The Caxtons: A Family Picture — Complete

Under ordinary circumstances, I must begin by taking from my father a large slice of an income that will ill spare paring. According to my calculation, my parents and my uncle want all they have got, and the subtraction of the yearly sum on which Pisistratus is to live till he can live by his own labors, would be so much taken from the decent comforts of his kindred. If I return to Cambridge, with all economy, I must thus narrow still more the res angusta domi; and when Cambridge is over, and I am turned loose upon the world,—failing, as is likely enough, of the support of a fellowship,—how many years must I work, or rather, alas! not work, at the Bar (which, after all, seems my best calling) before I can in my turn provide for those who, till then, rob themselves for me; till I have arrived at middle life, and they are old and worn out;

till the chink of the golden bowl sounds but hollow at the ebbing well? I would wish that, if I can make money, those I love best may enjoy it while enjoyment is yet left to them; that my father shall see “The History of Human Error” complete, bound in russia on his shelves; that my mother shall have the innocent pleasures that content her, before age steals the light from her happy smile; that before Roland’s hair is snow-white (alas! the snows there thicken fast), he shall lean on my arm while we settle together where the ruin shall be repaired or where left to the owls, and where the dreary bleak waste around shall laugh with the gleam of corn. For you know the nature of this Cumberland soil,—you, who possess much of it, and have won so many fair acres from the wild; you know that my uncle’s land, now (save a single farm) scarce worth a shilling an acre, needs but capital to become an estate more lucrative than ever his ancestors owned. You know that, for you have applied your capital to the same kind of land, and in doing so, what blessings— which you scarcely think of in your London library—you have effected, what mouths you feed, what hands you employ! I have calculated that my uncle’s moors, which now scarce maintain two or three shepherds, could, manured by money, maintain two hundred families by their labor. All this is worth trying for; therefore Pisistratus wants to make money. Not so much,—he does not require millions; a few spare thousand pounds would go a long way, and with a modest capital to begin with, Roland should become a true squire,—a real landowner, not the mere lord of a desert. Now then, dear sir, advise me how I may, with such qualities as I possess, arrive at that capital—ay, and before it is too late—so that money-making may not last till my grave. Turning in despair from this civilized world of ours, I have cast my eyes to a world far older,—and yet more to a world in its giant childhood. India here, Australia there,—what say you, sir, you who will see dispassionately those things that float before my eyes through a golden haze, looming large in the distance? Such is my confidence in your judgment that you have but to say, “Fool, give up thine El Dorados and stay at home; stick to the books and the desk; annihilate that redundance of animal life that is in thee;

grow a mental machine: thy physical gifts are of no avail to thee;

take thy place among the slaves of the Lamp,”—and I will obey without a murmur. But if I am right; if I have in me attributes that here find no market; if my repinings are but the instincts of nature that, out of this decrepit civilization, desire vent for growth in the young stir of some more rude and vigorous social system,—then give me, I pray, that advice which may clothe my idea in some practical and tangible embodiments. Have I made myself understood?

We take no newspaper here, but occasionally one finds its way from the parsonage; and I have lately rejoiced at a paragraph that spoke of your speedy entrance into the Administration as a thing certain.

I write to you before you are a minister, and you see what I seek is not in the way of official patronage. A niche in an office,—

oh, to me that were worse than all! Yet I did labor hard with you, but,—that was different. I write to you thus frankly, knowing your warm, noble heart, and as if you were my father. Allow me to add my humble but earnest congratulations on Miss Trevanion’s approaching marriage with one worthy, if not of her, at least of her station. I do so as becomes one whom you have allowed to retain the right to pray for the happiness of you and yours. My dear Mr. Trevanion, this is a long letter, and I dare not even read it over, lest, if I do, I should not send it. Take it with all its faults, and judge of it with that kindness with which you have judged ever,

    Your grateful and devoted servant,
    Pisistratus Caxton.

Letter From Albert Trevanion, Esq., M. P., To Pisistratus Caxton.

Library of the House of Commons, Tuesday Night.

My Dear Pisistratus, ———- is up; we are in for it for two mortal hours! I take flight to the library, and devote those hours to you. Don’t be conceited, but that picture of yourself which you have placed before me has struck me with all the force of an original. The state of mind which you describe so vividly must be a very common one in our era of civilization, yet I have never before seen it made so prominent and life-like. You have been in my thoughts all day. Yes, how many young men must there be like you, in this Old World, able, intelligent, active, and persevering enough, yet not adapted for success in any of our conventional professions,—“mute, inglorious Raleighs.” Your letter, young artist, is an illustration of the philosophy of colonizing. I comprehend better, after reading it, the old Greek colonization,— the sending out, not only the paupers, the refuse of an overpopulated state, but a large proportion of a better class, fellows full of pith and sap and exuberant vitality, like yourself, blending, in those wise cleruchioe, a certain portion of the aristocratic with the more democratic element; not turning a rabble loose upon a new soil, but planting in the foreign allotments all the rudiments of a harmonious state, analogous to that in the mother country; not only getting rid of hungry, craving mouths, but furnishing vent for a waste surplus of intelligence and courage, which at home is really not needed, and more often comes to ill than to good,—here only menaces our artificial embankments, but there, carried off in an aqueduct, might give life to a desert.

For my part, in my ideal of colonization I should like that each exportation of human beings had, as of old, its leaders and chiefs,—not so appointed from the mere quality of rank (often, indeed, taken from the humbler classes), but still men to whom a certain degree of education should give promptitude, quickness, adaptability; men in whom their followers can confide. The Greeks understood that. Nay, as the colony makes progress, as its principal town rises into the dignity of a capital,—a polis that needs a polity,—I sometimes think it might be wise to go still further, and not only transplant to it a high standard of civilization, but draw it more closely into connection with the parent state, and render the passage of spare intellect, education, and civility, to and fro, more facile, by drafting off thither the spare scions of royalty itself. I know that many of my more “liberal” friends would pooh-pooh this notion; but I am sure that the colony altogether, when arrived to a state that would bear the importation, would thrive all the better for it. And when the day shall come (as to all healthful colonies it must come sooner or later) in which the settlement has grown an independent state, we may thereby have laid the seeds of a constitution and a civilization similar to our own, with self-developed forms of monarchy and aristocracy, though of a simpler growth than old societies accept, and not left a strange, motley chaos of struggling democracy—an uncouth, livid giant, at which the Frankenstein may well tremble, not because it is a giant, but because it is a giant half completed. Depend on it, the New World will be friendly or hostile to the Old, not in proportion to the kinship of race, but in proportion to the similarity of manners and institutions,—a mighty truth to which we colonizers have been blind.

Passing from these more distant speculations to this positive present before us, you see already, from what I have said, that I sympathize with your aspirations; that I construe them as you would have me: looking to your nature and to your objects, I give you my advice in a word,—Emigrate!

My advice is, however, founded on one hypothesis; namely, that you are perfectly sincere,—you will be contented with a rough life, and with a moderate fortune at the end of your probation. Don’t dream of emigrating if you want to make a million, or the tenth of a million. Don’t dream of emigrating unless you can enjoy its hardships,—to bear them is not enough!

Australia is the land for you, as you seem to surmise. Australia is the land for two classes of emigrants: first, the man who has nothing but his wits, and plenty of them; secondly, the man who has a small capital, and who is contented to spend ten years in trebling it. I assume that you belong to the latter class. Take out L3,000, and before you are thirty years old you may return with L10,000 or L12,000. If that satisfies you, think seriously of Australia. By coach, tomorrow, I will send you down all the best books and reports on the subject; and I will get you what detailed information I can from the Colonial Office. Having read these, and thought over them dispassionately, spend some months yet among the sheep-walks of Cumberland; learn all you can from all the shepherds you can find,—from Thyrsis to Menalcas. Do more; fit yourself in every way for a life in the Bush, where the philosophy of the division of labor is not yet arrived at. Learn to turn your hand to everything. Be something of a smith, something of a carpenter —do the best you can with the fewest tools; make yourself an excellent shot; break in all the wild horses and ponies you can borrow and beg. Even if you want to do none of these things when in your settlement, the having learned to do them will fit you for many other things not now foreseen. De-fine-gentlemanize yourself from the crown of your head to the sole of your foot, and become the greater aristocrat for so doing; for he is more than an aristocrat, he is a king, who suffices in all things for himself,— who is his own master, because he wants no valetaille. I think Seneca has expressed that thought before me; and I would quote the passage, but the book, I fear, is not in the library of the House of Commons. But now (cheers, by Jove! I suppose —— is down. Ah! it is so; and C—- is up, and that cheer followed a sharp hit at me.

How I wish I were your age, and going to Australia with you!)—But now—to resume my suspended period—but now to the important point,—capital. You must take that, unless you go as a shepherd, and then good-by to the idea of L10,000 in ten years. So, you see, it appears at the first blush that you must still come to your father; but, you will say, with this difference, that you borrow the capital with every chance of repaying it instead of frittering away the income year after year till you are eight and thirty or forty at least. Still, Pisistratus, you don’t, in this, gain your object at a leap; and my dear old friend ought not to lose his son and his money too. You say you write to me as to your own father. You know I hate professions; and if you did not mean what you say, you have offended me mortally. As a father, then, I take a father’s rights, and speak plainly. A friend of mine, Mr. Bolding, a clergyman, has a son,—a wild fellow, who is likely to get into all sorts of scrapes in England, but with plenty of good in him notwithstanding, frank, bold, not wanting in talent, but rather in prudence, easily tempted and led away into extravagance. He would make a capital colonist (no such temptations in the Bush!) if tied to a youth like you. Now I propose, with your leave, that his

father shall advance him L1,500, which shall not, however, be placed in his hands, but in yours, as head partner in the firm.

You, on your side, shall advance the same sum of L1,500, which you shall borrow from me for three years without interest. At the end of that time interest shall commence; and the capital, with the interest on the said first three years, shall be repaid to me, or my executors, on your return. After you have been a year or two in the Bush, and felt your way, and learned your business, you may then safely borrow L1,500 more from your father; and, in the mean while, you and your partner will have had together the full sum of L3,000 to commence with. You see in this proposal I make you no gift, and I run no risk even by your death. If you die insolvent, I will promise to come on your father, poor fellow; for small joy and small care will he have then in what may be left of his fortune. There—I have said all; and I will never forgive you if you reject an aid that will serve you so much and cost me so little.

I accept your congratulations on Fanny’s engagement with Lord Castleton. When you return from Australia you will still be a young man, she (though about your own years) almost a middle-aged woman, with her head full of pomps and vanities. All girls have a short period of girlhood in common; but when they enter womanhood, the woman becomes the woman of her class. As for me, and the office assigned to me by report, you know what I said when we parted, and—But here J—— comes, and tells me that “I am expected to speak, and answer N——, who is just up, brimful of malice,”—the House crowded, and hungering for personalities. So I, the man of the Old World, gird up my loins, and leave you, with a sigh, to the fresh youth of the New

“Ne tibi sit duros acuisse in proelia dentes.”

    Yours affectionately,
    Albert Trevanion.

CHAPTER VII

So, reader, thou art now at the secret of my heart.

Wonder not that I, a bookman’s son, and at certain periods of my life a bookman myself, though of lowly grade in that venerable class,—wonder not that I should thus, in that transition stage between youth and manhood, have turned impatiently from books. Most students, at one time or other in their existence, have felt the imperious demand of that restless principle in man’s nature which calls upon each son of Adam to contribute his share to the vast treasury of human deeds. And though great scholars are not necessarily, nor usually, men of action, yet the men of action whom History presents to our survey have rarely been without a certain degree of scholarly nurture. For the ideas which books quicken, books cannot always satisfy. And though the royal pupil of Aristotle slept with Homer under his pillow, it was not that he might dream of composing epics, but of conquering new Ilions in the East. Many a man, how little soever resembling Alexander, may still have the conqueror’s aim in an object that action only can achieve, and the book under his pillow may be the strongest antidote to his repose. And how the stern Destinies that shall govern the man weave their first delicate tissues amidst the earliest associations of the child! Those idle tales with which the old credulous nurse had beguiled my infancy,—tales of wonder, knight-errantry, and adventure,—had left behind them seeds long latent, seeds that might never have sprung up above the soil, but that my boyhood was so early put under the burning-glass, and in the quick forcing house, of the London world. There, even amidst books and study, lively observation and petulant ambition broke forth from the lush foliage of romance,—that fruitless leafiness of poetic youth! And there passion, which is a revolution in all the elements of individual man, had called a new state of being, turbulent and eager, out of the old habits and conventional forms it had buried,—ashes that speak where the fire has been. Far from me, as from any mind of some manliness, be the attempt to create interest by dwelling at length on the struggles against a rash and misplaced attachment, which it was my duty to overcome; but all such love, as I have before implied, is a terrible unsettler,—

“Where once such fairies dance, no grass doth ever grow.”

To re-enter boyhood, go with meek docility through its disciplined routine—how hard had I found that return, amidst the cloistered monotony of college! My love for my father, and my submission to his wish, had indeed given some animation to objects otherwise distasteful; but now that my return to the University must be attended with positive privation to those at home, the idea became utterly hateful and repugnant. Under pretence that I found myself, on trial, not yet sufficiently prepared to do credit to my father’s name, I had easily obtained leave to lose the ensuing college term and pursue my studies at home. This gave me time to prepare my plans and bring round ——. How shall I ever bring round to my adventurous views those whom I propose to desert? Hard it is to get on in the world,—very hard; but the most painful step in the way is that which starts from the threshold of a beloved home.

How—ah, how indeed! “No, Blanche, you cannot join me to-day; I am going out for many hours. So it will be late before I can be home.”

Home,—the word chokes me! Juba slinks back to his young mistress, disconsolate; Blanche gazes at me ruefully from our favorite hill-top, and the flowers she has been gathering fall unheeded from her basket. I hear my mother’s voice singing low as she sits at work by her open casement. How,—ah, how indeed!

[END OF PRINT VOL 1.]

PART XIII

CHAPTER I

Saint Chrysostom, in his work on “The Priesthood,” defends deceit, if for a good purpose, by many Scriptural examples; ends his first book by asserting that it is often necessary, and that much benefit may arise from it; and begins his second book by saying that it ought not to be called “deceit,” but “good management.”[9 - Hohler’s translation.]

“Good management,” then, let me call the innocent arts by which I now sought to insinuate my project into favor and assent with my unsuspecting family. At first I began with Roland. I easily induced him to read some of the books, full of the charm of Australian life, which Trevanion had sent me; and so happily did those descriptions suit his own erratic tastes, and the free, half-savage man that lay rough and large within that soldierly nature, that he himself, as it were, seemed to suggest my own ardent desire, sighed, as the careworn Trevanion had done, that “he was not my age,” and blew the flame that consumed me, with his own willing breath. So that when at last—wandering one day over the wild moors—I said, knowing his hatred of law and lawyers: “Alas, uncle, that nothing should be left for me but the Bar!” Captain Roland struck his cane into the peat and exclaimed, “Zounds, sir! the Bar and lying, with truth and a world fresh from God before you!”

“Your hand, uncle,—we understand each other. Now help me with those two quiet hearts at home!”

“Plague on my tongue! what have I done?” said the Captain, looking aghast. Then, after musing a little time, he turned his dark eye on me and growled out, “I suspect, young sir, you have been laying a trap for me; and I have fallen into it, like an old fool as I am.”

“Oh, sir, I? you prefer the Bar!—”

“Rogue!”

“Or, indeed, I might perhaps get a clerkship in a merchant’s office?”

“If you do, I will scratch you out of the pedigree!”

“Huzza, then, for Australasia!”

“Well, well, well!” said my uncle,—

“With a smile on his lip, and a tear in his eye,”—

“the old sea-king’s blood will force its way,—a soldier or a rover, there is no other choice for you. We shall mourn and miss you; but who can chain the young eagles to the eyrie?”

I had a harder task with my father, who at first seemed to listen to me as if I had been talking of an excursion to the moon. But I threw in a dexterous dose of the old Greek Cleruchioe cited by Trevanion, which set him off full trot on his hobby, till after a short excursion to Euboea and the Chersonese, he was fairly lost amidst the Ionian colonies of Asia Minor. I then gradually and artfully decoyed him into his favorite science of Ethnology; and while he was speculating on the origin of the American savages, and considering the rival claims of Cimmerians, Israelites, and Scandinavians, I said quietly: “And you, sir, who think that all human improvement depends on the mixture of races; you, whose whole theory is an absolute sermon upon emigration, and the transplanting and interpolity of our species,—you, sir, should be the last man to chain your son, your elder son, to the soil, while your younger is the very missionary of rovers.”

“Pisistratus,” said my father, “you reason by synecdoche,—ornamental, but illogical;” and therewith, resolved to hear no more, my father rose and retreated into his study.

But his observation, now quickened, began from that day to follow my moods and humors; then he himself grew silent and thoughtful, and finally he took to long conferences with Roland. The result was that one evening in spring, as I lay listless amidst the weeds and fern that sprang up through the melancholy ruins, I felt a hand on my shoulder; and my father, seating himself beside me on a fragment of stone, said earnestly; “Pisistratus, let us talk. I had hoped better things from your study of Robert Hall.”

“Nay, dear father, the medicine did me great good: I have not repined since, and I look steadfastly and cheerfully on life. But Robert Hall fulfilled his mission, and I would fulfil mine.”

“Is there no mission in thy native land, O planeticose and exallotriote spirit?”[10 - Words coined by Mr. Caxton from (Greek word), “disposed to roaming,” and (Greek word), “to export, to alienate.”] asked my father, with compassionate rebuke.

“Alas, yes! But what the impulse of genius is to the great, the instinct of vocation is to the mediocre. In every man there is a magnet; in that thing which the man can do best there is a loadstone.”