The Poor Relation Story

He was very reluctant to take precedence over so many respected members

of the family, by beginning the round of stories, they were to relate as they sat

in a goodly circle by the Christmas fire, and he modestly suggested that it would be

more correct if “John our esteemed host” (whose health he begged to drink)

would have the kindness to begin. For as to himself, he said, he was so little used

to lead the way that really— But as they all cried out here, that he must begin,

and agreed with one voice that he might, could, would, and should begin; he left off

rubbing his hands, took his legs out from under his armchair, and did begin.

I have no doubt (said the poor relation) that I shall surprise the assembled members

of our family, and particularly John, our esteemed host to whom we are so much

indebted for the great hospitality with which he has this day entertained us,

by the confession I am going to make. But, if you do me the honor of being surprised

at anything that falls from a person so unimportant in the family as I am, I can only say

that I shall be scrupulously accurate in all I relate.

I am not what I am supposed to be. I am quite another thing. Perhaps before I go

further, I had better glance at what I am supposed to be.

It is supposed, unless I mistake—the assembled members of our family will correct me

if I do, which is very likely (here the poor relation looked mildly about him for

contradiction); that I am nobody’s enemy but my own. That I never met with any

particular success in anything. That I failed in business because I was unbusinesslike

-and credulous—in not being prepared for the interested designs of my partner.

That I failed in love because I was ridiculously trustful—in thinking it impossible

that Christiana could deceive me. That I failed in my expectations from my Uncle Chill

on account of not being as sharp as he could have wished in worldly matters.

, through life, I have been rather put upon and disappointed in a general way.

That I am at present a bachelor of between fifty-nine and sixty years of age, living

on a limited income in the form of a quarterly allowance, to which I see that John,

our esteemed host wishes me to make no further allusion.

The supposition as to my present pursuits and habits is to the following effect.

I live in a lodging in the Clapham Road—a very clean back room in a very respectable

house—where I am expected not to be at home in the day-time unless poorly,

and which I usually leave in the morning at nine o’clock on the pretense of going

to business. I take my breakfast—my roll and butter, and my half-pint of coffee

—at the old-established coffee shop near Westminster Bridge, and then I go into

the City—I don’t know why—and sit in Garraway’s Coffee House, and on Change,

and walk about, and look into a few offices and counting houses where some

of my relations or acquaintance are so good as to tolerate me, and where I stand by

the fire if the weather happens to be cold. I get through the day this way until five

o’clock, and then I dine: at a cost, on the average, of one and threepence.

Having still a little money to spend on my evening’s entertainment, I look into

the old-established coffee shop as I go home, and take my cup of tea, and perhaps

my bit of toast. So, as the large hand of the clock makes its way around to the morning

hour again, I make my way around to Clapham Road again and go to bed when

I get to my lodging—fire being expensive and being objected to by the family

on account of its giving trouble and making dirt.

Sometimes, one of my relations or acquaintances is so obliging as to ask me to dinner.

Those are holiday occasions, and then I generally walk in the Park. I am a solitary man

and seldom walk with anybody. Not that I am avoided because I am shabby;

for I am not at all shabby, always having a very good suit of black on (or rather, Oxford

mixture, which has the appearance of black and wears much better); but I have got

into a habit of speaking low and being rather silent, and my spirits are not high,

and I am sensible that I am not an attractive companion.

The only exception to this general rule is the child of my first cousin, Little Frank.

I have a particular affection for that child, and he takes very kindly to me.

He is a diffident boy by nature, and in a crowd, he is soon run over, as I may say,

and forgotten. He and I, however, get on exceedingly well. I have a fancy that the poor

child will, in time, succeed in my peculiar position in the family. We talk but little;

still, we understand each other. We walk about, hand in hand, and without much

speaking, he knows what I mean, and I know what he means. When he was very little,

I used to take him to the windows of the toy shops and show him the toys inside.

It is surprising how soon he found out that I would have made him a great many

presents if I had been in the circumstances to do it.

Little Frank and I go and look at the outside of the Monument—he is very fond

of the Monument—and at the Bridges and at all the sights that are free.

On two of my birthdays, we have dined on à-la-mode beef and gone at half-price

to the play, and been deeply interested. I was once walking with him on Lombard Street,

which we often visit on account of my having mentioned to him that there are great

riches there—he is very fond of Lombard Street—when a gentleman said to me

as he passed by, “Sir, your little son has dropped his glove.”

I assure you if you will excuse my remarking on so trivial a circumstance,

this accidental mention of the child as mine quite touched my heart and brought

the foolish tears into my eyes.

When Little Frank is sent to school in the country, I shall be very much at a loss

for what to do with me, but I have the intention of walking down there once a month

and seeing him on a half-holiday. I am told he will then be at play upon the Heath,

and if my visits should be objected to as unsettling the child, I can see him from

a distance without his seeing me and walk back again. His mother comes from

a highly genteel family and rather disapproves, I am aware, of our being too much

together. I know that I am not calculated to improve his retiring disposition,

but I think he would miss me beyond the feeling of the moment if we were

wholly separated.

When I die in the Clapham Road, I shall not leave much more in this world than I shall

take out of it, but I happen to have a miniature of a bright-faced boy with a curling

head and an open shirt frill waving down his bosom (my mother had it taken for me,

but I can’t believe that it was ever like), which will be worth nothing to sell, and which

I shall beg may be given to Frank. I have written my dear boy a little letter with it,

in which I have told him that I felt very sorry to part from him, though bound to confess

that I knew no reason why I should remain here. I have given him some short advice,

the best in my power to take warning of the consequences of being nobody’s enemy

but his own, and I have endeavored to comfort him for what I fear he will consider

a bereavement by pointing out to him that I was only a superfluous something

to everyone but him; and that having by some means failed to find a place in this great

assembly, I am better off of it.

Such (said the poor relation, clearing his throat and beginning to speak a little louder)

is the general impression of me. Now, it is a remarkable circumstance which forms

the aim and purpose of my story that this is all wrong. This is not my life,

and these are not my habits. I do not even live in the Clapham

Road. Comparatively speaking, I am very seldom there. I reside mostly in a

—I am almost ashamed to say the word; it sounds so full of pretension—in a Castle.

I do not mean that it is an old baronial habitation, but still, it is a building always known

to everyone by the name of a Castle. In it, I preserve the particulars of my history;

they run thus:

It was when I first took John Spatter (who had been my clerk) into partnership

and when I was still a young man of not more than five-and-twenty, residing

in the house of my uncle Chill, from whom I had considerable expectations

that I ventured to propose to Christiana. I had loved Christiana for a long time.

She was very beautiful and very winning in all respects. I rather mistrusted her

widowed mother, who I feared was of a plotting and mercenary turn of mind,

but I thought as well of her as I could, for Christiana’s sake. I had never loved anyone

but Christiana, and she had been all the world, and O far more than all the world, to me,

from our childhood!

Christiana accepted me with her mother’s consent, and I was rendered very happy

indeed. My life at my uncle Chill’s was of a spare dull kind, and my garret chamber

was as dull, and bare, and cold as an upper prison room in some stern northern

fortress. But, having Christiana’s love, I wanted nothing upon earth. I would not have

changed my lot with any human being.

Avarice was, unhappily, my Uncle Chill’s master vice. Though he was rich, he pinched

and scraped and clutched and lived miserably. As Christiana had no fortune, I was

for some time a little fearful of confessing our engagement to him, but, at length,

I wrote him a letter, saying how it all truly was. I put it into his hand one night before

going to bed.

As I came down-stairs next morning, shivering in the cold December air; colder

in my uncle’s unwarmed house than in the street, where the winter sun did sometimes

shine, and which was at all events enlivened by cheerful faces and voices passing

along; I carried a heavy heart towards the long, low breakfast room in which my uncle

sat. It was a large room with a small fire, and there was a great bay window in it which

the rain had marked the night as if with the tears of houseless people.

It stared upon a raw yard with cracked stone pavement and some rusted iron railings

half uprooted, whence an ugly out-building that had once been a dissecting- room

(in the time of the great surgeon who had mortgaged the house to my uncle)

stared at it.

We rose so early always that at that time of the year, we breakfasted by candlelight.

When I went into the room, my uncle was so contracted by the cold and so huddled

together in his chair behind the one dim candle that I did not see him until I was close

to the table.

As I held out my hand to him, he caught up his stick (being infirm, he always walked about the house with a stick), made a blow at me, and said, “You fool!”

“Uncle,” I returned, “I didn’t expect you to be so angry as this.” Nor had I expected it, though he was a hard and angry old man.

“You didn’t expect!” said he; “when did you ever expect? When did you ever calculate, or look forward, you contemptible dog?”

“These are hard words, uncle!”

“Hard words? Feathers, to pelt such an idiot as you with,” said he. “Here! Betsy Snap! Look at him!”

Betsy Snap was a withered, hard-favored, yellow old woman—our only domestic—

always employed, at this time of the morning, in rubbing my uncle’s legs.

As my uncle adjured her to look at me, he put his lean grip on the crown of her head;

she kneeled beside him and turned her face towards me. An involuntary thought

connecting them both with the Dissecting Room, as it must often have been

in the surgeon’s time, passed across my mind in the midst of my anxiety.

“Look at the sniveling milksop!” said my uncle. “Look at the baby! This is the gentleman who, people say, is nobody’s enemy but his own. This is the gentleman who can’t say no. This is the gentleman who was making such large profits in his business that he must need to take a partner, t’other day. This is the gentleman who is going to marry a wife without a penny and who falls into the hands of Jezabels, who are speculating on my death!”

I knew now how great my uncle’s rage was; for nothing short of his being almost

beside himself would have induced him to utter that concluding word, which he held

in such repugnance that it was never spoken or hinted at before him on any account.

“On my death,” he repeated as if he were defying me by defying his own abhorrence of the word. “On my death—death—Death! But I’ll spoil the speculation. Eat your last under this roof, you feeble wretch, and may it choke you!”

You may suppose that I had not much appetite for the breakfast to which I was bidden

in these terms, but I took my accustomed seat. I saw that I was repudiated henceforth

by my uncle; still, I could bear that very well, possessing Christiana’s heart.

He emptied his basin of bread and milk as usual, only that he took it on his knees

with his chair turned away from the table where I sat. When he had done, he carefully

snuffed out the candle; and the cold, slate-colored, miserable day looked in upon us.

“Now, Mr. Michael,” said he, “before we part, I should like to have a word with these ladies in your presence.”

“As you will, sir,” I returned, “but you deceive yourself and wrong us, cruelly, if you suppose that there is any feeling at stake in this contract but pure, disinterested, faithful love.”

To this, he only replied, “You lie!” and not one other word.

We went, through half-thawed snow and half-frozen rain, to the house where Christiana

and her mother lived. My uncle knew them very well. They were sitting at their

breakfast and were surprised to see us at that hour.

“Your servant, ma’am,” said my uncle to the mother. “You divine the purpose of my visit, I dare say, ma’am. I understand there is a world of pure, disinterested, faithful love cooped up here. I am happy to bring it all it wants, to make it complete. I bring you your son-in-law, ma’am—and you, your husband, miss. The gentleman is a perfect stranger to me, but I wish him the joy of his wise bargain.”

He snarled at me as he went out, and I never saw him again.

It is altogether a mistake (continued the poor relationship) to suppose that my dear

Christiana, over-persuaded and influenced by her mother, married a rich man,

the dirt from whose carriage wheels is often, in these changed times, thrown upon

me as she rides by. No, no. She married me.

The way we came to be married rather sooner than we intended was this.

I took a frugal lodging and was saving and planning for her sake when, one day,

she spoke to me with great earnestness and said:

“My dear Michael, I have given you my heart. I have said that I loved you, and I have pledged myself to be your wife. I am as much yours through all changes of good and evil as if we had been married on the day when such words passed between us. I know you well and know that if we should be separated and our union broke off, your whole life would be shadowed, and all that might, even now, be stronger in your character for the conflict with the world would then be weakened to the shadow of what it is!”

“God help me, Christiana!” said I. “You speak the truth.”

“Michael!” said she, putting her hand in mine, in all maidenly devotion, “Let us keep apart no longer. It is but for me to say that I can live contented upon such means as you have, and I will know you are happy. I say so from my heart. Strive no more alone; let us strive together. My dear Michael, it is not right that I should keep secret from you what you do not suspect but what distresses my whole life. My mother: without considering that what you have lost, you have lost for me, and on the assurance of my faith: sets her heart on riches and urges another suit upon me, to my misery. I cannot bear this, for to bear it is to be untrue to you. I would rather share your struggles than look on. I want no better home than you can give me. I know that you will aspire and labor with a higher courage if I am wholly yours, and let it be so when you will!”

I was blest indeed that day, and a new world opened to me. We were married in a very

little while, and I took my wife to our happy home. That was the beginning

of the residence I have spoken of; the Castle we have ever since inhabited together

dates from that time. All our children have been born in it. Our first child—now married

—was a little girl whom we called Christiana. Her son is so like Little Frank that I hardly

know which is which.

The current impression of my partner’s dealings with me is also quite erroneous.

He did not begin to treat me coldly, as a poor simpleton, when my uncle and I so fatally

quarreled, nor did he afterward gradually possess himself of our business and edge

me out. On the contrary, he behaved to me with the utmost good faith and honor.

Matters between us took this turn:—On the day of my separation from my uncle,

and even before the arrival at our counting-house of my trunks (which he sent after

me, not carriage paid), I went down to our room of business on our little wharf,

overlooking the river, and there I told John Spatter what had happened. John did not

say, in reply, that rich old relatives were palpable facts and that love and sentiment

were moonshine and fiction. He addressed me thus:

“Michael,” said John, “we were at school together, and I generally had the knack of getting on better than you and making a higher reputation.”

“You had, John,” I returned.

“Although,” said John, “I borrowed your books and lost them; borrowed your pocket- money and never repaid it; got you to buy my damaged knives at a higher price than
I had given them new and to own to the windows that I had broken.”

“All not worth mentioning, John Spatter,” said I, “but certainly true.”

“When you were first established in this infant business, which promises to thrive so well,” pursued John, “I came to you in my search for almost any employment, and you made me your clerk.”

“Still not worth mentioning, my dear John Spatter,” said I; “still, equally true.”

“And finding that I had a good head for business and that I was really useful to the business, you did not like to retain me in that capacity and thought it an act of justice soon to make me your partner.”

“Still less worth mentioning than any of those other little circumstances you have recalled, John Spatter,” said I; “for I was, and am, sensible of your merits and my deficiencies.”

“Now, my good friend,” said John, drawing my arm through his, as he had had a habit

of doing at school; while two vessels outside the windows of our counting house—

which were shaped like the stern windows of a ship—went lightly down the river with

the tide, as John and I might then be sailing away in company and in trust

and confidence on our voyage of life;

“Let there, under these friendly circumstances, be a right understanding between us. You are too easy, Michael. You are nobody’s enemy but your own. If I were to give you that damaging character among our connexion, with a shrug, and a shake of the head, and a sigh, and if I were further to abuse the trust you place in me—”

“But you never will abuse it at all, John,” I observed.

“Never!” said he;

“but I am putting a case—I say, and if I were further to abuse that trust by keeping this piece of our common affairs in the dark, and this other piece in the light, and again this other piece in the twilight, and so on, I should strengthen my strength, and weaken your weakness, day by day, until at last I found myself on the high road to fortune, and you left behind on some bare common, a hopeless number of miles out of the way.”

“Exactly so,” said I.

“To prevent this, Michael,” said John Spatter, “or the remotest chance of this, there must be perfect openness between us. Nothing must be concealed, and we must have but one interest.”

“My dear John Spatter,” I assured him, “that is precisely what I mean.”

“And when you are too easy,” pursued John, his face glowing with friendship, “you must allow me to prevent that imperfection in your nature from being taken advantage of by anyone; you must not expect me to humor it—”

“My dear John Spatter,” I interrupted, “I don’t expect you to humor it. I want to correct it.”

“And I, too,” said John.

“Exactly so!” cried I. “We both have the same end in view, and, honorably seeking it, and fully trusting one another, and having but one interest, ours will be a prosperous and happy partnership.”

“I am sure of it!” returned John Spatter. And we shook hands most affectionately.

I took John home to my Castle, and we had a very happy day. Our partnership throve

well. My friend and partner supplied what I wanted, as I had foreseen that he would,

and by improving both the business and myself, amply acknowledged any little rise

in life to which I had helped him.

I am not (said the poor relation, looking at the fire as he slowly rubbed his hands)

very rich, for I never cared to be that, but I have enough and am above all moderate

wants and anxieties. My Castle is not a splendid place, but it is very comfortable,

and it has a warm and cheerful air and is quite a picture of Home.

Our eldest girl, who is very like her mother, married John Spatter’s eldest son. Our two

families are closely united in other ties of attachment. It is very pleasant of an evening

when we are all assembled together—which frequently happens—and when John and I

talk over old times and the one interest there has always been between us.

I really do not know, in my Castle, what loneliness is. Some of our children

or grandchildren are always about it, and the young voices of my descendants are

delightful—O, how delightful!—to me to hear. My dearest and most devoted wife,

ever faithful, ever loving, ever helpful and sustaining and consoling, is the priceless

blessing of my house, from whom all its other blessings spring. We are rather

a musical family, and when Christiana sees me, at any time, a little weary or depressed,

she steals to the piano and sings a gentle air she used to sing when we were first

betrothed. So weak a man am I that I cannot bear to hear it from any other source.

They played it once at the Theatre when I was there with Little Frank, and the child

said, wondering, “Cousin Michael, whose hot tears are these that have fallen on my hand!”

Such is my Castle, and such are the real particulars of my life therein preserved.

I often take Little Frank home there. He is very welcoming to my grandchildren, and they

play together. At this time of the year—the Christmas and New Year time—I am seldom

out of my Castle. For the associations of the season seem to hold me there,

and the precepts of the season seem to teach me that it is well to be there.

“And the Castle is—” observed a grave, kind voice among the company.

“Yes. My Castle,” said the poor relation, shaking his head as he still looked at the fire,

“is in the Air. John, our esteemed host, suggests its situation accurately. My Castle is in the Air! I have done. Will you be so good as to pass the story?”