a rogue’s life(一个无赖的一生)

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A ROGUE'S LIFE

by Wilkie Collins

A ROGUE'S LIFE

INTRODUCTORY WORDS.

The following pages were written more than twenty years since, and

were then published periodically in _Household Words._

In the original form of publication the Rogue was very favorably

received. Year after year, I delayed the republication, proposing, at the

suggestion of my old friend, Mr. Charles Reade, to enlarge the present

sketch of the hero's adventures in Australia. But the opportunity of

carrying out this project has proved to be one of the lost opportunities of

my life. I republish the story with its original conclusion unaltered, but

with such occasional additions and improvements as will, I hope, render it

more worthy of attention at the present time.

The critical reader may possibly notice a tone of almost boisterous

gayety in certain parts of these imaginary Confessions. I can only plead, in

defense, that the story offers the faithful reflection of a very happy time in

my past life. It was written at Paris, when I had Charles Dickens for a near

neighbor and a daily companion, and when my leisure hours were

joyously passed with many other friends, all associated with literature and

art, of whom the admirable comedian, Regnier, is now the only survivor.

The revising of these pages has been to me a melancholy task. I can only

hope that they may cheer the sad moments of others. The Rogue may

surely claim two merits, at least, in the eyes of the new generation--he is

never serious for two moments together; and he "doesn't take long to

read." W. C.

GLOUCESTER PLACE, LONDON, _March_ 6th, 1879.

A ROGUE'S LIFE

CHAPTER I.

I AM going to try if I can't write something about myself. My life has

been rather a strange one. It may not seem particularly useful or

respectable; but it has been, in some respects, adventurous; and that may

give it claims to be read, even in the most prejudiced circles. I am an

example of some of the workings of the social system of this illustrious

country on the individual native, during the early part of the present

century; and, if I may say so without unbecoming vanity, I should like to

quote myself for the edification of my countrymen.

Who am I.

I am remarkably well connected, I can tell you. I came into this world

with the great advantage of having Lady Malkinshaw for a grandmother,

her ladyship's daughter for a mother, and Francis James Softly, Esq., M. D.

(commonly called Doctor Softly), for a father. I put my father last, because

he was not so well connected as my mother, and my grandmother first,

because she was the most nobly-born person of the three. I have been, am

still, and may continue to be, a Rogue; but I hope I am not abandoned

enough yet to forget the respect that is due to rank. On this account, I trust,

nobody will show such want of regard for my feelings as to expect me to

say much about my mother's brother. That inhuman person committed an

outrage on his family by making a fortune in the soap and candle trade. I

apologize for mentioning him, even in an accidental way. The fact is, he

left my sister, Annabella, a legacy of rather a peculiar kind, saddled with

certain conditions which indirectly affected me; but this passage of family

history need not be produced just yet. I apologize a second time for

alluding to money matters before it was absolutely necessary. Let me get

back to a pleasing and reputable subject, by saying a word or two more

about my father.

I am rather afraid that Doctor Softly was not a clever medical man; for

in spite of his great connections, he did not get a very magnificent practice

as a physician.

As a general practitioner, he might have bought a comfortable business,

with a house and snug surgery-shop attached; but the son-in-law of Lady

A ROGUE'S LIFE

Malkinshaw was obliged to hold up his head, and set up his carriage, and

live in a street near a fashionable square, and keep an expensive and

clumsy footman to answer the door, instead of a cheap and tidy housemaid.

How he managed to "maintain his position" (that is the right phrase, I

think), I never could tell. His wife did not bring him a farthing. When the

honorable and gallant baronet, her father, died, he left the widowed Lady

Malkinshaw with her worldly affairs in a curiously involved state. Her son

(of whom I feel truly ashamed to be obliged to speak again so soon) made

an effort to extricate his mother--involved himself in a series of pecuniary

disasters, which commercial people call, I believe, transactions--struggled

for a little while to get out of them in the character of an independent

gentleman--failed--and then spiritlessly availed himself of the oleaginous

refuge of the soap and candle trade. His mother always looked down upon

him after this; but borrowed money of him also--in order to show, I

suppose, that her maternal interest in her son was not quite extinct. My

father tried to follow her example--in his wife's interests, of course; but the

soap-boiler brutally buttoned up his pockets, and told my father to go into

business for himself. Thus it happened that we were certainly a poor

family, in spite of the fine appearance we made, the fashionable street we

lived in, the neat brougham we kept, and the clumsy and expensive

footman who answered our door.

What was to be done with me in the way of education?

If my father had consulted his means, I should have been sent to a

cheap commercial academy; but he had to consult his relationship to Lady

Malkinshaw; so I was sent to one of the most fashionable and famous of

the great public schools. I will not mention it by name, because I don't

think the masters would be proud of my connection with it. I ran away

three times, and was flogged three times. I made four aristocratic

connections, and had four pitched battles with them: three thrashed me,

and one I thrashed. I learned to play at cricket, to hate rich people, to cure

warts, to write Latin verses, to swim, to recite speeches, to cook kidneys

on toast, to draw caricatures of the masters, to construe Greek plays, to

black boots, and to receive kicks and serious advice resignedly. Who will

say that the fashionable public school was of no use to me after that?

A ROGUE'S LIFE

After I left school, I had the narrowest escape possible of intruding

myself into another place of accommodation for distinguished people; in

other words, I was very nearly being sent to college. Fortunately for me,

my father lost a lawsuit just in the nick of time, and was obliged to scrape

together every farthing of available money that he possessed to pay for the

luxury of going to law. If he could have saved his seven shillings, he

would certainly have sent me to scramble for a place in the pit of the great

university theater; but his purse was empty, and his son was not eligible

therefore for admission, in a gentlemanly capacity, at the doors.

The next thing was to choose a profession.

Here the Doctor was liberality itself, in leaving me to my own devices.

I was of a roving adventurous temperament, and I should have liked to go

into the army. But where was the money to come from, to pay for my

commission? As to enlisting in the ranks, and working my way up, the

social institutions of my country obliged the grandson of Lady

Malkinshaw to begin military life as an officer and gentleman, or not to

begin it at all. The army, therefore, was out of the question. The Church?

Equally out of the question: since I could not pay for admission to the

prepared place of accommodation for distinguished people, and could not

accept a charitable free pass, in consequence of my high connections. The

Bar? I should be five years getting to it, and should have to spend two

hundred a year in going circuit before I had earned a farthing. Physic?

This really seemed the only gentlemanly refuge left; and yet, with the

knowledge of my father's experience before me, I was ungrateful enough

to feel a secret dislike for it. It is a degrading confession to make; but I

remember wishing I was not so highly connected, and absolutely thinking

that the life of a commercial traveler would have suited me exactly, if I

had not been a poor g entleman. Driving about from place to place, living

jovially at inns, seeing fresh faces constantly, and getting money by all this

enjoyment, instead of spending it--what a life for me, if I had been the son

of a haberdasher and the grandson of a groom's widow!

While my father was uncertain what to do with me, a new profession

was suggested by a friend, which I shall repent not having been allowed to

adopt, to the last day of my life. This friend was an eccentric old

A ROGUE'S LIFE

gentleman of large property, much respected in our family. One day, my

father, in my presence, asked his advice about the best manner of starting

me in life, with due credit to my connections and sufficient advantage to

myself.

"Listen to my experience," said our eccentric friend, "and, if you are a

wise man, you will make up your mind as soon as you have heard me. I

have three sons. I brought my eldest son up to the Church; he is said to be

getting on admirably, and he costs me three hundred a year. I brought my

second son up to the Bar; he is said to be getting on admirably, and he

costs me four hundred a year. I brought my third son up to _Quadrilles_--

he has married an heiress, and he costs me nothing."

Ah, me! if that worthy sage's advice had only been followed--if I had

been brought up to Quadrilles!--if I had only been cast loose on the

ballrooms of London, to qualify under Hymen, for a golden degree! Oh!

you young ladies with money, I was five feet ten in my stockings; I was

great at small-talk and dancing; I had glossy whiskers, curling locks, and a

rich voice! Ye girls with golden guineas, ye nymphs with crisp bank-notes,

mourn over the husband you have lost among you--over the Rogue who

has broken the laws which, as the partner of a landed or fund-holding

woman, he might have helped to make on the benches of the British

Parliament! Oh! ye hearths and homes sung about in so many songs--

written about in so many books--shouted about in so many speeches, with

accompaniment of so much loud cheering: what a settler on the hearth-rug;

what a possessor of property; what a bringer-up of a family, was snatched

away from you, when the son of Dr. Softly was lost to the profession of

Quadrilles!

It ended in my resigning myself to the misfortune of being a doctor.

If I was a very good boy and took pains, and carefully mixed in the

best society, I might hope in the course of years to succeed to my father's

brougham, fashionably-situated house, and clumsy and expensive footman.

There was a prospect for a lad of spirit, with the blood of the early

Malkinshaws (who were Rogues of great capacity and distinction in the

feudal times) coursing adventurous through every vein! I look back on my

career, and when I remember the patience with which I accepted a medical

A ROGUE'S LIFE

destiny, I appear to myself in the light of a hero. Nay, I even went beyond

the passive virtue of accepting my destiny--I actually studied, I made the

acquaintance of the skeleton, I was on friendly terms with the muscular

system, and the mysteries of Physiology dropped in on me in the kindest

manner whenever they had an evening to spare.

Even this was not the worst of it. I disliked the abstruse studies of my

new profession; but I absolutely hated the diurnal slavery of qualifying

myself, in a social point of view, for future success in it. My fond medical

parent insisted on introducing me to his whole connection. I went round

visiting in the neat brougham--with a stethoscope and medical review in

the front-pocket, with Doctor Softly by my side, keeping his face well in

view at the window--to canvass for patients, in the character of my father's

hopeful successor. Never have I been so ill at ease in prison, as I was in

that carriage. I have felt more at home in the dock (such is the natural

depravity and perversity of my disposition) than ever I felt in the drawing-

rooms of my father's distinguished patrons and respectable friends. Nor

did my miseries end with the morning calls. I was commanded to attend

all dinner-parties, and to make myself agreeable at all balls. The dinners

were the worst trial. Sometimes, indeed, we contrived to get ourselves

asked to the houses of high and mighty entertainers, where we ate the

finest French dishes and drank the oldest vintages, and fortified ourselves

sensibly and snugly in that way against the frigidity of the company. Of

these repasts I have no hard words to say; it is of the dinners we gave

ourselves, and of the dinners which people in our rank of life gave to us,

that I now bitterly complain.

Have you ever observed the remarkable adherence to set forms of

speech which characterizes the talkers of arrant nonsense! Precisely the

same sheepish following of one given example distinguishes the ordering

of genteel dinners.

When we gave a dinner at home, we had gravy soup, turbot and

lobster-sauce, haunch of mutton, boiled fowls and tongue, lukewarm

oyster-patties and sticky curry for side-dishes; wild duck, cabinet-pudding,

jelly, cream and tartlets. All excellent things, except when you have to eat

them continually. We lived upon them entirely in the season. Every one of

A ROGUE'S LIFE

our hospitable friends gave us a return dinner, which was a perfect copy of

ours--just as ours was a perfect copy of theirs, last year. They boiled what

we boiled, and we roasted what they roasted. We none of us ever changed

the succession of the courses--or made more or less of them--or altered the

position of the fowls opposite the mistress and the haunch opposite the

master. My stomach used to quail within me, in those times, when the

tureen was taken off and the inevitable gravy-soup smell renewed its daily

acquaintance with my nostrils, and warned me of the persistent eatable

formalities that were certain to follow. I suppose that honest people, who

have known what it is to get no dinner (being a Rogue, I have myself

never wanted for one), have gone through some very acute suffering under

that privation. It may be some consolation to them to know that, next to

absolute starvation, the same company-dinner, every day, is one of the

hardest trials that assail human endurance. I date my first serious

determination to throw over the medical profession at the earliest

convenient opportunity, from the second season's series of dinners at

which my aspirations, as a rising physician, unavoidably and regularly

condemned me to be present.

A ROGUE'S LIFE

CHAPTER II.

THE opportunity I wanted presented itself in a curious way, and led,

unexpectedly enough, to some rather important consequences.

I have already stated, among the other branches of human attainment

which I acquired at the public school, that I learned to draw caricatures of

the masters who were so obliging as to educate me. I had a natural faculty

for this useful department of art. I improved it greatly by practice in secret

after I left school, and I ended by making it a source of profit and pocket

money to me when I entered the medical profession. What was I to do? I

could not expect for years to make a halfpenny, as a physician. My genteel

walk in life led me away from all immediate sources of emolument, and

my father could only afford to give me an allowance which was too

preposterously small to be mentioned. I had helped myself surreptitiously

to pocket-money at school, by selling my caricatures, and I was obliged to

repeat the process at home!

At the time of which I write, the Art of Caricature was just

approaching the close of its colored and most extravagant stage of

development. The subtlety and truth to Nature required for the pursuit of it

now, had hardly begun to be thought of then. Sheer farce and coarse

burlesque, with plenty of color for the money, still made up the sum of

what the public of those days wanted. I was first assured of my capacity

for the production of these requisites, by a medical friend of the ripe

critical age of nineteen. He knew a print-publisher, and enthusiastically

showed him a portfolio full of my sketches, taking care at my request not

to mention my name. Rather to my surprise (for I was too conceited to be

greatly amazed by the circumstance), the publisher picked out a few of the

best of my wares, and boldly bought them of me-- of course, at his own

price. From that time I became, in an anonymous way, one of the young

buccaneers of British Caricature; cruising about here, there and

everywhere, at all my intervals of spare time, for any prize in the shape of

a subject which it was possible to pick up. Little did my highly-connected

mother think that, among the colored prints in the shop-window, which

disrespectfully illustrated the public and private proceedings of

A ROGUE'S LIFE

distinguished individuals, certain specimens bearing the classic signature

of "Thersites Junior," were produced from designs furnished by her

studious and medical son. Little did my respectable father imagine when,

with great difficulty and vexation, he succeeded in getting me now and

then smuggled, along with himself, inside the pale of fashionable society--

that he was helping me to study likenesses which were destined under my

reckless treatment to make the public laugh at some of his most august

patrons, and to fill the pockets of his son with professional fees, never

once dreamed of in his philosophy.

For more than a year I managed, unsuspected, to keep the Privy Purse

fairly supplied by the exercise of my caricaturing abilities. But the day of

detection was to come.

Whether my medical friend's admiration of my satirical sketches led

him into talking about them in public with too little reserve; or whether the

servants at home found private means of watching me in my moments of

Art-study, I know not: but that some one betrayed me, and that the

discovery of my illicit manufacture of caricatures was actually

communicated even to the grandmotherly head and fount of the family

honor, is a most certain and lamentable matter of fact. One morning my

father received a letter from Lady Malkinshaw herself, informing him, in a

handwriting crooked with poignant grief, and blotted at every third word

by the violence of virtuous indignation, that "Thersites Junior" was his

own son, and that, in one of the last of the "ribald's" caricatures her own

venerable features were unmistakably represented as belonging to the

body of a large owl!

Of course, I laid my hand on my heart and indignantly denied

everything. Useless. My original model for the owl had got proofs of my

guilt that were not to be resisted.

The doctor, ordinarily the most mellifluous and self-possessed of men,

flew into a violent, roaring, cursing passion, on this occasion--declared

that I was imperiling the honor and standing of the family--insisted on my

never drawing another caricature, either for public or private purposes, as

long as I lived; and ordered me to go forthwith and ask pardon of Lady

Malkinshaw in the humblest terms that it was possible to select. I

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AROGUE'SLIFE1AROGUE'SLIFEbyWilkieCollinsAROGUE'SLIFE2INTRODUCTORYWORDS.Thefollowingpageswerewrittenmorethantwentyyearssince,andwerethenpublishedperiodicallyin_HouseholdWords._IntheoriginalformofpublicationtheRoguewasveryfavorablyreceived.Yearafteryear,Idelayedtherepublication,proposing,atthesuggesti...

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