Tracks of a Rolling Stone Part 5

'Who? Why, Miss -, of course! Who else do you suppose would accept me?'

'No one,' said I, with doleful sincerity. 'But did you propose to her?

Did she understand what you said to her? Did she deliberately and seriously say "Yes?"'

'Yes, yes, yes,' and his disordered jabot and touzled hair echoed the fatal word.

'O Smintheus of the silver bow!' I groaned. 'It is the woman's part to create delusions, and-destroy them! To think of it! after all that has pa.s.sed between us these-these three weeks, next Monday! "Once and for ever." Did ever woman use such words before? And I-believed them!'

'Did you speak to the mother?' I asked in a fit of desperation.

'There was no time for that. Mrs. - was in the carriage, and I didn't pop [the odious word!] till I was helping her on with her cloak. The cloak, you see, made it less awkward. My offer was a sort of _obiter dictum_-a by-the-way, as it were.'

'To the carriage, yes. But wasn't she taken by surprise?'

'Not a bit of it. Bless you! they always know. She pretended not to understand, but that's a way they have.'

'And when you explained?'

'There wasn't time for more. She laughed, and sprang into the carriage.'

'And that was all?'

'All! would you have had her spring into my arms?'

'G.o.d forbid! You will have to face the mother to-morrow,' said I, recovering rapidly from my despondency.

'Face? Well, I shall have to call upon Mrs. -, if that's what you mean.

A mere matter of form. I shall go over after lunch. But it needn't interfere with your work. You can go on with the "Anabasis" till I come back. And remember-_Neaniskos_ is not a proper name, ha! ha! ha! The quadratics will keep till the evening.' He was merry over his prospects, and I was not altogether otherwise.

But there was no Xenophon, no algebra, that day! Dire was the distress of my poor dominie when he found the mother as much bewildered as the daughter was frightened, by the mistake. 'She,' the daughter, 'had never for a moment imagined, &c., &c.'

My tutor was not long disheartened by such caprices-so he deemed them, as Miss Jemima's (she had a prettier name, you may be sure), and I did my best (it cost me little now) to encourage his fondest hopes. I proposed that we should drink the health of the future mistress of Warham in tea, which he cheerfully acceded to, all the more readily, that it gave him an opportunity to vent one of his old college jokes. 'Yes, yes,' said he, with a laugh, 'there's nothing like tea. _Te veniente die_, _te decedente canebam_.' Such sallies of innocent playfulness often smoothed his path in life. He took a genuine pleasure in his own jokes. Some men do. One day I dropped a pot of marmalade on a new carpet, and should certainly have been reprimanded for carelessness, had it not occurred to him to exclaim: '_Jam satis terris_!' and then laugh immoderately at his wit.

That there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, was a maxim he acted upon, if he never heard it. Within a month of the above incident he proposed to another lady upon the sole grounds that, when playing a game of chess, an exchange of pieces being contemplated, she innocently, but incautiously, observed, 'If you take me, I will take you.' He referred the matter next day to my ripe judgment. As I had no partiality for the lady in question, I strongly advised him to accept so obvious a challenge, and go down on his knees to her at once. I laid stress on the knees, as the accepted form of declaration, both in novels and on the stage.

In this case the beloved object, who was not embarra.s.sed by excess of amiability, promptly desired him, when he urged his suit, 'not to make a fool of himself.'

My tutor's peculiarities, however, were not confined to his endeavours to meet with a lady rectoress. He sometimes surprised his hearers with the originality of his abstruse theories. One morning he called me into the stable yard to join in consultation with his gardener as to the advisability of killing a pig. There were two, and it was not easy to decide which was the fitter for the butcher. The rector selected one, I the other, and the gardener, who had nurtured both from their tenderest age, pleaded that they should be allowed to 'put on another score.' The point was warmly argued all round.

'The black sow,' said I (they were both sows, you must know)-'The black sow had a litter of ten last time, and the white one only six. Ergo, if history repeats itself, as I have heard you say, you should keep the black, and sacrifice the white.'

'But,' objected the rector, 'that was the white's first litter, and the black's second. Why shouldn't the white do as well as the black next time?'

'And better, your reverence,' chimed in the gardener. 'The number don't allays depend on the sow, do it?'

'That is neither here nor there,' returned the rector.

'Well,' said the gardener, who stood to his guns, 'if your reverence is right, as no doubt you will be, that'll make just twenty little pigs for the butcher, come Michaelmas.'

'We can't kill 'em before they are born,' said the rector.

'That's true, your reverence. But it comes to the same thing.'

'Not to the pigs,' retorted the rector.

'To your reverence, I means.'

'A pig at the butcher's,' I suggested, 'is worth a dozen unborn.'

'No one can deny it,' said the rector, as he fingered the small change in his breeches pocket; and pointing with the other hand to the broad back of the black sow, exclaimed, 'This is the one, _Duplex agitur per lumbos spina_! She's got a back like an alderman's chin.'

'_Epicuri de grege porcus_,' I a.s.sented, and the fate of the black sow was sealed.

Next day an express came from Holkham, to say that Lady Leicester had given birth to a daughter. My tutor jumped out of his chair to hand me the note. 'Did I not antic.i.p.ate the event'? he cried. 'What a wonderful world we live in! Unconsciously I made room for the infant by sacrificing the life of that pig.' As I never heard him allude to the doctrine of Pythagoras, as he had no leaning to Buddhism, and, as I am sure he knew nothing of the correlation of forces, it must be admitted that the conception was an original one.

Be this as it may, Mr. Collyer was an upright and conscientious man. I owe him much, and respect his memory. He died at an advanced age, an honorary canon, and-a bachelor.

Another portrait hangs amongst the many in my memory's picture gallery.

It is that of his successor to the vicarage, the chaplaincy, and the librarians.h.i.+p, at Holkham-Mr. Alexander Napier-at this time, and until his death fifty years later, one of my closest and most cherished friends. Alexander Napier was the son of Macvey Napier, first editor of the 'Edinburgh Review.' Thus, a.s.sociated with many eminent men of letters, he also did some good literary work of his own. He edited Isaac Barrow's works for the University of Cambridge, also Boswell's 'Johnson,'

and gave various other proofs of his talents and his scholars.h.i.+p. He was the most delightful of companions; liberal-minded in the highest degree; full of quaint humour and quick sympathy; an excellent parish priest,-looking upon Christianity as a life and not a dogma; beloved by all, for he had a kind thought and a kind word for every needy or sick being in his parish.

With such qualities, the man always predominated over the priest. Hence his large-hearted charity and indulgence for the faults-nay, crimes-of others. Yet, if taken aback by an outrage, or an act of gross stupidity, which even the perpetrator himself had to suffer for, he would momentarily lose his patience, and rap out an objurgation that would stagger the straiter-laced gentlemen of his own cloth, or an outsider who knew less of him than-the recording angel.

A fellow undergraduate of Napier's told me a characteristic anecdote of his impetuosity. Both were Trinity men, and had been keeping high jinks at a supper party at Caius. The friend suddenly pointed to the clock, reminding Napier they had but five minutes to get into college before Trinity gates were closed. 'D-n the clock!' shouted Napier, and s.n.a.t.c.hing up the sugar basin (it was not _eau sucree_ they were drinking), incontinently flung it at the face of the offending timepiece.

This youthful vivacity did not desert him in later years. An old college friend-also a Scotchman-had become Bishop of Edinburgh. Napier paid him a visit (he described it to me himself). They talked of books, they talked of politics, they talked of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, of Brougham, Horner, Wilson, Macaulay, Jeffrey, of Carlyle's dealings with Napier's father-'Nosey,' as Carlyle calls him. They chatted into the small hours of the night, as boon companions, and as what Bacon calls 'full' men, are wont. The claret, once so famous in the 'land of cakes,'

had given place to toddy; its flow was in due measure to the flow of soul. But all that ends is short-the old friends had spent their last evening together. Yes, their last, perhaps. It was bed-time, and quoth Napier to his lords.h.i.+p, 'I tell you what it is, Bishop, I am na fou', but I'll be hanged if I haven't got two left legs.'

'I see something odd about them,' says his lords.h.i.+p. 'We'd better go to bed.'

Who the bishop was I do not know, but I'll answer for it he was one of the right sort.

In 1846 I became an undergraduate of Trinity College, Cambridge. I do not envy the man (though, of course, one ought) whose college days are not the happiest to look back upon. One should hope that however profitably a young man spends his time at the University, it is but the preparation for something better. But happiness and utility are not necessarily concomitant; and even when an undergraduate's course is least employed for its intended purpose (as, alas! mine was)-for happiness, certainly not pure, but simple, give me life at a University.

Heaven forbid that any youth should be corrupted by my confession! But surely there are some pleasures pertaining to this unique epoch that are harmless in themselves, and are certainly not to be met with at any other. These are the first years of comparative freedom, of manhood, of responsibility. The novelty, the freshness of every pleasure, the unsatiated appet.i.te for enjoyment, the animal vigour, the ignorance of care, the heedlessness of, or rather, the implicit faith in, the morrow, the absence of mistrust or suspicion, the frank surrender to generous impulses, the readiness to accept appearances for realities-to believe in every profession or exhibition of good will, to rush into the arms of every friends.h.i.+p, to lay bare one's tenderest secrets, to listen eagerly to the revelations which make us all akin, to offer one's time, one's energies, one's purse, one's heart, without a selfish afterthought-these, I say, are the priceless pleasures, never to be repeated, of healthful average youth.

What has after-success, honour, wealth, fame, or, power-burdened, as they always are, with ambitions, blunders, jealousies, cares, regrets, and failing health-to match with this enjoyment of the young, the bright, the bygone, hour? The wisdom of the worldly teacher-at least, the _carpe diem_-was practised here before the injunction was ever thought of. _Du bist so schon_ was the unuttered invocation, while the _Verweile doch_ was deemed unneedful.

Little, I am ashamed to own, did I add either to my small cla.s.sical or mathematical attainments. But I made friends.h.i.+ps-lifelong friends.h.i.+ps, that I would not barter for the best of academical prizes.

Amongst my a.s.sociates or acquaintances, two or three of whom have since become known-were the last Lord Derby, Sir William Harcourt, the late Lord Stanley of Alderley, Latimer Neville, late Master of Magdalen, Lord Calthorpe, of racing fame, with whom I afterwards crossed the Rocky Mountains, the last Lord Durham, my cousin, Sir Augustus Stephenson, ex-solicitor to the Treasury, Julian Fane, whose lyrics were edited by Lord Lytton, and my life-long friend Charles Barrington, private secretary to Lord Palmerston and to Lord John Russell.

But the most intimate of them was George Cayley, son of the member for the East Riding of Yorks.h.i.+re. Cayley was a young man of much promise.

In his second year he won the University prize poem with his 'Balder,'

and soon after published some other poems, and a novel, which met with merited oblivion. But it was as a talker that he shone. His quick intelligence, his ready wit, his command of language, made his conversation always lively, and sometimes brilliant. For several years after I left Cambridge I lived with him in his father's house in Dean's Yard, and thus made the acquaintance of some celebrities whom his fascinating and versatile talents attracted thither. As I shall return to this later on, I will merely mention here the names of such men as Thackeray, Tennyson, Frederick Locker, Stirling of Keir, Tom Taylor the dramatist, Millais, Leighton, and others of lesser note. Cayley was a member of, and regular attendant at, the Cosmopolitan Club; where he met d.i.c.kens, Foster, s.h.i.+rley Brooks, John Leech, d.i.c.ky Doyle, and the wits of the day; many of whom occasionally formed part of our charming coterie in the house I shared with his father.

Speaking of Tom Taylor reminds me of a good turn he once did me in my college examination at Cambridge. Whewell was then Master of Trinity.

One of the subjects I had to take up was either the 'Amicitia' or the 'Senectute' (I forget which). Whewell, more formidable and alarming than ever, opened the book at hazard, and set me on to construe. I broke down. He turned over the page; again I stuck fast. The truth is, I had hardly looked at my lesson,-trusting to my recollection of parts of it to carry me through, if lucky, with the whole.

'What's your name, sir?' was the Master's gruff inquiry. He did not catch it. But Tom Taylor-also an examiner-sitting next to him, repeated my reply, with the addition, 'Just returned from China, where he served as a mids.h.i.+pman in the late war.' He then took the book out of Whewell's hands, and giving it to me closed, said good-naturedly: 'Let us have another try, Mr. c.o.ke.' The chance was not thrown away; I turned to a part I knew, and rattled off as if my first examiner had been to blame, not I.