Chapter VI: Part 6

Time flew without my perceiving it. When I came to myself and
thought of the school, I hastened to return. I inquired for the
wagon in which I had come: it had been gone for hours. I asked
the time: it was almost midnight! A sudden quaking seized me. How
was I to get back to school? I was too weary to make the journey
on foot, and I knew not where to apply for a conveyance. Even if
I should find one, could I venture to disturb the school-house
long after midnight? to arouse that sleeping lion, the usher, in
the very midst of his night’s rest? The idea was too dreadful for
a delinquent school-boy. All the horrors of return rushed upon
me—my absence must long before this have been remarked—and absent
for a whole night? A deed of darkness not easily to be expiated.
The rod of the pedagogue budded forth into tenfold terrors before
my affrighted fancy. I pictured to myself punishment and
humiliation in every variety of form; and my heart sickened at
the picture. Alas! how often are the petty ills of boyhood as
painful to our tender natures, as are the sterner evils of
manhood to our robuster minds.

I wandered about among the booths, and I might have derived a
lesson from my actual feelings, how much the charms of this world
depend upon ourselves; for I no longer saw anything gay or
delightful in the revelry around me. At length I lay down,
wearied and perplexed, behind one of the large tents, and
covering myself with the margin of the tent cloth to keep off the
night chill, I soon fell fast asleep.

I had not slept long, when I was awakened by the noise of
merriment within an adjoining booth. It was the itinerant
theatre, rudely constructed of boards and canvas. I peeped
through an aperture, and saw the whole dramatis personae,
tragedy, comedy, pantomime, all refreshing themselves after the
final dismissal of their auditors. They were merry and gamesome,
and made their flimsy theatre ring with laughter. I was
astonished to see the tragedy tyrant in red baize and fierce
whiskers, who had made my heart quake as he strutted about the
boards, now transformed into a fat, good humored fellow; the
beaming porringer laid aside from his brow, and his jolly face
washed from all the terrors of burnt cork. I was delighted, too,
to see the distressed damsel in faded silk and dirty muslin, who
had trembled under his tyranny, and afflicted me so much by her
sorrows, now seated familiarly on his knee, and quaffing from the
same tankard. Harlequin lay asleep on one of the benches; and
monks, satyrs, and Vestal virgins were grouped together, laughing
outrageously at a broad story told by an unhappy count, who had
been barbarously murdered in the tragedy. This was, indeed,
novelty to me. It was a peep into another planet. I gazed and
listened with intense curiosity and enjoyment. They had a
thousand odd stories and jokes about the events of the day, and
burlesque descriptions and mimickings of the spectators who had
been admiring them. Their conversation was full of allusions to
their adventures at different places, where they had exhibited;
the characters they had met with in different villages; and the
ludicrous difficulties in which they had occasionally been
involved. All past cares and troubles were now turned by these
thoughtless beings into matter of merriment; and made to
contribute to the gayety of the moment. They had been moving from
fair to fair about the kingdom, and were the next morning to set
out on their way to London.

My resolution was taken. I crept from my nest, and scrambled
through a hedge into a neighboring field, where I went to work to
make a tatterdemalion of myself. I tore my clothes; soiled them
with dirt; begrimed my face and hands; and, crawling near one of
the booths, purloined an old hat, and left my new one in its
place. It was an honest theft, and I hope may not hereafter rise
up in judgment against me.

I now ventured to the scene of merrymaking, and, presenting
myself before the dramatic corps, offered myself as a volunteer.
I felt terribly agitated and abashed, for “never before stood I
in such a presence.” I had addressed myself to the manager of the
company. He was a fat man, dressed in dirty white; with a red
sash fringed with tinsel, swathed round his body. His face was
smeared with paint, and a majestic plume towered from an old
spangled black bonnet. He was the Jupiter tonans of this Olympus,
and was surrounded by the interior gods and goddesses of his
court. He sat on the end of a bench, by a table, with one arm
akimbo and the other extended to the handle of a tankard, which
he had slowly set down from his lips as he surveyed me from head
to foot. It was a moment of awful scrutiny, and I fancied the
groups around all watching us in silent suspense, and waiting for
the imperial nod.

He questioned me as to who I was; what were my qualifications;
and what terms I expected. I passed myself off for a discharged
servant from a gentleman’s family; and as, happily, one does not
require a special recommendation to get admitted into bad
company, the questions on that head were easily satisfied. As to
my accomplishments, I would spout a little poetry, and knew
several scenes of plays, which I had learnt at school
exhibitions. I could dance—, that was enough; no further
questions were asked me as to accomplishments; it was the very
thing they wanted; and, as I asked no wages, but merely meat and
drink, and safe conduct about the world, a bargain was struck in
a moment.

Behold me, therefore transformed of a sudden from a gentleman
student to a dancing buffoon; for such, in fact, was the
character in which I made my debut. I was one of those who formed
the groups in the dramas, and were principally, employed on the
stage in front of the booth, to attract company. I was equipped
as a satyr, in a dress of drab frize that fitted to my shape;
with a great laughing mask, ornamented with huge ears and short
horns. I was pleased with the disguise, because it kept me from
the danger of being discovered, whilst we were in that part of
the country; and, as I had merely to dance and make antics, the
character was favorable to a debutant, being almost on a par with
Simon Snug’s part of the Lion, which required nothing but
roaring.

I cannot tell you how happy I was at this sudden change in my
situation. I felt no degradation, for I had seen too little of
society to be thoughtful about the differences of rank; and a boy
of sixteen is seldom aristocratical. I had given up no friend;
for there seemed to be no one in the world that cared for me, now
my poor mother was dead. I had given up no pleasure; for my
pleasure was to ramble about and indulge the flow of a poetical
imagination; and I now enjoyed it in perfection. There is no life
so truly poetical as that of a dancing buffoon.

It may be said that all this argued grovelling inclinations. I do
not think so; not that I mean to vindicate myself in any great
degree; I know too well what a whimsical compound I am. But in
this instance I was seduced by no love of low company, nor
disposition to indulge in low vices. I have always despised the
brutally vulgar; and I have always had a disgust at vice, whether
in high or low life. I was governed merely by a sudden and
thoughtless impulse. I had no idea of resorting to this
profession as a mode of life; or of attaching myself to these
people, as my future class of society. I thought merely of a
temporary gratification of my curiosity, and an indulgence of my
humors. I had already a strong relish for the peculiarities of
character and the varieties of situation, and I have always been
fond of the comedy of life, and desirous of seeing it through all
its shifting scenes.

In mingling, therefore, among mountebanks and buffoons I was
protected by the very vivacity of imagination which had led me
among them. I moved about enveloped, as it were, in a protecting
delusion, which my fancy spread around me. I assimilated to these
people only as they struck me poetically; their whimsical ways
and a certain picturesqueness in their mode of life entertained
me; but I was neither amused nor corrupted by their vices. In
short, I mingled among them, as Prince Hal did among his
graceless associates, merely to gratify my humor.

I did not investigate my motives in this manner, at the time, for
I was too careless and thoughtless to reason about the matter;
but I do so now, when I look back with trembling to think of the
ordeal to which I unthinkingly exposed myself, and the manner in
which I passed through it. Nothing, I am convinced, but the
poetical temperament, that hurried me into the scrape, brought me
out of it without my becoming an arrant vagabond.

Full of the enjoyment of the moment, giddy with the wildness of
animal spirits, so rapturous in a boy, I capered, I danced, I
played a thousand fantastic tricks about the stage, in the
villages in which we exhibited; and I was universally pronounced
the most agreeable monster that had ever been seen in those
parts. My disappearance from school had awakened my father’s
anxiety; for I one day heard a description of myself cried before
the very booth in which I was exhibiting; with the offer of a
reward for any intelligence of me. I had no great scruple about
letting my father suffer a little uneasiness on my account; it
would punish him for past indifference, and would make him value
me the more when he found me again. I have wondered that some of
my comrades did not recognize in me the stray sheep that was
cried; but they were all, no doubt, occupied by their own
concerns. They were all laboring seriously in their antic
vocations, for folly was a mere trade with the most of them, and
they often grinned and capered with heavy hearts. With me, on the
contrary, it was all real. I acted _con amore_, and rattled and
laughed from the irrepressible gayety of my spirits. It is true
that, now and then, I started and looked grave on receiving a
sudden thwack from the wooden sword of Harlequin, in the course
of my gambols; as it brought to mind the birch of my
school-master. But I soon got accustomed to it; and bore all the
cuffing, and kicking, and tumbling about, that form the practical
wit of your itinerant pantomime, with a good humor that made me a
prodigious favorite.

The country campaign of the troupe was soon at an end, and we set
off for the metropolis, to perform at the fairs which are held in
its vicinity. The greater part of our theatrical property was
sent on direct, to be in a state of preparation for the opening
of the fairs; while a detachment of the company travelled slowly
on, foraging among the villages. I was amused with the desultory,
hap-hazard kind of life we led; here to-day, and gone to-morrow.
Sometimes revelling in ale-houses; sometimes feasting under
hedges in the green fields. When audiences were crowded and
business profitable, we fared well, and when otherwise, we fared
scantily, and consoled ourselves with anticipations of the next
day’s success.

At length the increasing frequency of coaches hurrying past us,
covered with passengers; the increasing number of carriages,
carts, wagons, gigs, droves of cattle and flocks of sheep, all
thronging the road; the snug country boxes with trim flower
gardens twelve feet square, and their trees twelve feet high, all
powdered with dust; and the innumerable seminaries for young
ladies and gentlemen, situated along the road, for the benefit of
country air and rural retirement; all these insignia announced
that the mighty London was at hand. The hurry, and the crowd, and
the bustle, and the noise, and the dust, increased as we
proceeded, until I saw the great cloud of smoke hanging in the
air, like a canopy of state, over this queen of cities.

In this way, then, did I enter the metropolis; a strolling
vagabond; on the top of a caravan with a crew of vagabonds about
me; but I was as happy as a prince, for, like Prince Hal, I felt
myself superior to my situation, and knew that I could at any
time cast it off and emerge into my proper sphere.

How my eyes sparkled as we passed Hyde-park corner, and I saw
splendid equipages rolling by, with powdered footmen behind, in
rich liveries, and fine nosegays, and gold-headed canes; and with
lovely women within, so sumptuously dressed and so surpassingly
fair. I was always extremely sensible to female beauty; and here
I saw it in all its fascination; for, whatever may be said of
“beauty unadorned,” there is something almost awful in female
loveliness decked out in jewelled state. The swan-like neck
encircled with diamonds; the raven locks, clustered with pearls;
the ruby glowing on the snowy bosom, are objects that I could
never contemplate without emotion; and a dazzling white arm
clasped with bracelets, and taper transparent fingers laden with
sparkling rings, are to me irresistible. My very eyes ached as I
gazed at the high and courtly beauty that passed before me. It
surpassed all that my imagination had conceived of the sex. I
shrunk, for a moment, into shame at the company in which I was
placed, and repined at the vast distance that seemed to intervene
between me and these magnificent beings.

I forbear to give a detail of the happy life which I led about
the skirts of the metropolis, playing at the various fairs, held
there during the latter part of spring and the beginning of
summer. This continual change from place to place, and scene to
scene, fed my imagination with novelties, and kept my spirits in
a perpetual state of excitement.

As I was tall of my age I aspired, at one time, to play heroes in
tragedy; but after two or three trials, I was pronounced, by the
manager, totally unfit for the line; and our first tragic
actress, who was a large woman, and held a small hero in
abhorrence, confirmed his decision.

The fact is, I had attempted to give point to language which had
no point, and nature to scenes which had no nature. They said I
did not fill out my characters; and they were right. The
characters had all been prepared for a different sort of man. Our
tragedy hero was a round, robustious fellow, with an amazing
voice; who stamped and slapped his breast until his wig shook
again; and who roared and bellowed out his bombast, until every
phrase swelled upon the ear like the sound of a kettle-drum. I
might as well have attempted to fill out his clothes as his
characters. When we had a dialogue together, I was nothing before
him, with my slender voice and discriminating manner. I might as
well have attempted to parry a cudgel with a small sword. If he
found me in any way gaining ground upon him, he would take refuge
in his mighty voice, and throw his tones like peals of thunder at
me, until they were drowned in the still louder thunders of
applause from the audience.

To tell the truth, I suspect that I was not shown fair play, and
that there was management at the bottom; for without vanity, I
think I was a better actor than he. As I had not embarked in the
vagabond line through ambition, I did not repine at lack of
preferment; but I was grieved to find that a vagrant life was not
without its cares and anxieties, and that jealousies, intrigues,
and mad ambition were to be found even among vagabonds.

Indeed, as I become more familiar with my situation, and the
delusions of fancy began to fade away, I discovered that my
associates were not the happy careless creatures I had at first
imagined them. They were jealous of each other’s talents; they
quarrelled about parts, the same as the actors on the grand
theatres; they quarrelled about dresses; and there was one robe
of yellow silk, trimmed with red, and a head-dress of three
rumpled ostrich feathers, which were continually setting the
ladies of the company by the ears. Even those who had attained
the highest honors were not more happy than the rest; for Mr.
Flimsey himself, our first tragedian, and apparently a jovial,
good-humored fellow, confessed to me one day, in the fullness of
his heart, that he was a miserable man. He had a brother-in-law,
a relative by marriage, though not by blood, who was manager of a
theatre in a small country town. And this same brother, (“a
little more than kin, but less than kind,”) looked down upon him,
and treated him with contumely, because forsooth he was but a
strolling player. I tried to console him with the thoughts of the
vast applause he daily received, but it was all in vain. He
declared that it gave him no delight, and that he should never be
a happy man until the name of Flimsey rivalled the name of Crimp.

How little do those before the scenes know of what passes behind;
how little can they judge, from the countenances of actors, of
what is passing in their hearts. I have known two lovers quarrel
like cats behind the scenes, who were, the moment after, ready to
fly into each other’s embraces. And I have dreaded, when our
Belvidera was to take her farewell kiss of her Jaffier, lest she
should bite a piece out of his cheek. Our tragedian was a rough
joker off the stage; our prime clown the most peevish mortal
living. The latter used to go about snapping and snarling, with a
broad laugh painted on his countenance; and I can assure you
that, whatever may be said of the gravity of a monkey, or the
melancholy of a gibed cat, there is no more melancholy creature
in existence than a mountebank off duty.

The only thing in which all parties agreed was to backbite the
manager, and cabal against his regulations. This, however, I have
since discovered to be a common trait of human nature, and to
take place in all communities. It would seem to be the main
business of man to repine at government. In all situations of
life into which I have looked, I have found mankind divided into
two grand parties;—those who ride and those who are ridden. The
great struggle of life seems to be which shall keep in the
saddle. This, it appears to me, is the fundamental principle of
politics, whether in great or little life. However, I do not mean
to moralize; but one cannot always sink the philosopher.

Well, then, to return to myself. It was determined, as I said,
that I was not fit for tragedy, and unluckily, as my study was
bad, having a very poor memory, I was pronounced unfit for comedy
also: besides, the line of young gentlemen was already engrossed
by an actor with whom I could not pretend to enter into
competition, he having filled it for almost half a century. I
came down again therefore to pantomime. In consequence, however,
of the good offices of the manager’s lady, who had taken a liking
to me, I was promoted from the part of the satyr to that of the
lover; and with my face patched and painted, a huge cravat of
paper, a steeple-crowned hat, and dangling, long-skirted,
sky-blue coat, was metamorphosed into the lover of Columbine. My
part did not call for much of the tender and sentimental. I had
merely to pursue the fugitive fair one; to have a door now and
then slammed in my face; to run my head occasionally against a
post; to tumble and roll about with Pantaloon and the clown; and
to endure the hearty thwacks of Harlequin’s wooden sword.

As ill luck would have it, my poetical temperament began to
ferment within me, and to work out new troubles. The inflammatory
air of a great metropolis added to the rural scenes in which the
fairs were held; such as Greenwich Park; Epping Forest; and the
lovely valley of the West End, had a powerful effect upon me.
While in Greenwich Park I was witness to the old holiday games of
running down hill; and kissing in the ring; and then the
firmament of blooming faces and blue eyes that would be turned
towards me as I was playing antics on the stage; all these set my
young blood, and my poetical vein, in full flow. In short, I
played my character to the life, and became desperately enamored
of Columbine. She was a trim, well-made, tempting girl, with a
rougish, dimpling face, and fine chestnut hair clustering all
about it. The moment I got fairly smitten, there was an end to
all playing. I was such a creature of fancy and feeling that I
could not put on a pretended, when I was powerfully affected by a
real emotion. I could not sport with a fiction that came so near
to the fact. I became too natural in my acting to succeed. And
then, what a situation for a lover! I was a mere stripling, and
she played with my passion; for girls soon grow more adroit and
knowing in these than your awkward youngsters. What agonies had I
to suffer. Every time that she danced in front of the booth and
made such liberal displays of her charms, I was in torment. To
complete my misery, I had a real rival in Harlequin; an active,
vigorous, knowing varlet of six-and-twenty. What had a raw,
inexperienced youngster like me to hope from such a competition?

I had still, however, some advantages in my favor. In spite of my
change of life, I retained that indescribable something which
always distinguishes the gentleman; that something which dwells
in a man’s air and deportment, and not in his clothes; and which
it is as difficult for a gentleman to put off as for a vulgar
fellow to put on. The company generally felt it, and used to call
me little gentleman Jack. The girl felt it too; and in spite of
her predilection for my powerful rival, she liked to flirt with
me. This only aggravated my troubles, by increasing my passion,
and awakening the jealousy of her parti-colored lover.

Alas! think what I suffered, at being obliged to keep up an
ineffectual chase after my Columbine through whole pantomimes; to
see her carried off in the vigorous arms of the happy Harlequin;
and to be obliged, instead of snatching her from him, to tumble
sprawling with Pantaloon and the clown; and bear the infernal and
degrading thwacks of my rival’s weapon of lath; which, may heaven
confound him! (excuse my passion) the villain laid on with a
malicious good-will; nay, I could absolutely hear him chuckle and
laugh beneath his accursed mask—I beg pardon for growing a little
warm in my narration. I wish to be cool, but these recollections
will sometimes agitate me. I have heard and read of many
desperate and deplorable situations of lovers; but none, I think,
in which true love was ever exposed to so severe and peculiar a
trial.

This could not last long. Flesh and blood, at least such flesh
and blood as mine, could not bear it. I had repeated
heartburnings and quarrels with my rival, in which he treated me
with the mortifying forbearance of a man towards a child. Had he
quarrelled outright with me, I could have stomached it; at least
I should have known what part to take; but to be humored and
treated as a child in the presence of my mistress, when I felt
all the bantam spirit of a little man swelling within me—gods, it
was insufferable!

At length we were exhibiting one day at West End fair, which was
at that time a very fashionable resort, and often beleaguered by
gay equipages from town. Among the spectators that filled the
front row of our little canvas theatre one afternoon, when I had
to figure in a pantomime, was a party of young ladies from a
boarding-school, with their governess. Guess my confusion, when,
in the midst of my antics, I beheld among the number my quondam
flame; her whom I had be-rhymed at school; her for whose charms I
had smarted so severely; tho cruel Sacharissa! What was worse, I
fancied she recollected me; and was repeating the story of my
humiliating flagellation, for I saw her whispering her companions
and her governess. I lost all consciousness of the part I was
acting, and of the place where I was. I felt shrunk to nothing,
and could have crept into a rat-hole—unluckily, none was open to
receive me. Before I could recover from my confusion, I was
tumbled over by Pantaloon and the clown; and I felt the sword of
Harlequin making vigorous assaults, in a manner most degrading to
my dignity.

Heaven and earth! was I again to suffer martyrdom in this
ignominious manner, in the knowledge, and even before the very
eyes of this most beautiful, but most disdainful of fair ones?
All my long-smothered wrath broke out at once; the dormant
feelings of the gentleman arose within me; stung to the quick by
intolerable mortification, I sprang on my feet in an instant;
leaped upon Harlequin like a young tiger; tore off his mask;
buffeted him in the face, and soon shed more blood on the stage
than had been spilt upon it during a whole tragic campaign of
battles and murders.

As soon as Harlequin recovered from his surprise he returned my
assault with interest. I was nothing in his hands. I was game to
be sure, for I was a gentleman; but he had the clownish
advantages of bone and muscle. I felt as if I could have fought
even unto the death; and I was likely to do so; for he was,
according to the vulgar phrase, “putting my head into Chancery,”
when the gentle Columbine flew to my assistance. God bless the
women; they are always on the side of the weak and the oppressed.

The battle now became general; the dramatis personae ranged on
either side. The manager interfered in vain. In vain were his
spangled black bonnet and towering white feathers seen whisking
about, and nodding, and bobbing, in the thickest of the fight.
Warriors, ladies, priests, satyrs, kings, queens, gods and
goddesses, all joined pell-mell in the fray. Never, since the
conflict under the walls of Troy, had there been such a chance
medley warfare of combatants, human and divine. The audience
applauded, the ladies shrieked and fled from the theatre, and a
scene of discord ensued that baffles all description.

Nothing but the interference of the peace officers restored some
degree of order. The havoc, however, that had been made among
dresses and decorations put an end to all farther acting for that
day. The battle over, the next thing was to inquire why it was
begun; a common question among politicians, after a bloody and
unprofitable war; and one not always easy to be answered. It was
soon traced to me, and my unaccountable transport of passion,
which they could only attribute to my having run _a muck_. The
manager was judge and jury, and plaintiff in the bargain, and in
such cases justice is always speedily administered. He came out
of the fight as sublime a wreck as the Santissìma Trinidada. His
gallant plumes, which once towered aloft, were drooping about his
ears. His robe of state hung in ribbands from his back, and but
ill concealed the ravages he had suffered in the rear. He had
received kicks and cuffs from all sides, during the tumult; for
every one took the opportunity of slyly gratifying some lurking
grudge on his fat carcass. He was a discreet man, and did not
choose to declare war with all his company; so he swore all those
kicks and cuffs had been given by me, and I let him enjoy the
opinion. Some wounds he bore, however, which were the
incontestible traces of a woman’s warfare. His sleek rosy cheek
was scored by trickling furrows, which were ascribed to the nails
of my intrepid and devoted Columbine. The ire of the monarch was
not to be appeased. He had suffered in his person, and he had
suffered in his purse; his dignity too had been insulted, and
that went for something; for dignity is always more irascible the
more petty the potentate. He wreaked his wrath upon the beginners
of the affray, and Columbine and myself were discharged, at once,
from the company.

Figure me, then, to yourself, a stripling of little more than
sixteen; a gentleman by birth; a vagabond by trade; turned adrift
upon the world; making the best of my way through the crowd of
West End fair; my mountebank dress fluttering in rags about me;
the weeping Columbine hanging upon my arm, in splendid, but
tattered finery; the tears coursing one by one down her face;
carrying off the red paint in torrents, and literally “preying
upon her damask cheek.”

The crowd made way for us as we passed and hooted in our rear. I
felt the ridicule of my situation, but had too much gallantry to
desert this fair one, who had sacrificed everything for me.
Having wandered through the fair, we emerged, like another Adam
and Eve, into unknown regions, and “had the world before us where
to choose.” Never was a more disconsolate pair seen in the soft
valley of West End. The luckless Columbine cast back many a
lingering look at the fair, which seemed to put on a more than
usual splendor; its tents, and booths, and parti-colored groups,
all brightening in the sunshine, and gleaming among the trees;
and its gay flags and streamers playing and fluttering in the
light summer airs. With a heavy sigh she would lean on my arm and
proceed. I had no hope or consolation to give her; but she had
linked herself to my fortunes, and she was too much of a woman to
desert me.

Pensive and silent, then, we traversed the beautiful fields that
lie behind Hempstead, and wandered on, until the fiddle, and the
hautboy, and the shout, and the laugh, were swallowed up in the
deep sound of the big bass drum, and even that died away into a
distant rumble. We passed along the pleasant sequestered walk of
Nightingale lane. For a pair of lovers what scene could be more
propitious?—But such a pair of lovers! Not a nightingale sang to
soothe us: the very gypsies who were encamped there during the
fair, made no offer to tell the fortunes of such an ill-omened
couple, whose fortunes, I suppose, they thought too legibly
written to need an interpreter; and the gypsey children crawled
into their cabins and peeped out fearfully at us as we went by.
For a moment I paused, and was almost tempted to turn gypsey, but
the poetical feeling for the present was fully satisfied, and I
passed on. Thus we travelled, and travelled, like a prince and
princess in nursery chronicle, until we had traversed a part of
Hempstead Heath and arrived in the vicinity of Jack Straw’s
castle.

Here, wearied and dispirited, we seated ourselves on the margin
of the hill, hard by the very mile-stone where Whittington of
yore heard the Bow bells ring out the presage of his future
greatness. Alas! no bell rung in invitation to us, as we looked
disconsolately upon the distant city. Old London seemed to wrap
itself up unsociably in its mantle of brown smoke, and to offer
no encouragement to such a couple of tatterdemalions.

For once, at least, the usual course of the pantomime was
reversed. Harlequin was jilted, and the lover had earned off
Columbine in good earnest. But what was I to do with her? I had
never contemplated such a dilemma; and I now felt that even a
fortunate lover may be embarrassed by his good fortune. I really
knew not what was to become of me; for I had still the boyish
fear of returning home; standing in awe of the stern temper of my
father, and dreading the ready arm of the pedagogue. And even if
I were to venture home, what was I to do with Columbine? I could
not take her in my hand, and throw myself on my knees, and crave
his forgiveness and his blessing according to dramatic usage. The
very dogs would have chased such a draggle-tailed beauty from the
grounds.

In the midst of my doleful dumps, some one tapped me on the
shoulder, and looking up I saw a couple of rough sturdy fellows
standing behind me. Not knowing what to expect I jumped on my
legs, and was preparing again to make battle; but I was tripped
up and secured in a twinkling.

“Come, come, young master,” said one of the fellows in a gruff,
but good-humored tone, “don’t let’s have any of your tantrums;
one would have thought that you had had swing enough for this
bout. Come, it’s high time to leave off harlequinading, and go
home to your father.”

In fact I had a couple of Bow street officers hold of me. The
cruel Sacharissa had proclaimed who I was, and that a reward had
been offered throughout the country for any tidings of me; and
they had seen a description of me that had been forwarded to the
police office in town. Those harpies, therefore, for the mere
sake of filthy lucre, were resolved to deliver me over into the
hands of my father and the clutches of my pedagogue.

It was in vain that I swore I would not leave my faithful and
Afflicted Columbine. It was in vain that I tore myself from their
grasp, and flew to her; and vowed to protect her; and wiped the
tears from her cheek, and with them a whole blush that might have
vied with the carnation for brilliancy. My persecutors were
inflexible; they even seemed to exult in our distress; and to
enjoy this theatrical display of dirt, and finery, and
tribulation. I was carried off in despair, leaving my Columbine
destitute in the wide world; but many a look of agony did I cast
back at her, as she stood gazing piteously after me from the
brink of Hempstead Hill; so forlorn, so fine, so ragged, so
bedraggled, yet so beautiful.

Thus ended my first peep into the world. I returned home, rich in
good-for-nothing experience, and dreading the reward I was to
receive for my improvement. My reception, however, was quite
different from what I had expected. My father had a spice of the
devil in him, and did not seem to like me the worse for my freak,
which he termed “sowing my wild oats.” He happened to have
several of his sporting friends to dine with him the very day of
my return; they made me tell some of my adventures, and laughed
heartily at them. One old fellow, with an outrageously red nose,
took to me hugely. I heard him whisper to my father that I was a
lad of mettle, and might make something clever; to which my
father replied that “I had good points, but was an ill-broken
whelp, and required a great deal of the whip.” Perhaps this very
conversation raised me a little in his esteem, for I found the
red-nosed old gentleman was a veteran fox-hunter of the
neighborhood, for whose opinion my father had vast deference.
Indeed, I believe he would have pardoned anything in me more
readily than poetry; which he called a cursed, sneaking, puling,
housekeeping employment, the bane of all true manhood. He swore
it was unworthy of a youngster of my expectations, who was one
day to have so great an estate, and would he able to keep horses
and hounds and hire poets to write songs for him into the
bargain.

I had now satisfied, for a time, my roving propensity. I had
exhausted the poetical feeling. I had been heartily buffeted out
of my love for theatrical display. I felt humiliated by my
exposure, and was willing to hide my head anywhere for a season;
so that I might be out of the way of the ridicule of the world;
for I found folks not altogether so indulgent abroad as they were
at my father’s table. I could not stay at home; the house was
intolerably doleful now that my mother was no longer there to
cherish me. Every thing around spoke mournfully of her. The
little flower-garden in which she delighted was all in disorder
and overrun with weeds. I attempted, for a day or two, to arrange
it, but my heart grew heavier and heavier as I labored. Every
little broken-down flower that I had seen her rear so tenderly,
seemed to plead in mute eloquence to my feelings. There was a
favorite honeysuckle which I had seen her often training with
assiduity, and had heard her say it should be the pride of her
garden. I found it grovelling along the ground, tangled and wild,
and twining round every worthless weed, and it struck me as an
emblem of myself: a mere scatterling, running to waste and
uselessness. I could work no longer in the garden.

My father sent me to pay a visit to my uncle, by way of keeping
the old gentleman in mind of me. I was received, as usual,
without any expression of discontent; which we always considered
equivalent to a hearty welcome. Whether he had ever heard of my
strolling freak or not I could not discover; he and his man were
both so taciturn. I spent a day or two roaming about the dreary
mansion and neglected park; and felt at one time, I believe, a
touch of poetry, for I was tempted to drown myself in a
fish-pond; I rebuked the evil spirit, however, and it left me. I
found the same red-headed boy running wild about the park, but I
felt in no humor to hunt him at present. On the contrary, I tried
to coax him to me, and to make friends with him, but the young
savage was untameable.

When I returned from my uncle’s I remained at home for some time,
for my father was disposed, he said, to make a man of me. He took
me out hunting with him, and I became a great favorite of the
red-nosed squire, because I rode at everything; never refused the
boldest leap, and was always sure to be in at the death. I used
often however, to offend my father at hunting dinners, by taking
the wrong side in politics. My father was amazingly ignorant—so
ignorant, in fact, as not to know that he knew nothing. He was
staunch, however, to church and king, and full of old-fashioned
prejudices. Now, I had picked up a little knowledge in politics
and religion, during my rambles with the strollers, and found
myself capable of setting him right as to many of his antiquated
notions. I felt it my duty to do so; we were apt, therefore, to
differ occasionally in the political discussions that sometimes
arose at these hunting dinners.

I was at that age when a man knows least and is most vain of his
knowledge; and when he is extremely tenacious in defending his
opinion upon subjects about which he knows nothing. My father was
a hard man for any one to argue with, for he never knew when he
was refuted. I sometimes posed him a little, but then he had one
argument that always settled the question; he would threaten to
knock me down. I believe he at last grew tired of me, because I
both out-talked and outrode him. The red-nosed squire, too, got
out of conceit of me, because in the heat of the chase, I rode
over him one day as he and his horse lay sprawling in the dirt.
My father, therefore, thought it high time to send me to college;
and accordingly to Trinity College at Oxford was I sent.

I had lost my habits of study while at home; and I was not likely
to find them again at college. I found that study was not the
fashion at college, and that a lad of spirit only ate his terms;
and grew wise by dint of knife and fork. I was always prone to
follow the fashions of the company into which I fell; so I threw
by my books, and became a man of spirit. As my father made me a
tolerable allowance, notwithstanding the narrowness of his
income, having an eye always to my great expectations, I was
enabled to appear to advantage among my fellow-students. I
cultivated all kinds of sports and exercises. I was one of the
most expert oarsmen that rowed on the Isis. I boxed and fenced. I
was a keen huntsman, and my chambers in college were always
decorated with whips of all kinds, spurs, foils, and boxing
gloves. A pair of leather breeches would seem to be throwing one
leg out of the half-open drawers, and empty bottles lumbered the
bottom of every closet.

I soon grew tired of this, and relapsed into my vein of mere
poetical indulgence. I was charmed with Oxford, for it was full
of poetry to me. I thought I should never grow tired of wandering
about its courts and cloisters; and visiting the different
college halls. I used to love to get in places surrounded by the
colleges, where all modern buildings were screened from the
sight; and to walk about them in twilight, and see the professors
and students sweeping along in the dusk in their caps and gowns.
There was complete delusion in the scene. It seemed to transport
me among the edifices and the people of old times. It was a great
luxury, too, for me to attend the evening service in the new
college chapel, and to hear the fine organ and the choir swelling
an anthem in that solemn building; where painting and music and
architecture seem to combine their grandest effects.

I became a loiterer, also, about the Bodleian library, and a
great dipper into books; but too idle to follow any course of
study or vein of research. One of my favorite haunts was the
beautiful walk, bordered by lofty elms, along the Isis, under the
old gray walls of Magdalen College, which goes by the name of
Addison’s Walk; and was his resort when a student at the college.
I used to take a volume of poetry in my hand, and stroll up and
down this walk for hours.

My father came to see me at college. He asked me how I came on
with my studies; and what kind of hunting there was in the
neighborhood. He examined my sporting apparatus; wanted to know
if any of the professors were fox-hunters; and whether they were
generally good shots; for he suspected this reading so much was
rather hurtful to the sight. Such was the only person to whom I
was responsible for my improvement: is it matter of wonder,
therefore, that I became a confirmed idler?

I do not know how it is, but I cannot be idle long without
getting in love. I became deeply smitten with a shopkeeper’s
daughter in the high street; who in fact was the admiration of
many of the students. I wrote several sonnets in praise of her,
and spent half of my pocket-money at the shop, in buying articles
which I did not want, that I might have an opportunity of
speaking to her. Her father, a severe-looking old gentleman, with
bright silver buckles and a crisp, curled wig, kept a strict
guard on her; as the fathers generally do upon their daughters in
Oxford; and well they may. I tried to get into his good graces,
and to be sociable with him; but in vain. I said several good
things in his shop, but he never laughed; he had no relish for
wit and humor. He was one of those dry old gentlemen who keep
youngsters at bay. He had already brought up two or three
daughters, and was experienced in the ways of students.

He was as knowing and wary as a gray old badger that has often
been hunted. To see him on Sunday, so stiff and starched in his
demeanor; so precise in his dress; with his daughter under his
arm, and his ivory-headed cane in his hand, was enough to deter
all graceless youngsters from approaching.

I managed, however, in spite of his vigilance, to have several
Conversations with the daughter, as I cheapened articles in the
shop. I made terrible long bargains, and examined the articles
over and over, before I purchased. In the meantime, I would
convey a sonnet or an acrostic under cover of a piece of cambric,
or slipped into a pair of stockings; I would whisper soft
nonsense into her ear as I haggled about the price; and would
squeeze her hand tenderly as I received my halfpence of change,
in a bit of whity-brown paper. Let this serve as a hint to all
haberdashers, who have pretty daughters for shop-girls, and young
students for customers. I do not know whether my words and looks
were very eloquent; but my poetry was irresistible; for, to tell
the truth, the girl had some literary taste, and was seldom
without a book from the circulating library.

By the divine power of poetry, therefore, which is irresistible
with the lovely sex, did I subdue the heart of this fair little
haberdasher. We carried on a sentimental correspondence for a
time across the counter, and I supplied her with rhyme by the
stockingful. At length I prevailed on her to grant me an
assignation. But how was it to be effected? Her father kept her
always under his eye; she never walked out alone; and the house
was locked up the moment that the shop was shut. All these
difficulties served but to give zest to the adventure. I proposed
that the assignation should be in her own chamber, into which I
would climb at night. The plan was irresistible. A cruel father,
a secret lover, and a clandestine meeting! All the little girl’s
studies from the circulating library seemed about to be realised.
But what had I in view in making this assignation? Indeed I know
not. I had no evil intentions; nor can I say that I had any good
ones. I liked the girl, and wanted to have an opportunity of
seeing more of her; and the assignation was made, as I have done
many things else, heedlessly and without forethought. I asked
myself a few questions of the kind, after all my arrangements
were made; but the answers were very unsatisfactory. “Am I to
ruin this poor thoughtless girl?” said I to myself. “No!” was the
prompt and indignant answer. “Am I to run away with her?”
“Whither—and to what purpose?” “Well, then, am I to marry
her!”—“Pah! a man of my expectations marry a shopkeeper’s
daughter!” “What, then, am I to do with her?” “Hum—why.—Let me
get into her chamber first, and then consider”—and so the
self-examination ended.

Well, sir, “come what come might,” I stole under cover of the
darkness to the dwelling of my dulcinea. All was quiet. At the
concerted signal her window was gently opened. It was just above
the projecting bow-window of her father’s shop, which assisted me
in mounting. The house was low, and I was enabled to scale the
fortress with tolerable ease. I clambered with a beating heart; I
reached the casement; I hoisted my body half into the chamber and
was welcomed, not by the embraces of my expecting fair one, but
by the grasp of the crabbed-looking old father in the crisp
curled wig.

I extricated myself from his clutches and endeavored to make my
retreat; but I was confounded by his cries of thieves! and
robbers! I was bothered, too, by his Sunday cane; which was
amazingly busy about my head as I descended; and against which my
hat was but a poor protection. Never before had I an idea of the
activity of an old man’s arm, and hardness of the knob of an
ivory-headed cane. In my hurry and confusion I missed my footing,
and fell sprawling on the pavement. I was immediately surrounded
by myrmidons, who I doubt not were on the watch for me. Indeed, I
was in no situation to escape, for I had sprained my ankle in the
fall, and could not stand. I was seized as a housebreaker; and to
exonerate myself from a greater crime I had to accuse myself of a
less. I made known who I was, and why I came there. Alas! the
varlets knew it already, and were only amusing themselves at my
expense. My perfidious muse had been playing me one of her
slippery tricks. The old curmudgeon of a father had found my
sonnets and acrostics hid away in holes and corners of his shop;
he had no taste for poetry like his daughter, and had instituted
a rigorous though silent observation. He had moused upon our
letters; detected the ladder of ropes, and prepared everything
for my reception. Thus was I ever doomed to be led into scrapes
by the muse. Let no man henceforth carry on a secret amour in
poetry.

The old man’s ire was in some measure appeased by the pummelling
of my head, and the anguish of my sprain; so he did not put me to
death on the spot. He was even humane enough to furnish a
shutter, on which I was carried back to the college like a
wounded warrior. The porter was roused to admit me; the college
gate was thrown open for my entry; the affair was blazed abroad
the next morning, and became the joke of the college from the
buttery to the hall.

I had leisure to repent during several weeks’ confinement by my
sprain, which I passed in translating Boethius’ Consolations of
Philosophy. I received a most tender and ill-spelled letter from
my mistress, who had been sent to a relation in Coventry. She
protested her innocence of my misfortunes, and vowed to be true
to me “till death.” I took no notice of the letter, for I was
cured, for the present, both of love and poetry. Women, however,
are more constant in their attachments than men, whatever
philosophers may say to the contrary. I am assured that she
actually remained faithful to her vow for several months; but she
had to deal with a cruel father whose heart was as hard as the
knob of his cane. He was not to be touched by tears or poetry;
but absolutely compelled her to marry a reputable young
tradesman; who made her a happy woman in spite of herself, and of
all the rules of romance; and what is more, the mother of several
children. They are at this very day a thriving couple and keep a
snug corner shop, just opposite the figure of Peeping Tom at
Coventry.

I will not fatigue you by any more details of my studies at
Oxford, though they were not always as severe as these; nor did I
always pay as dear for my lessons. People may say what they
please, a studious life has its charms, and there are many places
more gloomy than the cloisters of a university.

To be brief, then, I lived on in my usual miscellaneous manner,
gradually getting a knowledge of good and evil, until I had
attained my twenty-first year. I had scarcely come of age when I
heard of the sudden death of my father. The shock was severe, for
though he had never treated me with kindness, still he was my
father, and at his death I felt myself alone in the world.

I returned home to act as chief mourner at his funeral. It was
attended by many of the sportsmen of the country; for he was an
important member of their fraternity. According to his request
his favorite hunter was led after the hearse. The red-nosed
fox-hunter, who had taken a little too much wine at the house,
made a maudlin eulogy of the deceased, and wished to give the
view halloo over the grave; but he was rebuked by the rest of the
company. They all shook me kindly by the hand, said many
consolatory things to me, and invited me to become a member of
the hunt in my father’s place.