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A PURITAN MICAWBER

IN the second series of the 'Verney Papers,' one of the most delightful of the Memoirs of the Cromwellian period, we get a full-length picture of a person who was nothing more nor less than a Puritan Micawber.

Tom Verney, the Puritan Micawber, a warrior always in pawn to some small tradesman, and yet always designing mining speculations, and waiting for something to turn up in the Barbados or elsewhere, is one of the most amusing figures in the romances of real life. Poor Tom suffered from a perpetual and apparently entirely incurable lack of shirts, clothes, and other conveniences and necessaries. He was for ever bombarding his highly respectable and much-tried brother with letters, begging for clothes. These letters are every bit as monumental as those of Mr. Micawber, and read with the same mouthy amplitude of phrase. Note how in the following is reproduced the immortal Micawber's magnificent parade of financial exactitude, as well as the splendour of language:- Weekly instalments of 35. each! and then the exquisite touch as to his 'cloudy condition: '—

To imitate historians in putting prefaces to their books, I conceive I need not, for I am confident you are so very sencible

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of my want of clothing. Sir my last request to you is for a slight stuff sute & coat against Whitsontide, which may stand you in 50s., the which I will repay you by 3s. weekly till you be reimburst. In former times my own word would have passed for such a summ, but now they [they is good] require securitie of mee, becaus I live in soe cloudy a condition. God put it into your hart once to releive my nakedness & you shall find a most oblidgeing brother of Sir, your humble servant,

THOMAS VERNEY.

When Tom is thinking of going to the West Indies, he does not, like the Micawbers, discourse on the habits of the kangaroo, because he did not live in a scientific age. His environment was theological, hence when he drew up the list of things which his family were to provide for his journey, it is in the following style :

First for a provision for my soul-Doctor Taylour his holy liveing & holy dyeing both in one volume. 2ly the Practise of Piety to refresh my memery. The Turkish Historye, the reading whereof, I take some delight in. Now for my body.

A list follows of provisions of all kinds, Westphalian hams, Cheshire cheeses, Zante oil, beef suet, everything to be of the very best quality.' He will not ask for 'burnt clarett or brandy,' though he requires it, 'for I must not, Sir, overcharge you, for you have been highly civill to me!'

Unfortunately, however, Tom in one thing was not a true Micawber. He was a rogue, and a heartless one, and also a habitual liar, and not a mere pompous waiter on the something which never turned up. But, though this must be said, we will not dwell on the darker side of Tom's character. Let us return to the true Micawber

vein, and learn how he apprises his elder brother that his greatest stock has come to one poor groat, ' and how I am able to subsist five months with one groat I appeal to you and all rationeull and judicious persons.' His great archetype could not have bettered this appeal to the opinion of the rational and the judicious. When he was confined in the Fleet Prison, Tom wrote the following admirably expressed letter to his brother. Mark how he stands outside himself, and is favourably impressed by the chance of his own conversion :

You are that founetaine, from whence all my joy, delight, and comfort comes, and long may you live to see, what you principally aime att, my amendment. He goeth farr that never turnes. Wors livers than my self have seen their errors and have returned home like the prodigall: why may not I? God hath endued mee with a reasoneable understanding; and I question not a reall conversion, since I have soe courteous, soe kind, and so tender a harted brother to help mee up before I am quite downe. . . . In relation to my inlargement, I begg the continueance of a weekly supply during my restraint. Eighteene pence a day, which amounts in the week to 10s. 6d., is as low as any one that is borne a gentleman can possibly live att, let my wants be supplied by noon, that I may have a dinner as well as others.

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He is bailed out before noon, but alas! he is rearrested, and is back again by dinner-time. This fact, however, only stimulates his literary faculty, and he the same day a second letter to his brother, which ends, 'I must submit if so you have decreed, and if I perish I perish.' He does not perish, however, and three days after is inditing to his brother-in-law, Dr. Denton, an admirable plea for clean sheets to be obtained from a cruel jailer at two shillings 'per payre.' Tom is

ultimately released, and then comes the eternal question of where he shall go. At first Malaga was proposed, because, as the ingenuous warrior confessed, ‘he had a wife at Malaga:'

He promised if he reached Malaga to send Sir Ralph 'the knowledge of my wive's and my greeting, together with the scitueation of the place, there manner of government, and with what else that I shall esteeme worthy your reading.' . . . But he has no special preference for Malaga. He next desires 'to be transported in a shipp that is bound for the Barbados. Courteous Brother, That Island, and all the Indies over, doth wholly subsist by merchandizeing and that person that aimes to live in creditt and repute in those parts must be under the notion of a merchant or factor, planter, or overseer of a plantation, and he that lives otherwise, is of little or noe esteeme.

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. . I could (soe it might not occasion an offence) prescribe you a safe way how to send mee thither, like a gentleman, like your brother, and allso to equall my former height of liveing there but you may perhapps find out a way (unknowne to mee) how I may subsist and have a being like a gentleman till you can heare I am safely arrived there or noe.'

Tom's real preference, however, was for spending the summer on a Dutch man-of-war, because, as he fervently remarked, 'Noe damned bayliff nor hellish sergent can or dares disturb my abode there.' (How Shakespeare would have loved the fellow! Here is the very air of Ancient Pistol and his mates!)

The eternal clothes question and the instant need of shirts sends Tom into heroics :

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'I doe know of a garment that would last mee to eternity, and it is to be purchased for less than forty shillings; which is a grave; and that I cannot have neither as yet; in time I shall, then I shall have a requiem sung unto my soul, and pur

chase a releas from this my miserable life to enjoy one more glorious; soe I thought to have made an end of this my sad complaint, but before I soe doe I make it my request to you, if I have either by writeing, or by word of mouth abused you, or spoken evilly of you (which to my knowledge I never yet did) as to bury it in the grave of oblivion, and to weigh those words of mine as proceeding wholly from a person drunk with passion, and overwhelmed with miseries.' Sir Ralph sends him shirts, but refuses to advance any money, or to discuss his claims to enter upon a 'glorious' life, in a more appreciative world than here below.

But it would take a whole book to thoroughly depict the Puritan Micawber. Fain would we tell, but cannot, how Tom took to speculating in mines in Wales and elsewhere, and how these, though magnificently successful as commercial ventures, were always in need of a little money to go on with. Alas! the mines went smash, and Tom, like a modern director, had to come into court:

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It is truth' [he writes to his brother] the jury brought mee in guilty; but of what? not of the fact, but of too much indiscretion and rashness; which caused the judge and the major part of the justices to declare in open court, that they did really beleeve mee to be a person meerely drawne in, and they hoped it would be a warneing to mee for the future. Sir, when Sir Thomas Thinn understood the sence of the Bench, and that I was acquitted, paying my fees, he cunningly arrested mee in the face of the court, charging mee with an action of 500l. the which I have [word torn out] bayle too. It will not be long till he hath lex talionis, and soe we shall make it a cross action.'

With one more quotation we must leave Tom. We all know how people without money take vast journeys