The Caxtons: A Family Picture — Complete

“You frighten me out of my wits, mother! You are not in earnest?”

“And if my brother could be the means of raising him in the world—”

“Your brother would be enough to sink all the ships in the Channel, ma’am,” said I, quite irreverently. I was shocked before the words were well out of my mouth; and throwing my arms round my mother’s neck, I kissed away the pain I had inflicted.

When I was left alone and in my own little crib, in which my slumber had ever been so soft and easy, I might as well have been lying upon cut straw. I tossed to and fro; I could not sleep. I rose, threw on my dressing-gown, lighted my candle, and sat down by the table near the window. First I thought of the unfinished outline of my father’s youth, so suddenly sketched before me. I filled up the missing colors, and fancied the picture explained all that had often perplexed my conjectures. I comprehended, I suppose by some secret sympathy in my own nature (for experience in mankind could have taught me little enough), how an ardent, serious, inquiring mind, struggling into passion under the load of knowledge, had, with that stimulus sadly and abruptly withdrawn, sunk into the quiet of passive, aimless study. I comprehended how, in the indolence of a happy but unimpassioned marriage, with a companion so gentle, so provident and watchful, yet so little formed to rouse and task and fire an intellect naturally calm and meditative, years upon years had crept away in the learned idleness of a solitary scholar. I comprehended, too, how gradually and slowly, as my father entered that stage of middle life when all men are most prone to ambition, the long-silenced whispers were heard again, and the mind, at last escaping from the listless weight which a baffled and disappointed heart had laid upon it, saw once more, fair as in youth, the only true mistress of Genius,—Fame.

Oh! how I sympathized, too, in my mother’s gentle triumph. Looking over the past, I could see, year after year, how she had stolen more and more into my father’s heart of hearts; how what had been kindness had grown into love; how custom and habit, and the countless links in the sweet charities of home, had supplied that sympathy with the genial man which had been missed at first by the lonely scholar.

Next I thought of the gray, eagle-eyed old soldier, with his ruined tower and barren acres, and saw before me his proud, prejudiced, chivalrous boyhood, gliding through the ruins or poring over the mouldy pedigree. And this son, so disowned,—for what dark offence? An awe crept over me. And this girl,—his ewe-lamb, his all,—was she fair? had she blue eyes like my mother, or a high Roman nose and beetle brows like Captain Roland? I mused and mused and mused; and the candle went out, and the moonlight grew broader and stiller; till at last I was sailing in a balloon with Uncle Jack, and had just tumbled into the Red Sea, when the well-known voice of Nurse Primmins restored me to life with a “God bless my heart! the boy has not been in bed all this ‘varsal night!”

CHAPTER IV

As soon as I was dressed I hastened downstairs, for I longed to revisit my old haunts,—the little plot of garden I had sown with anemones and cresses; the walk by the peach wall; the pond wherein I had angled for roach and perch.

Entering the hall, I discovered my Uncle Roland in a great state of embarrassment. The maid-servant was scrubbing the stones at the hall-door; she was naturally plump,—and it is astonishing how much more plump a female becomes when she is on all-fours! The maid-servant, then, was scrubbing the stones, her face turned from the Captain; and the Captain, evidently meditating a sortie, stood ruefully gazing at the obstacle before him and hemming aloud. Alas, the maidservant was deaf! I stopped, curious to see how Uncle Roland would extricate himself from the dilemma.

Finding that his hems were in vain, my uncle made himself as small as he could, and glided close to the left of the wall; at that instant the maid turned abruptly round towards the right, and completely obstructed, by this manoeuvre, the slight crevice through which hope had dawned on her captive. My uncle stood stock-still,—and, to say the truth, he could not have stirred an inch without coming into personal contact with the rounded charms which blockaded his movements. My uncle took off his hat and scratched his forehead in great perplexity. Presently, by a slight turn of the flanks, the opposing party, while leaving him an opportunity of return, entirely precluded all chance of egress in that quarter. My uncle retreated in haste, and now presented himself to the right wing of the enemy. He had scarcely done so, when, without looking behind her, the blockading party shoved aside the pail that crippled the range of her operations, and so placed it that it formed a formidable barricade, which my uncle’s cork leg had no chance of surmounting. Therewith Captain Roland lifted his eyes appealingly to Heaven, and I heard him distinctly ejaculate—

“Would to Heaven she were a creature in breeches!”

But happily at this moment the maid-servant turned her head sharply round, and seeing the Captain, rose in an instant, moved away the pail, and dropped a frightened courtesy.

My uncle Roland touched his hat. “I beg you a thousand pardons, my good girl,” said he; and, with a half bow, he slid into the open air.

“You have a soldier’s politeness, uncle,” said I, tucking my arm into Captain Roland’s.

“Tush, my boy,” said he, smiling seriously, and coloring up to the temples; “tush, say a gentleman’s! To us, sir, every woman is a lady, in right of her sex.”

Now, I had often occasion later to recall that aphorism of my uncle’s; and it served to explain to me how a man, so prejudiced on the score of family pride, never seemed to consider it an offence in my father to have married a woman whose pedigree was as brief as my dear mother’s. Had she been a Montmorenci, my uncle could not have been more respectful and gallant than he was to that meek descendant of the Tibbetses. He held, indeed, which I never knew any other man, vain of family, approve or support,—a doctrine deduced from the following syllogisms: First, that birth was not valuable in itself, but as a transmission of certain qualities which descent from a race of warriors should perpetuate; namely, truth, courage, honor; secondly, that whereas from the woman’s side we derive our more intellectual faculties, from the man’s we derive our moral: a clever and witty man generally has a clever and witty mother; a brave and honorable man, a brave and honorable father. Therefore all the qualities which attention to race should perpetuate are the manly qualities, traceable only from the father’s side. Again, he held that while the aristocracy have higher and more chivalrous notions, the people generally have shrewder and livelier ideas. Therefore, to prevent gentlemen from degenerating into complete dunderheads, an admixture with the people, provided always it was on the female side, was not only excusable, but expedient; and, finally, my uncle held that whereas a man is a rude, coarse, sensual animal, and requires all manner of associations to dignify and refine him, women are so naturally susceptible of everything beautiful in sentiment and generous in purpose that she who is a true woman is a fit peer for a king. Odd and preposterous notions, no doubt, and capable of much controversy, so far as the doctrine of race (if that be any way tenable) is concerned; but then the plain fact is that my Uncle Roland was as eccentric and contradictory a gentleman—as—as—why, as you and I are, if we once venture to think for ourselves.

“Well, sir, and what profession are you meant for?” asked my uncle. “Not the army, I fear?”

“I have never thought of the subject, uncle.”

“Thank Heaven,” said Captain Roland, “we have never yet had a lawyer in the family, nor a stockbroker, nor a tradesman—ahem!”

I saw that my great ancestor the printer suddenly rose up in that hem.

“Why, uncle, there are honorable men in all callings.”

“Certainly, sir. But in all callings honor is not the first principle of action.”

“But it may be, sir, if a man of honor pursue it! There are some soldiers who have been great rascals!”

My uncle looked posed, and his black brows met thoughtfully. “You are right, boy, I dare say,” he answered, somewhat mildly. “But do you think that it ought to give me as much pleasure to look on my old ruined tower if I knew it had been bought by some herring-dealer, like the first ancestor of the Poles, as I do now, when I know it was given to a knight and gentleman (who traced his descent from an Anglo-Dane in the time of King Alfred) for services done in Aquitaine and Gascony, by Henry the Plantagenet? And do you mean to tell me that I should have been the same man if I had not from a boy associated that old tower with all ideas of what its owners were, and should be, as knights and gentlemen? Sir, you would have made a different being of me if at the head of my pedigree you had clapped a herring-dealer,—though, I dare say, the herring-dealer might have been as good a man as ever the Anglo-Dane was, God rest him!”

“And for the same reason I suppose, sir, that you think my father never would have been quite the same being he is if he had not made that notable discovery touching our descent from the great William Caxton, the printer.”

My uncle bounded as if he had been shot,—bounded so incautiously, considering the materials of which one leg was composed, that he would have fallen into a strawberry-bed if I had not caught him by the arm.

“Why, you—you—you young jackanapes!” cried the Captain, shaking me off as soon as he had regained his equilibrium. “You do not mean to inherit that infamous crotchet my brother has got into his head? You do not mean to exchange Sir William de Caxton, who fought and fell at Bosworth, for the mechanic who sold black-letter pamphlets in the Sanctuary at Westminster?”

“That depends on the evidence, uncle!”

“No, sir; like all noble truths, it depends upon faith. Men, nowadays,” continued my uncle, with a look of ineffable disgust, “actually require that truths should be proved.”

“It is a sad conceit on their part, no doubt, my dear uncle; but till a truth is proved, how can we know that it is a truth?”

I thought that in that very sagacious question I had effectually caught my uncle. Not I. He slipped through it like an eel.

“Sir,” said he, “whatever in Truth makes a man’s heart warmer and his soul purer, is a belief, not a knowledge. Proof, sir, is a handcuff; belief is a wing! Want proof as to an ancestor in the reign of King Richard? Sir, you cannot even prove to the satisfaction of a logician that you are the son of your own father. Sir, a religious man does not want to reason about his religion; religion is not mathematics. Religion is to be felt, not proved. There are a great many things in the religion of a good man which are not in the catechism. Proof!” continued my uncle, growing violent—“Proof, sir, is a low, vulgar, levelling, rascally Jacobin; Belief is a loyal, generous, chivalrous gentleman! No, no; prove what you please, you shall never rob me of one belief that has made me—”

“The finest-hearted creature that ever talked nonsense,” said my father, who came up, like Horace’s deity, at the right moment. “What is it you must believe in, brother, no matter what the proof against you?”

My uncle was silent, and with great energy dug the point of his cane into the gravel.

“He will not believe in our great ancestor the printer,” said I, maliciously.

My father’s calm brow was overcast in a moment. “Brother,” said the Captain, loftily, “you have a right to your own ideas; but you should take care how they contaminate your child.”

“Contaminate!” said my father, and for the first time I saw an angry sparkle flash from his eyes; but he checked himself on the instant. “Change the word, my dear brother.”

“No, sir, I will not change it! To belie the records of the family!”

“Records! A brass plate in a village church against all the books of the College of Arms!”

“To renounce your ancestor, a knight who died in the field!”

“For the worst cause that man ever fought for!”

“On behalf of his king!”

“Who had murdered his nephews!”

“A knight! with our crest on his helmet.”

“And no brains underneath it, or he would never have had them knocked out for so bloody a villain!”

“A rascally, drudging, money-making printer!”

“The wise and glorious introducer of the art that has enlightened a world. Prefer for an ancestor, to one whom scholar and sage never name but in homage, a worthless, obscure, jolter-headed booby in mail, whose only record to men is a brass plate in a church in a village!”

My uncle turned round perfectly livid. “Enough, sir! enough! I am insulted sufficiently. I ought to have expected it. I wish you and your son a very good day.”

My father stood aghast. The Captain was hobbling off to the iron gate; in another moment he would have been out of our precincts. I ran up and hung upon him. “Uncle, it is all my fault. Between you and me, I am quite of your side; pray forgive us both. What could I have been thinking of, to vex you so? And my father, whom your visit has made so happy!” My uncle paused, feeling for the latch of the gate. My father had now come up, and caught his hand. “What are all the printers that ever lived, and all the books they ever printed, to one wrong to thy fine heart, brother Roland? Shame on me! A bookman’s weak point, you know! It is very true, I should never have taught the boy one thing to give you pain, brother Roland,—though I don’t remember,” continued my father, with a perplexed look, “that I ever did teach it him, either! Pisistratus, as you value my blessing, respect as your ancestor Sir William de Caxton, the hero of Bosworth. Come, come, brother!”

“I am an old fool,” said Uncle Roland, “whichever way we look at it. Ah, you young dog, you are laughing at us both!”