The Caxtons: A Family Picture Part 24

Uncle Jack (mysteriously).--"Newspapers! you don't often read a newspaper, Austin Caxton!"

Mr. Caxton.--"Granted, John Tibbets!"

Uncle Jack.--"But if my speculation make you read a newspaper every day?"

Mr. Caxton (astounded).--"Make me read a newspaper every day!"

Uncle Jack (warming, and expanding his hands to the fire).--"As big as the 'Times'!"

Mr. Caxton (uneasily).--"Jack, you alarm me!"

Uncle Jack.--"And make you write in it too,--a leader!"

Mr. Caxton, pus.h.i.+ng back his chair, seizes the only weapon at his command, and hurls at Uncle Jack a great sentence of Greek,--"... a quotation in Greek..." (1)

Uncle Jack (nothing daunted).--"Ay, and put as much Greek as you like into it!"

Mr. Caxton (relieved and softening). "My dear Jack, you are a great man; let us hear you!"

Then Uncle Jack began. Now, perhaps my readers may have remarked that this ill.u.s.trious speculator was really fortunate in his ideas. His speculations in themselves always had something sound in the kernel, considering how barren they were in the fruit; and this it was that made him so dangerous. The idea Uncle Jack had now got hold of will, I am convinced, make a man's fortune one of these days; and I relate it with a sigh, in thinking how much has gone out of the family. Know, then, it was nothing less than setting up a daily paper, on the plan of the "Times," but devoted entirely to Art, Literature, and Science,--Mental Progress, in short; I say on the plan of the "Times," for it was to imitate the mighty machinery of that diurnal illuminator. It was to be the Literary Salmoneus of the Political Jupiter, and rattle its thunder over the bridge of knowledge. It was to have correspondents in all parts of the globe; everything that related to the chronicle of the mind, from the labor of the missionary in the South Sea Islands, or the research of a traveller in pursuit of that mirage called Timbuctoo, to the last new novel at Paris, or the last great emendation of a Greek particle at a German university, was to find a place in this focus of light. It was to amuse, to instruct, to interest,--there was nothing it was not to do.

Not a man in the whole reading public, not only of the three kingdoms, not only of the British empire, but under the cope of heaven, that it was not to touch somewhere, in head, in heart, or in pocket. The most crotchety member of the intellectual community might find his own hobby in those stables.

"Think," cried Uncle Jack,--"think of the march of mind; think of the pa.s.sion for cheap knowledge; think how little quarterly, monthly, weekly journals can keep pace with the main wants of the age! As well have a weekly journal on politics as a weekly journal on all the matters still more interesting than politics to the ma.s.s of the public. My 'Literary Times' once started, people will wonder how they had ever lived without it! Sir, they have not lived without it,--they have vegetated; they have lived in holes and caves, like the Troggledikes."

"Troglodytes," said my father, mildly,--"from trogle, 'a cave,' and dumi, 'to go under.' They lived in Ethiopia, and had their wives in common."

"As to the last point, I don't say that the public, poor creatures, are as bad as that," said Uncle Jack, candidly; "but no simile holds good in all its points. And the public are no less Troggledummies, or whatever you call them, compared with what they will be when living under the full light of my 'Literary Times.' Sir, it will be a revolution in the world. It will bring literature out of the clouds into the parlor, the cottage, the kitchen. The idlest dandy, the finest fine lady, will find something to her taste; the busiest man of the mart and counter will find some acquisition to his practical knowledge. The practical man will see the progress of divinity, medicine, nay, even law. Sir, the Indian will read me under the banyan; I shall be in the seraglios of the East; and over my sheets the American Indian will smoke the calumet of peace.

We shall reduce politics to its proper level in the affairs of life; raise literature to its due place in the thoughts and business of men. It is a grand thought, and my heart swells with pride while I contemplate it!"

"My dear Jack," said my father, seriously, and rising with emotion, "it is a grand thought, and I honor you for it. You are quite right,--it would be a revolution! It would educate mankind insensibly. Upon my life, I should be proud to write a leader, or a paragraph. Jack, you will immortalize yourself!"

"I believe I shall," said Uncle Jack, modestly; "but I have not said a word yet on the greatest attraction of all."

"Ah! and that?"

"The Advertis.e.m.e.nts!" cried my uncle, spreading his hands, with all the fingers at angles, like the threads of a spider's wed. "The advertis.e.m.e.nts--oh, think of them!--a perfect El Dorado. The advertis.e.m.e.nts, sir, on the most moderate calculation, will bring us in L50,000 a year. My dear Pisistratus, I shall never marry; you are my heir. Embrace me!"

So saying, my Uncle Jack threw himself upon me, and squeezed out of breath the prudential demur that was rising to my lips.

My poor mother, between laughing and sobbing, faltered out:

"And it is my brother who will pay back to his son all--all he gave up for me!"

While my father walked to and fro the room, more excited than ever I saw him before, muttering, "A sad, useless dog I have been hitherto! I should like to serve the world! I should indeed!"

Uncle Jack had fairly done it this time. He had found out the only bait in the world to catch so shy a carp as my father,--haaret letalis arundo. I saw that the deadly hook was within an inch of my father's nose, and that he was gazing at it with a fixed determination to swallow.

But if it amused my father? Boy that I was, I saw no further. I must own I myself was dazzled, and, perhaps with childlike malice, delighted at the perturbation of my betters. The young carp was pleased to see the waters so playfully in movement when the old carp waved his tail and swayed himself on his fins.

"Mum!" said Uncle Jack, releasing me; "not a word to Mr. Trevanion, to any one."

"But why?"

"Why? G.o.d bless my soul. Why? If my scheme gets wind, do you suppose some one will not clap on sail to be before me? You frighten me out of my senses. Promise me faithfully to be silent as the grave."

"I should like to hear Trevanion's opinion too."

"As well hear the town-crier! Sir, I have trusted to your honor. Sir, at the domestic hearth all secrets are sacred. Sir, I--"

"My dear Uncle Jack, you have said quite enough. Not a word will I breathe!"

"I'm sure you may trust him, Jack," said my mother.

"And I do trust him,--with wealth untold," replied my uncle. "May I ask you for a little water--with a trifle of brandy in it--and a biscuit, or indeed a sandwich. This talking makes me quite hungry."

My eye fell upon Uncle Jack as he spoke. Poor Uncle Jack, he had grown thin!

(1) "Some were so barbarous as to eat their own species." The sentence refers to the Scythians, and is in Strabo. I mention the authority, for Strabo is not an author that any man engaged on a less work than the "History of Human Error" is expected to have by heart.

PART VII.

CHAPTER I.

Saith Dr. Luther, "When I saw Dr. G.o.de begin to tell his puddings hanging in the chimney, I told him he would not live long!"

I wish I had copied that pa.s.sage from "The Table Talk" in large round hand, and set it before my father at breakfast, the morn preceding that fatal eve in which Uncle Jack persuaded him to tell his puddings.

Yet, now I think of it, Uncle Jack hung the puddings in the chimney, but he did not persuade my father to tell them.

Beyond a vague surmise that half the suspended "tomacula" would furnish a breakfast to Uncle Jack, and that the youthful appet.i.te of Pisistratus would despatch the rest, my father did not give a thought to the nutritious properties of the puddings,--in other words, to the two thousand pounds which, thanks to Mr. Tibbets, dangled down the chimney.

So far as the Great Work was concerned, my father only cared for its publication, not its profits. I will not say that he might not hunger for praise, but I am quite sure that he did not care a b.u.t.ton for pudding. Nevertheless, it was an infaust and sinister augury for Austin Caxton, the very appearance, the very suspension and danglement of any puddings whatsoever, right over his ingle-nook, when those puddings were made by the sleek hands of Uncle Jack! None of the puddings which he, poor man, had all his life been stringing, whether from his own chimneys or the chimneys of other people, had turned out to be real puddings,--they had always been the eidola, the erscheinungen, the phantoms and semblances of puddings.

I question if Uncle Jack knew much about Democritus of Abdera. But he was certainly tainted with the philosophy of that fanciful sage. He peopled the air with images of colossal stature which impressed all his dreams and divinations, and from whose influences came his very sensations and thoughts. His whole being, asleep or waking, was thus but the reflection of great phantom puddings!

As soon as Mr. Tibbets had possessed himself of the two volumes of the "History of Human Error," he had necessarily established that hold upon my father which hitherto those lubricate hands of his had failed to effect. He had found what he had so long sighed for in vain,--his point d'appui, wherein to fix the Archimedean screw. He fixed it tight in the "History of Human Error," and moved the Caxtonian world.

A day or two after the conversation recorded in my last chapter, I saw Uncle Jack coming out of the mahogany doors of my father's banker; and from that time there seemed no reason why Mr. Tibbets should not visit his relations on weekdays as well as Sundays. Not a day, indeed, pa.s.sed but what he held long conversations with my father. He had much to report of his interviews with the publishers. In these conversations he naturally recurred to that grand idea of the "Literary Times," which had so dazzled my poor father's imagination; and, having heated the iron, Uncle Jack was too knowing a man not to strike while it was hot.

When I think of the simplicity my wise father exhibited in this crisis of his life, I must own that I am less moved by pity than admiration for that poor great-hearted student. We have seen that out of the learned indolence of twenty years, the ambition which is the instinct of a man of genius had emerged; the serious preparation of the Great Book for the perusal of the world had insensibly restored the claims of that noisy world on the silent individual. And therewith came a n.o.ble remorse that he had hitherto done so little for his species. Was it enough to write quartos upon the past history of Human Error? Was it not his duty, when the occasion was fairly presented, to enter upon that present, daily, hourly war with Error, which is the sworn chivalry of Knowledge? Saint George did not dissect dead dragons, he fought the live one. And London, with that magnetic atmosphere which in great capitals fills the breath of life with stimulating particles, had its share in quickening the slow pulse of the student. In the country he read but his old authors, and lived with them through the gone ages. In the city, my father, during the intervals of repose from the Great Book, and still more now that the Great Book had come to a pause, inspected the literature of his own time. It had a prodigious effect upon him. He was unlike the ordinary run of scholars, and, indeed, of readers, for that matter, who, in their superst.i.tious homage to the dead, are always willing enough to sacrifice the living. He did justice to the marvellous fertility of intellect which characterizes the authors.h.i.+p of the present age. By the present age, I do not only mean the present day, I commence with the century.

"What," said my father one day in dispute with Trevanion, "what characterizes the literature of our time is its human interest. It is true that we do not see scholars addressing scholars, but men addressing men,--not that scholars are fewer, but that the reading public is more large. Authors in all ages address themselves to what interests their readers; the same things do not interest a vast community which interested half a score of monks or book-worms. The literary polls was once an oligarchy, it is now a republic. It is the general brilliancy of the atmosphere which prevents your noticing the size of any particular star. Do you not see that with the cultivation of the ma.s.ses has awakened the Literature of the affections? Every sentiment finds an expositor, every feeling an oracle. Like Epimenides, I have been sleeping in a cave; and, waking, I see those whom I left children are bearded men, and towns have sprung up in the landscapes which I left as solitary wastes."

Thence the reader may perceive the causes of the change which had come over my father. As Robert Hall says, I think of Dr. Kippis. "He had laid so many books at the top of his head that the brains could not move."

But the electricity had now penetrated the heart, and the quickened vigor of that n.o.ble organ enabled the brain to stir. Meanwhile, I leave my father to these influences, and to the continuous conversations of Uncle Jack, and proceed with the thread of my own egotism.