The Bertrams. Anthony Trollope
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train our horses to run against each other? But this early racing will hardly produce that humanity of spirit of which we now deplore the want. "The devil take the hindmost" is the very essence of the young man's book of proverbs. The devil assuredly will take all the hindmost. None but the very foremost can enter the present heaven of good things. Therefore, oh my brother, my friend, thou companion of my youth! may the devil take thee; thee quickly, since it needs must be thee or me.
Væ victis—alas! for these hindmost ones; there are so many of them! The skim-milk will always be so much more in quantity than the cream. With us at present cream is required for everything; nothing can be well done now unless it be done by cream of some sort. That milk has been skimmed; the cream has been taken away. No matter; skim it again. There shall be something yet which we will call cream. Competitive examination will produce something that shall look to be strong; that shall be swift, if it be only for a start of twenty yards.
This is the experiment of the present day. Wise men say that when nothing but cream is accepted, all mankind, all boykind rather, will prepare itself for a skimming of some sort; and that the quantity of cream produced will be immense. It is only done as an instigation to education. Much may be said in opposition to this; but nothing shall be said here. It is merely of the cruelty of spirit that is thus engendered that we now speak. Success is the only test of merit. Words have lost their old significance, and to deserve only is not meritorious. Væ victis! there are so many of them!
"Thompson," says Johnson, the young poet, when he has at last succeeded in getting the bosomest of his friends alone into his chamber with him, "have you happened to look at my Iphigenia yet?"
Thompson can't say that he has. He has been busy; has had so many water-parties; and then, somehow, he doesn't think that he is very partial to modern poetry on subjects of old mythology. Of course, however, he means to read it—some of these days.
"I wish you would," says Johnson, tendering a copy of the thin volume. "I really wish you would; and let me have your candid opinion. The press certainly have not noticed it much, and what they have said has been very luke-warm."
"I am sorry for that," says Thompson, looking grave.
"And I did my best with it too. You would hardly believe how hard I worked at it. There is not a line that has not been weighed and written, perhaps, three times over. I do not think I am conceited; but I cannot but believe that there is something in it. The reviewers are so jealous! if a man has not a name, they will give him credit for nothing; and it is so hard to begin."
"I am sure it is," says Thompson.
"I don't expect fame; and as for money, of course I don't think of that. But I should like to know that it had been read by one or two persons who could understand it. I have given to it the best of my time, the best of my labour. I cannot but think that there is something in it." Thus pleads the unsuccessful one for mercy.
And thus answers to him the successful one, with no grain of mercy in his composition:—"My dear Johnson, my maxim is this, that in this world every man gets in the long run exactly what he deserves—"
"Did Milton get what he deserved?"
"These are not the days of Milton. I don't want to hurt your feelings; but old friends as we are, I should not forgive myself if I didn't tell you what I really think. Poetry is all very well; but you can't create a taste for it if it doesn't exist. Nobody that I know of cares a d—— for Iphigenia."
"You think I should change my subject, then?"
"To tell you the truth, I think you should change your trade. This is the third attempt, you know. I dare say they are very good in their way; but if the world liked them, the world would have found it out by this time. 'Vox populi, vox Dei'—that is my motto—I don't trust my own judgment; I trust that of the public. If you will take my advice, you will give up Iphigenia and the rest of them. You see you are doing nothing whatever at the bar," &c., &c.
And thus Johnson is left, without a scrap of comfort, a word of consolation, a spark of sympathy; and yet he had given to that Iphigenia of his the best that was in him to give. Had his publisher sold ten thousand copies of it, how Thompson would have admired it! how he would have pressed the poet in his arms, and have given him champagne up at Richmond! But who now has sympathy for failure? To fail is to be disgraced. Væ victis!
There is something very painful in these races, which we English are always running, to one who has tenderness enough to think of the nine beaten horses instead of the one who has conquered. Look at that list which has just come out after our grand national struggle at Cambridge. How many wranglers are there? Thirty, shall we say? and it is always glorious to be a wrangler. Out of that thirty there is probably but one who has not failed, who is not called on to submit to the inward grief of having been beaten. The youth who is second, who has thus shown himself to be possessed of a mass of erudition sufficient to crush an ordinary mind to the earth, is ready to eat his heart with true bitterness of spirit. After all his labour, his midnight oil, his many sleepless nights, his deserted pleasures, his racking headaches, Amaryllis abandoned, and Neæra seen in the arms of another—! After all this, to be beaten by Jones! Had it been Green or Smith he could have borne it. Would it not have been better to do as others had done? he could have been contented to have gone out in the crowd; but there is nothing so base as to be second—and then second to Jones!
Out of the whole lot, Jones alone is contented; and he is told by his physician that he must spend his next two winters at Cairo. The intensity of his application has put his lungs into very serious jeopardy.
It was at Oxford, in the year 184—, that a young man sat in his college-rooms at Balliol a wretched victim to unsuccessful competition. It had been everything to him to come out as a first in classics, and he had dared to dream even of a double-first. But he had failed in both. The lists had just appeared, and he was only a second-class man. Now, a second-class man is not much thought of at Balliol, and he had lost his chance of an immediate fellowship.
But this was perhaps hardly the worst of it. Arthur Wilkinson, for such was this gentleman's name, had hitherto run his race in life alongside a friend and rival named George Bertram; and in almost every phase of life had hitherto been beaten. The same moment that had told Wilkinson of his failure had told him also that Bertram had obtained the place he had so desired. Bertram was the only double-first man of his year.
As these two young men will play the foremost parts in the following pages, I will endeavour to explain, in as few words as possible, who each of them was. As Bertram seems to have been the favourite with fortune, I will begin with him.
His father at the time alluded to was still alive, but his son George had seen but little of him. Sir Lionel Bertram had been a soldier of fortune, which generally, I believe, means a soldier without a fortune, and in that capacity he was still in some sort fighting his country's battles. At the present moment he held a quasi-military position in Persia, where he had been for the last five years, and previously to that he had served in Canada, India, the Cape of Good Hope, and on some special mission at Monte Video. He had, therefore, seen a good deal of the world; but very little of his only child. Mrs. Bertram, George's mother, had died early in life, and Mr. (afterwards Sir Lionel) Bertram had roamed the world free from all encumbrances.
The Rev. Arthur Wilkinson, vicar of Hurst Staple, on the borders of Hampshire and Berkshire, had married a first-cousin of Mrs. Bertram's; and when young George Bertram, at the age of nine, was tossing about the world rather in want of a fixed home, Mr. Wilkinson undertook to give him that home, and to educate him with his own eldest child till they should both be sent to some school. For three years George Bertram lived at Hurst Staple, and was educated accordingly. During these years he used to go annually for one month to the house of an uncle, who in due time will also be introduced to the reader; and therefore, not unnaturally, this month was regarded by the boy as his holidays.
Now, it may as well be explained in this place that Sir Lionel Bertram, though a very gallant man, and peculiarly well adapted to do business with outlandish people, had never succumbed to a habit of punctuality in pecuniary matters. An arrangement had been perhaps rather named than made,