Part 52 (1/2)
Meanwhile let us glance over the destinies of our more subordinate acquaintances.
Augustus Tomlinson, on parting from Long Ned, had succeeded in reaching Calais; and after a rapid tour through the Continent, he ultimately betook himself to a certain literary city in Germany, where he became distinguished for his metaphysical ac.u.men, and opened a school of morals on the Grecian model, taught in the French tongue. He managed, by the patronage he received and the pupils he enlightened, to obtain a very decent income; and as he wrote a folio against Locke, proved that men had innate feelings, and affirmed that we should refer everything not to reason, but to the sentiments of the soul, he became greatly respected for his extraordinary virtue. Some little discoveries were made after his death, which perhaps would have somewhat diminished the general odour of his sanct.i.ty, had not the admirers of his school carefully hushed up the matter, probably out of respect for the ”sentiments of the soul!”
Pepper, whom the police did not so anxiously desire to destroy as they did his two companions, might have managed, perhaps many years longer, to graze upon the public commons, had not a letter, written somewhat imprudently, fallen into wrong hands. This, though after creating a certain stir it apparently died away, lived in the memory of the police, and finally conspired, with various peccadilloes, to produce his downfall. He was seized, tried, and sentenced to seven years'
transportation. He so advantageously employed his time at Botany Bay, and arranged things there so comfortably to himself, that at the expiration of his sentence he refused to return home. He made an excellent match, built himself an excellent house, and remained in ”the land of the blest” to the end of his days, noted to the last for the redundance of his hair and a certain ferocious c.o.xcombry of aspect.
As for Fighting Attie and Gentleman George, for Scarlet Jem and for Old Bags, we confess ourselves dest.i.tute of any certain information of their latter ends. We can only add, with regard to Fighting Attie, ”Good luck be with him wherever he goes!” and for mine host of the Jolly Angler, that, though we have not the physical const.i.tution to quaff ”a b.u.mper of blue ruin,” we shall be very happy, over any tolerable wine and in company with any agreeable convivialist, to bear our part in the polished chorus of--
”Here's to Gentleman George, G.o.d bless him!”
Mrs. Lobkins departed this life like a lamb; and Dummie Dunnaker obtained a license to carry on the business at Thames Court. He boasted, to the last, of his acquaintance with the great Captain Lovett, and of the affability with which that distinguished personage treated him.
Stories he had, too, about Judge Brandon, but no one believed a syllable of them; and Dummie, indignant at the disbelief, increased, out of vehemence, the marvel of the stories, so that, at length, what was added almost swallowed up what was original, and Dummie himself might have been puzzled to satisfy his own conscience as to what was false and what was true.
The erudite Peter MacGrawler, returning to Scotland, disappeared by the road. A person singularly resembling the sage was afterward seen at Carlisle, where he discharged the useful and praiseworthy duties of Jack Ketch. But whether or not this respectable functionary was our identical Simon Pure, our ex-editor of ”The Asinaeum,” we will not take upon ourselves to a.s.sert.
Lord Mauleverer, finally resolving on a single life, pa.s.sed the remainder of his years in indolent tranquillity. When he died, the newspapers a.s.serted that his Majesty was deeply affected by the loss of so old and valued a friend. His furniture and wines sold remarkably high; and a Great Man, his particular intimate, who purchased his books, startled to find, by pencil marks, that the n.o.ble deceased had read some of them, exclaimed, not altogether without truth,
”Ah! Mauleverer might have been a deuced clever fellow--if he had liked it!”
The earl was accustomed to show as a curiosity a ring of great value, which he had received in rather a singular manner. One morning a packet was brought him which he found to contain a sum of money, the ring mentioned, and a letter from the notorious Lovett, in which that person in begging to return his lords.h.i.+p the sums of which he had twice a.s.sisted to rob him, thanked him, with earnest warmth, for the consideration testified towards him in not revealing his ident.i.ty with Captain Clifford; and ventured, as a slight testimony of respect, to inclose the aforesaid ring with the sum returned.
About the time Mauleverer received this curious packet, several anecdotes of a similar nature appeared in the public journals; and it seemed that Lovett had acted upon a general principle of rest.i.tution,--not always, it must be allowed, the offspring of a robber's repentance. While the idle were marvelling at these anecdotes, came the tardy news that Lovett, after a single month's sojourn at his place of condemnation, had, in the most daring and singular manner, effected his escape. Whether, in his progress up the country, he had been starved or slain by the natives, or whether, more fortunate, he had ultimately found the means of crossing seas, was as yet unknown. There ended the adventures of the gallant robber; and thus, by a strange coincidence, the same mystery which wrapped the fate of Lucy involved also that of her lover. And here, kind reader, might we drop the curtain on our closing scene, did we not think it might please thee to hold it up yet one moment, and give thee another view of the world behind.
In a certain town of that Great Country where shoes are imperfectly polished--[See Captain Hall's late work on America]--and opinions are not prosecuted, there resided, twenty years after the date of Lucy Brandon's departure from England, a man held in high and universal respect, not only for the rect.i.tude of his conduct, but for the energies of his mind, and the purposes to which they were directed. If you asked who cultivated that waste, the answer was, ”Clifford!” who procured the establishment of that hospital, ”Clifford!” who obtained the redress of such a public grievance, ”Clifford!” who struggled for and won such a popular benefit, ”Clifford!” In the gentler part of his projects and his undertakings--in that part, above all, which concerned the sick or the necessitous--this useful citizen was seconded, or rather excelled, by a being over whose surpa.s.sing loveliness Time seemed to have flown with a gentle and charming wing. There was something remarkable and touching in the love which this couple (for the woman we refer to was Clifford's wife) bore to each other; like the plant on the plains of Hebron, the time which brought to that love an additional strength brought to it also a softer and a fresher verdure. Although their present neighbours were unacquainted with the events of their earlier life previous to their settlement at ----------, it was known that they had been wealthy at the time they first came to reside there, and that, by a series of fatalities, they had lost all. But Clifford had borne up manfully against fortune; and in a new country, where men who prefer labour to dependence cannot easily starve, he had been enabled to toil upward through the severe stages of poverty and hards.h.i.+p with an honesty and vigour of character which won him, perhaps, a more hearty esteem for every successive effort than the display of his lost riches might ever have acquired him. His labours and his abilities obtained gradual but sure success; and he now enjoyed the blessings of a competence earned with the most scrupulous integrity, and spent with the most kindly benevolence. A trace of the trials they had pa.s.sed through was discernible in each; those trials had stolen the rose from the wife's cheek, and had sown untimely wrinkles in the broad brow of Clifford.
There were moments, too, but they were only moments, when the latter sank from his wonted elastic and healthful cheerfulness of mind into a gloomy and abstracted revery; but these moments the wife watched with a jealous and fond anxiety, and one sound of her sweet voice had the power to dispel their influence; and when Clifford raised his eyes, and glanced from her tender smile around his happy home and his growing children, or beheld through the very windows of his room the public benefits he had created, something of pride and gladness glowed on his countenance, and he said, though with glistening eyes and subdued voice, as his looks returned once more to his wife, ”I owe these to thee!”
One trait of mind especially characterized Clifford,--indulgence to the faults of others. ”Circ.u.mstances make guilt,” he was wont to say; ”let us endeavour to correct the circ.u.mstances, before we rail against the guilt!” His children promised to tread in the same useful and honourable path that he trod himself. Happy was considered that family which had the hope to ally itself with his.
Such was the after-fate of Clifford and Lucy. Who will condemn us for preferring the moral of that fate to the moral which is extorted from the gibbet and the hulks,--which makes scarecrows, not beacons; terrifies our weakness, not warms our reason. Who does not allow that it is better to repair than to perish,--better, too, to atone as the citizen than to repent as the hermit? Oh, John Wilkes, Alderman of London, and Drawcansir of Liberty, your life was not an iota too perfect,--your patriotism might have been infinitely purer, your morals would have admitted indefinite amendment, you are no great favourite with us or with the rest of the world,--but you said one excellent thing, for which we look on you with benevolence, nay, almost with respect. We scarcely know whether to smile at its wit or to sigh at its wisdom. Mark this truth, all ye gentlemen of England who would make law as the Romans made fasces,--a bundle of rods with an axe in the middle,--mark it, and remember! long may it live, allied with hope in ourselves, but with grat.i.tude in our children,--long after the book which it now ”adorns” and ”points” has gone to its dusty slumber,--long, long after the feverish hand which now writes it down can defend or enforce it no more: ”THE VERY WORST USE TO WHICH YOU CAN PUT A MAN IS TO HANG HIM!”
NOTE.
In the second edition of this novel there were here inserted two ”characters” of ”Fighting Attie” and ”Gentleman George,” omitted in the subsequent edition published by Mr. Bentley in the ”Standard Novels.” At the request of some admirers of those eminent personages, who considered the biographical sketches referred to impartial in themselves, and contributing to the completeness of the design for which men so ill.u.s.trious were introduced, they are here retained, though in the more honourable form of a separate and supplementary notice.
FIGHTING ATTIE.
When he dies, the road will have lost a great man, whose foot was rarely out of his stirrup, and whose clear head guided a bold hand. He carried common-sense to its perfection, and he made the straight path the sublimest. His words were few, his actions were many. He was the Spartan of Tobymen, and laconism was the short soul of his professional legislation!
Whatever way you view him, you see those properties of mind which command fortune; few thoughts not confusing each other,--simple elements, and bold. His character in action maybe summed in two phrases,--”a fact seized, and a stroke made.” Had his intellect been more luxurious, his resolution might have been less hardy; and his hardiness made his greatness. He was one of those who s.h.i.+ne but in action,--chimneys (to adapt the simile of Sir Thomas More) that seem useless till you light your fire. So in calm moments you dreamed not of his utility, and only on the road you were struck dumb with the outbreaking of his genius. Whatever situation he was called to, you found in hire what you looked for in vain in others; for his strong sense gave to Attie what long experience ought, but often fails, to give to its possessors. His energy triumphed over the sense of novel circ.u.mstance, and he broke in a moment through the cobwebs which entangled lesser natures for years. His eye saw a final result, and disregarded the detail. He robbed his man without chicanery; and took his purse by applying for it rather than scheming. If his enemies wish to detract from his merit,--a merit great, dazzling, and yet solid,--they may, perhaps, say that his genius fitted him better to continue exploits than to devise them; and thus that, besides the renown which he may justly claim, he often wholly engrossed that fame which should have been shared by others: he took up the enterprise where it ceased at Labour, and carried it onwards, where it was rewarded with Glory. Even this charge proves a new merit of address, and lessens not the merit less complicated the have allowed him before. The fame he has acquired may excite our emulation; the envy he has not appeased may console us for obscurity.
A stanza of Greek poetry--Thus, not too vigorously, translated by Mr.
West,--
”But wrapped in error is the human mind, And human bliss is ever insecure--Know we what fortune shall remain behind? Know we how long the present shall endure?”
GENTLEMAN GEORGE.
For thee, Gentleman George, for thee, what conclusive valediction remains? Alas! since we began the strange and mumming scene wherein first thou went introduced, the grim foe hath knocked thrice at thy gates; and now, as we write,--[In 1830]--thou art departed thence,--thou art no more! A new lord presides to thine easy-chair, a new voice rings from thy merry board,--thou art forgotten! thou art already, like these pages, a tale that is told to a memory that retaineth not! Where are thy quips and cranks; where thy stately c.o.xcombries and thy regal gauds? Thine house and thy paG.o.da, thy Gothic chimney and thy Chinese sign-post,--these yet ask the concluding hand. Thy hand is cold; their completion, and the enjoyment the completion yields, are for another!
Thou sowest, and thy follower reaps; thou buildest, thy successor holds; thou plantest, and thine heir sits beneath the shadow of thy trees,--