CHAPTER IV.
_THE BOOKBINDER AND HIS PUPIL._
It was the middle of the day before they were missed. Their absence
caused for a time no commotion; the servants said nurse must have taken
the child for his usual walk. But when the nurse from London came, and,
after renewed search and inquiry, nothing was heard of them, their
disappearance could no longer be kept from lady Ann. She sent to inform
her husband.
Sir Wilton asked a question or two of her messenger, said the thing must
be seen to, finished his cigar, threw the stump in the fire, and went to
his wife; when at once they began to discuss, not the steps to be taken
for the recovery of the child, but the woman's motive for stealing him.
The lady insisted it was revenge for having been turned away, and that
she would, as soon as she reached a suitable place, put an end to his
life: she had seen murder in her eyes! The father opined there was no
such danger: he remembered, though he did not mention it, the peculiarity
of the woman's behaviour when first he saw her. There was no limit, he
said, to the unnatural fancies of women; some were disgustingly fond of
children, even other women's children. Plain as the infant was, he did
not doubt she had taken a fancy to him, and therefore declined to part
with him. The element of revenge might, he allowed, have a share in the
deed; but that would be satisfied with leaving them in doubt of his fate.
For his part, he made her welcome to him! To this lady Ann gave no
answer: she was not easily shocked, and could, without consternation,
have regarded his disappearance as final. But something must at least
appear to be done! Unpleasant things might be said, and uncertainty was
full of annoyance!
"You must be careful, sir Wilton," she remarked. "Nobody thinks you
believe the child your own."
Sir Wilton laughed.
"I never had a doubt on the subject. I wish I had: he's not to my credit.
If we never hear of him again, the better for the next!"
"That is true!" rejoined lady Ann. "But what if, after we had forgotten
all about him, he were to turn up again?"
"That would be unpleasant--and is indeed a reason why we should
look for him. Better find him than live in doubt! Besides, the world
would be uncharitable enough to hint that you had made away with him:
it's what ought to have been done when first he appeared. I give
you my word, Ann, he was a positive monster! The object was actually
web-footed!--web-footed like any frog!"
"You must let the police know," said the lady.
"That the child is web-footed? No, I think not!" yawned sir Wilton.
He got up, went out, and ordered a groom to ride hard to the village--as
hard as he could go--and let the police understand what had occurred.
Within the hour a constable appeared, come to inquire when last the
fugitives were seen, and what they wore--the answer to which latter
question set the police looking for persons very different in appearance
from Jane and her nursling. Nothing was heard of them, and the inquiry,
never prosecuted with any vigour, was by degrees dropped entirely.
John Tuke had grumbled greatly at his wife's desertion of him for
grandees who would never thank her; but he gave in to the prolongation of
her absence with a better grace, when he learned how the motherless baby
was regarded by his own people. The humanity of the man rose in defence
of the injured. He felt also that, in espousing the cause of his wife's
nephew, scorned by his baronet father, he was taking the part of his own
down-trodden class. He was greatly perplexed, however, as to what end the
thing was to have. Must he live without his wife till the boy was sent to
school?
He was in bed and fast asleep, when suddenly opening his eyes, he saw
beside him the wife he had not seen for twelve months, with the stolen
child in her arms. When he heard how the stepmother had treated her, and
how the babe was likely to fare among its gentle kin, he was filled with
fresh indignation; but, while thoroughly appreciating and approving his
wife's decision and energy, he saw to what the deed exposed them, and
augured frightful consequences to the discovery that seemed almost
certain. But when he understood the precautions she had taken, and
bethought himself how often the police fail, he had better hopes of
escape. One thing he never dreamed of--and that was, restoring the child.
Often at night he would lie wondering how far, in case of their being
tried for kidnapping, the defence would reach, that his wife was the
child's aunt; and whether the fact that she was none the less a poor
woman standing up against the rich, would not render that or any plea
unavailing. Jane was, and long remained, serenely hopeful.
When she left for Mortgrange, they had agreed that her husband should say
she was gone to her father's; and as nobody where they lived knew who or
where her father was, nobody had the end of any clue. For some time after
her return she did not show herself, leaving it to her husband to say she
had come back with her baby. Then she began to appear with the child, and
so managed her references to her absence, that no one dreamed of his not
being her own, or imagined that she had left her husband for other reason
than to be tended at her old home in her confinement. After a few years,
even the fact of his not having been born in that house was forgotten;
and Richard Lestrange grew up as the son of John Tuke, the bookbinder.
Not in any mind was there a doubt as to his parentage.
They lived on the very bank of the Thames, in a poor part of a populous,
busy, thriving suburb, far from fashionable, yet not without inhabitants
of refinement. Had not art and literature sent out a few suckers into it,
there would have been no place in it for John Tuke. For, more than liking
his trade, being indeed fond of it, he would not work for the
booksellers, but used his talent to the satisfaction of known customers,
of whom he had now not a few, for his reputation had spread beyond the
near neighbourhood. But while he worked cheaper, quality considered, than
many binders, even carefully superintending that most important yet most
neglected part of the handicraft, the sewing, he never undertook cheap
work. Never, indeed, without persuasion on the part of his employer and
expostulation on his own, did he consent to _half-bind_ a book. Hence it
comes to be confessed, that, when _carte blanche_ was given him, he would
not infrequently expend upon a book an amount of labour and a value of
material quite out of proportion to the importance of the book. Still,
being a thoroughly conscientious workman, who never hurried the
forwarding, never cut from a margin a hair's breadth more than was
necessary, and hated finger-marks on the whiteness of a page, he was well
known as such, and had plenty of work--had often, indeed, to refuse what
was offered him, hence was able to decline all such jobs as would give
him no pleasure, and grew more fastidious as he grew older in regard to
the quality of the work he would undertake. He had never employed a
journeyman, and would never take more than two apprentices at a time.
As Richard Lestrange grew, his chief pleasure was to be in the shop with
his uncle, and watch him at his varying work. I think his knowledge of
books as things led him the sooner to desire them as realities, for to
read he learned with avidity. When he was old enough to go to school, his
adopted father spared nothing he could spend to make him fit for his
future; wisely resolved, however, that he should know nothing of his
rights until he was of an age to understand them--except, indeed, sir
Wilton should die before that age arrived, when his cause would be too
much prejudiced by farther postponement of claim. Heartily they hoped
that their secret might remain a secret until their nephew should be
capable of protecting them from any untoward consequence of their well
intended crime.
Happily there was in the place, and near enough for the boy to attend it
easily, a good day-school upon an old foundation, whose fees were within
his father's means. Richard proved a fair student and became a great
reader. But he took such an intelligent and practical interest in the
work he saw going on at home, that he began, while yet a mere child, to
use paste and paper of his own accord. First he made manuscript-books for
his work at school, and for the copying of such verses as he took a fancy
to in his reading. Then inside the covers of some of these he would make
pockets for papers; and so advanced to small portfolios and pocket-books,
of which he would make presents to his companions, and sometimes, when
more ambitiously successful, to a master. In their construction he used
bits of coloured paper and scraps of leather, chiefly morocco, which his
father willingly made over to him, watching his progress with an interest
quite paternal, and showing a workman's wisdom in this, that only when he
saw him in a real difficulty would he come to his aid--as, for instance,
when first he struggled with a piece of leather too thick for the bonds
of paste, and must be taught how to pare it to the necessary flexibility
and compliance.
To become able to _make_ something is, I think, necessary to thorough
development. I would rather have son of mine a carpenter, a watchmaker, a
wood-carver, a shoemaker, a jeweller, a blacksmith, a bookbinder, than I
would have him earn his bread as a clerk in a counting-house. Not merely
is the cultivation of operant faculty a better education in faculty, but
it brings the man nearer to every thing operant; humanity unfolds itself
to him the readier; its ways and thoughts and modes of being grow the
clearer to both intellect and heart. The poetry of life, the inner side
of that nature which comes from him who, on the Sabbath-days even,
"worketh hitherto," rises nearer the surface to meet the eyes of the man
who _makes._ What advantage the carpenter of Nazareth gathered from his
bench, is the inheritance of every workman, in proportion as he does
divine, that is, honest work.
Perceiving the faculty of the boy, his father--so let us call John Tuke
for the present--naturally thought it well to make him a gift of his
trade: it would always be a possession! "Whatever turn things may take,"
he would remark to his wife, "the boy will have his bread in his hands.
And say what they will, the man who can gather his food off his own
bench, or screw it out of his own press, must be a freer man than he who
but for his inheritance would have to beg, steal, or die of hunger. And
who knows how long the world may permit idlers to fare of its best!"
For, after a fashion of his own, Tuke was a philosopher and a politician.
But his politics were those of the philosopher, not of the politician.
Richard, with his great love of reading, and therefore of books, was
delighted to learn the craft which is their attendant and servitor. When
too young yet to wield the hammer without danger both to himself and the
book under it, he began to sew, and in a few weeks was able to bring the
sheets together entirely to the satisfaction of his father. From the
first he set him to do that essential part of the work in the best way,
that is, to sew every sheet round every cord: it is only when one can
perfectly work after the perfect rule, that he may be trusted with
variations and exceptions.
He went on teaching him until the boy could, he confessed, do almost
everything better than himself--went on until he had taught him every
delicacy, every secret of the craft. Richard developed a positive genius
for the work, seeming almost to learn it by intuition. A pocket-book,
with which he presented his father on his fiftieth birthday, brought out
his unqualified praise.
In the process he gradually revealed a predilection for a rarer use of
his faculty--a use more nice, while less distinguished, and not much
favoured by his father. It had its prime source deeper than the art of
book-binding--in the love of books themselves, not as leaves to be bound,
but as utterances to be heard. Certain dealers in old books have loved
some of them so as to refuse to part with them on any terms; Richard,
unable to possess more than a very few, manifested his veneration for
them in another and nearer fashion, running, as was natural and healthy,
in the lines of his calling.
For many months in diligent attendance at certain of the evening-classes
at King's College, he had developed a true insight into and sympathy with
what is best in our literature--chiefly in that of the sixteenth century:
from this grew an almost peculiar regard for old books. With three or
four shillings weekly at his disposal, he laid himself out to discover
and buy such volumes as, in themselves of value, were in so bad a
condition as to be of little worth from the mere bookseller's point of
view: with these for his first patients he opened a hospital, or
angel-asylum, for the lodging, restorative treatment, and systematic
invigoration of decayed volumes. Love and power combined made him look on
the dilapidated, slow-wasting abodes of human thought and delight with a
healing compassion--almost with a passion of healing. The worse gnawed of
the tooth of insect-time, the farther down any choice book in the steep
decline of years, the more intent was Richard on having it. More and more
skillful he grew, not only in rebinding such whose clothing was past
repair, but in restoring the tone of their very constitution; and in so
mending the ancient and beggarly garments of others that they reassumed a
venerable respectability. Through love, he passed from an artisan to an
artist. His reverence for the inner reality, the book itself, in itself
beyond time and decay, had roused in him a child-like regard for its
body, for its broken inclosure and default of manifestation. He would
espy the beauty of an old binding through any amount of abrasion and
laceration. To his eyes almost any old binding was better for its book
than any new one.
His father came to regard with wonder and admiration the redeeming
faculty of his son, whereby he would reinstate in strength and ripe
dignity a volume which he would have taken to pieces, and redressed like
an age-worn woman in a fashionable gown. So far did his son's superior
taste work upon his, that at length, if he opened a new binding, however
sombre, and saw a time-browned paper and old type within, the sight would
give him the shock of a discord.
But Tuke was in many things no other than a man of this world, and sorely
he doubted if such labour would ever have its counterpoise in money. It
paid better, because it was much easier, to reclothe than to restore! to
destroy and replace than to renew! When he had watched many times for
minutes together his son's delicate manipulation--in which he patched
without pauperizing, and subaided without humiliating--and at last
contemplating the finished result, he concluded him possessed of a quite
original faculty for book-healing.--"But alas," he thought, "genius
seldom gets beyond board-wages!" It did not occur to him that genius
least requires more than board-wages. He encouraged him, nevertheless,
though mildly, in the pursuit of this neglected branch of the
binding-art.
As the days went on, and their love for their nephew grew with his
deserts, the uncle and aunt shrank more and more from the thought, which
every year compelled them to think the oftener, that the day was drawing
nigh when they must volunteer the confession that he was not their child.
When he was about seventeen, Richard settled down to work with his
father, occasionally assisting him, but in general occupied with his own
special branch, in which Tuke, through his long connection with
book-lovers possessing small cherished libraries, was able to bring him
almost as many jobs as he could undertake. The fact that a volume could
be so repaired, stimulated the purchase of shabby books; and part of what
was saved on the price of a good copy was laid out on the amendment of
the poor one. But however much the youth delighted in it, he could not
but find the work fidgety and tiring; whence ensued the advantage that he
left it the oftener for a ramble, or a solitary hour on the river. He had
but few companions, his guardians, wisely or not, being more fastidious
about his associates than if he had been their very son. His uncle, of
strong socialistic opinions, and wont to dilate on human equality--as if
the thing that ought to be, and must one day come, could be furthered by
the assertion of its present existence--was, like the holders of even
higher theories, not a little apt to forget the practice necessarily
involved: this son of a baronet, seeing that he was the son also of his
wife's sister, was not to be brought up like one of the many!
Ugliness in infancy is a promise, though perhaps a doubtful one, of
beauty in manhood; and in Richard's case the promise was fulfilled:
hardly a hint was left of the baby-face which had repelled his father. He
was now a handsome well-grown youth, with dark-brown hair, dark-green
eyes, broad shoulders, and a little stoop which made his aunt uneasy: she
would have had him join a volunteer corps, but he declared he had not the
time. He accepted her encouragement, however, to forsake his work as
often as he felt inclined. He had good health; what was better, a good
temper; and what was better still, a willing heart toward his neighbour.
A certain over-hanging of his brows was--especially when he contracted
them, as, in perplexity or endeavour, he not infrequently did--called a
scowl by such as did not love him; but it was of shallow insignificance,
and probably the trick of some ancestor.
Before long, his thinking began to take form in verse-making. It matters
little to my narrative whether he produced anything of original value or
not; utterance aids growth, which is the prime necessity of human as of
all other life. Not seldom, bent over his work, he would be evolving some
musical fashion of words--with no relaxation, however, of the sharp
attention and delicate handling required by the nature of that work. It
is the privilege of some kinds of labour, that they are compatible with
thoughts of higher things. At the book-keeper's desk, the clerk must
think of nothing but his work; he is chained to it as the galley-slave to
his oar; the shoemaker may be poet or mystic, or both; the ploughman may
turn a good furrow and a good verse together; Richard could at once use
hands and thoughts. It troubled his protectors that they could not send
him to college, but they comforted themselves that it would not be too
late when he returned to his natural position in society. They had no
plan in their minds, no date settled at which to initiate his
restoration. All they had determined was, that he must at least be a
grown man, capable of looking after his own affairs, when the first step
for it was taken.
John Tuke was one of those who acknowledge in some measure the claims of
their neighbour, but assert ignorance of any one who must be worshipped.
And in truth, the God presented to him by his teachers was one with
little claim on human devotion. The religious system brought to bear on
his youth had operated but feebly on his conscience, and not at all on
his affections. It had, however, so wrought upon his apprehensions, that,
when afterward persuaded there was no ground for agonizing anticipation,
he welcomed the conviction as in itself a redemption for all men; "for,
surely," he argued, "fear is the worst of evils!" The very approach of
such a relief predisposed him to receive whatever teaching might
follow from the same source; and soon he believed himself satisfied that
the notion of religion--of duty toward an unseen maker--was but an
old-wives'-fable; and that, as to the hereafter, a mere cessation of
consciousness was the only reasonable expectation. The testimony of his
senses, although negative, he accepted as stronger on that side than any
amount of what could, he said, be but the purest assertion on the other.
Why should he heed an old book? why one more than another? The world was
around him: some things he must believe; other things no man could! One
thing was clear: every man was bound to give his neighbour fair-play! He
would press nothing upon Richard as to God or no God! he would not be
dogmatic! he only wanted to make a man of him! And was he not so far
successful? argued John. Was not Richard growing up a diligent, honest
fellow, loving books, and leading a good life; whereas, had he been left
to his father, he could not have escaped being arrogant and unjust,
despising the poor of his own flesh, and caring only to please himself!
In the midst of such superior causes of satisfaction, it also pleased
Tuke to reflect that the trade he had taught his nephew was a clean one,
which, while it rendered him superior to any shrewd trick fortune might
play him, would not make his hands unlike those of a gentleman.
His aunt, however, kept wishing that Richard were better "set up," and
looked more like his grandfather the blacksmith, whose trade she could
not help regarding as manlier than that of her husband. Hence she had
long cherished the desire that he should spend some time with her father.
But John would not hear of it. He would get working at the forge, he
said, and ruin his hands for the delicate art in which he was now
unapproachable.
For in certain less socialistic moods, John would insist on regarding
bookbinding, in all and any of its branches, not as a trade, but an art.
