Thomas Blackmore

“ My father was gone to his boiling by this time, for nothing must ever interfere with that; but my mother would never give up her breakfast, till she saw the bottom of the teapot.
"Oh, Tommy darling," she cried, as she caught me, and kissed me quite into the china-cupboard, for we always had breakfast in the kitchen, when out of a maid-of-all-work: "my own little Tommy, do you know why you fly? All the greatest men in the kingdom have been here, to prove that you do it from reasons of Herod, Heroditical something—but he was a bad man, and murdered a million of little ones. ”

“ The only man, who could extinguish the fire, was the very man blowing his large bellows at it; and in the headstrong weakness of his nature, he had shouted for a gentleman smaller than himself, but skilful in the manufacture of malignity.
So little desire had I, to share, in the rough affray impending, and so keenly did I feel my own helplessness, that nothing but Sir Roland's stern resolve could have held me to the pledge of public life. All I cared for was, to be allowed to take my Laura, who had promised to give herself to me ”

“ But, as soon as Bill Chumps came back from Oxford, with his double-first, and his six feet two, to read for the Bar at Lincoln's Inn, she became too personal—and I might say bodily—in her sentiments, to suit my taste.
"Do you mean to grow any more, Tommy?" she had asked, as if love were a question of inches; "why Mr. Chumps must be a foot more than you are; though you have got your heels three inches high." ”

“ With that will I rescue my Hermes, though the Hydra herself stand over him."
"No, sir; no, sir; for God's sake don't go near him," cried Bill Chumps, running up the playground; "Grip can beat any two men in the world, because no blow can hurt him. Leave him to me, sir; I understand him, and he knows me well enough, though he never took to me, somehow or other, as his dear old father does. He has taken wonderfully to Fly Tommy. Somebody come, and give Tommy a good whack." ”

“ Half a crown's worth of coppers would be gone in no time. Keep behind the curtain, Sophy; or back we all go to business to-morrow morning; and I heartily wish we had never come away. At home, when I am hungry, I can get my dinner."
"Oh dear, he has spoiled his white ducks with tar, and Grip is in a dreadful mess of wet, and the sailors want to hoist him too, if he would only let them! I see what it is—how stupid of me! Tommy has been flying all over the sea, and Grip has been swimming after him! Oh, Bucephalus, how can you eat your dinner? ”

“ With such things I never troubled my head, even when I grew to be a Bachelor of Arts; until Sir Roland Twentifold came driving me about them, and his strength of will was tenfold mine.
"Roly," I said, when I had kept my "Master's term," and enjoyed it rarely among old friends, without a stroke of work; "you will never get a bit of good out of me. I am not eloquent, I have no gift of speech; I tried it at the Union once, and when everybody cried out, 'Bravo, Tommy!' I could only laugh, and thank them, and sit down. ”

“ Who can give any cuds to a fellow, who starts with a heap of money round his neck? If it were not for my mother, and little Laura, I would have started long ago. Whatever I do, I shall get no credit, because of what [Pg 117] those dirty Radicals call my 'enormous social advantages.' By the bye, I do hope you're not a Radical, Tommy."
"I should rather hope not," I said, with grand contempt. "My father is a Conservative; and so am I. Though I don't pretend yet to know so very much about it."
"All the better for that. I will teach you," cried Sir Roland. ”

“ Chumps, who was looking very well, and you might say ten years younger, with a new front to her hair, and a pink binding to her bosom, and a pair of long-skirted kid-gloves on her lap, and a juvenile jacket with Bohemian scollops, hung behind her, as if she had just pulled it off—which she never could have done, unless born in it. "Poor dear, she naturally feels it so deeply. Oh, Tommy Upmore, you men never feel!" ”

“ Belinda, darling, run and fetch the papers. Oh, bless the girl, she's gone without the keys, I do believe!"
Mrs. Chumps laid down her gloves, and began hunting in her pockets; then hurried from the room upon her daughter's track, while I sat bewildered. Then a sad sigh issued from the gloomy corner, and a melancholy whisper followed it.
"Oh, Tommy, Tommy, will you ever forgive me? For years, you were the chosen of my heart. But—but you slighted me, you know you did; ever since you became so rich, and grand. Whatever has happened is all your own fault—and—and he is so many sizes bigger." ”

“ Upmore, you need not be vulgar," she said, "because you have had no advantages. Would you dare to speak so, before Latin scholars? Even Master Chumps is blushing for you; and his father a man of such fine common sense! No sensible person can doubt, for a moment, that Tommy knows a great many words of Latin, but is not to be persecuted out of them, in that very coarse manner, at dinner time. Tell me, my dear," she said, turning to me, for I was fit to cry almost, "what is the reason that you can't bring out your learning. ”

“ We should call you 'Fanny,' instead of Tommy Upmore. Now, don't be offended. You can't expect to be anything but a muff, after going to a private school, you know."
"Bill Chumps is not a muff, and he was there six years. If Bill Chumps heard you talk like that, he'd take you by the back of the neck, and throw you over the top of that bathing-waggon."
"I beg your pardon, Tommy," said Sir Roland, whose nature was truly generous; "it was cowardly of me to talk like that, when you can't help yourself, of course. Every fellow should stick up for his own hole. ”

“ Ah, ha! Lack is the luck! I am a most unhappy fellow. My mother said once, that I had no right to be born; and who should know so well as she?"
But before I had quite finished "doing my hair"—as the ladies express it, and mine very often took almost as long as a lady's to do, because of there being so much of it,—Sir Roland came thumping my dressing-room door, and with his usual impetuosity, rushed in.
"Tommy, shake hands, like a man," he exclaimed, "or I'll pull all your hair out of trim again. ”

“ Bill Chumps shall have a glass of wine after his pudding, and Tommy drink water like a flying fish; and you may pour me a drop from the black square bottle, as soon as you have filled my pipe, my dear."
"That I will, Bucephalus, with great pleasure; if you will promise me one little thing. If Tommy goes back to that Latin Pantheon, they must let him come home, every Sunday."
"Fly home to his nest, to prevent him from flying;" my father replied, with a smile of good humour, for he liked to see his pipe filled; "encourage his crop, and discourage his wings. ”

“ But Tommy is always as pat with an answer, as a Cheap-jack, or a Prime-minister; and sometimes more than he should say to the mother, that brought him up, and fermented him. And now it seems a Providence, Sir Roland, to speak without offence to any one, that he should be M.A. and M.P., without paying anything at all expensive; and make the one defend the other, against the people his dear father could never put up with, though many times they promised him their custom. ”

“ Because he is so cock-sure that I can't do it; and he calls it nothing but a pack of lies. And, somehow or other, I assure you, sir, I am just like a lump of lead, when father is looking at me."
"A common complaint of the Mediums, Tommy, of the effect incredulity has on them. But, my dear little anthropic nautilus, I can do nothing, either to make, or mar your excursions over my own head. As I have told you before, there is nothing exceptional in your formation; only it happens, that your bodily contour is exactly such as to promote the tendencies of your specific levity. ”

“ I said to Sir Roland, only two days before the one fixed for the poll; "I can't stand any more of this, and Bill cannot want me any longer. I have had the very kindest letters from your mother; and if you prefer racket to home-life, I don't. I will meet you in London, any day you may appoint. But I must have a little quiet first. 'Tis as bad as a boat-race every day; and at Henley once I lost my nerve, from too much of it, and we got whacked."
"I see;" he replied, as he was fond of doing. "Another man's laurels, wreathed with orange-blossom, are hard to behold philosophically. ”

“ Therefore I say again, cheer up, Tommy! Science may vaunt herself, as being the mistress of the now happening day, and of that which has been ordained to follow; but I am the master of my own cane. Thomas Upmore, none shall smite thee."
A glow of joy came into my heart, and dried up my tears in a wink or two, for we knew him to be a true man of his word, whether to cane, or to abstain; and if the professors had kept in the background, I might have soared up for them, then and there. But it never is their nature to do that ”

“ It is jolly to see a fellow in his troubles. Suppose we start to-morrow?"
"With all my heart;" I answered. And in saying this, I had used the right words, at the right moment. Not that I cared to see Bill in the straw so much, although it is a pleasant spectacle; but that I did long, with all my heart, to hear Laura's opinion on politics, with the whole of Her Majesty's speech cut out, and pasted up—as I had told her to do it—in the corner of my little room, where I meditated, and had left a woolly outline of my head against the wall.
Our work was to be at Silverside ”

“ Other novels followed. 'The Maid of Sker,' 'Alice Lorraine,' 'Cripps the Carrier,' 'Erema,' 'Mary Anerley,' 'Christowell,' 'Sir Thomas Upton,' came in rapid succession. The paternity of no novel of Mr. Blackmore's is doubtful. All have marked characteristics. They are long and exceedingly minute in detail. With all his finish, he tells his story almost with a child's elaborateness of incident. Every change of the seasons, the history of every walk is set down. ”

“ And unless you send Tommy down with me to Larkmount, that is all we shall have to look forward to. He alone can save the Country, from the vast deluge of anarchy now pouring in."
"Well, I do feel it hard upon me," dear mother answered, "to be losing him again; almost before he has had time to get into gray mourning for his uncle. But his dear father's foremost principle was,—and he was putting by money, to support it—that Tommy should go into Parliament, and speak up courageously for the boiling interest. It is useless to hope that Jack Windsor could do it, even if there were no other children ”

“ I'll be as straight-forward as Bill Chumps was, with the Earl, according to Tommy's tale."
"Oh, what are you going to do?" cried mother; "after all the lecture I gave Tommy, and all I have done on the sands, oh dear! It is flying in the face of Providence."
"The Lord—if you mean Him by 'Providence'—loves the men He has made, to tell the truth; and the women likewise, to the extent of their powers, though not so much insisted on. Sir Roland is gone to the beach with his pony, to wait for your answer, I believe. Tommy shall take it down to him. ”

“ Why should you be shy of a power, so much rarer than the most entrancing eloquence? Prepare; you can never prepare too much. If I could only do what you can, Tommy, I would have a Dissolution in February, and be the Premier, after a very little practice. Why don't you let me know, how you get on?"
"Because you don't deserve it;" I answered with some spirit; and by this time he knew that I had some will of my own. "If you had said to me, about my darling Laura—'Tommy, you shall have her ”

“ Roly is a great alarmist; but I cannot see any harm at all going on; and I do hate wars, and faction-fights. Why need you go up, to take your seat at all? My father was in Parliament continually; but he took care never to go near it."
"Neither would I, if I could help it, Laura. But [Pg 401] the times are very different now. I have not the least chance, dear, of ever attaining what I long for most in all the world, except by going up; and more than that, doing something to satisfy your dear brother." ”

“ When one has been wronged by the outer world, the sooner he gets back to the bosom of his family, the likelier will he be to bear it well; and as soon as the Champagne was finished, I made off. It was useless to be in any hurry with old Grip, for he knew how undignified it is to pant, though the formal cause thereof be portliness; so that by the time we both got back to "Placid Bower," my mother had been at home more than an hour, and had packed Uncle William off to bed.
"Oh, darling Tommy, so weak he is," she told me, as soon as we had heard all about one another, and finished dinner ”

“ The oddest part of all is, that I had the hardest work to get out my own warming-pan. The others have behaved like gentlemen. There will be six of us, with the three who still remain. All staunch fellows, and not a fool among them, unless it is your humble servant. Come, and have a game of pyramids, friend Tommy."
Very often, when I thought about Sir Roland Twentifold, I could not help feeling surprised at his devotion to that dryest and dullest of all games, at least in my opinion—politics. ”

“ Into this I shall not enter, any more than I can help; for the discussion of such matters (which even ladies sometimes taunt us with avoiding) can cure nobody, and may taint many. Enough that it quenched all further doubt (which became at once unmanly squeamishness) as to my duty, towards him and her; and would have made me loathe the sight of him near Laura, even if she had been nothing to me.
"Tommy, you are not in your usual spirits," Sir Roland said to me, as he sat in the chair of hospitality, after the ladies had retired, with the Earl on his right hand, and me on his left ”