Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 392, June, 1848

BOOK II. – CHAPTER I

It was a beautiful summer afternoon when the coach set me down at my father's gate. Mrs Primmins herself ran out to welcome me; and I had scarcely escaped from the warm clasp of her friendly hand, before I was in the arms of my mother.

As soon as that tenderest of parents was convinced that I was not famished, seeing that I had dined two hours ago at Dr Herman's, she led me gently across the garden towards the arbour. "You will find your father so cheerful," said she, wiping away a tear. "His brother is with him."

I stopped. His brother! Will the reader believe it? – I had never heard that he had a brother, so little were family affairs ever discussed in my hearing.

"His brother!" said I. "Have I then an Uncle Caxton as well as an Uncle Jack?"

"Yes, my love," said my mother. And then she added, "Your father and he were not such good friends as they ought to have been, and the Captain has been abroad. However, thank heaven! they are now quite reconciled."

We had time for no more – we were in the arbour. There, a table was spread with wine and fruit – the gentlemen were at their dessert; and those gentlemen were my father, Uncle Jack, Mr Squills, and, tall, lean, buttoned-to-the-chin – an erect, martial, majestic, and imposing personage, who seemed worthy of a place in my great ancestor's "Boke of Chivalrie."

All rose as I entered; but my poor father, who was always slow in his movements, had the last of me. Uncle Jack had left the very powerful impression of his great seal-ring on my fingers; Mr Squills had patted me on the shoulder, and pronounced me "wonderfully grown;" my new-found relative had with great dignity said, "Nephew, your hand, sir – I am Captain de Caxton;" and even the tame duck had taken her beak from her wing, and rubbed it gently between my legs, which was her usual mode of salutation, before my father placed his pale hand on my forehead, and, looking at me for a moment with unutterable sweetness, said, "More and more like your mother – God bless you!"

A chair had been kept vacant for me between my father and his brother. I sat down in haste, and with a tingling colour on my cheeks and a rising at my throat, so much had the unusual kindness of my father's greeting affected me; and then there came over me a sense of my new position. I was no longer a schoolboy at home for his brief holiday: I had returned to the shelter of the roof-tree, to become myself one of its supports. I was at last a man, privileged to aid or solace those dear ones who had ministered, as yet without return, to me. That is a very strange crisis in our life when we come home "for good." Home seems a different thing: before, one has been but a sort of guest after all, only welcomed and indulged, and little festivities held in honour of the released and happy child. But to come home for good– to have done with school and boyhood – is to be a guest, a child no more. It is to share the every-day life of cares and duties – it is to enter into the confidences of home. Is it not so? I could have buried my face in my hands, and wept!

My father, with all his abstraction and all his simplicity, had a knack now and then of penetrating at once to the heart. I verily believe he read all that was passing in me as easily as if it had been Greek. He stole his arm gently round my waist, and whispered, "Hush!" Then lifting his voice, he cried aloud, "Brother Roland, you must not let Jack have the best of the argument."

"Brother Augustine," replied the Captain, very formally "Mr Jack, if I may take the liberty so to call him" —

"You may indeed," cried Uncle Jack.

"Sir," said the Captain, bowing, "it is a familiarity that does me honour. I was about to say that Mr Jack has retired from the field."

"Far from it," said Squills, dropping an effervescing powder into a chemical mixture which he had been preparing with great attention, composed of sherry and lemon-juice – "far from it. Mr Tibbetts – whose organ of combativeness is finely developed, by the bye – was saying, – "

"That it is a rank sin and shame, in the nineteenth century" – quoth Uncle Jack – "that a man like my friend Captain Caxton" —

"De Caxton, sir – Mr Jack."

"De Caxton – of the highest military talents, of the most illustrious descent – a hero sprung from heroes – should have served twenty-three years in his Majesty's service, and should be only a captain on half-pay. This, I say, comes of the infamous system of purchase, which sets up the highest honours for sale as they did in the Roman Empire" —

My father pricked up his ears; but Uncle Jack pushed on before my father could get ready the forces of his meditated interruption; —

"A system which a little effort, a little union, can so easily terminate. Yes, sir" – and Uncle Jack thumped the table, and two cherries bobbed up and smote Captain de Caxton on the nose – "yes, sir, I will undertake to say that I could put the army upon a very different footing. If the poorer and more meritorious gentlemen, like Captain de Caxton, would, as I was just observing, but unite in a grand anti-aristocratic association, each paying a small sum quarterly, we could realise a capital sufficient to outpurchase all these undeserving individuals, and every man of merit should have his fair chance of promotion."

"Egad, sir!" said Squills, "there is something grand in that – eh, Captain?"

"No, sir," replied the Captain, quite seriously; "there is in monarchies but one fountain of honour. It would be an interference with a soldier's first duty – his respect for his sovereign."

"On the contrary," said Mr Squills, "it would still be to the sovereigns that one would owe the promotion."

"Honour," pursued the Captain, colouring up, and unheeding this witty interruption, "is the reward of a soldier. What do I care that a young jackanapes buys his colonelcy over my head? Sir, he does not buy from me my wounds and my services. Sir, he does not buy from me the medal I won at Waterloo. He is a rich man, and I am a poor man; he is called – colonel, because he paid money for the name. That pleases him; well and good. It would not please me: I had rather remain a captain, and feel my dignity, not in my title, but in the services of my three-and-twenty years. A beggarly, rascally association of stockbrokers, for aught I know, buy me a company! I don't want to be uncivil, or I would say, Damn 'em, Mr – sir – Jack!"

A sort of thrill ran through the Captain's audience – even Uncle Jack looked touched, as I thought, for he stared very hard at the grim veteran, and said nothing. The pause was awkward – Mr Squills broke it. "I should like," quoth he, "to see your Waterloo medal – you have not it about you?"

"Mr Squills," answered the Captain, "it lies next to my heart while I live. It shall be buried in my coffin, and I shall rise with it, at the word of command, on the day of the Grand Review!" So saying, the Captain leisurely unbuttoned his coat, and, detaching from a piece of striped ribbon as ugly a specimen of the art of the silversmith (begging its pardon) as ever rewarded merit at the expense of taste, placed the medal on the table.

The medal passed round, without a word, from hand to hand.

"It is strange," at last said my father, "how such trifles can be made of such value – how in one age a man sells his life for what in the next age he would not give a button! A Greek esteemed beyond price a few leaves of olive twisted into a circular shape, and set upon his head – a very ridiculous headgear we should now call it. An American Indian prefers a decoration of human scalps, which, I apprehend, we should all agree (save and except Mr Squills, who is accustomed to such things) to be a very disgusting addition to one's personal attractions; and my brother values this piece of silver, which may be worth about five shillings, more than Jack does a gold mine, or I do the library of the London Museum. A time will come when people will think that as idle a decoration as leaves and scalps."

"Brother," said the Captain, "there is nothing strange in the matter. It is as plain as a pike-staff to a man who understands the principles of honour."

"Possibly," said my father mildly. "I should like to hear what you have to say upon honour. I am sure it would very much edify us all."

CHAPTER II

"Gentlemen," began the Captain, at the distinct appeal thus made to him – "Gentlemen, God made the earth, but man made the garden. God made man, but man re-creates himself."

"True, by knowledge," said my father.

"By industry," said Uncle Jack.

"By the physical condition of his body," said Mr Squills. "He could not have made himself other than he was at first in the woods and wilds if he had fins like a fish, or could only chatter gibberish like a monkey. Hands and a tongue, sir; these are the instruments of progress."

"Mr Squills," said my father, nodding, "Anaxagoras said very much the same thing before you, touching the hands."

"I can't help that," answered Mr Squills; "one could not open one's lips if one were bound to say what nobody else had said. But, after all, our superiority is less in our hands than the greatness of our thumbs."

"Albinus, De Sceleto, and our own learned William Lawrence, have made a similar remark," again put in my father.

"Hang it, sir!" exclaimed Squills, "what business have you to know every thing?"

"Every thing! No; but thumbs furnish subjects of investigation to the simplest understanding," said my father, modestly.

"Gentlemen," recommenced my Uncle Roland, "thumbs and hands are given to an Esquimaux, as well as to scholars and surgeons – and what the deuce are they the wiser for them? Sirs, you cannot reduce us thus into mechanism. Look within. Man, I say, re-creates himself. How? By the Principle of Honour. His first desire is to excel some one else – his first impulse is distinction above his fellows. Heaven places in his soul, as if it were a compass, a needle that always points to one end, – viz., to honour in that which those around him consider honourable. Therefore, as man at first is exposed to all dangers from wild beasts, and from men as savage as himself, Courage becomes the first quality mankind must honour: therefore the savage is courageous; therefore he covets the praise for courage; therefore he decorates himself with the skins of the beasts he has subdued, or the scalps of the foes he has slain. Sirs, don't tell me that the skins and the scalps are only hide and leather; they are trophies of honour. Don't tell me they are ridiculous and disgusting; they become glorious as proofs that the savage has emerged out of the first brute-like egotism, and attached price to the praise which men never give except for works that secure or advance their welfare. By-and-by, sirs, our savages discover that they cannot live in safety amongst themselves unless they agree to speak the truth to each other; therefore Truth becomes valued, and grows into a principle of honour; so, brother Augustine will tell us that, in the primitive times, truth was always the attribute of a hero."

"Right," said my father: "Homer emphatically gives it to Achilles."

"Out of truth comes the necessity for some kind of rude justice and law. Therefore men, after courage in the warrior, and truth in all, begin to attach honour to the elder, whom they intrust with preserving justice amongst them. So, sirs, Law is born – "

"But the first lawgivers were priests," quoth my father.

"Sirs, I am coming to that. Whence arises the desire of honour, but from man's necessity of excelling – in other words, of improving his faculties for the benefit of others, – though, unconscious of that consequence, man only strives for their praise? But that desire for honour is unextinguishable, and man is naturally anxious to carry its rewards beyond the grave. Therefore, he who has slain most lions or enemies, is naturally prone to believe that he shall have the best hunting fields in the country beyond, and take the best place at the banquet. Nature, in all its operations, impresses him with the idea of an invisible Power; and the principle of honour, – that is, the desire of praise and reward, – makes him anxious for the approval which that Power can bestow. Thence comes the first rude idea of Religion; and in the death-hymn at the stake, the savage chants songs prophetic of the distinctions he is about to receive. Society goes on; hamlets are built; property is established. He who has more than another has more power than another. Power is honoured. Man covets the honour attached to the power which is attached to possession. Thus the soil is cultivated; thus the rafts are constructed; thus tribe trades with tribe; thus Commerce is founded and Civilisation commenced. Sirs, all that seems least connected with honour, as we approach the vulgar days of the present, has its origin in honour, and is but an abuse of its principles. If men now-a-days are hucksters and traders – if even military honours are purchased, and a rogue buys his way to a peerage – still all arise from the desire for honour, which society, as it grows old, gives to the outward signs of titles and gold, instead of, as once, to its inward essentials, – courage, truth, justice, enterprise. Therefore, I say, sirs, that honour is the foundation of all improvement in mankind."

"You have argued like a schoolman, brother," said Mr Caxton admiringly; "but still, as to this round piece of silver, – don't we go back to the most barbarous ages in estimating so highly such things as have no real value in themselves – as could not give us one opportunity for instructing our minds."

"Could not pay for a pair of boots," added Uncle Jack.

"Or," said Mr Squills, "save you one twinge of the cursed rheumatism you have got for life from that night's bivouac in the Portuguese marshes – to say nothing of the bullet in your cranium, and that cork leg, which must much diminish the salutary effects of your constitutional walk."

"Gentlemen," resumed the Captain, nothing abashed, "in going back to these barbarous ages, I go back to the true principles of honour. It is precisely because this round piece of silver has no value in the market that it is priceless, for thus it is only a proof of desert. Where would be the sense of service if it could buy back my leg, or if I could bargain it away for forty thousand a-year? No, sirs, its value is this – that when I wear it on my breast men shall say, 'that formal old fellow is not so useless as he seems. He was one of those who saved England and freed Europe.' And even when I conceal it here," (and devoutly kissing the medal, Uncle Roland restored it to its ribbon and its resting-place,) "and no eye sees it, its value is yet greater in the thought that my country has not degraded the old and true principles of honour by paying the soldier who fought for her in the same coin as that in which you, Mr Jack, sir, pay your bootmaker's bill. No, no, gentlemen. As courage was the first virtue that honour called forth – the first virtue from which all safety and civilisation proceed, so we do right to keep that one virtue at least clear and unsullied from all the money-making, mercenary, pay-me-in-cash abominations which are the vices, not the virtues, of the civilisation it has produced."

My Uncle Roland here came to a full stop; and, filling his glass, rose and said solemnly – "A last bumper, gentlemen. – 'To the dead who died for England!'"

CHAPTER III

"Indeed, my dear, you must take it. You certainly have caught cold: you sneezed three times together."

"Yes, ma'am, because I would take a pinch of Uncle Roland's snuff, just to say that I had taken a pinch out of his box – the honour of the thing, you know."

"Ah, my dear! what was that very clever remark you made at the same time which so pleased your father – something about Jews and the college?"

"Jews and – oh! 'pulverem Olympicum collegisse juvat,' my dear mother – which means, that it is a pleasure to take a pinch out of a brave man's snuff-box. I say, mother, put down the posset. Yes, I'll take it; I will, indeed. Now, then, sit here – that's right – and tell me all you know about this famous old Captain. Imprimis, he is older than my father?"

"To be sure!" exclaimed my mother indignantly; "he looks twenty years older; but there is only five years' real difference. Your father must always look young."

"And why does Uncle Roland put that absurd French de before his name – and why were my father and he not good friends – and is he married – and has he any children?"

Scene of this conference – my own little room, new papered on purpose for my return for good– trellis-work paper, flowers and birds – all so fresh, and so new, and so clean, and so gay – with my books ranged in neat shelves, and a writing-table by the window; and, without the window, shines the still summer moon. The window is a little open; you scent the flowers and new-mown hay. Past eleven; and the boy and his dear mother are all alone.

"My dear, my dear! you ask so many questions at once."

"Don't answer them then. Begin at the beginning, as Nurse Primmins does with her fairy tales – 'Once on a time.'"

"Once on a time, then," said my mother – kissing me between the eyes – "once on a time, my love, there was a certain clergyman in Cumberland, who had two sons; he had but a small living, and the boys were to make their own way in the world. But close to the parsonage, on the brow of a hill, rose an old ruin, with one tower left, and this, with half the county round it, had once belonged to the clergyman's family; but all had been sold – all gone piece by piece, you see, my dear, except the presentation to the living, (what they call the advowson was sold too,) which had been secured to the last of the family. The elder of these sons was your Uncle Roland, the younger was your father. Now I believe the first quarrel arose from the absurdest thing possible, as your father says; but Roland was exceedingly touchy on all things connected with his ancestors. He was always poring over the old pedigree, or wandering amongst the ruins, or reading books of knight-errantry. Well, where this pedigree began I know not, but it seems that King Henry II. gave some lands in Cumberland to one Sir Adam de Caxton; and from that time, you see, the pedigree went regularly from father to son till Henry V.; then, apparently from the disorders, produced, as your father says, by the wars of the Roses, there was a sad blank left – only one or two names, without dates or marriages, till the time of Henry VII., except that in the reign of Edward IV. there was one insertion of a William Caxton (named in a deed.) Now in the village church there was a beautiful brass monument to one Sir William de Caxton, who had been killed at the battle of Bosworth, fighting for that wicked King Richard III. And about the same time there lived, as you know, the great printer, William Caxton. Well, your father, happening to be in town on a visit to his aunt, took great trouble in hunting up all the old papers he could find at the Heralds' College; and sure enough he was overjoyed to satisfy himself that he was descended, not from that poor Sir William, who had been killed in so bad a cause, but from the great printer, who was from a younger branch of the same family, and to whose descendants the estate came, in the reign of Henry VIII. It was upon this that your Uncle Roland quarrelled with him; and, indeed, I tremble to think that they may touch on that matter again."

"Then, my dear mother, I must say my uncle is wrong there, so far as common-sense is concerned; but still, somehow or other, I can understand it – surely this was not the only cause of estrangement!"

My mother looked down, and moved one hand gently over the other, which was her way when embarrassed. "What was it, my own mother?" said I, coaxingly.