A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance

A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance
Charles Lever

Charles James Lever

A Day's Ride: A Life's Romance

CHAPTER I. I PREPARE TO SEEK ADVENTURES

It has been said that any man, no matter how small and insignificant the post he may have filled in life, who will faithfully record the events in which he has borne a share, even though incapable of himself deriving profit from the lessons he has learned, may still be of use to others, – sometimes a guide, sometimes a warning. I hope this is true. I like to think it so, for I like to think that even I, – A. S. P., – if I cannot adorn a tale, may at least point a moral.

Certain families are remarkable for the way in which peculiar gifts have been transmitted for ages. Some have been great in arms, some in letters, some in statecraft, displaying in successive generations the same high qualities which had won their first renown. In an humble fashion, I may lay claim to belong to this category. My ancestors have been apothecaries for one hundred and forty-odd years. Joseph Potts, “drug and condiment man,” lived in the reign of Queen Anne, at Lower Liffey Street, No. 87; and to be remembered passingly, has the name of Mr. Addison amongst his clients, – the illustrious writer having, as it would appear, a peculiar fondness for “Pott’s linature,” whatever that may have been; for the secret died out with my distinguished forefather. There was Michael Joseph Potts, “licensed for chemicals,” in Mary’s Abbey, about thirty years later; and so we come on to Paul Potts and Son, and then to Launcelot Peter Potts, “Pharmaceutical Chemist to his Excellency and the Irish Court,” the father of him who now bespeaks your indulgence.

My father’s great misfortune in life was the ambition to rise above the class his family had adorned for ages. He had, as he averred, a soul above senna, and a destiny higher than black drop. He had heard of a tailor’s apprentice becoming a great general. He had himself seen a wig-maker elevated to the woolsack; and he kept continually repeating, “Mine is the only walk in life that leads to no high rewards. What matters it whether my mixtures be addressed to the refined organization of rank, or the dura ilia rasorum?– I shall live and die an apothecary. From every class are men selected for honors save mine; and though it should rain baronetcies, the bloody hand would never fall to the lot of a compounding chemist.”

“What do you intend to make of Algernon Sydney, Mr. Potts?” would say one of his neighbors. “Bring him up to your own business? A first-rate connection to start with in life.”

“My own business, sir? I’d rather see him a chimneysweep.”

“But, after all, Mr. Potts, being so to say, at the head of your profession – ”

“It is not a profession, sir. It is not even a trade. High science and skill have long since left our insulted and outraged ranks; we are mere commission agents for the sale of patent quackeries. What respect has the world any longer for the great phials of ruby, and emerald, and marine blue, which, at nightfall, were once the magical emblems of our mysteries, seen afar through the dim mists of lowering atmospheres, or throwing their lurid glare upon the passers-by? What man, now, would have the courage to adorn his surgery – I suppose you would prefer I should call it a 'shop’ – with skeleton-fishes, snakes, or a stuffed alligator? Who, in this age of chemical infidelity, would surmount his door with the ancient symbols of our art, – the golden pestle and mortar? Why, sir, I’d as soon go forth to apply leeches on a herald’s tabard, or a suit of Milan mail. And what have they done, sir?” he would ask, with a roused indignation, – “what have they done by their reforms? In invading the mystery of medicine, they have ruined its prestige. The precious drops you once regarded as the essence of an elixir vitæ, and whose efficacy lay in your faith, are now so much strychnine, or creosote, which you take with fear and think over with foreboding.”

I suppose it can only be ascribed to that perversity which seems a great element in human nature, that, exactly in the direct ratio of my father’s dislike to his profession was my fondness for it. I used to take every opportunity of stealing into the laboratory, watching intently all the curious proceedings that went on there, learning the names and properties of the various ingredients, the gases, the minerals, the salts, the essences; and although, as may be imagined, science took, in these narrow regions, none of her loftiest flights, they were to me the most marvellous and high-soaring efforts of human intelligence. I was just at that period of life – the first opening of adolescence – when fiction and adventure have the strongest bold upon our nature, my mind filled with the marvels of Eastern romance, and imbued with a sentiment, strong as any conviction, that I was destined to a remarkable life. I passed days in dreamland, – what I should do in this or that emergency; how rescue myself from such a peril; how profit by such a stroke of fortune; by what arts resist the machinations of this adversary; how conciliate the kind favor of that. In the wonderful tales that I read, frequent mention was made of alchemy and its marvels; now the search was for some secret of endless wealth; now, it was for undying youth or undecay-ing beauty; while in other stories I read of men who had learned how to read the thoughts, trace the motives, and ultimately sway the hearts of their fellow-men, till life became to them a mere field for the exercise of their every will and caprice, throwing happiness and misery about them as the humor inclined. The strange life of the laboratory fitted itself exactly to this phase of my mind.

The wonders it displayed, the endless combinations and transformations it effected, were as marvellous as any that imaginative fiction could devise; but even these were nothing compared to the mysterious influence of the place itself upon my nervous system, particularly when I found myself there alone. In the tales with which my head was filled, many of them the wild fancies of Grimm, Hoffman, or Musæus, nothing was more common than to read how some eager student of the black art, deep in the mystery of forbidden knowledge, had, by some chance combination, by some mere accidental admixture of this ingredient with that, suddenly arrived at the great secret, that terrible mystery which for centuries and centuries had evaded human search. How often have I watched the fluid as it boiled and bubbled in the retort, till I thought the air globules, as they came to the surface, observed a certain rhythm and order. Were these, words? Were they symbols of some hidden virtue in the liquid? Were there intelligences to whom these could speak, and thus reveal a wondrous history? And then, again, with what an intense eagerness have I gazed on the lurid smoke that arose from some smelting mass, now fancying that the vapor was about to assume form and substance, and bow imagining that it lingered lazily, as though waiting for some cabalistic word of mine to give it life and being? How heartily did I censure the folly that had ranked alchemy amongst the absurdities of human invention! Why, rather, had not its facts been treasured and its discoveries recorded, so that in some future age a great intelligence arising might classify and arrange them, showing at least what were practicable and what were only evasive. Alchemists were, certainly, men of pure lives, self-denying and humble. They made their art no stepping-stone to worldly advancement or success; they sought no favor from princes, nor any popularity from the people; but, retired and estranged from all the pleasures of the world, followed their one pursuit, unnoticed and unfriended. How cruel, therefore, to drag them forth from their lonely cells, and expose them to the gaping crowd as devil worshippers! How inhuman to denounce men whose only crimes were lives of solitude and study! The last words of Peter von Vordt, burned for a wizard, at Haarlem, in 1306, were, “Had they left this poor head a little longer on my shoulders, it would have done more for human happiness than all this bonfire!”

How rash and presumptuous is it, besides, to set down any fixed limits to man’s knowledge! Is not every age an advance upon its predecessors, and are not the commonest acts of our present civilization perfect miracles as compared with the usages of our ancestors? But why do I linger on this theme, which I only introduced to illustrate the temper of my boyish days? As I grew older, books of chivalry and romance took possession of my mind, and my passion grew for lives of adventure. Of all kinds of existence, none seemed to me so enviable as that of those men who, regarding life as a vast ocean, hoisted sail, and set forth, not knowing nor caring whither, but trusting to their own manly spirit for extrication out of whatever difficulties might beset them. What a narrow thing, after all, was our modern civilization, with all its forms and conventionalities, with its gradations of rank and its orders! How hopeless for the adventurous spirit to war with the stern discipline of an age that marshalled men in ranks like soldiers, and told that each could only rise by successive steps! How often have I wondered was there any more of adventure left in life? Were there incidents in store for him who, in the true spirit of an adventurer, should go in search of them? As for the newer worlds of Australia and America, they did not possess for me much charm. No great association linked them with the past; no echo came out of them of that heroic time of feudalism, so peopled with heart-stirring characters. The life of the bush or the prairie had its incidents, but they were vulgar and commonplace; and worse, the associates and companions of them were more vulgar still. Hunting down Pawnees or buffaloes was as mean and ignoble a travesty of feudal adventure as was the gold diggings at Bendigo of the learned labors of the alchemist. The perils were unexciting, the rewards prosaic and commonplace. No. I felt that Europe – in some remote regions – and the East – in certain less visited tracts – must be the scenes best suited to my hopes. With considerable labor I could spell my way through a German romance, and I saw, in the stories of Fouqué, and even of Goethe, that there still survived in the mind of Germany many of the features which gave the color-ing to a feudal period. There was, at least, a dreamy indifference to the present, a careless abandonment to what the hour might bring forth, so long as the dreamer was left to follow out his fancies in all their mysticism, that lifted men out of the vulgarities of this work-o’-day world; and I longed to see a society where learning consented to live upon the humblest pittance, and beauty dwelt unflattered in obscurity.

I was now entering upon manhood; and my father – having, with that ambition so natural to an Irish parent who aspires highly for his only son, destined me for the bar – made me a student of Trinity College, Dublin.

What a shock to all the romance of my life were the scenes into which I now was thrown! With hundreds of companions to choose from, I found not one congenial to me. The reading men, too deeply bent upon winning honors, would not waste a thought upon what could not advance their chances of success. The idle, only eager to get through their career undetected in their ignorance, passed lives of wild excess or stupid extravagance.

What was I to do amongst such associates? What I did do, – avoid them, shun them, live in utter estrangement from all their haunts, their ways, and themselves. If the proud man who has achieved success in life encounters immense difficulties when, separating himself from his fellows, he acknowledges no companionship, nor admits any to his confidence, it may be imagined what must be the situation of one who adopts this isolation without any claim to superiority whatever. As can easily be supposed, I was the butt of my fellow students, the subject of many sarcasms and practical jokes. The whole of my Freshman year was a martyrdom. I had no peace, was rhymed on by poetasters, caricatured by draughtsmen, till the name of Potts became proverbial for all that was eccentric, ridiculous, and absurd.

Curran has said, “One can’t draw an indictment against a nation;” in the same spirit did I discover “one cannot fight his whole division.” For a while I believe I experienced a sort of heroism in my solitary state; I felt the spirit of a Coriolanus in my heart, and muttered, “I banish you! ” but this self-supplied esteem did not last long, and I fell into a settled melancholy. The horrible truth was gradually forcing its way slowly, clearly, through the mists of my mind, that there might be something in all this sarcasm, and I can remember to this hour, the day – ay, and the very place – wherein the questions flashed across me: Is my hair as limp, my nose as long, my back as arched, my eyes as green as they have pictured them? Do I drawl so fearfully in my speech? Do I drag my heavy feet along so ungracefully? Good heavens! have they possibly a grain of fact to sustain all this fiction against me?

And if so, – horrible thought, – am I the stuff to go forth and seek adventures? Oh, the ineffable bitterness of this reflection! I remember it in all its anguish, and even now, after years of such experience as have befallen few men, I can recall the pain it cost me. While I was yet in the paroxysm of that sorrow, which assured me that I was not made for doughty deeds, nor to captivate some fair princess, I chanced to fall upon a little German volume entitled “Wald Wandelungen und Abentheure,” von Heinrich Stebbe. Forest rambles and adventures, and of a student, too! for so Herr Stebbe announces himself, in a short introduction to the reader. I am not going into any account of his book. It is in Voss’s Leipzig Catalogue, and not unworthy of perusal by those who are sufficiently imbued with Germanism to accept the changeful moods of a mystical mind, with all its visionary glimpses of light and shade, its doubts, fears, hopes, and fancies, in lieu of real incidents and actual events. Of adventures, properly speaking, he had none. The people he met, the scenes in which he bore his part, were as commonplace as need be. The whole narrative never soared above that bread and butter life – Butter-brod Leben – which Germany accepts as romance; but, meanwhile, the reflex of whatever passed around him in the narrator’s own mind was amusing; so ingeniously did he contrive to interweave the imaginary with the actual, throwing over the most ordinary pictures of life a sort of hazy indistinctness, – meet atmosphere for mystical creation.

If I did not always sympathize with him in his brain-wrought wanderings, I never ceased to take pleasure in his description of scenery, and the heartfelt delight he experienced in Journeying through a world so beautiful and so varied. There was also a little woodcut frontispiece which took my fancy much, representing him as he stood leaning on his horse’s mane, gazing rapturously on the Elbe, from one of the cliffs off the Saxon Switzerland. How peaceful he looked, with his long hair waving gracefully on his neck, and his large soft eyes turned on the scene beneath him I His clasped hands, as they lay on the horse’s mane, imparted a sort of repose, too, that seemed to say, “I could linger here ever so long.” Nor was the horse itself without a significance in the picture; he was a long-maned, long-tailed, patient-looking beast, well befitting an enthusiast, who doubtless took but little heed of how he went or where. If his lazy eye denoted lethargy, his broad feet and short legs vouched for his sure-footedness.

Why should not I follow Stebbe’s example? Surely there was nothing too exalted or extravagant in his plan of life. It was simply to see the world as it was, with the aid of such combinations as a fertile fancy could contribute; not to distort events, but to arrange them, Just as the landscape painter in the license of his craft moves that massive rock more to the foreground, and throws that stone pine a little further to the left of his canvas. There was, indeed, nothing to prevent my trying the experiment Ireland was not less rich in picturesque scenery than Germany, and if she boasted no such mighty stream as the Elbe, the banks of the Blackwater and the Nore were still full of woodland beauty; and, then, there was lake scenery unrivalled throughout Europe.

I turned to Stebbe’s narrative for details of his outfit. His horse be bought at Nordheim for two hundred and forty gulden, – about ten pounds; his saddle and knapsack cost him a little more than forty shillings; with his map, guide-book, compass, and some little extras, all were comprised within twenty pounds sterling, – surely not too costly an equipage for one who was adventuring on a sea wide as the world itself.

As my trial was a mere experiment, to be essayed on the most limited scale, I resolved not to buy, but only hire a horse, taking him by the day, so that if any change of mind or purpose supervened I should not find myself in any embarrassment.

A fond uncle had just left me a legacy of a hundred pounds, which, besides, was the season of the long vacation; thus did everything combine to favor the easy execution of a plan which I determined forthwith to put into practice.

“Something quiet and easy to ride, sir, you said?” repeated Mr. Dycer after me, as I entered his great establishment for the sale and hire of horses. “Show the gentleman four hundred and twelve.”

“Oh, Heaven forbid!” I exclaimed, in ignorance; “such a number would only confuse me.”

“You mistake me, sir,” blandly interposed the dealer; “I meant the horse that stands at that number. Lead him out, Tim. He ‘s gentle as a lamb, sir, and, if you find he suits you, can be had for a song, – I mean a ten pound note.”

“Has he a long mane and tail?” I asked, eagerly.

“The longest tail and the fullest mane I ever saw. But here he comes.” And with the word, there advanced towards us, at a sort of easy amble, a small-sized cream-colored horse, with white mane and tail. Knowing nothing of horseflesh, I was fain to content myself with such observations as other studies might supply me with; and so I closely examined his head, which was largely developed in the frontal region, with moral qualities fairly displayed. He had memory large, and individuality strong; nor was wit, if it exist in the race, deficient Over the orbital region the depressions were deep enough to contain my closed fist, and when I remarked upon them to the groom, he said, “‘T is his teeth will tell you the rayson of that;” a remark which I suspect was a sarcasm upon my general ignorance.

I liked the creature’s eye. It was soft, mild, and contemplative; and although not remarkable for brilliancy, possessed a subdued lustre that promised well for temper and disposition.

“Ten shillings a day, – make it three half-crowns by the week, sir. You ‘ll never hit upon the like of him again,” said the dealer, hurriedly, as he passed me, on his other avocations.

“Better not lose him, sir; he’s well known at Batty’s, and they ‘ll have him in the circus again if they see him. Wish you saw him with his fore-legs on a table, ringing the bell for his breakfast.*’

“I’ll take him by the week, though, probably, a day or two will be all I shall need.”

“Four hundred and twelve for Mr. Potts,” Dycer screamed out. “Shoes removed, and to be ready in the morning.”

CHAPTER II. BLONDEL AND I SET OUT

I had heard and read frequently of the exhilarating sensations of horse exercise. My fellow-students were full of stories of the hunting-field and the race-course. Wherever, indeed, a horse figured in a narrative, there was an almost certainty of meeting some incident to stir the blood and warm up enthusiasm. Even the passing glimpses one caught of sporting-prints in shop-windows were suggestive of the pleasure imparted by a noble and chivalrous pastime. I never closed my eyes all night, revolving such thoughts in my head. I had so worked up my enthusiasm that I felt like one who is about to cross the frontier of some new land where people, language, ways, and habits are all unknown to him. “By this hour to-morrow night,” thought I, “I shall be in the land of strangers, who have never seen, nor so much as heard of me. There will invade no traditions of the scoffs and jibes I have so long endured; none will have received the disparaging estimate of my abilities, which my class-fellows love to propagate; I shall simply be the traveller who arrived at sundown mounted on a cream-colored palfrey, – a stranger, sad-looking, but gentle, withal, of courteous address, blandly demanding lodging for the night. ‘Look to my horse, ostler,’ shall I say, as I enter the honeysuckle-covered porch of the inn. ‘Blondel’ – I will call him Blondel – ‘is accustomed to kindly usage.’” With what quiet dignity, the repose of a conscious position, do I follow the landlord as he shows me to my room. It is humble, but neat and orderly. I am contented. I tell him so. I am sated and wearied of luxury; sick of a gilded and glittering existence. I am in search of repose and solitude. I order my tea; and, if I ask the name of the village, I take care to show by my inattention that I have not heard the answer, nor do I care for it.

Now I should like to hear how they are canvassing me in the bar, and what they think of me in the stable. I am, doubtless, a peer, or a peer’s eldest son. I am a great writer, the wondrous poet of the day; or the pre-Raphaelite artist; or I am a youth heart-broken by infidelity in love; or, mayhap, a dreadful criminal. I liked this last the best, the interest was so intense; not to say that there is, to men who are not constitutionally courageous, a strong pleasure in being able to excite terror in others.

But I hear a horse’s feet on the silent street. I look out Day is just breaking. Tim is holding Blondel at the door. My hour of adventure has struck, and noiselessly descending the stairs, I issue forth.

“He is a trifle tender on the fore-feet, your honor,” said Tim, as I mounted; “but when you get him off the stones on a nice piece of soft road, he ‘ll go like a four-year-old.”

“But he is young, Tim, isn’t he?” I asked, as I tendered him my half-crown.

“Well, not to tell your honor a lie, he is not,” said Tim, with the energy of a man whose veracity had cost him little less than a spasm.

“How old would you call him, then?” I asked, in that affected ease that seemed to say, “Not that it matters to me if he were Methuselah.”

“I could n’t come to his age exactly, your honor,” he replied, “but I remember seeing him fifteen years ago, dancing a hornpipe, more by token for his own benefit; it was at Cooke’s Circus, in Abbey Street, and there wasn’t a hair’s difference between him now and then, except, perhaps, that he had a star on the forehead, where you just see the mark a little darker now.”

“But that is a star, plain enough,” said I, half vexed.

“Well, it is, and it is not,” muttered Tim, doggedly, for he was not quite satisfied with my right to disagree with him.

“He’s gentle, at all events?” I said, more confidently.

“He’s a lamb!” replied Tim. “If you were to see the way he lets the Turks run over his back, when he’s wounded in Timour the Tartar, you wouldn’t believe he was a livin’ baste.”

“Poor fellow!” said I, caressing him. He turned his mild eye upon me, and we were friends from that hour.

What a glorious morning it was, as I gained the outskirts of the city, and entered one of those shady alleys that lead to the foot of the Dublin mountains! The birds were opening their morning hymn, and the earth, still fresh from the night dew, sent up a thousand delicious perfumes. The road on either side was one succession of handsome villas or ornamental cottages, whose grounds were laid out in the perfection of landscape gardening. There were but few persons to be seen at that early hour, and in the smokeless chimneys and closed shutters I could read that all slept, – slept in that luxurious hour when Nature unveils, and seems to revel in the sense of unregarded loveliness. “Ah, Potts,” said I, “thou hast chosen the wiser part; thou wilt see the world after thine own guise, and not as others see it.” Has my reader not often noticed that in a picture-gallery the slightest change of place, a move to the left or right, a chance approach or retreat, suffices to make what seemed a hazy confusion of color and gloss a rich and beautiful picture? So is it in the actual world, and just as much depends on the point from which objects are viewed. Do not be discouraged, then, by the dark aspects of events. It may be that by the slightest move to this side or to that, some unlooked-for sunlight shall slant down and light up all the scene. Thus musing, I gained a little grassy strip that ran along the roadside, and, gently touching Blonde! with my heel, he broke out into a delightful canter. The motion, so easy and swimming, made it a perfect ecstasy to sit there floating at will through the thin air, with a moving panorama of wood, water, and mountain around me.

Emerging at length from the thickly wooded plain, I began the ascent of the Three Rock Mountain, and, in my slackened speed, had full time to gaze upon the bay beneath me, broken with many a promontory, backed by the broad bluff of Howth, and the more distant Lambay. No, it is not finer than Naples. I did not say it was; but, seeing it as I then saw it, I thought it could not be surpassed. Indeed, I went further, and defied Naples in this fashion: —