Caxtons: A Family Picture — Part 6, Chapter 6 and 7
CHAPTER VI.
You may judge of the effect that my dinner at Mr. Trevanion’s, with a long conversation after it with Lady Ellinor, made upon my mind when, on my return home, after having satisfied all questions of parental curiosity, I said nervously, and looking down: “My dear father, I should like very much, if you have no objection--to--to--” “What, my dear?
” asked my father, kindly.
“Accept an offer Lady Ellinor has made me on the part of Mr. Trevanion.
He wants a secretary.
He is kind enough to excuse my inexperience, and declares I shall do very well, and can soon get into his ways.
Lady Ellinor says,” I continued with dignity, “that it will be a great opening in public life for me; and at all events, my dear father, I shall see much of the world, and learn what I really think will be more useful to me than anything they will teach me at college.
” My mother looked anxiously at my father.
“It will indeed be a great thing for Sisty,” said she, timidly; and then, taking courage, she added--“and that is just the sort of life he is formed for.
” “Hem!
” said my uncle.
My father rubbed his spectacles thoughtfully, and replied, after a long pause,-- “You may be right, Kitty: I don’t think Pisistratus is meant for study;
action will suit him better.
But what does this office lead to?
” “Public employment, sir,” said I, boldly; “the service of my country.
” “If that be the case,” quoth Roland, “have not a word to say.
But I should have thought that for a lad of spirit, a descendant of the old De Caxtons, the army would have--” “The army!
” exclaimed my mother, clasping her hands, and looking involuntarily at my uncle’s cork leg.
“The army!
” repeated my father, peevishly.
“Bless my soul, Roland, you seem to think man is made for nothing else but to be shot at!
You would not like the army, Pisistratus?
” “Why, sir, not if it pained you and my dear mother; otherwise, indeed--” “Papae!
” said my father, interrupting me.
“This all comes of your giving the boy that ambitious, uncomfortable name, Mrs. Caxton; what could a Pisistratus be but the plague of one’s life?
That idea of serving his country is Pisistratus ipsissimus all over.
If ever I have another son (Dii meliora!
) he has only got to be called Eratostratus, and then he will be burning down St. Paul’s,--which I believe was, by the way, first made out of the stones of a temple to Diana.
Of the two, certainly, you had better serve your country with a goose-quill than by poking a bayonet into the ribs of some unfortunate Indian; I don’t think there are any other people whom the service of one’s country makes it necessary to kill just at present, eh, Roland?
” “It is a very fine field, India,” said my uncle, sententiously; “it is the nursery of captains.
” “Is it?
Those plants take up a good deal of ground, then, that might be more profitably cultivated.
And, indeed, considering that the tallest captains in the world will be ultimately set into a box not above seven feet at the longest, it is astonishing what a quantity of room that species of arbor mortis takes in the growing!
However, Pisistratus, to return to your request, I will think it over, and talk to Trevanion.
” “Or rather to Lady Ellinor,” said I, imprudently: my mother slightly shivered, and took her hand from mine.
I felt cut to the heart by the slip of my own tongue.
“That, I think, your mother could do best,” said my father, dryly, “if she wants to be quite convinced that somebody will see that your shirts are aired.
For I suppose they mean you to lodge at Trevanion’s. ” “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 noble 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 prone, 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 passages for me.
2. Do, do.
“Irish Emigration.
” 3. Hunt out second volume of Kames’s “History of Man,” passage 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 Devonshire and Lancashire.
8. Answer these six begging letters “No,”--civilly.
9. The other six, to constituents, “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, Fanny 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 Saturdays 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 balls 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 passion for dress,--natural to eighteen.
I like everything I do, and every one about me.
I am over head and ears in love with Fanny Trevanion, who breaks my heart, nevertheless; for she flirts with two peers, a life-guardsman, three old members of Parliament, Sir Sedley Beaudesert, one ambassador and all his attaches and positively (the audacious minx!
) with a bishop, in full wig and apron, 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 Fanny Trevanion.
Alas!
alas!
