Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон: The Caxtons: A Family Picture — Complete

“My wife,” said my father, solemnly, “this is my first lesson to our child,—the sanctity and the happiness of self-sacrifice; undo not what it should teach to his dying day.”

When I was between my seventh and my eighth year, a change came over me, which may perhaps be familiar to the notice of those parents who boast the anxious blessing of an only child. The ordinary vivacity of childhood forsook me; I became quiet, sedate, and thoughtful. The absence of play-fellows of my own age, the companionship of mature minds, alternated only by complete solitude, gave something precocious, whether to my imagination or my reason. The wild fables muttered to me by the old nurse in the summer twilight or over the winter’s hearth,—the effort made by my struggling intellect to comprehend the grave, sweet wisdom of my father’s suggested lessons,—tended to feed a passion for revery, in which all my faculties strained and struggled, as in the dreams that come when sleep is nearest waking. I had learned to read with ease, and to write with some fluency, and I already began to imitate, to reproduce. Strange tales akin to those I had gleaned from fairy-land, rude songs modelled from such verse-books as fell into my hands, began to mar the contents of marble-covered pages designed for the less ambitious purposes of round text and multiplication. My mind was yet more disturbed by the intensity of my home affections. My love for both my parents had in it something morbid and painful. I often wept to think how little I could do for those I loved so well. My fondest fancies built up imaginary difficulties for them, which my arm was to smooth. These feelings, thus cherished, made my nerves over-susceptible and acute. Nature began to affect me powerfully; and, from that affection rose a restless curiosity to analyze the charms that so mysteriously moved me to joy or awe, to smiles or tears. I got my father to explain to me the elements of astronomy; I extracted from Squills, who was an ardent botanist, some of the mysteries in the life of flowers. But music became my darling passion. My mother (though the daughter of a great scholar,—a scholar at whose name my father raised his hat if it happened to be on his head) possessed, I must own it fairly, less book-learning than many a humble tradesman’s daughter can boast in this more enlightened generation; but she had some natural gifts which had ripened, Heaven knows how! into womanly accomplishments. She drew with some elegance, and painted flowers to exquisite perfection. She played on more than one instrument with more than boarding-school skill; and though she sang in no language but her own, few could hear her sweet voice without being deeply touched. Her music, her songs, had a wondrous effect on me. Thus, altogether, a kind of dreamy yet delightful melancholy seized upon my whole being; and this was the more remarkable because contrary to my early temperament, which was bold, active, and hilarious. The change in my character began to act upon my form. From a robust and vigorous infant, I grew into a pale and slender boy. I began to ail and mope. Mr. Squills was called in.

“Tonics!” said Mr. Squills; “and don’t let him sit over his book. Send him out in the air; make him play. Come here, my boy: these organs are growing too large;” and Mr. Squills, who was a phrenologist, placed his hand on my forehead. “Gad, sir, here’s an ideality for you; and, bless my soul, what a constructiveness!”

My father pushed aside his papers, and walked to and fro the room with his hands behind him; but he did not say a word till Mr. Squills was gone.

“My dear,” then said he to my mother, on whose breast I was leaning my aching ideality—“my dear, Pisistratus must go to school in good earnest.”

“Bless me, Austin!—at his age?”

“He is nearly eight years old.”

“But he is so forward.”

“It is for that reason he must go to school.”

“I don’t quite understand you, my love. I know he is getting past me; but you who are so clever—”

My father took my mother’s hand: “We can teach him nothing now, Kitty. We send him to school to be taught—”

“By some schoolmaster who knows much less than you do—”

“By little schoolboys, who will make him a boy again,” said my father, almost sadly. “My dear, you remember that when our Kentish gardener planted those filbert-trees, and when they were in their third year, and you began to calculate on what they would bring in, you went out one morning, and found he had cut them down to the ground. You were vexed, and asked why. What did the gardener say? ‘To prevent their bearing too soon.’ There is no want of fruitfulness here: put back the hour of produce, that the plant may last.”

“Let me go to school,” said I, lifting my languid head and smiling on my father. I understood him at once, and it was as if the voice of my life itself answered him.

A year after the resolution thus come to, I was at home for the holidays.

“I hope,” said my mother, “that they are doing Sisty justice. I do think he is not nearly so quick a child as he was before he went to school. I wish you would examine him, Austin.”

“I have examined him, my dear. It is just as I expected; and I am quite satisfied.”

“What! you really think he has come on?” said my mother, joyfully.

“He does not care a button for botany now,” said Mr. Squills.

“And he used to be so fond of music, dear boy!” observed my mother, with a sigh. “Good gracious, what noise is that?”

“Your son’s pop-gun against the window,” said my father. “It is lucky it is only the window; it would have made a less deafening noise, though, if it had been Mr. Squills’s head, as it was yesterday morning.”

“The left ear,” observed Squills; “and a very sharp blow it was too. Yet you are satisfied, Mr. Caxton?”

“Yes; I think the boy is now as great a blockhead as most boys of his age are,” observed my father with great complacency.

“Dear me, Austin,—a great blockhead?”

“What else did he go to school for?” asked my father.

And observing a certain dismay in the face of his female audience, and a certain surprise in that of his male, he rose and stood on the hearth, with one hand in his waistcoat, as was his wont when about to philosophize in more detail than was usual to him.

“Mr. Squills,” said he, “you have had great experience in families.”

“As good a practice as any in the county,” said Mr. Squills, proudly; “more than I can manage. I shall advertise for a partner.”

“And,” resumed my father, “you must have observed almost invariably that in every family there is what father, mother, uncle, and aunt pronounce to be one wonderful child.”

“One at least,” said Mr. Squills, smiling.

“It is easy,” continued my father, “to say this is parental partiality; but it is not so. Examine that child as a stranger, and it will startle yourself. You stand amazed at its eager curiosity, its quick comprehension, its ready wit, its delicate perception. Often, too, you will find some faculty strikingly developed. The child will have a turn for mechanics, perhaps, and make you a model of a steamboat; or it will have an ear tuned to verse, and will write you a poem like that it has got by heart from ‘The Speaker;’ or it will take to botany (like Pisistratus), with the old maid its aunt; or it will play a march on its sister’s pianoforte. In short, even you, Squills, will declare that it is really a wonderful child.”

“Upon my word,” said Mr. Squills, thoughtfully, “there’s a great deal of truth in what you say. Little Tom Dobbs is a wonderful child; so is Frank Stepington—and as for Johnny Styles, I must bring him here for you to hear him prattle on Natural History, and see how well he handles his pretty little microscope.”