Waiting for the Verdict. An autobiography ... Edited by B. Aikin

Front matter

Waiting for the Verdict. AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 11 Voi ch1 ascoltate . . . il suono Di quei sosp'iri ones io nudriva il core Quand' era in parte altr' uom di quel che sono Fra le vane speranze, e '1 van dolore, Spero trovar pieta, non che perdono." Petrarca. Edited by B. AIKIN, AUTHOR OF "ANNE SHERWOOD," ETC. ETC. LONDON: SAUNDERS, OTLEY, AND CO., 66, BROOK STREET, HANOVER SQUARE. I863. TO THE AUTHOR OF "THE CAXTONS," f |jis Want* is $ttsrrikb BY HIS OBLIGED SERVANT. PBEPACE. Kind Reader, take my book, with all its imperfec tions on its head, and without apology for its demerits. I have written from my heart, will you read with yours ? May you be like the reader Sterne desired — " Pleased you know not why, and care not where fore." CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGB I. MYSELF, MY CHILDHOOD, AND MY CONSCIENCE 9 II.

HOW WE LIVED, AND HOW A PUPIL CAME . 25 III. HELEN 37 IV. LOVE AND DREAMS 4 V. AN7 ADVENTURE 50 VI. A NEW INMATE AT THE CURATE'S .... 62 VII. THE NEW PUPIL 72 VIII. DEATH 81 IX. AN EXECUTION 86 X. GEMMEL PUMMEL AND OUR MOVE .... 99 XI. IN LONDON, SEEKING EMPLOYMENT . . .114 XII. A LAY SERMON AND A RENCONTRE . . . .122 XIII. CHANGES RUNG ON BELLS THAT WERE NOT SO GLADSOME AS WEDDING CHIMES . . .134 XIV. HOW I BECAME A CLERK AND POET . . . 149 XV. I PUBLISH MY ROMANCE 160 XVI. I ENTER SOCIETY 1 72 XVII. CHARLOTTE 193 XVIII. LITERATURE 199 XIX. THE MEETING OF FOES CONTENTS. CHAPTER PiQE XX. I TRY TO EFFECT MY SISTER'S ENTRANCE INTO SOCIETY 216 XXI. MY MOTHER 228 XXII. I FAIL AS AN AUTHOR 232 XXIII. BENVENUTA 241 XXIV. I BECOME A PLAYER 247 XXV. HOW I ACTED MY PLAY, AND ENDED THE TRAGEDY IT WAS NOT TILL THE ELEVENTH HOUR THAT I FOUND THE NAME OF MY PLAT WAS A WORN-OUT TITLE, "JEALOUSY" 251 LEAVES FROM MY JOURNAL WAITING FOE TEE VERDICT.

Chapter I. Myself, Mt Childhood, And Mt Conscience

I am standing alone on a lonely cliff, midway it seems between heaven and earth. Humanity is wilful. I should like a storm that would rend both heaven and earth, and utterly drown the cry of my own wild passions surging up within me : but no storm is brewing ; the sky is like an unrippled lake ; Geneva in its calmest mood ; the sea is like " The Ancient Mariner's ;" and the fisher's boat there, doubling yon promontory, seems " Like a painted ship Upon a painted ocean." Everything about me is peace, but I am like the wild tiger robbed of its young ; yet is there none of the tiger's cruelty in me, or if there be, my fangs are turned at my own bleeding bosom, clutching my own heart, my heart that beats for ever, and will not rest ; and the being who alone can still it, walks towards me with so slow and majestic a pace, that I despair of his reaching me in time to save my reason.

Oh sea ! awaken thy music, however wild the diapason ; keep me from listening to myself. Man that readest this brief chronicle, have patience with thy fellow-worm, condemn me not as a vain egotist ! Dost thou call the helpless child such? the child that nature teaches to wail forth its sorrows ? I am even as that child ; and if the cry of anguish will not be repressed, I beseech thee have patience with me. The shroud is not yet about thee, the slow, passing-bell has not tolled for thee, nor the dust rattled hollow on thy coffin ; thou yet mayst be as I am, a mur Great God,l cannot write the word, I cannot write it, each letter would stalk forth from the paper like an accusing ghost, to confront me. Oh sea ! eternal sea ! — for I will not believe thou canst be dried up like a dewdrop in the sun — oh sea ! lift up thy mighty voice, thou image of all in finite things, of God, of love, of eternity ; as is thy fulness, so was the immeasurable love that once filled my heart, filled it till it overflowed, and the wild waves wrecked the few flowers nature had planted in my soul.

Youth that treadest on the margin of life's ocean, beware of thine own heart, shut thine ears to the delusions of fancy, be neither lover, nor poet, nor artist — be a man, a man strong, majestic, and com plete, whose free firm mind grasps by its iron will the problems of abstruse science, or bends other men's minds, other men's wills to itself, by the passionless logic of the philosopher. Listen not to the croakings of the mean souls who deride am bition ; ambition that aims so high it would grasp the stars and measure them, that would weigh men and goyern them, is no paltry thing to deride with scoffs, it is "the glorious fault of angels and of gods;" aim at a lofty mark, snatch at the Pleiades if thou wilt, but intoxicate not thyself with the scent of earth's perishing flowers, they will die in thy grasp and leave but thorns behind.

I have written many books, records of others' feelings, others' passions. I have scattered their leaves on the wild winds, careless of who might pick up the abandoned foundlings. I have woven idle songs, and have heard them on other men's lips, sometimes called by other men's names ; I have seen my poor children alternately the sport B and the plaything of a judicious public, yet no pulse has stirred within me, I have looked on with a stoic's eye ; for those books, those songs, were not after all the true voice of my soul ; it seems to me now that they were made to order, as Sartor made my coat. I wrote from my head, my heart was hushed, the world condemned an author who appeared in his own book, and I was afraid of the world ; we are all cowards till we grow desperate, then we give up masking, and muffling, and shifting in corners.

I have given it all up, and I will write of myself, not that it is myself, but because I do not know another man. Earth has its millions, and I see some of their shirt-fronts and their gloved hands, but of what is within I see nothing, and if I would make a book, I must look into myself or yield this paltry ambition of mine ; so I, Ernest Clarkson, write my own memoirs, and kind or unkind reader, I swear to you I am dipping this iron pen of mine in my heart's blood while I do write. I have always pictured to myself that every soul that comes into this world has her counterpart born too, and if they never meet to dissolve in one, it is that they wander into the wrong road or grow bewildered in earth's darkness. I have dreamed, perchance I dream still — then wake me not ! I have dreamed that some being exists for whom I was made or who was created for me ; who would read me at a glance, and love and pity, even while condemning me.

Once I dreamt it was a woman, fair as a young poet's dream, whose wealth of silken curls was poor to the pure gold of her heart. I dreamt that we should meet, that we must meet, that I should one day rest roy head on the snows of her virgin bosom, and be consoled for all the thorns that had early entered the weary feet of the world-tired pilgrim. Oh love ! oh faith ! why did the vision melt into thin air, leaving no shred of the silken tresses in my passionate grasp ? Then my mind's eye painted on my brain a youth — a sort of son — the very embodiment of hope and joy and intellectual beauty ; he might not be of my blood, but he would be my disciple, he would hang with reverent love upon my teach ings, and his affection would lift and hold me above trial and affliction. I swore that he should never have to blush for his father.

Maiden of my dreams, thou art dead to me, or thou hast never been ! But thou, my son, thou child of my soul, I have never grasped thy hand in the flesh, never communed with thy spirit through the windows of thine eyes ; but I know thou art, I know thou wilt read these words ; thine heart will beat with my heart, thou wilt share my joys and sorrows, and weep a tear above my heart's grave, a tear that manhood need not blush to own ; thou wilt pity and forgive, perchance thy pitying prayer shall bribe the angels to efface the stain upon Ah, what do I say ? I need not tell it before the time. Woman that readest this book, or essayest to read it, perchance thou wilt close the volume when I tell thee what I am. Not young, not interesting, not bearing the form and the features that, once seen, leave ever a more or less enduring impression upon every woman's heart or fancy.

No ; I am a man of thirty-five years, with the semblance of ten more ; tall, but ill-formed and awkward ; so far from handsome, that my own mother could not think me fair even in my childhood. I am as an old man, my forehead is lined, my hair thickly strewu with grey. Shall I say more ? In woman's eyes I must be, I must have 'been, a monster. There are times when I think that all the trials of my life have sprung from this poor ugly case, in which the whimsicality of nature chose to wrap my burning heart and brain. Yet again there are times in which I thank God for making me a Caliban ; had I been a Ferdinand, my delusions would have been more, and have lasted longer. Oh great sea! thou hast at last lifted up thy mighty voice ; thy wild, angry mood tames mine. I can bear now to talk of my mother, and such wayside wild flowers, such stray sunbeams, as my childhood knew.

I suppose every childhood has a few flowers, a few sunbeams ; if not garden roses, daisies of the field, primroses from the hedges ; if not June sunshine, at least April skies. My father was a Wiltshire curate, and worked like bis namesake, trusting to be fed by the ravens ; but, alas ! I fear our ravens cared only for storing their own nest, and if we, the numerous children of the shabby curate, got bread, we could not boast of much more. Our father was a saint ripe for heaven, but altogether unfit for this world of ours ; yet he was something of a scholar, and did not want for elo quence ; but what did not strike me at the time, appears to me now as the true key to his disap pointments — his coat was threadbare and he always spoke his mind. He always spoke his mind, unless indeed it were to some-one poorer than himself, and to such an one I verily believe he crouched and cringed as you or I, sir, you know, would cringe to an ermined peer !

Then he lived on books of no value to any one but himself, and wore out his health and strength in ministering among the sick and old villagers, and teaching the young. Our rector was an awful man, awful in the dig nity of three thousand a year ; he preached once a month to us, and administered sacramental bread with such beautiful white hands. The rector thought my father was not sufficiently evangelical ; I dare say he was right, and that the grey-haired curate was a mere Christian, nothing more. My mother had more shrewdness than my father, and might have mended our condition, by nudging his elbow at the right minute, but he had, with or without design, wheedled her into the belief that he could not err, besides she had enough to do to work for her tribe of children. We had meat sometimes on Sundays, so I liked Sunday to come ; and when we had new coats or frocks, they never were new.

I could not guess the reason for a long time, that when I donned a tunic or jacket for the first time, it was darned and patched. I complained frequently to my mother on the subject, but she only shook her head, sighed, and coloured. I have since learnt that our wardrobes were furnished by a particular society in London, called never mind what it is called, but good men support it. My mother's gowns bore the same character as our clothes. I think my father's coat was really new, or at least had been so, but then he wore it a long time, and once a year my mother did some thing to it, which she said made it look as good as new, but I could not see much difference ; young eyes are supercilious. Our parents tried to give us some sort of education, at home of course ; my father put us through the Latin grammar, even attempted Greek with me, but it continued long to be very Greek.

He was no mathematician, and as for figures, the charity-school children knew more than I was ever likely to learn. It would have been the saving of my soul and body, if my father had sent me to the commercial school in the neigh bouring town, but he couldn't and he didn't. I skulked Virgil when I could, and hid in the hayloft, where, of course, we had no hay, and read, oh shame ! Beaumont and Fletcher. My poor, dear mother_ found the book, wept bitterly over the depravation of my young morals, and burnt — actually burnt the precious odd volume. I found one of Otway, and devoured it behind the cowhouse ; not meaning that to be burnt, I hid the book in a leafy tree, and there the rains proved nearly as destructive to my new treasure as the fire had been to my old one ; however, I nearly knew " The Orphan" by heart, before my fresh delinquency was discovered.

The fatal day arrived ! " Child," said my mother, solemnly, " unhappy child, do you know the meaning of the words you have read ?'' " Yes, mother," said I, proudly. " You do !" " Yes." " Where do the wicked go when they die?" " The wicked shall be turned into hell," I an swered, sturdily. " And you're not afraid, you awful child !" My mother's eyes showed a dreadful struggle between maternal tenderness and conscientious Calvinism, to which tender-hearted women are often subject. " Mother !" said I. " Well, you misguided child," " Do you want me to be afraid of my father !' " You know I don't." " Then why do you want to make me afraid of God?" My mother leant her head on her hand thought fully, and I picked up my condemned Otway, and hugged it to my breast, with the full persuasion that it would not again be molested ; still I found out a new and safer hiding-place.

Oh ! those old days in the tumble-down house, where the floors were uncarpeted and worm-eaten ; where the rain found its way in through the roof, and the dim sash was often mended with brown paper. Oh ! those old, dead days, when food was poor and even scanty ; when fire was scarce on the winter hearth, and one candle showed the gloom it had no power to dispel : days that have long laid sere in their cold winding-sheet. Yet had they some sunshine, some flowers, that have shed at least a little warmth and perfume over my life's wilderness. Surely that little sunshine, those few flowers, grew out of my mother's love, and some, too, out of the old, musty, stray volumes of the dead poets that beguiled my early years. Strange thoughts those books brought to me. The awakening of strange passions, strange desires.

One of my wild fancies, I remember, was to know how the manslaver felt ; afterwards I re It is very strange, but at intervals through life I have imagined myself a homicide, and a cold shiver runs down my back, the clutch of the Eumenides is in my vitals; but the frightful phantasm as frequently dissolves as it rises before me, and when it is gone, I can smoke my meer schaum, and draw on a pair of yellow gloves with precision and care. I am a man of the world, hard, dry as any of them, till an hour's solitude brings me face to face with my sick soul, and then — ah then, my old fancies return, and I am oppressed by a weight of Reader, I put a case to you. You are a lawyer, perhaps, or at least a shrewd man of business ; you button your pockets against borrowers and beggars, you don't recognise poor, distant relations, and never accept a bill not payable at sight.

But you're strictly honourable and conscientious ; oh yes ! and never leave a tradesman unpaid. They may call you a hard man, but they know you're an honest one ; of course they do. Well, you are just the man I want to decide a nice question for me. You have a pocket-book full of bank-notes in the left breast pocket of your good broad-cloth. You don't write upon it, "my life's blood," lest you should direct the hand of violence there, to spill it : but you know that these words are en graven in fiery letters within, just under the treasure. Now suppose you are walking down a narrow lane, you are quite alone, your hand is pressed on your breast, just as twenty years before it would have protected your loved one's portrait, in the same spot above your heart. You are quite alone ; you walk at a quicker pace, for twilight is stealing on, still the last thing you think of is a thief.

Suddenly you hear stealthy footsteps behind ; they come on, quicker, quicker. You grow rather nervous, not that you're a coward, but there is a great stake near. You feel a touch on your shoulder, instinctively your hand tightens on your left breast, you start, and though you were as strong a man as England's bull-dog champion, you feel you are growing pale, you mechanically turn round, and then — why then you laugh outright, for you know the man that has brought you to a halt. Why, you played together at leap-frog, you sat on the same hard bench at school, shared the same caning, the same black doses, the same sour apples you helped each other to steal from the neighbour's orchard. When bigger bullies perhaps fate still threw you together : you were chums, friends ; drank, swag gered, battled the police in company, and even lent each other money, till you knew the world too well to lend to any one.

Ah! well you may laugh at the notion of being startled by a rencontre with that old fellow, childhood's companion, manhood's friend, in a lonely lane. Ah, but you feel a strange sensation at your throat, a something that turns your laugh into a gurgling, rattling sound. What is it ? What is it clutching your windpipe so tight ? The old chum's hand ! A rough joke, still you know it is a joke, and — but you look through the gloom into his eyes, and they glitter like earnest ; dreadful ! but such things may and can be. Friends make the staunchest foes. Ah, how you twist and struggle ; how you coil round each other like snakes in the dark night. Shadows deepen around you, you can but see each other's gleaming eyes, and you feel rather than know that your strength is oozing away like water, and that the precious treasure, the life-blood, is gone from you, snatched by the old chum, the loved and trusted, the Pylades to your Orestes of old times.

The struggle still goes on ; in him, in you, the man is dead, the fierce animal instinct only is left. You fight like tigers ; by and by the robber weakens too ; he makes a desperate effort ; with his remnant of strength he gets you down, you roll together in the dust, there is not five minutes' life left in you. By a miracle you get above him ; but his coil is around you still, the coil of his arms, the coil of his hate ; you embrace closer than the most passionate lovers : shall both heave his last, hot breath in his foeman's arms ? Ah, his hold relaxes, but you are nought but a fierce, yelling animal now, with your clutch on the throat of your prey, and when the first pale star comes out, it shines clear and cold on the face of the dead — the dead, do you' hear? Now, quick, clever lawyer, shrewd man of business, what do you say ?

You know the code of criminal law, the codes of honour and of morals, and all the other codes from Adam to Justinian, from Justinian to us, are you, on account of that unfortunate affair in the dark lane — are you a mur a homicide I mean ? A nice point, sir, for conscience to decide. I am waiting for the verdict ; speak, judge, you are a man of the world, I only a poet.

Chapter II. How We Lived, And How

A PUPIL CAME. Years passed on in the old crazy house, but I scarcely think they mended or altered our condi tion much. Rain beat in on the foot of my garret bed in winter, and sunbeams came in in summer through the uncurtained window, and showed the shabby furniture to perfection. My father grew greyer and sadder ; he gave up talking of better times coming, when he would have a living of his own (he really had been promised one); he turned more of his garden into potato ground, which he worked at odd hours with his own hands ; and I noticed that his back became more and more bowed, like that of a man dejected or worn out ; yet he laboured as indefatigably as ever in the parish, and gave (at the evangelical rector's request) full service twice every Sunday iu winter, three times in summer. Saints' days of course were thrown out, but a thanksgiving service C we always had after harvest, and when the tithes had been gathered in.

Ours was a model parish for paying tithes ; the farmers seemed to like them; if they had been gathered in by any other sort of jector, there might have been some trouble about them, but our rector was not a bit like any other, and his lawn was got up by a London laundress. He had a wife, but she was delicate, and did not attend our church. Poor old curate-father, how hard he worked ; how nearly he came to his death by his incessant work, work, work; he liked his labour too, though it slew him, for he loved God and man. My mother looked grey and old long before her time ; bravely she worked on, patching old clothes, putting new feet into seemingly unmendable stockings ; she had long given up the fiction of making old things look us well as new — delusions cannot last for ever. My mother was a model wife, a model mother, a support and comfort to all ; she had a sweet, gentle temper which no misfortune could sour.

Never for a moment did she look or speak severely, unless when propounding a moral sentence, or impressing on our young minds Calvinistic dogmas. Dear soul ! how long and how earnestly she strove to imbue me, her eldest born, with the doctrine of election. How often did I shock her tender soul with my heresy. One day I told her plainly I could not be happy a minute — nay, I should insist on being miserable for life — if I thought half my brothers and sisters were going to be burnt up for ever. She grew pale at my bringing the question home to her own little flock, but murmured something about a " potter." " Ah, mother !" said I, " neither you nor I would like to be one of the poor pots, that could not help themselves, do what they would." She looked terrified, and I am sure had visions that I was a vessel fitted out from stem to stern, for the sole purpose of destruction.

I did not like these theological dissertations, the more especially as the maternal and brimstonial lecture was usually delivered in the dark, when we were sit ting without candles, because we could not afford to light them. I was not by nature a coward, but my imagination peopled the gloom with monstrous objects, and when I had to creep up-stairs without a light to bed, I carried with me ghastly visions that my pride would not let me mention. Up, up the horrid creatures glided from step to step, and I was sure they touched me with their slimy fingers. I c2 used to dart into my bed, covered with the cold sweat of agony. I drew the clothes over my head, and despite the stifling sensation, my teeth chattered. But the scaring visions stayed beside my bed, stood at its foot, surrounded me like an atmosphere ; closed eyes, muffled head, nothing would shut them out.

Sometimes they pursued me in sleep, now hobgoblins thin as air, then hollow-eyed skeletons, then slippery black snakes ; the snakes were the worst of all, I dreamt of them oftenest, waking and sleeping, and to this day, the empty skin of a snake will fill me with deadly horror. Still, still I feel the cold creep down my back at the recollec tion of those visions. Oh ! nights graven with iron on my brain, the man of mature years is coward enough to shudder at the terrors of the twelve-years' old boy. But morning brought its sunbeams, when all these horrors had rather a fascination for remembrance than otherwise. About that time I picked up a copy of Sweden borg's " Hell," which, though far less entertaining, I studied as devoutly as I had studied Otway. My father thought to take some pupils, to mend our circumstances; a few advertisements appeared :n the local papers, and one in the Tivies setting forth that " a married clergyman was desirous (of course for any other reason than to gain money) of having a very limited number of young gentlemen to educate with his own sons," &c. &c. &c. There really were two answers to these advertisements ; and a lady actually came down about placing two little boys under my father's care ; she saw the nakedness of the land ; she asked to see the sleeping-rooms, and after a minute exa mination of the beds, departed with an assurance that we should hear from her.

She never wrote ; but I remember her well, because she wore more magnificent clothes than I had supposed to exist ; moreover, the circumstance of the lady's visit was impressed on my mind, because at that precise time our last lingering silver teaspoons disappeared. I overheard that they went to pay for the un successful advertisements, though how silver spoons could pay a bill, I had, at that period, still to learn. Ah, 1 was wrong to say "unsuccessful adver tisements," for, after all, my father obtained one pupil through their medium. A gentleman wrote to say, that having accepted a diplomatic appointment abroad, he was anxious to secure a happy, safe home, for his only child, his greatest earthly treasure, aged ten. The little one was motherless. There wa3 a great deal more which I do not recollect, but I perfectly well remember that there were a great many fine, and even religious sentiments expressed in the letter.

My mother shed tears over the epistle, and felt convinced the writer was a Christian; he certainly made a most Christian-like proposal, i. _., to pay the first quarter for the child's board in advance. How eagerly my poor father wrote to the stranger, elaborating his plans of education, and offering undeniable references. He read his own letter aloud, and he and my mother weighed every word of its contents before it was finally despatched. Then followed two or three days, during which alternate hopes and fears rose to agony. The decision came; my father's hand shook; he seemed as if he could not open the letter which was to confer upon him, or take from him, fifty pounds per annum. My mother took the letter from his hands, tore it open, grew very pale, and sank upon a chair. " The boy is not coming !" said my father.

" Yes ! yes ! he is coming," said my mother, whom joy had completely overcome. The diplomatic gentleman was leaving Eng land in haste ; he had full confidence in the high character he had heard of the Rev. Ernest Clarkson ; he committed his " greatest earthly treasure" to his care, and the interesting child would be with us the following evening. The whole house was immediately in commo tion ; it was to be cleaned from garret to cellar, and everything was to be in apple-pie order, to greet the new comer. What shams and hypocrites we are ! ay, sir, those among us even, in whom the imprint of Eden is not quite effaced ! How we put the best on the outside, for every new face, and drop into old, slovenly ways directly the novelty of the stranger and our own shamefacedness are worn off. I am certain a menace of death would not have made my mother tell a lie, but she was deliberately preparing to act one.