Paul Clifford Part 2

"And I doesn't like all of them as comes here!" answered the dame,--"'specially for Paul's sake; but what can a lone 'oman do? Many's the gentleman highwayman wot comes here, whose money is as good as the clerk's of the parish. And when a bob [s.h.i.+lling] is in my hand, what does it sinnify whose hand it was in afore?"

"That's what I call being sinsible and practical," said Dummie, approvingly. "And after all, though you 'as a mixture like, I does not know a halehouse where a cove is better entertained, nor meets of a Sunday more illegant company, than the Mug!"

Here the conversation, which the reader must know had been sustained in a key inaudible to a third person, received a check from Mr. Peter MacGrawler, who, having finished his revery and his tankard, now rose to depart. First, however, approaching Mrs. Lobkins, he observed that he had gone on credit for some days, and demanded the amount of his bill.

Glancing towards certain chalk hieroglyphics inscribed on the wall at the other side of the fireplace, the dame answered that Mr. MacGrawler was indebted to her for the sum of one s.h.i.+lling and ninepence three farthings.

After a short preparatory search in his waistcoat pockets, the critic hunted into one corner a solitary half-crown, and having caught it between his finger and thumb, he gave it to Mrs. Lobkins and requested change.

As soon as the matron felt her hand anointed with what has been called by some ingenious Johnson of St. Giles's "the oil of palms," her countenance softened into a complacent smile; and when she gave the required change to Mr. MacGrawler, she graciously hoped as how he would recommend the Mug to the public.

"That you may be sure of," said the editor of "The Asinaeum." "There is not a place where I am so much at home."

With that the learned Scotsman b.u.t.toned his coat and went his way.

"How spiteful the world be!" said Mrs. Lobkins, after a pause, "'specially if a 'oman keeps a fas.h.i.+onable sort of a public! When Judith died, Joe, the dog's-meat man, said I war all the better for it, and that she left I a treasure to bring up the urchin. One would think a thumper makes a man richer,--'cause why? Every man thumps! I got nothing more than a watch and ten guineas when Judy died, and sure that scarce paid for the burrel [burial]."

"You forgits the two quids [Guineas] I giv' you for the hold box of rags,--much of a treasure I found there!" said Dummie, with sycophantic archness.

"Ay," cried the dame, laughing, "I fancies you war not pleased with the bargain. I thought you war too old a ragmerchant to be so free with the blunt; howsomever, I supposes it war the tinsel petticoat as took you in!"

"As it has mony a viser man than the like of I," rejoined Dummie, who to his various secret professions added the ostensible one of a rag-merchant and dealer in broken gla.s.s.

The recollection of her good bargain in the box of rags opened our landlady's heart.

"Drink, Dummie," said she, good-humouredly,--"drink; I scorns to score lush to a friend."

Dummie expressed his grat.i.tude, refilled his gla.s.s, and the hospitable matron, knocking out from her pipe the dying ashes, thus proceeded:

"You sees, Dummie, though I often beats the boy, I loves him as much as if I war his raal mother,--I wants to make him an honour to his country, and an ixciption to my family!"

"Who all flashed their ivories at Surgeons' Hall!" added the metaphorical Dummie.

"True!" said the lady; "they died game, and I be n't ashamed of 'em. But I owes a duty to Paul's mother, and I wants Paul to have a long life. I would send him to school, but you knows as how the boys only corrupt one another. And so, I should like to meet with some decent man, as a tutor, to teach the lad Latin and vartue!"

"My eyes!" cried Dummie; aghast at the grandeur of this desire.

"The boy is 'cute enough, and he loves reading," continued the dame; "but I does not think the books he gets hold of will teach him the way to grow old."

"And 'ow came he to read, anyhows?"

"Ranting Rob, the strolling player, taught him his letters, and said he'd a deal of janius."

"And why should not Ranting Rob tache the boy Latin and vartue?"

"'Cause Ranting Rob, poor fellow, was lagged [Transported for burglary]

for doing a panny!" answered the dame, despondently.

There was a long silence; it was broken by Mr. Dummie. Slapping his thigh with the gesticulatory vehemence of a Ugo Foscolo, that gentleman exclaimed,--

"I 'as it,--I 'as thought of a tutor for leetle Paul!"

"Who's that? You quite frightens me; you 'as no marcy on my narves,"

said the dame, fretfully.

"Vy, it be the gemman vot writes," said Dummie, putting his finger to his nose,--"the gemman vot paid you so flashly!"

"What! the Scotch gemman?"

"The werry same!" returned Dummie.

The dame turned in her chair and refilled her pipe. It was evident from her manner that Mr. Dunnaker's suggestion had made an impression on her.

But she recognized two doubts as to its feasibility: one, whether the gentleman proposed would be adequate to the task; the other, whether he would be willing to undertake it.

In the midst of her meditations on this matter, the dame was interrupted by the entrance of certain claimants on her hospitality; and Dummie soon after taking his leave, the suspense of Mrs. Lobkins's mind touching the education of little Paul remained the whole of that day and night utterly unrelieved.

CHAPTER III.

I own that I am envious of the pleasure you will have in finding yourself more learned than other boys,--even those who are older than yourself.

What honour this will do you! What distinctions, what applauses will follow wherever you go!

--LORD CHESTERFIELD: Letters to his Son.

Example, my boy,--example is worth a thousand precepts.

--MAXIMILIAN SOLEMN.

Tarpeia was crushed beneath the weight of ornaments. The language of the vulgar is a sort of Tarpeia. We have therefore relieved it of as many gems as we were able, and in the foregoing scene presented it to the gaze of our readers simplex munditiis. Nevertheless, we could timidly imagine some gentler beings of the softer s.e.x rather displeased with the tone of the dialogue we have given, did we not recollect how delighted they are with the provincial barbarities of the sister kingdom, whenever they meet them poured over the pages of some Scottish story-teller. As, unhappily for mankind, broad Scotch is not yet the universal language of Europe, we suppose our countrywomen will not be much more unacquainted with the dialect of their own lower orders than with that which breathes nasal melodies over the paradise of the North.

It was the next day, at the hour of twilight, when Mrs. Margery Lobkins, after a satisfactory tete-a-tete with Mr. MacGrawler, had the happiness of thinking that she had provided a tutor for little Paul. The critic having recited to her a considerable portion of Propria qum Maribus, the good lady had no longer a doubt of his capacities for teaching; and on the other hand, when Mrs. Lobkins entered on the subject of remuneration, the Scotsman professed himself perfectly willing to teach any and every thing that the most exacting guardian could require. It was finally settled that Paul should attend Mr. MacGrawler two hours a day; that Mr. MacGrawler should be ent.i.tled to such animal comforts of meat and drink as the Mug afforded, and, moreover, to the weekly stipend of two s.h.i.+llings and sixpence,--the s.h.i.+llings for instruction in the cla.s.sics, and the sixpence for all other humanities; or, as Mrs. Lobkins expressed it, "two bobs for the Latin, and a site for the vartue."

Let not thy mind, gentle reader, censure us for a deviation from probability in making so excellent and learned a gentleman as Mr. Peter MacGrawler the familiar guest of the lady of the Mug. First, thou must know that our story is cast in a period antecedent to the present, and one in which the old jokes against the circ.u.mstances of author and of critic had their foundation in truth; secondly, thou must know that by some curious concatenation of circ.u.mstances neither bailiff nor bailiff's man was ever seen within the four walls continent of Mrs.

Margery Lobkins; thirdly, the Mug was nearer than any other house of public resort to the abode of the critic; fourthly, it afforded excellent porter; and fifthly, O reader, thou dost Mrs. Margery Lobkins a grievous wrong if thou supposest that her door was only open to those mercurial gentry who are afflicted with the morbid curiosity to pry into the mysteries of their neighbours' pockets,--other visitors, of fair repute, were not unoften partakers of the good matron's hospitality; although it must be owned that they generally occupied the private room in preference to the public one. And sixthly, sweet reader (we grieve to be so prolix), we would just hint to thee that Mr. MacGrawler was one of those vast-minded sages who, occupied in contemplating morals in the great scale, do not fritter down their intellects by a base attention to minute details. So that if a descendant of Langfanger did sometimes cross the venerable Scot in his visit to the Mug, the apparition did not revolt that benevolent moralist so much as, were it not for the above hint, thy ignorance might lead thee to imagine.

It is said that Athenodorus the Stoic contributed greatly by his conversation to amend the faults of Augustus, and to effect the change visible in that fortunate man after his accession to the Roman empire.

If this be true, it may throw a new light on the character of Augustus, and instead of being the hypocrite, he was possibly the convert. Certain it is that there are few vices which cannot be conquered by wisdom; and yet, melancholy to relate, the instructions of Peter MacGrawler produced but slender amelioration in the habits of the youthful Paul. That ingenious stripling had, we have already seen, under the tuition of Ranting Bob, mastered the art of reading,--nay, he could even construct and link together certain curious pot-hooks, which himself and Mrs.

Lobkins were wont graciously to term "writing." So far, then, the way of MacGrawler was smoothed and prepared.

But, unhappily, all experienced teachers allow that the main difficulty is not to learn, but to unlearn; and the mind of Paul was already occupied by a vast number of heterogeneous miscellanies which stoutly resisted the ingress either of Latin or of virtue. Nothing could wean him from an ominous affection for the history of Richard Turpin; it was to him what, it has been said, the Greek authors should be to the Academician,--a study by day, and a dream by night. He was docile enough during lessons, and sometimes even too quick in conception for the stately march of Mr. MacGrawler's intellect. But it not unfrequently happened that when that gentleman attempted to rise, he found himself, like the Lady in "Comus," adhering to--

"A venomed seat Smeared with gums of glutinous heat;"

or his legs had been secretly united under the table, and the tie was not to be broken without overthrow to the superior powers. These, and various other little sportive machinations wherewith Paul was wont to relieve the monotony of literature, went far to disgust the learned critic with his undertaking. But "the tape" and the treasury of Mrs.

Lobkins re-smoothed, as it were, the irritated bristles of his mind, and he continued his labours with this philosophical reflection: "Why fret myself? If a pupil turns out well, it is clearly to the credit of his master; if not, to the disadvantage of himself." Of course, a similar suggestion never forced itself into the mind of Dr. Keate [A celebrated princ.i.p.al of Eton]. At Eton the very soul of the honest headmaster is consumed by his zeal for the welfare of the little gentlemen in stiff cravats.

But to Paul, who was predestined to enjoy a certain quantum of knowledge, circ.u.mstances happened, in the commencement of the second year of his pupilage, which prodigiously accelerated the progress of his scholastic career.

At the apartment of MacGrawler, Paul one morning encountered Mr.