that the horse could never have got any height into the air, and
the story couldn’t have been. He would have proved, by map and
compass, that there was no such kingdom as the delightful kingdom
of Casgar, on the frontiers of Tartary. He would have caused that
hypocritical young prig Harry to make an experiment, – with the aid
of a temporary building in the garden and a dummy, – demonstrating
that you couldn’t let a choked hunchback down an Eastern chimney
with a cord, and leave him upright on the hearth to terrify the
sultan’s purveyor.
The golden sounds of the overture to the first metropolitan
pantomime, I remember, were alloyed by Mr. Barlow. Click click,
ting ting, bang bang, weedle weedle weedle, bang! I recall the
chilling air that ran across my frame and cooled my hot delight, as
the thought occurred to me, ‘This would never do for Mr. Barlow!’
After the curtain drew up, dreadful doubts of Mr. Barlow’s
considering the costumes of the Nymphs of the Nebula as being
sufficiently opaque, obtruded themselves on my enjoyment. In the
clown I perceived two persons; one a fascinating unaccountable
creature of a hectic complexion, joyous in spirits though feeble in
intellect, with flashes of brilliancy; the other a pupil for Mr.
Barlow. I thought how Mr. Barlow would secretly rise early in the
morning, and butter the pavement for HIM, and, when he had brought
him down, would look severely out of his study window and ask HIM
how he enjoyed the fun.
I thought how Mr. Barlow would heat all the pokers in the house,
and singe him with the whole collection, to bring him better
acquainted with the properties of incandescent iron, on which he
(Barlow) would fully expatiate. I pictured Mr. Barlow’s
instituting a comparison between the clown’s conduct at his
studies, – drinking up the ink, licking his copy-book, and using
his head for blotting-paper, – and that of the already mentioned
young prig of prigs, Harry, sitting at the Barlovian feet,
sneakingly pretending to be in a rapture of youthful knowledge. I
thought how soon Mr. Barlow would smooth the clown’s hair down,
instead of letting it stand erect in three tall tufts; and how,
after a couple of years or so with Mr. Barlow, he would keep his
legs close together when he walked, and would take his hands out of
his big loose pockets, and wouldn’t have a jump left in him.
That I am particularly ignorant what most things in the universe
are made of, and how they are made, is another of my charges
against Mr. Barlow. With the dread upon me of developing into a
Harry, and with a further dread upon me of being Barlowed if I made
inquiries, by bringing down upon myself a cold shower-bath of
explanations and experiments, I forbore enlightenment in my youth,
and became, as they say in melodramas, ‘the wreck you now behold.’
That I consorted with idlers and dunces is another of the
melancholy facts for which I hold Mr. Barlow responsible. That
pragmatical prig, Harry, became so detestable in my sight, that, he
being reported studious in the South, I would have fled idle to the
extremest North. Better to learn misconduct from a Master Mash
than science and statistics from a Sandford! So I took the path,
which, but for Mr. Barlow, I might never have trodden. Thought I,
with a shudder, ‘Mr. Barlow is a bore, with an immense constructive
power of making bores. His prize specimen is a bore. He seeks to
make a bore of me. That knowledge is power I am not prepared to
gainsay; but, with Mr. Barlow, knowledge is power to bore.’
Therefore I took refuge in the caves of ignorance, wherein I have
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Dickens, Charles – The Uncommercial Traveller
resided ever since, and which are still my private address.
But the weightiest charge of all my charges against Mr. Barlow is,
that he still walks the earth in various disguises, seeking to make
a Tommy of me, even in my maturity. Irrepressible, instructive
monomaniac, Mr. Barlow fills my life with pitfalls, and lies hiding
at the bottom to burst out upon me when I least expect him.