William Cobbett . Edward E. Smith
been years in amassing, melted away like snow before the sun, when touched by the fingers of the innkeepers and their waiters. In short, when I arrived at Ludgate Hill, and had paid my fare, I had but about half-a-crown in my pocket.
“By a commencement of that good luck, which has hitherto attended me through all the situations in which fortune has placed me, I was preserved from ruin. A gentleman, who was one of the passengers in the stage, fell into conversation with me at dinner, and he soon learnt that I was going I knew not whither nor for what. This gentleman was a hop-merchant in the borough of Southwark, and, upon closer inquiry, it appeared that he had often dealt with my father at Wey Hill. He knew the danger I was in; he was himself a father, and he felt for my parents. His house became my home, he wrote to my father, and endeavoured to prevail on me to obey his orders, which were to return immediately home. I am ashamed to say that I was disobedient. It was the first time I had ever been so, and I have repented of it from that moment to this. Willingly would I have returned, but pride would not suffer me to do it. I feared the scoffs of my acquaintances more than the real evils that threatened me.
“My generous preserver, finding my obstinacy not to be overcome, began to look out for an employment for me. He was preparing an advertisement for the newspaper, when an acquaintance of his, an attorney, called in to see him. He related my adventure to this gentleman, whose name was Holland, and who, happening to want an understrapping quill-driver, did me the honour to take me into his service, and the next day saw me perched upon a great high stool, in an obscure chamber in Gray’s Inn, endeavouring to decipher the crabbed draughts of my employer.
“I could write a good plain hand, but I could not read the pot-hooks and hangers of Mr. Holland. He was a month in learning me to copy without almost continual assistance, and even then I was of but little use to him; for, besides that I wrote a snail’s pace, my want of knowledge in orthography gave him infinite trouble: so that for the first two months I was a dead weight upon his hands. Time, however, rendered me useful, and Mr. Holland was pleased to tell me that he was very well satisfied with me, just at the very moment when I began to grow extremely dissatisfied with him.
“No part of my life has been totally unattended with pleasure, except the eight or nine months I passed in Gray’s Inn. The office (for so the dungeon, where I wrote, was called) was so dark, that on cloudy days, we were obliged to burn candles. I worked like a galley-slave from five in the morning till eight or nine at night, and sometimes all night long. How many quarrels have I assisted to foment and perpetuate between those poor innocent fellows, John Doe and Richard Roe! How many times (God forgive me!) have I set them to assault each other with guns, swords, staves, and pitch-forks, and then brought them to answer for their misdeeds before our sovereign Lord the King seated in his Court of Westminster? When I think of the saids and soforths, and the counts of tautology that I scribbled over; when I think of those sheets of seventy-two words, and those lines two inches apart, my brain turns. Gracious Heaven! if I am doomed to be wretched, bury me beneath Iceland snows, and let me feed on blubber; stretch me under the burning line and deny me thy propitious dews; nay, if it be thy will, suffocate me with the infected and pestilential air of a democratic club-room; but save me, O save me from the desk of a pettifogging attorney!
“Mr. Holland was but little in the chambers himself. He always went out to dinner, while I was left to be provided for by the laundress, as he called her. Those gentlemen of the law, who have resided in the inns of court in London, know very well what a laundress means. Ours was, I believe, the oldest and ugliest of the officious sisterhood. She had age and experience enough to be Lady Abbess of all the nuns in all the convents of Irish-Town. It would be wronging the witch of Endor to compare her to this hag, who was the only creature that deigned to enter into conversation with me. All except the name, I was in prison, and this Weird Sister was my keeper. Our chambers were to me, what the subterraneous cavern was to Gil Blas: his description of the Dame Leonarda exactly suited my Laundress; nor were the professions, or rather the practice, of our masters altogether dissimilar.
“I never quitted this gloomy recess except on Sundays, when I usually took a walk to St. James’s Park, to feast my eyes with the sight of the trees, the grass, and the water. In one of these walks I happened to cast my eye on an advertisement, inviting all loyal young men, who had a mind to gain riches and glory, to repair to a certain rendezvous, where they might enter into his Majesty’s marine service, and have the peculiar happiness and honour of being enrolled in the Chatham Division. I was not ignorant enough to be the dupe of this morsel of military bombast; but a change was what I wanted; besides, I knew that marines went to sea, and my desire to be on that element had rather increased than diminished by my being penned up in London. In short, I resolved to join this glorious corps; and, to avoid all possibility of being discovered by my friends, I went down to Chatham, and enlisted into the marines as I thought, but the next morning I found myself before a captain of a marching regiment. There was no retreating: I had taken a shilling to drink his Majesty’s health, and his further bounty was ready for my reception.
“When I told the captain (who was an Irishman, and who has since been an excellent friend to me) that I thought myself engaged in the marines: ‘By Jasus, my lad,’ said he, ‘and you have had a narrow escape.’ He told me that the regiment into which I had been so happy as to enlist was one of the oldest and boldest in the whole army, and that it was at that moment serving in that fine, flourishing, and plentiful country, Nova Scotia. He dwelt long on the beauties and riches of this terrestrial Paradise, and dismissed me, perfectly enchanted with the prospect of a voyage thither.”
FOOTNOTES
[1] It is a noteworthy circumstance that Moor Park and “my grandmother’s cottage” should be almost within hail of each other; for it was among these very scenes that Swift spent some of his earliest and best years—a nice little item for any ingenious believer in “affinities.”
When Cobbett wrote “The Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine,” he was not aware of this coincidence, otherwise his humour would have happily played around the topic.
[2] Afterwards Admiral Sir George Berkeley. He entered the navy at twelve years of age, and saw a good deal of service, including the glorious 1st of June. Died 1818, æt. sixty-five.
CHAPTER II.
“WHEN I HAD THE HONOUR TO WEAR A RED COAT.”
From the point of view which Englishmen usually take, in speaking of success in life, it may remain an open question as to whether the hero of this story ever really attained it. But let such question be narrowed down to a point, from which is excluded all notions of wealth, and personal aggrandizement: the placing of one’s feet upon a given spot from which others have been ousted—the thing becomes clearer. The attainment of objects upon which one has set the heart, from time to time, can alone be called Success.
Now, this reflection is hazarded, because it is necessary for the reader of William Cobbett’s history to observe a leading feature in his character, from this stage onward; consisting in what may be called the instinct of discipline. Money-making (as such) was ever with him a process which he treated with contempt; the whole future, as it stood before him year after year, was to promise only the comfort of his family, and the welfare of his countrymen. All the blunders which he committed, in the untiring pursuit of this twofold object, were the result of undue impetuosity, the rashness of the soldier in the heat of strife: the temporary derangement of discipline, in the rear of a discomfited enemy. But in spite of ridicule and opposition, and long-deferred anticipation, and, besides, slanders of the foulest character, one after another were the dearest wishes of his heart fulfilled; and at seventy years of age he could write:—
“I have led the happiest life of any man that I have ever known. Never did I know one single