My father enacted that he should be treated as usual.
But how could that be when papa himself did not
know how changed were his own ways from his kindly
paternal air of confidence? All trust had been
undermined, so that Clarence could not cross the
threshold without being required to state his object,
and, if he overstayed the time calculated, he was
cross-examined, and his replies received with a sigh
of doubt.
He hung about the house, not caring to do much, except
taking me out in my Bath chair or languidly reading
the most exciting books he could get;—but
there was no great stock of sensation then, except
the Byronic, and from time to time one of my parents
would exclaim, ’Clarence, I wonder you can
find nothing more profitable to occupy yourself with
than trash like that!’
He would lay down the book without a word, and take
up Smith’s Wealth of Nations or Smollett’s
England—the profitable studies recommended,
and speedily become lost in a dejected reverie, with
fixed eyes and drooping lips.
’Though hawks can prey through storms and winds,
The poor bee in her hive must dwell.’
Henry Vaughan.
In imagination the piteous dejection of our family
seems to have lasted for ages, but on comparison
of dates it is plain that the first lightening of
the burthen came in about a fortnight’s time.
The firm of Frith and Castleford was coming to the
front in the Chinese trade. The junior partner
was an old companion of my father’s boyhood;
his London abode was near at hand, and he was a kind
of semi-godfather to both Clarence and me, having stood
proxy for our nominal sponsors. He was as good
and open-hearted a man as ever lived, and had always
been very kind to us; but he was scarcely welcome
when my father, finding that he had come up alone to
London to see about some repairs to his house, while
his family were still in the country, asked him to
dine and sleep—our first guest since our
misfortune.
My mother could hardly endure to receive any one,
but she seemed glad to see my father become animated
and like himself while Roman Catholic Emancipation
was vehemently discussed, and the ruin of England
hotly predicted. Clarence moped about silently
as usual, and tried to avoid notice, and it was not
till the next morning— after breakfast,
when the two gentlemen were in the dining-room, nearly
ready to go their several ways, and I was in the window
awaiting my classical tutor—that Mr. Castleford
said,
‘May I ask, Winslow, if you have any plans for
that poor boy?’
‘Edward?’ said my father, almost wilfully
misunderstanding. ’His ambition is to
be curator of something in the British Museum, isn’t
it?’
Mr. Castleford explained that he meant the other,
and my father sadly answered that he hardly knew;
he supposed the only thing was to send him to a private
tutor, but where to find a fit one he did not know
and besides, what could be his aim? Sir John
Griffith had said he was only fit for the Church,
’But one does not wish to dispose of a tarnished
article there.’
