CHAPTER VIII.
THE youthful confuter of Locke was despatched to Merton School, and
ranked, according to his merits, as lag of the penultimate form. When
he came home for the Christmas holidays he was more saturnine than
ever; in fact, his countenance bore the impression of some absorbing
grief. He said, however, that he liked school very well, and eluded
all other questions. But early the next morning he mounted his black
pony and rode to the Parson's rectory. The reverend gentleman was in
his farmyard examining his bullocks when Kenelm accosted him thus
briefly,--
"Sir, I am disgraced, and I shall die of it if you cannot help to set
me right in my own eyes."
"My dear boy, don't talk in that way. Come into my study."
As soon as they entered that room, and the Parson had carefully closed
the door, he took the boy's arm, turned him round to the light, and
saw at once that there was something very grave on his mind. Chucking
him under the chin, the Parson said cheerily, "Hold up your head,
Kenelm. I am sure you have done nothing unworthy of a gentleman."
"I don't know that. I fought a boy very little bigger than myself,
and I have been licked. I did not give in, though; but the other boys
picked me up, for I could not stand any longer; and the fellow is a
great bully; and his name is Butt; and he's the son of a lawyer; and
he got my head into chancery; and I have challenged him to fight again
next half; and unless you can help me to lick him, I shall never be
good for anything in the world,--never. It will break my heart."
"I am very glad to hear you have had the pluck to challenge him. Just
let me see how you double your fist. Well, that's not amiss. Now,
put yourself into a fighting attitude, and hit out at me,--hard!
harder! Pooh! that will never do. You should make your blows as
straight as an arrow. And that's not the way to stand. Stop,--so:
well on your haunches; weight on the left leg; good! Now, put on
these gloves, and I'll give you a lesson in boxing."
Five minutes afterwards Mrs. John Chillingly, entering the room to
summon her husband to breakfast, stood astounded to see him with his
coat off, and parrying the blows of Kenelm, who flew at him like a
young tiger. The good pastor at that moment might certainly have
appeared a fine type of muscular Christianity, but not of that kind of
Christianity out of which one makes Archbishops of Canterbury.
"Good gracious me!" faltered Mrs. John Chillingly; and then,
wife-like, flying to the protection of her husband, she seized Kenelm
by the shoulders, and gave him a good shaking. The Parson, who was
sadly out of breath, was not displeased at the interruption, but took
that opportunity to put on his coat, and said, "We'll begin again
to-morrow. Now, come to breakfast." But during breakfast Kenelm's
face still betrayed dejection, and he talked little and ate less.
As soon as the meal was over, he drew the Parson into the garden and
said, "I have been thinking, sir, that perhaps it is not fair to Butt
that I should be taking these lessons; and if it is not fair, I'd
rather not--"
"Give me your hand, my boy!" cried the Parson, transported. "The name
of Kenelm is not thrown away upon you. The natural desire of man in
his attribute of fighting animal (an attribute in which, I believe, he
excels all other animated beings, except a quail and a gamecock) is to
beat his adversary. But the natural desire of that culmination of man
which we call gentleman is to beat his adversary fairly. A gentleman
would rather be beaten fairly than beat unfairly. Is not that your
thought?"
"Yes," replied Kenelm, firmly; and then, beginning to philosophize, he
added, "And it stands to reason; because if I beat a fellow unfairly,
I don't really beat him at all."
"Excellent! But suppose that you and another boy go into examination
upon Caesar's Commentaries or the multiplication table, and the other
boy is cleverer than you, but you have taken the trouble to learn the
subject and he has not: should you say you beat him unfairly?"
Kenelm meditated a moment, and then said decidedly, "No."
"That which applies to the use of your brains applies equally to the
use of your fists. Do you comprehend me?"
"Yes, sir; I do now."
"In the time of your namesake, Sir Kenelm Digby, gentlemen wore
swords, and they learned how to use them, because, in case of quarrel,
they had to fight with them. Nobody, at least in England, fights with
swords now. It is a democratic age, and if you fight at all, you are
reduced to fists; and if Kenelm Digby learned to fence, so Kenelm
Chillingly must learn to box; and if a gentleman thrashes a drayman
twice his size, who has not learned to box, it is not unfair; it is
but an exemplification of the truth that knowledge is power. Come and
take another lesson on boxing to-morrow."
Kenelm remounted his pony and returned home. He found his father
sauntering in the garden with a book in his hand. "Papa," said
Kenelm, "how does one gentleman write to another with whom he has a
quarrel, and he don't want to make it up, but he has something to say
about the quarrel which it is fair the other gentleman should know?"
"I don't understand what you mean."
"Well, just before I went to school I remember hearing you say that
you had a quarrel with Lord Hautfort, and that he was an ass, and you
would write and tell him so. When you wrote did you say, 'You are an
ass'? Is that the way one gentleman writes to another?"
"Upon my honour, Kenelm, you ask very odd questions. But you cannot
learn too early this fact, that irony is to the high-bred what
Billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one gentleman thinks another
gentleman an ass, he does not say it point-blank: he implies it in the
politest terms he can invent. Lord Hautfort denies my right of free
warren over a trout-stream that runs through his lands. I don't care
a rush about the trout-stream, but there is no doubt of my right to
fish in it. He was an ass to raise the question; for, if he had not,
I should not have exercised the right. As he did raise the question,
I was obliged to catch his trout."
"And you wrote a letter to him?"
"Yes."
"How did you write, Papa? What did you say?"
"Something like this. 'Sir Peter Chillingly presents his compliments
to Lord Hautfort, and thinks it fair to his lordship to say that he
has taken the best legal advice with regard to his rights of free
warren; and trusts to be forgiven if he presumes to suggest that Lord
Hautfort might do well to consult his own lawyer before he decides on
disputing them.'"
"Thank you, Papa. I see."
That evening Kenelm wrote the following letter:--
Mr. Chillingly presents his compliments to Mr. Butt, and thinks it
fair to Mr. Butt to say that he is taking lessons in boxing; and
trusts to be forgiven if he presumes to suggest that Mr. Butt might do
well to take lessons himself before fighting with Mr. Chillingly next
half.
"Papa," said Kenelm the next morning, "I want to write to a
schoolfellow whose name is Butt; he is the son of a lawyer who is
called a serjeant. I don't know where to direct to him."
"That is easily ascertained," said Sir Peter. "Serjeant Butt is an
eminent man, and his address will be in the Court Guide."
The address was found,--Bloomsbury Square; and Kenelm directed his
letter accordingly. In due course he received this answer,--
You are an insolent little fool, and I'll thrash you within an inch of
your life.
ROBERT BUTT.
After the receipt of that polite epistle, Kenelm Chillingly's scruples
vanished, and he took daily lessons in muscular Christianity.
Kenelm returned to school with a brow cleared from care, and three
days after his return he wrote to the Reverend John,--
DEAR SIR,--I have licked Butt. Knowledge is power.
Your affectionate KENELM.
P. S.--Now that I have licked Butt, I have made it up with him.
From that time Kenelm prospered. Eulogistic letters from the
illustrious head-master showered in upon Sir Peter. At the age of
sixteen Kenelm Chillingly was the head of the school, and, quitting it
finally, brought home the following letter from his Orbilius to Sir
Peter, marked "confidential":--
DEAR SIR PETER CHILLINGLY,--I have never felt more anxious for the
future career of any of my pupils than I do for that of your son. He
is so clever that, with ease to himself, he may become a great man.
He is so peculiar that it is quite as likely that he may only make
himself known to the world as a great oddity. That distinguished
teacher Dr. Arnold said that the difference between one boy and
another was not so much talent as energy. Your son has talent, has
energy: yet he wants something for success in life; he wants the
faculty of amalgamation. He is of a melancholic and therefore
unsocial temperament. He will not act in concert with others. He is
lovable enough: the other boys like him, especially the smaller ones,
with whom he is a sort of hero; but he has not one intimate friend.
So far as school learning is concerned, he might go to college at
once, and with the certainty of distinction provided he chose to exert
himself. But if I may venture to offer an advice, I should say employ
the next two years in letting him see a little more of real life and
acquire a due sense of its practical objects. Send him to a private
tutor who is not a pedant, but a man of letters or a man of the world,
and if in the metropolis so much the better. In a word, my young
friend is unlike other people; and, with qualities that might do
anything in life, I fear, unless you can get him to be like other
people, that be will do nothing. Excuse the freedom with which I
write, and ascribe it to the singular interest with which your son has
inspired me. I have the honour to be, dear Sir Peter,
Yours truly, WILLIAM HORTON.
Upon the strength of this letter Sir Peter did not indeed summon
another family council; for he did not consider that his three maiden
sisters could offer any practical advice on the matter. And as to Mr.
Gordon, that gentleman having gone to law on the great timber
question, and having been signally beaten thereon, had informed Sir
Peter that he disowned him as a cousin and despised him as a man; not
exactly in those words,--more covertly, and therefore more stingingly.
But Sir Peter invited Mr. Mivers for a week's shooting, and requested
the Reverend John to meet him.
Mr. Mivers arrived. The sixteen years that had elapsed since he was
first introduced to the reader had made no perceptible change in his
appearance. It was one of his maxims that in youth a man of the world
should appear older than he is; and in middle age, and thence to his
dying day, younger. And he announced one secret for attaining that
art in these words: "Begin your wig early, thus you never become
gray."
Unlike most philosophers, Mivers made his practice conform to his
precepts; and while in the prime of youth inaugurated a wig in a
fashion that defied the flight of time, not curly and hyacinthine, but
straight-haired and unassuming. He looked five-and-thirty from the
day he put on that wig at the age of twenty-five. He looked
five-and-thirty now at the age of fifty-one.
"I mean," said he, "to remain thirty-five all my life. No better age
to stick at. People may choose to say I am more, but I shall not own
it. No one is bound to criminate himself."
Mr. Mivers had some other aphorisms on this important subject. One
was, "Refuse to be ill. Never tell people you are ill; never own it
to yourself. Illness is one of those things which a man should resist
on principle at the onset. It should never be allowed to get in the
thin end of the wedge. But take care of your constitution, and,
having ascertained the best habits for it, keep to them like
clockwork." Mr. Mivers would not have missed his constitutional walk
in the Park before breakfast if, by going in a cab to St. Giles's, he
could have saved the city of London from conflagration.
Another aphorism of his was, "If you want to keep young, live in a
metropolis; never stay above a few weeks at a time in the country.
Take two men of similar constitution at the age of twenty-five; let
one live in London and enjoy a regular sort of club life; send the
other to some rural district, preposterously called 'salubrious.'
Look at these men when they have both reached the age of forty-five.
The London man has preserved his figure: the rural man has a paunch.
The London man has an interesting delicacy of complexion: the face of
the rural man is coarse-grained and perhaps jowly."
A third axiom was, "Don't be a family man; nothing ages one like
matrimonial felicity and paternal ties. Never multiply cares, and
pack up your life in the briefest compass you can. Why add to your
carpet-bag of troubles the contents of a lady's imperials and
bonnet-boxes, and the travelling /fourgon/ required by the nursery?
Shun ambition: it is so gouty. It takes a great deal out of a man's
life, and gives him nothing worth having till he has ceased to enjoy
it." Another of his aphorisms was this, "A fresh mind keeps the body
fresh. Take in the ideas of the day, drain off those of yesterday.
As to the morrow, time enough to consider it when it becomes to-day."
Preserving himself by attention to these rules, Mr. Mivers appeared at
Exmundham /totus, teres/, but not /rotundus/,--a man of middle height,
slender, upright, with well-cut, small, slight features, thin lips,
enclosing an excellent set of teeth, even, white, and not indebted to
the dentist. For the sake of those teeth he shunned acid wines,
especially hock in all its varieties, culinary sweets, and hot drinks.
He drank even his tea cold.
"There are," he said, "two things in life that a sage must preserve at
every sacrifice, the coats of his stomach and the enamel of his teeth.
Some evils admit of consolations: there are no comforters for
dyspepsia and toothache." A man of letters, but a man of the world,
he had so cultivated his mind as both that he was feared as the one
and liked as the other. As a man of letters he despised the world; as
a man of the world he despised letters. As the representative of both
he revered himself.
