The Caxtons: A Family Picture Part 2

Presently he started up: "Barnes says Homer is Solomon. Read Omeros backward, in the Hebrew manner--"

"Yes, my love," interrupted my mother. "But baby's Christian name?"

"Omeros--Soreino--Solemo--Solomo!"

"Solomo,--shocking!" said my mother.

"Shocking indeed," echoed my father; "an outrage to common-sense." Then, after glancing again over his books, he broke out musingly: "But, after all, it is nonsense to suppose that Homer was not settled till his time."

"Whose?" asked my mother, mechanically. My father lifted up his finger.

My mother continued, after a short pause., "Arthur is a pretty name.

Then there 's William--Henry--Charles Robert. What shall it be, love?"

"Pisistratus!" said my father (who had hung fire till then), in a tone of contempt,--"Pisistratus, indeed!"

"Pisistratus! a very fine name," said my mother, joyfully,--"Pisistratus Caxton. Thank you, my love: Pisistratus it shall be."

"Do you contradict me? Do you side with Wolfe and Heyne and that pragmatical fellow Vico? Do you mean to say that the Rhapsodists--"

"No, indeed," interrupted my mother. "My dear, you frighten me."

My father sighed, and threw himself back in his chair. My mother took courage and resumed.

"Pisistratus is a long name too! Still, one could call him Sisty."

"Siste, Viator," muttered my father; "that's trite!"

"No, Sisty by itself--short. Thank you, my dear."

Four days afterwards, on his return from the book-sale, to my father's inexpressible bewilderment, he was informed that Pisistratus was "growing the very image of him."

When at length the good man was made thoroughly aware of the fact that his son and heir boasted a name so memorable in history as that borne by the enslaver of Athens and the disputed arranger of Homer,--and it was a.s.serted to be a name that he himself had suggested,--he was as angry as so mild a man could be. "But it is infamous!" he exclaimed. "Pisistratus christened! Pisistratus, who lived six hundred years before Christ was born! Good heavens, madam! you have made me the father of an Anachronism."

My mother burst into tears. But the evil was irremediable. An anachronism I was, and an anachronism I must continue to the end of the chapter.

CHAPTER IV.

"Of course, sir, you will begin soon to educate your son yourself?" said Mr. Squills.

"Of course, sir," said my father, "you have read Martinus Scriblerus?"

"I don't understand you, Mr. Caxton."

"Then you have not read Aiartinus Scriblerus, Mr. Squills!"

"Consider that I have read it; and what then?"

"Why, then, Squills," said my father, familiarly, "you son would know that though a scholar is often a fool, he is never a fool so supreme, so superlative, as when he is defacing the first unsullied page of the human history by entering into it the commonplaces of his own pedantry.

A scholar, sir,--at least one like me,--is of all persons the most unfit to teach young children. A mother, sir,--a simple, natural, loving mother,--is the infant's true guide to knowledge."

"Egad! Mr. Caxton,--in spite of Helvetius, whom you quoted the night the boy was born,--egad! I believe you are right."

"I am sure of it," said my father,--"at least as sure as a poor mortal can be of anything. I agree with Helvetius, the child should be educated from its birth; but how? There is the rub: send him to school forthwith!

Certainly, he is at school already with the two great teachers,--Nature and Love. Observe, that childhood and genius have the same master-organ in common,--inquisitiveness. Let childhood have its way, and as it began where genius begins, it may find what genius finds. A certain Greek writer tells us of some man who, in order to save his bees a troublesome flight to Hymettus, cut their wings, and placed before them the finest flowers he could select. The poor bees made no honey. Now, sir, if I were to teach my boy, I should be cutting his wings and giving him the flowers he should find himself. Let us leave Nature alone for the present, and Nature's loving proxy, the watchful mother."

Therewith my father pointed to his heir sprawling on the gra.s.s and plucking daisies on the lawn, while the young mother's voice rose merrily, laughing at the child's glee.

"I shall make but a poor bill out of your nursery, I see," said Mr.

Squills.

Agreeably to these doctrines, strange in so learned a father, I thrived and flourished, and learned to spell, and make pot-hooks, under the joint care of my mother and Dame Primmins. This last was one of an old race fast dying away,--the race of old, faithful servants; the race of old, tale-telling nurses. She had reared my mother before me; but her affection put out new flowers for the new generation. She was a Devons.h.i.+re woman; and Devons.h.i.+re women, especially those who have pa.s.sed their youth near the sea-coast, are generally superst.i.tious. She had a wonderful budget of fables. Before I was six years old, I was erudite in that primitive literature in which the legends of all nations are traced to a common fountain,--Puss in Boots, Tom Thumb, Fortunio, Fortunatus, Jack the Giant-Killer; tales, like proverbs, equally familiar, under different versions, to the infant wors.h.i.+ppers of Budh and the hardier children of Thor. I may say, without vanity, that in an examination in those venerable cla.s.sics I could have taken honors!

My dear mother had some little misgivings as to the solid benefit to be derived from such fantastic erudition, and timidly consulted my father thereon.

"My love," answered my father, in that tone of voice which always puzzled even my mother to be sure whether he was in jest or earnest, "in all these fables certain philosophers could easily discover symbolic significations of the highest morality. I have myself written a treatise to prove that Puss in Boots is an allegory upon the progress of the human understanding, having its origin in the mystical schools of the Egyptian priests, and evidently an ill.u.s.tration of the wors.h.i.+p rendered at Thebes and Memphis to those feline quadrupeds of which they make both religious symbols and elaborate mummies."

"My dear Austin," said my mother, opening her blue eyes, "you don't think that Sisty will discover all those fine things in Puss in Boots!"

"My dear Kitty," answered my father, "you don't think, when you were good enough to take up with me, that you found in me all the fine things I have learned from books. You knew me only as a harmless creature who was happy enough to please your fancy. By and by you discovered that I was no worse for all the quartos that have transmigrated into ideas within me,--ideas that are mysteries even to myself. If Sisty, as you call the child (plague on that unlucky anachronism! which you do well to abbreviate into a dissyllable),--if Sisty can't discover all the wisdom of Egypt in Puss in Boots, what then? Puss in Boots is harmless, and it pleases his fancy. All that wakes curiosity is wisdom, if innocent; all that pleases the fancy now, turns hereafter to love or to knowledge. And so, my dear, go back to the nursery."

But I should wrong thee, O best of fathers! if I suffered the reader to suppose that because thou didst seem so indifferent to my birth, and so careless as to my early teaching, therefore thou wert, at heart, indifferent to thy troublesome Neogilos. As I grew older, I became more sensibly aware that a father's eye was upon me. I distinctly remember one incident, that seems to me, in looking back, a crisis in my infant life, as the first tangible link between my own heart and that calm great soul.

My father was seated on the lawn before the house, his straw hat over his eyes (it was summer), and his book on his lap. Suddenly a beautiful delf blue-and-white flower-pot, which had been set on the window-sill of an upper story, fell to the ground with a crash, and the fragments spluttered up round my father's legs. Sublime in his studies as Archimedes in the siege, he continued to read,--Impavidum ferient ruince!

"Dear, dear!" cried my mother, who was at work in the porch, "my poor flower-pot that I prized so much! Who could have done this? Primmins, Primmins!"

Mrs. Primmins popped her head out of the fatal window, nodded to the summons, and came down in a trice, pale and breathless.

"Oh!" said my mother, Mournfully, "I would rather have lost all the plants in the greenhouse in the great blight last May,--I would rather the best tea-set were broken! The poor geranium I reared myself, and the dear, dear flower-pot which Mr. Caxton bought for me my last birthday!

That naughty child must have done this!"

Mrs. Primmins was dreadfully afraid of my father,--why, I know not, except that very talkative social persons are usually afraid of very silent shy ones. She cast a hasty glance at her master, who was beginning to evince signs of attention, and cried promptly, "No, ma'am, it was not the dear boy, bless his flesh, it was I!"

"You? How could you be so careless? and you knew how I prized them both.

Oh, Primmins!" Primmins began to sob.

"Don't tell fibs, nursey," said a small, shrill voice; and Master Sisty, coming out of the house as bold as bra.s.s, continued rapidly--"don't scold Primmins, mamma: it was I who pushed out the flower-pot."

"Hus.h.!.+" said nurse, more frightened than ever, and looking aghast towards my father, who had very deliberately taken off his hat, and was regarding the scene with serious eyes wide awake. "Hus.h.!.+ And if he did break it, ma'am, it was quite an accident; he was standing so, and he never meant it. Did you, Master Sisty? Speak!" this in a whisper, "or Pa will be so angry."

"Well," said my mother, "I suppose it was an accident; take care in future, my child. You are sorry, I see, to have grieved me. There's a kiss; don't fret."

"No, mamma, you must not kiss me; I don't deserve it. I pushed out the flower-pot on purpose."

"Ha! and why?" said my father, walking up.