I AM going to try if I can't
write something about myself.
My life has been rather a strange
one. It may not seem particularly
useful or respectable; but it
has been, in some respects, adventurous;
and that may give it claims to
be read, even in the most prejudiced
circles. I am an example of some
of the workings of the social
system of this illustrious country
on the individual native, during
the early part of the present
century; and, if I may say so
without unbecoming vanity, I
should like to quote myself for
the edification of my countrymen.
Who am I.
I am remarkably well connected,
I can tell you. I came into this
world with the great advantage
of having Lady Malkinshaw for
a grandmother, her ladyship's
daughter for a mother, and Francis
James Softly, Esq., M. D. (commonly
called Doctor Softly), for a
father. I put my father last,
because he was not so well connected
as my mother, and my grandmother
first, because she was the most
nobly-born person of the three.
I have been, am still, and may
continue to be, a Rogue; but
I hope I am not abandoned enough
yet to forget the respect that
is due to rank. On this account,
I trust, nobody will show such
want of regard for my feelings
as to expect me to say much about
my mother's brother. That inhuman
person committed an outrage on
his family by making a fortune
in the soap and candle trade.
I apologize for mentioning him,
even in an accidental way. The
fact is, he left my sister, Annabella,
a legacy of rather a peculiar
kind, saddled with certain conditions
which indirectly affected me;
but this passage of family history
need not be produced just yet.
I apologize a second time for
alluding to money matters before
it was absolutely necessary.
Let me get back to a pleasing
and reputable subject, by saying
a word or two more about my father.
I am rather afraid that Doctor
Softly was not a clever medical
man; for in spite of his great
connections, he did not get a
very magnificent practice as
a physician.
As a general
practitioner, he might have
bought a comfortable
business, with a house and snug
surgery-shop attached; but the
son-in-law of Lady Malkinshaw
was obliged to hold up his head,
and set up his carriage, and
live in a street near a fashionable
square, and keep an expensive
and clumsy footman to answer
the door, instead of a cheap
and tidy housemaid. How he managed
to "maintain his position" (that
is the right phrase, I think),
I never could tell. His wife
did not bring him a farthing.
When the honorable and gallant
baronet, her father, died, he
left the widowed Lady Malkinshaw
with her worldly affairs in a
curiously involved state. Her
son (of whom I feel truly ashamed
to be obliged to speak again
so soon) made an effort to extricate
his mother--involved himself
in a series of pecuniary disasters,
which commercial people call,
I believe, transactions--struggled
for a little while to get out
of them in the character of an
independent gentleman--failed--and
then spiritlessly availed himself
of the oleaginous refuge of the
soap and candle trade. His mother
always looked down upon him after
this; but borrowed money of him
also--in order to show, I suppose,
that her maternal interest in
her son was not quite extinct.
My father tried to follow her
example--in his wife's interests,
of course; but the soap-boiler
brutally buttoned up his pockets,
and told my father to go into
business for himself. Thus it
happened that we were certainly
a poor family, in spite of the
fine appearance we made, the
fashionable street we lived in,
the neat brougham we kept, and
the clumsy and expensive footman
who answered our door.
What was to be done with me
in the way of education?
If my father had consulted
his means, I should have been
sent to a cheap commercial academy;
but he had to consult his relationship
to Lady Malkinshaw; so I was
sent to one of the most fashionable
and famous of the great public
schools. I will not mention it
by name, because I don't think
the masters would be proud of
my connection with it. I ran
away three times, and was flogged
three times. I made four aristocratic
connections, and had four pitched
battles with them: three thrashed
me, and one I thrashed. I learned
to play at cricket, to hate rich
people, to cure warts, to write
Latin verses, to swim, to recite
speeches, to cook kidneys on
toast, to draw caricatures of
the masters, to construe Greek
plays, to black boots, and to
receive kicks and serious advice
resignedly. Who will say that
the fashionable public school
was of no use to me after that?
After I left school, I had
the narrowest escape possible
of intruding myself into another
place of accommodation for distinguished
people; in other words, I was
very nearly being sent to college.
Fortunately for me, my father
lost a lawsuit just in the nick
of time, and was obliged to scrape
together every farthing of available
money that he possessed to pay
for the luxury of going to law.
If he could have saved his seven
shillings, he would certainly
have sent me to scramble for
a place in the pit of the great
university theater; but his purse
was empty, and his son was not
eligible therefore for admission,
in a gentlemanly capacity, at
the doors.
The next thing was to choose
a profession.
Here the Doctor was liberality
itself, in leaving me to my own
devices. I was of a roving adventurous
temperament, and I should have
liked to go into the army. But
where was the money to come from,
to pay for my commission? As
to enlisting in the ranks, and
working my way up, the social
institutions of my country obliged
the grandson of Lady Malkinshaw
to begin military life as an
officer and gentleman, or not
to begin it at all. The army,
therefore, was out of the question.
The Church? Equally out of the
question: since I could not pay
for admission to the prepared
place of accommodation for distinguished
people, and could not accept
a charitable free pass, in consequence
of my high connections. The Bar?
I should be five years getting
to it, and should have to spend
two hundred a year in going circuit
before I had earned a farthing.
Physic? This really seemed the
only gentlemanly refuge left;
and yet, with the knowledge of
my father's experience before
me, I was ungrateful enough to
feel a secret dislike for it.
It is a degrading confession
to make; but I remember wishing
I was not so highly connected,
and absolutely thinking that
the life of a commercial traveler
would have suited me exactly,
if I had not been a poor g entleman.
Driving about from place to place,
living jovially at inns, seeing
fresh faces constantly, and getting
money by all this enjoyment,
instead of spending it--what
a life for me, if I had been
the son of a haberdasher and
the grandson of a groom's widow!
While my father was uncertain
what to do with me, a new profession
was suggested by a friend, which
I shall repent not having been
allowed to adopt, to the last
day of my life. This friend was
an eccentric old gentleman of
large property, much respected
in our family. One day, my father,
in my presence, asked his advice
about the best manner of starting
me in life, with due credit to
my connections and sufficient
advantage to myself.
"Listen to my experience," said
our eccentric friend, "and, if
you are a wise man, you will
make up your mind as soon as
you have heard me. I have three
sons. I brought my eldest son
up to the Church; he is said
to be getting on admirably, and
he costs me three hundred a year.
I brought my second son up to
the Bar; he is said to be getting
on admirably, and he costs me
four hundred a year. I brought
my third son up to Quadrilles--he
has married an heiress, and he
costs me nothing."
Ah, me! if that worthy sage's
advice had only been followed--if
I had been brought up to Quadrilles!--if
I had only been cast loose on
the ballrooms of London, to qualify
under Hymen, for a golden degree!
Oh! you young ladies with money,
I was five feet ten in my stockings;
I was great at small-talk and
dancing; I had glossy whiskers,
curling locks, and a rich voice!
Ye girls with golden guineas,
ye nymphs with crisp bank-notes,
mourn over the husband you have
lost among you--over the Rogue
who has broken the laws which,
as the partner of a landed or
fund-holding woman, he might
have helped to make on the benches
of the British Parliament! Oh!
ye hearths and homes sung about
in so many songs--written about
in so many books--shouted about
in so many speeches, with accompaniment
of so much loud cheering: what
a settler on the hearth-rug;
what a possessor of property;
what a bringer-up of a family,
was snatched away from you, when
the son of Dr. Softly was lost
to the profession of Quadrilles!
It ended in my resigning myself
to the misfortune of being a
doctor.
If I was a very good boy and
took pains, and carefully mixed
in the best society, I might
hope in the course of years to
succeed to my father's brougham,
fashionably-situated house, and
clumsy and expensive footman.
There was a prospect for a lad
of spirit, with the blood of
the early Malkinshaws (who were
Rogues of great capacity and
distinction in the feudal times)
coursing adventurous through
every vein! I look back on my
career, and when I remember the
patience with which I accepted
a medical destiny, I appear to
myself in the light of a hero.
Nay, I even went beyond the passive
virtue of accepting my destiny--I
actually studied, I made the
acquaintance of the skeleton,
I was on friendly terms with
the muscular system, and the
mysteries of Physiology dropped
in on me in the kindest manner
whenever they had an evening
to spare.
Even this was not the worst
of it. I disliked the abstruse
studies of my new profession;
but I absolutely hated the diurnal
slavery of qualifying myself,
in a social point of view, for
future success in it. My fond
medical parent insisted on introducing
me to his whole connection. I
went round visiting in the neat
brougham--with a stethoscope
and medical review in the front-pocket,
with Doctor Softly by my side,
keeping his face well in view
at the window--to canvass for
patients, in the character of
my father's hopeful successor.
Never have I been so ill at ease
in prison, as I was in that carriage.
I have felt more at home in the
dock (such is the natural depravity
and perversity of my disposition)
than ever I felt in the drawing-rooms
of my father's distinguished
patrons and respectable friends.
Nor did my miseries end with
the morning calls. I was commanded
to attend all dinner-parties,
and to make myself agreeable
at all balls. The dinners were
the worst trial. Sometimes, indeed,
we contrived to get ourselves
asked to the houses of high and
mighty entertainers, where we
ate the finest French dishes
and drank the oldest vintages,
and fortified ourselves sensibly
and snugly in that way against
the frigidity of the company.
Of these repasts I have no hard
words to say; it is of the dinners
we gave ourselves, and of the
dinners which people in our rank
of life gave to us, that I now
bitterly complain.
Have you ever observed the
remarkable adherence to set forms
of speech which characterizes
the talkers of arrant nonsense!
Precisely the same sheepish following
of one given example distinguishes
the ordering of genteel dinners.
When we gave a dinner at home,
we had gravy soup, turbot and
lobster-sauce, haunch of mutton,
boiled fowls and tongue, lukewarm
oyster-patties and sticky curry
for side-dishes; wild duck, cabinet-pudding,
jelly, cream and tartlets. All
excellent things, except when
you have to eat them continually.
We lived upon them entirely in
the season. Every one of our
hospitable friends gave us a
return dinner, which was a perfect
copy of ours--just as ours was
a perfect copy of theirs, last
year. They boiled what we boiled,
and we roasted what they roasted.
We none of us ever changed the
succession of the courses--or
made more or less of them--or
altered the position of the fowls
opposite the mistress and the
haunch opposite the master. My
stomach used to quail within
me, in those times, when the
tureen was taken off and the
inevitable gravy-soup smell renewed
its daily acquaintance with my
nostrils, and warned me of the
persistent eatable formalities
that were certain to follow.
I suppose that honest people,
who have known what it is to
get no dinner (being a Rogue,
I have myself never wanted for
one), have gone through some
very acute suffering under that
privation. It may be some consolation
to them to know that, next to
absolute starvation, the same
company-dinner, every day, is
one of the hardest trials that
assail human endurance. I date
my first serious determination
to throw over the medical profession
at the earliest convenient opportunity,
from the second season's series
of dinners at which my aspirations,
as a rising physician, unavoidably
and regularly condemned me to
be present.
|