. With a gentle breeze moving behind me, I started, to catch him and get the first sight of the sea; and then, down a steep path, we came round the corner of what must have been a live rock, and behold —

Behold! was a word you might have shouted at me, like thunder, without my knowing it. Because my whole nature was absorbed in beholding, or gazing, or staring, or mooning, or being bemooned – for the things were done to me, without my doing any one of them. Behind me, shone the low summer sun, throwing out my shadow any length it pleased, on an endless, measureless, countless, unimaginable world of silver, like the moon come down.

If I could have uttered any syllable, to let off, or thought of any definite idea, to keep in the wondrous inconceivable expansion of my nature, perhaps, even now, I might have stayed upon the ground. But being as I was, away I went, starting, at a height of about ten feet above the level of Spring-tides, with a moderate Westerly breeze behind me, and the light of the sinking sun coming up, under the soles of my shoes, as I slowly went round. And unluckily I had all my best clothes on – new from a shop down in Liverpool Street, the first Sunday of the summer holidays.

People, who have never been up like this, might suppose, at first sight, that I was terrified; especially at being carried out to sea, as my first acquaintance with that great space. But without laying claim to any share of courage, I may state, as a simple matter of fact, that I happened to feel no fear whatever. My father, (as truthful a man as ever lived, and from whom I inherit that quality) had said that I never was born to be drowned; and if I thought at all (which I disremember doing) that alone would have reassured me. At any rate, I looked around, as calmly as if I were sitting down to dinner; but with this disadvantage, that I could not keep my gaze very firmly fixed upon anything, because of the rotation of my body. For instance, I was able to shout down to Grip (who was howling most mournfully in the gap, and making sad jumps to come after me) that I was all right, and would come back, by and by; but before I could judge whether he was consoled, my eyes were on a ship a long way out. If there had been much wind, perhaps it would have proved a ticklish thing for me; but the air was calm, and full of yellow light, the sea was below me, like a floor of silver, the sky of a pure soft blue, wherever the sun did not interfere with it; and nothing on any side suggested danger, or uneasiness.

But, whatever the state of things may be, the human element is certain to rush in, and spoil all the comfort of nature. I had not been at all disconcerted, at perceiving that some people on the beach were surprised by my appearance, at a considerable height above their heads. They were calling out loudly to one another, and running together, or running away, and rubbing their eyes, as if the sun had taken the accuracy out of them. This rather pleased me, and improved my flight (which depends very much upon the approval of mankind), and I was beginning to practise movements, which I had thought of, and heard of from Jack Windsor. Jack had been taking swimming lessons, and being a wonderfully heavy fellow, had tried very hard to keep his head up. He had learned the whole theory of it beautifully, and showed me how easy it was to do; but as yet he had never been able to do it. Whatever I have done above the surface of the earth – which people are stupid enough to call flying – is nothing more than swimming in the air, or floating; or best of all, perhaps, I should say treading, as people who are heavy enough "tread water." And my great desire was to be my own master, to steer myself a little, as a man can do in swimming; instead of going round and round, at the air's discretion, like a bunch of lime-berries in September.

But, just as I was learning with my hands and feet, and some guidance of the silken summer tunic at my hips, – what did I discover but a great long gun, taken up by a man, from a boat upon the beach, and then being pointed with a careful aim at me! I endeavoured to scream out – "I am Tommy; only Tommy Upmore going for a fly; if you shoot me, you will be hanged for murder!" – but I give you my word that my fright was so great, that no sound of any use would come out of my mouth. Old Rum's cane was quite a joke, compared to this. Every atom of my levity turned to lead, my hands fell to my sides, and my feet struck together, and I dropped, like a well-bucket, when the rope is broken.

And I never had a luckier drop in my life – good as it is for all mortals to come down – for just above my hair, (which had been floating, like a sunset cloud, they say, but was now standing out, like a badger's, with alarm) a heavy charge of duck-shot, that would have killed Grip dead, went whistling like a goods'-train engine; and a streak of white still may be discovered in my head, from the combination of fear and fact.

And my drop was quite as lucky at the lower end; for descending, as you might say without exaggeration, almost vertically, (though my head, the lightest portion of my system, still was up) instead of falling into the sea, I was received in a sail, spread to catch me by a very lovely boat.

Some moments elapsed, as I have reason to believe, before either my rescuers, or myself, were fit to go into all the questions that arose. Naturally enough, they were surprised at the style of my visit to them; while I was not only embarrassed by shyness, at finding myself among great people, but also to some extent confused in mind, from the many gyrations of my upward, and the rapid descent of my downward course; moreover, I had never been in a boat till now, and the motion of the boards upon the water disconcerted me, more than any action of the air.