Chapter Five.
I receive my first lessons in pugnacity—And imbibe the evil spirit—Learn to read by intuition, and to fight by practice—Go to school to a soldier—Am a good boy and get whipped.
At six years of age my health had become firmly established, but this establishment caused dismay in that of Joe Brandon. As I was no longer the sickly infant that called for incessant attention and the most careful nurture, it was intimated to my foster-parents that a considerable reduction would be made in the quarterly allowance paid on my account. The indignation of Brandon was excessive. He looked upon himself as one grievously wronged. No sinecurist, with his pension recently reduced, could have been more vehement on the subject of the sanctity of vested rights. But his ire was not to be vented in idle declamation only. He was not a man to rest content with mere words: he declaimed for a full hour upon his wife’s folly in procuring him the means of well-fed idleness so long, threatened to take the brat—meaning no less a personage than myself—to the workhouse: and then wound up affairs, indoors, by beating his wife, and himself, out of doors, by getting royally drunk.
This was the first scene that made a deep impression on me. Young as I was, I comprehended that I was the cause of the ill-treatment of my nurse, whom I fondly loved. I interfered—I placed my little body between her and her brutal oppressor. I scratched, I kicked, I screamed—I grew mad with passion. At that hour, the spirit of evil and of hate blew the dark coal in my heart into a flame; and the demon of violent anger has ever since found it too easy to erect there his altar, of which the fire, though, at the time, all-consuming, is never durable. From that moment I commenced my intellectual existence. I looked on the sobbing mother, and knew what it was to love, and my love found its expression in an agony of tears. I looked on the tyrant, I felt what it was to hate, and endeavoured to relieve the burning desire to punish with frantic actions and wild outcries. Old Ford, who had been present and enjoyed the fracas, immediately took me into his especial favour; he declared that I was after his own heart, for I had the devil in me—said that I had the right spirit to bring me to the gallows, and he hoped, old as he was, to live to see it: he then entreated of the Lord that my precious soul might be saved as a burning brand out of the fire—took me by the hand and led me to the next gin-shop—made me taste the nauseating poison—told me I was a little man, and it was glorious to fight—doubled up for me my puny fists, and asserted that cowards only suffered a blow without returning it. A lesson like this never can be forgotten. I ground my teeth whilst I was receiving it—I clenched my hands, and looked wildly round for something to destroy. I was in training to become a little tiger. From what I then experienced, I can easily conceive the feelings that actuate, and can half forgive the crowned monsters who have revelled in blood, and relished the inflicting of torture; as pandering to their worst passions in infancy resolves them into a terrible instrument of cruelty, the control of which rests not with themselves. But this lesson in tiger ferocity had its emollient, though not its antidote, in the tenderness of the love which I bore to my nurse, when, on my return, I flung myself into her arms. Ever since that day I have been subject to terrific fits of passion; but very happily for me they have long ceased to be but of very rare occurrence.
The next morning, Master Joseph came home ill, and if not humbled, at least almost helpless. He had now three children of his own, and the necessity of eschewing skittles, and presiding over the sawpit, became urgent. With all his vices and his roughness, he was surprisingly fond of me. He, too, applauded my spirit in attacking himself. He now rejoiced to take me to the sawpit, to allow me to play about the timber-yards, and share with him his alfresco midday meal and pot of porter. I always passed for his eldest son, my name being told to the neighbours as Ralph Rattlin Brandon. I knew no otherwise, and my foster-parents kept the secret religiously. At seven I began to fight with dirty little urchins in the street, who felt much scandalised at the goodness of my clothes. It is hard work fighting up-hill at seven years of age. Old Ford would wipe the blood from my nose, and clap the vinegar and brown paper on my bruises with words of sweet encouragement; though he always ended by predicting that his hopeful godson would be hung, and that he should live to see it. I have certainly not been drowned yet, though I have had my escapes, and old Ford has been dead these thirty years. As one part of the prophecy will certainly never be fulfilled, I have some faint hopes of avoiding the exaltation hinted at in the other.
About this time, I began to notice that a lady, at long intervals, came to see me. She seemed exceedingly happy in my caresses, though she showed no weakness. She passed for my godmother, and so she certainly was. She was minute in her examination in ascertaining that I was perfectly clean; and always brought me a number of delicacies, which were invariably devoured immediately after her departure, by me and those little cormorants my loving foster-brothers and sister. Moreover, my nurse always received a present, which she very carefully and dutifully concealed from her liege lord of the pits. However, I cannot call to my mind more than four of these “angelic visits” altogether. “Angelic visits,” indeed, they might be termed, if the transcendent beauty of the visitor be regarded. At that time, her form and her countenance furnished me with the idea I had of the blessed inhabitants of heaven before man was created, and I have never been able to replace it since by anything more beautiful. The reader shall soon know how, at that very early age, I became so well acquainted with angelic lore.
When eight years old I was sent to school. I could read before I went there. How I picked up this knowledge I never could discover: both my foster-parents were grossly illiterate. Perhaps old Ford taught me—but this is one of the mysteries I could never solve; and it is strange that I should have so totally forgotten all about an affair so important, as not to remember a single lesson, and yet to hold so clear a recollection of many minor events. But so it is. To school I went: my master was a cadaverous, wooden-legged man, a disbanded soldier, and a disciplinarian, as well as an a-b-c-darian.
I well remember old Isaacs, and his tall, handsome, crane-necked daughter. The hussy was as straight as an arrow, yet, for the sake of coquetry, or singularity, she would sit in the Methodist chapel, with her dimpled chin resting upon an iron hoop, and her finely formed shoulders braced back with straps so tightly, as to thrust out in a remarkable manner her swanlike chest, and her almost too exuberant bust. This instrument for the distorted, with its bright crimson leather, thus pressed into the service of the beautiful, had a most singular and exciting effect upon the beholder. I have often thought of this girl in my maturer years, and confess that no dress that I ever beheld gave a more piquant interest to the wearer, than those straps and irons. The jade never wore them at home: perhaps the fancy was her father’s, he being an old soldier, and his motto “Eyes right! dress!” Whosever fancy it was, his daughter rejoiced in it. “Eyes right! dress!” is as good a motto for the ladies as for the army—and well do they act up to it.
The most important facts that my mind has preserved concerning this scholastic establishment are—that one evening, for a task, I learned perfectly by heart the two first chapters of the Gospel according to Saint John; that there was an unbaked gooseberry pie put prominently on the shelf in the schoolroom, a fortnight before the vacation at Midsummer, to be partaken of on the happy day of breaking-up, each boy paying fourpence for his share of the mighty feast. There were between forty and fifty of us. I had almost forgotten to mention that I was to be duly punished whenever I deserved it, but the master was, on no account, to hurt me, or make me cry. I deserved it regularly three or four times a day, and was as regularly horsed once. Oh! those floggings, how deceptive they were, and how much I regretted them when I came to understand the thing fundamentally. Old Isaacs could not have performed the operation more delicately, if he were only brushing a fly off the down of a lady’s cheek. He never made me cry.