A Rogue's Life

by Wilkie Collins
INTRODUCTORY WORDS.

The following pages were written more than twenty years since,
and were then published periodically in _Household Words._

In the original form of publication the Rogue was very favorably
received. Year after year, I delayed the republication,

proposing, at the suggestion of my old friend, Mr. Charles Reade,
to enlarge the present sketch of the hero's adventures in

Australia. But the opportunity of carrying out this project has
proved to be one of the lost opportunities of my life. I

republish the story with its original conclusion unaltered, but
with such occasional additions and improvements as will, I hope,

render it more worthy of attention at the present time.
The critical reader may possibly notice a tone of almost

boisterous gayety in certain parts of these imaginary
Confessions. I can only plead, in defense, that the story offers

the faithfulreflection of a very happy time in my past life. It
was written at Paris, when I had Charles Dickens for a near

neighbor and a daily companion, and when my leisure hours were
joyously passed with many other friends, all associated with

literature and art, of whom the admirablecomedian, Regnier, is
now the only survivor. The revising of these pages has been to me

a melancholy task. I can only hope that they may cheer the sad
moments of others. The Rogue may surely claim two merits, at

least, in the eyes of the new generation--he is never serious for
two moments together; and he "doesn't take long to read." W. C.

GLOUCESTER PLACE, LONDON, _March_ 6th, 1879.
A ROGUE'S LIFE.

CHAPTER I.
I AM going to try if I can't write something about myself. My

life has been rather a strange one. It may not seem particularly
useful or respectable; but it has been, in some respects,

adventurous; and that may give it claims to be read, even in the
most prejudiced circles. I am an example of some of the workings

of the social system of this illustrious country on the
individual native, during the early part of the present century;

and, if I may say so without unbecoming vanity, I should like to
quote myself for the edification of my countrymen.

Who am I.
I am remarkably well connected, I can tell you. I came into this

world with the great advantage of having Lady Malkinshaw for a
grandmother, her ladyship's daughter for a mother, and Francis

James Softly, Esq., M. D. (commonly called Doctor Softly), for a
father. I put my father last, because he was not so well

connected as my mother, and my grandmother first, because she was
the most nobly-born person of the three. I have been, am still,

and may continue to be, a Rogue; but I hope I am not abandoned
enough yet to forget the respect that is due to rank. On this

account, I trust, nobody will show such want of regard for my
feelings as to expect me to say much about my mother's brother.

That inhuman person committed an outrage on his family by making
a fortune in the soap and candle trade. I apologize for

mentioning him, even in an accidental way. The fact is, he left
my sister, Annabella, a legacy of rather a peculiar kind, saddled

with certain conditions which indirectlyaffected me; but this
passage of family history need not be produced just yet. I

apologize a second time for alluding to money matters before it
was absolutely necessary. Let me get back to a pleasing and

reputable subject, by saying a word or two more about my father.
I am rather afraid that Doctor Softly was not a clever medical

man; for in spite of his great connections, he did not get a very
magnificent practice as a physician.

As a general practitioner, he might have bought a comfortable
business, with a house and snug surgery-shop attached; but the

son-in-law of Lady Malkinshaw was obliged to hold up his head,
and set up his carriage, and live in a street near a fashionable

square, and keep an expensive and clumsyfootman to answer the
door, instead of a cheap and tidy housemaid. How he managed to

"maintain his position" (that is the right phrase, I think), I
never could tell. His wife did not bring him a farthing. When the

honorable and gallant baronet, her father, died, he left the
widowed Lady Malkinshaw with her worldly affairs in a curiously

involved state. Her son (of whom I feel truly ashamed to be
obliged to speak again so soon) made an effort to extricate his

mother--involved himself in a series of pecuniary disasters,
which commercial people call, I believe, transactions--struggled

for a little while to get out of them in the character of an
independent gentleman--failed--and then spiritlessly availed

himself of the oleaginous refuge of the soap and candle trade.
His mother always looked down upon him after this; but borrowed

money of him also--in order to show, I suppose, that her maternal
interest in her son was not quite extinct. My father tried to

follow her example--in his wife's interests, of course; but the
soap-boiler brutally buttoned up his pockets, and told my father

to go into business for himself. Thus it happened that we were
certainly a poor family, in spite of the fine appearance we made,

the fashionable street we lived in, the neat brougham we kept,
and the clumsy and expensivefootman who answered our door.

What was to be done with me in the way of education?
If my father had consulted his means, I should have been sent to

a cheap commercialacademy; but he had to consult his
relationship to Lady Malkinshaw; so I was sent to one of the most

fashionable and famous of the great public schools. I will not
mention it by name, because I don't think the masters would be

proud of my connection with it. I ran away three times, and was
flogged three times. I made four aristocraticconnections, and

had four pitched battles with them: three thrashed me, and one I
thrashed. I learned to play at cricket, to hate rich people, to

cure warts, to write Latin verses, to swim, to recite speeches,
to cook kidneys on toast, to draw caricatures of the masters, to

construe Greek plays, to black boots, and to receive kicks and
serious advice resignedly. Who will say that the fashionable

public school was of no use to me after that?
After I left school, I had the narrowest escape possible of

intruding myself into another place of accommodation for
distinguished people; in other words, I was very nearly being

sent to college. Fortunately for me, my father lost a lawsuit
just in the nick of time, and was obliged to scrape together

every farthing of available money that he possessed to pay for
the luxury of going to law. If he could have saved his seven

shillings, he would certainly have sent me to scramble for a
place in the pit of the great university theater; but his purse

was empty, and his son was not eligible therefore for admission,
in a gentlemanly capacity, at the doors.

The next thing was to choose a profession.
Here the Doctor was liberality itself, in leaving me to my own

devices. I was of a roving adventuroustemperament, and I should
have liked to go into the army. But where was the money to come

from, to pay for my commission? As to enlisting in the ranks, and
working my way up, the social institutions of my country obliged

the grandson of Lady Malkinshaw to begin military life as an
officer and gentleman, or not to begin it at all. The army,

therefore, was out of the question. The Church? Equally out of
the question: since I could not pay for admission to the prepared

place of accommodation for distinguished people, and could not
accept a charitable free pass, in consequence of my high

connections. The Bar? I should be five years getting to it, and
should have to spend two hundred a year in going circuit before I

had earned a farthing. Physic? This really seemed the only
gentlemanly refuge left; and yet, with the knowledge of my

father's experience before me, I was ungrateful enough to feel a
secret dislike for it. It is a degrading confession to make; but

I remember wishing I was not so highly connected, and absolutely
thinking that the life of a commercial traveler would have suited

me exactly, if I had not been a poor g entleman. Driving about
from place to place, living jovially at inns, seeing fresh faces