William Shakespeare - "The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra"

Adam Smith - "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations"

Jack London - "The Son of the Wolf"

William Makepeace Thackeray - "Vanity Fair"

The Water Babies

C >> Charles Kingsley >> The Water Babies



Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk



THE WATER BABIES




CHAPTER I



"I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined;
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

"To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think,
What man has made of man."

WORDSWORTH.


Once upon a time there was a little chimney-sweep, and his name was
Tom. That is a short name, and you have heard it before, so you
will not have much trouble in remembering it. He lived in a great
town in the North country, where there were plenty of chimneys to
sweep, and plenty of money for Tom to earn and his master to spend.
He could not read nor write, and did not care to do either; and he
never washed himself, for there was no water up the court where he
lived. He had never been taught to say his prayers. He never had
heard of God, or of Christ, except in words which you never have
heard, and which it would have been well if he had never heard. He
cried half his time, and laughed the other half. He cried when he
had to climb the dark flues, rubbing his poor knees and elbows raw;
and when the soot got into his eyes, which it did every day in the
week; and when his master beat him, which he did every day in the
week; and when he had not enough to eat, which happened every day
in the week likewise. And he laughed the other half of the day,
when he was tossing halfpennies with the other boys, or playing
leap-frog over the posts, or bowling stones at the horses' legs as
they trotted by, which last was excellent fun, when there was a
wall at hand behind which to hide. As for chimney-sweeping, and
being hungry, and being beaten, he took all that for the way of the
world, like the rain and snow and thunder, and stood manfully with
his back to it till it was over, as his old donkey did to a hail-
storm; and then shook his ears and was as jolly as ever; and
thought of the fine times coming, when he would be a man, and a
master sweep, and sit in the public-house with a quart of beer and
a long pipe, and play cards for silver money, and wear velveteens
and ankle-jacks, and keep a white bull-dog with one gray ear, and
carry her puppies in his pocket, just like a man. And he would
have apprentices, one, two, three, if he could. How he would bully
them, and knock them about, just as his master did to him; and make
them carry home the soot sacks, while he rode before them on his
donkey, with a pipe in his mouth and a flower in his button-hole,
like a king at the head of his army. Yes, there were good times
coming; and, when his master let him have a pull at the leavings of
his beer, Tom was the jolliest boy in the whole town.

One day a smart little groom rode into the court where Tom lived.
Tom was just hiding behind a wall, to heave half a brick at his
horse's legs, as is the custom of that country when they welcome
strangers; but the groom saw him, and halloed to him to know where
Mr. Grimes, the chimney-sweep, lived. Now, Mr. Grimes was Tom's
own master, and Tom was a good man of business, and always civil to
customers, so he put the half-brick down quietly behind the wall,
and proceeded to take orders.

Mr. Grimes was to come up next morning to Sir John Harthover's, at
the Place, for his old chimney-sweep was gone to prison, and the
chimneys wanted sweeping. And so he rode away, not giving Tom time
to ask what the sweep had gone to prison for, which was a matter of
interest to Tom, as he had been in prison once or twice himself.
Moreover, the groom looked so very neat and clean, with his drab
gaiters, drab breeches, drab jacket, snow-white tie with a smart
pin in it, and clean round ruddy face, that Tom was offended and
disgusted at his appearance, and considered him a stuck-up fellow,
who gave himself airs because he wore smart clothes, and other
people paid for them; and went behind the wall to fetch the half-
brick after all; but did not, remembering that he had come in the
way of business, and was, as it were, under a flag of truce.

His master was so delighted at his new customer that he knocked Tom
down out of hand, and drank more beer that night than he usually
did in two, in order to be sure of getting up in time next morning;
for the more a man's head aches when he wakes, the more glad he is
to turn out, and have a breath of fresh air. And, when he did get
up at four the next morning, he knocked Tom down again, in order to
teach him (as young gentlemen used to be taught at public schools)
that he must be an extra good boy that day, as they were going to a
very great house, and might make a very good thing of it, if they
could but give satisfaction.

And Tom thought so likewise, and, indeed, would have done and
behaved his best, even without being knocked down. For, of all
places upon earth, Harthover Place (which he had never seen) was
the most wonderful, and, of all men on earth, Sir John (whom he had
seen, having been sent to gaol by him twice) was the most awful.

Harthover Place was really a grand place, even for the rich North
country; with a house so large that in the frame-breaking riots,
which Tom could just remember, the Duke of Wellington, and ten
thousand soldiers to match, were easily housed therein; at least,
so Tom believed; with a park full of deer, which Tom believed to be
monsters who were in the habit of eating children; with miles of
game-preserves, in which Mr. Grimes and the collier lads poached at
times, on which occasions Tom saw pheasants, and wondered what they
tasted like; with a noble salmon-river, in which Mr. Grimes and his
friends would have liked to poach; but then they must have got into
cold water, and that they did not like at all. In short, Harthover
was a grand place, and Sir John a grand old man, whom even Mr.
Grimes respected; for not only could he send Mr. Grimes to prison
when he deserved it, as he did once or twice a week; not only did
he own all the land about for miles; not only was he a jolly,
honest, sensible squire, as ever kept a pack of hounds, who would
do what he thought right by his neighbours, as well as get what he
thought right for himself; but, what was more, he weighed full
fifteen stone, was nobody knew how many inches round the chest, and
could have thrashed Mr. Grimes himself in fair fight, which very
few folk round there could do, and which, my dear little boy, would
not have been right for him to do, as a great many things are not
which one both can do, and would like very much to do. So Mr.
Grimes touched his hat to him when he rode through the town, and
called him a "buirdly awd chap," and his young ladies "gradely
lasses," which are two high compliments in the North country; and
thought that that made up for his poaching Sir John's pheasants;
whereby you may perceive that Mr. Grimes had not been to a
properly-inspected Government National School.

Now, I dare say, you never got up at three o'clock on a midsummer
morning. Some people get up then because they want to catch
salmon; and some because they want to climb Alps; and a great many
more because they must, like Tom. But, I assure you, that three
o'clock on a midsummer morning is the pleasantest time of all the
twenty-four hours, and all the three hundred and sixty-five days;
and why every one does not get up then, I never could tell, save
that they are all determined to spoil their nerves and their
complexions by doing all night what they might just as well do all
day. But Tom, instead of going out to dinner at half-past eight at
night, and to a ball at ten, and finishing off somewhere between
twelve and four, went to bed at seven, when his master went to the
public-house, and slept like a dead pig; for which reason he was as
piert as a game-cock (who always gets up early to wake the maids),
and just ready to get up when the fine gentlemen and ladies were
just ready to go to bed.

So he and his master set out; Grimes rode the donkey in front, and
Tom and the brushes walked behind; out of the court, and up the
street, past the closed window-shutters, and the winking weary
policemen, and the roofs all shining gray in the gray dawn.

They passed through the pitmen's village, all shut up and silent
now, and through the turnpike; and then the were out in the real
country, and plodding along the black dusty road, between black
slag walls, with no sound but the groaning and thumping of the pit-
engine in the next field. But soon the road grew white, and the
walls likewise; and at the wall's foot grew long grass and gay
flowers, all drenched with dew; and instead of the groaning of the
pit-engine, they heard the skylark saying his matins high up in the
air, and the pit-bird warbling in the sedges, as he had warbled all
night long.

All else was silent. For old Mrs. Earth was still fast asleep;
and, like many pretty people, she looked still prettier asleep than
awake. The great elm-trees in the gold-green meadows were fast
asleep above, and the cows fast asleep beneath them; nay, the few
clouds which were about were fast asleep likewise, and so tired
that they had lain down on the earth to rest, in long white flakes
and bars, among the stems of the elm-trees, and along the tops of
the alders by the stream, waiting for the sun to bid them rise and
go about their day's business in the clear blue overhead.

On they went; and Tom looked, and looked, for he never had been so
far into the country before; and longed to get over a gate, and
pick buttercups, and look for birds' nests in the hedge; but Mr.
Grimes was a man of business, and would not have heard of that.

Soon they came up with a poor Irishwoman, trudging along with a
bundle at her back. She had a gray shawl over her head, and a
crimson madder petticoat; so you may be sure she came from Galway.
She had neither shoes nor stockings, and limped along as if she
were tired and footsore; but she was a very tall handsome woman,
with bright gray eyes, and heavy black hair hanging about her
cheeks. And she took Mr. Grimes' fancy so much, that when he came
alongside he called out to her:

"This is a hard road for a gradely foot like that. Will ye up,
lass, and ride behind me?"

But, perhaps, she did not admire Mr. Grimes' look and voice; for
she answered quietly:

"No, thank you: I'd sooner walk with your little lad here."

"You may please yourself," growled Grimes, and went on smoking.

So she walked beside Tom, and talked to him, and asked him where he
lived, and what he knew, and all about himself, till Tom thought he
had never met such a pleasant-spoken woman. And she asked him, at
last, whether he said his prayers! and seemed sad when he told her
that he knew no prayers to say.

Then he asked her where she lived, and she said far away by the
sea. And Tom asked her about the sea; and she told him how it
rolled and roared over the rocks in winter nights, and lay still in
the bright summer days, for the children to bathe and play in it;
and many a story more, till Tom longed to go and see the sea, and
bathe in it likewise.

At last, at the bottom of a hill, they came to a spring; not such a
spring as you see here, which soaks up out of a white gravel in the
bog, among red fly-catchers, and pink bottle-heath, and sweet white
orchis; nor such a one as you may see, too, here, which bubbles up
under the warm sandbank in the hollow lane by the great tuft of
lady ferns, and makes the sand dance reels at the bottom, day and
night, all the year round; not such a spring as either of those;
but a real North country limestone fountain, like one of those in
Sicily or Greece, where the old heathen fancied the nymphs sat
cooling themselves the hot summer's day, while the shepherds peeped
at them from behind the bushes. Out of a low cave of rock, at the
foot of a limestone crag, the great fountain rose, quelling, and
bubbling, and gurgling, so clear that you could not tell where the
water ended and the air began; and ran away under the road, a
stream large enough to turn a mill; among blue geranium, and golden
globe-flower, and wild raspberry, and the bird-cherry with its
tassels of snow.

And there Grimes stopped, and looked; and Tom looked too. Tom was
wondering whether anything lived in that dark cave, and came out at
night to fly in the meadows. But Grimes was not wondering at all.
Without a word, he got off his donkey, and clambered over the low
road wall, and knelt down, and began dipping his ugly head into the
spring--and very dirty he made it.

Tom was picking the flowers as fast as he could. The Irishwoman
helped him, and showed him how to tie them up; and a very pretty
nosegay they had made between them. But when he saw Grimes
actually wash, he stopped, quite astonished; and when Grimes had
finished, and began shaking his ears to dry them, he said:

"Why, master, I never saw you do that before."

"Nor will again, most likely. 'Twasn't for cleanliness I did it,
but for coolness. I'd be ashamed to want washing every week or so,
like any smutty collier lad."

"I wish I might go and dip my head in," said poor little Tom. "It
must be as good as putting it under the town-pump; and there is no
beadle here to drive a chap away."

"Thou come along," said Grimes; "what dost want with washing
thyself? Thou did not drink half a gallon of beer last night, like
me."

"I don't care for you," said naughty Tom, and ran down to the
stream, and began washing his face.

Grimes was very sulky, because the woman preferred Tom's company to
his; so he dashed at him with horrid words, and tore him up from
his knees, and began beating him. But Tom was accustomed to that,
and got his head safe between Mr. Grimes' legs, and kicked his
shins with all his might.

"Are you not ashamed of yourself, Thomas Grimes?" cried the
Irishwoman over the wall.

Grimes looked up, startled at her knowing his name; but all he
answered was, "No, nor never was yet;" and went on beating Tom.

"True for you. If you ever had been ashamed of yourself, you would
have gone over into Vendale long ago."

"What do you know about Vendale?" shouted Grimes; but he left off
beating Tom.

"I know about Vendale, and about you, too. I know, for instance,
what happened in Aldermire Copse, by night, two years ago come
Martinmas."

"You do?" shouted Grimes; and leaving Tom, he climbed up over the
wall, and faced the woman. Tom thought he was going to strike her;
but she looked him too full and fierce in the face for that.

"Yes; I was there," said the Irishwoman quietly.

"You are no Irishwoman, by your speech," said Grimes, after many
bad words.

"Never mind who I am. I saw what I saw; and if you strike that boy
again, I can tell what I know."

Grimes seemed quite cowed, and got on his donkey without another
word.

"Stop!" said the Irishwoman. "I have one more word for you both;
for you will both see me again before all is over. Those that wish
to be clean, clean they will be; and those that wish to be foul,
foul they will be. Remember."

And she turned away, and through a gate into the meadow. Grimes
stood still a moment, like a man who had been stunned. Then he
rushed after her, shouting, "You come back." But when he got into
the meadow, the woman was not there.

Had she hidden away? There was no place to hide in. But Grimes
looked about, and Tom also, for he was as puzzled as Grimes himself
at her disappearing so suddenly; but look where they would, she was
not there.

Grimes came back again, as silent as a post, for he was a little
frightened; and, getting on his donkey, filled a fresh pipe, and
smoked away, leaving Tom in peace.

And now they had gone three miles and more, and came to Sir John's
lodge-gates.

Very grand lodges they were, with very grand iron gates and stone
gate-posts, and on the top of each a most dreadful bogy, all teeth,
horns, and tail, which was the crest which Sir John's ancestors
wore in the Wars of the Roses; and very prudent men they were to
wear it, for all their enemies must have run for their lives at the
very first sight of them.

Grimes rang at the gate, and out came a keeper on the spot, and
opened.

"I was told to expect thee," he said. "Now thou'lt be so good as
to keep to the main avenue, and not let me find a hare or a rabbit
on thee when thou comest back. I shall look sharp for one, I tell
thee."

"Not if it's in the bottom of the soot-bag," quoth Grimes, and at
that he laughed; and the keeper laughed and said:

"If that's thy sort, I may as well walk up with thee to the hall."

"I think thou best had. It's thy business to see after thy game,
man, and not mine."

So the keeper went with them; and, to Tom's surprise, he and Grimes
chatted together all the way quite pleasantly. He did not know
that a keeper is only a poacher turned outside in, and a poacher a
keeper turned inside out.

They walked up a great lime avenue, a full mile long, and between
their stems Tom peeped trembling at the horns of the sleeping deer,
which stood up among the ferns. Tom had never seen such enormous
trees, and as he looked up he fancied that the blue sky rested on
their heads. But he was puzzled very much by a strange murmuring
noise, which followed them all the way. So much puzzled, that at
last he took courage to ask the keeper what it was.

He spoke very civilly, and called him Sir, for he was horribly
afraid of him, which pleased the keeper, and he told him that they
were the bees about the lime flowers.

"What are bees?" asked Tom.

"What make honey."

"What is honey?" asked Tom.

"Thou hold thy noise," said Grimes.

"Let the boy be," said the keeper. "He's a civil young chap now,
and that's more than he'll be long if he bides with thee."

Grimes laughed, for he took that for a compliment.

"I wish I were a keeper," said Tom, "to live in such a beautiful
place, and wear green velveteens, and have a real dog-whistle at my
button, like you."

The keeper laughed; he was a kind-hearted fellow enough.

"Let well alone, lad, and ill too at times. Thy life's safer than
mine at all events, eh, Mr. Grimes?"

And Grimes laughed again, and then the two men began talking, quite
low. Tom could hear, though, that it was about some poaching
fight; and at last Grimes said surlily, "Hast thou anything against
me?"

"Not now."

"Then don't ask me any questions till thou hast, for I am a man of
honour."

And at that they both laughed again, and thought it a very good
joke.

And by this time they were come up to the great iron gates in front
of the house; and Tom stared through them at the rhododendrons and
azaleas, which were all in flower; and then at the house itself,
and wondered how many chimneys there were in it, and how long ago
it was built, and what was the man's name that built it, and
whether he got much money for his job?

These last were very difficult questions to answer. For Harthover
had been built at ninety different times, and in nineteen different
styles, and looked as if somebody had built a whole street of
houses of every imaginable shape, and then stirred them together
with a spoon.


For the attics were Anglo-Saxon.
The third door Norman.
The second Cinque-cento.
The first-floor Elizabethan.
The right wing Pure Doric.
The centre Early English, with a huge portico copied from the
Parthenon.
The left wing pure Boeotian, which the country folk admired most of
all, became it was just like the new barracks in the town, only
three times as big.
The grand staircase was copied from the Catacombs at Rome.
The back staircase from the Tajmahal at Agra. This was built by
Sir John's great-great-great-uncle, who won, in Lord Clive's Indian
Wars, plenty of money, plenty of wounds, and no more taste than his
betters.
The cellars were copied from the caves of Elephanta.
The offices from the Pavilion at Brighton.


And the rest from nothing in heaven, or earth, or under the earth.

So that Harthover House was a great puzzle to antiquarians, and a
thorough Naboth's vineyard to critics, and architects, and all
persons who like meddling with other men's business, and spending
other men's money. So they were all setting upon poor Sir John,
year after year, and trying to talk him into spending a hundred
thousand pounds or so, in building, to please them and not himself.
But he always put them off, like a canny North-countryman as he
was. One wanted him to build a Gothic house, but he said he was no
Goth; and another to build an Elizabethan, but he said he lived
under good Queen Victoria, and not good Queen Bess; and another was
bold enough to tell him that his house was ugly, but he said he
lived inside it, and not outside; and another, that there was no
unity in it, but he said that that was just why he liked the old
place. For he liked to see how each Sir John, and Sir Hugh, and
Sir Ralph, and Sir Randal, had left his mark upon the place, each
after his own taste; and he had no more notion of disturbing his
ancestors' work than of disturbing their graves. For now the house
looked like a real live house, that had a history, and had grown
and grown as the world grew; and that it was only an upstart fellow
who did not know who his own grandfather was, who would change it
for some spick and span new Gothic or Elizabethan thing, which
looked as if it bad been all spawned in a night, as mushrooms are.
From which you may collect (if you have wit enough) that Sir John
was a very sound-headed, sound-hearted squire, and just the man to
keep the country side in order, and show good sport with his
hounds.

But Tom and his master did not go in through the great iron gates,
as if they had been Dukes or Bishops, but round the back way, and a
very long way round it was; and into a little back-door, where the
ash-boy let them in, yawning horribly; and then in a passage the
housekeeper met them, in such a flowered chintz dressing-gown, that
Tom mistook her for My Lady herself, and she gave Grimes solemn
orders about "You will take care of this, and take care of that,"
as if he was going up the chimneys, and not Tom. And Grimes
listened, and said every now and then, under his voice, "You'll
mind that, you little beggar?" and Tom did mind, all at least that
he could. And then the housekeeper turned them into a grand room,
all covered up in sheets of brown paper, and bade them begin, in a
lofty and tremendous voice; and so after a whimper or two, and a
kick from his master, into the grate Tom went, and up the chimney,
while a housemaid stayed in the room to watch the furniture; to
whom Mr. Grimes paid many playful and chivalrous compliments, but
met with very slight encouragement in return.

How many chimneys Tom swept I cannot say; but he swept so many that
he got quite tired, and puzzled too, for they were not like the
town flues to which he was accustomed, but such as you would find--
if you would only get up them and look, which perhaps you would not
like to do--in old country-houses, large and crooked chimneys,
which had been altered again and again, till they ran one into
another, anastomosing (as Professor Owen would say) considerably.
So Tom fairly lost his way in them; not that he cared much for
that, though he was in pitchy darkness, for he was as much at home
in a chimney as a mole is underground; but at last, coming down as
he thought the right chimney, he came down the wrong one, and found
himself standing on the hearthrug in a room the like of which he
had never seen before.

Tom had never seen the like. He had never been in gentlefolks'
rooms but when the carpets were all up, and the curtains down, and
the furniture huddled together under a cloth, and the pictures
covered with aprons and dusters; and he had often enough wondered
what the rooms were like when they were all ready for the quality
to sit in. And now he saw, and he thought the sight very pretty.

The room was all dressed in white,--white window-curtains, white
bed-curtains, white furniture, and white walls, with just a few
lines of pink here and there. The carpet was all over gay little
flowers; and the walls were hung with pictures in gilt frames,
which amused Tom very much. There were pictures of ladies and
gentlemen, and pictures of horses and dogs. The horses he liked;
but the dogs he did not care for much, for there were no bull-dogs
among them, not even a terrier. But the two pictures which took
his fancy most were, one a man in long garments, with little
children and their mothers round him, who was laying his hand upon
the children's heads. That was a very pretty picture, Tom thought,
to hang in a lady's room. For he could see that it was a lady's
room by the dresses which lay about.

The other picture was that of a man nailed to a cross, which
surprised Tom much. He fancied that he had seen something like it
in a shop-window. But why was it there? "Poor man," thought Tom,
"and he looks so kind and quiet. But why should the lady have such
a sad picture as that in her room? Perhaps it was some kinsman of
hers, who had been murdered by the savages in foreign parts, and
she kept it there for a remembrance." And Tom felt sad, and awed,
and turned to look at something else.

Copyright (c) 2007. topbookz.net. All rights reserved.