Paul Clifford Read online

  ‘Mr Pepper, madam, says very properly that I must have money to support myself like a gentleman: and as you won’t give it me, I am determined, with many thanks for your past favours, to throw myself on the world, and seek my fortune.’

  If Paul was of no oily and bland temper, dame Margaret Lobkins, it has been seen, had no advantage on that score: – we dare say the reader has observed that nothing so enrages persons on whom one depends as any expressed determination of seeking independence. Gazing, therefore, for one moment at the open but resolute countenance of Paul, while all the blood of her veins seemed gathering in fire and scarlet to her enlarging cheeks, Dame Lobkins said –

  ‘Ifeaks, Master Pride-in-duds! Seek your fortune yourself, will you? This comes of my bringing you up, and letting you eat the bread of idleness and charity, you toad of a thousand! Take that and be d—d to you!’ and, suiting the action to the word, the tube which she had withdrawn from her mouth, in order to utter her gentle rebuke, whizzed through the air, grazed Paul’s cheek, and finished its earthly career by coming in violent contact with the right eye of Dummie Dunnaker, who at that exact moment entered the room.

  Paul had winced for a moment to avoid the missive, – in the next he stood perfectly upright; his cheeks glowed, his chest swelled; and the entrance of Dummie Dunnaker who was thus made the spectator of the affront he had received, stirred his blood into a deeper anger and a more bitter self-humiliation: – all his former resolutions of departure – all the hard words, the coarse allusions, the practical insults he had at any time received, rushed upon him at once. He merely cast one look at the old woman, whose rage was now half subsided, and turned slowly and in silence to the door.

  There is often something alarming in an occurrence, merely because it is that which we least expect: the astute Mrs Lobkins, remembering the hardy temper and fiery passions of Paul, had expected some burst of rage, some vehement reply; and when she caught with one wandering eye his parting look, and saw him turn so passively and mutely to the door, her heart misgave her, she raised herself from her chair, and made towards him. Unhappily for her chance of reconciliation, she had that day quaffed more copiously of the bowl than usual, and the signs of intoxication visible in her uncertain gait, her meaningless eye, her vacant leer, her ruby cheek, all inspired Paul with feelings which, at the moment converted resentment into something very much like aversion. He sprang from her grasp to the threshold. ‘Where be you going, you imp of the world?’ cried the dame. ‘Get in with you, and say no more on the matter: be a bob-cull – drop the bullies, and you shall have the blunt!’

  But Paul heeded not this invitation.

  ‘I will eat the bread of idleness and charity no longer,’ said he, sullenly. ‘Good by, – and if ever I can pay you what I have cost you, I will.’

  He turned away as he spoke; and the dame kindling with resentment at his unseemly return to her proffered kindness, hallooed after him, and bade that dark-coloured gentleman who keeps the fire-office below, go along with him.

  Swelling with anger, pride, shame, and a half-joyous feeling of emancipated independence, Paul walked on he knew not whither, with his head in the air, and his legs marshalling themselves into a military gait of defiance. He had not proceeded far, before he heard his name uttered behind him, – he turned, and saw the rueful face of Dummie Dunnaker.

  Very inoffensively had that respectable person been employed during the last part of the scene we have described, in caressing his afflicted eye, and muttering philosophical observations on the danger incurred by all those who are acquainted with ladies of a choleric temperament: when Mrs Lobkins, turning round after Paul’s departure, and seeing the pitiful person of that Dummie Dunnaker, whose name she remembered Paul had mentioned in his opening speech, and whom, therefore, with an illogical confusion of ideas, she considered a party in the late dispute, exhausted upon him all that rage which it was necessary for her comfort that she should unburden somewhere.

  She seized the little man by the collar – the tenderest of all places in gentlemen similarly circumstanced with regard to the ways of life, and giving him a blow, which took effect on his other and hitherto undamaged eye, cried out, ‘I’ll teach you, you blood-sucker, to spunge upon those as has expectations! I’ll teach you to cozen the heir of the Mug, you snivelling, whey-faced ghost of a farthing rush-light! What! You’ll lend my Paul three crowns, will you, when you knows as how you told me you could not pay me a pitiful tizzy? Oh, you’re a queer one, I warrants; but you won’t queer Margery Lobkins. Out of my ken, you cur of the mange! – out of my ken; and if ever I claps my sees on you again, or if ever I know as how you makes a flat of my Paul, blow me tight, but I’ll weave you a hempen collar: I’ll hang you, you dog, I will. What! You will answer me, will you? – O you viper, budge, and begone!’

  It was in vain that Dummie protested his innocence. A violent coup-de-pied broke off all further parlance. He made a clear house of the Mug; and the landlady thereof, tottering back to her elbow-chair, sought out another pipe, and, like all imaginative persons when the world goes wrong with them, consoled herself for the absence of realities by the creations of smoke.

  Meanwhile, Dummie Dunnaker, muttering and murmuring bitter fancies, overtook Paul, and accused that youth of having been the occasion of the injuries he had just undergone. Paul was not at that moment in the humour best adapted for the patient bearing of accusations; he answered Mr Dunnaker very shortly; and that respectable individual, still smarting under his bruises, replied with equal tartness. Words grew high, and at length, Paul, desirous of concluding the conference, clenched his fist, and told the redoubted Dummie that he would ‘knock him down.’ There is something peculiarly harsh and stunning in those three hard, wirey, sturdy, stubborn monosyllables. Their very sound makes you double your fist – if you are a hero; or your pace – if you are a peaceable man. They produced an instant effect upon Dummie Dunnaker, aided as they were by the effect of an athletic and youthful figure, already fast approaching to the height of six feet, – a flushed cheek, and an eye that bespoke both passion and resolution. The rag-merchant’s voice sunk at once, and with the countenance of a wronged Cassius he whimpered forth, –

  ‘Knock me down! – O leetle Paul, vot vicked vhids are those! Vot! Dummie Dunnaker as has dandled you on his knee mony’s a time and oft! Vy, the cove’s art is as ard as junk, and as proud as a gardener’s dog vith a nosegay tied to his tail.’ This pathetic remonstrance softened Paul’s anger.

  ‘Well, Dummie,’ said he, laughing, ‘I did not mean to hurt you, and there’s an end of it; and I am very sorry for the dame’s ill conduct: and so I wish you a good morning.’

  ‘Vy, vere be you trotting to, leetle Paul?’ said Dummie, grasping him by the tail of the coat.

  ‘The deuce a bit I know,’ answered our hero; ‘but I think I shall drop a call on Long Ned.’

  ‘Avast there!’ said Dummie, speaking under his breath; ‘if so be as you von’t blab, I’ll tell you a bit of a secret. I heered as ’ow Long Ned started for Hampshire this werry morning on a toby consarn!’*

  ‘Ha!’ said Paul, ‘then hang me if I know what to do!’ As he uttered these words, a more thorough sense of his destitution (if he persevered in leaving the Mug) than he had hitherto felt rushed upon him; for Paul had designed for a while to throw himself on the hospitality of his Patagonian friend, and now that he found that friend was absent from London, and on so dangerous an expedition, he was a little puzzled what to do with that treasure of intellect and wisdom which he carried about upon his legs. Already he had acquired sufficient penetration (for Charles Trywit and Harry Finish were excellent masters for initiating a man into the knowledge of the world) to perceive that a person, however admirable may be his qualities, does not readily find a welcome without a penny in his pocket. In the neighbourhood of Thames Court he had, indeed, many acquaintances; but the fineness of his language, acquired from his education, and the elegance of his air, in which he attempted to blend, in happy
association, the gallant effrontery of Mr Long Ned with the graceful negligence of Mr Augustus Tomlinson, had made him many enemies among those acquaintances; and he was not willing, – so great was our hero’s pride, – to throw himself on the chance of their welcome, or to publish, as it were, his exiled and crest-fallen state. As for those boon companions who had assisted him in making a wilderness of his pockets, he had already found, that that was the only species of assistance which they were willing to render him: in a word, he could not for the life of him conjecture in what quarter he should find the benefits of bed and board. While he stood with his finger to his lip, undecided and musing, but fully resolved at least on one thing – not to return to the Mug, – little Dummie, who was a good-natured fellow at the bottom, peered up in his face, and said, ‘Vy, Paul, my kid, you looks down in the chops: cheer up, care killed a cat!’

  Observing that this appropriate and encouraging fact of natural history did not lessen the cloud upon Paul’s brow, the acute Dummie Dunnaker proceeded at once to the grand panacea for all evils, in his own profound estimation.

  ‘Paul, my ben cull,’ said he, with a knowing wink, and nudging the young gentleman in the left side, ‘vot do you say to a drop o’ blue ruin? Or, as you likes to be genteel, I doesn’t care if I sports you a glass of port!’ While Dunnaker was uttering this invitation, a sudden reminiscence flashed across Paul: he bethought him at once of Mac Grawler: and he resolved forthwith to repair to the abode of that illustrious sage, and petition at least for accommodation for the approaching night. So soon as he had come to this determination, he shook off the grasp of the amiable Dummie, and refusing, with many thanks, his hospitable invitation, requested him to abstract from the dame’s house, and lodge within his own, until called for, such articles of linen and clothing as belonged to Paul, and could easily be laid hold of, during one of the matron’s evening siestas, by the shrewd Dunnaker. The merchant promised that the commission should be speedily executed; and Paul, shaking hands with him, proceeded to the mansion of Mac Grawler.

  We must now go back somewhat in the natural course of our narrative, and observe, that among the minor causes which had conspired with the great one of gambling to bring our excellent Paul to his present situation, was his intimacy with Mac Grawler; for when Paul’s increasing years and roving habits had put an end to the sage’s instructions, there was thereby lopped off from the preceptor’s finances the weekly sum of two shillings and sixpence, as well as the freedom of the dame’s cellar and larder; and as, in the reaction of feeling, and the perverse course of human affairs, people generally repent the most of those actions once the most ardently incurred; so poor Mrs Lobkins, imagining that Paul’s irregularities were entirely owing to the knowledge he had acquired from Mac Grawler’s instructions, grievously upbraided herself for her former folly, in seeking for a superior education for her protégé: nay, she even vented upon the sacred head of Mac Grawler himself her dissatisfaction at the results of his instructions. In like manner, when a man who can spell comes to be hanged, the anti-educationists accuse the spelling-book of his murder. High words between the admirer of ignorant innocence and the propagator of intellectual science ensued, which ended in Mac Grawler’s final expulsion from the Mug.

  There are some young gentlemen of the present day addicted to the adoption of Lord Byron’s poetry, with the alteration of new rhymes, who are pleased graciously to inform us, that they are born to be the ruin of all those who love them: an interesting fact, doubtless, but which they might as well keep to themselves. It would seem by the contents of this chapter, as if the same misfortune were destined to Paul. The exile of Mac Grawler, – the insults offered to Dummie Dunnaker, – alike occasioned by him, appear to sanction that opinion. Unfortunately, though Paul was a poet, he was not much of a sentimentalist; and he has never given us the edifying ravings of his remorse on those subjects. But Mac Grawler, like Dunnaker, was resolved that our hero should perceive the curse of his fatality; and as he still retained some influence over the mind of his quondam pupil, his accusations against Paul, as the origin of his banishment, were attended with a greater success than were the complaints of Dummie Dunnaker on a similar calamity. Paul, who, like most people who are good for nothing, had an excellent heart, was exceedingly grieved at Mac Grawler’s banishment on his account: and he endeavoured to atone for it by such pecuniary consolations as he was enabled to offer. These Mac Grawler (purely, we may suppose, from a benevolent desire to lessen the boy’s remorse) scrupled not to accept; and thus, so similar often are the effects of virtue and of vice, the exemplary Mac Grawler conspired with the unprincipled Long Ned and the heartless Henry Finish, in producing that unenviable state of vacuity which now saddened over the pockets of Paul.

  As our hero was slowly walking towards the sage’s abode, depending on his gratitude and friendship for a temporary shelter, one of those lightning flashes of thought which often illumine the profoundest abyss of affliction darted across his mind. Recalling the image of the critic, he remembered that he had seen that ornament of the Asinæum receive sundry sums for his critical lucubrations.

  ‘Why,’ said Paul, seizing on that fact, and stopping short in the street, ‘why should I not turn critic myself?’

  The only person to whom one ever puts a question with a tolerable certainty of receiving a satisfactory answer is one’s self. The moment Paul started this luminous suggestion, it appeared to him that he had discovered the mines of Potosi. Burning with impatience to discuss with the great Mac Grawler the feasibility of his project, he quickened his pace almost into a run, and in a very few minutes, having only overthrown one chimney-sweeper and two apple-women by the way, he arrived at the sage’s door.

  Chapter V

  Ye realms yet unreveal’d to human sight!

  Ye canes athwart the hapless hands that write!

  Ye critic chiefs – permit me to relate

  The mystic wonders of your silent state!

  Virgil, Aeneid

  Fortune had smiled upon Mr Mac Grawler since he first undertook the tuition of Mrs Lobkins’s protégé. He now inhabited a second-floor, and defied the sheriff and his evil spirits. It was at the dusk of evening that Paul found him at home and alone.

  Before the mighty man stood a pot of London porter; a candle, with an unregarded wick, shed its solitary light upon his labours; and an infant cat played sportively at his learned feet, beguiling the weary moments with the remnants of the spiral cap wherewith, instead of laurel, the critic had hitherto nightly adorned his brows.

  So soon as Mac Grawler, piercing through the gloomy mist which hung about the chamber, perceived the person of the intruder, a frown settled upon his brow.

  ‘Have I not told you, youngster!’ he growled, ‘never to enter a gentleman’s room without knocking? I tell you, sir, that manners are no less essential to human happiness than virtue; wherefore, never disturb a gentleman in his avocations, and sit yourself down without molesting the cat!’

  Paul, who knew that his respected tutor disliked any one to trace the source of the wonderful spirit which he infused into his critical compositions, affected not to perceive the pewter Hippocrene, and with many apologies for his want of preparatory politeness, seated himself as directed. It was then that the following edifying conversation ensued.

  ‘The ancients,’ quoth Paul, ‘were very great men, Mr Mac Grawler.’

  ‘They were so, sir,’ returned the critic; ‘we make it a rule in our profession to assert that fact!’

  ‘But, sir,’ said Paul, ‘they were wrong now and then.’

  ‘Never, Ignoramus; never!’

  ‘They praised poverty, Mr Mac Grawler!’ said Paul, with a sigh.

  ‘Hem!’ quoth the critic, a little staggered, but presently recovering his characteristic acumen, he observed, –

  ‘It is true, Paul; but that was the poverty of other people.’

  There was a slight pause. ‘Criticism,’ renewed Paul, ‘must be a most difficult art.’

/>   ‘A-hem! And what art is there, sir, that is not difficult – at least, to become master of?’

  ‘True,’ sighed Paul; ‘or else –’

  ‘Or else what, boy?’ repeated Mr Mac Grawler, seeing that Paul hesitated, either from fear of his superior knowledge, as the critic’s vanity suggested, or from (what was equally likely) want of a word to express his meaning.

  ‘Why, I was thinking, sir,’ said Paul, with that desperate courage which gives a distinct and loud intonation to the voice of all who set, or think they set, their fate upon a cast: ‘I was thinking that I should like to become a critic myself!’

  ‘W–h–e–w!’ whistled Mac Grawler, elevating his eyebrows; ‘w–h–e–w! Great ends have come of less beginnings!’

  Encouraging as this assertion was, coming as it did from the lips of so great a man and so great a critic, at the very moment too when nothing short of an anathema against arrogance and presumption was expected to issue from those portals of wisdom: yet, such is the fallacy of all human hopes, that Paul’s of a surety would have been a little less elated, had he, at the same time his ears drank in the balm of these gracious words, been able to have dived into the source whence they emanated.

  ‘Know thyself!’ was a precept the sage Mac Grawler had endeavoured to obey: consequently the result of his obedience was, that even by himself he was better known than trusted. Whatever he might appear to others, he had in reality no vain faith in the infallibility of his own talents and resources; as well might a butcher deem himself a perfect anatomist from the frequent amputation of legs of mutton, as the critic of the Asinæum have laid ‘the flattering unction to his soul,’ that he was really skilled in the art of criticism, or even acquainted with one of its commonest rules, because he could with all speed cut up and disjoint any work, from the smallest to the greatest, from the most superficial to the most superior; and thus it was that he never had the want of candour to deceive himself as to his own talents. Paul’s wish, therefore, was no sooner expressed, than a vague but golden scheme of future profit illumed the brain of Mac Grawler: – in a word, he resolved that Paul should henceforward share the labour of his critiques; and that he, Mac Grawler, should receive the whole profits in return for the honour thereby conferred on his coadjutor.