The Caxtons: A Family Picture — Complete

7. Look out Population Returns: strike average of last five years (between mortality and births) in Devonshire and Lancashire.

8. Answer these six begging letters “No,”—civilly.

9. The other six, to constituents, “that I have no interest with Government.”

10. See, if you have time, whether any of the new books on the round table are not trash.

11. I want to know All about Indian corn.

12. Longinus says something, somewhere, in regret for uncongenial pursuits (public life, I suppose): what is it? N. B. Longinus is not in my London catalogue, but is here, I know,—I think in a box in the lumber-room.

13. Set right the calculation I leave on the poor-rates. I have made a blunder somewhere, etc.

Certainly my father knew Mr. Trevanion; he never expected a secretary to sleep! To get through the work required of me by half-past nine, I get up by candle-light. At half-past nine I am still hunting for Longinus, when Mr. Trevanion comes in with a bundle of letters.

Answers to half the said letters fall to my share. Directions verbal,—in a species of short-hand talk. While I write, Mr. Trevanion reads the newspapers, examines what I have done, makes notes therefrom,—some for Parliament, some for conversation, some for correspondence,—skims over the Parliamentary papers of the morning, and jots down directions for extracting, abridging, and comparing them with others, perhaps twenty years old. At eleven he walks down to a Committee of the House of Commons,—leaving me plenty to do,—till half-past three, when he returns. At four, Fanny puts her head into the room—and I lose mine. Four days in the week Mr. Trevanion then disappears for the rest of the day; dines at Bellamy’s or a club; expects me at the House at eight o’clock, in case he thinks of something, wants a fact or a quotation. He then releases me,—generally with a fresh list of instructions. But I have my holidays, nevertheless. On Wednesdays and Saturdays Mr. Trevanion gives dinners, and I meet the most eminent men of the day, on both sides; for Trevanion is on both sides himself,—or no side at all, which comes to the same thing. On Tuesdays Lady Ellinor gives me a ticket for the Opera, and I get there at least in time for the ballet. I have already invitations enough to balls and soirees, for I am regarded as an only son of great expectations. I am treated as becomes a Caxton who has the right, if he pleases, to put a De before his name. I have grown very smart. I have taken a passion for dress,—natural to eighteen. I like everything I do, and every one about me. I am over head and ears in love with Fanny Trevanion, who breaks my heart, nevertheless; for she flirts with two peers, a life-guardsman, three old members of Parliament, Sir Sedley Beaudesert, one ambassador and all his attaches and positively (the audacious minx!) with a bishop, in full wig and apron, who, people say, means to marry again.

Pisistratus has lost color and flesh. His mother says he is very much improved,—that he takes to be the natural effect produced by Stultz and Hoby. Uncle Jack says he is “fined down.” His father looks at him and writes to Trevanion,—

“Dear T.—I refused a salary for my son. Give him a horse, and two hours a day to ride it. Yours, A. C.”

The next day I am master of a pretty bay mare, and riding by the side of Fanny Trevanion. Alas! alas!

CHAPTER VIII

I have not mentioned my Uncle Roland. He is gone—abroad—to fetch his daughter. He has stayed longer than was expected. Does he seek his son still,—there as here? My father has finished the first portion of his work, in two great volumes. Uncle Jack, who for some time has been looking melancholy, and who now seldom stirs out, except on Sundays (on which days we all meet at my father’s and dine together),—Uncle Jack, I say, has undertaken to sell it.

“Don’t be over-sanguine,” says Uncle Jack, as he locks up the MS. in two red boxes with a slit in the lids, which belonged to one of the defunct companies. “Don’t be over-sanguine as to the price. These publishers never venture much on a first experiment. They must be talked even into looking at the book.”

“Oh!” said my father, “if they will publish it at all, and at their own risk, I should not stand out for any other terms. ‘Nothing great,’ said Dryden, ‘ever came from a venal pen!’”

“An uncommonly foolish observation of Dryden’s,” returned Uncle Jack; “he ought to have known better.”

“So he did,” said I, “for he used his pen to fill his pockets, poor man!”

“But the pen was not venal, Master Anachronism,” said my father. “A baker is not to be called venal if he sells his loaves, he is venal if he sells himself; Dryden only sold his loaves.”

“And we must sell yours,” said Uncle Jack, emphatically. “A thousand pounds a volume will be about the mark, eh?”

“A thousand pounds a volume!” cried my father. “Gibbon, I fancy, did not receive more.”

“Very likely; Gibbon had not an Uncle Jack to look after his interests,” said Mr. Tibbets, laughing, and rubbing those smooth hands of his. “No! two thousand pounds the two volumes,—a sacrifice, but still I recommend moderation.”

“I should be happy indeed if the book brought in anything,” said my father, evidently fascinated; “for that young gentleman is rather expensive. And you, my dear Jack,—perhaps half the sum may be of use to you!”

“To me! my dear brother,” cried Uncle Jack “to me! Why when my new speculation has succeeded, I shall be a millionnaire!”

“Have you a new speculation, uncle?” said I, anxiously. “What is it?”

“Mum!” said my uncle, putting his finger to his lip, and looking all round the room; “Mum! Mum!”

Pisistratus.—“A Grand National Company for blowing up both Houses of Parliament!”

Mr. Caxton.—“Upon my life, I hope something newer than that; for they, to judge by the newspapers, don’t want brother Jack’s assistance to blow up each other!”

Uncle Jack (mysteriously).—“Newspapers! you don’t often read a newspaper, Austin Caxton!”

Mr. Caxton.—“Granted, John Tibbets!”

Uncle Jack.—“But if my speculation make you read a newspaper every day?”

Mr. Caxton (astounded).—“Make me read a newspaper every day!”

Uncle Jack (warming, and expanding his hands to the fire).—“As big as the ‘Times’!”

Mr. Caxton (uneasily).—“Jack, you alarm me!”

Uncle Jack.—“And make you write in it too,—a leader!”

Mr. Caxton, pushing back his chair, seizes the only weapon at his command, and hurls at Uncle Jack a great sentence of Greek,—“... a quotation in Greek...”[2 - “Some were so barbarous as to eat their own species.” The sentence refers to the Scythians, and is in Strabo. I mention the authority, for Strabo is not an author that any man engaged on a less work than the “History of Human Error” is expected to have by heart.]

Uncle Jack (nothing daunted).—“Ay, and put as much Greek as you like into it!”

Mr. Caxton (relieved and softening). “My dear Jack, you are a great man; let us hear you!”

Then Uncle Jack began. Now, perhaps my readers may have remarked that this illustrious speculator was really fortunate in his ideas. His speculations in themselves always had something sound in the kernel, considering how barren they were in the fruit; and this it was that made him so dangerous. The idea Uncle Jack had now got hold of will, I am convinced, make a man’s fortune one of these days; and I relate it with a sigh, in thinking how much has gone out of the family. Know, then, it was nothing less than setting up a daily paper, on the plan of the “Times,” but devoted entirely to Art, Literature, and Science,—Mental Progress, in short; I say on the plan of the “Times,” for it was to imitate the mighty machinery of that diurnal illuminator. It was to be the Literary Salmoneus of the Political Jupiter, and rattle its thunder over the bridge of knowledge. It was to have correspondents in all parts of the globe; everything that related to the chronicle of the mind, from the labor of the missionary in the South Sea Islands, or the research of a traveller in pursuit of that mirage called Timbuctoo, to the last new novel at Paris, or the last great emendation of a Greek particle at a German university, was to find a place in this focus of light. It was to amuse, to instruct, to interest,—there was nothing it was not to do. Not a man in the whole reading public, not only of the three kingdoms, not only of the British empire, but under the cope of heaven, that it was not to touch somewhere, in head, in heart, or in pocket. The most crotchety member of the intellectual community might find his own hobby in those stables.

“Think,” cried Uncle Jack,—“think of the march of mind; think of the passion for cheap knowledge; think how little quarterly, monthly, weekly journals can keep pace with the main wants of the age! As well have a weekly journal on politics as a weekly journal on all the matters still more interesting than politics to the mass of the public. My ‘Literary Times’ once started, people will wonder how they had ever lived without it! Sir, they have not lived without it,—they have vegetated; they have lived in holes and caves, like the Troggledikes.”

“Troglodytes,” said my father, mildly,—“from trogle, ‘a cave,’ and dumi, ‘to go under.’ They lived in Ethiopia, and had their wives in common.”

“As to the last point, I don’t say that the public, poor creatures, are as bad as that,” said Uncle Jack, candidly; “but no simile holds good in all its points. And the public are no less Troggledummies, or whatever you call them, compared with what they will be when living under the full light of my ‘Literary Times.’ Sir, it will be a revolution in the world. It will bring literature out of the clouds into the parlor, the cottage, the kitchen. The idlest dandy, the finest fine lady, will find something to her taste; the busiest man of the mart and counter will find some acquisition to his practical knowledge. The practical man will see the progress of divinity, medicine, nay, even law. Sir, the Indian will read me under the banyan; I shall be in the seraglios of the East; and over my sheets the American Indian will smoke the calumet of peace. We shall reduce politics to its proper level in the affairs of life; raise literature to its due place in the thoughts and business of men. It is a grand thought, and my heart swells with pride while I contemplate it!”

“My dear Jack,” said my father, seriously, and rising with emotion, “it is a grand thought, and I honor you for it. You are quite right,—it would be a revolution! It would educate mankind insensibly. Upon my life, I should be proud to write a leader, or a paragraph. Jack, you will immortalize yourself!”

“I believe I shall,” said Uncle Jack, modestly; “but I have not said a word yet on the greatest attraction of all.”

“Ah! and that?”

“The Advertisements!” cried my uncle, spreading his hands, with all the fingers at angles, like the threads of a spider’s wed. “The advertisements—oh, think of them!—a perfect El Dorado. The advertisements, sir, on the most moderate calculation, will bring us in L50,000 a year. My dear Pisistratus, I shall never marry; you are my heir. Embrace me!”

So saying, my Uncle Jack threw himself upon me, and squeezed out of breath the prudential demur that was rising to my lips.

My poor mother, between laughing and sobbing, faltered out:

“And it is my brother who will pay back to his son all—all he gave up for me!”

While my father walked to and fro the room, more excited than ever I saw him before, muttering, “A sad, useless dog I have been hitherto! I should like to serve the world! I should indeed!”