The Circumstance Of Mrs. Tibbs Being
Obliged To Wash Her Husband's Two Shirts In A Neighbor's House, Who
Refused To Lend Her Washtub, May Have Been No Sport Of Fancy, But A
Fact Passing Under His Own Eye.
His landlady may have sat for the
picture, and Beau Tibbs' scanty wardrobe have been a facsimile of his
own.
It was with some difficulty that we found our way to Dribble's
lodgings. They were up two pair of stairs, in a room that looked upon
the court, and when we entered he was seated on the edge of his bed,
writing at a broken table. He received us, however, with a free, open,
poor devil air, that was irresistible. It is true he did at first
appear slightly confused; buttoned up his waistcoat a little higher and
tucked in a stray frill of linen. But he recollected himself in an
instant; gave a half swagger, half leer, as he stepped forth to receive
us; drew a three-legged stool for Mr. Buckthorne; pointed me to a
lumbering old damask chair that looked like a dethroned monarch in
exile, and bade us welcome to his garret.
We soon got engaged in conversation. Buckthorne and he had much to say
about early school scenes; and as nothing opens a man's heart more than
recollections of the kind, we soon drew from him a brief outline of his
literary career.
THE POOR DEVIL AUTHOR.
I began life unluckily by being the wag and bright fellow at school;
and I had the farther misfortune of becoming the great genius of my
native village. My father was a country attorney, and intended that I
should succeed him in business; but I had too much genius to study, and
he was too fond of my genius to force it into the traces. So I fell
into bad company and took to bad habits. Do not mistake me. I mean that
I fell into the company of village literati and village blues, and took
to writing village poetry.
It was quite the fashion in the village to be literary. We had a little
knot of choice spirits who assembled frequently together, formed
ourselves into a Literary, Scientific, and Philosophical Society, and
fancied ourselves the most learned philos in existence. Every one had a
great character assigned him, suggested by some casual habit or
affectation. One heavy fellow drank an enormous quantity of tea; rolled
in his armchair, talked sententiously, pronounced dogmatically, and was
considered a second Dr. Johnson; another, who happened to be a curate,
uttered coarse jokes, wrote doggerel rhymes, and was the Swift of our
association. Thus we had also our Popes and Goldsmiths and Addisons,
and a blue-stocking lady, whose drawing-room we frequented, who
corresponded about nothing with all the world, and wrote letters with
the stiffness and formality of a printed book, was cried up as another
Mrs. Montagu. I was, by common consent, the juvenile prodigy, the
poetical youth, the great genius, the pride and hope of the village,
through whom it was to become one day as celebrated as
Stratford-on-Avon.
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