The Caxtons: A Family Picture Part 23

"Oh, no!" cried my mother; "he might as well go to college then. I thought he was to stay with us,--only go in the morning, but, of course, sleep here."

"If I know anything of Trevanion," said my father, "his secretary will be expected to do without sleep. Poor boy! you don't know what it is you desire. And yet, at your age, I--" my father stopped short. "No!" he renewed abruptly, after a long silence, and as if soliloquizing,--"no; man is never wrong while he lives for others. The philosopher who contemplates from the rock is a less n.o.ble image than the sailor who struggles with the storm. Why should there be two of us? And could he be an alter ego, even if I wished it? Impossible!" My father turned on his chair, and laying the left leg on the right knee, said smilingly, as he bent down to look me full in the face: "But, Pisistratus, will you promise me always to wear the saffron bag?"

CHAPTER VII.

I now make a long stride in my narrative. I am domesticated with the Trevanions. A very short conversation with the statesman sufficed to decide my father; and the pith of it lay in this single sentence uttered by Trevanion: "I promise you one thing,--he shall never be idle!"

Looking back, I am convinced that my father was right, and that he understood my character, and the temptations to which I was most p.r.o.ne, when he consented to let me resign college and enter thus prematurely on the world of men. I was naturally so joyous that I should have made college life a holiday, and then, in repentance, worked myself into a phthisis.

And my father, too, was right that though I could study, I was not meant for a student.

After all, the thing was an experiment. I had time to spare; if the experiment failed, a year's delay would not necessarily be a year's loss.

I am ensconced, then, at Mr. Trevanion's; I have been there some months.

It is late in the winter; Parliament and the season have commenced. I work hard,--Heaven knows, harder than I should have worked at college.

Take a day for sample.

Trevanion gets up at eight o'clock, and in all--weathers rides an hour before breakfast; at nine he takes that meal in his wife's dressing-room; at half-past nine he comes into his study. By that time he expects to find done by his secretary the work I am about to describe.

On coming home,--or rather before going to bed, which is usually after three o'clock,--it is Mr. Trevanion's habit to leave on the table of the said study a list of directions for the secretary. The following, which I take at random from many I have preserved, may show their multifarious nature:--

1. Look out in the Reports (Committee, House of Lords) for the last seven years all that is said about the growth of flax; mark the pa.s.sages for me.

2. Do, do. "Irish Emigration."

3. Hunt out second volume of Kames's "History of Man," pa.s.sage containing Reid's Logic,--don't know where the book is!

4. How does the line beginning Lumina conjurent, inter something, end? Is it in Grey? See.

5. Fracastorius writes: Quantum hoe infecit vitium, quot adiverit urbes. Query, ought it not, in strict grammar, to be injecerit, instead of infecit? If you don't know, write to father.

6. Write the four letters in full from the notes I leave; i. e., about the Ecclesiastical Courts.

7. Look out Population Returns: strike average of last five years (between mortality and births) in Devons.h.i.+re and Lancas.h.i.+re.

8. Answer these six begging letters "No,"--civilly.

9. The other six, to const.i.tuents, "that I have no interest with Government."

10. See, if you have time, whether any of the new books on the round table are not trash.

11. I want to know All about Indian corn.

12. Longinus says something, somewhere, in regret for uncongenial pursuits (public life, I suppose): what is it? N. B. Longinus is not in my London catalogue, but is here, I know,--I think in a box in the lumber-room.

13. Set right the calculation I leave on the poor-rates. I have made a blunder somewhere, etc.

Certainly my father knew Mr. Trevanion; he never expected a secretary to sleep! To get through the work required of me by half-past nine, I get up by candle-light. At half-past nine I am still hunting for Longinus, when Mr. Trevanion comes in with a bundle of letters.

Answers to half the said letters fall to my share. Directions verbal,--in a species of short-hand talk. While I write, Mr.

Trevanion reads the newspapers, examines what I have done, makes notes therefrom,--some for Parliament, some for conversation, some for correspondence,--skims over the Parliamentary papers of the morning, and jots down directions for extracting, abridging, and comparing them with others, perhaps twenty years old. At eleven he walks down to a Committee of the House of Commons,--leaving me plenty to do,--till half-past three, when he returns. At four, f.a.n.n.y puts her head into the room--and I lose mine. Four days in the week Mr. Trevanion then disappears for the rest of the day; dines at Bellamy's or a club; expects me at the House at eight o'clock, in case he thinks of something, wants a fact or a quotation. He then releases me,--generally with a fresh list of instructions. But I have my holidays, nevertheless. On Wednesdays and Sat.u.r.days Mr. Trevanion gives dinners, and I meet the most eminent men of the day, on both sides; for Trevanion is on both sides himself,--or no side at all, which comes to the same thing. On Tuesdays Lady Ellinor gives me a ticket for the Opera, and I get there at least in time for the ballet. I have already invitations enough to b.a.l.l.s and soirees, for I am regarded as an only son of great expectations. I am treated as becomes a Caxton who has the right, if he pleases, to put a De before his name. I have grown very smart. I have taken a pa.s.sion for dress,--natural to eighteen. I like everything I do, and every one about me. I am over head and ears in love with f.a.n.n.y Trevanion, who breaks my heart, nevertheless; for she flirts with two peers, a life-guardsman, three old members of Parliament, Sir Sedley Beaudesert, one amba.s.sador and all his attaches and positively (the audacious minx!) with a bishop, in full wig and ap.r.o.n, who, people say, means to marry again.

Pisistratus has lost color and flesh. His mother says he is very much improved,--that he takes to be the natural effect produced by Stultz and Hoby. Uncle Jack says he is "fined down." His father looks at him and writes to Trevanion,--

"Dear T.--I refused a salary for my son. Give him a horse, and two hours a day to ride it. Yours, A. C."

The next day I am master of a pretty bay mare, and riding by the side of f.a.n.n.y Trevanion. Alas! alas!

CHAPTER VIII.

I have not mentioned my Uncle Roland. He is gone--abroad--to fetch his daughter. He has stayed longer than was expected. Does he seek his son still,--there as here? My father has finished the first portion of his work, in two great volumes. Uncle Jack, who for some time has been looking melancholy, and who now seldom stirs out, except on Sundays (on which clays we all meet at my father's and dine together),--Uncle Jack, I say, has undertaken to sell it.

"Don't be over-sanguine," says Uncle Jack, as he locks up the MS. in two red boxes with a slit in the lids, which belonged to one of the defunct companies. "Don't be over-sanguine as to the price. These publishers never venture much on a first experiment. They must be talked even into looking at the book."

"Oh!" said my father, "if they will publish it at all, and at their own risk, I should not stand out for any other terms. 'Nothing great,' said Dryden, 'ever came from a venal pen!'"

"An uncommonly foolish observation of Dryden's," returned Uncle Jack; "he ought to have known better."

"So he did," said I, "for he used his pen to fill his pockets, poor man!"

"But the pen was not venal, Master Anachronism," said my father. "A baker is not to be called venal if he sells his loaves, he is venal if he sells himself; Dryden only sold his loaves."

"And we must sell yours," said Uncle Jack, emphatically. "A thousand pounds a volume will be about the mark, eh?"

"A thousand pounds a volume!" cried my father. "Gibbon, I fancy, did not receive more."

"Very likely; Gibbon had not an Uncle Jack to look after his interests,"

said Mr. Tibbets, laughing, and rubbing those smooth hands of his. "No!

two thousand pounds the two volumes,--a sacrifice, but still I recommend moderation."

"I should be happy indeed if the book brought in anything," said my father, evidently fascinated; "for that young gentleman is rather expensive. And you, my dear Jack,--perhaps half the sum may be of use to you!"

"To me! my dear brother," cried Uncle Jack "to me! Why when my new speculation has succeeded, I shall be a millionnaire!"

"Have you a new speculation, uncle?" said I, anxiously. "What is it?"

"Mum!" said my uncle, putting his finger to his lip, and looking all round the room; "Mum! Mum!"

Pisistratus.--"A Grand National Company for blowing up both Houses of Parliament!"

Mr. Caxton.--"Upon my life, I hope something newer than that; for they, to judge by the newspapers, don't want brother Jack's a.s.sistance to blow up each other!"