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Title: The Works of Thomas Hood; Vol. 02 (of 11) - Comic and Serious, in Prose and Verse, With All the Original - Illustrations
Author: Hood, Thomas
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Works of Thomas Hood; Vol. 02 (of 11) - Comic and Serious, in Prose and Verse, With All the Original - Illustrations" ***
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Transcriber’s Notes
This e-text is based on the print version of ‘The Works of Thomas
Hood, Vol. II,’ published in 1882. Inconsistent and uncommon
spelling and hyphenation have been retained; punctuation and
typographical errors have been corrected. Footnotes have been moved
to the end of the sections in which their respective footnote
anchors are situated.
Small caps have been changed to uppercase letters.
####################################################################
HOOD’S OWN.
THE WORKS
OF
THOMAS HOOD.
COMIC AND SERIOUS, IN PROSE AND VERSE, WITH ALL
THE ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS.
EDITED, WITH NOTES,
BY HIS SON AND DAUGHTER.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
WARD, LOCK, & CO., WARWICK HOUSE,
SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C.
NEW YORK: 10 BOND STREET.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
The Boy at the Nore 1
The Run-Over 4
Johnsoniana 11
The Great Earthquake at Marylebone 16
Ode to St. Swithin 20
The Apparition. A True Story 24
A Blind Man 28
The Supper Superstition. A Pathetic Ballad 30
A Snake-Snack 33
A Storm at Hastings, and the Little Unknown 36
Lines to a Lady on her Departure for India 45
The Nelson 48
Sonnet to a Scotch Girl Washing Linen after her Country
Fashion 51
My Apology 52
Sonnet to a Decayed Seaman 54
The Great Conflagration 55
Huggins and Duggins 97
Domestic Didactics. By an Old Servant 101
Pain in a Pleasure-Boat. A Sea Eclogue 107
A Spent Ball 111
Literary and Literal 113
The Accident 120
Sonnet to Lord Wharncliffe, on his Game Bill 123
Literary Reminiscences. No. I. 124
Ode to Perry, the Inventor of the Patent Perryan Pen 132
Sketches on the Road 139
The Undying One 144
A Gipsy Party 148
Cockle _v._ Cackle 157
A Lawyer’s Letter 162
The Sweep’s Complaint 167
Letter from an Old Sportsman 173
The Sub-Marine 179
The Island 182
Dog-grel Verses. By a poor Blind 188
The Kangaroos. A Fable 193
Literary Reminiscences. No. II. 195
The Domestic Dilemma. A True Story from the German of
Jean Paul Nemand 201
Ode for the Ninth of November 222
Sonnet 228
Rondeau. (Extracted from a Well-known Annual) 229
London Fashions for November. Remarks 230
Symptoms of Ossification 233
The Poacher. A Serious Ballad 234
Sketches on the Road. The Sudden Death 237
I cannot Bear a Gun 252
Trimmer’s Exercise for the Use of Children 257
Some Account of William Whiston 259
The Fox and the Hen. A Fable 263
The Comet. An Astronomical Anecdote 267
Literary Reminiscences. No. III. 270
The Ocean. Considered per se 275
Love and Lunacy 295
Those Evening Bells. “I’d be a Parody.” 331
Lines to a Friend at Cobham 332
The Quakers’ Conversazione 333
Sketches on the Road. The Morning Call 344
The Lament of Toby, the Learned Pig 348
To a Bad Rider 351
My Son and Heir 352
Literary Reminiscences. No. IV. 358
The Carnaby Correspondence 395
A Rise at the Father of Angling 425
Right and Wrong. A Sketch at Sea 431
Patronage 440
Animal Magnetism 452
The Forlorn Shepherd’s Complaint. An Unpublished Poem,
from Sidney 464
Anacreontic. By a Footman 468
[Illustration: “HAVE I A WOTE FOR GRINNAGE?”]
HOOD’S OWN:
OR, LAUGHTER FROM YEAR TO YEAR.
[Illustration: THE ISLE OF MAN.]
THE BOY AT THE NORE.
“Alone I did it!--Boy!”--CORIOLANUS.
I SAY, little Boy at the Nore,
Do you come from the small Isle of Man?
Why, your history a mystery must be,--
Come tell us as much as you can,
Little Boy at the Nore!
You live it seems wholly on water,
Which your Gambier calls living in clover;--
But how comes it, if that is the case,
You’re eternally half seas over,--
Little Boy at the Nore?
While you ride--while you dance--while you float--
Never mind your imperfect orthography;--
But give us as well as you can,
Your watery auto-biography,
Little Boy at the Nore!
LITTLE BOY AT THE NORE LOQUITUR.
I’m the tight little Boy at the Nore,
In a sort of sea negus I dwells;
Half and half ’twixt saltwater and Port,
I’m reckon’d the first of the swells--
I’m the Boy at the Nore!
I lives with my toes to the flounders,
And watches through long days and nights;
Yet, cruelly eager, men look--
To catch the first glimpse of my lights--
I’m the Boy at the Nore.
I never gets cold in the head,
So my life on salt water is sweet,--
I think I owes much of my health
To being well used to wet feet--
As the Boy at the Nore.
There’s one thing, I’m never in debt:
Nay!--I liquidates more than I _oughtor_[1];
So the man to beat Cits as goes by,
In keeping the head above water,
Is the Boy at the Nore.
I’ve seen a good deal of distress,
Lots of Breakers in Ocean’s Gazette;
They should do as I do--rise o’er all;
Aye, a good floating capital get,
Like the Boy at the Nore!
[Illustration: THE BUOY AT THE NORE.]
I’m a’ter the sailor’s own heart,
And cheers him, in deep water rolling;
And the friend of all friends to Jack Junk,
Ben Backstay, Tom Pipes, and Tom Bowling,
Is the Boy at the Nore!
Could I e’er but grow up, I’d be off
For a week to make love with my wheedles;
If the tight little Boy at the Nore
Could but catch a nice girl at the Needles,
We’d have _two_ at the Nore!
They thinks little of sizes on water,
On big waves the tiny one skulks,--
While the river has Men of War on it--
Yes--the Thames is oppress’d with great Hulks,
And the Boy’s at the Nore!
But I’ve done--for the water is heaving
Round my body, as though it would sink it!
And I’ve been so long pitching and tossing,
That sea-sick--you’d hardly now think it--
Is the Boy at the Nore!
[Illustration: AS SAFE AS THE BANK.]
[1] A word caught from some American Trader in passing.
THE RUN-OVER.
“DO you see that ’ere gentleman in the buggy, with the clipt un?”
enquired Ned Stocker, as he pointed with his whip at a chaise, some
fifty yards in advance. “Well, for all he’s driving there so easy like,
and comfortable, he once had a gig-shaft, and that’s a fact, driv right
through his body!”
“Rather him than me,” drawled a passenger on the box, without removing
his cigar from his mouth.
“It’s true for all that,” returned Ned, with a nod of his head equal
to an affidavit. “The shaft run in under one armpit, right up to the
tug, and out again at t’other besides pinning him to the wall of the
stable--and that’s a thing such as don’t happen every day.”
“Lucky it don’t,” said the smoker, between two puffs of his cigar.
“It an’t likely to come often,” resumed Ned, “let alone the getting
over it afterwards, which is the wonderfullest part of it all. To
see him bowling along there, he don’t look like a man pinned to a
stable-wall with the rod through him, right up to the tug--do he?”
“Can’t say he does,” said the smoker.
“For my part,” said Ned, “or indeed any man’s part, most people in such
a case would have said, it’s all up with me, and good reason why, as
I said afore, with a shaft clean through your inside, right up to the
tug--and two inches besides into the stable wall, by way of a benefit.
But somehow he always stuck to it--not the wall, you know--but his own
opinion, that he should get over it--he was as firm as flints about
that--and sure enough the event came off exactly.”
“The better for him,” said the smoker.
“I don’t know the rights on it,” said Ned, “for I warn’t there--but
they do say when he was dextricated from the rod, there was a regular
tunnel through him, and in course the greatest danger was of his
ketching cold in the lungs from the thorough draught.”
“Nothing more likely,” said the fumigator.
“Howsomever,” continued Ned, “he was cured by Dr. Maiden of Stratford,
who give him lots of physic to provoke his stomach, and make him eat
hearty; and by taking his feeds well,--warm mashes at first, and then
hard meat, in course of time he filled up. Nobody hardly believed it,
though, when they see him about on his legs again--myself for one--but
he always said he would overcome it, and he was as good as his word. If
that an’t game, I don’t know what is.”
“No more do I,” said the man with the Havannah.
“I don’t know the philosophy on it,” resumed Ned, “but it’s a remark of
mine about recovering, if a man says he will, he will,--and if he says
he won’t, he won’t--you may book that for certain. Mayhap a good pluck
helps the wounds in healing kindly,--but so it is, for I’ve observed
it. You’ll see one man with hardly a scratch on his face, and says he,
I’m done for--and he turns out quite correct--while another as is cut
to ribbons will say--never mind,--I’m good for another round, and so he
proves, particularly if he’s one of your small farmers. I’ll give you a
reason why.”
“Now then,” said the smoker.
“My reason is,” replied Ned, “that they’re all as hard as
nails--regular pebbles for game. They take more thrashing than their
own corn, and that’s saying something. They’re all fortitude, and
nothing else. Talk about punishment! nothing comes amiss to ’em, from
butt-ends of whips and brickbats down to bludgeons loaded with lead.
You can’t hurt their feelings. They’re jist like badgers, the more you
welt ’em the more they grin, and when it’s over, maybe a turn-up at a
cattle fair, or a stop by footpads, they’ll go home to their missises
all over blood and wounds as cool and comfortable as cowcumbers,
with holes in their heads enough to scarify a whole hospital of army
surgeons.”
“The very thing Scott has characterised,” I ventured to observe, “in
the person of honest Dandie.”
“Begging your pardon, Sir,” said Ned, “I know Farmer Scott very well,
and he’s anything but a dandy. I was just a going to bring forward, as
one of the trumps, a regular out-and-outer. We become friends through
an axident. It was a darkish night, you see, and him a little lushy
or so, making a bit of a swerve in his going towards the middle of
the road, before you could cry Snacks! I was over him with the old
Regulator.”
“Good God!” exclaimed my left-hand companion on the roof. “Was not the
poor fellow hurt?”
“Why, not much for HIM,” answered Ned, with a very decided
emphasis on the pronoun. “Though it would have been a quietus for nine
men out of ten, and, as the Jews say, Take your pick of the basket. But
he looked queer at first, and shook himself, and made a wryish face,
like a man that hadn’t got the exact bit of the joint he preferred.”
“Looked queer!” ejaculated the compassionate passenger, “he must have
looked dreadful! I remember the Regulator, one of the oldest and
heaviest vehicles on the road. But of course you picked him up, and got
him inside, and----”
“Quite the reverse,” answered Ned, quietly, “and far from it; he picked
himself up, quite independent, and wouldn’t even accept a lift on the
box. He only felt about his head a bit, and then his back, and his
arms, and his thighs, and his lines, and after that he guv a nod, and
says he, ‘all right,’ and away he toddled.”
“I can’t credit it,” exclaimed the man on the roof.
“That’s jist what his wife said,” replied Ned, with considerable
composure, in spite of the slur on his veracity. “Let alone two black
eyes, and his collar bone, and the broke rib, he’d a hole in his head,
with a flint sticking in it bigger than any one you can find since
Macadaming. But he made so light on it all, and not being very clear
besides in his notions, I’m blest if he didn’t tell her he’d only been
knockt down by a man with a truck!”
“Not a bad story,” said the smoker on the box.
I confess I made internally a parallel remark. Naturally robust as my
faith is, I could not, as Hamlet says, let “Belief lay hold of me,”
with the coachman’s narrative in his hand, like a copy of a writ. I am
no stranger, indeed, to the peculiar hardihood of our native yeomanry;
but Ned, in his zeal for their credit, had certainly overdrawn the
truth. As to his doctrine of presentiments, it had never been one of
the subjects of my speculations; but on a superficial view, it appeared
to me improbable that life or death, in cases of casualty, could be
predetermined with such certainty as he had averred; and particularly
as I happen to know a certain lady, who has been accepting the Bills
of Mortality at two months’ date, for many years past--but has never
honoured them when due. It was fated, however, that honest Ned was to
be confirmed in his theories and corroborated in his facts.
We had scarcely trotted half a mile in meditative silence, when we
overtook a sturdy pedestrian, who was pacing the breadth as well as
the length of the road, rather more like a land surveyor than a mere
traveller. He evidently belonged to the agricultural class, which
Ned had distinguished by the title of Small Farmers. Like Scott’s
Liddesdale yeoman, he wore a shaggy dreadnought, below which you saw
two well-fatted calves, penned in a pair of huge top-boots--the tops
and the boots being of such different shades of brown as you may
observe in two arable fields of various soil, a rich loam and a clay.
In his hand he carried a formidable knotted club-stick, and a member of
the Heralds’ College would have set him down at once a tenant of the
Earl of Leicester, he looked so like a bear with a ragged staff.
I observed that Ned seemed anxious. One of his leaders was a bolter,
and his wheelers were far from steady; and the man ahead walked not
quite so straightly as if he had been ploughing a furrow. We were
almost upon him--Ned gave a sharp halloo--the man looked back, and
wavered. A minute decided the matter. He escaped Scylla, but Charybdis
yawned for him--in plain prose, he cleared the Rocket, but contrived to
get under the broad wheel of a Warwickshire waggon, which was passing
in the opposite direction. There was still a chance,--even a fly-waggon
may be stopped without much notice--but the waggoner was inside,
sweethearting with three maids that were going to Coventry. Every voice
cried out Woh! but the right one. The horses plodded on--the wheels
rumbled--the bells jingled--we all thought a knell.
Ned instantly pulled up, with his team upon their haunches--we all
alighted, and in a moment the sixteen the Rocket was licensed to
carry were at the fatal spot. In the midst of the circle lay, what we
considered a bundle of last linen just come home from the mangle.
“That’s a dead un,” said the smoker, throwing away as he spoke the
butt-end of a cigar.
“Poor wretch,” exclaimed the humane man from the roof, “what a shocking
spectacle!”
“It’s over his chest,” said I.
“It’s all over,” said the passenger on my right.
“And a happy release,” said a lady on my left; “he must have been a
cripple for life.”
“He can’t have a whole rib in his body,” said a man from the dicky.
“Hall to hattums,” said a gentleman from the inside.
“The worst I ever see, and I’ve had the good luck to see many,” said
the guard.
“No, he can’t get over that,” said Ned himself.
To our astonishment, however, the human mass still breathed. After
a long sigh it opened one eye--the right--then the other--the mouth
gasped--the tongue moved--and at last even spoke, though in disjointed
syllables.
“We’re nigh--hand--an’t we--the nine--milestun?”
“Yes--yes--close to it,” answered a dozen voices, and one in its
bewilderment asked, “Do you live there?” but was set right by the
sufferer himself.
“No--a mile fudder.”
“Where is there a surgeon?” asked the humane man, “I will ride off for
him on one of the leaders.”
“Better not,” said the phlegmatic smoker, who had lighted a fresh cigar
with some German tinder and a lucifer--“not used to saddle--may want a
surgeon yourself.”
“Is there never a doctor among the company?” inquired the guard.
“I am a medical man,” replied a squat vulgar-looking personage. “I sell
Morison’s pills--but I haven’t any about me.”
“Glad of it,” said the smoker, casting a long puff in the other’s face.
[Illustration: “THIS IS THE TIME WHEN CHURCH-YARDS YAWN.”]
“Poor wretch!” sighed the compassionate man. “He is beyond human aid.
Heaven help the widow and the fatherless--he looks like a family man!”
“I were not to blaame,” said the waggoner. “The woife and childerin
can’t coom upon I.”
“Does anyone know who he is?” inquired the coachman, but there was no
answer.
“Maybe the gemman has a card or summut,” said the gentleman from the
inside.
“Is there no house near?” inquired the lady.
“For to get a shutter off on,” added the gentleman.
“Ought we not to procure a postchaise,” inquired a gentleman’s footman.
“Or a shell, in case,” suggested the man from the dicky.
“Shell be hanged!” said the sufferer, in a tone that made us all jump
a yard backward. “Stick me up agin the milestun--there, easy does
it--that’s comfortable--and now tell me, and no nonsense,--be I flat?”
“A little pancakey,” said the man with the cigar.
“I say,” repeated the sufferer, with some earnestness, “be I
flat--quite flat--as flat like as a sheet of paper? Yes or no?”
“No, no, no,” burst from sixteen voices at once, and the assurance
seemed to take as great a load off his mind as had lately passed
over his body. By an effort he contrived to get up and sit upon the
milestone, from which he waved us a good-bye, accompanied by the
following words:--
“Gentlefolk, my best thanks and my sarvice to you, and a pleasant
journey. Don’t consarn yourselves about me, for there’s nothing
dangerous. I shall do well, I know I shall; and I’ll tell you what I’ll
go upon--if I bean’t flat I shall get round.”
JOHNSONIANA.
“None despise puns but those who cannot make them.”--SWIFT.
_To the Editor of the Comic Annual._
SIR,
As I am but an occasional reader in the temporary indulgence of
intellectual relaxation, I have but recently become cognizant
of the metropolitan publication of Mr. Murray’s Mr. Croker’s Mr.
Boswell’s Dr. Johnson: a circumstance the more to be deprecated,
for if I had been simultaneously aware of that amalgamation of
miscellaneous memoranda I could have contributed a personal
quota of characteristic colloquial anecdotes to the biographical
reminiscences of the multitudinous lexicographer, which although
founded on the basis of indubitable veracity, has never transpired
among the multifarious effusions of that stupendous complication
of mechanical ingenuity, which, according to the technicalities
in usage in our modern nomenclature, has obtained the universal
cognomen of the press. Expediency imperiously dictates that the
nominal identity of the hereditary kinsman, from whom I derive my
authoritative responsibility, shall be inviolable and umbrageously
obscured; but in future variorum editions his voluntary addenda
to the already inestimable concatenation of circumstantial
particularisation might typographically be discriminated from
the literary accumulations of the indefatigable Boswell and the
vivacious Piozzi, by the significant classification of Boz, Poz,
and Coz.
In posthumously eliciting and philosophically elucidating the
phenomena of defunct luminaries, whether in reference to corporeal,
physiognomical, or metaphysical attributes, justice demands the
strictest scrupulosity, in order that the heterogeneous may not
preponderate over the homogeneous in the critical analysis.
Metaphorically speaking, I am rationally convinced that the
operative point I am about to develop will remove a pertinacious
film from the eye of the biographer of the memorable Dr. Johnson;
and especially with reference to that reiterated verbal aphorism
so preposterously ascribed to his conversational inculcation,
namely, that “he who would make a pun would pick a pocket;”
however irrelevant such a doctrinarian maxim to the irrefragable
fact, that in that colossal monument of etymological erudition
erected by the stupendous Doctor himself (of course implying his
inestimable Dictionary), the paramount gist, scope, and tendency
of his laborious researches was obviously to give as many meanings
as possible to one word. In order, however, to place hypothesis
on the immutable foundation of fact, I will, with your periodical
permission, adduce a few Johnsonian repartees from my cousin’s
anecdotical memorabilia, which will perspicuously evolve the
synthetical conclusion, that the inimitable author of Rasselas
did not dogmatically predicate such an aggravated degree of moral
turpitude in the perpetration of a double entendre.
Apologistically requesting indulgence for the epistolary laxity of
an unpremeditated effusion,
I remain, Sir,
Your very humble obedient servant,
SEPTIMUS REARDON.
_Lichfield, October 1, 1833._
“Do you really believe, Dr. Johnson,” said a Lichfield lady, “in the
dead walking after death?”--“Madam,” said Johnson, “I have no doubt
on the subject; I have heard the Dead March in Saul.” “You really
believe then, Doctor, in ghosts?”--“Madam,” said Johnson, “I think
_appearances_ are in their favour.”
The Doctor was notoriously very superstitious. The same lady once
asked him--“if he ever felt any presentiment at a winding-sheet in the
candle.”--“Madam,” said Johnson, “if a _mould_ candle, it doubtless
indicates death, and that somebody will go out like a _snuff_; but
whether at Hampton _Wick_ or in _Greece_, must depend upon the
_graves_.”
Dr. Johnson was not comfortable in the Hebrides. “Pray, Doctor, how did
you sleep?” inquired a benevolent Scotch hostess, who was so extremely
hospitable that some hundreds always occupied the same bed.--“Madam,”
said Johnson, “I had not a wink the whole night long; sleep seemed to
_flee_ from my eyelids, and to _bug_ from all the rest of my body.”
The Doctor and Boswell once lost themselves in the Isle of Muck, and
the latter said they must “_spier_ their way at the first body they
met.” “Sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “you’re a scoundrel: you may spear
anybody you like, but I am not going to ‘run a-Muck and tilt at all I
meet.’”
[Illustration: AN ILLUMINATED MS.]
“What do you think of whiskey, Dr. Johnson?” hiccupped Boswell after
emptying a sixth tumbler of toddy. “Sir,” said the Doctor, “it
penetrates my very soul like ‘the _small-still_ voice of conscience,’
and doubtless the worm of the still is the ‘worm that never dies.’”
Boswell afterwards inquired the Doctor’s opinion on illicit
distillation, and how the great moralist would act in an affray between
the smugglers and the Excise. “If I went by the _letter_ of the law, I
should assist the Customs, but according to the _spirit_ I should stand
by the contrabands.”
The Doctor was always very satirical on the want of timber in the
North. “Sir,” he said to the young Laird of Icombally, who was going
to join his regiment, “may Providence preserve you in battle, and
especially your nether limbs. You may grow a walking-stick here, but
you must import a wooden leg.” At Dunsinane the old prejudice broke
out. “Sir,” said he to Boswell, “Macbeth was an idiot; he ought to have
known that every wood in Scotland might be carried in a man’s hand. The
Scotch, Sir, are like the frogs in the fable: if they had a Log they
would make a King of it.”
Boswell one day expatiated at some length on the moral and religious
character of his countrymen, and remarked triumphantly that there was
a Cathedral at Kirkwall, and the remains of a Bishop’s Palace. “Sir,”
said Johnson, “it must have been the poorest of Sees: take your _Rum_
and _Egg_ and _Mull_ altogether, and they won’t provide for a _Bishop_.”
East India company is the worst of all company. A Lady fresh from
Calcutta once endeavoured to curry Johnson’s favour by talking of
nothing but howdahs, doolies, and bungalows, till the Doctor took, as
usual, to _tiffin_. “Madam,” said he, in a tone that would have scared
a tiger out of a jungle, “India’s very well for a rubber or for a
bandana, or for a cake of ink, but what with its Bhurtpore, Pahlumpore,
Barrackpore, Hyderapore, Singapore, and Nagpore, its Hyderabad,
Astrabad, Bundlebad, Sindbad, and Guzzaratbadbad, it’s a _poor_ and
_bad_ country altogether.”
Master M., after plaguing Miss Seward and Dr. Darwin, and a large tea
party at Lichfield, said to his mother that he would be good if she
would give him an apple. “My dear child,” said the parent, feeling
herself in the presence of a great moralist, “you ought not to be good
on any consideration of gain, for ‘virtue is its own reward.’ You ought
to be good disinterestedly, and without thinking what you are to get
for it.” “Madam,” said Dr. Johnson, “you are a fool; would you have the
boy _good for nothing_?”
The same lady once consulted the Doctor on the degree of turpitude to
be attached to her son’s robbing an orchard. “Madam,” said Johnson,
“it all depends upon the weight of the boy. I remember my schoolfellow
Davy Garrick, who was always a little fellow, robbing a dozen of
orchards with impunity, but the very first time I climbed up an apple
tree, for I was always a heavy boy, the bough broke with me, and it was
called a judgment. I suppose that’s why Justice is represented with a
pair of scales.”
Caleb Whitefoord, the famous punster, once inquired seriously of
Dr. Johnson whether he really considered that a man ought to be
transported, like Barrington, the pickpocket, for being guilty of a
double meaning. “Sir,” said Johnson, “if a man means well, the more he
means the better.”
THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE AT MARY-LE-BONE.
“Do you never deviate?”--JOHN BULL.
IT was on the evening of the 7th of November, 18--, that I went by
invitation to sup with my friend P., at his house in Highstreet,
Mary-le-bone. The only other person present was a Portuguese, by
name Senor Mendez, P.’s mercantile agent at Lisbon, a person of
remarkably retentive memory, and most wonderful power of description.
The conversation somehow turned upon the memorable great earthquake
at Lisbon, in the year of our Lord----, and Senor Mendez, who was
residing at that time in the Portuguese capital, gave us a very
lively picture--if lively it may be called--of the horrors of that
awful convulsion of nature. The picture was dreadful; the Senor’s own
house, a substantial stone mansion, was rent from attic to cellar: and
the steeple of his parish church left impending over it at an angle
surpassing that of the famous Leaning Tower of Bologna!
The Portuguese had a wonderfully expressive countenance, with a
style of narration indescribably vivid; and as I listened with the
most intense interest, every dismal circumstance of the calamity
became awfully distinct to my apprehension. I could hear the dreary
ringing of the bells, self-tolled from the rocking of the churches;
the swaying to and fro of the steeples themselves, and the unnatural
heavings and swellings of the Tagus, were vividly before me. As the
agitations increased, the voice of the Senor became awfully tremulous,
and his seat seemed literally to rock under him. I seemed palsied, and
could see from P.’s looks that he was similarly affected. To conceal
his disorder, he kept swallowing large gulps from his rummer, and I
followed his example.
[Illustration: “DO THY SPIRITING GENTLY.”]
This was only the first shock;--the second soon followed, and, to
use a popular expression, it made us both “shake in our shoes.”
Terrific, however, as it was, the third was more tremendous; the order
of nature seemed reversed; the ships in the Tagus sank to the bottom,
and their ponderous anchors rose to the surface; volcanic fire burst
forth from the water, and water from dry ground; the air, no longer
elastic, seemed to become a stupendous solid; swaying to and fro, and
irresistibly battering down the fabrics of ages; hollow rumblings
and moanings as from the very centre of the world, gave warning of
deafening explosions, which soon followed, and seemed to shake the
very stars out of the sky. All this time the powerful features of
the Senor kept working, in frightful imitation of the convulsion he
was describing, and the effect was horrible; I saw P. quiver like an
aspen--there seemed no such thing as terra firma. Our chairs rocked
under us; the floor tossed and heaved; the candles wavered, the windows
clattered, and the teaspoons rang again, as our tumblers vibrated in
our hands.
Senor Mendez at length concluded his narrative, and shortly took leave;
I staid but a few minutes after him, just to make a remark on the
appalling character of the story, and then departed myself,--little
thinking, that any part of the late description was to be so speedily
realised by my own experience!
The hour being late, and the servants in bed, P. himself accompanied me
to the door. I ought to remark here that the day had been uncommonly
serene--not a breath stirring, as was noticed on the morning of the
great catastrophe at Lisbon; however, P. had barely closed the door,
when a sudden and violent motion of the earth threw me from the step
on which I was standing, to the middle of the pavement; I had got
partly up when a second shock, as smart as the first, threw me again
on the ground. With some difficulty I recovered my legs a second
time, the earth in the mean time heaving about under me like the deck
of a ship at sea. The street lamps, too, seemed violently agitated,
and the houses nodded over me as if they would fall every instant.
I attempted to run, but it was impossible; I could barely keep on
my feet. At one step I was dashed forcibly against the wall; at the
next I was thrown into the road; as the motion became more violent
I clung to a lamp-post, but it swayed with me like a rush. A great
mist came suddenly on, but I could perceive people hurrying about,
all staggering like drunken men; some of them addressing me, but so
confusedly as to be quite unintelligible; one--a lady--passed close to
me in evident alarm: seizing her hand, I besought her to fly with me
from the falling houses, into the open fields; what answer she made I
know not, for at that instant, a fresh shock threw me on my face with
such violence as to render me quite insensible. Providentially, in this
state I attracted the notice of some of the night police, who humanely
deposited me, for safety, in St. Anne’s watch-house, till the following
morning; when being sufficiently recovered to give a collected account
of that eventful evening, the ingenious Mr. W., of the Morning Herald,
was so much interested by my narrative that he kindly did me the favour
of drawing it up for publication in the following form.
[Illustration: “WELL! I NEVER COULD KEEP MY LEGS!”]
_Police Intelligence.--Bow Street._
“This morning a stout country gentleman, in a new suit of mud,
evidently town made, was charged with having walked _Waverly_
over-night till he got his _Kennelworth_ in a gutter in Mary-le-bone.
The Jack-o’-lanthorn who picked him up could make nothing out of him,
but that he was some sort of a _Quaker_, and declared that the whole
country was in a _shocking_ state. He acknowledged having taken rather
too much _Lisbon_; but according to Mr. Daly, he sniffed of whiskey ‘as
strong as natur.’ The defendant attempted with a _sotto voce_ (Anglice,
a tipsy voice), to make some excuse, but was stopped and fined in
the usual sum, by Sir Richard. He found his way out of the office,
muttering that he thought it very hard to have to pay _five hogs_ for
being only as drunk as _one_.”
ODE TO ST. SWITHIN.
“The rain it raineth every day.”
THE Dawn is overcast, the morning low’rs,
On ev’ry window-frame hang beaded damps
Like rows of small illumination lamps,
To celebrate the Jubilee of Show’rs!
A constant sprinkle patters from all leaves,
The very Dryads are not dry, but soppers,
And from the Houses’ eaves
Tumble eaves-droppers.
The hundred clerks that live along the street,
Bondsmen to mercantile and City schemers,
With squashing, sloshing, and galoching feet,
Go paddling, paddling, through the wet, like steamers,
Each hurrying to earn the daily stipend--
Umbrellas pass of every shade of green,
And now and then a crimson one is seen,
Like an Umbrella _ripen’d_.
Over the way a waggon
Stand with six smoking horses, shrinking, blinking,
While in the George and Dragon
The man is keeping himself dry--and drinking!
The Butcher’s boy skulks underneath his tray,
Hats shine--shoes don’t--and down droop collars,
And one blue Parasol cries all the way
To school, in company with four small scholars!
[Illustration: PRIDE AND HUMILITY.]
Unhappy is the man to-day who rides,
Making his journey sloppier, not shorter;
Aye, there they go, a dozen of outsides,
Performing on “a Stage with real water!”
A dripping Pauper crawls along the way,
The only real willing out-of-doorer
And says, or seems to say,
“Well, I am poor enough--but here’s a _pourer!_”
The scene in water colours thus I paint,
Is your own Festival, you Sloppy Saint!
Mother of all the Family of Rainers!
Saint of the Soakers!
Making all people croakers,
Like frogs in swampy marshes, and complainers!
And why you mizzle forty days together,
Giving the earth your water-soup to sup,
I marvel--Why such wet, mysterious weather?
I wish you’d _clear it up_!
Why cast such cruel dampers
On pretty Pic Nics, and against all wishes
Set the cold ducks a-swimming in the hampers,
And volunteer, unask’d, to wash the dishes?
Why drive the Nymphs from the selected spot,
To cling like lady-birds around a tree--
Why spoil a Gipsy party at their tea,
By throwing your cold water upon hot?
Cannot a rural maiden, or a man,
Seek Hornsey-Wood by invitation, sipping
Their green with Pan,
But souse you come, and show their Pan all dripping!
Why upon snow-white table-cloths and sheets,
That do not wait, or want a second washing,
Come squashing?
Why task yourself to lay the dust in streets,
As if there were no Water-Cart contractors,
No pot-boys spilling beer, no shop-boys ruddy
Spooning out puddles muddy,
Milkmaids, and other slopping benefactors!
A Queen you are, raining in your own right,
Yet oh! how little flatter’d by report!
Even by those that seek the Court,
Pelted with every term of spleen and spite.
Folks rail and swear at you in every place;
They say you are a creature of no bowel;
They say you’re always washing Nature’s face,
And that you then supply her,
With nothing drier,
Than some old wringing cloud by way of towel!
The whole town wants you duck’d, just as you duck it,
They wish you on your own mud porridge supper’d,
They hope that you may kick your own big bucket,
Or in your water-butt go sous! heels up’ard!
They are, in short, so weary of your drizzle,
They’d spill the water in your veins to stop it--
Be warn’d! You are too partial to a mizzle--
Pray _drop it_!
[Illustration: “IT NEVER RAINS BUT IT POURS.”]
[Illustration: A FIGURE OF SPEECH:--A BROAD SCOTCHMAN.]
THE APPARITION.
A TRUE STORY.
“To keep without a reef in a gale of wind like that--Jock was the only
boatman on the Firth of Tay to do it!”--
“He had sail enough to blow him over Dundee Law.”--
“She’s emptied her ballast and come up again,--with her sails all
standing--every sheet was belayed with a double turn.”
I give the sense rather than the sound of the foregoing speeches, for
the speakers were all Dundee ferry-boatmen, and broad Scotchmen, using
the extra-wide dialect of Angus-shire and Fife.
At the other end of the low-roofed room, under a coarse white sheet,
sprinkled with sprigs of rue and rosemary, dimly lighted by a small
candle at the head, and another at the feet, lay the object of
their comments--a corpse of startling magnitude. In life, poor Jock
was of unusual stature, but stretching a little, perhaps, as is
usual in death, and advantaged by the narrow limits of the room, the
dimensions seemed absolutely supernatural. During the warfare of the
Allies against Napoleon, Jock, a fellow of some native humour, had
distinguished himself by singing about the streets of Dundee, ballads,
I believe his own, against old Boney. The nick-name of Ballad-Jock was
not his only reward; the loyal burgesses subscribed among themselves,
and made him that fatal gift, a ferry-boat, the management of which
we have just heard so seriously reviewed. The catastrophe took place
one stormy Sunday, a furious gale blowing against the tide, down
the river--and the Tay is anything but what the Irish call “weak
tay,” at such seasons. In fact, the devoted Nelson, with all sails
set,--fair-weather fashion,--caught aback in a sudden gust,--after
a convulsive whirl capsized, and went down in forty fathoms, taking
with her two-and-twenty persons, the greater part of whom were on
their way to hear the celebrated Dr. Chalmers,--even at that time
highly popular,--though preaching in a small church at some obscure
village, I forget the name, in Fife. After all the rest had sunk in
the waters, the huge figure of Jock was observed clinging to an oar,
barely afloat,--when some sufferer probably catching hold of his feet,
he suddenly disappeared, still grasping the oar, which afterwards
springing upright into the air, as it rose again to the surface, showed
the fearful depth to which it had been carried. The body of Jock was
the last found; about the fifth day, it was strangely enough deposited
by the tide almost at the threshold of his own dwelling, at the Craig,
a small pier or jetty, frequented by the ferry-boats. It had been
hastily caught up, and in its clothes laid out in the manner just
described, lying as it were in state, and the public, myself one, being
freely admitted, as far as the room would hold, it was crowded by
fish-wives, mariners, and other shore-haunters, except a few feet next
the corpse, which a natural awe towards the dead kept always vacant.
The narrow death’s door was crammed with eager listening and looking
heads, and by the buzzing without, there was a large surplus crowd in
waiting before the dwelling for their turn to enter it.
On a sudden, at a startling exclamation from one of those nearest
the bed, all eyes were directed towards that quarter. One of the
candles was guttering and sputtering near the socket,--the other just
twinkling out, and sending up a stream of rank smoke,--but by the
light, dim as it was, a slight motion of the sheet was perceptible
just at that part where the hand of the dead mariner might be supposed
to be lying at his side! A scream and shout of horror burst from all
within, echoed, though ignorant of the cause, by another from the
crowd without. A general rush was made towards the door, but egress
was impossible. Nevertheless horror and dread squeezed up the company
in the room to half their former compass: and left a far wider blank
between the living and the dead! I confess at first I mistrusted my
sight; it seemed that some twitching of the nerves of the eye, or
the flickering of the shadows, thrown by the unsteady flame of the
candle, might have caused some optical delusion; but after several
minutes of sepulchral silence and watching, the motion became more
awfully manifest, now proceeding slowly upwards, as if the hand of the
deceased, still beneath the sheet, was struggling up feebly towards
his head. It is possible to conceive, but not to describe, the popular
consternation,--the shrieks of women,--the shouts of men--the struggles
to gain the only outlet, choked up and rendered impassable by the very
efforts of desperation and fear!--Clinging to each other, and with
ghastly faces that _dared_ not turn from the object of dread, the
whole assembly backed with united force against the opposite wall,
with a convulsive energy that threatened to force out the very side
of the dwelling--when, startled before by silent motion, but now by
sound,--with a smart rattle something fell from the bed to the floor,
and disentangling itself from the death drapery, displayed--a large
pound Crab!--The creature, with some design, perhaps sinister, had
been secreted in the ample clothes of the drowned seaman, but even
the comparative insignificance of this apparition gave but little
alleviation to the superstitious horrors of the spectators, who
appeared to believe firmly, that it was only the Evil One himself,
transfigured.--Wherever the crab straddled sidelong, infirm beldame
and sturdy boatman equally shrank and retreated before it,--aye, even
as it changed place, to crowding closely round the corpse itself,
rather than endure its diabolical contact. The crowd outside, warned
by cries from within, of the presence of Mahound, had by this time
retired to a respectful distance, and the crab, doing what herculean
sinews had failed to effect, cleared itself a free passage through
the door in a twinkling, and with natural instinct began crawling as
fast as he could clapperclaw, down the little jetty before mentioned
that led into his native sea. The Satanic Spirit, however disguised,
seemed everywhere distinctly recognised. Many at the lower end of the
Craig lept into their craft; one or two even into the water, whilst
others crept as close to the verge of the pier as they could, leaving
a thoroughfare--wide as “the broad path of honour,”--to the Infernal
Cancer. To do him justice, he straddled along with a very unaffected
unconsciousness of his own evil importance. He seemed to have no aim
higher than salt water and sand, and had accomplished half the distance
towards them, when a little decrepit poor old sea-roamer, generally
known as “Creel Katie,” made a dexterous snatch at a hind claw, and
before the Crab-Devil was aware, deposited him in her patchwork
apron, with an “Hech, Sirs, what for are ye gaun to let gang siccan a
braw partane?” In vain a hundred voices shouted out, “Let him bide,
Katie,--he’s no cannie;” fish or fiend, the resolute old dame kept a
fast clutch of her prize, promising him, moreover, a comfortable simmer
in the mickle pat, for the benefit of herself and that “puir silly body
the gudeman:” and she kept her word. Before night the poor Devil was
dressed in his shell, to the infinite horror of all her neighbours.
Some even said that a black figure, with horns, and wings, and hoofs,
and forky tail, in fact old Clooty himself, had been seen to fly out
of the chimney. Others said that unwholesome and unearthly smells, as
of pitch and brimstone, had reeked forth from the abominable thing,
through door and window. Creel Kate, however, persisted, aye, even to
her dying day and on her deathbed, that the Crab was as sweet a Crab
as ever was supped on; and that it recovered her old husband out of a
very poor low way,--adding, “And that was a thing, ye ken, the Deil a
Deil in the Dub of Darkness wad hae dune for siccan a gude man, and
kirk-going Christian body, as my ain douce Davie.”
A BLIND MAN
Is a Blackamoor turned outside in. His skin is fair, but his lining is
utter dark; his eyes are like shotten stars,--mere jellies; or like
mock-painted windows since the tax upon daylight: what his mind’s eye
can be, is yet a mystery with the learned, or if he hath a mental
capacity at all--for, “out of sight is out of mind.”
Wherever he stands, he is antipodean, with his midnight to your noon.
The brightest sunshine serves only to make him the gloomier object;
like a dark house at a general illumination. When he stirs, it is like
a Venetian blind, being pulled up and down by a string; he is a human
kettle tied to a dog’s tail, and with much of the same tin twang in
his tone. With botanists he is a species of solanum, or night-shade,
whereof the berries are in his eyes;--amongst painters he is only
contemned, for his ignorance of clare-obscure; but by musicians
marvelled at for playing, ante-sight, on an invisible fiddle. He stands
against a wall with his two blank orbs, like a figure in high relief,
howbeit but seldom relieved; and though he is fond of getting pence,
yet he is confessedly blind to his own interest.
[Illustration: A MISGUIDED MAN.]
In his religion he is a materialist, putting no faith but in things
palpable. In politics, no visionary; in his learning a smatterer, his
knowledge of all being superficial; in his age a child, being yet in
leading-strings; in his life immortal, for death may lengthen his
night, but can put no end to his days; in his courage, heroic, for
he winks at no danger; in his pretensions humble, confessing that he
is nothing, even in his own eyes; in his malady hopeless, for eyes
of _looking_-glass would not help him to see. To conclude--he is
pitied by the rich, relieved by the poor, oppressed by the beadle, and
horse-whipped by the fox-hunter, for not giving the view holloa!
[Illustration: “BE TO THEIR FAULTS A LITTLE BLIND.”]
THE SUPPER SUPERSTITION.
A PATHETIC BALLAD.
“Oh flesh, flesh how art thou fishified.”--MERCUTIO.
I.
’Twas twelve o’clock by Chelsea chimes,
When all in hungry trim,
Good Mister Jupp sat down to sup
With wife, and Kate, and Jim.
II.
Said he, “Upon this dainty cod
How bravely I shall sup,”--
When, whiter than the table-cloth,
A GHOST came rising up!
III.
“O, father dear, O, mother dear,
Dear Kate, and brother Jim,--
You know when some one went to sea,--
Don’t cry--but I am him!
IV.
“You hope some day with fond embrace
To greet your absent Jack,
But oh, I am come here to say
I’m never coming back!
V.
“From Alexandria we set sail,
With corn, and oil, and figs,
But steering ‘too much Sow,’ we struck
Upon the Sow and Pigs!
VI.
“The Ship we pump’d till we could see
Old England from the tops;
When down she went with all our hands,
Right in the Channel’s Chops.
VII.
“Just give a look in Norey’s chart,
The very place it tells;
I think it says twelve fathom deep,
Clay bottom, mixed with shells.
VIII.
“Well, there we are till ‘hands aloft,’
We have at last a call;
The pug I had for brother Jim,
Kate’s parrot too, and all.
IX.
“But oh, my spirit cannot rest,
In Davy Jones’s sod,
Till I’ve appear’d to you and said,--
Don’t sup on that ’ere Cod!
X.
“You live on land, and little think
What passes in the sea;
Last Sunday week, at 2 P.M.,
That cod was picking me!
XI.
“Those oysters too, that look so plump,
And seem so nicely done,
They put my corpse in many shells,
Instead of only one.
XII.
“O, do not eat those oysters then,
And do not touch the shrimps;
When I was in my briny grave,
They suck’d my blood like imps!
XIII.
“Don’t eat what brutes would never eat,
The brutes I used to pat,
They’ll know the smell they used to smell;
Just try the dog and cat!”
XIV.
The Spirit fled--they wept his fate,
And cried, Alack, alack!
At last up started brother Jim.
“Let’s try if Jack was Jack!”
XV.
They call’d the Dog, they call’d the Cat,
And little Kitten too,
And down they put the Cod and sauce,
To see what brutes would do.
XVI.
Old Tray lick’d all the oysters up,
Puss never stood at crimps,
But munch’d the Cod--and little Kit
Quite feasted on the shrimps!
XVII.
The thing was odd, and minus Cod
And sauce, they stood like posts;
O, prudent folks, for fear of hoax,
Put no belief in Ghosts!
[Illustration: FRIENDS AWAITING A SAILOR’S RETURN.]
A SNAKE-SNACK.
“Twine ye, twine ye.”--SIR W. SCOTT.
IT was my good fortune once, at Charing Cross, to witness the feeding
of the Boa Constrictor; rather a rare occurrence, and difficult of
observation, the reptile not being remarkable for the regularity of
its dinner-hour; and a very considerable interval intervenes, as the
world knows, between Gorge the First, and Gorge the Second, Gorge the
Third, and Gorge the Fourth. I was not in time to see the serpent’s
first dart at the prey; she had already twisted herself round her
victim,--a living White Rabbit--who with a large dark eye gazed
piteously through one of the folds, and looked most eloquently that
line in Hamlet--
“O could I shuffle off this mortal _coil_!”
[Illustration: THE BOA AFTER A MEAL.]
The Snake evidently only embraced him in a kill-him-when-I-want-him
manner, just firmly enough to prevent an escape--but her lips were
glued on his, in a close “Judas’ kiss.” So long a time elapsed, in
this position, both as marble-still as poor old Laocoon with his
leaches on, that I really began to doubt the tale of the Boa’s ability
in swallowing; and to associate the hoax before me, with that of the
Bottle Conjuror. The head of the snake, in fact, might have gone
without difficulty into a wine-glass, and the throat, down which the
rabbit was to proceed whole, seemed not at all thicker than my thumb.
In short, I thought the reported _cram_ was nothing but _stuff_,
and the only other visitor declared himself of my opinion: “If that
’ere little wiper swallows up the rabbit, I’ll bolt um both!” and he
seemed capable of the feat. He looked like a personification of what
Political Economists call the Public Consumer; or, Geoffrey Crayon’s
Stout Gentleman, seen through Carpenter’s Solar Microscope; a genuine
Edax Rerum; one of your devourers of legs of mutton and trimmings, for
wagers: the delight of eating-houses, and the dread of ordinaries. The
contrast was whimsical, between his mountain of mummy, and the slim
Macaroni figure of the Snake, the reputed Glutton. However, the Boa
began at last to prepare for the meal, by lubricating the muzzle of the
Rabbit with her slimy tongue, and then commenced in earnest,
As far as in her lay to take him in,
A stranger dying with so fair a skin.
The process was tedious--“one swallow makes a summer”--but it gradually
became apparent, from the fate of the head, that the whole body might
eventually be “lost in the Serpentine.” The Reptile, indeed, made ready
for the rest of the interment by an operation rather horrible. On a
sudden, the living cable was observed, as a sailor would say, to haul
in her slack, and with a squeeze evincing tremendous muscular power,
she reduced the whole body into a compass that would follow the head
with perfect ease. It was like a regular smash in business:--the poor
rabbit was completely broken--and the wily winder-up of his affairs
recommenced paying herself in full. It was a sorry sight and sickening.
As for the Stout Gentleman, he could not control his agitation. His
eyes rolled and watered; his jaws constantly yawned like a panther’s;
and his hands with a convulsive movement were clasped every now and
then on his stomach;--but when the whole rabbit was smothered in
snake, he could restrain himself no longer, and rushed out of the
menagerie as if he really expected to be called upon to fulfil his
rash engagement. Anxious to ascertain the true nature of the impulse,
I hurried in pursuit of him, and after a short but sharp chase, I saw
him dash into the British Hotel, and overheard his familiar voice--the
same that had promised to swallow both Snake and Snack--bellowing out,
guttural with hunger--“Here!--waiter!--Quick!--Rabbits in onions for
two!”
[Illustration: THE GREAT SEA SERPENT DISCOVERED FROM THE MAST-HEAD.]
A STORM AT HASTINGS
AND THE LITTLE UNKNOWN.
’TWAS August--Hastings every day was filling--
Hastings, that “greenest spot on memory’s waste!”
With crowds of idlers willing or unwilling
To be bedipped--be noticed--or be braced,
And all things rose a penny in a shilling.
Meanwhile, from window and from door, in haste
“Accommodation bills” kept coming down,
Gladding “the world of letters” in that town.
Each day pour’d in new coach-fulls of new cits,
Flying from London smoke and dust annoying,
Unmarried Misses hoping to make hits,
And new-wed couples fresh from Tunbridge toying.
Lacemen and placemen, ministers and wits,
And Quakers of both sexes, much enjoying
A morning’s reading by the ocean’s rim,
That sect delighting in the sea’s broad brim.
[Illustration: AN ABRIDGMENT OF ALL THAT IS PLEASANT IN MAN.]
And lo! amongst all these appear’d a creature,
So small, he almost might a twin have been,
With Miss Crachami--dwarfish quite in stature,
Yet well proportion’d--neither fat nor lean,
His face of marvellously pleasant feature.
So short and sweet a man was never seen--
All thought him charming at the first beginning--
Alas, ere long they found him far too winning!
He seem’d in love with chance--and chance repaid
His ardent passion with her fondest smile,
The sunshine of good luck, without a shade,
He staked and won--and won and staked--the bile
It stirr’d of many a man and many a maid,
To see at every venture how that vile
Small gambler snatch’d--and how he won them too--
A living Pam, omnipotent at loo!
[Illustration: A TIDE-WAITER.]
Miss Wiggins set her heart upon a box,
’Twas handsome, rosewood, and inlaid with brass,
And dreamt three times she garnish’d it with stocks,
Of needles, silks, and cottons--but alas!
She lost it wide awake.--We thought Miss Cox
Was lucky--but she saw three caddies pass
To that small imp:--no living luck could loo him!
Sir Stamford would have lost his Raffles to him!
And so he climb’d--and rode, and won--and walk’d,
The wondrous topic of the curious swarm
That haunted the Parade. Many were balk’d
Of notoriety by that small form
Pacing it up and down:--some even talk’d
Of ducking him--when lo! a dismal storm
Stepp’d in--one Friday, at the close of day--
And every head was turn’d another way--
Watching the grander guest. It seem’d to rise
Bulky and slow upon the southern brink
Of the horizon--fann’d by sultry sighs--
So black and threatening, I cannot think
Of any simile, except the skies
Miss Wiggins sometime _shades_ in Indian ink--
_Miss_-shapen blotches of such heavy vapour,
They seem a deal more solid than her paper.
As for the sea, it did not fret, and rave,
And tear its waves to tatters, and so dash on
The stony-hearted beach;--some bards would have
It always rampant, in that idle fashion,--
Whereas the waves roll’d in, subdued and grave,
Like schoolboys, when the master’s in a passion,
Who meekly settle in and take their places,
With a very quiet awe on all their faces.
Some love to draw the ocean with a head,
Like troubled table-beer,--and make it bounce,
And froth and roar, and fling--but this, I’ve said,
Surged in scarce rougher than a lady’s flounce:--
But then, a grander contrast thus it bred
With the wild welkin, seeming to pronounce
Something more awful in the serious ear,
As one would whisper that a lion’s near--
Who just begins to roar; so the hoarse thunder
Growl’d long--but low--a prelude note of death,
As if the stifling clouds yet kept it under,
But still it mutter’d to the sea beneath
Such a continued peal, as made us wonder
It did not pause more oft to take its breath,
Whilst we were panting with the sultry weather,
And hardly cared to wed two words together,
But watch’d the surly advent of the storm,
Much as the brown-cheek’d planters of Barbadoes
Must watch a rising of the Negro swarm:--
Meantime it steer’d, like Odin’s old Armadas,
Right on our coast;--a dismal, coal-black form;--
Many proud gaits were quell’d--and all bravadoes
Of folly ceased--and sundry idle jokers
Went home to cover up their tongs and pokers.
So fierce the lightning flashed. In all their days
The oldest smugglers had not seen such flashing,
And they are used to many a pretty blaze,
To keep their Hollands from an awkward clashing
With hostile cutters in our creeks and bays:--
And truly one could think without much lashing
The fancy, that those coasting clouds so awful
And black, were fraught with spirits as unlawful.
The gay Parade grew thin--all the fair crowd
Vanish’d--as if they knew their own attractions,--
For now the lightning through a near hand cloud
Began to make some very crooked fractions--
Only some few remain’d that were not cow’d,
A few rough sailors, who had been in actions,
And sundry boatmen, that with quick yeo’s,
Lest it should _blow_,--were pulling up the _Rose_:
(No flower, but a boat)--some more hauling
The _Regent_ by the head:--another crew
With that same cry peculiar to their _calling_--
Were heaving up the _Hope_:--and as they knew
The very gods themselves oft get a mauling
In their own realms, the seamen wisely drew
The _Neptune_ rather higher on the beach,
That he might lie beyond his billows’ reach.
And now the storm, with its despotic power
Had all usurp’d the azure of the skies,
Making our daylight darker by an hour,
And some few drops--of an unusual size--
Few and distinct--scarce twenty to the shower,
Fell like huge tear-drops from a Giant’s eyes--
But then this sprinkle thicken’d in a trice
And rain’d much _harder_--in good solid ice.
Oh! for a very storm of words to show
How this fierce crash of hail came rushing o’er us!
Handel would make the gusty organs blow
Grandly, and a rich storm in music score us!--
But ev’n his music seem’d composed and low,
When we were _handled_ by this Hailstone Chorus;
Whilst thunder rumbled, with its awful sound,
And frozen comfits roll’d along the ground--
As big as bullets:--Lord! how they did batter
Our crazy tiles:--And now the lightning flash’d
Alternate with the dark, until the latter
Was rarest of the two:--the gust too dash’d
So terribly, I thought the hail must shatter
Some panes,--and so it did--and first it smash’d
The very square where I had chose my station
To watch the general illumination.
Another, and another, still came in,
And fell in jingling ruin at my feet,
Making transparent holes that let me win
Some samples of the storm:--Oh! it was sweet
To think I had a shelter for my skin,
Culling them through these “loopholes of retreat”--
Which in a little we began to glaze--
Chiefly with a jacktowel and some baize!
By which, the cloud had pass’d o’erhead, but play’d
Its crooked fires in constant flashes still,
Just in our rear, as though it had array’d
Its heavy batteries at Fairlight Mill,
So that it lit the town, and grandly made
The rugged features of the Castle Hill
Leap, like a birth, from chaos, into light,
And then relapse into the gloomy night--
As parcel of the cloud:--the clouds themselves,
Like monstrous crags and summits everlasting,
Piled each on each in most gigantic shelves,
That Milton’s devils were engaged in blasting.--
We could e’en fancy Satan and his elves
Busy upon those crags, and ever casting
Huge fragments loose--and that we _felt_ the sound
They made in falling to the startled ground.
And so the tempest scowl’d away,--and soon,
Timidly shining through its skirts of jet,
We saw the rim of the pacific moon,
Like a bright fish entangled in a net,
Flashing its silver sides,--how sweet a boon,
Seem’d her sweet light, as though it would beget,
With that fair smile, a calm upon the seas--
Peace in the sky--and coolness in the breeze!
Meantime the hail had ceased:--and all the brood
Of glaziers stole abroad to count their gains;--
At every window, there were maids who stood
Lamenting o’er the glass’s small remains,--
Or with coarse linens made the fractious good,
Stanching the wind in all the wounded panes,--
Or, holding candles to the panes, in doubt:
The wind resolved--blowing the candles out.
No house was whole that had a southern front,--
No green-house but the same mishap befell:--
_Bow_-windows and _bell_-glasses bore the brunt,--
No sex in glass was spared!--For those who dwell
On each hill side, you might have swam a punt
In any of their parlours;--Mrs. Snell
Was slopp’d out of her seat,--and Mr. Hitchin
Had a _flow’r_-garden wash’d into a _Kitchen_.
[Illustration: SHE FROM OCEAN RISING.]
But still the sea was mild, and quite disclaim’d
The recent violence.--Each after each
The gentle waves a gentle murmur framed,
Tapping, like Woodpeckers, the hollow beach.
Howbeit his _weather eye_ the seaman aim’d
Across the calm, and hinted by his speech
A gale next morning--and when morning broke
There was a gale--“quite equal to bespoke.”
Before high water--(it were better far
To christen it not _water_ then, but _waiter_,
For then the tide is _serving at the bar_)
Rose such a swell--I never saw one greater!
Black, jagged billows rearing up in war
Like ragged roaring bears against the baiter,
With lots of froth upon the shingle shed,
Like stout pour’d out with a fine _beachy head_.
No open boat was open to a fare,
Or launch’d that morn on seven-shilling trips;
No bathing woman waded--none would dare
A dipping in the wave--but waived their dips;
No seagull ventured on the stormy air,
And all the dreary coast was clear of ships;
For two _lea shores_ upon the river Lea
Are not so perilous as one at sea.
Awe-struck we sat, and gazed upon the scene
Before us in such horrid hurly-burly,--
A boiling ocean of mix’d black and green,
A sky of copper colour, grim and surly,--
When lo, in that vast hollow scoop’d between
Two rolling Alps of water,--white and curly!
We saw a pair of little arms a-skimming,
Much like a first or last attempt at swimming!
Sometimes a hand--sometimes a little shoe--
Sometimes a skirt--sometimes a hank of hair,
Just like a dabbled seaweed, rose to view,
Sometimes a knee, sometimes a back was bare--
At last a frightful summerset he threw
Right on the shingles. Any one could swear
The lad was dead--without a chance of perjury,
And batter’d by the surge beyond all surgery!
However, we snatch’d up the corse thus thrown,
Intending, Christian-like, to sod and turf it,
And after venting Pity’s sigh and groan,
Then Curiosity began with _her_ fit;
And lo! the features of the Small Unknown!
’Twas he that of the surf had had this surfeit!--
And in his fob, the cause of late monopolies!
We found a contract signed Mephistopheles!
A bond of blood, whereby the sinner gave
His forfeit soul to Satan in reversion,
Providing in this world he was to have
A lordship over luck, by whose exertion
He might control the course of cards, and brave
All throws of dice,--but on a sea excursion
The juggling Demon, in his usual vein,
Seized the last cast--and _Nick’d_ him in the _main_!
LINES
TO A LADY ON HER DEPARTURE FOR INDIA.
Go where the waves run rather Holborn-hilly,
And tempests make a soda-water sea,
Almost as rough as our rough Piccadilly,
And think of me!
Go where the mild Madeira ripens _her_ juice,--
A wine more praised that it deserves to be:
Go pass the Cape, just capable of ver-juice,
And think of me!
[Illustration: KETCHING ITS PREY.]
Go where the Tiger in the darkness prowleth
Making a midnight meal of he and she;
Go where the Lion in his hunger howleth,
And think of me!
Go where the serpent dangerously coileth,
Or lies along at full length like a tree,
Go where the Suttee in her own soot broileth,
And think of me!
Go where with human notes the Parrot dealeth
In mono-_polly_-logue with tongue as free,
And like a woman, all she can revealeth,
And think of me!
Go to the land of muslin and nankeening,
And parasols of straw where hats should be,
Go to the land of slaves and palankeening,
And think of me!
Go to the land of Jungles and of vast hills,
And tall bamboos--may none _bamboozle_ thee!
Go gaze upon their Elephants and Castles,
And think of me!
Go where a cook must always be a currier,
And parch the pepper’d palate like a pea,
Go where the fierce musquito is a worrier,
And think of me!
[Illustration: “A SOW WESTER OFF THE CAPE:--PIGS IN THE TROUGH OF THE
SEA.”]
Go where the maiden on a marriage plan goes,
Consign’d for wedlock to Calcutta’s quay,
Where woman goes for mart, the same as mangoes,
And think of me!
Go where the sun is very hot and fervent,
Go to the land of pagod and rupee,
Where every black will be your slave and servant,
And think of me!
THE NELSON.
This here, your honour, upon wheels, is the true genuine real
_Nelson’s Car_.
GUIDE TO GREENWICH HOSPITAL.
“THE Nelson,” I repeated to myself, as I read that illustrious name on
the dicky of the vehicle--“the Nelson.” My fancy instantly converted
the coach into a first-rate, the leaders and wheelers into sea-horses,
the driver into Neptunus, brandishing a trident, and the guard into a
Triton blowing his wreathed shell. There was room for one on the box,
so I climbed up, and took my seat beside the coachman. “Now, clap on
all sail,” said I, audibly, “I am proud to be one of the crew of the
great Nelson, the hero of Aboukir.”
“Begging your pardon, Sir,” said the coachman, “the Hero ain’t a booker
at Mrs. Nelson’s: it goes from some other yard.” Gracious powers! what
a tumble down stairs for an idea! As for mine, it pitched on its head,
as stunned and stupefied as if it had rolled down the whole flight
at the Monument. “I have made a Bull, indeed,” I exclaimed, as the
noted inn at Aldgate occurred to my memory; “but we are the slaves of
association,” I continued, addressing the coachman, “and the name of
Nelson identified itself with the Union Jack.”
“I really can’t say,” replied the coachman, very civilly, “whether
the name of Mrs. Nelson is down to the Slave Associations or not: but
as for Jack, if you mean Jack Bunce, he’s been off the Union these
six months. Too fond of the _Bar_, Sir” (here he tipped me the most
significant of winks), “to keep his seat on the _Bench_.”
“I alluded, my good fellow, to Nelson, the wonder of the maritime
world--the dauntless leader when yard was opposed to yard, and seas
teemed with blood.”
“We’re all right--as right as a trivet,” said the coachman, after a
pause of perplexity; “I thought our notions were getting rather wide
apart, and that one of us wanted putting straight; but I see what you
mean, and quite go along with your opinion, step for step. To be sure,
Mrs. Nelson has done the world and all for coaching; and the Wonder
_is_ the crack of all the drags in London, and so is the Dauntless,
let yard turn out agin yard, as you say, any day you like. And as for
leaders, and teams full of blood, there’s as pretty a sprinkling of
blood in the tits I’m now tooling of--”
“The vehicles of the proprietress, and the appearance of the animals,
with their corresponding caparisons,” said I, “have often gratified my
visual organs and elicited my mental plaudits.”
“That’s exactly what _I_ says,” replied the coachman, very briskly,
“there’s no humbug nor no nonsense about Mrs. Nelson. You never see her
a standing a-foaming and fretting in front o’ the Bank, with a regular
mob round her, and looking as if she’d bolt with the Quicksilver. And
you never see her painted all over her body, wherever there’s room for
’em, with Saracen Heads, and Blue Boars, and Brown Bears, from her
roller bolts to her dicky and hind boot. She’s plain and neat, and
nothin’ else--and is fondest of having her body of a claret colour,
pick’d out with white, and won’t suffer the Bull, no where, except on
the back-gammon board.”
I know not how much further the whimsical description might have gone,
if a strapping, capless, curly-headed lass, running with all her might
and main, had not addressed a screaming retainer to the coachman. With
some difficulty he pulled up, for he had been tacitly giving me a proof
that the craft of _his_ Nelson was a first-rate, with regard to its
rate of travelling.
“If you please, Mr. Stevens,” said the panting damsel, holding up
something towards the box--“if you please, Mr. Stevens, mother’s gone
to Lonnon--in the light cart--and will you be so kind as to give
her--her linchpin.”
Mr. Stevens took the article with a smile, and I fancied with a sly
squeeze of the hand that delivered it.
“If such a go had been anyone’s but your mother’s, Fanny,” he slyly
remarked, “I should have said it was somebody in love.” The Dispatch
was too strictly timed to allow of further parley; the horses broke, or
were rather broken, into a gallop, in pursuit of the mother of Fanny,
the Flower of Waltham; and the pin secretly acting as a spur, we did
the next five mile in something like twenty minutes.
In spite, however, of this unusual speed, we never overtook Mrs.
Merryweather and her cart till we arrived at the Basing-House, where we
found her chirping over a cup of ale; as safe and sound as if linchpins
had never been invented; in fact, she made as light of the article,
when it was handed to her, as if it had been only a pin out of her gown!
[Illustration: FANCY PORTRAIT--MRS. NELSON.]
“Well, I must say one thing for Mrs. Nelson,” said our coachman, as he
resumed his seat on the box, “and that’s this. There’s no pinning at
the Bull. She sets her face against everything but the patent boxes.
She may come to a runaway with a bolter--or drop the ribbons--or make a
mistake in clearing a gate, by being a little lushy--but you’ll never
see Mrs. Nelson lying flat on her side in the middle of the road, with
her insides gone to smash, and her outsides well distributed, because
she’s been let go out of the yard without one of her pins.”
[Illustration: THE STAMP DUTY ON SCOTCH LINEN.]
SONNET
TO A SCOTCH GIRL, WASHING LINEN AFTER HER COUNTRY FASHION.
WELL done and wetly, thou Fair Maid of Perth,
Thou mak’st a washing picture well deserving
The pen and pencilling of Washington Irving:
Like dripping Naiad, pearly from her birth,
Dashing about the water of the Firth,
To cleanse the calico of Mrs. Skirving,
And never from thy dance of duty swerving
As there were nothing else than dirt on earth!
Yet what is thy reward? Nay, do not start!
I do not mean to give thee a new damper,
But while thou fillest this industrious part
Of washer, wearer, mangler, presser, stamper,
Deserving better character--thou art
What Bodkin would but call--“a common tramper.”
MY APOLOGY.
GENTLE READERS,
For the present month, there must be what Dr. Johnson called a solution
of continuity in my “Literary Reminiscences.” Confined to my chamber
by what ought to be termed _room_atism--then attacked by my old
livery complaint--and finally, by a minor, but troublesome malady,
the Present has too much prevailed over the Past, to let me indulge
in any retrospective reviews. In such cases, on the stage, when a
Performer is unable to support his character, a substitute is usually
found to read the part; but, unfortunately, in the present case there
is no part written, and consequently it cannot be read. But apropos of
theatricals--there is an anecdote on point.
In the Olympic days of the great Elliston, there was one evening a
tremendous tumult at his Theatre, in consequence of the absence of a
favourite performer. One man in the pit--a Butcher--was especially
vociferous in his cry for “Carl! Carl! Carl!” Others called for the
Manager, who duly made his appearance, and black as the weather
looked, he was the very sort of pilot to weather the storm. With one
of his princely bows he proceeded to address the House. “Ladies
and Gentlemen--but by your leave I will address myself to a single
individual. I will ask that gentleman (pointing to the vociferous
Butcher) what right he has to demand the appearance of Mr. Carl?”
“’Cos,” said the Butcher, “’cos he’s down in the Bill.” Such an
undeniable answer would have staggered any other Manager than Elliston,
but he was not easily to be disconcerted. “Because he is down in the
bill!” he echoed, in a tone of the loftiest indignation: “Ladies and
Gentlemen, the Mr. Carl, so unseasonably, so vociferously and so
unfeelingly called for, is at this very moment labouring under severe
illness--he is in bed. And let me ask, is a man, a fellow-creature,
a human being, to be torn from his couch, from his home, on a cold
night, from the affectionate attentions of his wife and family, at
the risk of his valuable life perhaps, to go through a fatiguing part
because he happens to be DOWN IN THE BILL?” [Cries of “Shame, shame!”
from all parts of the house.] “And yet, ladies and gentlemen, there
stands a man--if I may call him so--a Butcher, that for his own selfish
gratification--the amusement of a few short hours--would risk the very
existence of a deserving member of society, a good husband, father,
friend, and one of your favourite actors, and all, forsooth, because
he is DOWN IN THE BILL!” [Universal hooting, with cries of “Turn him
out.”] “By all means,” acquiesced the Manager, with one of his best
bows--and the indignant pittites actually hooted and kicked their own
champion out of the theatre, as something more than a Butcher, and less
than a Christian.
Now I am myself, gentle readers, in the same predicament with Mr.
Carl. Like him I am an invalid--and like him I am unfortunately down
in the Bill. It would not become me to set forth my own domestic or
social virtues, or to hint what sort of gap my loss would make in
society--still less would it consist with modesty to compare myself
with a favourite actor--but as a mere human being I throw myself on
your mercy, and ask, in common charity, would you have had me leave
my warm bed, to shiver in a printer’s damp sheets, at the risk of my
reputation perhaps, and for the mere amusement of some half hour, or
more probably for no amusement at all--simply because I was “_down in
the Bill_?”
But there is no such Butcher, or Butcheress, or little Butcherling,
amongst you; and by your good leave and patience, the instalment of my
Reminiscences that is over due, shall be paid with interest in the NEXT
NUMBER.
[Illustration: THE TOP OF HIS PROFESSION.]
SONNET TO A DECAYED SEAMAN.
HAIL! seventy-four cut down! Hail, Top and Lop!
Unless I’m much mistaken in my notion,
Thou wast a stirring Tar, before that hop
Became so fatal to thy locomotion;--
Now, thrown on shore, like a mere weed of ocean,
Thou readest still to men a lesson good,
To King and Country showing thy devotion,
By kneeling thus upon a stump of wood!
Still is thy spirit strong as alcohol;
Spite of that limb, begot of acorn-egg,--
Methinks,--thou Naval History in one Vol.--
A virtue shines, e’en in that timber leg,
For unlike others that desert their Poll,
Thou walkest ever with thy “Constant Peg!”
THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION.
_Dreadful Fire--Destruction of both Houses of Parliament--The Speaker’s
House gutted--Reports of Incendiarism._
IT is our unexpected lot to announce that the Houses of Lords and
Commons, so often threatened with combustion, are in a state of actual
ignition. At this moment, both fabrics are furiously burning. We are
writing this paragraph without the aid of lamp or candles; by the mere
reflection of the flames. Nothing is known of the origin of the fire,
although it is throwing a light upon everything else.--_Evening Star._
The devouring element which destroyed Covent Garden and Drury Lane,
the Royalty and the Pantheon, has made its appearance on a new stage,
equally devoted to declamatory elocution. St. Stephen’s Chapel is in
flames! The floor which was trodden by the eloquent legs of a Fox,
a Burke, a Pitt, and a Sheridan, is reduced to a heap of ashes; and
the benches which sustained the Demosthenic weight of a Wyndham, a
Whitbread, and a Wilberforce, are a mere mass of charcoal. The very
roof that re-echoed the classicalities of Canning is nodding to its
fall. In Parliamentary language, Fire is in possession of the House:
the Destructive spirit is on its legs, and the Conservative principle
can offer but a feeble opposition.--_Daily Post._
The blow is struck. What we have long foreseen has come to pass.
Incendiarism triumphs! The whole British Empire, as represented by the
three estates, is in a blaze! The Throne, the Lords, and the Commons,
are now burning. The cycle is complete. The spirit of Guy Fawkes
revives in 1834!
England seems to have changed places with Italy; London with Naples.
We stand hourly on the brink of a crater; every step we take is on
a solfaterra--not a land of Sol Fa, as some musical people would
translate it; but a frail crust, with a treacherous subsoil of ardent
brimstone! At length the eyes of our rulers are opened; but we must
ask, could nothing short of such an eruption awaken them to a sense
of the perilous state of the country? For weeks, nay, months past, at
the risk of being considered alarmists, we have called the attention
of the legislature and magistracy to a variety of suspicious symptoms
and signs of the times, and in particular to the multiplied chemical
inventions, for the purpose of obtaining instantaneous lights. Well
are certain matches or fire-boxes called Lucifers, for they may be
applied to the most diabolical purposes! The origin of the fire cannot
raise the shadow of a doubt in any reasonable mind. Accident is out
of the question. Tell us not of tallies. We have just tried our
milk-woman’s, and it contained so much water, that nothing could make
it ignite.--_Britannic Guardian_.
The Houses of Parliament are in flames. We shall stop the press to give
full particulars. Our reporters are at the spot, and Mons. C----, the
celebrated Salamander, is engaged to give a description of the blazing
_interiors_, exclusively for this journal.--_Daily Times._
_From a Correspondent._
On Thursday evening, towards seven o’clock, I was struck by the
singular appearance of the moon silvering the opposite chimneys with
a blood-red light, a lunar phenomenon, which I conceived belonged
only to our theatres. It speedily occurred to me that there must be
a conflagration in my vicinity, and after a little hunting by scent
as well as sight, I found myself in front of the Houses of Lords
and Commons, which were burning with a rapidity and brilliancy that
I make bold to say did not always characterise their proceedings.
By favour of my natural assurance, which seemed to identify me with
the firemen, I was allowed to pass through the lines of guards and
policemen, who surrounded the blazing pile, and was thus enabled to
select a favourable position for overlooking the whole scene. It was
an imposing sight. The flames rose from the Peers’ in a volume, as red
as the Extraordinary Red Book, and the House of Commons was not at
all behind-hand in voting supplies of timber and other combustibles.
Westminster Hall reminded me vividly of a London cry, “Hall hot, Hall
hot,” that was familiar in our childhood--and the Gothic architecture
of the Abbey seemed unusually _florid_. Instead of dingy stone, the
venerable pile appeared to be built of the well-baked brick of the
Elizabethan age. Indeed, so red-hot was its aspect, that it led to a
ludicrous misapprehension on the part of the populace. A procession,
bearing several male and female figures in a state of insensibility,
naturally gave rise to the most painful conjectures, inferring loss of
human life by the devouring element, but I have reason to believe it
was only the Dean and Chapter saving the Wax-Work. As far as my own
observation went, the first object carried out certainly bore a strong
resemblance to General Monk.
In the meantime a select party had effected an entrance into the Hall,
but not without some serious delay, occasioned, I believe, by somebody
within bringing the wrong key, that belonged to a tea-caddy. However,
at last they entered, and I followed their example. The first person
I beheld was the veteran Higginbottom, so unfairly, but facetiously,
put to death by the authors of the Rejected Addresses; for no man is
more alive to his duty. But he was sadly hampered. First came one
Hon. Gent. said to be Mr. Morrison, and insisted on directing the
_Hose_ department; and next arrived a noble Lord from Crockford’s, who
wouldn’t sit out, but persisted in taking a hand, and playing, though
every body agreed that he played too high. I mention this, because some
of the journals have imputed mismanagement to the engines, and have
insinuated that the pipes wanted organising; indeed, I myself overheard
a noble director of the Academy of Music lamenting that the firemen did
not “play in concert.”
[Illustration: PLAYING AT HAZARD.]
The same remark applies with greater force to the House of Commons.
Here all was confusion worse confounded, and Higginbottom’s station
was enviable, compared with that of some of the poor fellows in St.
Stephen’s Chapel. A considerable number of members had arrived, and
without any attention to their usual parliamentary rules, were all
making motions at once, which nobody seconded. The most prominent,
I was informed, were Mr. Hume, Mr. O’Connell, Mr. Attwood, Mr.
Buckingham, Mr. Pease, Sir Andrew, and Mr. Buxton--the latter almost
covered with blacks. The clamour was terrific, and I really expected
that the poor foremen who held the pipes would be torn in pieces. Every
body wanted to command the Coldstream. Nothing but shouts of “Here!
here! here!” answered like an Irish echo by cries of “There! there!
there!” “Oh, save my savings!”--“My poor, Poor Bill!” “More water--more
water for my Drunkenness!” “Work awa, lads, work awa--it’s no the
Sabbath, and ye may just play at what ye like!”
In pleasing contrast to this tumult, was the unusual and cordial
unanimity of the members of both Houses, in rescuing whatever was
portable from the flames. It was a delightful novelty to see the
Lords helping the Commons in whatever they moved or carried. No party
spirit--no Whig, pulling at one leg of the table, whilst a Tory tugged
at another in the opposite direction. They seemed to belong to the
Hand-in-Hand. Peers and Commoners were alike seen burthened with loads
of papers or furniture. Mr. Calvert, in particular, worked like any
porter. Of course, in rescuing the papers and parchments, there was no
time for inspecting their contents, and some curious results were the
consequence. Every body remembers the pathetic story in the Tatler,
of the lover who saved a strange lady from a burning theatre, under
the idea that he was preserving the mistress of his affections, and
some similar mistakes are currently reported to have occurred at the
late conflagration--and equally to the chagrin of the parties. I go
by hearsay, and cannot vouch for the facts, but it is said that the
unpopular Six Acts, including what I believe is called the Gagging
Act, were actually preserved by Mr. Cobbett. Mr. O’Connell saved the
Irish Coercion Bill, whilst the Reform Bill was snatched like “a brand
out of the fire,” by a certain noble Duke, who resolutely set his face
against it in all its stages! Amongst others, Mr. Ricardo saved an old
tattered flag, which he thought was “the standard of value.”
[Illustration: CRIBBAGE:--ONE FOR HIS NOB AND TWO FOR HIS HEELS.]
However deficient in general combination, and concentration of
energies, individual efforts were beyond all praise. The instances of
personal exertion and daring were numerous. Mr. Rice worked amidst
the flames till he was nearly baked; and everybody expected that Mr.
Pease would be parched. The greatest danger was from the melted metal
pouring down from the windows and roof. The heads of some of the Hon.
Gentlemen were literally nothing but lead. Great apprehensions were
entertained of the falling in of one of the walls, which eventually
gave way, but fortunately everybody had retreated on the timely warning
of a gentleman, Mr. O’Connell, I believe, who declared that he saw a
Rent in it.
I did not enter the House of Lords, which was now one mass of glowing
fire, but directed my attention towards the Speaker’s mansion, which
was partially burning. The garden behind was nearly filled with
miscellaneous property--and numbers of well-dressed gentlemen were
every moment rushing into the house, from which they issued again,
laden with spits, sauce-pans, and other culinary implements. I, myself,
saw one zealous individual thus encumbered--with a stew-pan on his
head, the meat-screen under one arm, the dripping-pan under the other,
the frying-pan in his right hand, the grid-iron in his left, and the
rolling-pin in his mouth. Indeed, it is said that every article in the
kitchen was saved down to the salt-box; and the cook declares that such
was the anxiety to save her she was “cotched up in twelve gentlemen’s
arms, and never felt her feet till the corner of Abingdon Street.”
The whole of the Foot Guards were in attendance, as well as a
great number of the police, but the thieves had mustered in great
force, and there was a good deal of plundering, which was however
checked temporarily by a gentleman said to be one of the members and
magistrates for Essex, who jumped up on a railing and addressed the
populace to the following effect, “How do you hall dare!”
The origin of the fire is involved in much mystery; nor is it correctly
ascertained by whom it was first discovered. Some say that one of the
serjeants, in taking up the insignia, was astonished to find the mace
as hot as ginger. Others relate that a Mr. Spell, or Shell, or Snell,
whilst viewing the House, although no dancer, began suddenly, and in
his boots, to the utter amazement of his companions and Mrs. Wright,
the housekeeper, to jump and caper like a bear upon a hotted floor.
This story certainly seems to countenance a report that the mischief
originated in the warming apparatus, an opinion that is very current,
but, for my own part, I cannot conceive that the Collective Wisdom,
which knows how to lay down laws for us all, should not know how to lay
down flues. Rumours of Incendiarism are also very generally prevalent,
and stories are in circulation of the finding of half-burnt matches and
other combustibles. But these facts rest on very frail foundations. The
links said to have been found in the Speaker’s garden have turned out
to be nothing but German sausages; and another cock-and-a-bull that has
got abroad will probably come to no better end. A Mr. Dudley affirms
that he smelt the fire before it broke out, at Cooper’s Hill; but such
olfactories are too much like manufactories to be believed.
I am, Sir, your most obedient Servant,
X. Y. Z.
_Another Account._
The writer of these lines, who resides in Lambeth, was first awakened
to a sense of conflagration by a cry of “Fire” from a number of persons
who were running in the direction of Westminster Bridge. Owning myself
a warm enthusiast on the subject of ignition, and indeed not having
missed a fire for the last fifty years, except one, and that was only a
chimney, it may be supposed the exclamation in question had an electric
effect. We are all the slaves of some physical bias, strange as it may
appear to others with opposite tendencies. It is recorded of some great
marshal that he disliked music, but testified the liveliest pleasure at
a salvo of artillery or a roll of thunder, and the rumble of an engine
has the same effect on the author of these lines. To say I am a guebre,
or fire-worshipper, is only to confess the truth. I have a sort of
observatory erected on the roof of my house, from which, if there be a
break-out within the circuit of the metropolis, it may be discovered,
and before going to bed I invariably visit this look-out.
Every man has his hobby-horse, and, figuratively speaking, mine was
always kept harnessed and ready to run to a fire with the first engine.
Many a time I have arrived before the turncocks, though I perhaps had
to traverse half London, and I scarcely remember an instance that I
did not appear long before the water. Habit is second nature--I verily
believe I could sniff a conflagration by instinct; and if I was not, I
ought to have been, the trainer of the firemen’s dog, which at present
attracts so much of the public attention, by his eager running along
with the Sun, the Globe, the British, and the Hand-in-Hand.
[Illustration: “’TIS DISTANCE LENDS ENCHANTMENT TO THE VIEW.”]
Of course I have seen a great many fires in my time--Rotherhithe,
the theatres, the Custom-house, &c. &c. I remember in the days of
Thistlewood and Co., when the metropolis was expected to be set on
fire, I slept for three weeks in my clothes in order to be ready for
the first alarm; for I had the good fortune to witness the great riots
of 1780, when no less than eight fires were blazing at once, and a
lamentable sight it was. I say lamentable, because it was impossible
to be present at them all at the same time; but my good genius directed
me to Langdale’s the Distiller, which made (excuse the vulgar popular
phrase) a very satisfactory flare-up.
The Rotherhithe fire, not the recent little job, but some fifteen
or twenty years ago, was also on a grand scale, and very lasting.
The engine-pipes were wilfully cut; and I remember some of my
friends rallying me on my well-known propensity, jocularly accusing
me of lending my knife and my assistance. The Custom-house was a
disappointment; it certainly cleared itself effectually, but it was
done by day-light, and consequently the long-room fell short of my
anticipations. Drury-lane and Covent-garden were better: but I have
observed generally that theatres burn with more attention to stage
effect. They avoid the noon; a dark night to a fire is like the black
letters in a benefit-bill, setting off the red ones.
The destruction of the Kent Indiaman I should like to have witnessed,
but contrary to the opinion of many experienced amateurs I conceive
the Dartford Mills must have been a failure. Powder magazines make
very indifferent conflagrations; they are no sooner on fire than they
are off,--all is over before you know where you are, and there is no
getting under, which quite puts you out. But fires, generally, are not
what they used to be. What with gas, and new police, steam, and one
cause or other, they have become what one might call slow explosions.
A body of flame bursts from all the windows at once, and before B 25
can call fi-er in two syllables, the roof falls in, and all is over.
It was not so in _my_ time. First a little smoke would issue from a
window-shutter, like the puff of a cigar, and after a long spring of
his rattle, the rheumatic watchman had time to knock double and treble
knocks, from No. 9 to No. 35, before a spark made its appearance out of
the chimney-pot. The Volunteers had time to assemble under arms, and
muffle their drums, and the bell-ringers to collect in the belfry, and
pull an alarm peal backwards. The parish engines even, although pulled
along by the pursy churchwardens, and the paralytic paupers, contrived
to arrive before the fire fairly broke out in the shape of a little
squib-like eruption from the garret-window. The affrighted family,
fourteen in number, all elaborately drest in their best Sunday clothes,
saved themselves by the street-door, according to seniority, the
furniture was carefully removed, and after an hour’s pumping, the fire
was extinguished without extending beyond the room where it originated,
namely a bed-room on the second floor. Such was the progress _in my
time_ of a fire, but it is the fashion now to sacrifice everything
to _pace_. Look at our race-horses, and look at our fox-hounds,--and
I will add look at our conflagrations. All that is cared for is a
burst--no matter how short, if it be but rapid. The devouring element
never sits down now to a regular meal--it pitches on a house and
_bolts_ it.
But I am wandering from the point. The announcement of both Houses of
Parliament being in flames thrilled through every fibre. It seemed
to promise what I may call a crowning event to the Conflagrationary
Reminiscences of an Octogenarian. I snatched up my hat, and rushed into
the street, at eighty years of age, with the alacrity of eighteen, when
I ran from Highgate to Horselydown, to be present at the gutting of a
ship chandler’s. As the bard says--
“Ev’n in our ashes live their wonted _fires_,”
and I could almost have supposed myself a fireman belonging to the
Phœnix. My first step into the street discouraged me, the moonlight was
so brilliant, and in such cases the most splendid blaze is somewhat
“shorn of its beams.” But a few steps reassured me. Even at the Surrey
side of the river the sparks and burning particles were falling like
flakes of snow--I mean of course the red snow formerly discovered by
Captain Ross, and the light was so great that I could have read the
small print of the Police Gazette with the greatest ease, only I don’t
take it in. I of course made the best of my way towards the scene, but
the crowd was already so dense that I could only attain a situation on
the Strand opposite Cotton Gardens, up to my knees in mud. Both Houses
of Parliament were at this time in a blaze, and no doubt presented as
striking objects of conflagration as the metropolis could offer. I say,
“no doubt,”--forgetting jammed against a barge with my back towards
the fire, I am unable to state anything on my own authority as an
eye-witness, excepting that the buildings on the Surreyside exhibited
a glowing reflection for some hours. At last the flowing of the tide
caused the multitude to retreat, and releasing me from my retrospective
position allowed me to gaze upon the ruins. By what I hear, it was a
most imposing sight--but in spite of my Lord Althorpe, I cannot help
thinking that Westminster Hall, with its long range, would have made
up an admirable fire. Neither can I agree with the many that it was an
Incendiary Act, that passed through both houses so rapidly. To enjoy
the thing, a later hour and a darker night would certainly have been
chosen. Fire-light and moon-light do not _mix well_:--they are best
_neat_.
I am, Sir, Yours, &c.,
SENEX.
_Various Accounts._
WE are concerned to state that Sir Jacob Jubb the new member for Shrops
was severely burnt, by taking his seat in the House, on a bench that
was burning under him. The danger of his situation was several times
pointed out to him, but he replied that his seat had cost him ten
thousand pounds, and he wouldn’t quit. He was at length removed by
force.--_Morning Ledger._
A great many foolish anecdotes of the fire are in circulation. One
of our contemporaries gravely asserts that the Marquis of Culpepper
was the last person who left the South Turret, a fact we beg leave to
question, for the exquisite reason that noble lord alluded to is at
present at Constantinople.--_The Real Sun._
We are enabled to state that the individual who displayed so much
coolness in the South Turret was Captain Back.--_The Public Journal._
[Illustration: FANCY PORTRAIT:--CAPTAIN BACK.]
It is said that considerable interest was evinced by the members of the
House of Commons who were present at the fire, as to the fate of their
respective Bills. One honourable gentleman, in particular, was observed
anxiously watching the last scintillations of some burnt paper. “Oh, my
Sabbath Observances!” he exclaimed, “There’s an end of religion! There
go the Parson and Clerk!”--_Public Diary._
The Earl of M. had a very narrow escape. His lordship was on the point
of kicking a bucket when a labourer rushed forward and snatched it out
of the way. The individual’s name is M’Farrel. We understand he is a
sober, honest, hard-working man, and has two wives, and a numerous
family; the eldest not above a year old.--_Daily Chronicle._
The exclamation of a noble lord, high in office, who was very active
at the fire, has been very incorrectly given. The words were as
follows:--“Blow the Commons! let ’em flare up--but oh,--for a save-all!
a save-all.”--_Morning News._
The public attention has been greatly excited by the extraordinary
statement of a commercial gentleman, that he smelt the fire at the Cock
and Bottle, in Coventry. He asserts that he mentioned the fact in the
commercial room to a deaf gentleman, and likewise to a dumb waiter, but
neither have any recollection of the circumstance. He has been examined
before the Common Council, who have elicited that he actually arrived
at Coventry on the night in question, by the Tallyho, and the near
leader of that coach has been sent for by express.--_New Monitor._
We were in error in stating that the Atlas was the first engine at
the scene of action. So early as five o’clock Mr. Alderman A. arrived
with his own garden engine, and began immediately to play upon the
Thames.--_British Guardian._
It must have struck everyone who witnessed the operations in the House
of Commons, that there was a lamentable want of “order! order! order!”
A great many gentlemen succeeded in making pumps of themselves, without
producing any check on the flames. The conduct of the military also was
far from unexceptionable. On the arrival of the Coldstream at the fire
they actually refused to fall in. Many declined to stand at ease on the
burning rafters--but what is the public interest to a private?--_Public
Advertiser._
_Monsieur C.’s Account. (Exclusive.)_
WHEN I am come first to the fire it was not long burnt up; and I was
oblige to walk up and down the floor to keep myself warm. At last, I
take my seat on the stove, quite convenient to look about. In the House
of Commons there was nobody, and I am all alone. The first thing I
observe was a great many rats, ratting about--but they did not known
which way to turn. So they were all burnt dead. The flames grew very
fast; and I am interested very much with the seats, how they burned,
quite different from one another. Some seats made what you call a great
splutter, and popped and bounced, and some other seats made no noise
at all. Mr. Bulwer’s place burned of a blue colour; Mr. Buckstone’s
turned quite black; and there was one made a flame the colour of a
drab. I observe one green flame and one orange, side by side, and they
hiss and roar at one another very furious. The gallery cleared itself
quite quickly, and the seat of Messieurs the reporters, exploded itself
like a cannon of forty-eight pounds. The speaking chair burnt without
any sound at all.
When everything is quite done in the Commons I leave them off, and go
to the House of Lords, where the fire was all in one sheet, and almost
the whole of its inside burnt out. I was able in this room to take
off my great coat. I could find nothing to be saved except one great
ink-stand, that was red hot, and which I carry away in my two hands.
Likewise here, as well as in the Commons, I bottled up several bottles
of smoke, to distribute afterwards, at five guineas a-piece, and may be
more; for I know the English people admire such things, and are fond
after reliques, like a madness almost. I did not make a long stop, for
whenever I was visible, the pompiers was so foolish as play water upon
me, and I was afraid of a catch-cold. In fact, when I arrive at home,
I find myself stuffed in my head, and fast in my chest, and my throat
was a little horse. I am going for it into a bath of boiling water, and
cannot write any more at full length.
_A Letter to a Labouring Man._
BUSHELL,
When you made a holiday last Whitsuntide to see the Sights of London,
in your way to the Waxwork and Westminster Abbey, you probably noticed
a vast pile of buildings in Palace Yard, and you stood and scratched
that shock head of yours, and wondered whose fine houses they were.
Seeing you to be a country clodpole, no doubt some well-dressed
vagabond, by way of putting a hoax upon the hawbuck, told you that in
those buildings congregated all the talent, all the integrity and
public spirit of the country--that beneath those roofs the best and
wisest, and the most honest men to be found in three kingdoms, met
to deliberate and enact the most wholesome, and just, and judicious
laws for the good of the nation. He called them the oracles of our
constitution, the guardians of our rights, and the assertors of our
liberties. Of course, Bushell, you were told all this; but nobody told
you, I dare say, that within those walls your master had lifted up his
voice, and delivered the only sound, rational, and wholesome, upright,
and able speeches that were ever uttered in St. Stephen’s Chapel. No,
nobody told you that. But when I come home, Bushell, I will lend you
all my printed speeches, and when you have spelt them, and read them,
and studied them, and got them by heart, bumpkin as you are, Bushell,
you will know as much of legislation as all our precious members
together.
[Illustration: “OUR CONSTITUTION’S GONE!”]
Well, Bushell, the fine houses you stood gaping at are burnt down,
gutted, as the vulgar call it, and nothing is left but the bare walls.
You saw Farmer Gubbins’ house, or, at least, the shell of it, after
the fire there: well, the Parliament Houses are exactly in the same
state. There is news for you! and now, Bushell, how do you feel? Why,
if the well-dressed vagabond told you the truth, you feel as if you had
had a stroke--for all the British Constitution is affected, and you
are a fraction of it, that is to say, a British subject. Your bacon
grows rusty in your mouth, and your table-beer turns to vinegar on your
palate. You cannot sleep at night, or work by day. You have no heart
for anything. You can hardly drag one clouted shoe after another. And
how do you look? Why, as pale as a parsnip, and as thin as a hurdle,
and your carroty locks stand bolt upright as if you had just met old
Lawson’s ghost with his head under his arm. I say thus you must feel
and look, Bushell, if what the well-dressed vagabond told you is the
truth. But is that the case? No. You drink your small-beer with a sigh
and smack of delight; and you bolt your bacon with a relish, as if, as
the virtuous Americans say, you could “go the whole hog.” Your clouted
shoes clatter about as if you were counting hobnails with the Lord
Mayor, and you work like a young horse, or an old ass, and at night
you snore like an oratorio of jews’ harps. Your face is as bold and
ruddy as the Red Lion’s. Your carroty locks lie sleek upon your poll,
and as for poor old Lawson’s ghost, you could lend him flesh and blood
enough to set him up again in life. But what, say you, does all this
tend to? I will tell you, Bushell. There are a great many well-dressed
vagabonds, besides the one you met in Palace Yard, who would persuade
a poor man that a House of Lords or Commons is as good to him as his
bread, beer, beef, bacon, bed, and breeches; and therefore I address
this to you, Bushell, to set such notions to rights by an appeal to
your own back and belly. And now I will tell you what you shall do. You
shall go three nights a week to the Red Lion (when your work is done),
and you may score up a pint of beer, at my cost, each time. And when
the parson, or the exciseman, or the tax-gatherer, or any such gentry,
begin to talk of that deplorable great burning, and the national
calamity, and such-like trash, you shall pull out my letter and read
to them--I say, Bushell, you shall read this letter to them, twice
over, loudly and distinctly, and tell them from me, that the burning of
twenty Parliament Houses wouldn’t be such a national calamity as a fire
at No. 1, Bolt Court.
PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE.
_To Mary Price, Fenny Hall, Lincolnshire._
O Mary,--I am writing in such a quiver, with my art in my mouth, and
my tung sticking to it. For too hole hours Ive bean Doin nothink but
taking on and going off, I mean into fits, or crying and blessing
goodness for my miraclus escape. This day week I wear inwallopped in
flams, and thinkin of roth to cum, and fire evverlasting. But thenks
to Diving Providings, hear I am, althowgh with loss of wan high brew
scotched off, a noo cap and my rite shew. But I hav bean terrifid to
deth. Wen I was ate, or it mite be nine, I fell on the stow, and hav
had a grate dred of fire evver since. Gudge then how low I felt at the
idear of burning along with the Lords and Communer’s. It as bean a
Warnin, and never, no, never never never agin will I go to Clandestiny
parties behind Mississis backs. I now see my errer, but temtashun
prevaled, tho the clovin fut of the Wicked Wan had a hand in it all:
Oh Mary, down on yure marrybones, and bless yure stars for sitiating
you in a loanly stooped poky place, wear you cant be lead into liteness
and gayty, if you was evver so inclind. Fore wipping willies and a
windmill is a dullish luck out, shure enuff, but its better then moor
ambishus prospex, and stairing at a grate fire, like a suckin pig, till
yure eyes is reddy to drop out of yure hed!
[Illustration: “WHY DON’T THE MEN PROPOSE?”]
You no wen Lady Manners is absent, a certin person allways givs a good
rowt:--and I had a card in Coarse. I went verry ginteel, my Cloke cost
I wont say Wot, and a hat and fethers to match. But it warnt to be.
After takin off my things, I had barely set down, wen at the front
dore there cums a dubble nock without any end to it, and a ring of the
bell at the saim time, like a triangle keepin cumpany with a big drum.
As soon as the door were opened a man with a pail face asked for the
buckits, and that was the fust news we had of the fire. Oh Mary, never
trust to the mail sects! They are all Alick from the Botcher and Backer
that flurts at the front dore, down to the deer dissevers you throw
away yure arts upon. For all their fine purfessions, they are only
filling your ears with picrust, they make trifles of yure afections,
and destroy yure comfits for life. They think no moore of parjuring
themselvs then I do of sweeping the earth. If yure wise you will sit
yure face agin all menkind and luv nonsense, as I meen to in futer,
or may be, wen you are dreeming of brid cake and wite fevers, you may
find yureself left with nothink but breeches of prommis. John Futman
is a proof in pint. Menny tims Ive give him a hiding at number fore,
and he allways had the best of the lardur at our stolin meatings, and
God nose Ive offun alloud him to idelize me wen I ort to have bean at
my wurks, besides larning to rite for his sack. Twenty housis afire
ort not to hav abaited his warmth, insted of witch to jump up at the
fust allurm and run away, leaving me to make my hone shifts. A treu
luver wood have staid to shear my fat. O Mary, if ever there was a
terryfickle spectikle that was won. Flams before and flams behind,
and flams overhead. Sich axing and hollowing out, and mobbing and
pumpin, and cussing and swaring, and the peple’s rushes into the Hous
purvented all gitting out. For my hone parts, I climed up the dresser,
and skreeked, but nobbody was man enuff to purtect. Men ant what they
was. I am sick of the retches! It used to be femails fust, but now its
furniter. I fully thort one gintleman was comin to cotch me up in arms,
but he prefered the fish kettle. As for the sogers they marcht off to
the wind seller and the pantry, ware they maid beleave to preserve
the gusberry gam. How I was reskewd at last Lord nose, for my hed was
unsensible tell I found meself setten on the pickid pinted ralings of
St. Margret’s Church, with my fethers all frizzild, and a shew off. But
of all lossis, my ridicule was most serius, for it had my puss in it.
How and ware it broke out is a mistery. Sum say both Howses was under
minded. Sum say the Common members got over heatid in there fluency.
A grate deal of property was burned, in spit of Lord Allthorp,
who ingaged every cotch, cab, and gobbing porter as conveyancers.
Westmunster may thenk his Lordship it did not lose its All. They say
the Lords and Communs was connectid with a grate menny historicle
associashuns, wich of coarse will hav to make good all dammage.
Fortnately, the Speker’s mornin, noon, and evning services of plait was
not at home, or it mite hav sufferd, for they say goold and silver as
stud the fire verry well, melted down when it got furthur off. Tauking
of plait a gentilman, who giv his card, Mr. William Soames, were verry
kind and partickler in his inquerries efter Mr. Speker’s vallybles. I
hope he will hav a place givn him for his indevvers.
Ware the poor burnt-out creturs will go noboddy nose. Sum say Exter
Hall, sum say the Refudge for the Destitut, and sum say the King will
lend them his Bensh to set upon! All I no is, I’ve had a frite that
will go with me to my grave. I am allways snifing fire by day and
dreeming on it by nite. Ony last Fryday I allarmd the hole naberhood by
screaching out of winder for the warter to be plugged up. Liting fires,
or striking lite, or making tindur, throes me into fits.
[Illustration: A REFINED WOMAN.]
I shall nevver be the womman I was; but that is no excus for John’s
unconstancy. I don’t dare to take my close off to go to bed, and I
practice clambering up and down by a rop in case, and I giv police M
25 a shillin now and than to keep a specious eye to number fore, and
be reddy to ketch anny won in his harms. But it cums to munny, and
particly givin the ingin keeper a pint of bear from time to time,
and drams to the turncox: where there’s nabers fires will happen,
howevver cerefull and precocius you may be youreself. I dred our too
nex dores; number three is a Gurmin fammily, and them orrid forriners
think nothink of smocking siggars in bed, witch will ketch sum day to
a curtainty. Number fiv is wus; since his wif’s deth Mr. Sanders has
betuck himself to comicle studis, and offin has a littel blo up amung
his pistles and morters. O! Mary, how happy is them as livs lick you,
as the song says, “Fur from the buzzy aunts of men.” If yu’re inflamd
its nobbody’s folt but youre hone. Pray take the gratest car. Have sure
eyes about you, and luck out for sparks; watever the men may say, don’t
allow backerpips or long snufs, and let evvery boddy be thurrowly put
out. Don’t neglect to rake out evvery nite, see that evvery sole in
the hows is turnd down or xtinguished, and allways blo yureself out
befour you go to yure piller. Thenk gudness you nevver larnd to reed,
and therefor will not take anny bucks to bed with you. Allways ware
stuff or woollin, insted of lite cottons and gingums, in case of the
coles throwin out coffens or pusses, by witch munny persons gains their
ends. In case of yure pettycots catchin don’t forgit standin on yure
hed, as recommended by the Human Society, becoz fire burns uppards,
but its a posishun as requiers practis. Have yure chimbly swept reglar
wonce a munth, and wen visiters cum neveer put hot coles in the warmin
pan, for fear you forgit and leave it in the spair bed. Remember fire
is a good sarvent but a bad master, and sure enuff wen it is master it
never gives a sarvent a munth’s notis. To be shure we have won marsy
in town that is unbenone in the country, and that is Swingeing; there
is no cornstax or heyrix in St. Jims’s Square. That is yure week pint,
and I trembil for the barns; a rockite or a roaming candle mite set you
in a blaze. But I hop and trust wat I say will never pruve the truth.
Oppydildock is good for burns, and I am, dear Mary,
Yure old and afexionate feller sarvent,
ANN GALE.
[Illustration: THE SWELL MOB.]
THE JUBB LETTERS.
_From Lady Jubb to Mrs. Phipps, Housekeeper at the Shrubbery,
Shrewsbury, Shrops._
MRS. PHIPPS,
You will prepare the house directly for the family’s return, not that
our coming back is absolutely certain, but events have happened to
render our stay in Portland Place very precarious. All depends upon
Sir Jacob. In Parliament or out of Parliament his motions must guide
ours. By this time what has happened will be known in Shropshire, but I
forbid your talking. Politics belong to people of property, and those
who have no voice in the country ought not to speak. In your inferior
situations it’s a duty to be ignorant of what you know. The nation is
out of your sphere, and besides, people out of town cannot know the
state of the country. I want to put you on your guard; thanks to the
press, as Sir Jacob says, public affairs cannot be kept private, and
the consequence is, the ignorant are as well informed as their betters.
The burning of both Houses of Parliament I am afraid cannot be hushed
up--but it is not a subject for servants, that have neither upper nor
lower members amongst them, and represent nobody. I trust to you, Mrs.
Phipps, to discourage all discussions in the kitchen, which isn’t the
place for parliamentary canvassing. The most ridiculous notions are
abroad. I should not be surprised even to hear that Sir Jacob had lost
his seat, because the benches were burnt, but we have been deprived
of none of our dignities or privileges. You will observe this letter
is _franked_; the fire made no difference to your master, he is not
dissolved, whatever the Blues may wish--he is still Sir Jacob Jubb,
Baronet, M.P.
[Illustration: THE LIGHT HORSE.]
The election of Sir Jacob at such a crisis was an act of Providence.
His firmness at the fire affords an example to posterity; although
the bench was burning under him he refused to retreat, replying
emphatically, “I will sit by my order.” As far as this goes you may
mention, and no more. I enjoin upon all else a diplomatic silence. Sir
Jacob himself will write to the bailiff, and whatever may be the nature
of his directions, I desire that no curiosity may be indulged in, and
above all, that you entertain no opinions of your own. You cannot
square with the upper circles. I would write more, but I am going to
a meeting, I need not say where, or upon what subject. I rely, Mrs.
Phipps, on your discretion, and am, &c.,
ARABELLA ANASTASIA JUBB.
_To T. Crawfurd, junior, Esquire, the Beeches, near Shrewsbury, Shrops._
DEAR TOM,
Throw up your cap and huzza. There’s glorious news, and so you’ll say
when I tell you. I could almost jump out of my skin for joy! Father’s
dismembered! The House of Commons caught fire, and he was dissolved
along with the rest.
[Illustration: “THE LAST DAYS OF POMP--.”]
I’ve never been happy since we came up to London, and all through
Parliament. The election was good sport enough. I liked the riding up
and down, and carrying a flag; and the battle, with sticks, between
the Blues and the Yellows, was famous fun; and I huzza’d myself hoarse
at our getting the day at last. But after that came the jollup, as we
used to say at Old Busby’s. Theme writing was a fool to it. If father
composed one maiden speech he composed a hundred, and he made me
knuckle down and copy them all out, and precious stupid stuff it was. A
regular physicker, says you, and I’d worse to take after it. He made us
all sit down and hear him spout them, and a poor stick he made.--Dick
Willis, that we used to call Handpost, was a dab at it compared to him.
He’s no better hand at figures, so much the worse for me. Did you ever
have a fag, Tom, at the national debt? I don’t know who owes it, but I
wish he’d pay it, or be made bankrupt at once. I’ve worked more sums
last month than ever I did at school in the half year,--geography the
same. I had to hunt out Don Carlos and Don Pedro, all over the maps. I
came in for a regular wigging one day, for wishing both the Dons were
well peppered, as Tom Tough says. I’ve seen none of the sights I wanted
to see. He wouldn’t let me go to the play, because he says the theatres
are bad schools, and would give me a vicious style of elocution. The
only pleasure he promised me was to sit in the gallery at the Commons
and see him present his petitions. Short-hand would have come next,
that I might take down his speechifying--for he says the reporters all
garble. An’t I well out of it all--and a place he was to get for me
besides, from the Prime Minister? I suppose the Navy Pay, to sit on a
high stool and give Jack Junk one pound two and ninepence twice a year.
I’d rather be Jack Junk himself, wouldn’t you, Tom? But father’s lost
his wicket, and huzza for Shropshire! In hopes of our soon meeting, I
remain, my dear Tom,
Your old chum and schoolfellow,
FREDERICK JUBB.
P.S.--A court gentleman has just come in, with a knock-me-down-again.
He says there’s to be a new election. I wish you’d do something; it
would be a real favour, and I will do as much for you another time.
What I want of you is, to get your father to set up against mine. Do
try, Tom--there’s a good fellow. I will ask every body I know to give
your side a plumper.
[Illustration: AN ADDER UP.]
_To Mr. Roger Davis, Bailiff, the Shrubbery, near Shrewsbury._
DAVIS,
I hope to God this will find you at home--I am writing in a state
of mind bordering on madness. I can’t collect myself to give
particulars--you will have a newspaper along with this--read that,
and your hair will stand on end. Incendiarism has reached its height
like the flaming thing on the top of the Monument. Our crisis is come.
To my mind--political suicide--is as bad as felo de se. Oh Whigs,
Whigs, Whigs--what have you brought us to! As the Britannic Guardian
well says--England is gone to Italy--London is at Naples--and we are
all standing on the top of Vesuvius. I have heard--and I believe
it--that an attempt has been made to choke Aldgate Pump. A Waltham
Abbey paper says positively that the mills were recently robbed of 513
barrels of powder, the exact number of the members for England and
Wales. What a diabolical refinement--to blow up a government with its
own powder! I can hardly persuade myself I am in England. God knows
where it will spread to--I mean the incendiary spirit. The dry season
is frightful--I suppose the springs are all dry. Keep the engine
locked in the stable for fear of a cut at the pipes. I’ll send you
down two more. Let all the labourers take a turn at them, by way of
practice. I’m persuaded the Parliament houses were burnt on purpose.
The flue story is ridiculous. Mr. Cooper’s is a great deal more to the
point. I believe everything I hear. A bunch of matches was found in
the Speaker’s kitchen. I saw something suspicious myself--some said
treacle, but I say tar. Have your eyes about you--lock all the gates,
day as well as night--and above all, watch the stacks. One Tiger is not
enough--get three or four more, I should have said Cæsar, but you know
I mean the house-dog. Good mastiffs,--the biggest and savagest you can
get. The gentry will be attempted first--beginning with the M.P.’s.
You and Barnes and Sam must sit up by turns--and let the maids sit up
too--women have sharp ears and sharp tongues.--If a mouse stirs I would
have them squall--danger or no danger. It’s the only way to sleep in
security--and comfort. I have read that the common goose is a vigilant
creature--and saved Rome. Get a score of them at the next market--don’t
stand about price--but choose them with good cackles. Alarm them now
and then to keep them watchful, Fire the blunderbuss off every night,
and both fowling pieces and all the pistols. If all the Gentry did
as much, it might keep the country quiet. If you were to ring the
alarm-bell once or twice in the middle of the night, it would be as
well--you would know then what help to depend upon. Search the house
often from the garret to the cellar, for combustibles--if you could
manage to go without candles, or any sort of light, it would be better.
[Illustration: THE MOVEMENT PARTY.]
You’d find your way about in the dark after a little practice. Pray
don’t allow any sweethearts; they may be Swings and Captain Rocks in
disguise, and their pretended flames turn out real. I’ve misgivings
about the maids. Tie them up and taste their liver, before they eat
it themselves--I mean the house-dogs; but my agitation makes me
unconnected. The scoundrels often poison them, before they attempt
robbery and arson. Keep the cattle in the cowhouse for fear of their
being houghed and hamstrung. Surely there were great defects somewhere.
The Houses could not have been properly protected--if they had been
watched as well as they were lighted--but it is too late to cast any
blame on individuals. A paltry spirit of economy has been our bane. A
few shillings would have purchased a watch-dog; and one or two geese in
each house might have saved the capitol of the constitution! But the
incendiary knew how to choose his time--an adjournment when there were
none sitting.
I say incendiary, because no doubt can exist in any cool mind, that
enters into the conflagration. I transcribe conclusive extracts from
several papers, the editors of which I know to be upright men, and they
all write on one side.
“We are confidently informed,” says the Beacon, “that a quantity of
tar-barrels was purchased at No. 2, High-street, Shadwell, about ten
o’clock on the morning of the fire. There was abundant time before six
a.m., for removing the combustibles to Westminster. The purchaser was a
short, squat, down-looking man, and the name on his cart was I. Burns.”
“Trifling circumstances,” says the Sentinel, “sometimes point to great
results. Our own opinion is formed. We have made it our business to
examine the Guys in preparation for the impending anniversary of the
Gunpowder Plot, and we affirm that every one of the effigies bore a
striking resemblance to some member or other of assemblies we need not
name. These are signs of the times.”
“We should be loth,” says the Detector, “to impute the late calamity to
any particular party: but we may reasonably inquire what relative stake
in the country is possessed by the Whigs and the Tories. The English
language may be taken as a fair standard. The first may lay claim to
perri-_wig_, scratch-_wig_, tie-_wig_, bob-_wig_, in short, the whole
family of the perruques, with _whig_-maleery. The latter, not to
mention other good things, have a vested right in ora_tory_, his_tory_,
terri_tory_, and vic_tory_. Can a man of common patriotism have a doubt
which side it is his interest to adhere to?”
[Illustration: “WHEN SHALL WE THREE MEET AGAIN?”]
That last paragraph, Davis, is what I call sound argument. Indeed I
don’t see how it is to be answered. You see they are all nem. con.
as to our danger, and decidedly reckon fire an inflammatory agent.
Take care what you read. Very pernicious doctrines are abroad, and
especially across the Western Channel. The Irish are really frightful.
I’m told they tie the cows’ tails together, and then saw off their
horns for insurrectionary bugles. The foundations of society are
shaken all over the world--the Whiteboys in Ireland, and the Blacks
in the West Indies, all seem to fight under the same colours. It’s
time for honest men to rally round themselves--but I’m sorry to say
public spirit and love of one’s country are at a low ebb. There’s too
much Americanism. One writer wants us to turn all our English wheat
to Indian corn, and to grow no sort of apples but Franklin pippins.
We want strong measures against associations and unions. There’s
demagogues abroad--and they wear white hats. By-the-bye, I more
than half suspect that fellow Johnson is a delegate. Take him to the
ale-house, and treat him freely--it may warm him to blab something.
Besides, you will see what sort of papers the public-houses take in.
You may drop a hint about their licenses. Give my compliments to Dr.
Garratt, and tell him I hope he will preach to the times, and take
strong texts. I wish I could be down amongst you, but I cannot desert
my post. You may tell the tenantry, and electors--I’m burnt out and
gutted--but my heart’s in the right place--and devoted to constituents.
Come what may, I will be an unshaken pillar on the basis of my circular
letter. Don’t forget any of my precautions. I am sorry I did not bring
all the plate up to town--but at the first alarm bury it. Take in no
letters or notices; for what you know they may be threatenings. If
any Irishman applies for work, discharge him instantly. All the old
spring-guns had better be set again, they are not now legal, but I am
ministerial, and if they did go off, the higher powers would perhaps
wink at them. But it’s fire that I am afraid of, fire that destroyed
my political roof, and may now assail my paternal one. Walk, as I may
say, bucket in hand, and be ready every moment for a break out. You
may set fire to the small faggot stack, and try your hands at getting
it under--there’s nothing worse than being taken by surprise. Read
this letter frequently, and impress these charges on your mind. It
is a sad change for England to have become, I may say, this fiery
furnace. I have not the least doubt, if properly traced, the burning
cliff at Weymouth would be found to be connected with Incendiarism, and
the Earthquakes at Chichester with our political convulsions. Thank
Providence in your prayers, Davis, that your own station forbids your
being an M.P., for a place in parliament is little better than sitting
on a barrel of gunpowder. Honour forbids to resign, or I should wish I
was nothing but a simple country gentleman. Remember, and be vigilant.
Once more I cry Watch, Watch, Watch! By adopting the motions I propose,
a conflagration may be adjourned sine die, which is a petition
perpetually presented by
Your anxious but uncompromising Master,
JACOB JUBB, M.P.
_To Lady Jubb, at 45, Portland Place._
RESPECTED MADAM,
I received your Ladyship’s obliging commands, and have used my best
endeavours to conform to the wishes condescended therein. In respect
to political controversy, I beg to say I have imposed a tacit silence
on the domestic capacities as far as within the sphere of my control,
but lament to say the Bailiff, Mr. Davis, is a party unamenable to
my authority, and as such has taken liberties with decorum quite
unconsistent with propriety and the decency due. However reluctant
to censoriousness, duty compels to communicate subversive conduct
quite unconformable to decency’s rules and order in a well-regulated
establishment. I allude to Mr. Davis’s terrifically jumping out from
behind doors and in obscure dark corners, on the female domestics, for
no reasonable purpose I can discover, except to make them exert their
voices in a very alarming manner. The housemaid, indeed, confirms me
by saying in her own words, “he considered her skreek the best skreek
in the family.” If impropriety had proceeded no further, I should have
hesitated to trouble your Ladyship with particulars; but Mr. Davis,
not satisfied with thus working on the unsophisticated terrors of
ignorant females, thought proper to horrify with inflammatory reports.
[Illustration: A MARKED MAN.]
[Illustration: WAPPING OLD STARES.]
One night, as a prominent instance, about twelve o’clock, he rang the
alarm bell so violently, at the same time proclaiming conflagration,
that the law of preservation became our paramount duty, and, as a
consequence, we all escaped in a state of dishabille only to be
ambiguously hinted at, by saying that time did not allow to put on my
best lutestring to meet the neighbouring gentry--and must add, with
indignation, in the full blaze of a heap of straw, thought proper to
be set on fire by Mr. Davis in the fore-court. I trust your Ladyship
will excuse a little warmth of language, in saying it was highly
reprehensible; but I have not depictured the worst. I, one evening,
lighted up what I conceived to be a mould candle, and your Ladyship
will imagine my undescribable fright when it exploded itself like a
missile of the squib description, an unwarrantable mode, I must say,
of convincing me, as Mr. Davis had the audaciousness to own to,
that we may be made to be actors in our own combustion. To suppose
at my years and experience, I can be unsensible of the danger of
fire, must be a preposterous notion; but all his subsequent acts
partake an agreeable character. For fear of being consumed in our
beds, as he insidiously professed, he exerted all his influential
arguments to persuade the females to set up nocturnally all night,
a precaution of course declined, as well as his following scheme,
being almost too much broached with absurdity to enumerate. I mean
every retiring female reposing her confidence on a live goose in her
chamber, as were purchased for the express purpose, but need not add
were dispensed with by rational beings. I trust your ladyship will
acquit of uncharitableness if I suspect it was out of vindictive
feelings at their opposition to the geese that Mr. Davis insinuated a
strict inquiry into every individual that came into the house, as far
even as requiring to be personally present at all that passed between
the dairymaid and her cousin. It escaped memory to say that when the
feminine department refused to be deprived of rest, the male servants
were equally adverse to go to bed, being spirited up by Mr. Davis to
spend the night together, and likewise being furnished with the best
strong ale in the cellar by his imperious directions, which, by way of
climax to assurance, was alleged to be by order of Sir Jacob himself.
I say nothing reflectively on his repeatedly discharging his artillery
at unseasonable hours, the shock principally concerning my own nervous
constitution, which was so vibrated as to require calling in physical
powers: and Doctor Tudor, considering advanced age and infirmity, is
of opinion I may require to be under his professional hands for an
ensuing twelvemonth. Of startling effects upon other parties I may
make comments more unreserved, and without harsh extenuation must
say, his letting off reports without due notice, frequently when the
females had valuable cut glass and china in their hands, or on their
trays, was blamable in the extreme, to express the least of it. Another
feature which caused much unpleasantness, was Mr. Davis persisting to
scrutinise and rummage the entire premises from top to bottom, but on
this characteristic tediousness forbids to dwell, and more particularly
as mainly affecting himself, such as the flow of blood from his nose,
and two coagulated eyes, from the cellar door, through a peculiar
whim of looking for every thing in a state of absolute obscurity. I
may add, by way of incident, that Mr. Davis walks lame from a canine
injury in the calf of his leg, which I hope will not prove rabid in the
end,--but the animals he has on his own responsibility introduced on
the premises, really resemble, begging your Ladyship’s pardon for the
expression, what are denominated D.’s incarnate.
Such, your Ladyship, is the unpropitious posture of domestic affairs
at the Shrubbery, originating, I must say, exclusively from the
unprecedented deviations of Mr. Davis. A mild construction would infer,
from such extraordinary extravagance of conduct, a flightiness, or
aberration of mind in the individual, but I deeply lament to say a
more obvious cause exists to put a negative on such a surmise. For
the last week Mr. Davis has betrayed an unusual propensity to pass
his evenings at the George Tavern, and in consequence has several
times exhibited himself in a Bacchanalian character to our extreme
discomforture, and on one occasion actually trespassed so far beyond
the bounds of modesty, as to offer me the rudeness of a salute. I
blush to impart such details to your Ladyship; but justice demands an
explicit statement, however repulsive to violated reserve and the rules
of virtue. Amongst less immoral actions, I must advert to the arrival
of two new engines with a vast number of leathern buckets, I fear
ordered by Mr. Davis at my honoured master’s expense, and which are
periodically exercised in pumping every day, by the gardeners and the
hinds, being induced thereto by extra beverages of strong beer. By such
means the aquatic supply of the well is frequently exhausted by playing
upon nothing,--and at this present moment I am justified in stating we
have not sufficient water to fulfil culinary purposes, or the demands
of cleanliness. I feel ashamed to say there is not a strictly clean cap
in the whole household.
[Illustration: THE UNITED SERVICE.]
In short, Madam, we labour under an aggravated complication of
insubordination, deprivation, discomfort, and alarm, daily and nightly,
such as to shock my eyes whilst it grieves my heart, and I may almost
say turns my head to be present at, without sufficient authority to
dictate or power to enforce a course more consistent with the line of
rectitude. As my sway does not extend to Mr. Davis, I humbly beseech
your Ladyship’s interference and influence in the proper quarter,
in behalf, I may say, of a body of persecuted females, some of whom
possess cultivated minds and sensitive feelings beyond their sphere.
I remain, respected Madam,
Your Ladyship’s most obliged and very humble Servant,
AMELIA PHIPPS.
P.S.--One of Mr. Davis’s savage bull-baiting dogs has just rushed with
a frightful crash into the china-closet, in pursuit of the poor cat.
_To Sir Jacob Jubb, Baronet, M.P._
HONNERD SUR,
Yure faver enclosin the Ruings of the Parlimint houses cam dully to
hand, and did indeed put up all the hares on my hed. It cam like the
bust of a thunder bolt. You mite hav nockt me down with the fether of a
ginny ren. My bran swum. I seamed rooted to the hearth--and did not no
weather I was a slip or a wack, on my hed or my heals. I was perfecly
unconshunable, and could no more kollect meself then the Hirish tiths.
I was a long Tim befor I cud perswade meself that the trooth was trew.
But sich a dredful fire is enuff to unsettil wons resin. A thowsend
ears mite role over our heds, and not prodeuce sich a blo to the
constitushun. I was barley sensible. The Currier dropt from my hands
wen I cam to the perrygraft witch says “Our hops are at an end. The
Hous of Communs is a boddy of Flams, and so is the Hous of Pears! The
Lords will be dun!”
[Illustration: GENERAL ELECTION.]
Honnerd Sur, I beg to kondole as becums on yure missin yure seat. It
must have bean the suddinest of shox, & jest wen goin to sit after
standin for the hole county, on yure hone futting, at your sole
expens. But I do hop and trust it will not be yure dissolushun, as sum
report; I do hop it is onely an emty rummer pict up at sum publick
Hous. At such an encindery crisus our wust frend wood be General
Elixion, by stirrin up inflametory peple, particly if there was a
long pole. You see, Sir Jacob, I konker in evvery sentashus sentemint
in yure respected Letter. The Volkano you menshun I can enter into.
Theres a great deal of combustibul sperits in the country that onely
wants a spark to convart them into catarax:--and I greave to say evvery
inflammetory little demy Gog is nust, and has the caudle support of
certin pappers. Im alludin to the Press. From this sort of countenins
the nashunal aspec gits moor friteful evvery day. I see no prospex for
the next gennerashun but rocking and swinging. I hav had a grate menny
low thorts, for wat can be moor dispiritin then the loss of our two
gratest Publick Housis! There is nothin cumfortable. There is a Vesuvus
under our feat, and evvery step brings us nearer to its brinks. Evvery
reflective man must say we are a virgin on a precipus.
Honnerd Sur! In the mean tim I hav pade atenshuns to yure letter, and
studid its epistlery derecshuns, witch I hav made meself very particler
in fulfiling to the utmost xtent. If the most zellus effuts have not
sucksedid to wish I humbly beg to blame but wat is dew may fall on me,
and hope other peples shears will visit their hone heds. The axident
with the spring gun was no neglex of mine. After Barnes settin it
himself, his tumblin over the wier must be lade to his hone dore along
with his shot legs. I sent for two surgings to sea to him, and they
cauld in too moor, so that he is certin of a good dressin, but he was
very down-harted about gitting a livin, till I tolled him yure honner
wood settle on him for the rest of his days. I may say the lik of the
other axident to Sanders and Sam, who got badly woundid wile wotchin
the stax, by apprehendin won another after a sanguine conflic by
mistake for incinderies. I have promist in yure honners nam to reword
them boath hansumly for their vigilings, but they stedfistly refus
to padrol anny moor after dusk, tho they ar agreble by daylit, which
leavs me at my whits ends for Firegards, as strange men wood not be
trusswurthy.
Honnered Sur--I am sorry I cood not git the mad servents to set up
for theaves, even for wun nite runnin. I tried the Currier on them,
but it didn’t wurk on there minds; they tuck lites in their hands and
waukd to there pillers as if they hadn’t a car on there heds, and wen
I insistid on their allarmin me they all give me warnin. As for the
swetharts there’s a duzzen domesticatted luvers in the kitchen, and
I’m sorry to say I can’t give them all a rowt. I ketchd the cook’s bo
gettin in at a winder, and sercht his pockets for feer of fosfrus, but
he contaned nothin xcept a cruckid sixpens, a taler’s thimbel, and a
tin backy-box, with a lock of hare witch did not match with cook’s. It
is dangerus wurk. Becus I luck after the mades candels they tie strings
to the banesters to ketch my fut, and I have twice pitcht from the
hed to the futt of the stars. I am riting with my forrid brandid and
brown pepperd, and my rite hand in a poltus from gropping in the dark
for cumbustibils in the cole seller, and diskivering nothin but the
torturous kat and her kittings.
[Illustration: “TWO HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE.”]
Honnerd Sur--I got six capitol gees a bargin, but am verry dubbius
weather they possess the propperty that ort to make them wakful and
weary of nites. The old specious may be lost. The Roman gees you
menshun wood certinly hav nevver sufferd themselves to be stolen
without a cakeling, as our hone did too nites ago. As for the wotch
dogs, to be candied, they were all errors in gudgment. There was to
much Bul in the bread. The verry fust nite they were let lose they flew
in a rag, and began to vent their caning propensities on each other’s
curcases. I regret to say too was wurrid to deth before the next
mourning, and the rest were so full of bad bits and ingeries in there
vitties they were obligated to be kild. In shutting Seazer with the
blunderbush, I lament to ad it hung fire, and in liftin it up it went
off of its hone hed and shot the bucher’s horse at the gait, and he has
thretind to tak the law if he isn’t made good, as he was verry vallyble.
Honnerd Sur--Accordin to orders I tuck Johnson the suspishus man evvery
nite to the Gorge, and told him to caul for wat he likt, witch was
allways an ot suppir and Punch. As yet he as diskivered nothin but sum
lov nonsins about a deary-made, so that its uncertin weather he is a
dillygate or not; but I shood say a desinin won, for by sum artful
meens he allways manniged to make me drunk fust, and gennerally lent
a hand to carry me home. I told the landlord to let him have aney
thing he wantid and yure Honner wood pay the skore, but I think it was
unprudent of Mr. Tapper to let him run up to ten pound. But it isn’t
all drink, but eating as well--Johnson has a very glutinous appetit,
and always stix to the tabel as long as there is meet.
Honnerd Sur--Last fridy morning there was grate riotism and sines of
the populus risin, and accordin I lost no time in berryin the plait as
derected by yure ordirs. I am gratifid to say the disturbans turned out
onely a puggleistical fit; but owen to our hurry and allarm, the spot
ware the plait was berrid went out of our heads. We have since dug up
the hole srubbery, but without turnin up anny thing in its shape. But
it cant be lost, tho’ it isnt to be found. The gardner swares the srubs
will all di from being transplanted at unpropper sesin--but I trust it
is onely his old grumblin stile witch he cannot git over.
Honnerd Sur--The wust is to cum. In casis of Fire the trooth is shure
to brake out suner or latter, so I may as well cum to the catstrophy
without any varnish on my tail. This morning according to yure order, I
hignitted the littel faggit stak, fust takin the precawshuny meshure
of drawin up a line of men with buckits, from the dux-pond to the sene
of combusting. Nothin can lay therefor on my sholders: it all riz
from the men strikin for bear, wen they ort to hav bean handin warter
to won another. I felt my deuty to argy the pint, which I trust will
be apruved, and wile we were cussin and discussin the fire got a hed
that defide all our unitted pours to subdo. To confess the fax, the
fire inguns ware all lokt up in a stabble with a shy key that had lost
itself the day before, and was not to be had wen we wantid to lay hands
on it. Not that we could have wurkd the inguns if they had faverd with
their presens, for want of hands. Evvery boddy had run so offen at
the allarm bell that they got noboddy to go in there steed. It was an
hawful site; the devowring ellemint swallerd won thing after another as
sune as cotched, and rushed along roring with friteful violins. Were
the finger of Providins is the hand as does we must not arrange it,
but as the him says, “we must submit and humbel Bee.” Heavin direx the
winds, and not us. As it blue towards the sow the piggry sune cotchd,
and that cotchd the foul housis, and then the barn cotchd with all the
straw, and the granery cotchd also, witch it wood not have dun if we
had puld down the hay stax that stud between. That was all the cotching
excep the hay stax, from Jenkins runnin about with a flaimin tale to
his smoak frock. At last, by a blessin, when there was no moor to burn
it was got under and squentched itself, prays be given without loss of
lif or lim. Another comfit is all bein inshured in the Sun, enuff to
kiver it; and I shud hop they will not refus to make gud on the ground
that it was dun wilful by our hone ax and deeds. But fire officis are
sumtimes verry unlibberal, and will ketch hold of a burning straw,
and if fax were put on their oths I couldn’t deni a bundil of rags,
matchis, candel ends, and other combustibils pokt into the faggits, and
then litin up with my hone hand. Tim will sho. In the meenwhile I am
consienshusly easy, it was dun for the best, though turned out for the
wust, and am gratified to reflect that I hav omitted nothin, but have
scruppleusly fulfild evvery particler of yure honner’s instruxions, and
in hop of approval of the saim, await the faver of furthir commands,
and am,
Honnerd Sur Jacob,
Your humbel, faithful, and obedient Servint,
ROGER DAVIS.
[Illustration: LIGHT-FINGERED.]
HUGGINS AND DUGGINS.
A PASTORAL AFTER POPE.
TWO swains or clowns--but call them swains--
While keeping flocks on Salisbury Plains,
For all that tend on sheep as drovers,
Are turned to songsters, or to lovers,
Each of the lass he called his dear,
Began to carol loud and clear.
First Huggins sang, and Duggins then,
In the way of ancient shepherd men;
Who thus alternate hitch’d in song,
“All things by turns, and nothing long.”
HUGGINS.
Of all the girls about our place,
There’s one beats all in form and face;
Search through all Great and Little Bumpstead,
You’ll only find one Peggy Plumpstead.
[Illustration: FOLLOW MY LEADER.]
DUGGINS.
To groves and streams I tell my flame,
I make the cliffs repeat her name:
When I’m inspired by gills and noggins,
The rocks re-echo Sally Hoggins!
HUGGINS.
When I am walking in the grove,
I think of Peggy as I rove.
I’d carve her name on every tree,
But I don’t know my A, B, C.
DUGGINS.
Whether I walk in hill or valley,
I think of nothing else but Sally.
I’d sing her praise, but I can sing
No song, except “God save the King.”
HUGGINS.
My Peggy does all nymphs excel,
And all confess she bears the bell,--
Where’er she goes swains flock together,
Like sheep that follow the bellwether.
DUGGINS.
Sally is tall and not too straight,--
Those very poplar shapes I hate;
But something twisted like an S,--
A crook becomes a shepherdess.
HUGGINS.
When Peggy’s dog her arms imprison,
I often wish my lot was hisn;
How often I should stand and turn,
To get a pat from hands like hern.
DUGGINS.
I tell Sall’s lambs how blest they be,
To stand about and stare at she;
But when I look, she turns and shies,
And won’t bear none but their sheep’s-eyes!
HUGGINS.
Love goes with Peggy where she goes.--
Beneath her smile the garden grows;
Potatoes spring, and cabbage starts,
’Tatoes have eyes, and cabbage hearts!
DUGGINS.
Where Sally goes it’s always spring,
Her presence brightens every thing;
The sun smiles bright, but where her grin is,
It makes brass farthings look like guineas.
HUGGINS.
For Peggy I can have no joy,
She’s sometimes kind, and sometimes coy,
And keeps me, by her wayward tricks,
As comfortless as sheep with ticks.
[Illustration: RAMSAY’S GENTLE SHEPHERD.]
DUGGINS.
Sally is ripe as June or May,
And yet as cold as Christmas day;
For when she’s asked to change her lot,
Lamb’s wool,--but Sally, she wool not
HUGGINS.
Only with Peggy and with health,
I’d never wish for state or wealth;
Talking of having health and more pence,
I’d drink her health if I had fourpence.
DUGGINS.
Oh, how that day would seem to shine,
If Sally’s banns were read with mine;
She cries, when such a wish I carry,
“Marry come up!” but will not marry.
DOMESTIC DIDACTICS.
BY AN OLD SERVANT.
IT is not often when the Nine descend that they go so low as into
areas; it is certain, nevertheless, that they were in the habit of
visiting John Humphreys, in the kitchen of No. 189, Portland Place,
disguised, no doubt, from mortal eye, as seamstresses or charwomen--at
all events, as Winifred Jenkins says, “they were never ketch’d in the
fact.” Perhaps it was the rule of the house to allow no followers, and
they were obliged to come by stealth, and to go in the same manner;
indeed, from the fragmental nature of John’s verses, they appear
to have often left him very abruptly. Other pieces bear witness of
the severe distraction he suffered between his domestic duty to the
Umphravilles, twelve in family, with their guests, and his own secret
visitors from Helicon. It must have been provoking, when seeking for
a simile, to be sent in search of a salt-cellar; or when hunting
for a rhyme, to have to look for a missing teaspoon. By a whimsical
peculiarity, the causes of these lets and hindrances are recorded in
his verses, by way of parenthesis: and though John’s poetry was of a
decidedly serious and moralising turn, these little insertions give
it so whimsical a character, as to make it an appropriate offering
in the present work. Poor John! the grave has put a period to his
didactics, and the publication of his lays in “Hood’s Own,” therefore,
cannot give him pain, as it certainly would have done otherwise, for
the MSS. were left by last will and testament “to his very worthy
master, Joshua Umphraville, Esq., to be printed in Elegant Extracts,
or Flowers of English Poetry.” The Editor is indebted to the kindness
of that gentleman for a selection from the papers; which he has been
unable to arrange chronologically, as John always wrote in too great a
hurry to put dates. Whether he ever sent any pieces to the periodicals
is unknown, for he kept his authorship as secret as Junius’s, till
his death discovered his propensity for poetry, and happily cleared
up some points in John’s character, which had appeared to his
disadvantage. Thus when his eye was “in fine frenzy rolling,” bemused
only with Castalian water, he had been suspected of being “bemused with
beer;” and when he was supposed to indulge in a morning sluggishness,
he was really rising with the sun, at least with Apollo. He was accused
occasionally of shamming deafness, whereas it was doubtless nothing but
the natural difficulty of hearing more than Nine at once. Above all,
he was reckoned almost wilfully unfortunate in his breakage; but it
appears that when deductions for damage were made from his wages, the
poetry ought to have been stopped, and not the money. The truth is,
John’s master was a classical scholar, and so accustomed to read of
Pegasus, and to associate a Poet with a Horseman, that he never dreamt
of one as a Footman.
[Illustration: NOT UP YET.]
The Editor is too diffident to volunteer an elaborate criticism of the
merits of Humphreys as a Bard--but he presumes to say thus much, that
there are several Authors, of the present day, whom John ought not to
walk behind.
THE BROKEN DISH.
WHAT’S life but full of care and doubt,
With all its fine humanities,
With parasols we walk about,
Long pigtails and such vanities.
We plant pomegranite trees and things,
And go in gardens sporting,
With toys and fans of peacocks’ wings,
To painted ladies courting.
We gather flowers of every hue,
And fish in boats for fishes,
Build summer-houses painted blue,--
But life’s as frail as dishes.
Walking about their groves of trees,
Blue bridges and blue rivers,
How little thought them two Chinese
They’d both be smash’d to shivers.
ODE TO PEACE.
WRITTEN ON THE NIGHT OF MY MISTRESS’S GRAND ROUT.
OH Peace! oh come with me and dwell--
But stop, for there’s the bell.
Oh Peace! for thee I go and sit in churches,
On Wednesday, when there’s very few
In loft or pew--
Another ring, the tarts are come from Birch’s.
Oh Peace! for thee I have avoided marriage--
Hush! there’s a carriage.
Oh Peace! thou art the best of earthly goods--
The five Miss Woods.
Oh Peace! thou art the Goddess I adore--
There come some more.
Oh Peace! thou child of solitude and quiet--
That’s Lord Drum’s footman, for he loves a riot.
Oh Peace!
Knocks will not cease.
Oh Peace! thou wert for human comfort plann’d--
That’s Weippert’s band.
Oh Peace! how glad I welcome thy approaches--
I hear the sound of coaches.
Oh Peace! oh Peace!--another carriage stops--
It’s early for the Blenkinsops.
Oh Peace! with thee I love to wander,
But wait till I have show’d up Lady Squander,
And now I’ve seen her up the stair,
Oh Peace!--but here comes Captain Hare.
Oh Peace! thou art the slumber of the mind,
Untroubled, calm and quiet, and unbroken,--
If that is Alderman Guzzle from Portsoken,
Alderman Gobble won’t be far behind;
Oh Peace! serene in worldly shyness,--
Make way there for his Serene Highness!
Oh Peace! if you do not disdain
To dwell amongst the menial train,
I have a silent place, and lone,
That you and I may call our own;
Where tumult never makes an entry--
Susan, what business have you in my pantry?
Oh Peace! but there is Major Monk,
At variance with his wife--Oh Peace!
And that great German, Vander Trunk,
And that great talker, Miss Apreece;
Oh Peace! so dear to poets’ quills--
They’re just beginning their quadrilles--
Oh Peace! our greatest renovator;--
I wonder where I put my waiter--
Oh Peace!--but here my Ode I’ll cease;
I have no peace to write of Peace.
A FEW LINES ON COMPLETING FORTY-SEVEN.
When I reflect with serious sense,
While years and years run on,
How soon I may be summoned hence--
There’s cook a-calling John.
Our lives are built so frail and poor,
On sand and not on rocks,
We’re hourly standing at Death’s door--
There’s some one double-knocks.
All human days have settled terms,
Our fates we cannot force;
This flesh of mine will feed the worms--
They’re come to lunch of course.
And when my body’s turn’d to clay,
And dear friends hear my knell,
O let them give a sigh and say--
I hear the upstairs bell.
TO MARY HOUSEMAID,
ON VALENTINE’S DAY.
Mary, you know I’ve no love-nonsense,
And, though I pen on such a day,
I don’t mean flirting, on my conscience,
Or writing in the courting way.
Though Beauty hasn’t form’d your feature,
It saves you, p’rhaps, from being vain,
And many a poor unhappy creature
May wish that she was half as plain.
Your virtues would not rise an inch,
Although your shape was two foot taller,
And wisely you let others pinch
Great waists and feet to make them smaller.
You never try to spare your hands
From getting red by household duty,
But, doing all that it commands,
Their coarseness is a moral beauty.
Let Susan flourish her fair arms
And at your odd legs sneer and scoff,
But let her laugh, for you have charms
That nobody knows nothing of.
[Illustration: WHAT ODD LEGS!]
PAIN IN A PLEASURE-BOAT.
A SEA ECLOGUE.
“I apprehend you!”--SCHOOL OF REFORM.
BOATMAN.
SHOVE off there!--ship the rudder, Bill--cast off! she’s under way!
MRS. F.
She’s under what?--I hope she’s not! good gracious, what a spray!
BOATMAN.
Run out the jib, and rig the boom! keep clear of those two brigs!
MRS. F.
I hope they don’t intend some joke by running of their rigs!
[Illustration: SEE-VIEW:--BROAD STARES.]
BOATMAN.
Bill, shift them bags of ballast aft--she’s rather out of trim!
MRS. F.
Great bags of stones! they’re pretty things to help a boat to swim!
BOATMAN.
The wind is fresh--if she don’t scud, it’s not the breeze’s fault!
MRS. F.
Wind fresh, indeed, I never felt the air so full of salt!
BOATMAN.
That Schooner, Bill, harn’t left the roads, with oranges and nuts!
MRS. F.
If seas have roads, they’re very rough--I never felt such ruts!
BOATMAN.
It’s neap, ye see, she’s heavy lade, and couldn’t pass the bar.
MRS. F.
The bar! what, roads with turnpikes too? I wonder where they are!
BOATMAN.
Ho! brig ahoy! hard up! hard up! that lubber cannot steer!
MRS. F.
Yes, yes,--hard up upon a rock! I know some danger’s near!
Lord, there’s a wave! it’s coming in! and roaring like a bull!
BOATMAN.
Nothing, Ma’am, but a little slop! go large, Bill! keep her full!
MRS. F.
What, keep her full! what daring work! when full, she must go down!
BOATMAN.
Why, Bill, it lulls! ease off a bit--it’s coming off the town!
Steady your helm! we’ll clear the _Pint_! lay right for yonder pink!
MRS. F.
Be steady--well, I hope they can! but they’ve got a pint of drink!
BOATMAN.
Bill, give that sheet another haul--she’ll fetch it up this reach.
MRS. F.
I’m getting rather pale, I know, and they see it by that speech!
I wonder what it is, now, but----I never felt so queer!
BOATMAN.
Bill, mind your luff--why Bill, I say, she’s yawing--keep her near!
MRS. F.
Keep near! we’re going further off; the land’s behind our backs.
[Illustration: STERNE’S MARIA.]
BOATMAN.
Be easy, Ma’am, it’s all correct, that’s only ’cause we tacks:
We shall have to beat about a bit,--Bill, keep her out to sea.
MRS. F.
Beat who about? keep who at sea?--how black they look at me!
BOATMAN.
It’s veering round--I knew it would! off with her head! stand by!
MRS. F.
Off with her head! whose? where? what with?--an axe I seem to spy!
BOATMAN.
She can’t not keep her own, you see; we shall have to pull her in!
MRS. F.
They’ll drown me, and take all I have! my life’s not worth a pin!
BOATMAN.
Look out you know, be ready, Bill--just when she takes the sand!
MRS. F.
The sand--O Lord! to stop my mouth! how every thing is planned!
BOATMAN.
The handspike, Bill--quick, bear a hand! now Ma’am, just step
ashore!
MRS. F.
What! an’t I going to be kill’d--and welter’d in my gore?
Well, Heaven be praised! but I’ll not go a sailing any more!
A SPENT BALL.
“The flying ball.”--GRAY.
A BALL is a round, but not a perpetual round, of pleasure. It spends
itself at last, like that from the cannon’s mouth; or rather, like that
greatest of balls, “that great globe itself,” is “dissolved with all
that it inherits.”
[Illustration]
Four o’clock strikes. The company are all but gone, and the musicians
“put up” with their absence. A few “_figures_,” however, remain, that
have never been danced, and the hostess, who is all urbanity and
turbanity, kindly hopes that they will stand up for “one set more.” The
six figures jump at the offer; they “wake the Harp,” get the fiddlers
into a fresh scrape, and “the Lancers” are put through their exercise.
This may be called the Dance of Death, for it ends every thing. The
band is disbanded, and the Ball takes the form of a family circle. It
is long past the time when church-yards yawn, but the mouth of Mamma
opens to a bore, that gives hopes of the Thames Tunnel. Papa, to whom
the Ball has been anything but a force-meat one, seizes eagerly upon
the first eatables he can catch, and with his mouth open and his eyes
shut, declares, in the spirit of an “Examiner” into such things, that a
“Party is the madness of many for the gain of a few.” The son, heartily
tired of a suit of broad cloth cut narrow, assents to the proposition,
and having no further use for his curled head, lays it quietly on
the shelf. The daughter droops; art has had her Almack’s, and nature
establishes a Free and Easy. Grace throws herself, skow-wow any-how, on
an ottoman, and Good Breeding crosses her legs. Roses begin to relax,
and Curls to unbend themselves; the very Candles seem released from the
restraints of gentility, and getting low, some begin to smoke, while
others indulge in a gutter. Muscles and sinews feel equally let loose,
and by way of a joke, the cramp ties a double-knot in Clarinda’s calf.
Clarinda screams. To this appeal the maternal heart is more awake than
the maternal eyes, and the maternal hand begins hastily to bestow its
friction, not on the leg of suffering, but on the leg of the sofa.
In the mean time, paternal hunger gets satisfied; he eats slower,
and sleeps faster, subsiding, like a gorged Boa Constrictor, into
torpidity; and in this state, grasping an extinguished candle, he
lights himself up to bed. Clarinda follows, stumbling through her steps
in a doze-à-doze; the brother is next, and Mamma having seen with half
an eye, or something less, that all is safe, winds up the procession.
Every Ball, however, has its rebound, and so has this in their
dreams--with the mother who has a daughter, as a Golden Ball; with the
daughter, who has a lover, as an eye-ball; with his son, who has a
rival, as a pistol-ball; but with the father, who has no dreams at all,
as nothing but the blacking-ball of oblivion.
LITERARY AND LITERAL.
THE March of Mind upon its mighty stilts,
(A spirit by no means to fasten mocks on,)
In travelling through Berks, Beds, Notts, and Wilts,
Hants--Bucks, Herts, Oxon,
Got up a thing our ancestors ne’er thought on,
A thing that, only in our proper youth,
We should have chuckled at--in sober truth,
A Conversazione at Hog’s Norton!
A place whose native dialect, somehow,
Has always by an adage been affronted,
And that it is all _gutturals_, is now
Taken for grunted.
Conceive the snoring of a greedy swine,
The slobbering of a hungry Ursine Sloth--
If you have ever heard such creature dine--
And--for Hog’s Norton, make a mix of both!--
O shades of Shakspeare! Chaucer! Spenser!
Milton! Pope! Gray! Warton!
O Colman! Kenny! Planche! Poole! Peake!
Pocock! Reynolds! Morton!
O Grey! Peel! Sadler! Wilberforce! Burdett!
Hume! Wilmot Horton!
Think of your prose and verse, and worse--delivered in Hog’s
Norton!--
The founder of Hog’s Norton Athenæum
Framed her society
With some variety
From Mr. Roscoe’s Liverpool museum;
Not a mere pic-nic, for the mind’s repast,
But tempting to the solid knife-and-forker,
It held its sessions in the house that last
Had killed a porker.
It chanced one Friday,
One Farmer Grayley stuck a very big hog,
A perfect Gog or Magog of a pig-hog,
Which made of course a literary high day,--
Not that our Farmer was a man to go
With literary tastes--so far from suiting ’em,
When he heard mention of Professor _Crowe_,
Or Lalla-_Rookh_, he always was for shooting ’em!
In fact in letters he was quite a log,
With him great Bacon
Was literally taken.
[Illustration: “’TIS PLEASANT SURE TO SEE ONE’S SELF IN PRINT.”]
And Hogg--the Poet--nothing but a Hog!
As to all others on the list of Fame,
Although they were discuss’d and mention’d daily,
He only recognised one classic name,
And thought that _she_ had hung herself--_Miss Baillie_!
To balance this, our Farmer’s only daughter
Had a great taste for the Castalian water--
A Wordsworth worshipper--a Southey wooer,--
(Though men that deal in water-colour cakes
May disbelieve the fact--yet nothing’s truer)
She got the _bluer_
The more she dipped and dabbled in the _Lakes_.
The secret truth is, Hope, the old deceiver,
At future Authorship was apt to hint,
Producing what some call the _Type-us_ Fever,
Which means a burning to be seen in print.
Of learning’s laurels--Miss Joanna Baillie--
Of Mrs. Hemans--Mrs. Wilson--daily
Dreamt Anne Priscilla Isabella Grayley;
And Fancy hinting that she had the better
Of L.E.L. by one initial letter,
She thought the world would quite enraptur’d see
“LOVE LAYS AND LYRICS
BY
A P I G.”
Accordingly, with very great propriety,
She joined the H. N. B. and double S.,
That is,--Hog’s Norton Blue Stocking Society;
And saving when her Pa his pigs prohibited,
Contributed
Her pork and poetry towards the mess.
This feast, we said, one Friday was the case
When farmer Grayley--from Macbeth to quote--
Screwing his courage to the “sticking place,”
Stuck a large knife into a grunter’s throat;--
A kind of murder that the law’s rebuke
Seldom condemns by shake of its peruke,
Showing the little sympathy of _big-wigs_
With _pig-wigs_!
The swine--poor wretch!--with nobody to speak for it,
And beg its life, resolved to have a squeak for it;
So--like the fabled swan--died singing out,
And, thus, there issued from the farmer’s yard
A note that notified without a card,
An invitation to the evening rout.
[Illustration: BREAKING UP, NO HOLIDAY.]
And when the time came duly,--“At the close of
The day,” as Beattie has it, “when the ham--”
Bacon and pork were ready to dispose of,
And pettitoes and chit’lings too, to cram,--
Walked in the H. N. B. and double S.’s,
All in appropriate and swinish dresses,
For lo! it is a fact, and not a joke,
Although the Muse might fairly jest upon it,
They came--each “Pig-faced Lady,” in that bonnet
We call _a poke_.
The Members all assembled thus, a rare woman
At pork and poetry was chosen _chairwoman_;--
In fact, the bluest of the Blues, Miss Ikey,
Whose whole pronunciation was so piggy,
She always named the authoress of “_Psyche_”--
As Mrs. _Tiggey_!
And now arose a question of some moment,--
What author for a lecture was the richer,
Bacon or Hogg? there were no votes for Beaumont,
But some for _Flitcher_;
While others, with a more sagacious reasoning,
Proposed another work,
And thought their pork
Would prove more relishing from Thomson’s Season-ing!
But, practised in Shakspearian readings daily--
O! Miss Macaulay! Shakspeare at Hog’s Norton!--
Miss Anne Priscilla Isabella Grayley
Selected _him_ that evening to snort on.
In short, to make our story not a big tale,
Just fancy her exerting
Her talents, and converting
The Winter’s Tale to something like a pig-tale!
Her sister auditory
All sitting round, with grave and learned faces,
Were very plauditory,
Of course, and clapped her at the proper places;
Till fanned at once by fortune and the Muse,
She thought herself the blessedest of Blues.
But Happiness, alas! has blights of ill,
And Pleasure’s bubbles in the air explode;--
There is no travelling through life but still
The heart will meet with breakers on the road!
With that peculiar voice
Heard only from Hog’s Norton throats and noses,
Miss G., with Perdita, was making choice
Of buds and blossoms for her summer posies,
When coming to that line, where Proserpine
Lets fall her flowers from the wain of Dis;
Imagine this--
Uprose on his hind legs old Farmer Grayley,
Grunting this question for the club’s digestion,
“Do _Dis’s Waggon_ go from the Ould Bäaley?”
[Illustration]
THE ACCIDENT.
“We thought she never would ride it out, and expected her every
moment to go to pieces.”--NAVAL SKETCH BOOK.
“THERE you go, you villain--that’s the way to run over people! There’s
a little boy in the road--you’d better run over _him_, for you won’t
call out to him, no, not you, for a brute as you are! You think poor
people an’t common Christians,--you grind the faces of the poor, you
do. Ay, cut away, do--you’ll be Wilful Murdered by the Crowner some
day! I’ll keep up with you and tell the gentlemen on the top! Women
wasn’t created for you to gallop over like dirt, and scrunch their
bones into compound fractions.--Don’t get into his coach, Ma’am! he’s
no respect for the sects--he’ll lay you up in the hospital for months
and months, he will, the inhuman hard-hearted varmin!”
The speaker, a little active old woman, had run parallel with the coach
some fifty yards, when it stopped to take up a lady who was as prompt
as ladies generally are, in giving dinner instructions to the cook,
and setting domestic lessons to the housemaid, besides having to pack
a parcel, to hunt for her clogs, to exchange the cook’s umbrella for
her own, and to kiss all her seven children. Mat, thus reduced to a
door-mat, was unable to escape the volley which the Virago still poured
in upon him; but he kept a most imperturbable face and silence till he
was fairly seated again on the box.
“There, gentlemen,” said he, pointing at the assailant with his whip;
“that’s what I call gratitude. Look at her figure now, and look at what
it was six months ago. She never had a waist till I run over her.”
“I hope, friend, thee art not very apt to make these experiments on the
human figure,” said an elderly Quaker on the roof. “Not by no means,”
answered Mat; “I have done very little in the accidental line--nothing
worth mentioning. All the years I’ve been on the road, I’ve never
come to a kill on the spot; them sort o’things belongs to Burrowes,
as drives over one with the Friend in Need, and he’s got quite a name
for it. He’s called ‘Fatal Jack.’ To be sure, now I think of it, I was
the innocent cause of death to one person, and she was rather out of
the common.” “You fractured her limbs, p’r’aps?” inquired one of the
outsides. “No such thing,” said Mat, “there was nothing fractious in
the case; as to running over her limbs, it was the impossible thing
with a woman born without legs and arms.” “You must allude to Miss
Biffin,” said the outsider--“the Norfolk phenomenon.”
“Begging your pardon,” said Mat, “it was before the Phenomenon was
started. It was one of the regular old long-bodied double-coaches,
and I drove it myself. Very uneasy they were; for springs at that
time hadn’t much spring in ’em; and nobody on earth had thought of
Macadaming Piccadilly. You could always tell whether you were on the
stones, or off, and no mistake. I was a full hour behind time--for
coaches in them days wasn’t called by such names as Chronometers and
Regulators, and good reason why. So I’d been plying a full hour after
time, without a soul inside, except a barrel of natives for a customer
down the road: at last, a hackney-coach pulls up, and Jarvey and the
waterman lifts Miss Biffin into my drag. Well, off I sets with a light
load enough, and to fetch up time astonished my team into a bit of a
gallop--and it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to keep one’s seat
on the box, the coach jumped so over the stones. Well, away I goes,
springing my rattle till I come to the gate at Hyde Park Corner, where
one of my insides was waiting for me--and not very sorry to pull up,
for the breath was almost shook out of my bellows. Well, I opens the
door, and what do I see lying together at the bottom of the coach,
but Miss Biffin bruised unsensible, and the head out of the barrel of
oysters!”
[Illustration: FANCY PORTRAIT--OLD SARUM.]
“I do hope, friend,” said the elderly Quaker, “that thou didst replace
them on their seats.”
“To be sure I did,” answered Mat, “and the oysters took it quietly
enough, without opening their mouths; but it didn’t go quite so smooth
with Miss B. She talked of an action for damages, and consulted
counsel; but, Lord bless you, when it came to taking steps agin us, she
hadn’t a leg to stand upon!”
[Illustration: DICKY BIRDS.]
SONNET.
TO LORD WHARNCLIFFE, ON HIS GAME-BILL.
I’m fond of partridges, I’m fond of snipes,
I’m fond of black cocks, for they’re very good cocks--
I’m fond of wild ducks, and I’m fond of woodcocks--
And grouse that set up such strange moorish pipes.
I’m fond of pheasants with their splendid stripes--
I’m fond of hares, whether from Whig or Tory--
I’m fond of capercailzies in their glory,--
Teal, widgeons, plovers, birds in all their types:
All these are in your care, Law-giving Peer,
And when you next address your Lordly Babel,
Some clause put in your Bill, precise and clear,
With due and fit provision to enable
A man that holds all kinds of game so dear
To keep, like Crockford, a good Gaming Table.
LITERARY REMINISCENCES.
No. I.
TIME was, I sat upon a lofty stool,
At lofty desk, and with a clerkly pen
Began each morning, at the stroke of ten,
To write in Bell and Co.’s commercial school;
In Warnford Court, a shady nook and cool,
The favourite retreat of merchant men;
Yet would my quill turn vagrant even then,
And take stray dips in the Castalian pool.
Now double entry--now a flowery trope--
Mingling poetic honey with trade wax--
Blogg, Brothers--Milton--Grote and Prescott--Pope--
Bristles--and Hogg--Glyn Mills and Halifax--
Rogers--and Towgood--Hemp--the Bard of Hope--
Barilla--Byron--Tallow--Burns--and Flax!
MY commercial career was a brief one, and deserved only a sonnet in
commemoration. The fault, however, lay not with the muses. To commit
poetry indeed is a crime ranking next to forgery in the counting-house
code; and an Ode or a song dated Copthall Court, would be as certainly
noted and protested as a dishonoured bill. I have even heard of an
unfortunate clerk, who lost his situation through being tempted by the
jingle to subscribe under an account current
“Excepted all errors
Made by John Ferrers,”
his employer emphatically declaring that Poetry and Logwood could never
coexist in the same head. The principal of _our_ firm on the contrary
had a turn for the Belles Lettres, and would have winked with both
eyes at verses which did not intrude into an invoice or confuse their
figures with those of the Ledger. The true cause of my retirement from
Commercial affairs was more prosaic. My constitution, though far from
venerable, had begun to show symptoms of decay: my appetite failed,
and its principal creditor, the stomach, received only an ounce in the
pound. My spirits daily became a shade lower--my flesh was held less
and less firmly--in short, in the language of the price current, it
was expected that I must “submit to a decline.” The Doctors who were
called in, declared imperatively that a mercantile life would be the
death of me--that by so much sitting, I was hatching a whole brood of
complaints, and that no Physician would insure me as a merchantman from
the Port of London to the next Spring. The Exchange, they said, was
against me, and as the Exchange itself used to ring with “Life let us
Cherish,” there was no resisting the advice. I was ordered to abstain
from Ashes, Bristles, and Petersburg yellow candle, and to indulge in
a more generous diet--to take regular country exercise instead of the
Russia Walk, and to go to bed early even on Foreign Post nights. Above
all I was recommended change of air, and in particular the bracing
breezes of the North. Accordingly I was soon shipped as per advice,
in a Scotch Smack, which “_smacked_ through the breeze,” as Dibdin
sings so merrily, that on the fourth morning we were in sight of the
prominent old Steeple of “Bonny Dundee.”
My Biographer, in the Book of Gems, alludes to this voyage, and
infers from some verses--“Gadzooks! must one swear to the truth of a
song?”--that it sickened me of the sea. Nothing can be more unfounded.
The marine terrors and disagreeables enumerated in the poem, belong
to a Miss Oliver, and not to me, who regard the ocean with a natural
and national partiality. Constitutionally proof against that nausea
which extorts so many wave-offerings from the afflicted, I am as
constant as Captain Basil Hall himself, in my regard “for the element
that never tires.” Some washy fellows, it is true, _Fresh_-men from
Cambridge and the like, affect to prefer river or even pond water for
their aquatics--the tame ripple to the wild wave, the prose to “the
poetry of motion.” But give _me_ “the multitudinous sea,” resting
or rampant, with all its variable moods and changeable colouring.
Methought, when pining under the _maladie du pays_, on a hopeless, sick
bed, inland, in Germany, it would have relieved those yearnings but to
look across an element so instinct with English associations, that it
would seem rather to unite me to than sever me from my native island.
And, truly, when I did at last stand on the brink of the dark blue
sea, my home-sick wishes seemed already half fulfilled, and it was not
till many months afterwards that I actually crossed the Channel. But
I am, besides, personally under deep obligations to the great deep.
Twice, indeed, in a calm, and in a storm, has my life been threatened
with a salt-water catastrophe; but that quarrel has long been made
up, and forgiven, in gratitude for the blessing and bracing influence
of the breezes that smack of the ocean brine. Dislike the sea!--With
what delight aforetime used I to swim in it, to dive in it, to sail
on it! Ask honest Tom Woodgate, of Hastings, who made of me, for a
landsman, a tolerable boatsman. Even now, when do I feel so easy in
body, and so cheerful in spirit, as when walking hard by the surge,
listening, as if expecting some whisperings of friendly but distant
voices, in its eternal murmuring. Sick of the sea! If ever I have
a water-drinking fancy, it is a wish that the ocean brine had been
sweet, or sour instead of salt, so as to be potable; for what can be
more tempting _to the eye_ as a draught, than the pure fluid, almost
invisible with clearness, as it lies in some sandy scoop, or rocky
hollow, a true “Diamond of the Desert,” to say nothing of the same
living liquid in its effervescing state, when it sparkles up, hissing
and bubbling in the ship’s wake--the very Champaigne of water! Above
all what intellectual solar and soothing syrup have I not derived from
the mere contemplation of the boundless main,--the most effectual and
innocent of mental sedatives, and often called in aid of that practical
philosophy it has been my wont to recommend in the present work. For
whenever, owing to physical depression, or a discordant state of the
nerves, my personal vexations and cares, real or imaginary, become
importunate in my thoughts, and acquire, by morbid exaggeration, an
undue prominence and importance, what remedy then so infallible as
to mount to my solitary seat in the look-out, and thence gaze awhile
across the broad expanse, till in the presence of that vast horizon,
my proper troubles shrink to their true proportions, and I look on
the whole race of men, with their insignificant pursuits, as so many
shrimpers! But this is a digression--We have made the harbour of
Dundee, and it is time to step ashore in “stout and original Scotland,”
as it is called by Doctor Adolphus Wagner, in his German edition of
Burns[2].
Like other shipments, I had been regularly addressed to the care of a
consignee:--but the latter, not anxious, probably, to take charge of
a hobbledehoy, yet at the same time unwilling to incur the reproach
of having a relative in the same town and not under the same roof,
peremptorily declined the office. Nay, more, she pronounced against
me a capital sentence, so far as returning to the place from whence I
came, and even proceeded to bespeak my passage and reship my luggage.
Judging from such vigorous measures the temper of my customer, instead
of remonstrating, I affected resignation, and went with a grave face
through the farce of a formal leave-taking; I even went on board, but
it was in company with a stout fellow who relanded my baggage; and
thus, whilst my transporter imagined, good easy soul! that the rejected
article was sailing round St. Abb’s Head, or rolling off the Bass, he
was actually safe and snug in Dundee, quietly laughing in his sleeve
with the Law at his back. I have a confused recollection of meeting,
some three or four days afterwards, a female cousin on her road to
school, who at sight of me turned suddenly round, and galloped off
towards home with the speed of a scared heifer.
My first concern was now to look out for some comfortable roof, under
which “for a consideration” one would be treated as one of the family.
I entered accordingly into a treaty with a respectable widower, who had
no sons of his own, but in spite of the most undeniable references, and
a general accordance as to terms, there occurred a mysterious hitch in
the arrangement, arising from a whimsical prepossession which only came
afterwards to my knowledge--namely, that an English laddie, instead
of supping parritch, would inevitably require a rump-steak to his
breakfeast! My next essay was more successful; and ended in my being
regularly installed in a boarding-house, kept by a Scotchwoman, who was
not so sure of my being a beefeater. She was a sort of widow, with a
seafaring husband “as good as dead,” and in her appearance not unlike a
personification of _rouge et noir_, with her red eyes, her red face,
her yellow teeth, and her black velvet cap. The first day of my term
happened to be also the first day of the new year, and on stepping from
my bed-room, I encountered our Hostess--like a witch and her familiar
spirit--with a huge bottle of whiskey in one hand, and a glass in the
other. It was impossible to decline the dram she pressed upon me, and
very good it proved, and undoubtedly strong, seeing that for some time
I could only muse its praise in expressive silence, and indeed, I was
only able to speak with “a _small still_ voice” for several minutes
afterwards. Such was my characteristic introduction to the Land of
Cakes, where I was destined to spend the greater part of two years,
under circumstances likely to materially influence the colouring and
filling up of my future life.
To properly estimate the dangers of my position, imagine a boy of
fifteen, at the Nore, as it were, of life, thus left dependent on
his own pilotage for a safe voyage to the Isle of Man; or conceive
a juvenile Telemachus, without a Mentor, brought suddenly into the
perilous neighbourhood of Calypso and her enchantments. It will hardly
be expected, that from some half-dozen of young bachelors, there came
forth any solemn voice didactically warning me in the strain of the
sage Imlac to the Prince of Abyssinia. In fact, I recollect receiving
but one solitary serious admonition, and that was from a she cousin of
ten years old, that the Spectator I was reading on a Sunday morning,
“was no the Bible.” For there was still much of this pious rigour
extant in Scotland, though a gentleman was no longer committed to
Tolboothia Infelix, for an unseasonable promenade during church time.
It was once, however, my fortune to witness a sample of the _ancien
régime_ at an evening party composed chiefly of young and rather
fashionable persons, when lo! like an Anachronism confounding times
past with times present, there came out of some corner an antique
figure, with quaintly cut blue suit and three-cornered hat, not unlike
a very old Greenwich Pensioner, who taking his stand in front of the
circle, deliberately asked a blessing of formidable length on the thin
bread and butter, the short cake, the marmalade, and the Pekoe tea. And
here, _en passant_, it may be worth while to remark, for the benefit of
our Agnews and Plumtres, as illustrating the intrinsic value of such
sanctimonious pretension, that the elder Scotland, so renowned for
armlong graces, and redundant preachments, and abundant psalm-singing,
has yet bequeathed to posterity a singularly liberal collection of
songs, the reverie of Divine and Moral, such as “can only be sung when
the punch-bowl has done its work and the wild wit is set free[3].”
To return to my boarding-house, which with all its chairs, had none
appropriated to a Professor of Moral Philosophy. In the absence of
such a monitor, nature, fortunately for myself, had gifted me with a
taste for reading, which the languor of ill-health, inclining me to
sedentary habits, helped materially to encourage. Whatever books, good,
bad, or indifferent, happened to come within my reach, were perused
with the greatest avidity, and however indiscriminate the course, the
balance of the impressions thence derived was decidedly in favour of
the allegorical lady, so wisely preferred by Hercules when he had
to make his election between Virtue and Vice. Of the material that
ministered to this appetite, I shall always regret that I did not
secure, as a literary curiosity--a collection of halfpenny Ballads,
the property of a Grocer’s apprentice, and which contained, amongst
other matters, a new version of Chevy Chase, wherein the victory was
transferred to the Scots. In the mean time, this bookishness acquired
for me a sort of reputation for scholarship amongst my comrades, and
in consequence my pen was sometimes called into requisition, in divers
and sometimes delicate cases. Thus for one party, whom the Gods had
not made poetical, I composed a love-letter in verse; for another,
whose education had been neglected, I carried on a correspondence with
reference to a tobacco manufactory in which he was a sleeping partner;
whilst, on a graver occasion, the hand now peacefully setting down
these reminiscences, was employed in penning a most horrible peremptory
invitation to pistols and twelve paces, till one was nicked. The
facts were briefly these. A spicy-tempered captain of Artillery, in a
dispute with a superior officer, had rashly cashiered himself by either
throwing up or tearing up his commission. In this dilemma he arrived
at Dundee, to assume a post in the Customs, which had been procured
for him by the interest of his friends. To his infinite indignation,
however, he found that instead of a lucrative surveyorship, he had
been appointed a simple tide-waiter! and magnificent was the rage with
which he tore, trampled, and danced on the little official paper book
wherein he had been set to tick off, bale by bale, a cargo of “infernal
hemp.” Unluckily, on the very day of this revelation, a forgery was
perpetrated on the local Bank, and those sapient Dogberries, the
town officers, saw fit to take up our persecuted ex-captain, on the
simple ground that he was the last stranger who had entered the town.
Rendered almost frantic by this second insult, nothing would serve
him in his paroxysm but calling somebody out, and he pitched at once
on the cashier of the defrauded Bank. As the state of his nerves
would not permit him to write, he entreated me earnestly to draw up a
defiance, which I performed, at the expense of an agony of suppressed
laughter, merely to imagine the effect of such a missive on the man of
business--a respectable powdered, bald, pudgy, pacific little body,
with no more idea of “going out” than a cow in a field of clover. I
forget the precise result--but certainly there was no duel.
[2] The Baron Dupotet de Sennevoy and Doctor Elliotson, will
doubtless be glad to be informed, that the inspired Scottish
Poet was a believer in their magnetismal mysteries--at least in
the article of reading a book behind the back. In a letter to
Mr. Robert Ainslie, is the following passage in proof. “I have
no doubt but scholarcraft may be caught, as a Scotchman catches
the itch--by friction. How else can you account for it that born
blockheads, by mere dint of _handling_ books, grow so wise that
even they themselves are equally convinced of and surprised at
their own parts? I once carried that philosophy to that degree,
that in a knot of country folks, who had a library amongst them,
and who, to the honour of their good sense, made me factotum
in the business; one of our members, a little wiselook, squat,
upright, jabbering body of a tailor, I advised him instead of
turning over the leaves, _to bind the book on his back_. Johnnie
took the hint, and as our meetings were every fourth Saturday,
and Pricklouse having a good Scots mile to walk in coming, and
of course another in returning, Bodkin was sure to lay his hand
on some heavy quarto or ponderous folio; with and under which,
wrapt up in his gray plaid, he grew wise as he grew weary all
the way home. He carried this so far, that an old musty Hebrew
Concordance, which we had in a present from a neighbouring
priest, _by mere dint of applying it as doctors do a blistering
plaster, between his shoulders_, Stitch, in a dozen pilgrimages,
acquired as much rational theology as the said priest had done by
forty years’ perusal of its pages.”
[3] A. Cunningham.
ODE TO PERRY,
THE INVENTOR OF THE PATENT PERRYAN PEN.
“In this good work, Penn appears the greatest, usefullest of God’s
instruments. Firm and unbending when the exigency requires it--soft
and yielding when rigid inflexibility is not a desideratum, fluent
and flowing, at need, for eloquent rapidity--slow and retentive
in cases of deliberation--never spluttering or by amplification
going wide of the mark--never splitting, if it can be helped, with
any one, but ready to wear itself out rather in their service--all
things as it were with all men, ready to embrace the hand of Jew,
Christian or Mahometan,--heavy with the German, light with the
Italian, oblique with the English, upright with the Roman, backward
in coming forward with the Hebrew,--in short, for flexibility,
amiability, constitutional durability, general ability, and
universal utility, it would be hard to find a parallel to the great
Penn.”
PERRY’S CHARACTERISTICS OF A SETTLER.
I.
O! Patent, Pen-inventing Perrian Perry!
Friend of the Goose and Gander,
That now unplucked of their quill-feathers wander,
Cackling, and gabbling, dabbling, making merry,
About the happy Fen,
Untroubled for one penny-worth of pen,
For which they chant thy praise all Britain through,
From Goose-Green unto Gander-Cleugh!--
II.
Friend to all Author-kind--
Whether of Poet or of Proser,--
Thou art composer unto the composer
Of pens,--yea, patent vehicles for Mind
To carry it on jaunts, or more extensive
_Perry_grinations through the realms of Thought;
Each plying from the Comic to the Pensive,
An Omnibus of intellectual sort!
III.
Modern Improvements in their course we feel;
And while to iron-railroads heavy wares,
Dry goods, and human bodies, pay their fares,
Mind flies on steel,
To Penrith, Penrhyn, even to Penzance.
Nay, penetrates, perchance,
To Pennsylvania, or without rash vaunts,
To where the Penguin haunts!
IV.
In times bygone, when each man cut his quill
With little Perryan skill,
What horrid, awkward, bungling tools of trade
Appear’d the writing implements home-made!
What Pens were sliced, hew’d, hack’d, and haggled out,
Slit or unslit, with many a various snout,
Aquiline, Roman, crooked, square, and snubby,
Stumpy and stubby;
Some capable of ladye-billets neat,
Some only fit for Ledger-keeping Clerk,
And some to grub down Peter Stubbs his mark,
Or smudge through some illegible receipt;
Others in florid caligraphic plans,
Equal to Ships, and wiggy Heads, and Swans!
V.
To try in any common inkstands, then,
With all their miscellaneous stocks,
To find a decent pen,
Was like a dip into a lucky box:
You drew,--and got one very curly,
And split like endive in some hurly-burly;
The next, unslit, and square at end, a spade;
The third, incipient pop-gun, not yet made;
The fourth a broom; the fifth of no avail,
Turn’d upwards, like a rabbit’s tail;
And last, not least, by way of a relief,
A stump that Master Richard, James, or John,
Had tried his candle-cookery upon,
Making “roast-beef!”
VI.
Not so thy Perryan Pens!
True to their M’s and N’s,
They do not with a whizzing zig-zag split,
Straddle, turn up their noses, sulk, and spit,
Or drop large dots,
Huge fullstop blots,
Where even semicolons were unfit.
They will not frizzle up, or, broom-like, drudge
In sable sludge--
Nay, bought at proper “Patent Perryan” shops,
They write good grammar, sense, and mind their stops;
Compose both prose and verse, the sad or merry--
For when the Editor, whose pains compile
The grown-up Annual, or the Juvenile,
Vaunteth his articles, not women’s, men’s,
But lays “by the most celebrated Pens,”
What means he but thy Patent Pens, my Perry?
VII.
Pleasant they are to feel!
So firm! so flexible! composed of steel
So finely temper’d--fit for tenderest Miss
To give her passion breath,
Or Kings to sign the warrant stern of death--
But their supremest merit still is this,
Write with them all your days,
Tragedy, Comedy, all kinds of plays--
(No Dramatist should ever be without ’em)--
And, just conceive the bliss,--
There is so little of the goose aboot ’em,
One’s safe from any hiss!
VIII.
Ah! who can paint that first great awful night,
Big with a blessing or a blight,
When the poor Dramatist, all fume and fret,
Fuss, fidget, fancy, fever, funking, fright,
Ferment, fault-fearing, faintness--more f’s yet:
Flushed, frigid, flurried, flinching, fitful, flat,--
Add famished, fuddled, and fatigued, to that;
Funeral, fate-foreboding--sits in doubt,
Or rather doubt with hope, a wretched marriage,
To see his Play upon the stage come out;
No stage to him! it is Thalia’s carriage,
And he is sitting on the spikes behind it,
Striving to look as if he didn’t mind it!
IX.
Witness how Beazley vents upon his hat
His nervousness, meanwhile his fate is dealt:
He kneads, moulds, pummels it, and sits it flat,
Squeezes and twists it up, until the felt
That went a Beaver in, comes out a Rat!
Miss Mitford had mis-givings, and in fright,
Upon Rienzi’s night,
Gnaw’d up one long kid glove, and all her bag,
Quite to a rag.
Knowles has confess’d he trembled as for life
Afraid of his own “Wife;”
Poole told me that he felt a monstrous pail
Of water backing him, all down his spine,--
“The ice-brook’s temper”--pleasant to the chine!
For fear that Simpson and his Co. should fail.
Did Lord Glengall not frame a mental pray’r,
Wishing devoutly he was Lord knows where?
Nay, did not Jerrold, in enormous drouth,
While doubtful of Nell Gwynne’s eventful luck,
Squeeze out and suck
More oranges with his one fevered mouth,
Than Nelly had to hawk from North to South?
Yea, Buckstone, changing colour like a mullet,
Refused, on an occasion, once, twice, thrice,
From his best friend, an ice,
Lest it should hiss in his own red-hot gullet.
X.
Doth punning Peake not sit upon the points
Of his own jokes, and shake in all his joints,
During their trial?
’Tis past denial.
And does not Pocock, feeling, like a peacock,
All eyes upon him, turn to very meacock?
And does not Planché, tremulous and blank,
Meanwhile his personages tread the boards,
Seem goaded by sharp swords,
And call’d upon himself to “walk the plank?”
As for the Dances, Charles and George to boot,
What have they more
Of ease and rest, for sole of either foot,
Than bear that capers on a hotted floor?
XI.
Thus pending--does not Mathews, at sad shift
For voice, croak like a frog in waters fenny?--
Serle seem upon the surly seas adrift?--
And Kenny think he’s going to Kilkenny?--
Haynes Bayly feel Old ditto, with the note
Of Cotton in his ear, a mortal grapple
About his arms, and Adam’s apples
Big as a fine Dutch codling in his throat?
Did Rodwell, on his chimney-piece, desire
Or not to take a jump into the fire?
Did Wade feel as composed as music can?
And was not Bernard his own Nervous Man?
Lastly, don’t Farley, a bewildered elf,
Quake at the Pantomime he loves to cater,
And ere its changes ring, transform himself?--
A frightful mug of human delf?
A spirit-bottle--empty of “the cratur”?
A leaden-platter ready for the shelf?
A thunderstruck dumb-waiter?
XII.
To clench the fact,
Myself once guilty, of one small rash act,
Committed at the Surrey
Quite in a hurry,
Felt all this flurry,
Corporal worry,
And spiritual scurry,
Dram-devil--attic curry!
All going well
From prompter’s bell,
Until befel
A hissing at some dull imperfect dunce--
There’s no denying,
I felt in all four elements at once!
My head was swimming, while my arms were flying,
My legs for running--all the rest was frying!
[Illustration: HIS-TRIONICS.]
XIII.
Thrice welcome, then, for this peculiar use,
Thy pens so innocent of goose!
For this shall Dramatists, when they make merry,
Discarding Port and Sherry,
Drink--“Perry!”
Perry, whose fame, pennated, is let loose
To distant lands,
Perry, admitted on all hands,
Text, running, German, Roman,
For Patent Perryans approach’d by no man!
And when, ah me! far distant be the hour!
Pluto shall call thee to his gloomy bow’r,
Many shall be thy pensive mourners, many!
And Penury itself shall club its penny,
To raise thy monument in lofty place;
Higher than York’s, or any son of War;
Whilst Time all meaner effigies shall bury,
On due pentagonal base,
Shall stand the Parian, Perryan, perriwig’d Perry
Perch’d on the proudest peak of Penman Mawr!
[Illustration: “PENNSYLVANIA.”]
SKETCHES ON THE ROAD.
THE CHECK-STRING.
THOSE who have travelled much, as inside passengers in a long
stage-coach, whilst they admired the facility of starting off with
one, must have occasionally remarked the difficulty of stopping with
it, just at the point where it would be convenient to be set down.
An ailing man may not have voice enough to lock all the four wheels
at once; and should he be, as is probable, a nervous man besides,
he will not without some hesitation make up his mind to request of
some stentorian neighbour the loan of a set of lungs. In a six-inside
coach, the timid occupier of a middle seat has no chance whatever,
unless to take advantage of the first casual halt, or an upset. Even
in the four-inside vehicle, a weakly, shy traveller’s case is equally
hopeless, supposing the passengers on the roof to have properly tucked
up the skirts of their great and little coats. To a bold, brassy fellow
even, with a tongue like a trumpet, it is anything but an easy affair
to say woh! with any effect to a Dart that is flying at twelve miles
within the hour. The coachman, who ought to hear, will not: the horses
hear but do not understand: the coach cannot hear: the outsiders admire
the pace too much to hear anything but the patter of the hoofs. At
last, when he has succeeded, the stout gentleman with the big voice,
who wants to run home, finds generally that he has a good hundred yards
or two allowed him of law, measured, as the Irish always mete it out,
_backwards_.
It was after a more serious dilemma,--for a little nervous bashful
man with a little squeaking voice like Punch’s, though he was not so
fond of exhibiting it, after suffering himself to be carried two miles
beyond his house, had at last fractured the small bone of his leg, by
opening the door in despair and jumping out,--that a discussion ensued
in the Brighton “Age” as to the best means of being let out to order.
Many different methods had been proposed before the little florid plump
gentleman in black delivered his opinion, with his back to the horses.
“For my own part, ratiocinating on hackney-coaches, I should
hypothetically propose check-strings.”
“Lord forbid!” exclaimed a voice from the other seat, on the same side.
Nobody remembered to have heard that voice before, from London to
Crawley Common.
The friend to check-strings seemed thunderstruck by the explosion. He
screwed himself round to take a look at his neighbour--didn’t like him
at all--turned back again--stole another look--liked him worse than
before--then looked for the third time, and hated him. His seat became
uneasy--he had found a choke-pear, very like a hedgehog, and very like
a bull terrier, he could neither kill it nor let it alone. It clung to
him like a burr which you pull off your hat that it may stick on your
right-hand glove, thence to be transferred to the left-hand one, and
so on alternately till you finally get rid of it on your pantaloons.
The “Lord forbid,” like Macbeth’s “Amen,” stuck in his throat--it
buzzed in his head like a fly in a horse’s ear. However, he held his
uncomfortable peace till silence itself became insupportable. At last
he broke out:
“Humph! Doubtful as I am whether common coach conversation ought to
be tied by strict rules of logic, still I cannot suppress the remark,
that when one gentleman syllogistically brings forward a proposition
of check-strings, for another gentleman to cry ‘Lord forbid,’ does
not appear to my mind to be following a regular line of argument. But
perhaps the forbidding gentleman will have the goodness to explain the
colloquial anomaly.”
The forbidding gentleman thus appealed to, good-humouredly apologised.
It was a mere slip of the tongue, he said: the words escaped from him
involuntarily; but his fellow-traveller would probably excuse him, in
consideration of the fact, that on account of a check-string he had
lost the only hope of affluence he ever had in his life.
“Indeed, Sir! why then I excuse the colloquial irregularity with all my
heart,” said the warm man, putting both his hands into his pockets;
“but, upon my life, Sir, it must have been a very extraordinary
consequence.”
[Illustration: A CHINESE PUZZLE.]
“A very simple one, Sir,” returned the other. “The facts are briefly
these: my maternal uncle had lately returned from India with an immense
fortune, a handsome portion of which was my own in expectance, on no
worse authority than his own promise. He was a widower with an only
daughter, with whom, and himself, I one evening found myself in the
carriage, on our way to a dinner-party given by a nobleman, then
intimately connected with East Indian affairs. We were very late:
and my uncle, the Nabob, who rode backward, was extremely fidgety,
insisting that we were going beyond our destination. Every other minute
he was thrusting his head out of the front window to dispute with the
coachman, who in truth, was a little less sober, and more obstinate,
than became him. And so we went onwards, till my uncle’s temper, always
irritable, was worked up almost to combustion. In such moods he was
rather apt to give vent to serio-comic ebullitions; and my ill-fortune
has gifted me with risible muscles of exquisite sensibility. I was
in the very midst of an ill-smothered laugh, when my fair cousin,
giving me a sudden push, and then clasping her hands, exclaimed that
we were going past the house. I instantly jumped up and made for the
check-string, but with no more effect than if I had pulled at anything
else. Gracious Heaven! I had better have pulled the string of a
shower-bath, full of scalding hot water, to pour itself on my devoted
head!--By that one infernal pull, Sir, I pulled myself out of half a
plum!”
“A sad pull, indeed, Sir!” said the florid plump man in black.
“But--humph--begging your pardon, Sir, I cannot really derive any such
deduction from the premises.”
[Illustration: “A SPLIT WITH DUCROW.”]
“A moment’s patience, Sir,” continued the unfortunate coach-stopper.
“Lord forbid check-strings,--Lord forbid all strings whatever! I was in
despair, Sir. I could have sunk through the bottom of the carriage!--I
believe I went down on my knees. I said everything I could think
of--and begged fifty thousand pardons, but my uncle was obdurate. ‘Pray
don’t mention it,’ he said, in his most caustic tone--‘it has saved me
fifty thousand pounds. It’s a very good practical joke, although it
will not read quite so well in my will.’”
“But surely, Sir,” objected the plump man, “your uncle never acted on a
conclusion, jumped to, as I may say, by such very imperfect inferences?”
“You did not know my uncle, Sir,” answered the unfortunate kinsman,
with a deep sigh. “But you shall judge of his character from the
clause itself:--Item, I give and bequeath to my jocose nephew, Arthur
Carruthers Oliphant, _for pulling his uncle’s pigtail_, the sum of one
shilling, sterling.”
THE UNDYING ONE.
“He shall not die.”--_Uncle Toby._
I.
OF all the verses, grave or gay,
That ever whiled an hour,
I never knew a mingled lay
At once so sweet and sour,
As that by Ladye Norton spun,
And christened “The Undying One.”
II.
I’m very certain that she drew
A portrait, when she penn’d
That picture of a perfect Jew,
Whose days will never end:
I’m sure it means my Uncle Lunn,
For he is an Undying One.
III.
Those twenty years he’s been the same,
And may be twenty more;
But Memory’s Pleasures only claim
His features for a score;
Yet in that time the change is none--
The image of th’ Undying One!
[Illustration: AN INN-QUEST.]
IV.
They say our climate’s damp and cold,
And lungs are tender things;
My uncle’s much abroad and old,
But when “King Cole” he sings,
A Stentor’s voice, enough to stun,
Declares him an Undying One.
V.
Others have died from needle-pricks,
And very slender blows;
From accidental slips or kicks,
Or bleedings at the nose;
Or choked by grape-stone, or a bun--
But he is the Undying One!
VI.
A soldier once, he once endur’d
A bullet in the breast--
It might have kill’d--but only cured
An asthma in the chest;
He was not to be slain with gun,
For he is the Undying One.
VII.
In water once too long he dived,
And all supposed him beat,
He seem’d so cold--but he revived
To have another heat,
Just when we thought his race was run,
And came in fresh--th’ Undying One!
VIII.
To look at Meux’s once he went,
And tumbled in the vat--
And greater Jobs their lives have spent
In lesser boils than that,--
He left the beer quite underdone,
No bier to the Undying One!
IX.
He’s been from strangulation black,
From bile, of yellow hue,
Scarlet from fever’s hot attack,
From cholera morbus blue;
Yet with these dyes--to use a pun--
He still is the Undying One.
X.
He rolls in wealth, yet has no wife
His three per Cents. to share;
He never married in his life,
Or flirted with the fair;
The sex he made a point to shun,
For beauty an Undying One.
XI.
To judge him by the present signs,
The future by the past,
So quick he lives, so slow declines,
The Last Man won’t be last,
But buried underneath a ton
Of mould by the Undying One!
XII.
Next Friday week, his birth-day boast,
His ninetieth year he spends,
And I shall have his health to toast
Amongst expectant friends,
And wish--it really sounds like fun--
Long life to the Undying One!
A GIPSY PARTY.
“Come stain your cheeks with nut or berry,
You’ll find a gipsy’s life is merry.”--GIPSY GLEE.
I DO not know what imp of mischief could have put such a fancy into
the dreaming head of Mrs. Carnaby, except Puck--but on a fine morning
in August she awoke with a determination to get up a gipsy party, and
have a day’s pleasure “under the green-wood tree.” She opened her
mind therefore to Mr. C----, as soon as he had opened his eyes, and
before breakfast they had arranged the whole affair. Hornsey Wood was
stale, and Norwood was rejected, for the very paradoxical reason that
it was such a haunt for Gipsies; and Mrs. Carnaby meant to take even
her youngest children. After a good deal of debating, Hainault was the
Forest fixed upon;--it lay so handy to Whitechapel, and the redletter
day was marked to be the Wednesday in the following week, because then
Master Carnaby would only lose half a day’s schooling.
Accordingly, on the Wednesday, the Dryads of Wanstead were startled
by the rumble of a well-laden tax-cart up that avenue which once led
to a princely mansion; and the vehicle at last stopped, and set down
its insides and outsides just where the lines of trees branch off into
another verdant alley. “It was,” Mrs. Carnaby remarked, “a delicious
green spot, and very handy to the Green Man for getting porter.” Mrs.
C---- was assisted out of the cart; and then Miss C---- was lifted out
by Mr. Hodges; and then the children were lifted out by the Mother; and
then the nursemaid, an awkward plainlooking girl that nobody helped,
tumbled out. In the mean time, Master C---- jumped out, all agog after
blackberrying and birdnesting; and had swarmed half up a tree before
his mother’s vigilance discovered, at a single glance, that he was
tearing his trowsers, and had his best clothes on. This was a bad
setting out for the boy; and the horse was not better, for directly
he got out of harness, and felt himself free and at grass, after two
or three preliminary kicks and plunges, it occurred to him to indulge
in a roll, and so he rolled over a pigeon pie that was unfortunately
unpacked, and finished by getting very much up with his fore-legs in
a basket of ginger beer. But it was only a moment of enthusiasm; and,
like other old nags, he betook himself to eating his green grass salad
as gravely as a judge. None of the performers were fortunate in their
debut. The first thing Mrs. Carnaby did in her hurry to save the pop,
was to pop down one of the children on the basket of knives and forks;
but it was a sharp child and soon got up again: and the first thing the
other twin did was to trip over a stump, and fall, as Betty nursemaid
said, “with its face in a fuz.” The first thing Mr. Hodges did, was
to take Miss Carnaby round the waist and give her a smacking kiss; in
return for which, as her first act, she gave him a playful push, that
sent him, with his white ducks, into a muddy miniature pond, that had
recently been stirred up by a cow in search of a cold bath. The first
thing that Mr. C---- did was to recommend some brandy as a preventive
against catching cold; but the last thing the brandy bottle had done
had been to stay at home in the cupboard. Mr. Hodges, therefore, walked
off to the Green Man for his health’s sake; and Master Carnaby sneaked
off, nobody knew where, for the sake of blackberries;--while the
Nursemaid, for the sake of society, took a romantic walk with the two
twins, and a strange footman. Gipsies are a wandering race, and all the
performers topped their parts; the very horse roamed away like a horse
that had neither parish nor settlement: and Mr. Carnaby would have gone
roaming after him, if his Wife and Daughter had not hung round his neck
and made him swear not to leave ’em till the others returned, which was
afterwards softened down to taking a little walk, provided he didn’t
go out of sight and hearing. In the mean time Mrs. and Miss C---- laid
the cloth, and began to review the eatables, not without lamenting over
the smash of the pigeon pie; and when they came to plan their second
course they found that the chief remove, a cold round of beef, had been
pinned on the way down by a favourite bull-dog, that Master Carnaby had
smuggled into the party. Luckily for the dog, he had also gone roving,
with the whole forest before him, as naturally as if he had belonged to
Bampfylde Moore Carew, the King of the Gipsies.
[Illustration: COIL AND RECOIL.]
[Illustration: DEADLY NIGHTSHADE.]
Mrs. Carnaby was one of those characters emphatically called fidgets;
she never rested till each individual came back, and she never rested
when they did. Mr. C. was the first to return, and not in the first
of tempers. He had been done out of his long-anticipated rural walk
by setting his foot, before he had gone a hundred yards, on a yard of
snake, and it had frightened him so that Mrs. Carnaby expected “it
would turn his whole mash of blood, and give him the yellow jaundice.”
Mr. Hodges came in second, but to the impatient eye of Miss C.
certainly did not proceed from the Green Man with the straightness of a
bullet from a rifle. Master Carnaby was a good third, for he had been
well horse-whipped, just as he had got three little red blackberries
and five thorns in his fingers, by a gentleman who did not approve of
his trespassing upon his grounds. Boxer the bull-dog was fourth; he
came back on three-legs, with his brindle well peppered with number
six by the gamekeeper, to cure him of worrying park rabbits. In fact,
poor Boxer, as Mrs. C. exclaimed, “was bleeding like a pig,” and the
grateful animal acknowledged her compassionate notice by going and
rubbing his shot hide against her shot silk, in return for which he
got a blow quite hard enough to shiver the stick of something between
a parasol and an umbrella. As for the nurse-maid and the twins they
did not return for an hour, to the infinite horror of the mother; but
just as they were all sitting down to dinner Betsey appeared with her
charge, walked off their feet, with their “pretty mouths all besmeared”
with blue and red juice; but no one of the party was botanist enough
to tell whether the berries they were munching were hips and haws, or
bilberries, or deadly nightshade, but maternal anxiety made sure it
was the “rank pison.” Accordingly dinner was postponed, and they set
to get up an extempore fire to make the kettle hot, and as soon as the
water was warm enough, these “two pretty babes” were well drenched,
and were soon as perfectly uncomfortable as they had been two months
before in a rough steam trip to Margate. As soon as peace was restored
it transpired, from an examination of the children, and a very cross
examination of the nurse-maid, that they had met with a _real_ gipsy
woman in the forest who had told Betty’s fortune, but had omitted to
prognosticate that her mistress would give her warning on the spot, and
that _her_ gipsying would end, as it actually did, in finding herself
suddenly out of place in the middle of a forest. Like other servants,
when they lose a comfortable situation, “some natural tears she shed,”
but did not wipe them soon, as did “our general mother,” for the very
excellent reason that she had spread her pocket handkerchief on the
ground to sit upon, somewhere between Wanstead and Walthamstow, and had
left it as a waif to the lord of the manor.
[Illustration: BACKING OUT OF GOING TO MARKET.]
Dinner time then came again, to the especial delight of the two empty
children, though, thanks to the horse and dog, it was principally
broken victuals. But on sitting down and counting heads Master C. had
a second time absconded during the last bustle; and, as his mother
could not touch a morsel for anxiety, Mr. Carnaby was obliged to set
out fasting to look for him, and had soon the satisfaction of finding
him sitting hatless crying in a wet ditch, and scraping a suit of brown
off a suit of blue with an old oyster shell. His father, in the first
transport of anger and hunger, gave him what boys call “a regular
larruping,” then a good rubbing down with a bunch of fern, and then
brought him back to the cold collation, with the comfortable threat
that he should go without his dinner. As soon as the culprit could
explain for sobbing, he told them that “he had gone for a little walk,
like, and saw the most capital donkey with a saddle and bridle feeding
wild about the forest as if he belonged to nobody, and he just got on
him like, like they used to do at Margate; and then the donkey set off
full tear, and never stopped till he came to a tent of gipsies in the
middle of the wood; and they all set upon him, and swore at him like
anything for running away with their donkey; and then all of a sudden
he lost his hat and his handkerchief, and his money out of his pockets
like conjuring; then they told him to run for his life, and so he did,
and as for the mud it was all along of jumping over a hedge that had no
other side to it.” This intelligence threw Mrs. Carnaby into an agony
of horror which could only be pacified by their immediately packing up
and removing, eatables and all, to a less lonesome place by the side
of the road, an operation that was performed by their all pulling and
pushing at the cart, as the horse had taken French leave of absence.
It was now Miss Carnaby’s turn to be discomfited: her retiring
disposition made her wince under the idea of dining in public; for
being market day at Romford, they were over-looked by plenty of farmers
and pig butchers: consequently, after a very miffy dialogue with her
mother, the young lady took herself off, as she was desired, with “her
romantical notions,” to a place of more solitude, and Mr. Hodges, as in
gallantry bound, postponed his dinner till his tea to keep her company.
In the mean time, Betsey, who had been sent up to the Green Man for
the porter, returned with the empty tankard, and a terrified tale of
being “cotch’d hold on by a ruffian in the wood, that had drunk up all
the beer to all their very good healths.” The first impulse of Mr.
Carnaby was to jump up to do justice on the vagabond, but Mrs. C----
had the presence of mind to catch hold of his coat-flaps so abruptly,
that before he could well feel his legs, he found himself sitting in
a large plum pie, which the children had just set their hearts upon;
of course it did not mend his temper to hear the shout from a dozen
ragged boys who were looking on; and in the crisis of his vexation,
he vented such a fervent devil’s blessing on gipsy parties, and all
that proposed them, that Mrs. Carnaby was obliged to take it up, and
to tell him sharply, what in reality was true enough, that “if people
did have gipsy parties, it didn’t follow that their stupid husbands
was to sit down on plum pies.” Heaven knows to what size and shape
this little quarrel might have ripened, but for the appearance of Miss
Carnaby, who, with a terrified exclamation sat herself down, and after
a vain attempt to recover, went off into a strong fit of what her
mother called “kicking hysterics.” The cause was soon explained by the
appearance of Mr. Hodges, with one eye poached black, and a dog-bite
in the calf of his leg, because “he had only stood looking on at two
men setting wires for rabbits, thinking to himself if he watched them
well he could learn how to do it.” Fortunately, Miss Carnaby came to
just in time to concur with her father and Mr. Hodges in the opinion,
that the best thing they could all do was to pack up and go home, but
which was stoutly combated by Mrs. Carnaby, who insisted that she
was resolved to take tea in a wood for once in her life, and she was
seconded by the children and Master C----, who said they hadn’t had any
pleasure yet. It was an unanswerable argument; sticks were collected,
a fire was made, the kettle boiled, the tea-things were set in order,
the bread and butter was cut, and pleasure began to smile on the gipsy
party so placidly that Mr. Hodges was encouraged to begin playing “In
my Cottage near a Wood,” on the key bugle, but was obliged to break
off in the middle, on finding that it acted as a bugle call to a corps
of observation, who came and stood round to see “Rural Felicity.”
Mrs. Carnaby, however, was happy; but “there is many a slip between
the tea-cup and the lip.” She was in the triumphant fact of pouring
the hot water on her best souchong, in her best china tea-pot, when
a very well-charged gun went off just on the other side of the park
palings, and Mrs. Carnaby had not been born like her Grace, old Sarah
of Marlborough, “before nerves came in fashion.” The tea-kettle dropped
from her hand upon the tea-pot, which it dashed to atoms, and then lay
on its side, hot watering the daisies and the dandelions that had the
luck to grow near it. “Misfortunes never come single,” and the gun,
therefore, acted like a double one in its inflictions; for no sooner
did Boxer recognise its sound than he jumped up, and with an alarming
howl dashed through the rest of the tea service, as if he had absorbed
another ounce of number six: a fresh shout from the bystanders welcomed
this new disaster, and with the true spirit of “biting a bitten cur,”
they began to heap embarrassments on the disconcerted gipsyers. They
kept pitching sticks into the fire till it grew a bonfire, and made
cockshies of the remaining crockery; some audacious boys even helped
themselves to bread and butter, as if on the principle that the open
air ought to keep open house. As there were too many assailants to
chastise, the only remedy was to pack up and take to the road as
fast as they could, with a horse which they found with two broken
knees, the consequence of his being too curious in the construction
of a gravel-pit. “You may say what you like,” said Mr. Carnaby, in
his summing up, “but for my part I must say of gipsying, that it’s
impossible to take to it without being regularly ‘done brown.’”
[Illustration: THE FORTUNE HUNTER.]
COCKLE _v._ CACKLE.
THOSE who much read advertisements and bills,
Must have seen puffs of Cockle’s Pills,
Call’d Anti-bilious--
Which some Physicians sneer at, supercilious,
But which we are assured, if timely taken,
May save your liver and bacon;
Whether or not they really give one ease,
I, who have never tried,
Will not decide;
But no two things in union go like these--
Viz.--Quacks and Pills--save Ducks and Pease.
Now Mrs. W. was getting sallow,
Her lilies not of the white kind, but yellow,
And friends portended was preparing for
A human Pâté Périgord;
She was, indeed, so very far from well,
Her Son, in filial fear, procured a box
Of those said pellets to resist Bile’s shocks,
And--tho’ upon the ear it strangely knocks--
To save her by a Cockle from a shell!
But Mrs. W., just like Macbeth,
Who very vehemently bids us “throw
Bark to the Bow-wows,” hated physic so,
It seem’d to share “the bitterness of Death:”
Rhubarb--Magnesia--Jalap, and the kind--
Senna--Steel--Assa-fœtida, and Squills--
Powder or Draught--but least her throat inclined
To give a course to Boluses or Pills:
No--not to save her life, in lung or lobe,
For all her lights or all her liver’s sake,
Would her convulsive thorax undertake,
Only one little uncelestial globe!
’Tis not to wonder at, in such a case,
If she put by the pill-box in a place
For linen rather than for drugs intended--
Yet for the credit of the pills let’s say
After they thus were stow’d away,
Some of the linen mended;
But Mrs. W. by disease’s dint,
Kept getting still more yellow in her tint,
When lo! her second son, like elder brother,
Marking the hue on the parental gills,
Brought a new charge of Anti-tumeric Pills,
To bleach the jaundiced visage of his Mother--
Who took them--in her cupboard--like the other.
“Deeper and deeper, still,” of course,
The fatal colour daily grew in force;
Till daughter W. newly come from Rome,
Acting the self-same filial, pillial, part,
To cure Mamma, another dose brought home
Of Cockles;--not the Cockles of her heart!
These going where the others went before,
Of course she had a very pretty store;
And then--some hue of health her cheek adorning,
The Medicine so good must be,
They brought her dose on dose, which she
Gave to the upstairs cupboard, “night and morning.”
Till wanting room at last, for other stocks,
Out of the window one fine day she pitch’d
The pillage of each box, and quite enrich’d
The feed of Mister Burrell’s hens and cocks,--
A little Barber of a by-gone day,
Over the way
Whose stock in trade, to keep the least of shops,
Was one great head of Kemble,--that is, John,
Staring in plaster, with a _Brutus_ on,
And twenty little Bantam fowls--with _crops_.
Little Dame W. thought when through the sash
She gave the physic wings,
To find the very things
So good for bile, so bad for chicken rash,
For thoughtless cock, and unreflecting pullet!
But while they gathered up the nauseous nubbles,
Each peck’d itself into a peck of troubles,
And brought the hand of Death upon its gullet.
They might as well have addled been, or ratted,
For long before the night--ah woe betide
The Pills! each suicidal Bantam died
Unfatted!
Think of poor Burrell’s shock,
Of Nature’s debt to see his hens all payers,
And laid in death as Everlasting Layers,
With Bantam’s small Ex-Emperor, the Cock,
In ruffled plumage and funereal hackle,
Giving, undone by Cockle, a last Cackle!
To see as stiff as stone, his unlive stock,
It really was enough to move his block.
Down on the floor he dash’d, with horror big,
Mr. Bell’s third wife’s mother’s coachman’s wig;
And with a tragic stare like his own Kemble,
Burst out with natural emphasis enough,
And voice that grief made tremble,
Into that very speech of sad Macduff--
“What!--all my pretty chickens and their dam,
At one fell swoop!--
Just when I’d bought a coop
To see the poor lamented creatures cram!”
After a little of this mood,
And brooding over the departed brood,
With razor he began to ope each craw,
Already turning black, as black as coals;
When lo! the undigested cause he saw--
“Pison’d by goles!”
To Mrs. W.’s luck a contradiction,
Her window still stood open to conviction;
And by short course of circumstantial labour,
He fix’d the guilt upon his adverse neighbour;--
Lord! how he rail’d at her: declaring now,
He’d bring an action ere next Term of Hilary,
Then, in another moment, swore a vow,
He’d make her do pill-penance in the pillory!
She, meanwhile distant from the dimmest dream
Of combating with guilt, yard-arm or arm-yard,
Lapp’d in a paradise of tea and cream;
When up ran Betty with a dismal scream--
“Here’s Mr. Burrell, Ma’am, with all his farm-yard!”
Straight in he came, unbowing and unbending,
With all the warmth that iron and a barber
Can harbour;
To dress the head and front of her offending,
The fuming phial of his wrath uncorking;
In short, he made her pay him altogether,
In hard cash, very _hard_, for ev’ry feather,
Charging of course, each Bantam as a Dorking;
Nothing could move him, nothing make him supple,
So the sad dame unpocketing her loss,
Had nothing left but to sit hands across,
And see her poultry, “going down ten couple.”
[Illustration: HALFPENNY HATCH.]
Now birds by poison slain,
As venom’d dart from Indian’s hollow cane,
Are edible; and Mrs. W.’s thrift,--
She had a thrifty vein,--
Destined one pair for supper to make shift,--
Supper as usual at the hour of ten:
But ten o’clock arrived and quickly pass’d,
Eleven--twelve--and one o’clock at last,
Without a sign of supper even then!
At length, the speed of cookery to quicken,
Betty was called, and with reluctant feet,
Came up at a white heat--
“Well, never I see chicken like them chicken!
My saucepans, they have been a pretty while in ’em!
Enough to stew them, if it comes to that,
To flesh and bones, and perfect rags; but drat
Those Anti-biting Pills! there is no bile in ’em!”
A LAWYER’S LETTER.
_To Mr. Richard Walton, 32, Lincoln’s Inn._
DEAR DICK,
IN re Pedro--Pike, Row, Badgery, and Crump, Mr. Theodore Hook’s
attorneys, offered three years ago, and continued the allowance
up to last Easter Term, to give me, with unexampled liberality,
eighteen shillings per week as copying clerk, and to undertake the
management of the Common Law--attend to the Chancery Department--do the
out-door business--make out Bills of Costs--and make myself generally
useful--which I have been doing as long as my health permitted. Not
being strong, though with an attachment to the profession, I have been
compelled to withdraw my record, and to sue out a Writ of Certiorari to
carry my line of life into another court. Hearing that Don Pedro was
about to bring an action against Don Miguel and Company, and that lots
of John Does and Richard Roes were wanted, I took a retainer from an
agent of the great Portuguese professional gentleman, and have really
embarked in the cause. Being out here on the circuit, as one might call
it (Mr. Chief Justice Sartorius goes it), and knowing the interest you
take in my verdicts, I shall write at intervals the particulars of
plaintiff’s demand, and account of set-off on the part of the enemy’s
fleet, or Defendant. Pray call on Mr. Wilson, the Common Law Clerk at
Pike, Row, and Co., and tell him I have four hours to myself and a
chance of being paid, but do this if possible without the knowledge of
the Principals. White of the same office, when I enlisted, was to have
taken the benefit of the act, but on mustering at Gravesend, he did not
attend the roll call, and was struck off the Rolls. I can’t but say,
putting Truth on her oath in the Admiralty Court, that when the Blue
Peter gave legal notice to quit, I felt some regret at leaving a land
where I might have been, so to speak, a tenant at will. Nor was it much
better when I came to the Nore. I heartily wished, with Mr. Matthews,
that if Britannia does rule the waves, she would rule them evener! but
it was “rule refused.” The sea ran very rough, and you will understand
me when I say I took nothing by my motion. There was the thought of my
mother, besides, and the numberless feelings for which, though matters
of everyday practice, it is difficult to show cause.
You remember Sugden with Hart & Co., and will not be surprised to hear
that he volunteered to convince Don Miguel of his defective title.
A few hours, however, sufficed to disgust him with conveyancing, as
it is practised in the Marine Courts; and I heard him, by a verbal
instrument, assign over with technical formality, the whole ship to the
Devil, his Heirs, Executors, Administrators, and Assigns.
As for Butterworth, the Captain gave instructions with regard to the
stays, and Butterworth in going aloft fell overboard. We thought for
some time that he was dead, but after rubbing, and other means of
revival, we had the satisfaction of seeing him moving for a new trial,
and that he was beginning _de novo_.
You may conceive, professionally, our joy at entering the Douro with
a prospect of being invited within the Bar,--but the anchors were
instructed to stay proceedings, and we stayed the same. As I took notes
of what happened afterwards, I will give you a rough draft.
_Michaelmas Term, Oct. 31._ Admiral took Counsel’s opinion with
regard to the Fort of St. Michael. Held that an action would lie.
Judgment affirmed.
_Nov. 2._ Action of assault and battery. Admiral’s ship opened the
case, and the others followed on the same side. Hills crowded with
witnesses. Enemy’s damages laid at a hundred and fifty men. Tax off
a hundred.
[Illustration: DRAKE DISPERSING THE ARMADA.]
3. Discovering flaws and amending same. At intervals term reports.
Pollock died of his wounds, and was struck off the paper. Gave him
an undertaking.
4. _A dies non._ Poor Horne seized with lockjaw, and preparing for
the long vacation.
5. Notice of action. Enemy’s Fleet put in an appearance, but _non
pros_. Horne demised.
6. Joined issue with enemy’s flag ship. Wetherell killed by a ball
lodging in the Inner Temple, and Denman subpœnaed by a bullet out
of the main-top. Enemy attempted to put an officer and fifty men in
possession--but we served them with an ejectment. Night coming on,
agreed to withdraw a juror.
7. A violent storm, and a sail under a distress. Taken in execution
by a wave,--levied on longboat and three men, and all the hen-coops.
8. Fell in with a Portuguese brig, and lodged a detainer. Have not
received my share of prize, but have got a cognovit.
9. Enemy moved for a new trial. Bore up and fired a broadside;
replied to same. Admiral endeavoured, by intercepting the rear-most
ships, to cut off the entail. Boarding again,--obliged to fight
with all my Power of Attorney. Gave quarter to one man, he was such
a special pleader. Verdict--drawn battle.
10. Chitty fell overboard from the mizen chains. Action of trover
failed. Filed a bill of him in Ocean’s Chancery, and sent an office
copy to his Widow.
11. Enemy brought a fresh action. Boarding again, and obliged to
defend in person. Enemy nonsuited with costs.
To abbreviate pleadings, you will see that our time has been Term time.
Plenty of work at overhours, and I am sorry to say no extra charge. But
I am not going to take a bill of exceptions. I comfort myself for the
loss of my arm--I have lost that limb of the law, Dick--by reflecting
that I am now like Nelson, except the blind eye, and that I do not
follow the Hamiltonian system. Sometimes, however, as I look homeward,
and remember “dear Morton,” I sigh to join you by a _Surrey-joinder_,
and to taste your _Surrey-butter_. I think that is the legal mode of
expressing it.
Nothing can behave better than our men--from the principals down to the
juniors. They fight as if they belonged to Lyon’s Inn. However, a good
many have been ticked off,--including Tyndale, Thessiger, Phillips,
Spankie, Scarlett, Gurney, Wilde, Burney, and some others of our
acquaintance, who have received a general release. For my own part----
[LETTER ENCLOSING THE ABOVE.]
SIR.
Am sorry to Say the man as writ the Inclosed letter, with a bit of
a log, fell Down the Main Hatchway on the 16th instant at 2 P. M.
Was carried down to Cockpit. But the Doctor pronounced it a Bad
Job, and after saying O Law three times was a Corps. He left no
Will nor no property, and was Sowed up and heaved overboard, same
day in lat. 41, 5 N., long. 8, 50 W.
I take the Liberty of writing This that you may inform Parents,
provided there’s father or mother, as well as to his widow and
children, if so be. Should you be encouraged to come out to us in
your friend’s Place, you will be heartily welcome, and lots of as
jolly good fighting as hearts can wish. So no more at present from
Your Humble Servant
THOMAS BENYON.
N.B. Go to the Duncan’s Head in Wapping, and Captain Bligh will tell
you all about the Bounty. That’s if you mean to ’list.
[Illustration: “I HAVE A SILENT SORROW HERE.”]
THE SWEEP’S COMPLAINT.
“I like to meet a sweep--such as come forth with the dawn, or
somewhat earlier, with their little professional notes, sounding
like the peep, peep, of a young sparrow.”--ESSAYS OF ELIA.
----“A voice cried Sweep no more!
Macbeth hath murdered sweep.”--SHAKSPEARE.
ONE morning ere my usual time
I rose, about the seventh chime,
When little stunted boys that climb
Still linger in the street:
And as I walked, I saw indeed
A sample of the sooty breed,
Though he was rather run to seed,
In height above five feet.
A mongrel tint he seem’d to take,
Poetic simile to make,
DAY through his MARTIN ’gan to break,
White overcoming jet.
From side to side he cross’d oblique,
Like Frenchman who has friends to seek,
And yet no English word can speak,
He walk’d upon the fret:
And while he sought the dingy job,
His lab’ring breast appear’d to throb
And half a hiccup half a sob
Betray’d internal woe.
To cry the cry he had by rote
He yearn’d, but law forbade the note,
Like Chanticleer with roupy throat,
He gaped--but not a crow!
I watch’d him, and the glimpse I snatch’d
Disclosed his sorry eyelids patch’d
With red, as if the soot had catch’d
That hung about the lid;
And soon I saw the tear-drop stray,
He did not care to brush away;
Thought I the cause he will betray--
And thus at last he did.
[Illustration: A WIND-FALL.]
Well, here’s a pretty go! here’s a Gagging Act, if ever there was a
gagging!
But I’m bound the members as silenced us, in doing it had plenty of
magging.
They had better send us all off, they had, to the School for the
Deaf and Dumb,
To unlarn us our mother tongues, and to make signs and be regularly
mum.
But they can’t undo natur--as sure as ever the morning begins to
peep,
Directly I open my eyes, I can’t help calling out Sweep
As natural as the sparrows among the chimbley-pots that say Cheep!
For my own part I find my suppress’d voice very uneasy,
And comparable to nothing but having your tissue stopt when you are
sneezy.
Well, it’s all up with us! tho’ I suppose we mustn’t cry all up.
Here’s a precious merry Christmas, I’m blest if I can earn either
bit or sup!
If crying Sweep, of mornings, is going beyond quietness’s border,
Them as pretends to be fond of silence oughtn’t to cry hear, hear,
and order, order.
I wonder Mr. Sutton, as we’ve sut-on too, don’t sympathise with us
As a Speaker what don’t speak, and that’s exactly our own cus.
God help us if we don’t not cry, how are we to pursue our callings?
I’m sure we’re not half so bad as other businesses with their
bawlings.
For instance, the general postmen, that at six o’clock go about
ringing,
And wake up all the babbies that their mothers have just got to
sleep with singing.
Greens oughtn’t to be cried no more than blacks--to do the unpartial
job,
If they bring in a Sooty Bill, they ought to have brought in a Dusty
Bob.
Is a dustman’s voice more sweet than ourn, when he comes a seeking
arter the cinders,
Instead of a little boy like a blackbird in spring, singing merrily
under your windows?
There’s the omnibus cads as plies in Cheapside, and keeps calling
out Bank and City;
Let his Worship, the Mayor, decide if our call of Sweep is not just
as pretty.
I can’t see why the Jews should be let go about crying Old Close
thro their hooky noses,
And Christian laws should be ten times more hard than the old stone
laws of Moses.
Why isn’t the mouths of the muffin-men compell’d to be equally shut?
Why, because Parliament members eat muffins, but they never eat no
sut.
Next year there won’t be any May-day at all, we shan’t have no heart
to dance,
And Jack in the Green will go in black like mourning for our
mischance;
If we live as long as May, that’s to say, through the hard winter
and pinching weather,
For I don’t see how we’re to earn enough to keep body and soul
together.
I only wish Mr. Wilberforce or some of them that pities the niggers,
Would take a peep down in our cellars, and look at our miserable
starving figures,
A-sitting idle on our empty sacks, and all ready to eat each other,
And a brood of little ones crying for bread to a heart-breaking
Father and Mother.
They haven’t a rag of clothes to mend, if their mothers had thread
and needles,
But crawl naked about the cellars, poor things, like a swarm of
common black beadles.
If they’d only inquired before passing the Act and taken a few such
peeps,
I don’t think that any real gentleman would have set his face
against sweeps.
Climbin’s an ancient respectable art, and if History’s of any vally,
Was recommended by Queen Elizabeth to the great Sir Walter Raleigh,
When he wrote on a pane of glass how I’d climb, if the way I only
knew,
And she writ beneath, if your heart’s afeard, don’t venture up the
flue.
As for me I was always loyal, and respected all powers that are
higher,
But how can I now say God save the King, if I an’t to be a Cryer?
There’s London milk, that’s one of the cries, even on Sunday the law
allows,
But ought black sweeps, that are human beasts, to be worser off than
black cows?
Do _we_ go calling about, when it’s church time, like the noisy
Billingsgate vermin,
And disturb the parson with “All alive O!” in the middle of a
funeral sermon?
But the fish won’t keep, not the mackarel won’t, is the cry of the
Parliament elves,
Every thing, except the sweeps I think, is to be allowed to keep
themselves!
Lord help us! what’s to become of us if we mustn’t cry no more?
We shan’t do for black mutes to go a standing at a death’s door.
And we shan’t do to emigrate, no not even to the Hottentot nations,
For as time wears on, our black will wear off, and then think of our
situations!
And we should not do, in lieu of black-a-moor footmen, to serve
ladies of quality nimbly,
For when we we’re drest in our sky-blue and silver, and large
frills, all clean and neat, and white silk stockings, if they
pleased to desire us to sweep the hearth, we couldn’t resist the
chimbley.
[Illustration: A REVERSE IN BUSINESS.]
LETTER FROM AN OLD SPORTSMAN.
DEAR SIR,
I RECEAVED your’s of the first last, wich I should have anser’d it
sooner, only I have ad the Roomatiz in my fingers, so you must Pleas to
excus my crampd hand.
As to my Sporting Reminis-cences, as you are pleasd to say, I have
look’d them out in the dixenary, and kno verry well what it is. I beg
leaf to Say, I have forgot all my recolections, and can not bring to
mind any of my old Rememberances.
As for Hunting, I shall never take a fence at it agen, altho I sumtims
Ride to cover on the old Gray, wich is now be come quite Wite. The last
tim I went out, we dru Hazelmere copses down to Broxley wood; then
we dru Broxley wood over to Fox thorp; then we dru Fox thorp over to
Middle ford, and then we dru Middle ford, in short, it was all drawing
and no painting for want of a brush.
Sir William Chase coming to be his father’s hare, he set up a coarsing
club, but being short of long dogs, and there hairs falling of, it was
obleged to discourse, and is now turned into a conversasiony.
In regard to shuting, I have never dun anny thing Since percussion
Captiousness cum up, wich I am Told they are sharper then Flints. The
last hare I kild was 2 long ears ago, and the Last fezzant, But there’s
a long tail belonging to that, wich you shall have when you cum over,
as I hop you wil, with your Horse’s; I have good entertainment for
boath, as the french Say, at my table D’ oats. The lads go out after
Burds now and then, but I seldum cum at the rites of there shuting--you
kno
Wat is Hits is Histery,
But what is mist is mistery.
[Illustration: WHICH WAY DID THE FOX GO?]
Talking of shuting, hav you seen Ubbard’s new guns like wauking
sticks--there a cappital defence agin cappital offences; as you may
ether stick a feller or Shute him; or boath together. I wish farmer
Gale had carrid one last friday, for he was Rob’d cuming from markit by
a foot paddy Irish man, that knockd him down to make him Stand. Luckly
he had nothing on him when Stopd but sum notes of the Barnsby bank that
had bin stopd the weak afore.
In the fishing line I am quite Dead bait, tho I have had manny a Good
run in my tim, Partickler when the keeper spide me out were I hadent
got Leaf. The last tim I went I could hardly un do my rod for roomatiz
in my joints, and I got the Lumbago verry bad wen I cum back, and its
atax I doant like. Beside wich I found very Little big fish on a count
of the pochers, who Kil em al in colde blood. I used sumtims to float
and sumtims to fli, but our waters is so over fished theres no fish to
be had, and as I am very musicle, I dont like trolling without a catch,
the last jack I caut was with my boot, and was only a foot long.
[Illustration: FLY FISHING.]
As for raceing, I never cared much a bout it, and in regard of betting,
I am Better with out it, tho I al ways take the feeld wen I am Able,
and suport the Farmer’s Plate with al my Mite.
Our Wist club is going of, Some of the members go on so; two of em are
perpetuly quareling like anny thing but double dummies, for one plays
like Hoyle and the other like Vinegar. The young men hav interduced
Shorts, but I doant think theyle Last long. They are al so verry Sharp
at the Pints, and as for drinking, I never se sich Liquorish Chaps in
my life. They are al ways laying ods, even at Super, when theyle Bet
about the age of a Roosted foul, with they cal Chicken hazzard, or
about the Wait of a Curran py, with they cal the Currancy question.
They al so smoke a grate manny seagars, but they cant Put the old men’s
pips out, wich it Wood be a Burning shame if they did. I am sorry to
say politicks has Crept in; Sum is al for reform, and some is al for
none at al, and the only thing they agre in is, that the Land lord
shant bring in no Bil. There is be sides grate dis-cushins as to the
new game laws, sum entertaning douts wen sum peple go out a shuting,
wether even acts of Parliament will inable them to shute anny game.
The crickit Club is going on uncomon wel. They are 36 members with out
rekoning the byes; our best man at Wickit is Captin Batty--he often
gets four notches running; and our best boler is Use Ball, tho we
sumtims get Dr. Pilby to bolus. As for the crickit Bal, it is quit wore
out, wich the gals say they are verry Sory for it, as they took a grate
intrest in our matches.
My lads are boath of em marred, wich mayhap you have Herd,--and if
the gals are not, I Believe its no falt of theres. They hope youle
cum to the Wake, wich is next Sunday weak, for they Say there will be
High fun, al tho I think it is Rather Low. The only use of waking that
I can See, is to pervent folkes Sleeping, and as for there jumping
and throwing up their Heals, I see no Pleasur in it. If they had the
Roomatiz as Bad as I have, they woudent be for Dancing there fandangoes
at that rat, and Kicking for partners.
Our county Member, Sir William Wiseacre, is going to bring in a bil
“for the supression of the Barbarus past-time of bul beating, and for
the better incorigement of the nobul art of Cockin,” by wich al buls,
wether inglish or irish, are to be Made game of no longer, and al such
as are found at anny ring or stake are libel to be find. They cal it
here the Cock and Bul Act, wich I think is a very good name. It has
causd grate diversion in manny peple’s opinions, but most of us Think
the cocks is quite as Bad as the buls. The same Barrownet as tried to
interduce Forkenry, but the first atempts as been verry Hawkward. The
forkens flu at a herin, who tried to be above there atax, for the more
they pecked him the more they maid him sore, but a boy flying a Kite
skared em al away togither.
[Illustration: WHERE’S YOUR HAWKER’S LICENSE?]
Last week was our grand archery Meetin, and the first prize was won by
Little Master Tomkins, of grove House. I supose his fondnes for lolli
pops made him ame best at bulls Eyes. The Miss Courtenays were there
as usul, and in comparison of arch Angles look ralyarcher.--The wags
propposed miss Emilyshood have the second prize for shuting in too a
cows Eye that came to nere the target; she says she wos so nervus, it
put her arrow into a quiver. In the middle of the meeting we herd a Bad
playd Key buggle, and out of the shrubbery, were they had bin hiding,
Jumpd Revd. Mister Crumpe and assistants; he is Rector of Bow and Curat
of Harrow, and was disgised in every thing green, as Robin Hood and
his mery Men; after geting Little John to string his bow for him, I am
sorry to say, Robin Hood shot Worst of every Body, for he did not even
hit the target, and we should have never Seen wear his arrow went, but
by hereing it smash in to the conservatorry. When we came to look for
the prize, a silver Arrow, every Body had lost it, for it had dropt
out of the case, and would never have been found, but for Revd. mister
Crumpe sittin downe on the lawne, and wich made Him jump up agen, as
miss Courtenay said out of Byron, like “a warrior bounding from its
Barb.” The Toxophilus Club is very flurrishing, but talk of expeling
sum members for persisting in wereing peagreen insted of lincon, and
puttin on there spanish Hats and fethers the rong side before.
Thank you for the Hoisters, wich was verry good. Mary has took the
shels to make her a groto, of wich I think is very shameful, as I
wanted them to Friten the Burds. Old Mark Lane, the man as Cheated you
out of them oats, has bean sent to jail for Stealing barly. I am sadly
Afearde old Marks corn will give Him 14 ears of Bottany.
Pleas to Remember me to al inquiring friends, if they should think it
woth wile to Ask after me.
From your Humbel servant,
ANDREW AXELTREE.
P.S. I forgot to menshun the subskripshon Stag hounds kep by the same
members as the wist club, and its there wim to have fifty too dogs
to the pack. If old Bil, the huntsman, was drest like Pam, theyd be
complet. They have had sum cappital runs dooring the season. As you
write for the sporting Maggazins, you may like to notice an apereance
rather noo in the felde, I mean the Grate Creol Curnel Brown, who is
very pompus, and hunts with Pompey, his black servant, after him. I
have got a Deal more to Say, but carnt for want of Room. Mary says I
should Cros it, wich I wood, but I doant Wish to put you to the expense
of a Dubble leter.
THE SUB-MARINE.
IT was a brave and jolly wight,
His cheek was baked and brown,
For he had been in many climes
With captains of renown,
And fought with those who fought so well
At Nile and Camperdown.
His coat it was a soldier coat,
Of red with yellow faced,
But (merman-like) he look’d marine
All downward from the waist;
His trousers were so wide and blue,
And quite in sailor taste!
He put the rummer to his lips,
And drank a jolly draught;
He raised the rummer many times--
And ever as he quaff’d,
The more he drank the more the ship
Seem’d pitching fore and aft!
The ship seemed pitching fore and aft,
As in a heavy squall;
It gave a lurch and down he went,
Head-foremost in his fall!
Three times he did not rise, alas!
He never rose at all!
But down he went right down at once,
Like any stone he dived,
He could not see, or hear, or feel--
Of senses all deprived!
At last he gave a look around
To see where he arrived!
And all that he could see was green,
Sea-green on every hand!
And then he tried to sound beneath,
And all he felt was sand!
There he was fain to lie, for he
Could neither sit nor stand!
And lo! above his head there bent
A strange and staring lass;
One hand was in her yellow hair,
The other held a glass;
A mermaid she must surely be
If ever mermaid was!
Her fish-like mouth was opened wide,
Her eyes were blue and pale,
Her dress was of the ocean green,
When ruffled by a gale;
Thought he “beneath that petticoat
She hides a salmon-tail!”
She look’d as siren ought to look,
A sharp and bitter shrew,
To sing deceiving lullabies
For mariners to rue,--
But when he saw her lips apart,
It chill’d him through and through!
With either hand he stopp’d his ears
Against her evil cry;
Alas, alas, for all his care,
His doom it seem’d to die,
Her voice went ringing through his head
It was so sharp and high!
He thrust his fingers farther in
At each unwilling ear,
But still in very spite of all
The words were plain and clear;
“I can’t stand here the whole day long,
To hold your glass of beer!”
With open’d mouth and open’d eyes,
Up rose the sub-marine,
And gave a stare to find the sands
And deeps where he had been:
There was no siren with her glass!
No waters ocean-green!
The wet deception from his eyes
Kept fading more and more,
He only saw the bar-maid stand
With pouting lip before--
The small green parlour of the Ship,
And little sanded floor.
[Illustration: BOARDING-SCHOOL.]
THE ISLAND.
“Oh had I some sweet little Isle of my own!”--MOORE.
IF the author of the Irish Melodies had ever had a little Isle so much
his own as I have possessed, he might not have found it so sweet as the
song anticipates. It has been my fortune, like Robinson Crusoe, and
Alexander Selkirk, to be thrown on such a desolate spot, and I felt so
lonely, though I had a follower, that I wish Moore had been there. I
had the honour of being in that tremendous action off Finisterre, which
proved an end of the earth to many a brave fellow. I was ordered with
a boarding party to forcibly enter the Santissima Trinidada, but in
the act of climbing into the quarter-gallery, which, however, gave no
quarter, was rebutted by the butt-end of a marine’s gun, who remained
the quarter-master of the place. I fell senseless into the sea, and
should no doubt have perished in the waters of oblivion, but for the
kindness of John Monday, who picked me up to go adrift with him in one
of the ship’s boats. All our oars were carried away, that is to say we
did not carry away any oars, and while shot was raining, our feeble
hailing was unheeded. In short, as Shakspeare says, we were drifting
off by “the current of a heady fight.” As may be supposed, our boat was
anything but the jolly-boat, for we had no provisions to spare in the
middle of an immense waste. We were, in fact, adrift in the cutter with
nothing to cut. We had not even junk for junketing, and nothing but
salt-water, even if the wind should blow fresh. Famine indeed seemed to
stare each of us in the ace; that is we stared at one another; but if
men turn cannibals, a great allowance must be made for a short ditto.
We were truly in a very disagreeable pickle, with oceans of brine and
no beef, and, like Shylock, I fancy we would have exchanged a pound of
gold for a pound of flesh. The more we drifted Nor, the more sharply we
inclined to gnaw,--but when we drifted Sow, we found nothing like pork.
No bread rose in the east, and in the opposite point we were equally
disappointed. We could not compass a meal anyhow, but got mealy-mouth’d
notwithstanding. We could see the Sea mews to the eastward, flying over
what Byron calls the Gardens of Gull. We saw plenty of Grampus, but
they were useless to all intents and porpusses, and we had no bait for
catching a bottle-nose.
[Illustration: THE POUND OF FLESH.]
[Illustration: CATCHING A BOTTLE-NOSE.]
Time hung heavily on our hands, for our fast days seemed to pass very
slowly, and our strength was rapidly sinking from being so much afloat.
Still we nourished Hope, though we had nothing to give her. But at last
we lost all prospect of land, if one may so say when no land was in
sight. The weather got thicker as we were getting thinner; and though
we kept a sharp watch, it was a very bad look-out. We could see nothing
before us but nothing to eat and drink. At last the fog cleared off,
and we saw something like land right a-head, but alas, the wind was
in our teeth as well as in our stomachs. We could do nothing but keep
her near, and as we could not keep ourselves full, we luckily suited
the course of the boat; so that after a tedious beating about--for
the wind not only gives blows, but takes a great deal of beating--we
came incontinently to an island. Here we landed, and our first impulse
on coming to dry land was to drink. There was a little brook at hand
to which we applied ourselves till it seemed actually to murmur at
our inordinate thirst. Our next care was to look for some food, for
though our hearts were full at our escape, the neighbouring region was
dreadfully empty. We succeeded in getting some natives out of their
bed, and ate them, poor things, as fast as they got up, but with some
difficulty in getting them open; a common oyster-knife would have been
worth the price of a sceptre. Our next concern was to look out for a
lodging, and at last we discovered an empty cave, reminding me of an
old inscription at Portsmouth, “The whole of this place to let.” We
took the precaution of rolling some great stones to the entrance, for
fear of last lodgers,--that some bear might come home from business,
or a tiger to tea. Here, under the rock, we slept without rocking,
and when, through the night’s failing, the day broke, we saw with the
first instalment of light that we were upon a small desert isle, now
for the first time an Isle of Man. Accordingly, the birds in this wild
solitude were so little wild, that a number of boobies and noddies
allowed themselves to be taken by hand, though the asses were not such
asses as to be caught. There was an abundance of rabbits, which we
chased unremittingly, as Hunt runs Warren; and when coats and trousers
fell short, we clothed our skins with theirs, till, as Monday said,
we each represented a burrow. In this work Monday was the tailor, for
like the maker of shadowy rabbits and cocks upon the wall, he could
turn his hand to anything. He became a potter, a carpenter, a butcher,
and a baker--that is to say, a master butcher and a master baker, for
I became merely his journeyman. Reduced to a state of nature, Monday’s
favourite phrase for our condition, I found my being an officer
fulfilled no office; to confess the truth, I made a very poor sort of
savage, whereas Monday, I am persuaded, would have been made a chief by
any tribe whatever. Our situations in life were completely reversed;
he became the leader and I the follower, or rather, to do justice to
his attachment and ability, he became like a strong big brother to a
helpless little one.
[Illustration: IN EMBARRASSED CIRCUMSTANCES.]
We remained in a state of nature five years, when at last a whaler of
Hull--though the hull was not visible--showed her masts on the horizon,
an event which was telegraphed by Monday, who began saying his prayers
and dancing the College Hornpipe at the same time with equal fervour.
We contrived by lighting a fire, literally a _feu-de-joie_, to make a
sign of distress, and a boat came to our signal deliverance. We had a
prosperous passage home, where the reader may anticipate the happiness
that awaited us; but not the trouble that was in store for me and
Monday. Our parting was out of the question; we would both rather have
parted from our sheet anchor. We attempted to return to our relative
rank, but we had lived so long in a kind of liberty and equality,
that we could never resume our grades. The state of nature remained
uppermost with us both, and Monday still watched over and tended me
like Dominie Sampson with the boy Harry Bertram; go where I would, he
followed with the dogged pertinacity of Tom Pipes; and do what I might,
he interfered with the resolute vigour of John Dory in Wild Oats. This
disposition involved us daily, nay, hourly, in the most embarrassing
circumstances; and how the connexion might have terminated I know not,
if it had not been speedily dissolved in a very unexpected manner. One
morning poor Monday was found on his bed in a sort of convulsion, which
barely enabled him to grasp my hand, and to falter out, “Good-bye, I am
go--going--back--to a state of nature.”
[Illustration: A GOOD ACTION MEETS ITS OWN REWARD.]
DOG-GREL VERSES, BY A POOR BLIND.
“Hark! hark! the dogs do bark,
The beggars are coming....”--OLD BALLAD.
OH what shall I do for a dog?
Of sight I have not got a particle,
Globe, Standard, or Sun,
Times, Chronicle--none
Can give _me_ a good leading article.
A Mastiff once led me about,
But people appeared so to fear him--
I might have got pence
Without his defence,
But Charity would not come near him.
A Blood-hound was not much amiss,
But instinct at last got the upper;
And tracking Bill Soames,
And thieves to their homes,
I never could get home to supper.
A Fox-hound once served me as guide,
A good one at hill and at valley;
But day after day
He led me astray,
To follow a milk-woman’s tally.
A turnspit once did me good turns
At going and crossing, and stopping;
Till one day his breed
Went off at full speed,
To spit at a great fire in Wapping.
A Pointer once pointed my way,
But did not turn out quite so pleasant,
Each hour I’d a stop
At a Poulterer’s shop
To point at a very high pheasant.
[Illustration: THE BATH GUIDE.]
A Pug did not suit me at all,
The feature unluckily rose up;
And folks took offence
When offering pence,
Because of his turning his nose up.
A Butcher once gave me a dog,
That turn’d out the worst one of any;
A Bull dog’s own pup,
I got a toss up,
Before he had brought me a penny.
My next was a Westminster Dog,
From Aistrop the regular cadger;
But sightless, I saw
He never would draw
A blind man so well as a badger.
A greyhound I got by a swop,
But, Lord! we soon came to divorces:
He treated my strip
Of cord like a slip,
And left me to go my own courses.
A poodle once tow’d me along,
But always we came to one harbour
To keep his curls smart,
And shave his hind part,
He constantly call’d on a barber.
My next was a Newfoundland brute,
As big as a calf fit for slaughter;
But my old cataract
So truly he back’d
I always fell into the water.
I once had a sheep-dog for guide,
His worth did not value a button;
I found it no go,
A Smithfield Ducrow,
To stand on four saddles of mutton.
My next was an Esquimaux dog,
A dog that my bones ache to talk on,
For picking his ways
On cold frosty days
He pick’d out the slides for a walk on.
Bijou was a lady-like dog,
But vex’d me at night not a little,
When tea-time was come
She would not go home,
Her tail had once trail’d a tin kettle.
I once had a sort of a Shock,
And kiss’d a street post like a brother,
And lost every tooth
In learning this truth--
One blind cannot well lead another.
A terrier was far from a trump,
He had one defect, and a thorough,
I never could stir,
’Od rabbit the cur!
Without going into the Borough.
My next was Dalmatian, the dog!
And led me in danger, oh crikey!
By chasing horse heels,
Between carriage wheels,
Till I came upon boards that were spiky.
The next that I had was from Cross,
And once was a favourite spaniel
With Nero, now dead,
And so I was led
Right up to his den like a Daniel.
A mongrel I tried, and he did,
As far as the profit and lossing,
Except that the kind
Endangers the blind,
The breed is so fond of a crossing.
A setter was quite to my taste,
In alleys or streets broad or narrow
Till one day I met
A very dead set,
At a very dead horse in a barrow.
[Illustration: “DOG-BERRY.”]
I once had a dog that went mad,
And sorry I was that I got him;
It came to a run,
And a man with a gun
Pepper’d _me_ when he ought to have shot him.
My profits have gone to the dogs,
My trade has been such a deceiver,
I fear that my aim
Is a mere losing game,
Unless I can find a Retriever.
THE KANGAROOS.
A FABLE.
A PAIR of married kangaroos
(The case is oft a human one too)
Were greatly puzzled once to choose
A trade to put their eldest son to:
A little brisk and busy chap,
As all the little K.’s just then are--
About some two months off the lap,--
They’re not so long in arms as men are.
A twist in each parental muzzle
Betray’d the hardship of the puzzle--
So much the flavour of life’s cup
Is framed by early wrong or right,
And Kangaroos we know are quite
Dependent on their “rearing up.”
The question, with its ins and outs,
Was intricate and full of doubts;
And yet they had no squeamish carings
For trades unfit or fit for gentry,
Such notion never had an entry,
For they had no armorial bearings.
Howbeit they’re not the last on earth
That might indulge in pride of birth;
Whoe’er has seen their infant young
Bob in and out their mother’s pokes,
Would own, with very ready tongue,
They are not born like common folks.
Well, thus the serious subject stood,
It kept the old pair watchful nightly,
Debating for young hopeful’s good,
That he might earn his livelihood,
And go through life (like them) uprightly.
Arms would not do at all; no, marry,
In that line all his race miscarry;
And agriculture was not proper,
Unless they meant the lad to tarry
For ever as a mere clod-hopper.
He was not well cut out for preaching,
At least in any striking style;
And as for being mercantile--
He was not form’d for over-reaching.
The law--why there still fate ill-starr’d him,
And plainly from the bar debarr’d him:
A doctor--who would ever fee him?
In music he could scarce engage,
And as for going on the stage
In tragic socks I think I see him!
He would not make a rigging-mounter;
A haberdasher had some merit,
But there the counter still ran counter,
For just suppose
A lady chose
To ask him for a yard of ferret!
A gardener digging up his beds,
The puzzled parents shook their heads.
“A tailor would not do because--”
They paused and glanced upon his paws.
Some parish post, though fate should place it
Before him, how could he embrace it?
In short each anxious Kangaroo
Discuss’d the matter through and through;
By day they seem’d to get no nearer,
’Twas posing quite--
And in the night
Of course they saw their way no clearer!
At last thus musing on their knees--
Or hinder elbows if you please--
It came--no thought was ever brighter!
In weighing every why and whether,
They jump’d upon it both together--
“Let’s make the imp a _short-hand writer_!”
MORAL.
I wish all human parents so
Would argue what their sons are fit for;
Some would-be critics that I know
Would be in trades they have more wit for.
LITERARY REMINISCENCES.
No. II.
TO do justice to the climate of “stout and original Scotland,” it
promised to act kindly by the constitution committed to its care. The
air evidently agreed with the natives; and auld Robin Grays and John
Andersons were plenty as blackberries, and Auld Lang Syne himself
seemed to walk, bonneted, amongst these patriarchal figures in the
likeness of an old man covered with a mantle. The effect on myself
was rather curious--for I seemed to have come amongst a generation
that scarcely belonged to my era; mature spinsters, waning bachelors,
very motherly matrons, and experienced fathers, that I should have
set down as uncles and aunts, called themselves my cousins; reverend
personages, apparently grandfathers and grandmothers, were simply
great uncles and aunts: and finally I enjoyed an interview with a
relative oftener heard of traditionally, than encountered in the
body--a great-great grandmother--still a tall woman and a tolerable
pedestrian, going indeed down the hill, but with the wheel well
locked. It was like coming amongst the Struldbrugs; and truly, for any
knowledge to the contrary, many of these Old Mortalities are still
living, enjoying their sneeshing, their toddy, their cracks, and
particular reminiscences. The very phrase of being “Scotch’d, but not
killed,” seems to refer to this Caledonian tenacity of life, of which
the well-known Walking Stewart was an example: he was an annuitant in
the County-office, and as the actuaries would say, died very hard. It
must be difficult for the teatotallers to reconcile this longevity with
the imputed enormous consumption of ardent spirits beyond the Tweed.
Scotia, according to the evidence of Mr. Buckingham’s committee, is an
especially drouthie bodie, who drinks whiskey at christenings, and at
buryings, and on all possible occasions besides. Her sons drink not by
the hour or by the day, but by the week,--witness Souter Johnny:--
“Tam lo’ed him like a vera brither,
They had been fou for weeks thegither.”
Swallowing no thin washy potation, but a strong overproof spirit,
with a smack of smoke--and “where there is smoke there is fire,” yet
without flashing off, according to temperance theories, by spontaneous
combustion. On the contrary, the canny northerns are noted for
soundness of constitution and clearness of head, with such a strong
principle of vitality as to justify the poetical prediction of C***,
that the world’s longest liver, or Last Man, will be a Scotchman.
All these favourable signs I duly noted; and prophetically refrained
from delivering the letter of introduction to Doctor C----, which was
to place me under his medical care. As the sick man said, when he
went into the gin-shop instead of the hospital, I “trusted to natur.”
Whenever the weather permitted, therefore, which was generally when
there were no new books to the fore, I haunted the banks and braes, or
paid flying visits to the burns, with a rod intended to punish that
rising generation amongst fishes called trout. But I whipped in vain.
Trout there were in plenty, but like obstinate double teeth, with a bad
operator, they would neither be pulled out nor come out of themselves.
Still the sport, if so it might be called, had its own attractions, as,
the catching excepted, the whole of the Waltonish enjoyments were at
my command, the contemplative quiet, the sweet wholesome country air,
and the picturesque scenery--not to forget the relishing the homely
repast at the shealing or the mill; sometimes I went alone, but often
we were a company, and then we had for our attendant a journeyman
tobacco-spinner, an original, and literary withal, for he had a reel in
his head, whence ever and anon he unwound a line of Allan Ramsay, or
Beattie, or Burns. Methinks I still listen, trudging homewards in the
gloaming, to the recitation of that appropriate stanza, beginning--
“At the close of the day when the hamlet was still,”
delivered with a gusto perhaps only to be felt by a day-labouring
mechanic, who had “nothing but his evenings to himself.” Methinks I
still sympathise with the zest with which he dwelt on the pastoral
images and dreams so rarely realised, when a chance holiday gave
him the fresh-breathing fragrance of the living flower in lieu
of the stale odour of the Indian weed; and philosophically I can
now understand why poetry, with its lofty aspirations and sublimed
feelings, seemed to sound so gratefully to the ear from the lips of
a “squire of low degree.” There is something painful and humiliating
to humanity in the abjectness of mind, that too often accompanies the
sordid condition of the working classes; whereas it is soothing and
consolatory to find the mind of the poor man rising superior to his
estate, and compensating by intellectual enjoyment for the physical
pains and privation that belong to his humble lot. Whatever raises
him above the level of the ox in the garner, or the horse in the
mill, ought to be acceptable to the pride, if not to the charity, of
the fellow creature that calls him brother; for instance, music and
dancing, but against which innocent unbendings some of our magistracy
persist in setting their faces, as if resolved that a low neighbourhood
should enjoy no dance but St. Vitus’s, and no fiddle but the Scotch.
To these open-air pursuits, sailing was afterwards added, bringing
me acquainted with the boatmen and fishermen of The Craig, a hardy
race, rough and ready-witted, from whom perchance was first derived my
partiality for all marine bipeds and sea-craft, from Flag Admirals down
to Jack Junk, the proud first-rate to the humble boatie that “wins the
bairns’ bread.” The Tay at Dundee is a broad noble river, with a racing
tide, which, when it differs with a contrary wind, will get up “_jars_”
(Anglicè waves) quite equal to those of a family manufacture. It was
at least a good preparatory school for learning the rudiments of boat
craft; whereof I acquired enough to be able at need to take the helm
without either going too near the wind or too distant from the port.
Not without some boyish pride I occasionally found myself intrusted
with the guidance of the Coach-Boat--so called from its carrying the
passengers by the Edinburgh Mail--particularly in a calm, when the
utmost exertions of the crew, four old man-of-war’s-men, were required
at the oars. It not unfrequently happened, however, that “the laddie”
was unceremoniously ousted by the unanimous vote, and sometimes by the
united strength, of the ladies, who invariably pitched upon the oldest
old gentleman in the vessel to
“_Steer_ her up and haud her gaun.”
The consequence being the landing with all the baggage, some half-mile
above or below the town--and a too late conviction, that the _Elder_
Brethren of our Trinity House were not the best Pilots.
It was during one of these brief voyages, that I witnessed a
serio-comic accident, at which the reader will smile or sigh according
to his connexion with the Corporation of London. I forget on what
unconscious pilgrimage it was bound, but amongst the other passengers
one day, there was that stock-dove of a gourmand’s affection, a five
lively turtle. Rich and rare as it was, it did not travel unprotected
like Moore’s heroine, but was under the care of a vigilant guardian,
who seemed as jealous of the eyes that looked amorously at his charge,
as if the latter had been a ward in Chancery. So far--namely, as far
as the middle of the Tay--so good; when the spirit of mischief, or
curiosity, or humanity, suggested the convenience of a sea-bath, and
the refreshment the creature might derive from a taste of its native
element. Accordingly, Testudo was lifted over the side, and indulged
with a dip and a wallop in the wave, which actually revived it so
powerfully, that from a playful flapping with its fore-fins it soon
began to struggle most vigorously, like a giant refreshed with brine.
In fact, it paddled with a power which, added to its weight, left no
alternative to its guardian but to go with it, or without it. The event
soon came off. The man tumbled backward into the boat, and the turtle
plunged forward into the deep. There was a splash--a momentary glimpse
of the broad back-shell--the waters closed, and all was over--or
at least under! In vain one of the boatmen aimed a lunge with his
boat-hook, at the fatal spot in particular--in vain another made a blow
with his oar at the Tay in general--whilst a third, in his confusion,
heaved a coil of rope, as he would, could, should, might, or ought to
have done to a drowning Christian. The Amphibious was beyond their
reach, and no doubt, making westward and homeward with all its might,
with an instinctive feeling that
“The world was all before it where to choose
Its place of rest, and Providence its guide.”
Never shall I forget, whilst capable of reminiscences, the face of that
mourning mate thus suddenly bereaved of his turtle! The unfortunate
shepherd, Ding-dog, in Rabelais, could hardly have looked more utterly
and unutterably dozed, crazed, mizmazed, and flabbergasted, when his
whole flock and stock of golden-fleeced sheep suicidically sheepwashed
themselves to death, by wilfully leaping over-board! He said little
in words, but more eloquently clapped his hands to his waistcoat, as
if the loss, as the nurses say, had literally “flown to his stomach.”
And truly, after promising it both callipash and callipee, with the
delicious green fat to boot, what cold comfort could well be colder
than the miserable chilling reflection that there was
“Cauld kail in Aberdeen?”
THE DOMESTIC DILEMMA; A TRUE STORY, FROM THE GERMAN OF JEAN PAUL NEMAND.
CHAPTER I.
“I AM perfectly at my wits’ ends!”
As Madame Doppeldick said this, she thrust both her fat hands into
the pockets of her scarlet cotton apron, at the same time giving her
head a gentle shake, as if implying that it was a case in which heads
and hands could be of no possible avail. She was standing in a little
dormitory, exactly equidistant from two beds, between which her eyes
and her thoughts had been alternating some ten minutes past. They were
small beds,--pallets,--cots,--cribs, troughs upon four legs, such
as the old painters represent the manger in their pictures of the
Nativity. Our German beds are not intended to carry double, and in such
an obscure out-of-the way village as Kleinewinkel, who would think of
finding any thing better in the way of a couch than a sort of box just
too little for a bed, and just too large for a coffin? It was between
two such bedlings, then, that Madame Doppeldick was standing, when she
broke out into the aforesaid exclamation--“I am perfectly at my wits’
ends!”
Now, the wits’ ends of Madame Doppeldick scarcely extended farther
from her scull than the horns of a snail. They seldom protruded far
beyond her nose, and that was a short one; and moreover they were apt
to recede and draw in from the first obstacle they encountered, leaving
their proprietor to feel her own way, as if she had no wits’ ends at
all. Thus, having satisfied themselves that there were only two beds
in the rooms, they left the poor lady in the lurch, and absolutely
at a nonplus, as to how she was to provide for the accommodation of a
third sleeper, who was expected to arrive the same evening. There was
only one best bed-room in the house, and it happened to be the worst
bed-room also; all for Gretchen, the maid-servant, went home nightly to
sleep at her mother’s. To be sure a shake-down might be spread in the
parlour; but to be sure the parlour was also a shop of all sorts; and
to be sure the young officer would object to such accommodations; and
to be very sure, Mr. Doppeldick would object equally to the shake-down,
and giving up the two beds overhead to his wife and the young officer.
“God forgive me,” said the perplexed Madame Doppeldick as she went
slowly down the stairs;--“but I wish Captain Schenk had been killed at
the battle of Leipzig, or had got a bed of glory anywhere else, before
he came to be billeted on us!”
[Illustration: “I’LL TAKE A BED WITH YOU.”]
CHAPTER II.
IN extenuation of so unchristian-like an aspiration as the one which
escaped from the lips of Madame Doppeldick at the end of the last
chapter, it must be remembered that she was a woman of great delicacy
for her size. She was so corpulent, that she might safely have gone to
court without a hoop, her arms were too big for legs; and as for her
legs, it passed for a miracle of industry, even amongst the laborious
hard-working inhabitants of Kleinewinkel, that she knitted her own
stockings. It must be confessed, that she ate heartily, drank heartily,
and slept heartily; and all she ate, drank, and slept, seemed to do her
good, for she never ceased growing, at least horizontally, till she
did ample justice to the name which became her own by marriage. Still,
as the bulk of her body increased, the native shrinking, unobtrusive
modesty of her mind remained the same; or rather it became even more
tremulously sensitive. In spite of her huge dimensions, she seemed to
entertain the Utopian desire of being seen by no eyes save those of
her husband; of passing through life unnoticed and unknown; in short
she was a globe-peony with the feelings of a violet. Judge then what
a shock her blushing sensibilities received from the mere idea of the
strange captain intruding on the shadiest haunts of domestic privacy!
Although by birth, education, and disposition, as loyal as the
sunflower to the sun, in the first rash transports of her trepidation
and vexation she wished anything but well to her liege sovereign the
King of Prussia--wondering bitterly why his majesty could not contrive
to have his reviews and sham-fights in Berlin itself; or at least in
Posen, where there were spare beds to be had, and lodgings to let for
single men. Then again, if the Quarter-master had but condescended
to give a quarter’s notice, why, Mr. Doppeldick might have run up
an extra room, or they might have parted off a portion of their own
chamber with lath and plaster--or they might have done a thousand
things; for instance, they might have sold their house and left the
country, instead of being thus taken unawares in their own sanctorum
by a strange gentleman, as suddenly as if he had tumbled through the
roof. “It was too bad--it was really too bad--and she wondered what Mr.
Doppeldick would say to it when he came home.”
[Illustration: “I WISH I WAS WELL THROUGH IT.”]
CHAPTER III.
MR. DOPPELDICK did come home--and he said nothing to it at all. He only
pulled his tobacco-bag out of one coat-pocket, and his tobacco-pipe
out of the other, and then he struck a light, and fell to smoking,
as complacently as if there had been no Captain Schenk in the world.
The truth was, he had none of that nervous nicety of feeling, which
his partner possessed so eminently, and, accordingly, he took no more
interest in her domestic dilemma, than the walnut-wood chair that he
sat upon. Moreover, when he once had in his mouth his favourite pipe,
with a portrait of Kant on the bowl of it, he sucked through its tube a
sort of Transcendental Philosophy which elevated him above all the ills
of human life, to say nothing of such little domestic inconveniences
as the present. If the house had been as big as the hotel de Nassau,
at Schlangenbad, with as many chambers and spare beds in it--or a
barrack, with quarters for the captain and his company to boot--he
could not have puffed on more contentedly. The very talk about beds
and bedding appeared to lull him into a sort of sleep with his eyes
open; and even when the voice and words of his helpmate grew a little
sharp and querulous in detailing all her doubts, and difficulties, and
disagreeables, they could not raise even a ripple in the calm placid
expanse of his forehead. How should they? His equable German good
humour might well be invulnerable to all outward attacks, which had
so long withstood every internal one,--ay, in Temper’s very citadel,
the stomach. For instance, the better part of his daily diet was of
sours. He ate “sauer-kraut,” and “sauer-braten,” with sour sauce and
“sauer-ampfer” by way of salad, and pickled plums by way of dessert,
and “sauer-milch” with sourish brown bread--and then, to wash these
down, he drank sourish “Essigberger” wine, and “sauer-wasser,” of
which the village of Kleinewinkel had its own peculiar brunnen. Still,
I say, by all these sours, and many others not mentioned besides, his
temper was never soured--nor could they turn one drop of the milk of
human kindness that flowed in his bosom. Instead, therefore, of his
round features being ever rumpled and crumpled, and furrowed up by
the plough-share of passion, you never saw any thing on his face but
the same everlasting sub-smile of phlegmatic philanthropy. In spite
of the stream of complaint that kept pouring into his ear, he forgave
Captain Schenk from the bottom of his soul for being billeted on him;
and entertained no more spleen towards the King of Prussia and the
Quarter-master, than he did towards the gnat that bit him last year.
At length, his pipe wanting replenishing, he dropped a few comfortable
words to his wife, meanwhile he refilled the bowl, and brought the
engine again into play:--
[Illustration: “WE ALL SMOKE IN GERMANY.”]
[Illustration: “THE LAST IN BED TO PUT OUT THE LIGHT.”]
“As for undressing, Malchen--before the strange man--puff--why can’t we
go to bed,--puff--before _he_ does,--puff--puff and so put an end to
the matter--puff--puff--puff!”
“As I live upon damsons and bullases!” (for it was the plum season,)
exclaimed Madame Doppeldick, clapping her fat hands with delight,
“I never thought of that! Gretchen, my lass, get the supper ready
immediately, for your good master is mortal hungry, and so am I!--and
then, my own Dietrich dear, we’ll bundle off to bed as fast as we can!”
CHAPTER IV.
[Illustration: TRAVELLERS SEEING THE “LIONS.”]
THE best of plots may come to the worst of ends. It was no fault,
however, of Gretchen’s; for being in a hurry of her own to meet Ludwig
Liedeback, she clapped the supper upon the table in no time at all.
The transcendental pipe, with the head of Kant upon it, instantly
found itself deposited in a by corner; for Mr. Doppeldick, like his
better half, was a person of substance, keeping a good running account
with Messer and Gabel. Besides, amongst other delicacies, the board
actually displayed those rarest of all inland rarities, oysters,--a bag
of which the warm-hearted Adam Kloot had sent, by way of a token of
remembrance, to his old friend Dietrich; forgetting utterly that it was
full a hundred leagues from the nearest high water-mark of the sea to
the village of Kleinewinkel. Of course they came like other travellers,
with their mouths wide agape, to see the wonders of the place,--but,
then, so much the easier they were to open; and as the worthy couple
did not contemplate any such superfluous nicety as _shaving_ them
before they swallowed them, there was a fair chance that the delicious
morsels would all be devoured before the inauspicious arrival of
Captain Schenk. Some such speculation seemed to glimmer in the eyes of
both Mr. and Mrs. Doppeldick--when, lo! just as the sixth dead oyster
had been body-snatched out of its shell, and was being flavoured up
with lemon and vinegar, the door opened, and in walked a blue cap with
a red band, a pair of mustachios, and a grey cloak without any arms in
its sleeves. Had Madame Doppeldick held any thing but an oyster in her
mouth at that moment it would infallibly have choked her, the flutter
of her heart in her throat was so violent.
“Holy Virgin!--Captain Schenk!”
“At your service, Madame,” answered a voice through the mustachios.
“You are welcome, Captain!” said the worthy master of the house, at
the same time rising, and placing a chair for his guest at that side
of the table which was farthest from the oysters. The officer, without
any ceremony, threw himself into the seat, and then, resting his elbows
upon the table, and his cheeks between his palms, he fixed his dark
eyes on the blushing face of Madame Doppeldick in a long and steady
stare. It is true that he was only mentally reviewing the review;
or, possibly, calculating the chances he had made in favour of an
application he had lately forwarded to Berlin, to be exchanged into
the Royal Guards; but the circumstance sufficed to set every nerve of
Madame Doppeldick a-vibrating, and in two minutes from his arrival, she
had made up her mind that he was a very bold, forward, and presuming
young man.
[Illustration: “O HAM--WHAT A FALLING OFF WAS THERE.”]
It is astonishing, when we have once conceived a prejudice, how
rapidly it grows, and how plentifully it finds nutriment! Like the sea
polypus, it extends its thousand feelers on every side, for anything
they can lay hold of, and the smallest particle afloat in the ocean
of conjecture cannot escape from the tenacity of their grasp. So it
was with Madame Doppeldick. From mistrusting the captain’s eyes, she
came to suspect his nose, his mustachios, his mouth, his chin, and
even the slight furrow of a sabre cut that scarred his forehead just
over the left eyebrow. She felt morally sure that he had received it
in no battle-field, but in some scandalous duel. Luckily she had never
seen Mozart’s celebrated opera, or she would inevitably have set down
Captain Schenk as its libertine masquerading hero, Don Giovanni himself!
[Illustration: “A PIPING BULLFINCH.”]
“You will be sharp-set for supper, Captain,” said the hospitable
host, pushing towards his guest a dish of lean home-made bacon; but
the Captain took no more notice of the invitation than if he had
been stunned stone-deaf by the artillery at the sham-fight in the
morning. Possibly he did not like bacon, or, at any rate, such bacon
as was set before him; for to put the naked Truth on her bare oath,
the Kleinewinkel pigs always looked as if they got their living, like
cockroaches, by creeping through cracks. However, he never changed
his posture, but kept his dark intolerable eyes still fixed on his
hostess’s full and flushed face. He might just as well have stared,--if
he must stare--at the shelves-full of old family china (some of it
elaborately mended and riveted) in the corner cupboard, the door of
which she had left open on purpose; but he had, apparently, no such
considerate respect for female modesty.
“Saint Ursula and the Eleven Thousand be near us!” said the disquieted
Madame Doppeldick to herself. “It is hard enough for people of our
years and bulk to be obliged to lie double;--but to have a strange,
wild, rakish, staring young fellow in the same chamber--I _do_ wish
that Dietrich would make more haste with his supper, that we may get
into bed first!”
CHAPTER V.
HONEST Dietrich was in no such hurry. A rational, moral, pious man,
with a due grateful sense of the sapidity of certain gifts of the
Creator, ought not to swallow them with the post-haste indifference
of a sow swilling her wash; and as Dietrich Doppeldick did not taste
oysters once in ten years, it was a sort of religious obligation,
as well as a positive secular temptation, that the relish of each
particular fish should be prolonged as far as possible on the palate by
an orderly, decorous, and deliberate deglutition. Accordingly, instead
of bolting the oysters as if he had been swallowing them for a wager,
he sate soberly, with his eyes fixed on the two plumpest, as if only
awaiting the “good-night” of his guest to do ample and Christian-like
justice to the edible forget-me-nots of his good friend Adam Kloot. In
vain his wife looked hard at him, and trod on his toes as long as she
could reach them, besides being seized with a short hectic cough that
was any thing but constitutional--
“Lord, help me!” said Mrs. Doppeldick in her soul, too fluttered to
attend to the correctness of her metaphors--“It’s as easy to catch the
eye of a post!--He minds me no more than if I trod on the toes of a
stock-fish! I might as well cough into the ears of a stone wall.”
In fact, honest Dietrich had totally forgotten the domestic dilemma.
[Illustration: “KISSING GOES BY FAVOUR.”]
“He will never take his eyes off,” thought Madame Doppeldick, stealing
a glance across the table; “I was never so stared at, never since
I was a girl and wore pigtails! I expect every moment he will jump
and embrace me.” Whereas nothing could be further from the Captain’s
thought. The second battalion had joined that very morning, and
accordingly he had kissed, or been kissed by, all its eight-and-twenty
officers, tall or short, fat or lean, fair or swarthy,--which was quite
kissing enough for a reasonable day’s ration. The truth is, he was
staring at himself. He had just, mentally, put on a new uniform, and
was looking with the back of his eyes at his own brilliant figure, as
a Captain in the Royal Guards. It was, however, a stare, outwardly,
at Madame Doppeldick, who took everything to herself, frogs, lace,
bullion, buttons, cuffs, collars, epaulettes, and the Deuce knows what
besides.
“I would to Heaven!” she wished, “he had never thought of going into
the army,--or at least that the Quarter-master had never taken it into
his stupid head to quarter him on us. Young gay Captains are very well
to flirt with, or to waltz with, but at my years and bulk waltzing is
quite out of the question!”
[Illustration: WALTZING TO A NEW AIR.]
CHAPTER VI.
AT last Captain Schenk changed his posture, and averted his familiar
eyes from the face of Madame Doppeldick; but it was only to give her a
fresh alarm with his free-and-easy mouth. First of all he clenched his
fists--then he raised his arms at full stretch above his head, as if
he wanted to be crucified, and then turning his face upwards towards
the ceiling, with his eyes shut, and his jaws open--he yawned such a
yawn, as panther never yawned after prowling all day without prey, in a
ten-foot cage--
“Auw-yauw-au-ya-augh-auwayawauwghf!”
[Illustration: HOB AND NOB.]
“By all the Saints,” thought the terrified Madame Doppeldick, “he will
be for packing off to bed at once!”--and in the vain hope of inducing
him to sup beforehand, she seized, yes, she actually seized the devoted
dish of oysters, and made them relieve guard, with the home-made bacon,
just under the Captain’s nose. It was now honest Dietrich’s turn to
try to catch the eyes of posts, and tread on the toes of stock-fish;
however, for this time the natives were safe.
“By your leave, Madame,” said the abominable voice through the
moustachios, “I will take nothing except a candle. What with the heavy
rain at first, and then the horse artillery ploughing up our marching
ground, I am really dog-tired with my day’s work. If you will do me the
favour, therefore, to show me to my chamber----”
[Illustration: “WHAT NEXT?” AS THE FROG SAID WHEN HIS TAIL FELL OFF.]
“Not for the whole world!” exclaimed the horrified Madame
Doppeldick--“not for the whole world, I mean, till you have
hob-and-nobbed with us--at least with the good man”--and, like a
warm-hearted hostess, jealous of the honour of her hospitality, she
snatched up the spare-candle, and hurried off to the barrel. If she
could but set them down to drinking, she calculated, let who _would_ be
the second, she would herself be the first in bed, if she jumped into
it with all her clothes on. It was a likely scheme enough,--but alas!
it fell through, like the rest!--Before she had drawn half a flask of
Essigberger, or Holzapfelheimer, for I forget which--she was alarmed
by the double screech of two chairs pushed suddenly back on the
uncarpeted floor. Then came a trampling of light and heavy feet--and
although she dropped the bottle--and forgot to turn the spigot--and
carried the candle without the candlestick--and left her left slipper
behind her,--still, in spite of all the haste she could make, she
only reached the stair-foot just in time to see two Prussian-blue
coat-tails, turned up with red, whisking in at the bed-room door!
CHAPTER VII.
“OH the cruel, the killing ill-luck that pursues us!” exclaimed the
forlorn Madame Doppeldick, as her husband returned, with his mouth
watering, to the little parlour, where, by some sort of attraction,
he was drawn into the Captain’s vacant chair, instead of his own. In
a few seconds the plumpest of Adam Kloot’s tender souvenirs, of about
the size and shape of a penny bun, was sliding over his tongue. Then
another went--and another--and another. They were a little gone or so,
and no wonder; for they had travelled up the Rhine and the Moselle, in
a dry “schiff,” not a “dampschiff,” towed by real horse-powers, instead
of steam-powers, against the stream. To tell the naked truth, there
were only four words in the world that a respectably fresh Cod’s head
could have said to them, namely--
[Illustration: “NONE OF YOUR SAUCE.”]
No matter: down they went glibly, glibly. The lemon-juice did something
for them, and the vinegar still more, by making them seem sharp instead
of flat. Honest Dietrich enjoyed them as mightily as Adam Kloot could
have wished; and was in no humour, you may be sure, for spinning prolix
answers or long-winded speeches.
“They are good--very!--excellent! Malchen!--Just eat a couple.”
But the mind of the forlorn Malchen was occupied with any thing but
oysters; it was fixed upon things above, or at least overhead. “I do
not think I can sit up all night,” she murmured, concluding with such
a gape that the tears squeezed out plentifully between her fat little
eyelids.
“I’ve found only one bad one--and that was full of black
mud--schloo--oo--oo--ooop!”--slirropped honest Dietrich. N. B. There
is no established formula of minims and crotchets on the gamut to
represent the swallowing of an oyster: so the aforesaid syllables of
“schloo--oo--oo--ooop,” must stand in their stead.
“As for sleeping in my clothes,” continued Madame Doppeldick, “the
weather is so very warm,--and the little window won’t open--and with
two in a bed--”
“The English do it, Malchen,--schloo--oo--ooop!”
“But the English beds have curtains,” said Madame Doppeldick, “thick
stuff or canvas curtains, Dietrich,--all round, and over the top--just
like a general’s tent.”
“We can go--schloo--ooop--to bed in the dark, Malchen.”
“No--no,” objected Madam Doppeldick, with a grave shake of her head.
“We’ll have no blindman’s-buff work, Dietrich,--and maybe blundering
into wrong beds.”
“Schloo--oo--oo--oo--ooop.”
“And if ever I saw a wild, rakish, immoral, irreligious-looking young
man, Dietrich, the Captain is one!”
“Schloo--oo--oo--oo--ooop.”
“Did you observe, Dietrich, how shamefully he stared at me?”
“Schloo--ooop.”
“And the cut on his forehead, Dietrich, I’ll be bound he got it for no
good!”
“Schloo--oo--oo--oo--ooop.”
“Confound Adam Kloot and his oysters to boot!” exclaimed the offended
Madame Doppeldick, irritated beyond all patience at the bovine apathy
of her connubial partner. “I wish, I do, that the nets had burst in
catching them!”
“Why, what can one do, Malchen?” asked honest Dietrich, looking up for
the first time from the engrossing dish, whence the one-a-penny oysters
had all vanished, leaving only the two-a-penny ones behind.
“Saint Ursula only knows!” sighed Madame Doppeldick, her voice
relapsing into its former tone of melancholy. “I only know that I will
never undress in the room!”
“Then you must undress out of it, Malchen. Schloo--oop.
Schloo--oo--oo--oo--ooop.”
“I believe that must be the way after all,” said Madame Doppeldick,
on whose mind her husband’s sentence of transcendental philosophy had
cast a new light. “To be sure there is a little landing-place at the
stair-head, and _our_ bed is exactly opposite the door--and if one
scuttled briskly across the room, and jumped in--But are you sure,
Dietrich, that you explained every thing correctly to the Captain? Did
you tell him that _his_ was the one next the window--with the patchwork
coverlet?”
“Not a word of it!” answered honest Dietrich, who like all other
Prussians had served his two years as a soldier, and was therefore
moderately interested in military manœuvres. “Not a word of it--we
talked all about the review. But I did what was far better, my own
Malchen, for I saw him get into the bed with the patchwork coverlet,
with my own eyes, and then took away his candle--Schloo--oo--oop!”
“It was done like my own dear, kind Dietrich,” exclaimed the delighted
Madame Doppeldick, and in the sudden revulsion of her feelings, she
actually pulled up his huge round bullet-head from the dish, and kissed
him between the nose and chin.
The Domestic Dilemma was disarmed of its horns, Madame Doppeldick saw
her way before her, as clear and open as the Rhine three months after
the ice has broken up. From that moment, as long as the dish contained
two oysters, the air of “Schloo--oo--oo--oo--ooop” was sung, as
“arranged for a duet.”
CHAPTER VIII.
“ALL is quiet, thank Heaven! the Captain is as fast as a church,”
thought Madame Doppeldick, as she stood in nocturnal dishabille, on the
little landing-place, at the stair-head. “Now then, my own Dietrich,”
she whispered, “are you ready to run?” For like the best of wives, as
she was, she did not much care to go anywhere without her husband.
But the deliberate Dietrich was not prepared to escort her. He had
chosen to undress as usual, with his transcendental pipe in his mouth;
indeed it was always the last thing that he took off before getting
into bed, so that till all his philosophy was burned to ashes, his mind
would not consent to any active corporeal exertion, especially to any
locomotion so rapid as a race. At last he stood balancing, made up for
the start; his eyes staring, his teeth clenched, his fists doubled,
and his arms swinging, as if he were about to be admitted a burgess of
Andernach--that is to say, by leaping backwards over a winnowing fan,
with a well poised pail of water in his arms, in order to show if he
accomplished it neatly.
“The night-light may be left burning where it is, Dietrich.”
“Now then, Malchen!”
“Now then Dietrich,--and run gently--on your toes!”
No sooner said than done. The modest Malchen with the speed of a young
wild elephant made a rush across the room, and, with something of a
jump and something more of a scramble, plunged headlong into the bed.
The phlegmatic Dietrich was a thought later, from having included
the whole length of the landing-place in his run, to help him in his
leap, so that just as his bulk came squash! upon the coverlet, his
predecessor was tumbling her body, skow-wow, bow-wow, any-how, over the
side of the bedstead.
[Illustration: COUNTRY QUARTERS.]
“Sancta Maria!” sobbed Madame Doppeldick, as she settled into hysterics
upon the floor.
“Potz-tausend!” said Mr. Doppeldick, as he crawled backwards out of the
bed like a crab.
“Ten thousand devils!” bellowed Captain Schenk--a suppressed
exclamation that the first shock had driven from his mouth into his
throat, from his throat into his lungs, and from thence into his
stomach; but which the second shock had now driven out again in full
force.
[Illustration: THE BEARER OF THE GREAT SEAL.]
* * * * *
“Why, I thought, Mister Jean Paul Nemand (says the reader), that we
left the Captain safe and sound, in his own bed, next the window, with
the patch-work coverlet?”
“And so we did, Mister Carl Wilhelm Jemand (says the author,) but it
was so short, that in five minutes he caught the cramp. Wherefore, as
there was a second spare bed in the room, and as honest Dietrich had
said nothing of other lodgers, and as of all blessings we ought to
choose the biggest, the Captain determined to give it a trial--and
between you and me he liked the bed well enough, till he felt a sort of
smashing pain all over his body, his eyes squeezing out of his face,
his nose squeezing into it, and his precious front teeth, at a gulp,
going uninvited down his gullet!”
[Illustration: “WHY DID YOU SUP ON PORK?”]
ODE FOR THE NINTH OF NOVEMBER.
O Lud! O Lud! O Lud!
I mean of course that venerable town,
Mention’d in stories of renown,
Built formerly of mud;--
O Lud, I say, why didst thou e’er
Invent the office of a Mayor,
An office that no useful purpose crowns,
But to set Aldermen against each other,
That should be Brother unto Brother,--
Sisters at least, by virtue of their gowns
But still if one must have a Mayor
To fill the Civic chair,
O Lud, I say,
Was there no better day
To fix on, than November Ninth so shivery
And dull for showing off the Livery’s livery?
[Illustration: FINDING A MAY’R’S NEST.]
Dimming, alas!
The Brazier’s brass,
Soiling th’ Embroiderers and all the Saddlers,
Sopping the Furriers,
Draggling the Curriers,
And making Merchant Tailors dirty paddlers:
Drenching the Skinners’ Company to the skin,
Making the crusty Vintner chiller,
And turning the Distiller
To cold without instead of warm within;--
Spoiling the bran-new beavers
Of Wax-chandlers and Weavers,
Plastering the Plasterers and spotting Mercers,
Hearty November-cursers--
And showing Cordwainers and dapper Drapers
Sadly in want of brushes and of scrapers;
Making the Grocer’s company not fit
For Company a bit;
Dying the Dyers with a dingy flood,
Daubing incorporated Bakers,
And leading the Patten-makers,
Over their very pattens in the mud,--
O Lud! O Lud! O Lud!
“This is a sorry sight,”
To quote Macbeth--but oh, it grieves me quite,
To see your Wives and Daughters in their plumes--
White plumes not white--
Sitting at open windows catching rheums,
Not “Angels ever bright and fair,”
But angels ever brown and sallow,
With eyes--you cannot see above one pair,
For city clouds of black and yellow--
And artificial flowers, rose, leaf, and bud,
Such sable lilies
And grim daffodilies
Drooping, but not for drought, O Lud! O Lud!
I may as well, while I’m inclined,
Just go through all the faults I find:
Oh Lud! then, with a better air, say June,
Could’st thou not find a better tune
To sound with trumpets, and with drums,
Than “See the Conquering Hero comes,”
When he who comes ne’er dealt in blood!
Thy May’r is not a War Horse, Lud,
That ever charged on Turk or Tartar,
And yet upon a march you strike
That treats him like--
A little French if I may martyr--
Lewis Cart-Horse or Henry Carter!
[Illustration: ARMS FOUND.]
O Lud! I say
Do change your day
To some time when your Show can really show;
When silk can seem like silk, and gold can glow.
Look at your Sweepers, how they shine in May
Have it when there’s a sun to gild the coach,
And sparkle in tiara--bracelet--brooch--
Diamond--or paste--of sister, mother, daughter;
When grandeur really may be grand--
But if thy Pageant’s thus obscured by land--
O Lud! it’s ten times worse upon the water!
Suppose, O Lud, to show its plan,
I call, like Blue Beard’s wife, to sister Anne.
Who’s gone to Beaufort Wharf with niece and aunt
To see what she can see--and what she can’t;
Chewing a saffron bun by way of cud,
To keep the fog out of a tender lung,
While perch’d in a verandah nicely hung
Over a margin of thy own black mud,
O Lud!
Now Sister Anne, I call to thee,
Look out and see:
Of course about the bridge you view them rally
And sally,
With many a wherry, sculler, punt, and cutter;
The Fishmongers’ grand boat, but not for butter,
The Goldsmiths’ glorious galley,--
Of course you see the Lord Mayor’s coach aquatic,
With silken banners that the breezes fan,
In gold all glowing,
And men in scarlet rowing,
Like Doge of Venice to the Adriatic;
Of course you see all this, O Sister Anne?
“No, I see no such thing!
I only see the edge of Beaufort Wharf,
With two coal lighters fasten’d to a ring:
And, dim as ghosts,
Two little boys are jumping over posts;
And something farther off,
That’s rather like the shadow of a dog,
And all beyond is fog.
If there be any thing so fine and bright,
To see it I must see by second sight.
Call this a Show? It is not worth a pin!
I see no barges row,
No banners blow;
The show is merely a gallanty-show,
Without a lamp or any candle in.”
But sister Anne, my dear,
Although you cannot see, you still may hear?
Of course you hear, I’m very sure of that,
The “Water parted from the Sea” in C,
Or “Where the Bee sucks,” set in B,
Or Huntsman’s chorus from the Freyschutz frightful,
Or Handel’s Water Music in A flat.
Oh music from the water comes delightful!
It sounds as no where else it can:
You hear it first,
In some rich burst,
Then faintly sighing,
Tenderly dying
Away upon the breezes, Sister Anne.
“There is no breeze to die on;
And all their drums and trumpets, flutes and harps,
Could never cut their way with ev’n three sharps
Through such a fog as this, you may rely on.
I think, but am not sure, I hear a hum,
Like a very muffled double drum,
And then a something faintly shrill,
Like Bartlemy Fair’s old buz at Pentonville.
And now and then hear a pop,
As if from Pedley’s Soda Water shop.
I’m almost ill with the strong scent of mud,
And, not to mention sneezing,
My cough is, more than usual, teasing;
I really fear that I have chill’d my blood,
O Lud! O Lud! O Lud! O Lud! O Lud!”
[Illustration: THE HOUSE ADJOURNED.]
SONNET.
THE sky is glowing in one ruddy sheet;--
A cry of fire! resounds from door to door;
And westward still the thronging people pour;--
The turncock hastens to F. P. 6 feet,
And quick unlocks the fountains of the street;
While rumbling engines, with increasing roar,
Thunder along to luckless Number Four,
Where Mr. Dough makes bread for folks to eat.
And now through blazing frames, and fiery beams,
The Globe, the Sun, the Phœnix, and what not,
With gushing pipes throw up abundant streams,
On burning bricks, and twists, on rolls--too hot--
And scorching loaves,--as if there were no shorter
And cheaper way of making toast-and-water!
RONDEAU.
[EXTRACTED FROM A WELL-KNOWN ANNUAL.]
O CURIOUS reader, didst thou ne’er
Behold a worshipful Lord May’r
Seated in his great civic chair
So dear?
Then cast thy longing eyes this way,
It is the ninth November day,
And in his new-born state survey
One here!
To rise from little into great
Is pleasant; but to sink in state
From high to lowly is a fate
Severe.
Too soon his shine is overcast,
Chill’d by the next November blast;
His blushing honours only last
One year!
He casts his fur and sheds his chains,
And moults till not a plume remains--
The next impending May’r distrains
His gear.
He slips like water through a sieve--
Ah, could his little splendour live
Another twelvemonth--he would give
One ear!
[Illustration: FANCY PORTRAIT:--THE LORD MAYOR.]
LONDON FASHIONS FOR NOVEMBER.
REMARKS.
NO season has offered such _variétés_ in costume as the early part
of the present month. Fancy dresses of the most _outré_ description
have appeared, even in the streets. Short waists and long, full
sleeves and empty, broad skirts and narrow, whole skirts, half skirts,
and none at all, have been indifferently worn. For the _Promenade_,
rags and tatters of all kinds have been in much favour; very few
buttons are worn; and the coats, waistcoats, and pantaloons, have
been invariably padded and stuffed with hay or straw. We observed
several _exquisites_ making morning calls in scare-crow great-coats;
the skirts, lappels, collars, and cuffs, picturesquely, but not too
formally, jagged _à la Vandyke_. The prevailing colours--all colours
at once. Wigs have been very general--both _en buzz_ and _frizzé_;
these have been commonly composed of deal shavings; but in some cases
of tow, and sometimes horse-hair. For the evening party, a few squibs
and crackers are stuck in the _perruque_ or hat, and the boots and
shoes are polished up with a little pitch or tar; sometimes a Catherine
wheel has been added _en coquarde_. Frills, collars, and ruffles, of
_papier coupé_, have entirely superseded those of cambric or lace, and
shirts of every description are quite discarded. Paint has been in much
request, and ruddle seems to have been preferred to _rouge_; patches
are also much worn, not on the countenance, but on the clothes; for
these the favourite _matériel_ is tartan, plush of any colour, or
corduroy. Several dandies appeared on the 5th with gloves, but they
are not essential requisites to be in the _ton_: canes are discarded;
even a riding-whip would be reckoned to evince _mauvais goût_, but
a half-penny bunch of matches “_à la main_” is indispensable to a
fashionable aspirant. The old practice of being carried abroad in
chairs has been universally revived; and it must be confessed, that it
exhibits the Figure to much advantage.
[Illustration]
Amongst the _Nouveautés_, we observed the following _Caractère_, as
making a felicitous _début_. The coast was _à-la-militaire_, of the
colour formerly so much in vogue under the name of _fumée de Londres_,
turned up with _flamme d’enfer_. It was _garni_ with very dead gold;
and slashed _à l’Espagnole_, back and front. The pantaloons were
equally _bizarre_; one leg being composed of Scotch tartan, and the
other of blue striped bed-ticking, made very full, _en matelot_, in
compliance with the prevailing taste for navals. The wig was made of
green and white willow shavings, with a large link for a _queue_, tied
on with a _nœud_ of red tape. The hat, brown, somewhat darker than
the Devonshire beaver, but disinclining to black. It had no brim, and
was without a crown. A tarnished badge of the Phœnix Fire Office, on
the bust, gave a _distingué_ air to the whole Figure, which was going
down Bond-street, and excited a sensation quite _à-l’envie_ by its
appearance in the World of Fashion.
N.B.--We are requested to state that the above described figure
was entirely invented and manufactured by little Solomon Levy, of
Hollywell-street, Strand, who has a variety always on show, about the
metropolis.
SYMPTOMS OF OSSIFICATION.
“An indifference to tears, and blood, and human suffering, that
could only belong to a _Boney-parte_.”--_Life of Napoleon._
TIME was, I always had a drop
For any tale or sigh of sorrow;
My handkerchief I used to sop
Till often I was forced to borrow;
I don’t know how it is, but now
My eyelids seldom want a drying;
The doctors, p’rhaps, could tell me how--
I fear my heart is ossifying!
O’er Goethe how I used to weep,
With turnip cheeks and nose of scarlet,
When Werter put himself to sleep
With pistols kiss’d and clean’d by Charlotte;
Self-murder is an awful sin,
No joke there is in bullets flying,
But now at such a tale I grin--
I fear my heart is ossifying!
The Drama once could shake and thrill
My nerves, and set my tears a stealing,
The Siddons then could turn at will
Each plug upon the main of feeling;
At Belvidera now I smile,
And laugh while Mrs. Haller’s crying;
’Tis odd, so great a change of style--
I fear my heart is ossifying!
That heart was such--some years ago,
To see a beggar quite would shock it,
And in his hat I used to throw
The quarter’s savings of my pocket:
I never wish--as I did _then_!--
The means from my own purse supplying,
To turn them all to gentlemen--
I fear my heart is ossifying!
We’ve had some serious things of late,
Our sympathies to beg or borrow,
New melo-drames, of tragic fate,
And acts and songs, and tales of sorrow;
Miss Zouch’s case, our eyes to melt,
And sundry actors sad good-bye-ing.
But Lord!--so little have I felt,
I’m sure my heart is ossifying!
THE POACHER.
A SERIOUS BALLAD.
But a bold pheasantry, their country’s pride,
When once destroyed can never be supplied.
GOLDSMITH.
BILL BLOSSOM was a nice young man,
And drove the Bury coach;
But bad companions were his bane,
And egg’d him on to poach.
They taught him how to net the birds,
And how to noose the hare;
And with a wiry terrier,
He often set a snare.
Each “shiny night” the moon was bright,
To park, preserve, and wood
He went, and kept the game alive,
By killing all he could.
[Illustration: A BUCK-ANEER!]
Land-owners, who had rabbits, swore
That he had this demerit--
Give him an inch of warren, he
Would take a yard of ferret.
At partridges he was not nice;
And many, large and small,
Without Hall’s powder, without lead,
Were sent to Leaden-Hall.
He did not fear to take a deer,
From forest, park, or lawn;
And without courting lord or duke,
Used frequently to _fawn_.
Folks who had hares discovered snares--
His course they could not stop:
No barber he, and yet he made
Their hares a perfect crop.
To pheasant he was such a foe,
He tried the keeper’s nerves;
They swore he never seem’d to have
_Jam_ satis of _preserves_.
The Shooter went to beat, and found
No sporting worth a pin,
Unless he tried the _covers_ made
Of silver, plate, or tin.
In Kent the game was little worth,
In Surrey not a button;
The Speaker said he often tried
The _Manors_ about _Sutton_.
No county from his tricks was safe:
In each he tried his lucks,
And when the keepers were in _Beds_,
He often was at _Bucks_.
And when he went to _Bucks_, alas!
They always came to _Herts_;
And even _Oxon_ used to wish
That he had his deserts.
But going to his usual _Hants_,
Old _Cheshire_ laid his plots:
He got entrapp’d by legal _Berks_,
And lost his life in _Notts_.
[Illustration: LUNAR CAUSTIC.]
SKETCHES ON THE ROAD.
THE SUDDEN DEATH.
THERE are several objections to one-horse vehicles. With two wheels,
they are dangerous; with four, generally cruel inventions, tasking one
animal with the labour of two. And, in either case, should your horse
think proper to die on the road you have no survivor to drag your
carriage through the rest of the stage; or to be sent off galloping
with the coachman on his back for a coadjutor.
That was precisely Miss Norman’s dilemma.
If a horse could be supposed to harbour so deadly a spite against his
proprietor, I should believe that the one in question chose to vent
his animosity by giving up the ghost just at the spot where it would
cause most annoyance and inconvenience. For fourteen months past he
had drawn the Lady in daily airings to a point just short of the Binn
Gate;--because that fifty yards further would have cost sixpence; a sum
which Miss Norman could, or believed she could, but ill spare out of a
limited income. At this very place, exactly opposite the tall elm which
usually gave the signal for turning homeward, did Plantagenet prefer to
drop down stone dead: as if determined that his mistress should have to
walk every inch of it, to her own house.
But Miss Norman never walked.
[Illustration: “TAKE CARE OF THE PENCE, AND THE POUNDS WILL TAKE CARE
OF THEMSELVES.”]
Pedestrianism was, in her opinion, a very vulgar exercise, unavoidable
with the poor, and to some people, as Postmen, Bankers’ clerks,
Hawkers, and the like, a professional mode of progression, but a bodily
exertion very derogatory to persons of birth and breeding. So far was
this carried, that she was once heard to declare, speaking of certain
rather humble obsequies, “she would rather live for ever than have a
walking funeral!” On another occasion, when the great performance of
Captain Barclay, in walking a thousand miles in a thousand hours, was
submitted to her opinion, she said “it was a step she did not approve.”
[Illustration: DESCENDED FROM THE CONQUEROR.]
It might be surmised from such declarations, that she was incapable of
personal locomotion, through some original infirmity, for instance,
such as results from the rickets; whereas, so far from allowing any
deficiency on the part of her nurse or parents, in putting her to
her feet, Miss Norman professed to have the perfect command of all
her limbs, and would have felt extremely offended at a hint that she
could not dance. It was quite another weakness than any bodily one
which restricted her promenades, and made her feet almost as useless
to her as those of the female Chinese. Pride was in fault; and partly
her surname, for suggesting to one of her ancestors that he was a
descendant of William the First of England: a notion, which, after
turning his own head, had slightly crazed those of his successors, who
all believed, as part and parcel of their inheritance, on the strength
of the “Norman” and some dubious old pedigree, that the Conqueror was
their great Progenitor.
The hereditary arrogance engendered by this imaginary distinction, had
successively displayed itself by outbreaks of different character,
according to the temperament of the individual who happened to be head
of the family: with Miss Norman, the last of _her_ line, it took the
form of a boast that every branch and twig of her illustrious tree had
always ridden “in their own carriage.” I am not quite sure whether
she did not push this pretension further back than the date of the
invention of “little houses on wheels” would warrant; however, it held
good, in local tradition, for several generations, although the family
vehicle had gradually dwindled down from an ample coach to a chariot,
a fly, and, finally, the one-inside sedan-chair upon wheels, which the
sudden death of Plantagenet left planted fifty yards short of the Binn
Gate. To glance at the whole set-out, nobody would ever have attributed
high birth and inherent gentility to its owner. ’Twas never of a piece.
For once that the body was new-painted, the arms were thrice refreshed
and touched up, till the dingy vehicle, by the glaring comparison,
looked more ancient than the quarterings. The crest was much oftener
renewed than the hammer-cloth; and Humphrey, the coachman, evidently
never got a new suit all at once. He had always old drab to bran-new
bright sky-blue plush; or _vice versâ_. Sometimes a hat in its first
gloss got the better of its old tarnished band; sometimes the fresh
gold lace made the brown beaver look still more an antique. The same
with the harness and the horse, which was sometimes a tall spanking
brute, who seemed to have outgrown the concern; at other times, a
short pony-like animal, who had been put into the shafts by mistake.
In short, the several articles seemed to belong the more especially
to Miss Norman because they belonged so little to each other. A few
minutes made a great change in her possessions, instead of a living
horse, hight Plantagenet, she was proprietor of certain hundred-weights
of dogs’-meat.
[Illustration: “WARRANTED QUIET TO RIDE OR DRIVE.”]
It was just at this moment that I came up with my gig; and knowing
something of the lady’s character, I pulled up in expectation of a
scene. Leaving my own bay, who would stand as steady as a mute at
death’s door, I proceeded to assist the coachman in extricating his
horse; but the nag of royal line was stone dead: and I accompanied
Humphrey to the carriage-door to make his report.
A recent American author has described as an essential attribute
of high birth and breeding in England, a certain sort of quakerly
composure, in all possible sudden emergencies, such as an alarm of
the house on fire, or a man falling into a fit by one’s side; in
fact, the same kind of self-command which Pope praises in a lady
who is “mistress of herself, though China fall.” In this particular
Miss Norman’s conduct justified her pretensions. She was mistress of
herself, though her horse fell. She did not start--exclaim--put her
head out of the window, or even let down the front glass: she only
adjusted herself more exactly in the middle of the seat, drew herself
bolt upright, and fixed her eyes on the back of the coach-box. In this
posture Humphrey found her.
“If you please, Ma’am, Planty-ginit be dead.” The lady acquiesced with
the smallest nod ever made.
“I’ve took off the collar, and the bit out, and got un out o’
harness entirely; but he be as unanimate as his own shoes;” and the
informant looked earnestly at the lady to observe the effect of the
communication. But she never moved a muscle; and honest Humphrey was
just shutting the coach-door, to go and finish the laying out of the
corpse, when he was recalled.
“Humphrey!”
“What’s your pleasure, Ma’am?”
“Remember, another time----”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“When a horse of mine is deceased----”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Touch your hat.”
The abashed coachman instantly paid up the salute in arrear. Unblessed
by birthright with self-possession, he had not even the advantage of
experience in the first families, where he might have learned a little
from good example: he was a raw uncouth country servant, with the great
merit of being cheap, whom Miss Norman had undertaken to educate; but
he was still so far from proficient, that in the importance of breaking
the death to his mistress, he had omitted one of those minor tokens of
respect which she always rigorously exacted.
It was now my own turn to come forward, and as deferentially as if
she had been indeed the last of the Conqueror’s Normandy pippins,
I tendered a seat in my chaise, which she tacitly declined, with a
gracious gesture of head and hand.
“If you please, Ma’am,” said Humphrey, taking care to touch his hat,
and shutting his head into the carriage so that I might not overhear
him, “he’s a respectable kind of gentleman enough, and connected with
some of the first houses.”
“The gentleman’s name?”
“To be sure, Ma’am, the gentleman can’t help his name,” answered
Humphrey, fully aware of the peculiar prejudices of his mistress; “but
it be Huggins.”
[Illustration: “ONE MAY GO FARTHER AND FARE WORSE”--AS THE HORSE SAID]
“Shut the door.”
It appeared, on explanation with the coachman, that he had mistaken
me for a person in the employ of the opulent firm of Naylor and
Co., whose province it was to travel throughout Britain with samples
of hardware in the box-seat of his gig. I did not take the trouble
to undeceive him, but determining to see the end of the affair, I
affected to hope that the lady would change her mind; and accordingly
I renewed, from time to time, my offer of accommodation, which was
always stiffly declined. After a tolerably long pause on all sides, my
expectation was excited by the appearance of the W---- coach coming
through the Binn Gate, the only public vehicle that used the road.
At sight of the dead horse, the driver (the noted Jem Wade) pulled
up--alighted--and standing at the carriage-door with his hat off, as if
he knew his customer, made an offer of his services. But Miss Norman,
more dignified than ever, waved him off with her hand. Jem became more
pressing, and the lady more rigid. “She never rode,” she condescended
to say, “in _public_ vehicles.” Jem entreated again; but “she was
accustomed to be driven by her _own_ coachman.” It was in vain that in
answer he praised the quietness of his team, the safety of his patent
boxes, besides promising the utmost steadiness and sobriety on his
own part. Miss Norman still looked perseveringly at the back of her
coach-box; which, on an unlucky assurance that “he would take as much
care of her as of his own mother,” she exchanged for a steady gaze at
the side-window, opposite to the coachman, so long as he remained in
the presence.
“By your leave, Ma’am,” said Humphrey, putting his hand to his hat, and
keeping it there, “Mr. Wade be a very civil-spoken careful whip, and
his coach loads very respectable society. There’s Sir Vincent Ball on
the box.”
“If Sir Vincent Ball chooses to degrade himself, it is no rule for
_me_,” retorted the lady, without turning her head; when, lo! Sir
Vincent appeared himself, and politely endeavoured to persuade her out
of her prejudices. It was useless. Miss Norman’s ancestors had one
and all expressed a very decided opinion against stage-coaches, by
never getting into one; and “she did not feel disposed to disgrace a
line longer than common, by riding in any carriage but her own.” Sir
Vincent bowed and retreated. So did Jem Wade, without bowing, fervently
declaring “he would never do the civil thing to the old female sex
again!”
[Illustration: “JACK’S AS GOOD AS HIS MASTER.”]
The stage rattled away at an indignant gallop; and we were left once
more to our own resources. By way of passing the time, I thrice
repeated my offers to the obdurate old maiden, and endured as many
rebuffs. I was contemplating a fourth trial, when a signal was made
from the carriage window, and Humphrey, hat in hand, opened the door.
“Procure me a post-chaise.”
“A po-shay!” echoed Humphrey, but, like an Irish echo, with some
variation from his original--“Lord help ye, Ma’am, there bean’t such a
thing to be had ten miles round--no, not for love nor money. Why, bless
ye, it be election time, and there bean’t coach, cart, nor dog-barrow,
but what be gone to it!”
“No matter,” said the mistress, drawing herself up with an air of lofty
resignation. “I revoke my order; for it is far, very far from the kind
of riding that I prefer. And Humphrey----”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Another time--”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Remember once for all--”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“I do not choose to be blest, or the Lord to help me.”
Another pause in our proceedings, during which a company of ragged
boys, who had been black-berrying, came up, and planted themselves,
with every symptom of vulgar curiosity, around the carriage. Miss
Norman had now no single glass through which she could look without
encountering a group of low-life faces staring at her with all their
might. Neither could she help hearing some such shocking ill-bred
remarks as, “Vy don’t the frizzle-vigged old Guy get into the gemman’s
drag?” Still the pride of the Normans sustained her. She seemed to draw
a sort of supplementary neck out of her bosom, and sat more rigidly
erect than ever, occasionally favouring the circle, like a mad bull at
bay, with a most awful threatening look, accompanied ever by the same
five words:
“I CHOOSE to be alone.”
It is easy to say choose, but more difficult to have one’s choice. The
blackberry boys chose to remain; and in reply to each congé only proved
by a general grin how very much teeth are set off to advantage by
purple mouths. I confess I took pity on the pangs even of unwarrantable
pride, and urged my proposal again with some warmth; but it was
repelled with absolute scorn.
“Fellow, you are insolent.”
“Quis Deus vult perdere,” thought I, and I determined to let her take
her fate, merely staying to mark the result. After a tedious interval,
in which her mind had doubtless looked abroad as well as inward, it
appeared that the rigour of the condition, as to riding only in her own
carriage, had been somewhat relaxed to meet the exigency of the case. A
fresh tapping at the window summoned the obsequious Humphrey to receive
orders.
“Present my compliments at the Grove--and the loan of the chariot will
be esteemed a favour.”
“By your leave, Ma’am, if I may speak--”
“You may _not_.”
Humphrey closed the door, but remained for a minute gazing on the
panel, at a blue arm, with a red carving-knife in its hand, defending a
black and white rolling-pin. If he meditated any expostulation, he gave
it up, and proceeded to drive away the boys, one of whom was astride
on the dead Plantagenet, a second grinning through his collar, and two
more preparing to play at horses with the reins. It seemed a strange
mode enough that he took to secure the harness, by hanging it, collar
and all, on his own back and shoulders; but by an aside to me, he
explained the mystery, in a grumble,
“It be no use in the world. I see the charrot set off for Lonnon.
I shan’t go compli_ment_ing no Grove. I’se hang about a bit at the
George, and compli_ment_ a pint o’ beer.”
Away he went, intending, no doubt, to be fully as good as his word: and
I found the time grow tedious in his absence. I had almost made up my
mind to follow his example, when hope revived at the sound of wheels,
and up came a tax-cart carrying four insides, namely, two well-grown
porkers, Master Bardell the pig-butcher, and his foreman Samuel Slark,
or, as he was more commonly called, Sam the Sticker. They were both
a trifle “the worse for liquor,” if such a phrase might honestly be
applied to men who were only a little more courageous, more generous,
and civil and obliging to the fair sex, than their wont when perfectly
sober. The Sticker, especially--in his most temperate moments a perfect
sky-blue-bodied, red-faced, bowing and smirking pattern of politeness
to females, was now, under the influence of good ale, a very Sir
Calidore, ready to comfort and succour distressed damsels, to fight for
them, live or die for them, with as much of the chivalrous spirit as
remains in our times. They inquired, and I explained in a few words the
lady’s dilemma, taking care to forewarn them, by relating the issue of
my own attempts in her behalf.
“Mayhap you warn’t half purlite or pressing enough,” observed Sam,
with a side wink at his master. “It an’t a bit of a scrape, and a
civil word, as will get a strange lady up into a strange gemman’s gig.
It wants warmth-like, and making on her feel at home. Only let me
alone with her, for a persuader, and I’ll have her up in our cart--my
master’s that is to say--afore you can see whether she has feet or
hoofs.”
In a moment the speaker was at the carriage-door, stroking down his
sleek forelocks, bowing, and using his utmost eloquence, even to the
repeating most of his arguments twice over. She would be perfectly
safe, he told her, sitting up between him and master, and quite
pleasant, for the pigs would keep themselves to themselves at the back
of the cart, and as for the horse, he was nothing but a good one,
equal to twelve mile an hour--with much more to the same purpose. It
was quite unnecessary for Miss Norman to say she had never ridden
in a cart with two pigs and two butchers; and she did not say it.
She merely turned away her head from the man, to be addressed by
the master, at the other window, the glass of which she had just
let down for a little air. “A taxed cart, Madam,” he said, “mayn’t
be exactly the wehicle, accustomed to, and so forth; but thereby,
considering respective ranks of life, why, the more honour done to your
humbles, which, as I said afore, will take every care, and observe
the respectful; likewise in distancing the two hogs. Whereby, every
thing considered, namely, necessity and so forth, I will make so bold
as hope, Madam, excusing _more_ pressing, and the like, and dropping
ceremony for the time being, you will embrace us at once, as you shall
be most heartily welcome to, and be considered, by your humbles, as a
favour besides.”
[Illustration: “NONE BUT THE BRAVE DESERVE THE FAIR.”]
The sudden drawing up of the window, so violently as to shiver the
glass, showed sufficiently in what light Miss Norman viewed Master
Bardell’s behaviour. It was an unlucky smash, for it afforded what the
tradesman would have called “an advantageous opening” for pouring in a
fresh stream of eloquence; and the Sticker, who shrewdly estimated the
convenience of the breach, came round the back of the carriage, and as
junior counsel “followed on the same side.” But he took nothing by the
motion. The lady was invincible, or, as the discomfited pair mutually
agreed, “as hard for to be _convinced into a cart_, as any thing on
four legs.” The blackberry boys had departed, the evening began to
close in, and no Humphrey made his appearance. The butcher’s horse was
on the fret, and his swine grumbled at the delay. The master and man
fell into consultation, and favoured me afterwards with the result, the
Sticker being the orator. It was man’s duty, he said, to look after
women, pretty or ugly, young or old; it was what we all came into the
world to do, namely, to make ourselves comfortable and agreeable to
the fair sex. As for himself, purtecting females was his nature, and
he should never lie easy agin, if so be he left the lady on the road;
and providing a female wouldn’t be purtected with her own free will,
she ought to be forced to, like any other ’live beast unsensible of its
own good. Them was his sentiments, and his master followed ’em up. They
knowed Miss Norman, name and fame, and was both well-known respectable
men in their lines, and I might ax about for their characters. Whereby,
supposing I approved, they’d have her, right and tight, in their cart,
afore she felt herself respectfully off her legs.
Such were the arguments and the plan of the bull-headed pair. I
attempted to reason with them, but my consent had clearly been only
asked as a compliment. The lady herself hastened the catastrophe.
Whether she had overheard the debate, or the amount of long pent-up
emotion became too overwhelming for its barriers, I know not, but Pride
gave way to Nature, and a short hysteric scream proceeded from the
carriage. Miss Norman was in fits! We contrived to get her seated on
the step of the vehicle, where the butchers supported her, fanning her
with their hats, whilst I ran off to a little pool near at hand for
some cold water. It was the errand only of some four or five minutes,
but when I returned, the lady, only half conscious, had been caught
up, and there she sate, in the cart, right and tight, between the two
butchers, instead of the two Salvages, or Griffins, or whatever they
were, her hereditary supporters. They were already on the move. I
jumped into my own gig, and put my horse to his speed; but I had lost
my start, and when I came up with them, they were already galloping
into W----. Unfortunately her residence was at the further end of the
town, and thither I saw her conveyed, struggling in the bright blue,
and somewhat greasy, arms of Sam the Sticker, screaming in concert with
the two swine, and answered by the shouts of the whole rabblement of
the place, who knew Miss Norman quite as well, by sight, as “her own
carriage!”
[Illustration: “I’M AFRAID I’M IN LOW COMPANY!”]
[Illustration: A MINOR CANON.]
I CANNOT BEAR A GUN.
“Timidity is generally reckoned an essential attribute of the fair
sex, and this absurd notion gives rise to more false starts than
a race for the Leger. Hence screams at mice, fits at spiders,
faces at toads, jumps at lizards, flights from daddy longlegs,
panics at wasps, _sauve qui peut_ at sight of a gun. Surely, when
the military exercise is made a branch of education at so many
ladies’ academies, the use of the musket would only be a judicious
step further in the march of mind. I should not despair, in a
month’s practice, of making the most timid British female fond of
small-arms.”--HINTS BY A CORPORAL.
IT can’t be minced, I’m quite convinced
All girls are full of flam,
Their feelings fine and feminine
Are nothing else but sham.
On all their tricks I need not fix,
I’ll only mention one,
How many a Miss will tell you this,
“I cannot bear a gun!”
There’s cousin Bell can’t ’bide the smell
Of powder--horrid stuff!
A single pop will make her drop,
She shudders at a puff.
My Manton near, with aspen fear
Will make her scream and run:
“It’s always so, you brute, you know
I cannot bear a gun!”
About my flask I must not ask,
I must not wear a belt,
I must not take a punch to make
My pellets, card or felt;
And if I just allude to dust,
Or speak of number one,
“I beg you’ll not--don’t talk of shot,
I cannot bear a gun!”
Percussion cap I dare not snap,
I may not mention Hall,
Or raise my voice for Mr. Joyce,
His wadding to recall;
At Hawker’s book I must not look,
All shooting I must shun,
Or else--“It’s hard, you’ve no regard,
I cannot bear a gun!”
The very dress I wear no less
Must suit her timid mind,
A blue or black must clothe my back,
With swallow-tails behind;
By fustian, jean, or velveteen,
Her nerves are overdone:
“Oh do not, John, put gaiters on,
I cannot bear a gun!”
E’en little James she snubs, and blames
His Liliputian train,
Two inches each from mouth to breach,
And charged with half a grain--
His crackers stopp’d, his squibbing dropp’d.
He has no fiery fun,
And all thro’ her “How dare you, Sir?
I cannot bear a gun!”
[Illustration: “JAMES’S POWDER.”]
Yet Major Flint,--the Devil’s in’t!
May talk from morn to night,
Of springing mines, and twelves and nines,
And volleys left and right,
Of voltigeurs and tirailleurs,
And bullets by the ton:
She never dies of fright, or cries
“I cannot bear a gun!”
It stirs my bile to see her smile
At all his bang and whiz,
But if I talk of morning walk,
And shots as good as his,
I must not name the fallen game:
As soon as I’ve begun,
She’s in her pout, and crying out,
“I cannot bear a gun!”
Yet, underneath the rose, her teeth
Are false, to match her tongue:
Grouse, partridge, hares, she never spares,
Or pheasants, old or young--
On widgeon, teal, she makes a meal,
And yet objects to none:
“What have I got, it’s full of shot!
I cannot bear a gun!”
At pigeon-pie she is not shy,
Her taste it never shocks,
Though they should be from Battersea,
So famous for blue rocks;
Yet when I bring the very thing
My marksmanship has won,
She cries “Lock up that horrid cup,
I cannot bear a gun!”
Like fool and dunce I got her once
A box at Drury Lane,
And by her side I felt a pride
I ne’er shall feel again:
To read the bill it made her ill,
And this excuse she spun,
“Der Freyschütz, oh, seven shots; you know,
I cannot bear a gun!”
Yet at a hint from Major Flint,
Her very hands she rubs,
And quickly drest in all her best,
Is off to Wormwood Scrubbs.
The whole review she sits it through,
With noise enough to stun,
And never winks, or even thinks,
“I cannot bear a gun!”
[Illustration: WOOLWICH WARREN.]
She thus may blind the Major’s mind
In mock-heroic strife,
But let a bout at war break out,
And where’s the soldier’s wife,
To take his kit and march a bit
Beneath a broiling sun?
Or will she cry, “My dear, good-bye,
I cannot bear a gun?”
If thus she doats on army coats,
And regimental cuffs,
The yeomanry might surely be
Secure from her rebuffs;
But when I don my trappings on,
To follow Captain Dunn,
My carbine’s gleam provokes a scream,
“I cannot bear a gun.”
It can’t be minced, I’m quite convinced,
All girls are full of flam,
Their feelings fine, and feminine,
Are nothing else but sham;
On all their tricks I need not fix,
I’ll only mention one,
How many a Miss will tell you this,
“I cannot bear a gun!”
TRIMMER’S EXERCISE, FOR THE USE OF CHILDREN.
Here, come, Master Timothy Todd,
Before we have done you’ll look grimmer,
You’ve been spelling some time for the rod,
And your jacket shall know I’m a Trimmer.
You don’t know your A from your B,
So backward you are in your Primer;
Don’t kneel--you shall go on _my_ knee,
For I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.
This morning you hinder’d the cook,
By melting your dumps in the skimmer;
Instead of attending your book,--
But I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.
To-day, too, you went to the pond,
And bathed, though you are not a swimmer:
And with parents so doting and fond--
But I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.
After dinner you went to the wine,
And help’d yourself--yes, to a brimmer;
You couldn’t walk straight in a line,
But I’ll make you to know I’m a Trimmer.
[Illustration: FANCY PORTRAIT--MRS. TRIMMER.]
You kick little Tomkins about,
Because he is slighter and slimmer;
Are the weak to be thump’d by the stout?
But I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.
Then you have a sly pilfering trick,
Your school-fellows call you the nimmer,--
I will cut to the bone if you kick!
For I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.
To-day you made game at my back:
You think that my eyes are grown dimmer,
But I watch’d you, I’ve got a sly knack!
And I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.
Don’t think that my temper is hot,
It’s never beyond a slow simmer;
I’ll teach you to call me Dame Trot,
But I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.
Miss Edgeworth, or Mrs. Chapone,
Might melt to behold your tears glimmer;
Mrs. Barbauld would let you alone,
But I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.
[Illustration: LITTLE JACK AND HIS TRIMMER.]
SOME ACCOUNT OF WILLIAM WHISTON.
“That boy is the brother of Pam----.”--JOSEPH ANDREWS.
“WILLIAM certainly _is_ fond of whist!”
This was an admission drawn, or extracted, as Cartwright would say,
like a double tooth from the mouth of William’s mother; an amiable and
excellent lady, who ever reluctantly confessed foibles in her family,
and invariably endeavoured to exhibit to the world the sunny side of
her children.
There can be no possibility of doubt that William _was_ fond of whist.
He doted on it. Whist was his first passion--his first love; and in
whist he experienced no disappointment. The two were made for each
other.
[Illustration: CARDY MUMS.]
William was one of a large bunch of children, and he never grew up. On
his seventh birthday a relation gave him a miniature pack of cards, and
made him a whist-player for life. Our bias dates much earlier than some
natural philosophers suppose. I remember William, a mere child, being
one day William of Orange, and objecting to a St. Michael’s because it
had no pips.
At school he was a total failure; except in reckoning the odd tricks.
He counted nothing by honours, and the schoolmaster said of his head
what he has since said occasionally of his hand that “it held literally
nothing.”
At sixteen, after a long maternal debate between the black and red
suits, William was articled to an attorney: but instead of becoming
a respectable land-shark, he played double-dummy with the Common-Law
Clerk, and was discharged on the 6th of November. The principal
remonstrated with him on a breach of duty, and William imprudently
answered that he was aware of his duty, like the ace of spades. Mr.
Bitem immediately banged the door against him, and William, for the
first time in his life--to use his own expression, “got a slam.”
William having served his time, and, as he calls it, followed suit for
five years, was admitted as an attorney, and began to play at that
finessing game, the Law. _Short-hand_ he still studied and practised;
though more in parlours than in court.
William at one period admired Miss Hunt, or Miss Creswick, or Miss
Hardy, or Miss Reynolds; a daughter of one of the great card-makers, I
forget which--and he cut for partners, but without “getting the Lady.”
His own explanation was that he “_was discarded_.” He then paid his
addresses to a Scotch girl, a Miss MacNab, but she professed religious
scruples about cards, and he _revoked_. I have heard it said that she
expected to match higher; indeed William used to say she “looked over
his hand.”
William is short, and likes shorts. He likes nothing of _longs_, but
the St. John of them: and he only takes to _him_, because that saint
is partial to a _rubber_. Whist seems to influence his face as well as
form; it is like a knave of clubs. I sometimes fancy whist could not
go on without William, and certainly William could not go on without
whist. His whole conversation, except on cards, is wool-gathering;
and on that subject is like wool--carded. He “speaks by the card,”
and never gives equivocation a chance. At the Olympic once he had a
quarrel with a gentleman about _the lead_ of Madame Vestris or Miss
Sydney: he was required to give his card, and he gave the “Deuce of
Hearts.” This was what he termed “calling out.”
Of late years William only goes out like a bad rushlight, earlyish of
a night, and quits every table that is not covered with green baize
with absolute disgust. The fairies love by night to “_gambol_ on the
_green_,” and so does William, and he is constantly humming with great
gusto,
“Come unto these yellow sands,
_And then take hands_.”
The only verses, by the way, he ever got by heart. He never cared to
play much with the Muses. They stick, he used to say, at Nine.
William can sit longer--drink less--say as little--pay or receive as
much--shuffle as well--and cut as deeply as any man on earth. You may
leave him safely after dinner, and catch him at breakfast time without
alteration of attitude or look. He is a small statue erected in honour
of whist, and like Eloquence, “holds his hand well up.” He is content
to ring the changes on thirteen cards a long Midsummer night; for he
does not _play_ at cards--he _works_ at them, and considering the
returns, for very low wages. William never was particularly lucky; but
he bears the twos and threes with as much equanimity as any one, and
seems, horticulturally speaking, to have grafted Patience upon Whist.
I do not know whether it is the family motto, but he has upon his
seal--with the great Mogul for a crest--the inscription of “Packs in
Bello.”
William is now getting old (nearly fifty-two), with an asthma;
which he says makes him rather “weak in trumps.” He is preparing
himself accordingly to “take down his score,” and has made his
will, bequeathing all he has or has not, to a whist club. His
funeral he directs to be quite private, and his gravestone a plain
one, and especially “that there be no cherubims carved thereon,
forasmuch,”--says this characteristic document, “that they never hold
Honours.”
[Illustration: A DOUBLE AT LONG’S.]
THE FOX AND THE HEN.
A FABLE.
Speaking within _compass_, as to fabulousness I prefer _Southcote_
to _Northcote_.--PIGROGROMITUS.
ONE day, or night, no matter where or when,
Sly Reynard, like a foot-pad, laid his pad
Right on the body of a speckled Hen,
Determined upon taking all she had;
And like a very bibber at his bottle,
Began to draw the claret from her throttle;
Of course it put her in a pretty pucker.
And with a scream as high
As she could cry,
She called for help--she had enough of sucker.
Dame Partlet’s scream
Waked, luckily, the house-dog from his dream,
And with a savage growl
In answer to the fowl,
He bounded forth against the prowling sinner.
And, uninvited, came to the Fox Dinner.
[Illustration: NATIVES OF THE SILLY ISLANDS.]
Sly Reynard, heedful of the coming doom,
Thought, self-deceived,
He should not be perceived,
Hiding his _brush_ within a neighbouring _broom_;
But quite unconscious of a Poacher’s snare,
And caught in copper noose,
And looking like a goose,
Found that his fate “had hung upon a _hare_;”
His tricks and turns were rendered of no use to him,
And, worst of all, he saw old surly Tray
Coming to play
Tray-Deuce with him.
Tray, an old Mastiff bred at Dunstable,
Under his Master, a most special constable,
Instead of killing Reynard in a fury,
Seized him for legal trial by a Jury;
But Juries--Æsop was a sheriff then--
Consisted of twelve Brutes and not of Men.
But first the Elephant sat on the body--
I mean the Hen--and proved that she was dead,
To the veriest fool’s head
Of the Booby and the Noddy.
Accordingly, the Stork brought in a bill
Quite true enough to kill;
And then the Owl was call’d--for mark,
The Owl can witness in the dark.
To make the evidence more plain,
The Lynx connected all the chain.
In short there was no quirk or quibble
At which a legal Rat could nibble;
The Culprit was as far beyond hope’s bounds,
As if the Jury had been _packed_--of hounds.
Reynard, however, at the utmost nick,
Is seldom quite devoid of shift and trick;
Accordingly our cunning Fox,
Through certain influence, obscurely channel’d,
A friendly Camel got into the box,
When ’gainst his life the Jury was impanel’d.
Now, in the Silly Isles such is the law,
If Jurors should withdraw,
They are to have no eating and no drinking,
Till all are starved into one way of thinking.
Thus Reynard’s Jurors, who could not agree,
Were lock’d up strictly, without bit or mummock,
Till every beast that only had _one_ stomach,
Bent to the Camel who was blest with _three_.
To do them justice, they debated
From four till ten, while dinner waited
When thirst and hunger got the upper,
And each inclined to mercy, and hot supper:
“Not guilty” was the word, and Master Fox
Was freed to murder other hens and cocks.
MORAL.
What moral greets us by this tale’s assistance
But that the Solon is a sorry Solon,
Who makes the full stop of a Man’s existence
Depend upon a _Colon_?
[Illustration: PRO BONO PUBLICO.]
THE COMET.
AN ASTRONOMICAL ANECDOTE.
“I cannot fill up a blank better than with a short history of this
self-same _Star_ling.”--STERNE’S SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.
AMONGST professors of astronomy,
Adepts in the celestial economy,
The name of H*******l’s very often cited,
And justly so, for he is hand and glove
With ev’ry bright intelligence above;
Indeed, it was his custom so to stop,
Watching the stars upon the house’s top,
That once upon a time he got be-knighted.
In his observatory thus coquetting
With Venus--or with Juno gone astray,
All sublunary matters quite forgetting
In his flirtations with the winking stars,
Acting the spy--it might be upon Mars--
A new André;
Or, like a Tom of Coventry, sly peeping,
At Dian sleeping;
Or ogling thro’ his glass
Some heavenly lass
Tripping with pails along the Milky Way;
Or looking at that Wain of Charles the Martyrs:--
Thus he was sitting, watchman of the sky,
When lo! a something with a tail of flame
Made him exclaim,
“_My_ stars!”--he always put that stress on _my_--
“_My_ stars and garters!”
“A comet, sure as I’m alive!
A noble one as I should wish to view;
It can’t be Halley’s though, _that_ is not due
Till eighteen thirty-five.
Magnificent!--how fine his fiery trail!
Zounds! ’tis a pity, though he comes unsought--
Unask’d--unreckon’d,--in no human thought--
He ought--he ought--he ought
To have been caught
With scientific salt upon his tail!”
[Illustration: “POSSE COMETATIS.”]
“I look’d no more for it, I do declare,
Than the Great Bear!
As sure as Tycho Brahe is dead,
It really enter’d in my head
No more than Berenice’s Hair!”
Thus musing, Heaven’s Grand Inquisitor
Sat gazing on the uninvited visitor
Till John, the serving-man, came to the upper
Regions, with “Please your Honour, come to supper.”
“Supper! Good John, to-night I shall not sup
Except on that phenomenon--look up!”
“Not sup!” cried John, thinking with consternation
That supping on a _star_ must be _star_vation,
Or ev’n to batten
On Ignes Fatui would never fatten,
His visage seem’d to say,--that very odd is,--
But still his master the same tune ran on,
“I can’t come down,--go to the parlour, John,
And say I’m supping with the heavenly bodies.”
“The heavenly bodies!” echoed John, “Ahem!”
His mind still full of famishing alarms,
“’Zooks, if your Honour sups with _them_,
In helping, somebody must make long arms!”
He thought his master’s stomach was in danger,
But still in the same tone replied the Knight,
“Go down, John, go, I have no appetite;
Say I’m engaged with a celestial stranger.”--
Quoth John, not much au fait in such affairs,
“Wouldn’t the stranger take a bit down stairs?”
“No,” said the master, smiling, and no wonder,
At such a blunder,
“The stranger is not quite the thing you think,
He wants no meat or drink,
And one may doubt quite reasonably whether
He has a mouth,
Seeing his head and tail are joined together.
Behold him,--there he is, John, in the South.”
John look’d up with his portentous eyes,
Each rolling like a marble in its socket.
At last the fiery tad-pole spies,
And, full of Vauxhall reminiscence, cries,
“A rare good rocket!”
“A what! A rocket, John! Far from it!
What you behold, John, is a comet;
One of those most eccentric things
That in all ages
Have puzzled sages
And frighten’d kings;
With fear of change that flaming meteor, John,
Perplexes sovereigns, throughout its range”--
“Do he?” cried John;
“Well, let him flare on,
_I_ haven’t got no sovereigns to change!”
[Illustration: THE HARVEST MOON.]
LITERARY REMINISCENCES.
No. III.
MY first acquaintance with the press--a memorable event in an author’s
experience--took place in Scotland. Amongst the temporary sojourners
at our boarding-house, there came a legal antiquarian who had been
sent for from Edinburgh, expressly to make some unprofitable researches
amongst the mustiest of the civic records. It was my humour to think,
that in Political as well as Domestic Economy, it must be better to
sweep the Present than to dust the Past; and certain new brooms were
recommended to the Town Council in a quizzing letter, which the then
editor of the Dundee Advertiser or Chronicle, thought fit to favour
with a prominent place in his columns. “’Tis pleasant sure,” sings
Lord Byron, “to see one’s self in print,” and according to the popular
notion I ought to have been quite up in my stirrups, if not standing
on the saddle, at thus seeing myself, for the first strange time, set
up in type. Memory recalls, however, but a very moderate share of
exaltation, which was totally eclipsed, moreover, by the exuberant
transports of an accessory before the fact, whom, methinks, I still
see in my mind’s eye, rushing out of the printing-office with the wet
sheet steaming in his hand, and fluttering all along the High Street,
to announce breathlessly that “we were in.” But G. was an indifferent
scholar, even in English, and therefore thought the more highly of
this literary feat. It was this defective education, and the want of
a proper vent for his abundant love nonsense in prose or verse, that
probably led to the wound he subsequently inflicted on his own throat,
but which was luckily remedied by “a stitch in time.” The failure of
a tragedy is very apt to produce something like a comedy, and few
afterpieces have amused me more than the behaviour of this Amicus
Redivivus, when, thus dramatising the saying of “cut and come again,”
he made what ought to have been a posthumous appearance amongst his
friends. In fact, and he was ludicrously alive to it, he had placed
himself for all his supplementary days in a false position. Like the
old man in the fable, after formally calling upon Death to execute
a general release, he had quietly resumed his fardel, which he bore
about, with exactly the uneasy ridiculous air of a fine-would be
gentleman, who is sensitively conscious that he is carrying a bundle.
For the sake of our native sentimentalists who profess dying for love,
as well as the foreign romanticists who affect a love for dying, it may
not be amiss to give a slight sketch of the bearing of a traveller who
had gone through half the journey. I had been absent some months, and
was consequently ignorant of the affair, when lo! on my return to the
town, the very first person who accosted me in the market-place was our
felo-de-se; and truly, no Bashful Man, “with all his blushing honours
thick upon him,” in the presence of a damp stranger, could have been
more divertingly sheepish, and awkwardly backward in coming forward
as to manner and address. Indeed, something or the embarrassment of
a fresh introduction might naturally be felt by an individual, thus
beginning again, as the lawyers say, _de novo_, and renewing ties he
had virtually cast off. The guilty hand was as dubiously extended to
me as if it had been a dyer’s,--its fellow meanwhile performing sundry
involuntary motions and manipulations about his cravat, as if nervously
mistrusting the correctness of the ties or the stability of a buckle.
As for his face, there was a foolish, deprecatory smile upon it that
would have puzzled the pencil of Wilkie; and even Liston himself could
scarcely have parodied the indescribable croak with which, conscious of
an unlucky notoriety, he inquired “if I had heard”--here, a short husky
cough--“of anything particular?”
“Not a word,” was the answer.
“Then you don’t know”(--more fidgeting about the neck, the smile
rather sillier, the voice more guttural, and the cough worse than
ever)--“then you don’t know”--but, like Macbeth’s amen, the confession
literally stuck in the culprit’s throat; and I was left to learn, an
hour afterwards, and from another source, that “Jemmy G*** had _fought
a duel with himself_, and cut his own weazand, about a lady.”
For my own part, with the above figure, and all its foolish features
vividly imprinted on my memory, I do not think that I could ever
seriously attempt “what Cato did, and Addison approved,” in my own
person. On the contrary, it seems to me that the English moralist gave
but an Irish illustration of “a brave man struggling with the storms
of fate,” by representing him as wilfully scuttling his own hold,
and going at once to the bottom. As for the Censor, he plainly laid
himself open to censure, when he used a naked sword as a stomachic--a
very sorry way, by the way, when weary of conjectures, of enjoying
the benefit of the doubt, and for which, were I tasked to select an
inscription for his cenotaph, it should be the exclamation of Thisby,
in the Midsummer Night’s Dream--
“This is old Ninny’s tomb.”
_Mais revenons à nos moutons_, as the wolf said to her cubs. The
reception of my letter in the Dublin Newspaper encouraged me to forward
a contribution to the Dundee Magazine, the Editor of which was kind
enough, as Winifred Jenkins says, to “wrap my bit of nonsense under
his Honour’s Kiver,” without charging anything for its insertion.
Here was success sufficient to turn a young author at once into “a
scribbling miller,” and make him sell himself, body and soul, after
the German fashion, to that minor Mephistopheles, the Printer’s Devil!
Nevertheless, it was not till years afterwards, and the lapse of
term equal to an ordinary apprenticeship, that the Imp in question
became really my Familiar. In the meantime, I continued to compose
occasionally, and, like the literary performances of Mr. Weller Senior,
my lucubrations were generally committed to paper, not in what is
commonly called written hand, but an imitation of print. Such a course
hints suspiciously of type and antetype, and a longing eye to the Row,
whereas, it was adopted simply to make the reading more easy, and
thus enable me the more readily to form a judgment of the effect of
my little efforts. It is more difficult than may be supposed to decide
on the value of a work in MS., and especially when the handwriting
presents only a swell mob of bad characters, that must be severally
examined and re-examined to arrive at the merits or demerits of the
case. Print settles it, as Coleridge used to say; and to be candid, I
have more than once reversed, or greatly modified a previous verdict,
on seeing a rough proof from the press. But, as Editors too well know,
it is next to impossible to retain the tune of a stanza, or the drift
of an argument, whilst the mind has to scramble through a patch of
scribble scrabble, as stiff as a gorse cover. The beauties of the
piece will as naturally appear to disadvantage through such a medium
as the features of a pretty woman through a bad pane of glass; and
without doubt, many a tolerable article has been consigned hand over
head to the Balaam Box for want of a fair copy. Wherefore, O ye Poets
and Prosers, who aspire to write in Miscellanies, and above all, O ye
palpitating Untried, who meditate the offer of your maiden essays to
established periodicals, take care, pray ye take care, to cultivate a
good, plain, bold, round text. Set up Tomkins as well as Pope or Dryden
for a model, and have an eye to your pothooks. Some persons hold that
the best writers are those who write the best hands, and I have known
the conductor of a magazine to be converted by a crabbed MS. to the
same opinion. Of all things, therefore, be legible; and to that end,
practise in penmanship. If you have never learned, take six lessons of
Mr. Carstairs. Be sure to buy the best paper, the best ink, the best
pens, and then sit down and do the best you can; as the schoolboys
do--put out your tongue, and take pains. So shall ye haply escape the
rash rejection of a jaded editor; so, having got in your hand, it is
possible that your head may follow; and so, last not least, ye may
fortunately avert those awful mistakes of the press which sometimes
ruin a poet’s sublimest effusion, by pantomimically transforming his
roses into noses, his angels into angles, and all his happiness into
pappiness.
THE OCEAN.
CONSIDERED PER SE.
“A man whom both the waters and the wind, in that vast tennis-court
have made the ball for them to play upon, entreats you pity
him.”--PERICLES.
IT was during a voyage to Margate, many summers ago--before steam
_was_--that the little episode occurred which I am going to relate, by
way of text, to some observations on the ocean.
The importance of the Mariner’s Compass to the sailor is as well
known universally as the utility of the little one-eyed instrument,
for which Whitechapel is so famous, to the tailor: but its mode of
action, and the manner of its application, must be far less generally
understood. Whether the plougher of the deep mends his checked shirts
with the Needle, or sews the canvas into sails with it, or uses it,
after a battle, to extract the splinters from his hard tarry hand,
are speculations likely enough to be entertained by the plougher of
the land; at least by those clod-_compelling_ turners of the furrows,
mid-county born and bred, who, despite of their predilection for such
naval ballads as Tom Bowling and Jack Junk, have never set their
simple eyes on ship or sailor, or the sea which they subdue. To many
Londoners even, who jostle the tar in the streets, and behold tier
after tier of masted vessels from their lower Bridge,--who have
perchance stood and stared at the Compass itself in some shop-window
of Leadenhall, or the still more maritime Minories, the Card with
its _Card_-inal Points, is an undeciphered hieroglyphic. It did not
violently surprise me, therefore, to see a simple-looking creature of
this latter class go and take a long wondering look into the binnacle,
like a child peeping at the tortoise in an Italian’s show-box; and
doubtless, to his callow apprehension, the veering Guide was as much
a thing of life and instinct as the outlandish reptile to the urchin.
It was not until after a tedious poring at it--long enough, if there
were any truth in animal magnetism, for the Needle and the Man to
have understood one another by mutual sympathy--that the wonderer
made up to the steersman, and begged for an elucidation of the marine
mystery. Fortunately for the querist, the helmsman, along with all the
characteristic good-nature of his fraternity, had none of the coyness,
as to the secrets of the craft, with which the ripe sailor is apt to
treat the raw voyager; perhaps not without cause. The nautical truths,
masonic, may deserve to be obtained by degrees of probation: in the
present case the unreserved communication of occult knowledge led to
anything but a satisfactory result. No one could take more pains--call
them pleasures rather--than the honest man at the wheel, to explain the
use and properties of the Compass: he boxed it again and again for the
benefit of the gaping neophyte; a benevolent smile, and the twinkling
of his blue eyes, declaring that he felt amply repaid by the supposed
proficiency of his pupil,--when, all of a sudden, his well-earned
pride was dashed to the deck by the pupil’s turning away on his heel,
with a hunch of his shoulders, a blank look, and a dissatisfied grunt,
exclaiming,
“Well, arter all, I don’t see how the turning round of that ’ere little
needle can move about the rudder!”
I should have been no Christian man, but a brute beast, had I not
sympathised with the feelings of the steersman. Contempt took the lead.
All “the dismal hiss of universal scorn,” ascribed to Milton’s devils,
seemed condensed into his whistle. Next came Resentment, wishing back
the Cockney-Tailor to his shop-board, sitting on his own needle--and
then came Pity, inducing the milder reflection,
“I wonder the poor gentleman’s friends allows him to go about by
himself!”
I doubt whether the force of contempt and pity could further go: and
yet--to confess a truth--shall I?--dare I?--say, that to the intense
sea-ignorance which incurred the scorn, anger, and compassion of our
Palinurus, I look back with ENVY?
Methinks, every British Heart of Oak recoils, and every British head of
the same material shakes itself, at such an avowal! Every lip that ever
helped to chorus Rule Britannia, curls itself up--noses which never
sniffed sea-weed tacitly snub me,--eyes which never glimpsed the ocean
avert themselves in disgust. I am bespattered with salt-water oaths
and tobacco-juice. The Thames Yacht Clubs, on the strength of having
learned to bellow “Elm a-lee!”--“Ard-hup!” and “Oist-away!” agree to
run me down. The very clerks of the Navy Pay Office propose to seize me
up to the dingy fresh-water Neptune in their fore-court. Captain Basil
Hall swears, on his best anchor-button, to keel-haul me daily, for six
months, in “the element which never tires.” The last of the Dibdins
asks for my card. Campbell flares up with the “Meteor Flag of England,”
and vows to knock me down with its staff;--nay, our Sailor King himself
repudiates me, as a subject, for not relishing his _High Seas_!
It can’t be helped. When one is confessing, there is no place under
the sun like the Ocean for “making a clean breast of it:”--and am
not I here staggering and tumbling--soberly tipsy--aboard a lubberly
Dutch-built hull, becalmed in a heavy swell--dreaming, when I can
sleep, that I am a barrel-churn, revolving with my inside full of
half-turned cream or incipient butter;--and finding, when I awake, that
dreams do not go so altogether by contraries?
If this perpetual motion hold, the cargo of cheeses we shipped at
Dordrecht, flat as single Glo’sters, will be delivered in London
spherical as bowls! The Jung Vrouw herself, before she reaches the
Nore, will be a washing-tub! I have doubts whether the salt beef,
produced at this day’s luncheon, was, originally, a round. The leathern
conveniency that I brought aboard, a fair and square trunk, is already
almost a portmanteau;--and, what is worse, every several morsel I have
swallowed this blessed day without bliss, seems rolling itself into
a bolus or a pill,--whether of opium or ipecacuanha, I leave you to
divine. If the calm should continue, I may become--who knows?--a Ball
myself--a Master Biffin! Every half-hour, on feeling my knees and
elbows, I find joints by this friction losing some of their asperities,
and getting obtuser. A little more, and I shan’t have a good point
about me!
Is such as this a season to be squeamishly retentive in delivering
one’s sentiments? Or, rather, is not open candour inevitable; seeing
that you cannot have any reserve even with the merest stranger? It
is impossible to keep your feelings to yourself. In spite, then, of
Britannia, the Yacht Club, the Navy Pay,--of Dibdin, Campbell, and
Basil Hall,--of the Lords of the Admiralty, with Portsmouth, Devonport,
and Gosport, to boot--in spite of the Royal William, nay, in spite of
my very self, the truth will out!--not sneaking out, or stepping out,
or backing out, but bolting out, in a plain unequivocal straightforward
style. I DO envy the simple man, with his sheer ignorance about rudders
and compasses. I _do_ detest and abominate the ocean--or to phrase it
more mildly--the sea and I cannot agree with each other--there is sure
to be falling-out between us--we can never be bosom friends.
The Marine Society must despise me for it; my Elder Brethren of the
Trinity House will long to dispose of me as Joseph was made _away with_
by _his_ elder Brethren; Boatswain Smith will preach, write Tracts
and distribute them, against me: the Greenwich Pensioners will bind
themselves by a round robin to kick me with me with their knottiest
legs; Long Tom Coffin himself will be for fetching me, with a shroud in
one hand, and a dead-light in the other; but I cannot eat my words.
[Illustration: SEE-SAW.]
It is no time, when you cannot keep your legs, to “stand bandying
compliments with your sovereign,” that is, Neptune. If he were present
at this moment, in this cabin, I would tell him, from this my seat on
its floor, that he might very much improve his paternal estate, to
wit, by levelling, and still more by draining it. I would flatly say
to him, lying flat on my face as it now happens, that a few little
gravel walks, merely across and across it, would be of rare advantage
both for show and use. For ’tis a sorry pleasure-garden that is all
fish-pond; and, finally, I would broadly hint to him, from the broad
of my back, as I am at this present---- But this is bullying Taurus
behind his back. There is no sea-god present, only the Skipper. How he
skips in such weather, give him his pick of all the ropes in the ship,
is a miracle I would fain see ere I believe in it. For my own part I
cannot even step deliberately over a thread. Perhaps, without going too
curiously into the Doctrine of Predestination, as regards the soul, it
may hold good as concerns the body. Undoubtedly there be some men born
to sit fast upon horses; others to fall off therefrom as if they had
soaped saddles. Some to slide and skate upon the ice; others only to
slip, straddle, and sprawl upon it. Some to walk, or at least waddle,
on ships’ decks; others to flop, flounder, wallow, and grovel thereon.
That is my destiny. None can be more safe on the Serpentine, or sure
in the saddle;--but Fate, long before my great-great-great-grandfather
was put to his feet, forbade me sea-legs. An average pedestrian on
land, on the caulked plank I am a born cripple, hopeless of cure. Put
me apprentice to the Goodwin, or the Dudgeon Light, at the end of my
term you shall find me as unsafe on my soles as when I first paid my
footing. Even now, whilst Hans Vandergroot and his crew are comfortably
promenading, I rock and totter, balancing one end against the other,
like a great rickety babe, until, after some posturing and scrambling,
I trip up over nothing, and fall flat on everything. An earthquake in
London, when its streets are what is called greasy, could not more
puzzle my centre of gravity; if, indeed, I was not born a mathematical
monster, devoid of that material point!
By way of clincher, Fate, who never does things by halves, whilst
foredooming me incapable of standing my ground at sea, has also denied
me the power of settling it. A camp-stool is sure to decamp with me; a
chair, as if it stood on Siberian ice, suddenly throws itself on its
back, and behold me in an extempore sledge! Barrels roll from under
me; coils of rope shuffle me off. Even on the plain bare hard deck,
or cabin floor, I throw demi-summersets, as if I had been returned to
Parliament to represent the Antipodes by sitting on the back of my head.
To complete the Sea Curse,--there are three Fates, and each had a
boon for me at my birth--it was ordained that, like the great Nelson,
I should never sail from fresh water into salt, without knowing it by
a general rising and commotion, which might be called figuratively, a
Mutiny at the Nore.
Like the standing and sitting infirmity, it is incurable. On my voyage
outwards I tried every popular recipe; the hard ones first, to wit, raw
carrots, raw onions, sailors’ biscuit with Dutch cheese, hard-boiled
eggs, hard dumplings, raw stockfish. Next the easy ones: namely, cream
cheese, Welsh rabbits, maccaroni, very hasty pudding, and insupportable
soup. Then the neutrals: such as chewed blotting-paper, dry oatmeal,
pounded egg-shells, scraped chalk, and unbaked dough.
To wash these down, I took, by prescription, tea without milk, coffee
without sugar, bark without wine, water without brandy; and these
formulæ all failing, I then tried them, as witches pray, backwards;
brandy without water, wine without bark, and so forth. The experimental
combinations followed; rum and milk, and mustard; eggs and wine, and
camomile tea; gin and beer, and vinegar; sea-water and salad-oil,
mulled, with sugar and nutmeg. Of which last, I drank by advice most
prodigiously, the Doctors of the Marine College dispensing always on
the Homœopathic principle, that a large dose of anything, whereof a
little would set you wrong on the land, will set you right on the sea.
I need hardly say that, with my predisposed _necessitarian_ viscera,
all these infallible remedies failed of any effect, except to aggravate
my case. Nothing short of liquid lead, maybe, or potable plaster of
Paris, would have proved a settler.
Happy the man who hath never been driven in his despair to test,
detest, invoke, evoke, swallow, and unswallow, such drugs and draughts
of the naval Pharmacopœia! Thrice happy civic simpleton who hath never
learned how the rudder revolveth, at the risk of _turning round_
himself!
Vandergroot is visibly in course of transformation. At every visit
to the cabin he looks more and more like a Dutch-pin. He talks to me
roundly, and gets blunter and blunter! The last time I felt, I had no
small to my back. If I may guess at my own figure, it is now about
an oval. I must look like one of Leda’s babies, just emerged, with
their insignificant buds of legs and arms, from the egg! From an oval
to a circle is but a step. Heaven help me when I get landed, round
and sound, as they say of cherries! How shall I get home--how get
up--(there will be a short way down)--mine own stairs? How shall I sit?
Instead of my old library chair, I must borrow its three-legged stool
of the terrestrial globe!
Either my head swims, or the cabin is getting circular! I shall roll
about in it like a bolus in its box! If I am not merely giddy, I am
already as spherical as the earth; a little flatted, or so, that is,
towards the poles. What a horrible rough calm! I will down on my knees,
if I have knees, and with clasped hands, if hands remain to me, pray,
beg, and supplicate for a dismal storm to batter me into shape again,
though it be but nine-bobble-square!
I get more and more candid and communicative every moment. I can keep
nothing to myself: you shall have my whole heart. I abhor, loathe,
execrate, the sea! If I could throw up my hat, my cry would be “Land
for ever!” A fico for Tom Tough! Down with Duncan Howe, and Jervis! No
Dibdin!
If ever I get ashore, able to chalk upon a wall, you shall read--Ask
for Stoke Pogis! Try Lupton Parva! If ever I get to a dry desk again,
to write verse upon,--and the poetry of the ocean is all on the
land, its prose only upon the sea, you shall have a rare new melody,
published by Power, to some such strain as this:--
The sea! the D----!
The terrible horrible sea!
The stormy, tumbling,
Qualmy-jumbling,
Spirit-humbling,
Shingle-stumbling,
Sea-weed fumbling,
Wearing, crumbling,
Mischief-mumbling,
Growling, grumbling,
Like thunder far off rumbling-- --
That last line halteth in its feet, as well it may, when the poet
cannot keep his legs. Oh! it is well for Cornwall, born perchance “with
one foot on sea and one foot on shore” at the Land’s End,--I have seen
a picture of it by Turner, a bare bleak rocky promontory, with some
nineteen gulls and cormorants sitting thereon, each with its tail
turned contemptuously towards the barren granite, feldspar, and like
sordid soils which there represent land.--It is well enough for him to
chaunt laudations of the briny element, and cry up those amphibia, his
first cousins almost, the Nereids and Tritons. Or it may become those
others, born in a berth, and christened in brine, with Neptune for
sponsor, to sing slightingly of the dry ground, on which they cannot
claim even a parish. But my nativity was otherwise cast--I am a grass
lamb, yeaned on the green sward--oh sweet sweet sweet Cropton-le-Moor,
down in dear dear Wiltshire!
[Illustration: “HOW ARE YOU OFF FOR MONEY?”
“WHY I’M OFF WITH ALL MY MASTER’S.”]
That pastoral reminiscence hath made me worse. It has given me an
appetite--for acres. Methinks I yearn and long and crave for nice
clay, delicious mould, and crisp pebbles, in a paroxysm of that
strange bulimy that attacks the African Dirt Eater. Something of
Nebuchadnezzar’s grazing propensity comes along with it. Gracious
Heaven! can it be possible that, after having been battered and shaken
out of all shape,--a mere mass of living flesh, like the unlicked
ursine cub,--this same Circean Jung Vrouw has taken it into her
figure-head to beat, bang, bump, and rumbledy-thump me into another
form, a horse, a ram, or a brindled bull!
Thrice brute and beast-hyæna! Were-wolf! Dragon! horned Devil! that
thou wast, my Land-steward, Peter Stuckey! after counselling me before
thy last audit to abate my rents, to volunteer to reduce them thyself
by absconding, across sea, with the whole receipt! Thrice Soland goose,
booby, noddy, sea-calf, land-donkey, and loggerhead turtle was I, thus
impoverished, instead of economising, to pursue thee on an element
where I cannot control my out-goings!
Donner and Blitzen! what a crash! my rash prayer was heard: there is a
storm coming--as the Powers proposed to storm Angiers in King John’s
days--from all the four quarters at once! I must needs turn in: but
how vilely this bed is made with the foot two yards higher than the
head! No, the head is highest--perpendicular. I designed to lie down,
and here I am standing bolt erect on my heels--no, on my head. It
must be getting cold: the very trunks, stools and tables are making
a move towards the stove--nay, now we are in some sudden peril, for
they are all doing their best to rush up the cabin-stair. Whew--that
sea last shipped must needs have put all the Dutchmen’s pipes out.
Another plunge; and a flood of brine soaks me through, shirt, sheet,
and blankets. There is no washing put out here, I perceive; ’tis all
done at home. What a complex, chaotic motion,--the ship tosses and
flings like a wild desert-born horse, that is trying to rear, kick up
behind, turn round and round, and roll on his back at one and the same
moment. This is no Dutch ship, but a Dutch fair--with the drums, gongs,
speaking-trumpets, and other discords, all braying together; and I am
on the rocking-horse, the round-about, in the up-and-down, and each
of the swings, all at once! Another crash! The Jung Vrouw is bereaved
of her little one, alias the long-boat. How kind of Vandergroot to
come down to tell me of it, direct through the sky-light, instead of
going round by the stair! How kind of that table, lying on its back,
to catch him in its legs! Angels of grace be near us! He tells me, as
he sways up and down, partly in High, partly in Low Dutch, that the
Jung Vrouw herself is washed overboard! But no--I misconstrued him.
’Tis only her great ruddy staring figure-head--which the blundering
Holland shipwrights had stuck astern, on the crown of the tiller--that
is gone adrift. Oh how I wish from my soul of souls that I could see
the Commodore of the Thames Yachts now pulling, within hail, in the
Wenus! Or, the last Dibdin taking a chair--or the chair taking him--in
this cabin! Or, Campbell essaying to write down a new sea-song on yon
topsy-turvy table! And oh! to behold the author of “The deep deep Sea”
sitting on the poop, singing to that floating Young Woman’s head and
bust, taken by mistake for a mermaid’s!
Another shout. Pieter Pietersoon, in heaving the lead, hath chucked
himself in along with it! I do not wonder; he heaveth after my own
fashion, by wholesale. Have I not within the last two hours rejected,
discharged, and utterly cast from me in disgust, the whole ocean,
nay all the oceans, German, Atlantic, Pacific--the Arctic last, its
solid calms, the next best things to Terra Firma, not so violently
disagreeing with me as the rest. And do I not know and feel that I
am now about to give up Neptune, trident and all, with the whole
salt-water mythology? I warrant, ere ten minutes to come, there shall
not remain within me so much as a syren’s mirror, or her tortoise-shell
comb:--not one solitary Triton will be left on my stomach. Some
unsavoury odour about the cabin--marvellously like the smell of oil
paint--hath just given me a new turn, by conjuring up all the nauseous
pictures of marine allegories, which even on steady dry land, used to
stir and provoke my spleen.
Oh! that they were all here, President, R.A., and A.R.A., in a string,
climbing after me up this perilous slippery stair, to the more perilous
slippery deck, there to crawl on all-fours to the ship’s side, and
clinging like cats or monkeys to the quarter boards, take a trembling
peep at what Vandergroot calls “den wild zee!” What an awful sight!
The tempest-tost sky is as troubled as the ocean: whilst betwixt the
jagged base of the low black cloud, and the still jaggeder crest of
the sea, the red angry lightning restlessly darts to and fro, as if in
search of whatever presuming mortal dares fare between them! Oh tell
me, Mister Elias Martin--if you a’nt dead--is the tossing crest of
yonder mad black billow, that comes racing after us, at all like the
black worsted fringe which your brethren are apt to hang on the necks
of their marine Arabians? But hush, yonder comes Neptune himself, in
his state-coach--aye, hats off--the wind hath taught ye manners. Lo!
yonder he stands,--Pshaw! no, no, no,--Zounds! you are all gaping at
honest Hans Vandergroot. Look to starboard--to the left hand! That’s
the gentleman, without his castor, nor indeed overwell togged otherwise
for wet weather--with his beard lather’d but not shaved--standing up in
an oyster-shell drag, and attempting, like a sorry whip as he is, to
tool his team of bokickers with a potato-fork. Did you ever see four
such unbroke brutes as he hath to keep together--neither reined-up,
nor down, nor indeed, any ribbons to hold at all--and as I would have
laid a pony to nothing, there they go, no pace at all, cause why? they
are just come to some invisible sea obelisk, and each horse is for
going down a road of his own. Did you ever set eyes on such action? No
stepping out--but all pawing and prancing and putting their feet down
again where they picked them up, like Ducrow’s dancing stud; as sure
as I’m a judge, they have all got the string-halt in their fore-legs,
because they can’t have it in their hinder ones! You may swear safely
that they have four bad colds besides, and look what a rabble of
naked postillions are hanging on by their manes, because they have no
saddles, and if they had, they would never be able to sit in them with
those salmon tails! Between ourselves, Elias, ’tis no great shakes of
a show; the Lord Mayor’s pageant on the water beats it all to sticks;
and if you make a picture of it, you will be a fool for your pains. Yet
have I seen paintings by first-rate hands as like to this same trumpery
Sadlers’ Wells water spectacle----
Murder! murder! Help! help! O Lord! A surgeon and a shutter, if there
be such comfortable things in this unneighbourly neighbourhood. O! oh!
oh! oh! Woe is me! I am not--I am now certain and sure I am not a Ball!
I have limbs and members! legs and arms! like other people’s, only
they’re broke; and a very distinct back. My head! Oh! my head, my head;
there are nine lumps thereon, and there are nine cabin stairs.
The real Sea-King, in resentment, I suppose, of my untimely caricature
of him and his state-coach, after spitting nine gallons of foam in my
face, knocked me flat with a wave, and then kicked me down stairs;
and here I am again trying to anoint my bruises with trunks, and bind
them up with stools and tables, on the hard-hearted oak planks of the
cabin-floor. Yet is it easier with me than I first feared. My legs are
not broken but merely bent. I am only bandy and not lame for life; but
my sea-sickness is not cured. Am I likely to put up, better or worse,
think you, with Neptune and his satellites, for this unhandsome usage?
[Illustration: “FRIEND! DOST THEE CALL THIS THE PACIFIC?”]
The Jung Vrouw, meanwhile, is as giddy as ever, nay, worse ten times
told. She hath taken a tinge of high-flying, deep-living, German
Romanticism into her wooden head, and is trying, plunge after plunge,
to drown herself, and to make me commit wilful suicide along with her,
whether I will or not. After that, there is no hope; but oh! yet oh,
my Fates, let me die upon land. I have a horror of shipboard! The idea
of severing all ties in this cabin is trebly agonising. Why, the very
table is tied to the floor, the candlestick to the table, the snuffers
to the candlestick, the extinguisher to the snuffers. Only the burning
candle is unattached, and there--there it jumps into bed! No matter; it
could as soon set fire to the Thames. Another squall! How she groans,
creaks, squeaks, strains, grinds, and squeezes, like a huge walnut in
Neptune’s crackers? Accursed Jung Vrouw! thou wilt be the widowing
of my poor dear old one! Accursed Peter Stuckey, thou wilt be the
murdering of my poor deaf old self!
I know not, for a surety, by reason that everything about me is
quaking and shaking, but I suspect I am trembling like an aspen. It
is impossible to hear, in the midst of this universal hubbub, but
methinks, I am wailing and weeping aloud. But one may as well make
a manly exit. Like other men, in such sea extremities, I would fain
betake me to the rum-cask; but either Hans Vandergroot sails on
Temperance principles, or I have looked in the wrong place. I will try
a stave or two instead.
“Full fathom five--”
[Illustration: THE BEST BOWER ANCHOR.]
Alas! it will not go down. I am too much out of sorts for even the
“delicate Ariel.” It was one thing for Shakspeare, sailing, hugging
the shore, never out of sight of land, on the safe serene coasts of
Bohemia, to compose such a sea song for the wood and canvas Tempests of
the stage; but it is another guess thing to hear it, as I do, howled
through hoarse ship-ropes, by Boreas himself, in a real storm. What
comfort to me that everything about me shall suffer a sea-change?--that
my bones shall turn, forsooth, into coral? I would not give a bad
doit, with some of these poor metacarpal bones of mine to be rubbing
the gums of the Royal Infant of Spain. I am not so blindly ambitious
as to wish that these two precious useful balls of mine, turned into
pearls, should shine in the British crown itself, or, what is more
tempting, in the hair of the beautiful Countess of B. What if some
economical jeweller--I think I feel him at it--should take it into his
head to split them, for setting in a ring? As for the Syren’s knell,
I would as lief have it as long hereafter as may be, from the plain
prosaic old sexton of St. Sepulchre’s. I have no depraved yearning
to be first wet-nursed to death, and then “lapped in Elysium,” by
Mermaids, the most cold, flabby, washy, fishy, draggletails ever
invented to give any human fancy the ague--half-and-half monsters,
neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red herring. A whole cargo of them,
nay a glut of them, leaping alive, unfit for loving or eating, is not
worth one loveable real woman at Billingsgate, or one of the eatable
maids on her stall. I could never imagine the boldest and gallantest
boatswain encountering such a sea-witch, on a lone beach--combing the
shrimps out of her wet sandy mud-coloured hair, and wriggling her
foolish tail about, curling, or stretching it, or trying to put it into
her pocket, forgetting that she has no pockets, as a shy man in company
does not know what to do with his hands--I could never fancy him
looking on such a creature, however attached to the fair sex, without
his recoiling till he tumbled over his own pigtail, singing out, with a
slight variation of a line of Dibdin’s,
“Avert yon ’oman, gracious Heaven!”
For other sea-temptations, I would not give my old white pony, that
stumbles over every stone in his road, and some out of it, to ride
like that Lord Godolphin Arion over the seas on the fairest fish that
was ever foaled. Speaking under fear of death, I would rather, waving
all the romance, ride in a rill by a roadside on a stickle-back. On
my solemn word, I would far liefer bestride even a pond perch with
his dorsal fin erect. But hark! What means that dreadful cry? Our
death-bell is tolling in Dutch--“Del, del, is verlooren!”
I must scramble, crawl, haul myself, spite of my sprained ankles, up
unto the deck how I may. Next best unto witnessing our own funeral is
the seeing how we are done to death.
What a sight! Here is the tiller tied hard a-port, or hard a-lee, as
hard as they can tie it. Further back is the Skipper himself, entangled
dismally by some cord or other to the stern-rails; and yonder is his
mate, with a hundred and fifty turns of rope round himself and the
mizen-mast, which he seems trying to strengthen. The gunner, as I take
him to be, with a preposterous superfluity of breeching, is made fast
to look through a hole, which seems to have been meant for a window to
a cannon; and the carpenter, well pinioned and tethered by a stout
rope to the back-stay, is sheepishly dangling therefrom, whenever his
side of the ship is uppermost, like unto the Lamb of the Order of the
Golden Fleece. The cook, having given away both his hands, is spliced,
as if for life, unto the capstan. Adam Vaart is double-turned and
double-knotted to the main-mast, and Hendrick his brother is belayed
down, on the broad of his back, in the place of the lost long-boat.
Should the anchor be dropped, Jan Bart is sure, even from head to foot,
to go along with it. Poor little Yacob Yops, the apprentice, hath
been turned over, and re-bound into a ring-bolt, by articles which
are called rope-yarns; and lo, up yonder, lashed by his legs to the
rattlines, hangs Diedrick Dumm-Kopf, head downwards, like a split cod
left there to dry, in the main shrouds!
Oh! that I were bound myself round and round all the ribs, from the top
to the bottom, with good six-twist, lest even thus, in articulo mortis,
I burst, split my sides, and die with excess of laughter. The Skipper,
honest Hans, with much difficulty, for he grievously mistrusts his
breathing to the beating of the wave, opening his mouth when it comes,
and sealing up his lips when it is gone, hath let me into the whole
secret. Considering the wild sea, he saith, and that no man can tie
himself so surely as another man can, to some more steadfast substance,
they had been all fastened, at their own special wish and agreement,
to such hold-fasts as pleased them best, by Diedrick Dumm-Kopf, who
was afterwards to provide for his safety as he judged surest, in order
that he might liberate them again when the storm should be blown over.
That accordingly, after first tying them all as securely as he was
able, the said Diedrick betook himself to the main rigging, about half
way up, to which he lashed himself by the ankles, holding on likewise
with his hands, and his great clasp-knife in his mouth. That the Jung
Vrouw driving before the wind and sea, they made shift, as they were to
navigate her pretty comfortably for some twenty minutes or thereby,
when all of a sudden they saw Diedrick, being seized with a vertigo,
let go his hold and drop into his present posture, from which he could
never recover himself; and it was that dismal sight which had extorted
the universal outcry that I heard.
I am sicker of the sea than ever! Is the safety of a Christian man’s
life, and soul maybe, of no more interest than to be gambled away by
such a set of Dutch Bottoms with Asses’ heads on their shoulders! Oh!
that the worthy Chairman and all the Underwriters of Lloyd’s were here
present on this deck--the mere sight of the Skipper’s countenance
there, with not so much meaning in it as a smoked pig’s face, for
_that_ means to be eaten, would scare them from all sea-risks for ever!
Thanks be to Heaven! yonder’s a sail. It makes straight towards
us--they come aboard. A Pilot?--well said! Oh, honest, good, dear
Pilot, as you love a distressed poor countryman--as you understand
the compass and how rudders are turned--if you know what a rope’s end
is,--take the biggest bit of a cable you can pick, and give yonder
Dutch sea-calves a round dozen a piece; ’twill cost you no great pains,
seeing they are tied up ready to your hand. Pish! never mind their
offence; they have mutinied against themselves. Smite, and spare not. I
will go ashore meanwhile, in your boat. Hollo there! help me down. Take
heed to my footing. Catch me, all of you, in your arms. Now I am in.
No, I an’t! I an’t! I an’t!
If ye had not hauled me in again with that same boat-hook, I was
drown’d. My shoulder bleeds for it, but I forgive. Never heed me: look
to your helms and sails. ’Tis only a gallon or two of sea-water, just
swallowed, that is indisposed to go on shore with me. I am used to it,
indeed I am. Pray, what is the name of this blessed boat? The Lively
Nancy. Lively indeed! The Jung Vrouw was a Quakeress to her! At every
jump she takes, my heart leaps also. Pray, pray, pray take in some
canvas. You think you be sailing, but you are committing suicide. They
mind me no more than stones. Oh! oh! I am out of Danger’s frying-pan
into its fire! Peter Stuckey will be a murtherer after all!
What a set of dare-devils! They grin like baboons whilst she is driving
with half her deck under water! I will shut mine eyes and hold fast
by something. I am worse than ever. I give myself up. Oh! oh! what an
awful roaring, hissing, grinding noise we are come into! The bottom of
the sea is coming out, or else the bottom of the boat! Hah! Help! help!
I am heels upward! Why did not some kindly soul forewarn me that she
was going to stop short on the beach? Stand all aside, and let me leap
upon the sand. Ah! I have made my nose spout gore in my over-haste to
kiss my native land!
[Illustration: “WHY DON’T YOU LOOK OUT FOR WORK?”]
Blessed be dry ground! Farewell, ocean! farewell, Jung Vrouw and Lively
Nancy! Take my advice, and get married both of you to young farmers.
Farewell, ye hang-dogs that saved me! Share my blessing amongst you;
’tis all I have upon me or in me. Farewell, Neptune! We’ll part
friends. If you ever come to Cropton-le-Moor, I shall be glad to see
you, and not till then. Hans! Jan! Pieter! farewell one and all of you;
“and if a merry meeting may be wished, God prohibit it.” Now for a
sweet, safe, still, silent land-bed! Set me but within a run and a jump
of one, and in two clipped current minutes I will be fast asleep in it,
even like the Irishman who forgot to say his prayers, but remembered to
say amen.
LOVE AND LUNACY.
The Moon--who does not love the silver moon,
In all her fantasies and all her phases?
Whether full-orb’d in the nocturnal noon,
Shining in all the dewdrops on the daisies,
To light the tripping Fairies in their mazes,
Whilst stars are winking at the pranks of Puck;
Or huge and red, as on brown sheaves she gazes;
Or new and thin, when coin is turn’d for luck;
Who will not say that Dian is a Duck?
But, oh! how tender, beautiful and sweet,
When in her silent round, serene and clear,
By assignation loving fancies meet,
To recompense the pangs of absence drear!
So Ellen, dreaming of Lorenzo, dear,
But distant from the city mapp’d by Mogg,
Still saw his image in that silver sphere,
Plain as the Man with lantern, bush, and dog,
That used to set our ancestors a-gog.
And so she told him in a pretty letter,
That came to hand exactly as Saint Meg’s
Was striking ten--eleven had been better;
For then he might have eaten six more eggs,
And both of the bedevill’d turkey-legs,
With relishes from East, West, North, and South,
Draining, beside, the teapot to the dregs;
Whereas a man, whose heart is in his mouth,
Is rather spoilt for hunger and for drouth.
[Illustration: ABSTRACTION.]
And so the kidneys, broiling hot, were wasted;
The brawn--it never enter’d in his thought;
The grated Parmesan remained untasted;
The potted shrimps were left as they were bought,
The capelings stood as merely good for nought,
The German sausage did not tempt him better,
Whilst Juno, licking her poor lips, was taught
There’s neither bone nor skin about a letter,
Gristle, nor scalp, that one can give a setter.
Heav’n bless the man who first devised a mail!
Heav’n bless that public pile which stands concealing
The Goldsmiths’ front with such a solid veil!
Heav’n bless the Master, and Sir Francis Freeling,
The drags, the nags, the leading or the wheeling,
The whips, the guards, the horns, the coats of scarlet,
The boxes, bags, those evening bells a-pealing!
Heav’n bless, in short, each posting thing, and varlet
That helps a Werter to a sigh from Charlotte.
So felt Lorenzo as he oped the sheet,
Where, first, the darling signature he kiss’d,
And then, recurring to its contents sweet
With thirsty eyes, a phrase I must enlist,
He _gulp’d_ the words to hasten to their gist;
In mortal ecstasy his soul was bound--
When, lo! with features all at once a-twist,
He gave a whistle, wild enough in sound
To summon Faustus’s Infernal Hound!
Alas! what little miffs and tiffs in love,
A snubbish word, or pouting look mistaken,
Will loosen screws with sweethearts hand and glove,
Oh! love, rock firm when chimney-pots were shaken,
A pettish breath will into huffs awaken,
To spit like hump-back’d cats, and snarling Towzers!
Till hearts are wreck’d and founder’d, and forsaken,
As ships go to Old Davy, Lord knows how, Sirs,
While heav’n is blue enough for Dutchmen’s trowsers!
“The moon’s at full, love, and I think of you”--
Who would have thought that such a kind P.S.
Could make a man turn white, then red, then blue,
Then black, and knit his eyebrows and compress
His teeth, as if about to effervesce
Like certain people when they lose at whist!
So look’d the chafed Lorenzo, ne’ertheless,
And, in a trice, the paper he had kiss’d
Was crumpled like a snowball in his fist!
Ah! had he been less versed in scientifics,
More ignorant, in short, of what is what:
He ne’er had flared up in such calorifics;
But he _would_ seek societies, and trot
To clubs, Mechanics’ institutes, and got
With Birkbeck--Bartley--Combe--George Robins--Rennie,
And other lecturing men. And had he not
That work, of weekly parts, which sells so many,
The Copper-bottomed Magazine--or “Penny?”
But, of all learned pools whereon, or in,
Men dive like dabchicks, or like swallows skim,
Some hardly damp’d, some wetted to the skin,
Some drown’d like pigs when they attempt to swim,
Astronomy was most Lorenzo’s whim,
(’Tis studied by a Prince amongst the Burmans);
He loved those heavenly bodies which, the Hymn
Of Addison declares, preach solemn sermons,
While waltzing on their pivots like young Germans.
Night after night, with telescope in hand,
Supposing that the night was fair and clear,
Aloft, on the house-top, he took his stand,
Till he obtained to know each twinkling sphere
Better, I doubt, than Milton’s “Starry Vere;”
Thus, reading thro’ poor Ellen’s fond epistle,
He soon espied the flaw--the lapse so sheer
That made him raise his hair in such a bristle,
And like the Boatswain of the Storm-Ship whistle.
“The moon’s at full, love, and I think of thee,”--
“Indeed! I’m very much her humble debtor,
But not the moon-calf she would have me be,
Zounds! does she fancy that I know no better?”
Herewith, at either corner of the letter
He gave a most ferocious, rending, pull;--
“O woman! woman! that no vows can fetter,
A moon to stay for three weeks at the full!
By Jove! a very pretty cock-and-bull!
“The moon at full! ’twas very finely reckon’d!
Why so she wrote me word upon the first--
The twelfth, and now upon the twenty-second--
Full!--yes--it must be full enough to burst!
But let her go--of all vile jilts the worst”--
Here with his thumbs he gave contemptuous snaps,
Anon he blubber’d like the child that’s nurs’d,
And then he hit the table frightful raps,
And stamped till he had broken both his straps.
“The moon’s at full--and I am in her thought--
No doubt; I do believe it in my soul!”
Here he threw up his head, and gave a snort
Like a young horse first harness’d to a pole:
“The moon is full--aye, so is this d--d bowl!”
And, grinning like the sourest of curmudgeons,
Globe--water--fishes--he dash’d down the whole,
Strewing the carpet with the gasping gudgeons;
Men do the strangest things in such love-dudgeons.
“I fill her thoughts--her memory’s vice-gerent?
No, no,--some paltry puppy--three weeks old--
And round as Norval’s shield”--thus incoherent
His fancies grew as he went on to scold;
So stormy waves are into breakers roll’d,
Work’d up at last to mere chaotic wroth--
This--that--heads--tails--thoughts jumbled uncontroll’d
As onions, turnips, meat, in boiling broth,
By turns bob up, and splutter in the froth.
[Illustration: HOME’S DOUGLAS.]
“Fool that I was to let a baby face--
A full one--like a hunter’s--round and red--
Ass that I am, to give her more a place
Within this heart”--and here he struck his head.
“’Sdeath are the Almanack-compilers dead?
But no--’tis all an artifice--a trick,
Some newer face--some dandy under-bred--
Well--be it so--of all the sex I’m sick!”
Here Juno wonder’d why she got a kick.
“‘The moon is full’--where’s her infernal scrawl?
‘And you are in my thought: that silver ray
Will ever your dear image thus recall’--
My image? Mine! She’d barter it away
For Pretty Poll’s on an Italian’s tray!
Three weeks, full weeks,--it is too plain--too bad--
Too gross and palpable! Oh cursed day!
My senses have not crazed--but if they had--
Such moons would worry a Mad Doctor mad!
“Oh Nature! wherefore did you frame a lip
So fair for falsehood? Wherefore have you drest
Deceit so angel-like?” With sudden rip
He tore six new buff buttons from his vest
And groped with hand impetuous at his breast,
As if some flea from Juno’s fleecy curls
Had skipp’d to batten on a human chest,
But no--the hand comes forth, and down it hurls
A lady’s miniature beset with pearls.
Yet long upon the floor it did not tarry,
Before another outrage could be plann’d:
Poor Juno, who had learn’d to fetch and carry,
Pick’d up and brought it to her master’s hand,
Who seized it, and the mimic feature scann’d;
Yet not with the old loving ardent drouth,
He only saw in that fair face, so bland,
Look how he would at it, east, west, north, south.
A moon, a full one, with eyes, nose, and mouth.
“I’ll go to her,”--herewith his hat he touch’d,
And gave his arm a most heroic brandish;
“But no--I’ll write”--and here a spoon he clutch’d,
And ramm’d it with such fury in the standish,
A sable flood, like Niger the outlandish,
Came rushing forth--Oh Antics and Buffoons!
Ye never danced a caper so ran-dan-dish;
He jump’d, thump’d--tore--swore, more than ten dragoons,
At all nights, noons, moons, spoons, and pantaloons!
But soon ashamed, or weary, of such dancing,
Without a Collinet’s or Weippert’s band,
His rampant arms and legs left off their prancing,
And down he sat again, with pen in hand,
Not fiddle-headed, or King’s-pattern grand,
But one of Bramah’s patent Caligraphics;
And many a sheet it spoil’d before he plann’d
A likely letter. Used to pure seraphics,
Philippics sounded strangely after Sapphics.
Long while he rock’d like Yankee in his chair,
Staring as he would stare the wainscot through,
And then he thrust his fingers in his hair,
And set his crest up like a cockatoo;
And trampled with his hoofs, a mere Yahoo:
At last with many a tragic frown and start,
He penn’d a billet, very far from doux,
’Twas sour, severe--but think of a man’s smart
Writing with lunar caustic on his heart!
The letter done and closed, he lit his taper,
And sealing, as it were, his other mocks,
He stamped a grave device upon the paper,
No Cupid toying with his Psyche’s locks,
But some stern head of the old Stoic stocks--
Then, fiercely striding through the staring streets,
He dropt the bitter missive in a box,
Beneath the cakes and tarts, and sugar’d treats,
In Mrs. Smelling’s window full of sweets.
[Illustration: BROKE BY A FALL OF THE STOCKS.]
Soon sped the letter--thanks to modern plans,
Our English mails run little in the style
Of those great German wild-beast caravans,
_Eil_-wagons--tho’ they do not “go like _ile_,”--
But take a good twelve minutes to the mile--
On Monday morning, just at ten o’clock,
As Ellen humm’d “The young May Moon” the while,
Her ear was startled by that double knock
Which thrills the nerves like an electric shock!
Her right hand instantly forgot its cunning,
And down into the street it dropt, or flung,
Right on the hat and wig of Mr. Gunning,
The jug that o’er her ten-week stocks had hung;
Then down the stairs by twos and threes she sprung,
And through the passage like a burglar darted.
Alas! how sanguine are the fond and young--
She little thought, when with the coin she parted,
She paid a sixpence to be broken-hearted!
[Illustration: “WHEN WILL IT REACH LONDON?”]
Too dear at any price--had she but paid
Nothing and taken discount, it was dear;
Yet, worthless as it was, the sweet-lipped maid
Oft kissed the letter in her brief career
Between the lower and the upper sphere,
Where, seated in a study bistre-brown,
She tried to pierce a mystery as clear
As _that_ I saw once puzzling a young clown--
“Reading Made Easy,” but turned upside down.
Yet Ellen, like most Misses in the land,
Had sipped sky blue, through certain of her teens,
At one of those establishments which stand
In highways, byeways, squares, and village greens;
’Twas called “The Grove,”--a name that always means
Two poplars stand like sentries at the gate--
Each window had its close Venetian screens
And Holland blind, to keep in a cool state
The twenty-four Young Ladies of Miss Bate.
But when the screens were left unclosed by chance,
The blinds not down, as if Miss B. were dead,
Each upper window to a passing glance
Revealed a little dimity white bed;
Each lower one a cropp’d or curly head;
And thrice a week, for soul’s and health’s economies,
Along the road the twenty four were led,
Like coupled hounds, whipped in by two she-dominies
With faces rather graver than Melpomene’s.
And thus their studies they pursued:--On Sunday,
Beef, collects, batter, texts from Dr. Price;
Mutton, French, pancakes, grammar--of a Monday;
Tuesday--hard dumplings, globes, Chapone’s Advice;
Wednesday--fancy-work, rice-milk (no spice);
Thursday--pork, dancing, currant-bolsters, reading;
Friday--beef, Mr. Butler, and plain rice;
Saturday--scraps, short lessons and short feeding,
Stocks, back-boards, hash, steel-collars, and good breeding
From this repertory of female learning,
Came Ellen once a quarter, always fatter!
To gratify the eyes of parents yearning.
’Twas evident in bolsters, beef, and batter,
Hard dumplings, and rice-milk, she did not smatter,
But heartily, as Jenkins says, “demollidge;”
But as for any learning, not to flatter,
As often happens when girls leave their college,
She had done nothing but grow out of knowledge.
[Illustration: PRACTICE DRIVES ME MAD.]
At Long Division sums she had no chance,
And History was quite as bad a balk;
Her French it was too small for Petty France,
And Priscian suffered in her English talk:
Her drawing might be done with cheese or chalk;
As for the globes--the use of the terrestrial
She knew when she went out to take a walk,
Or take a ride; but, touching the celestial,
Her knowledge hardly soared above the bestial.
Nothing she learned of Juno, Pallas, Mars;
Georgium, for what she knew, might stand for Burgo,
Sidus, for Master: then, for northern stars,
The Bear she fancied did in sable fur go,
The Bull was Farmer Giles’s bull, and, ergo,
The Ram the same that butted at her brother;
As for the Twins, she only guessed that Virgo,
From coming after them, must be their mother;
The Scales weighed soap, tea, figs, like any other.
As ignorant as donkeys in Gallicia,
She thought that Saturn, with his Belt, was but
A private, may be, in the Kent Militia;
That Charles’s Wain would stick in a deep rut,
That Venus was a real West-End slut--
Oh, Gods and Goddesses of Greek Theogony!
That Berenice’s Hair would curl and cut,
That Cassiopëia’s Chair was good Mahogany,
Nicely French-polished,--such was her cosmogony!
Judge, then, how puzzled by the scientifics
Lorenzo’s letter came now to dispense;
A lizard, crawling over hieroglyphics,
Knows quite as much of their Egyptian sense;
A sort of London fog, opaque and dense,
Hung over verbs, nouns, genitives, and datives.
In vain she pored and pored, with eyes intense;
As well is known to oyster-operatives,
Mere looking at the shells won’t open natives.
Yet mixed with the hard words, so called, she found
Some easy ones that gave her heart the staggers:
Words giving tongue against her, like a hound
At picking out a fault--words speaking daggers.
The very letters seemed, in hostile swaggers,
To lash their tails, but not as horses do,
Nor like the tails of spaniels, gentle waggers,
But like a lion’s, ere he tears in two
A black, to see if he is black all through.
With open mouth, and eyeballs at full stretch,
She gazed upon the paper sad and sorry,
No sound--no stir--quite petrified, poor wretch!
As when Apollo, in old allegory,
Down-stooping like a falcon, made his quarry
Of Niobe, just turned to Purbeck stone;
In fact, since Cupid grew into a worry,
Judge if a suing lover, let alone
A lawyer, ever wrote in such a tone.
[Illustration: A POUTER.]
“Ellen, I will no longer call you mine,
That time is past, and ne’er can come again;
However other lights undimmed may shine,
And undiminishing, one truth is plain,
Which I, alas! have learned,--that love can wane.
The dream is pass’d away, the veil is rent,
Your heart was not intended for my reign;
A sphere so full, I feel, was never meant
With one poor man in it to be content.
“It must, no doubt, be pleasant beyond measure,
To wander underneath the whispering bough
With Dian, a perpetual round of pleasure.
Nay, fear not,--I absolve of every vow,--
Use,--use your own celestial pleasure now,
Your apogee and perigee arrange.
Herschel might aptly stare and wonder how,
To me that constant disk has nothing strange--
A counterfeit is sometimes hard to change.
“Oh Ellen! I once little thought to write
Such words unto you, with so hard a pen;
Yet outraged love will change its nature quite,
And turn like tiger hunted to its den--
How Falsehood trips in her deceits on men!
And stands abash’d, discover’d, and forlorn!
Had it been only cusp’d--but gibbous--then
It had gone down--but Faith drew back in scorn,
And would not swallow it--without a horn!
“I am in occultation,--that is plain:
My culmination’s past,--that’s quite as clear.
But think not I will suffer your disdain
To hang a lunar rainbow on a tear.
Whate’er my pangs, they shall be buried here;
No murmur,--not a sigh,--shall thence exhale:
Smile on,--and for your own peculiar sphere
Choose some eccentric path,--you cannot fail,
And pray stick on a most portentous tail!
“Farewell! I hope you are in health and gay;
For me, I never felt so well and merry--
As for the bran-new idol of the day,
Monkey or man, I am indifferent--very!
Nor e’en will ask who is the Happy Jerry;
My jealousy is dead, or gone to sleep,
But let me hint that you will want a wherry,
Three weeks’ spring-tide, and not a chance of neap,
Your parlours will be flooded six feet deep!”
[Illustration: POND’S ASTRONOMY.]
“Oh Ellen! how delicious was that light
Wherein our plighted shadows used to blend,
Meanwhile the melancholy bird of night--
No more of that----the lover’s at an end.
Yet if I may advise you, as a friend,
Before you next pen sentiments so fond,
Study your cycles--I would recommend
Our Airy--and let South be duly conn’d,
And take a dip, I beg, in the great Pond.
“Farewell again! it is farewell for ever!
Before your lamp of night be lit up thrice,
I shall be sailing, haply, for Swan River,
Jamaica, or the Indian land of rice,
Or Boothia Felix--happy clime of ice!
For Trebizond, or distant Scanderoon,
Ceylon, or Java redolent of spice,
Or settling, neighbour of the Cape baboon,
Or roaming o’er--The Mountains of the Moon!
“What matters where? my world no longer owns
That dear meridian spot from which I dated
Degrees of distance, hemispheres, and zones,
A globe all blank and barren and belated.
What matters where my future life be fated?
With Lapland hordes, or Koords or Afric peasant,
A squatter in the western woods located,
What matters where? My bias, at the present,
Leans to the country that reveres the Crescent!
“Farewell! and if for ever, fare thee well!
As wrote another of my fellow-martyrs:
I ask no sexton for his passing-bell,
I do not ask your tear-drops to be starters,
However I may die, transfix’d by Tartars,
By Cobras poisoned, by Constrictors strangled,
By shark or cayman snapt above the garters,
By royal tiger or Cape lion mangled,
Or starved to death in the wild woods entangled,
“Or tortured slowly at an Indian stake,
Or smother’d in the sandy hot simoom,
Or crush’d in Chili by earth’s awful quake,
Or baked in lava, a Vesuvian tomb,
Or dirged by syrens and the billows’ boom
Or stiffen’d to a stock mid Alpine snows,
Or stricken by the plague with sudden doom,
Or suck’d by Vampyres to a last repose,
Or self-destroy’d, impatient of my woes,
“Still fare you well, however I may fare,
A fare perchance to the Lethean shore,
Caught up by rushing whirlwinds in the air,
Or dash’d down cataracts with dreadful roar:
Nay, this warm heart, once yours unto the core,
This hand you should have claim’d in church or minster
Some cannibal may gnaw”--she read no more--
Prone on the carpet fell the senseless spinster,
Losing herself, as ’twere, in Kidderminster!
Of course of such a fall the shock was great,
In rush’d the father, panting from the shop,
In rush’d the mother, without cap or tête,
Pursued by Betty Housemaid with her mop;
The cook to change her apron did not stop,
The charwoman next scrambled up the stair,--
All help to lift, to haul, to seat, to prop,
And then they stand and smother round the chair,
Exclaiming in a chorus, “Give her air!”
One sears her nostrils with a burning feather,
Another rams a phial up her nose;
A third crooks all her finger-joints together,
A fourth rips her up laces and her bows,
While all by turns keep trampling on her toes,
And, when she gasps for breath, they pour in plump
A sudden drench that down her thorax goes,
As if in fetching her--some wits so jump--
She must be fetched with water like a pump!
[Illustration: “SHE’S BLACK IN THE FACE!”]
No wonder that thus drench’d, and wrench’d, and gall’d,
As soon as possible from syncope’s fetter
Her senses had the sense to be recall’d,
“I’m better--that will do--indeed I’m better,”
She cried to each importunate besetter;
Meanwhile, escaping from the stir and smother,
The prudent parent seized the lover’s letter,
(Daughters should have no secrets with a Mother)
And read it thro’ from one end to the other.
From first to last she never skipp’d a word--
For young Lorenzo of all youths was one
So wise, so good, so moral she averr’d,
So clever, quite above the common run--
She made him sit by her, and call’d him son,
No matrimonial suit, e’en Duke’s or Earl’s,
So flatter’d her maternal feelings--none!
For mothers always think young men are pearls
Who come and throw themselves before their girls.
[Illustration: DECAPITATION.]
And now, at warning signal from her finger,
The servants most reluctantly withdrew,
But list’ning on the stairs contrived to linger;
For Ellen, gazing round with eyes of blue,
At last the features of her parent knew,
And summoning her breath and vocal pow’rs,
“Oh, mother!” she exclaimed--“Oh, is it true--
Our dear Lorenzo”--the dear name drew show’rs--
“_Ours_,” cried the mother, “pray don’t call him ours!”
“I never liked him, never, in my days!”
[“Oh yes--you did”--said Ellen with a sob,]
“There always _was_ a something in his ways--”
[“So sweet--so kind,” said Ellen, with a throb,]
“His very face was what I call a snob,
And, spite of West-end coats and pantaloons,
He had a sort of air of the swell mob;
I’m sure when he has come of afternoons
To tea, I’ve often thought--I’ll watch my spoons!”
“The spoons!” cried Ellen, almost with a scream,
“Oh cruel--false as cruel--and unjust!
He that once stood so high in your esteem!”
“He!” cried the dame, grimacing her disgust,
“I like him?--yes--as any body must
An infidel that scoffs at God and Devil:
Didn’t he bring you Bonaparty’s bust?
Lord! when he calls I hardly can be civil--
_My_ favourite was always Mr. Neville.
“Lorenzo?--I should like, of earthly things,
To see him hanging forty cubits high;
Doesn’t he write like Captain Rocks and Swings?
Nay, in this very letter bid you try
To make yourself particular, and tie
A tail on--a prodigious tail!--Oh, daughter!
And don’t he ask you down his area--fie!
And recommend to cut your being shorter,
With brick-bats round your neck in ponds of water?”
Alas! to think how readers thus may vary
A writer’s sense!--What mortal would have thought
Lorenzo’s hint about Professor Airy
And Pond to such a likeness could be brought!
Who would have dreamt the simple way he taught
To make a comet of poor Ellen’s moon,
Could furnish forth an image so distraught,
As Ellen, walking Regent Street at noon,
Tail’d--like a fat Cape sheep, or a racoon!
[Illustration: “STICK AS YOU BE--THAT’S THE COMET.”]
And yet, whate’er absurdity the brains
May hatch, it ne’er wants wet-nurses to suckle it!
Or dry ones, like a hen, to take the pains
To lead the nudity abroad, and chuckle it;
No whim so stupid but some fool will buckle it
To jingle bell-like on his empty head,
No mental mud--but some will knead and knuckle it,
And fancy they are making fancy-bread;--
No ass has written, but some ass has read.
No dolts could lead if others did not follow ’em.
No Hahnémann could give decillionth drops,
If any man could not be got to swallow ’em;
But folly never comes to such full stops.
As soon, then, as the Mother made such swaps
Of all Lorenzo’s meanings, heads and tails,
The Father seized upon her malaprops--
“My girl down areas--of a night! ’Ods nails!
I’ll stick the scoundrel on his area-rails!”
[Illustration: TAILS OF THE HAUL BY CRAB.]
“I will!--as sure as I was christen’d John!
A girl--well born--and bred,--and school’d at Ditton--
Accomplish’d--handsome--with a tail stuck on!
And chuck’d, Zounds! chuck’d in horseponds like a kitten
I wish I had been by when that was written!”--
And doubling to a fist each ample hand,
The empty air he boxed with, a-la-Bitton,
As if in training for a fight, long plann’d,
With Nobody--for love--at No Man’s Land!
[Illustration: A FOWL WIND.]
“I’ll pond--I’ll tail him!”--In a voice of thunder
He recommenced his fury and his fuss,
Loud, open-mouth’d, and wedded to his blunder,
Like one of those great guns that end in buss.
“I’ll teach him to write ponds and tails to us!”
But while so menacing this-that-and-t’others,
His wife broke in with certain truths, as thus:
“Men are not women--fathers can’t be mothers,--
Females are females”--and a few such others.
So saying, with rough nudges, willy-nilly,
She hustled him outside the chamber-door,
Looking, it must be own’d, a little silly;
And then she did as the Carinthian boor
Serves (Goldsmith says) the traveller that’s poor!
_Id est_, she shut him in the outer space,
With just as much apology--no more--
As Boreas would present in such a case,
For slamming the street door right in your face.
And now, the secrets of the sex thus kept,
What passed in that important tête-à-tête
’Twixt dam and daughter, nobody except
Paul Pry, or his Twin Brother, could narrate--
So turn we to Lorenzo, left of late,
In front of Mrs. Snelling’s sugar’d snacks,
In such a very waspish stinging state,
But now at the Old Dragon, stretch’d on racks,
Fretting, and biting down his nails to tacks;
Because that new fast four-inside--the Comet,
Instead of keeping its appointed time,
Had deviated some few minutes from it,
A thing with all astronomers a crime,
And he had studied in that lore sublime;
Nor did his heat get any less or shorter
For pouring upon passion’s unslaked lime
A well-grown glass of Cogniac and water,
Mix’d stiff as starch by the Old Dragon’s daughter.
At length, “Fair Ellen” sounding with a flourish,
The Comet came all bright, bran new, and smart:
Meanwhile the melody conspired to nourish
The hasty spirit in Lorenzo’s heart,
And soon upon the roof he “topped his part,”
Which never had a more impatient man on,
Wishing devoutly that the steeds would start
Like lightning greased,--or, as at Ballyshannon
Sublimed, “greased lightning shot out of a cannon.”
For, ever since the letter left his hand,
His mind had been in vacillating motion,
Dodge-dodging like a fluster’d crab on land,
That cannot ask its way, and has no notion
If right or left leads to the German Ocean--
Hatred and Love by turns enjoy’d monopolies,
Till, like a Doctor following his own potion,
Before a learned pig could spell Acropolis,
He went and booked himself for our metropolis.
“Oh, for a horse,” or rather four,--“with wings!”
For so he put the wish into the plural--
No relish he retained for country things,
He could not join felicity with rural,
His thoughts were all with London and the mural,
Where architects--not paupers--heap and _pile_ stones;
Or with the horses’ muscles, called the crural,
How fast they could macadamize the milestones
Which pass’d as tediously as gall or bile stones.
Blind to the picturesque, he ne’er perceived
In Nature one artistical fine stroke;
For instance, how that purple hill relieved
The beggar-woman in the gipsy-poke,
And how the red cow carried off her cloak;
Or how the aged horse, so gaunt and grey,
Threw off a noble mass of beech and oak!
Or, how the tinker’s ass, beside the way,
Came boldly out from a white cloud--to bray!
Such things have no delight for worried men,
That travel full of care and anxious smart:
Coachmen and horses, are your artists then:
Just try a team of draughtsmen with the Dart,
Take Shee, for instance, Etty, Jones, and Hart,
Let every neck be put into its noose,
Then tip ’em on the flank to make ’em start,
And see how they will draw!--Four screws let loose
Would make a difference--or I’m a goose!
Nor cared he more about the promised crops,
If oats were looking up, or wheat was laid,
For flies in turnip, or a blight in hops,
Or how the barley prosper’d or decay’d;
In short, no items of the farming trade.
Peas, beans, tares, ’taters, could his mind beguile;
Nor did he answer to the servant maid,
That always asked at every other mile,
“Where do we change, Sir?” with her sweetest smile.
[Illustration: “LORD, JOHN, HERE’S A BURROW!”]
Nor more he listened to the Politician,
Who lectured on his left, a formal prig,
Of Belgium’s, Greece’s, Turkey’s sad condition,
Not worth a cheese, an olive, or a fig;
Nor yet unto the critic, fierce and big,
Who, holding forth, all lonely, in his glory,
Called one a sad bad Poet--and a Whig,
And one, a first-rate proser--and a Tory;
So critics judge, now, of a song or story.
Nay, when the coachman spoke about the ’Leger,
Of Popsy, Mopsy, Bergamotte, and Civet,
Of breeder, trainer, owner, backer, hedger,
And nags as right, or righter than a trivet,
The theme his crack’d attention could not rivet,
Though leaning forward to the man of whips,
He seem’d to give an ear,--but did not give it,
For Ellen’s moon (that saddest of her slips)
Would not be hidden by a “new Eclipse.”
[Illustration: THE HEAD WAITER AT HATCHETT’S.]
If any thought e’er flitted in his head
Belonging to the sphere of Bland and Crocky,
It was to wish the team all thorough-bred,
And every buckle on their backs a jockey:
When spinning down a steep descent, or rocky,
He never watch’d the wheel, and long’d to lock it,
He liked the bolters that set off so cocky:
Nor did it shake a single nerve or shock it
Because the Comet raced against the Rocket.
Thanks to which rivalry, at last the journey
Finish’d an hour and a quarter under time,
Without a case for surgeon or attorney,
Just as St. James’s rang its seventh chime,
And now, descending from his seat sublime,
Behold Lorenzo, weariest of wights,
In that great core of brick, and stone, and lime,
Call’d England’s Heart--but which, as seen of nights,
Has rather more th’ appearance of its lights.
[Illustration: FREE TRADE.]
Away he scudded--elbowing, perforce,
Thro’ cads, and lads, and many a Hebrew worrier,
With fruit, knives, pencils,--all dirt cheap of course,
Coachmen, and hawkers of the Globe and “Currier;”
Away!--the cookmaid is not such a skurrier,
When, fit to split her gingham as she goes,
With six just striking on the clock to hurry her,
She strides along with one of her three beaux,
To get well placed at “Ashley’s”--now Ducrow’s.
“I wonder if her moon is full to-night!”
He mutter’d, jealous as a Spanish Don,
When, lo!--to aggravate that inward spite,
In glancing at a board he spied thereon
A play-bill for dramatic folks to con,
In letters such as those may read, who run,
“‘KING JOHN’--oh yes,--I recollect King John!
‘My Lord, they say five moons’--_five_ moons!--well done!
I wonder Ellen was content with one!
“Five moons--all full!--and all at once in heav’n!
She should have lived in that prolific reign!”
Here he arrived in front of number seven,
Th’ abode of all his joy and all his pain;
A sudden tremor shot through every vein,
He wish’d he’d come up by the heavy waggon,
And felt an impulse to turn back again,
Oh, that he ne’er had quitted the Old Dragon!
Then came a sort of longing for a flagon.
His tongue and palate seem’d so parch’d with drouth,--
The very knocker fill’d his soul with dread,
As if it had a living lion’s mouth,
With teeth so terrible, and tongue so red,
In which he had engaged to put his head,
The bell-pull turn’d his courage into vapour,
As though ’t would cause a shower-bath to shed
Its thousand shocks, to make him sigh and caper--
He look’d askance, and did not like the scraper.
“What business have I here? (he thought) a dunce
A hopeless passion thus to fan and foster,
Instead of putting out its wick at once;
She’s gone--it’s very evident I’ve lost her,--
And to the wanton wind I should have toss’d her--
Pish! I will leave her with her moon, at ease,
To toast and eat it, like a single Gloster,
Or cram some fool with it, as good green cheese,
Or make a honey-moon, if so she please.
“Yes--here I leave her,” and as thus he spoke,
He plied the knocker with such needless force,
It almost split the panel of sound oak;
And then he went as wildly through a course
Of ringing, till he made abrupt divorce
Between the bell and its dumfounded handle,
Whilst up ran Betty, out of breath and hoarse,
And thrust into his face her blown-out candle,
To recognise the author of such scandal.
Who, presto! cloak, and carpet-bag to boot,
Went stumbling, rumbling, up the dark one pair,
With other noise than his whose “very foot
Had music in’t as he came up the stair:”
And then with no more manners than a bear,
His hat upon his head, no matter how,
No modest tap his presence to declare,
He bolted in a room, without a bow,
And there sat Ellen, with a marble brow!
Like fond Medora, watching at her window,
Yet not of any Corsair bark in search--
The jutting lodging-house of Mrs. Lindo,
“The Cheapest House in Town” of Todd and Sturch.
The private house of Reverend Doctor Birch,
The public-house, closed nightly at eleven,
And then that house of prayer, the parish church,
Some roofs, and chimneys, and a glimpse of heaven,
Made up the whole look-out of Number Seven.
[Illustration: “MEET ME BY MOONLIGHT ALONE.”]
Yet something in the prospect so absorbed her,
She seemed quite drowned and dozing in a dream;
As if her own belov’d full moon still orb’d her,
Lulling her fancy in some lunar scheme,
With lost Lorenzo, may be, for its theme--
Yet when Lorenzo touch’d her on the shoulder,
She started up with an abortive scream,
As if some midnight ghost, from regions colder,
Had come within his bony arms to fold her.
“Lorenzo!” “Ellen!” then came “Sir!” and “Madam!”
They tried to speak, but hammer’d at each word,
As if it were a flint for great Mac Adam:
Such broken English never else was heard,
For like an aspen leaf each nerve was stirr’d,
A chilly tremor thrill’d them through and through,
Their efforts to be stiff were quite absurd,
They shook like jellies made without a due
And proper share of common joiner’s glue.
“Ellen! I’m come--to bid you--fare--farewell!”
They thus began to fight their verbal duel;
“Since some more hap--hap--happy man must dwell--”
“Alas--Loren--Lorenzo!--cru--cru--cruel!”
For so they split their words like grits for gruel.
At last the Lover, as he long had plann’d,
Drew out that once inestimable jewel,
Her portrait, which was erst so fondly scann’d,
And thrust poor Ellen’s face into her hand.
“There--take it, Madam--take it back, I crave,
The face of one--but I must now forget her,
Bestow it on whatever hapless slave
Your art has last enticed into your fetter--
And there are your epistles--there! each letter!
I wish no record of your vow’s infractions,
Send them to South--or Children--you had better--
They will be novelties--rare benefactions!
To shine in Philosophical Transactions!
“Take them--pray take them--I resign them quite!
And there’s the glove you gave me leave to steal--
And there’s the handkerchief, so pure and white,
Once sanctified by tears, when Miss O’Neill--
But no--you did not--cannot--do not feel
A Juliet’s faith, that time could only harden!
Fool that I was, in my mistaken zeal!
I should have led you,--by your leave and pardon--
To Bartley’s Orrery, not Covent Garden!”
[Illustration: “I RAN IT THRO’ E’EN FROM MY BOYISH DAYS.”]
“And here’s the birth-day ring--nor man nor devil
Should once have torn it from my living hand,
Perchance ’twill look as well on Mr. Neville;
And that--and that is all--and now I stand
Absolved of each dissever’d tie and band--
And so farewell, till Time’s eternal sickle
Shall reap our lives; in this, or foreign land
Some other may be found for truth to stickle
Almost as fair--and not so false and fickle!”
And there he ceased: as truly it was time,
For of the various themes that left his mouth,
One half surpass’d her intellectual climb:
She knew no more than the old Hill of Howth
About that “Children of a larger growth,”
Who notes proceedings of the F. R. S.’s;
Kit North, was just as strange to her as South,
Except the south the weathercock expresses,
Nay, Bartley’s Orrery defied her guesses.
Howbeit some notion of his jealous drift
She gather’d from the simple outward fact,
That her own lap contained each slighted gift;
Though quite unconscious of his cause to act
So like Othello, with his face unblack’d;
“Alas!” she sobbed, “your cruel course I see
These faded charms no longer can attract;
Your fancy palls, and you would wander free,
And lay your own apostacy on me!”
“_I_, false!--unjust Lorenzo!--and to _you_!
Oh, all ye holy gospels that incline
The soul to truth, bear witness I am true!
By all that lives, of earthly or divine--
So long as this poor throbbing heart is mine--
_I_ false!--the world shall change its course as soon!
True as the streamlet to the stars that shine--
True as the dial to the sun at noon,
True as the tide to ‘yonder blessed moon’!”
And as she spoke, she pointed through the window,
Somewhere above the houses’ distant tops,
Betwixt the chimney-pots of Mrs. Lindo,
And Todd and Sturch’s cheapest of all shops
For ribbons, laces, muslins, silks, and fops:--
Meanwhile, as she upraised her face so Grecian,
And eyes suffused with scintillating drops,
Lorenzo looked, too, o’er the blinds venetian,
To see the sphere so troubled with repletion.
“The Moon!” he cried, and an electric spasm
Seem’d all at once his features to distort,
And fix’d his mouth, a dumb and gaping chasm--
His faculties benumb’d and all amort--
At last his voice came, of most shrilly sort,
Just like a sea-gull’s wheeling round a rock--
“Speak!--Ellen!--is your sight indeed so short?
The Moon!--Brute! savage that I am, and block!
The Moon! (O, ye Romantics, what a shock!)
Why that’s the new Illuminated Clock!”
[Illustration: ST. BLAISE.]
[Illustration: “THOSE EVENING BELLS.”]
THOSE EVENING BELLS.
“I’D BE A PARODY.”
THOSE Evening Bells, those Evening Bells,
How many a tale their music tells,
Of Yorkshire cakes and crumpets prime,
And letters only just in time!--
The Muffin-boy has pass’d away,
The Postman gone--and I must pay,
For down below Deaf Mary dwells,
And does not hear those Evening Bells,
And so ’twill be when she is gone,
That tuneful peal will still ring on,
And other maids with timely yells
Forget to stay those Evening Bells.
[Illustration: BALL-PRACTICE.]
LINES
TO A FRIEND AT COBHAM.
’Tis pleasant, when we’ve absent friends,
Sometimes to hob and nob ’em
With Memory’s glass--at such a pass
Remember me at Cobham!
Have pigs you will, and sometimes kill,
But if you sigh and sob ’em,
And cannot eat your home-grown meat,
Remember me at Cobham!
Of hen and cock, you’ll have a stock,
And death will oft unthrob ’em,--
A country chick is good to pick--
Remember me at Cobham!
Some orchard trees of course you’ll lease
And boys will sometimes rob ’em,
A friend (you know) before a foe--
Remember me at Cobham!
You’ll sometimes have wax-lighted rooms,
And friends of course to mob ’em,
Should you be short of such a sort,
Remember me at Cobham!
THE QUAKERS’ CONVERSAZIONE.
“Dost thou love silence, deep as that before the winds were made?
Go not into the wilderness; descend not into the profundities of
the earth; shut not up thy casements; nor pour wax into the cells
of thine ears, with little-faith’d, self-mistrusting Ulysses.
Retire with me into a Quakers’ Meeting.”--ESSAYS OF ELIA.
IT may not, or rather it cannot, be generally known, that an attempt
was made last winter, by certain influential members of the Society of
Friends, to establish a Conversazione at Tottenham, a neighbourhood
especially favoured by that respectable and substantial sect. The idea
originated with a junior female branch of the opulent family of the
Mumfords, which has been seated, time out of mind, in the vicinity
of Bruce Castle; the notion was broached to a select few of the
sisterhood, during a Sabbath walk homewards from the conventicle: the
suggestion was relished; and a conference was called, at which the
scheme was seriously brought forward, and gravely considered. At first
there was a little boggling at the proposed title, as savouring, it was
thought, of Loquacity; but the objection was dropped, on an explanation
that although the word implied conversation, no one would be bidden to
discourse against their own inclination; nay that, even amongst other
persuasions, the conversazioni were frequently as distant as possible
from a Negro “Talk,” or a Red Indian “Palaver.” This little demur
excepted, the plan went on swimmingly, and was finally adopted with the
subdued hum which, in that quiet-loving community, is equivalent to
acclamations. A secretary was formally proposed, and tacitly chosen
unanimously; being no other than the fair Foundress herself, the
mild-spoken and meek-eyed Ruth Mumford. A few brief rules were then
drawn up, and, after no debate, agreed to--some of them, considering
the constitutional taciturnity of the sect, being sufficiently
superfluous, as guarding against what Bubb Doddington called “a
multiplicity of talk.” For instance, the 9th rule provided, that “no
brother or sister should indulge in rambling irrelevant discourse,
embracing a profusion of topics, wide of the matter in hand.” The
10th, that “no two or more Friends should disburden themselves of
speech at one and the same time;” and the 12th, that “no member of this
society shall deliver himself or herself with unreasonable continuity,
to the prevention of other Friends who might desire to speak to the
matter.” From the list of subjects to be “spoken to” politics and
polemics were excluded; but poetry was allowed, or at least connived
at, the excellent example of Bernard Barton and the Howitts having
happily relaxed the primitive rigour of that proscription. Besides,
it was well known, between Friends, that several of the younger
female members, the fair secretary included, occasionally struck, or
rather, as Quakers ought not to strike anything, twanged the lyre.
For the rest, the society was modelled after other private literary
associations; it was to meet twice weekly, visiting the houses of the
members in rotation, when original essays or papers were to be read,
and afterwards discussed; provided always, that they afforded any
Debateable Land to make a stand upon, seeing that at the end of the
rules and regulations, a special article earnestly recommended, that in
the selection of subjects all such topics should be avoided “as might
lead to differences of opinion amongst the brethren.”
Such was--for it is defunct--the Tottenham Friends’ Conversazione; of
whose existence I became aware but by accident. It was my good fortune,
till lately, to live next door to a family of Quakers, and to make
acquaintance with the eldest daughter, a young lively maiden just
wearing out the last of her teens. I am afraid in the austere brown
eyes of her parents she was not strictly considered as the flower of
their flock, being a sort of nonconformist among nonconformists, as
was especially to be seen in comparing her with her younger sisters,
who seemed to have been brought up, or stuck up, under the most
starched discipline. Instead of their plain close caps,--mere casts of
their skulls taken in muslin,--she wore an airy fanciful structure of
blonde and white ribbon, that a Parisian woman might have put on--at
least of a morning. In lieu of their sleek mohair braids, her auburn
ringlets flowed down her neck in all the “Unloveliness of Love-locks.”
To her star-like hazel eyes she allowed a little planetary liberty
of circulation; whereas it seemed the object of the others, to keep
their demure brown orbs as immoveable in their faces, as bad halfpence
nailed to counters. Instead of screwing up her lips, as if she had
just come, minus a masticator, out of Cartwright’s into an east wind,
she sometimes gave her ivory teeth an airing, by smiling at some
innocent fancy, to which she would give utterance, without trying
to send her clear sweet voice, by a New North-West Passage, through
her nose. As for her figure, it was none of those shapes which have
no shape, and may be swaddled up without detriment in dingy drabs,
olives, slates, and snuffy browns,--shapes which nature makes on her
basin-pudding days, instead of using her best jelly-moulds--shapes
like the bonnet-shapes which balance baskets of live mackerel. To
see the symmetrical Rachel standing near either of her sisters, you
would think you beheld (borrowing a local image) Tottenham High Cross,
beside the Waithman Obelisk. Accordingly, the orthodox warp of her
glossy satin was always _shot_ with a woof of some one of those gayer
prismatic tints, to wear which is reckoned, among the severer Foxites,
“a profanation of the Rainbow, deserving a second deluge.” As will
be seen hereafter, she put a little blue into her superfine silken
hose; sometimes I even fancied that I detected a tinge of the more
fleshy pink--in short, she was a Quakeress, but not of the sad-brown
sort--only a brunette.
[Illustration: DISCOVERY OF ORGANIC REMAINS.]
With the old Friends, her parents, I cannot boast that I was even on
speaking terms; but with the lovely and lively Rachel my acquaintance
had ripened even to the calling her by her Christian name; and the
reciprocation of her thou and thee, to which I was led, not as a
convertite, but from learning, in my French and German Grammars, that
the use of the second person singular was an especial token of intimacy
and affection. In this our neighbourly intercourse, a system of mutual
accommodation sprang up between us, not by bills, but by books; for
which she drew upon me by pretty little notes of hand, that I duly
honoured, making them payable over the back garden wall. Drawings and
pieces of new music were equally negotiable. If I remember rightly,
it was in return for Moore’s Melodies--the exchange at the time being
against me--that I received “Fox’s Martyrs.” It was rather a ponderous
tome for a lover of light reading; and if St. Swithin’s Festival had
not fallen on a very wet Sunday in the country, I might never have
opened its leaves,--if indeed they did not open of themselves,--thus
letting fall certain MSS. intrusted to their custody, and which I
now proceed to make public. In a new edition of the “Curiosities of
Literature” they would deserve a distinguished place.
MINUTES OF THE TOTTENHAM FRIENDS’ CONVERSAZIONE;
ESTABLISHED with a view to sober, Intellectual, and Literary
unbendings. Now first held, namely, on the fourteenth day of the
eleventh month, one thousand eight hundred thirty and four. Brother
Mumford, the Father of the present humble Pen, in the chair.
A most powerful and worthy setting forth, both in regard of numbers
and our proceedings. Firstly, a word in season from Friend Oliver.
Secondly, a draft of the rules. Thirdly, an opening poem; meditation
thereon until the tenth hour, when our sitting was completed. Many
congratulations between the brethren on the order, quiet, and decency
thereof; myself as its humble founder, very joyously elevated--even
unto the shedding of tears.
17. Some awkwardness on this night, arising out of the presentation of
nine several Negroes’ Complaints to be read forth. Precedence yielded
unto Sister Skeldrum’s complaint, in respect of her being so ancient,
namely three-score and ten. After which, Sister Panyer’s was gone
through, detaining us nearhand until our hour of dissolution. Friend
Black in the chair.
21. The Negro Complaints resumed, whereof three more were gotten
over, Sister Fagg kindly taking turn about with me in the deliverance
thereof. Friend Thorne in the chair.
24. A spare meeting. The Negro Complaints brought to an end, save one;
Sister Rumble consenting, on much persuasion, to reserve the Sorrows of
Sambo for the Abolition Anniversary. Friend Woolley in the chair.
28. Friend Greathead read forth an original paper on the Manners of the
Beavers. Much meditation thereon. Friend Stillfox in the chair.
[Illustration: “BEAR ABOUT THE MOCKERY OF WOE.”]
1-12. Friend Seagrave in the chair. Sister Meeking read forth her Essay
on Silence, but in so humble a tone, that little thereof was taken
inward at our ears. No debate thereon. Dorcas Fysche, a visitor, craved
to know whether Friends, not being members, were permitted to speak on
the subject, and was replied to in the affirmative. Whereupon she held
her peace.
5. Sister Knight read forth a self-composed addressing of herself unto
Sleep. To which no objection was made by any present. Friend Knapp in
the chair.
8. On this night I plucked up courage, and essayed to read forth
mine own Stanzas on Universal Love; but my voice failing me in the
midst, it was completely finished for me by Friend Thicknesse, who did
perversely continue to pronounce _Jews_ instead of _Dews_, whereof came
absurdity. Above all in the line which singeth,--“Descend ye Dews on
this my head.” And again,--“Ye painted Flies that suck the Dews.”
12. No other member being prepared with originality, Sister Rumble read
forth her Sorrows of Sambo. Much silent comment thereon. Brother Kersey
in the chair, who shamefully suffered himself to be surprised with
sleep.
15. No lecturing, and, by course, no debate; only meditation. A
call made to order against Friend Dilly, who was in the chair, for
untimeliness in asking the price of Anglo-Mexicans at a quarter before
ten.
19. Sister Fetterlock being a visitor in expectancy, every one confined
themselves unto Newgate. Several of the brethren declared their
convictions. Friend Roper in the chair.
22. No lecturing. Sister Rumble distributed Sambo’s Sorrows amongst us,
one unto each; the which she had caused to be imprinted at her own risk
and cost. Friend Boulter was the chair.
26. No lecturing. It pleased our worthy Brother Upham, at his
House of Welcome, to spread before us the creature comforts most
abundantly, with a great out-pouring of the foreign luxury, which is
called Champagne; the which was greatly discussed; and Brother Upham
thereafter rebuked for the same, for that it was not of the kind which
is still.
29. Friend Stock read forth a narrative of his own Life and Personal
Adventures, the which held us for half an hour. Some debate touching
the imprinting of the same, at the cost of the Society, in the shape
of a Tract; which was agreed to, but put off at the instance of Friend
Stock himself, in order to give him time to live into the shape of a
pamphlet. Friend Smallbones went through the chair.
2-1-35. No assembly, by reason of the outrageous wind and hail,
excepting Sister Rumble, with a new original poem, called “The Moral
Gipsy.” The which she did read forth from the chair to my humble self
and family, and our serving-man, Simon Dunny.
[Illustration: HOPE DEFERRED.]
5. Friend Broadbent read forth, in part, an Essay on Innocent
Jocularity; the which, in sundry passages, provoked dissentients, as
tending to a defence of levity. A stiff debate thereon, in which all
the brethren were agreeable to censure. Great merriment at Friend
Sexton in his rebuking, saying, “Christian gravy,” instead of gravity,
by a slip of the tongue.
9. The remains of Innocent Jocularity brought on again in a decidedly
grave way, and nothing savouring of offensive. Followed with silence.
12. There were not sufficient friends to make a sitting, and no chair.
[Illustration: “IT CAN’T BE HELPED.”]
16. At Sister Rumble’s by course of rotation. No other member present,
save mine own self, as by duty bound. A deplorable falling away from
the cause. Whereof more hereafter.
* * * * *
The Record here breaks off. The society probably did not proceed
farther, but died on the spot, of a complication of Innocent Jocularity
and Sister Rumble, and was buried tacitly, with the fair Ruth Mumford
for its chief mourner. The other papers are in verse, and a reading of
them will certainly persuade the reviewers that they were premature
in applying the designation of “Quaker Poetry” to foregone lays and
lyrics. The first is a genuine brown study after nature; the second a
hint how Peace ought _not_ to be proclaimed.
SONNET.
BY R. M.
HOW sweet thus clad, in Autumn’s mellow Tone,
With serious Eye, the russet Scene to view!
No Verdure decks the Forest, save alone
The sad green Holly, and the olive Yew.
The Skies, no longer of a garish Blue,
Subdued to Dove-like Tints, and soft as Wool,
Reflected show their slaty Shades anew
In the drab Waters of the clayey Pool.
Meanwhile yon Cottage Maiden wends to School,
In Garb of Chocolate so neatly drest,
And Bonnet puce, fit object for the Tool,
And chasten’d Pigments, of our Brother West;
Yea, all is silent, sober, calm, and cool,
Save gaudy Robin with his crimson Breast.
LINES
ON THE CELEBRATION OF PEACE.
BY DORCAS DOVE.
AND is it thus ye welcome Peace,
From Mouths of forty-pounding Bores?
Oh cease, exploding Cannons, cease!
Lest Peace, affrighted, shun our shores!
Not so the quiet Queen should come;
But like a Nurse to still our Fears,
With Shoes of List, demurely dumb,
And Wool or Cotton in her Ears!
She asks for no triumphal Arch;
No Steeples for their ropy Tongues;
Down, Drumsticks, down, She needs no March,
Or blasted Trumps from brazen Lungs.
She wants no Noise of mobbing Throats
To tell that She is drawing nigh;
Why this Parade of scarlet Coats,
When War has closed his bloodshot Eye?
Returning to Domestic Loves,
When War has ceased with all its Ills,
Captains should come like sucking Doves,
With Olive Branches in their Bills.
[Illustration: A GENERAL PEACE.]
No need there is of vulgar Shout,
Bells, Cannons, Trumpets, Fife, and Drum,
And Soldiers marching all about,
To let Us know that Peace is come.
Oh mild should be the Signs and meek,
Sweet Peace’s Advent to proclaim!
Silence her noiseless Foot should speak,
And Echo should repeat the same.
Lo! where the Soldier walks, alas!
With Scars received on Foreign Grounds;
Shall we consume in Coloured Glass
The Oil that should be pour’d in Wounds?
The bleeding Gaps of War to close,
Will whizzing Rocket-Flight avail?
Will Squibs enliven Orphans’ Woes?
Or Crackers cheer the Widow’s Tale?
SKETCHES ON THE ROAD.
THE MORNING CALL.
I CANNOT conceive any prospect more agreeable to a weary traveller
than the approach to _Bedfordshire_. Each valley reminds him of Sleepy
Hollow, the fleecy clouds seem like blankets, the lakes and ponds are
clean sheets; the setting sun looks like a warming-pan. He dreams of
dreams to come. His travelling-cap transforms to a night-cap, the coach
lining feels softlier squabbed; the guard’s horn plays “Lullaby.” Every
flower by the road-side is a poppy. Each jolt of the coach is but a
drowsy stumble up stairs. The lady opposite is the chamber-maid; the
gentleman beside her is Boots. He slides into imaginary slippers; he
winks and nods flirtingly at Sleep, so soon to be his own. Although the
wheels may be rattling into vigilant Wakefield, it appears to him to be
sleepy Ware, with its great Bed, a whole County of Down, spread “all
before him where to choose his place of rest.”
It was in a similar mood, after a long dusty droughty dog-day’s
journey, that I entered the Dolphin, at Bedhampton. I nodded in at the
door, winked at the lights, blinked at the company in the coffee-room,
yawned for a glass of negus, swallowed it with my eyes shut, as though
it had been “a pint of nappy,” surrendered my boots, clutched a
candlestick, and blundered, slipshod, up the stairs to number nine.
Blessed be the man, says Sancho Panza, who first invented sleep: and
blessed be heaven that he did not take out a patent, and keep his
discovery to himself. My clothes dropped off me: I saw through a drowsy
haze the likeness of a four-poster: “Great Nature’s second course” was
spread before me; and I fell to without a long grace!
Here’s a body--there’s a bed!
There’s a pillow--here’s a head!
There’s a curtain--here’s a light!
There’s a puff--and so Good Night!
It would have been gross improvidence to waste more words on the
occasion; for I was to be roused up again at four o’clock the next
morning to proceed by the early coach. I determined, therefore, to do
as much sleep within the interval as I could; and in a minute, short
measure, I was with that mandarin, Morpheus, in his Land of Nod.
How intensely we sleep when we are fatigued! Some as sound as tops,
others as fast as churches. For my own part I must have slept as fast
as a Cathedral,--as fast as Young Rapid wished his father to slumber:
nay as fast as the French veteran who dreams over again the whole
Russian campaign while dozing in his sentry-box. I must have slept as
fast as a fast post-coach in my four-poster--or rather I must have
slept “like winkin,” for I seemed hardly to have closed my eyes, when a
voice cried “Sleep no more!”
It was that of Boots, calling and knocking at the door, whilst through
the keyhole a ray of candlelight darted into my chamber.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s me, your honour, I humbly ax pardon--but somehow I’ve oversleeped
myself, and the coach be gone by!”
“The devil it is!--then I have lost my place!”
“No, not exactly, your honour. She stops a bit at the Dragon, t’other
end o’ the town; and if your honour wouldn’t object to a bit of a run--”
“That’s enough--come in. Put down the light--and take up that bag--my
coat over your arm--and waistcoat with it--and that cravat.”
Boots acted according to orders. I jumped out of bed--pocketed my
nightcap--screwed on my stockings--plunged into my trowsers--rammed
my feet into wrong right and left boots--tumbled down the back
stairs--burst through a door, and found myself in the fresh air of
the stable-yard, holding a lantern, which, in sheer haste, or spleen,
I pitched into the horsepond. Then began the race, during which I
completed my toilet, running and firing a verbal volley at Boots, as
often as I could spare breath for one.
“And you call this waking me up--for the coach. My waistcoat!--Why I
could wake myself--too late--without being called. Now my cravat--and
be hanged to you!--Confound that stone!--and give me my coat. A
nice road--for a run!--I suppose you keep it--on purpose. How many
gentlemen--may you do a week?--I’ll tell you what. If I--run--a
foot--further--”
I paused for wind; while Boots had stopped of his own accord. We
had turned a corner into a small square; and on the opposite side,
certainly stood an inn with the sign of the Dragon, but without
any sign of a coach at the door. Boots stood beside me aghast, and
surveying the house from the top to the bottom; not a wreath of smoke
came from a chimney; the curtains were closed over every window,
and the door was closed and shuttered. I could hardly contain my
indignation when I looked at the infernal somnolent visage of the
fellow, hardly yet broad awake--he kept rubbing his black-lead eyes
with his hands, as if he would have rubbed them out.
“Yes, you may well look--you have overslept yourself with a vengeance.
The coach must have passed an hour ago--and they have all gone to bed
again!”
“No, there be no coach, sure enough,” soliloquised Boots, slowly
raising his eyes from the road, where he had been searching for the
track of recent wheels, and fixing them with a deprecating expression
on my face. “No, there’s no coach--I ax a thousand pardons, your
honour--but you see, Sir, what with waiting on her, and talking on her,
and expecting on her, and giving notice on her, every night of my life,
your honour--why I sometimes dreams on her--and that’s the case as is
now!”
[Illustration: “YOU’VE WAKED ME TOO SOON, I MUST SLUMBER AGAIN.”]
[Illustration: A STUFFED BIRD.]
THE LAMENT OF TOBY, THE LEARNED PIG.
“A little learning is a dangerous thing.”--POPE.
O HEAVY day! oh day of woe!
To misery a poster,
Why was I ever farrow’d--why
Not spitted for a roaster?
In this world, pigs, as well as men,
Must dance to fortune’s fiddlings,
But must I give the classics up,
For barley-meal and middlings?
Of what avail that I could spell
And read, just like my betters,
If I must come to this at last,
To litters, not to letters?
O, why are pigs made scholars of?
It baffles my discerning,
What griskins, fry, and chitterlings
Can have to do with learning.
Alas! my learning once drew cash,
But public fame’s unstable,
So I must turn a pig again,
And fatten for the table.
To leave my literary line
My eyes get red and leaky;
But Giblett doesn’t want me _blue_,
But red and white, and streaky
Old Mullins used to cultivate
My learning like a gard’ner;
But Giblett only thinks of lard,
And not of Doctor Lardner!
He does not care about my brain
The value of two coppers,
All that he thinks about my head
Is, how I’m off for choppers.
Of all my literary kin
A farewell must be taken,
Goodbye to the poetic Hogg!
The philosophic Bacon!
Day after day my lessons fade,
My intellect gets muddy;
A trough I have, and not a desk,
A sty--and not a study!
Another little month, and then
My progress ends like Bunyan’s;
The seven sages that I loved
Will be chopp’d up with onions!
Then over head and ears in brine
They’ll souse me, like a salmon,
My mathematics turned to brawn,
My logic into gammon.
My Hebrew will all retrograde,
Now I’m put up to fatten;
My Greek, it will all go to grease;
The Dogs will have my Latin!
Farewell to Oxford!--and to Bliss!
To Milman, Crowe, and Glossop,--
I now must be content with chats,
Instead of learned gossip!
Farewell to “Town!” farewell to “Gown!”
I’ve quite outgrown the latter,--
Instead of Trencher-cap my head
Will soon be in a platter!
O why did I at Brazen-Nose
Rout up the roots of knowledge?
A butcher that can’t read will kill
A pig that’s been to college!
For sorrow I could stick myself,
But conscience is a clasher;
A thing that would be rash in man,
In me would be a rasher!
One thing I ask when I am dead,
And past the Stygian ditches--
And that is, let my schoolmaster
Have one of my two flitches:
’Twas he who taught my letters so
I ne’er mistook or miss’d ’em,
Simply by _ringing_ at the nose,
According to _Bell’s_ system.
[Illustration: THE LEARNED PIG GROWN OUT OF KNOWLEDGE.]
TO A BAD RIDER.
I.
WHY, Mr. Rider, why
Your nag so ill indorse, man?
To make observers cry,
You’re mounted, but no horseman?
II.
With elbows out so far,
This thought you can’t debar me--
Though no Dragoon-- Hussar--
You’re surely of the army!
III.
I hope to turn M.P.
You have not any notion,
So awkward you would be
At “seconding a motion!”
[Illustration: OUT AT ELBOWS.]
MY SON AND HEIR.
I.
MY mother bids me bind my heir,
But not the trade where I should bind;
To place a boy--the how and where--
It is the plague of parent-kind!
II.
She does not hint the slightest plan,
Nor what indentures to endorse;
Whether to bind him to a man,--
Or, like Mazeppa, to a horse.
[Illustration: SON AND HAIR.]
III.
What line to choose of likely rise,
To something in the Stocks at last,--
“Fast bind, fast find,” the proverb cries,
I find I cannot bind so fast!
IV.
A Statesman James can never be;
A Tailor?--there I only learn
His chief concern is cloth, and he
Is always cutting his concern.
V.
A Seedsman?--I’d not have him so;
A Grocer’s plum might disappoint;
A Butcher?--no, not that--although
I hear “the times are out of joint!”
VI.
Too many of all trades there be,
Like Pedlars, each has such a pack,
A merchant selling coals?--we see
The buyer send to cellar back.
VII.
A Hardware dealer?--that might please,
But if his trade’s foundation leans
On spikes and nails, he won’t have ease
When he retires upon his means.
VIII.
A Soldier?--there he has not nerves
A Sailor seldom lays up pelf:
A Baker?--no, a baker serves
His customer before himself.
IX.
Dresser of hair?--that’s not the sort;
A joiner jars with his desire--
A Churchman?--James is very short,
And cannot to a church aspire.
X.
A Lawyer?--that’s a hardish term!
A Publisher might give him ease,
If he could into Longman’s firm
Just plunge at once “in medias Rees.”
XI.
A shop for pot, and pan, and cup,
Such brittle Stock I can’t advise;
A Builder running houses up,
Their gains are stories--may be lies!
XII.
A Coppersmith I can’t endure--
Nor petty Usher A, B, C-ing;
A Publican no father sure,
Would be the author of his being!
XIII.
A Paper-maker?--come he must
To rags before he sells a sheet--
A Miller?--all his toil is just
To make a meal--he does not eat.
XIV.
A Currier?--that by favour goes--
A Chandler gives me great misgiving--
An Undertaker?--one of those
That do not hope to get their living!
XV.
Three Golden Balls?--I like them not;
An Auctioneer I never did--
The victim of a slavish lot,
Obliged to do as he is bid!
XVI.
A Broker watching fall and rise
Of Stock?--I’d rather deal in stone,--
A Printer?--there his toils comprise
Another’s work beside his own.
XVII.
A Cooper?--neither I nor Jem
Have any taste or turn for that,--
A fish retailer?--but with him,
One part of trade is always flat.
[Illustration: THE FAMILY LIBRARY.]
XVIII.
A Painter?--long he would not live,--
An Artist’s a precarious craft--
In trade Apothecaries give,
But very seldom take, a draught.
XIX.
A Glazier?--what if he should smash!
A Crispin he shall not be made--
A Grazier may be losing cash,
Although he drives “a roaring trade.”
XX.
Well, something must be done! to look
On all my little works around--
James is too big a boy, like book,
To leave upon the shelf unbound.
XXI.
But what to do?--my temples ache
From evening’s dew till morning’s pearl,
What course to take my boy to make--
Oh could I make my boy--a girl!
[Illustration: SON AND SHADE.]
LITERARY REMINISCENCES.
No. IV.
“And are ye sure the news is true?
And are ye sure he’s weel?”--OLD SCOTCH SONG.
THE great Doctor Johnson--himself a sufferer--has pathetically
described, in an essay on the miseries of an infirm constitution, the
melancholy case of an Invalid, with a willing mind in a weak body.
“The time of such a man,” he says, “is spent in forming schemes which
a change of wind prevents him from executing; his powers fume away in
projects and in hope, and the day of action never arrives. He lies down
delighted with the thoughts of to-morrow; but in the night the skies
are overcast; the temper of the air is changed; he wakes in languor,
impatience, and distraction; and has no longer any wish but for ease,
nor any attention but for misery.” In short the Rambler describes the
whole race of Valetudinarians as a sort of great Bitumen Company,
paving a certain nameless place, as some of the Asphalticals have paved
Oxford Street, with not very durable good intentions. In a word, your
Invalid promises like a Hogamy, and performs like a Pigamy.
To a hale hearty man, a perfect picture of health in an oaken frame,
such abortions seem sufficiently unaccountable. A great hulking
fellow, revelling as De Quincey used emphatically to say, “in rude
BOVINE health,”--a voracious human animal, camel-stomached and
iron-built, who could all but devour and digest himself like a Kilkenny
cat,--can neither sympathise with nor understand those frequent
failures and down-breakings which happen to beings not so fortunately
gifted with indelicate constitutions. Such a half-horse half-alligator
monster cannot judge, like a _Puny_ Judge, of a case of feebleness. The
broad-chested cannot allow for the narrow-breasted; the robust for the
no-bust. Nevertheless, even the stalwart may sometimes fall egregiously
short of their own designs--as witness a case in point.
Amongst my fellow passengers, on a late sea-voyage, there was one who
attracted my especial attention. A glance at his face, another at his
figure, a third at his costume, and a fourth at his paraphernalia,
sufficed to detect his country: by his light hair, nubbly features,
heavy frame, odd-coloured dressing-gown, and the national meerschaum
and gaudy tobacco-bag, he was undeniably a German. But, besides
the everlasting pipe, he was provided with a sketching apparatus,
an ample note book, a gun, and a telescope; the whole being placed
ready for immediate use. He had predetermined, no doubt, to record
his German sentiments on first making acquaintance with the German
Ocean; to sketch the picturesque craft he might encounter on its
surface; to shoot his first sea-gull; and to catch a first glimpse of
the shores of Albion, beyond the reach of the naked eye. But alas!
all these intentions fell--if one may correctly say so with only
sky and water--to the ground. He ate nothing--drank nothing--smoked
nothing--drew nothing--wrote nothing--shot nothing--spied nothing--nay,
he merely stared, but replied nothing to my friendly inquiry (I am ill
at the German tongue and its pronunciation) “Wie befinden _sea sick_?”
Now, my own case, gentle reader, has been precisely akin to that of our
unfortunate Cousin German. Like him I have promised much, projected
still more, and done little. Like him, too, I have been a sick man,
though not at sea, but on shore--and in excuse of all that has been
left undone, or delayed, with other Performers, when they do not
perform, I must proffer the old theatrical plea of indisposition. As
the Rambler describes, I have erected schemes which have been blown
down by an _ill_ wind; I have formed plans, and been weather-beaten,
like another Murphy, by a change in the weather. For instance, the
Comic Annual for 1839 ought properly to have been published some forty
days earlier; but was obliged, as it were, to perform quarantine, for
want of a clean Bill of Health. Thus, too, the patron of the present
Work who has taken the trouble to peruse certain chapters under the
title of Literary Reminiscences, will doubtless have compared the tone
of them with an Apology in Number Six, wherein, declining any attempt
at an Auto-biography, a promise was made of giving such anecdotes as
a bad memory and a bad hearing might have retained of my literary
friends and acquaintance. Hitherto, however, the fragments in question
have only presented desultory glimpses of a goose quill still in its
green-gosling-hood, instead of any recollections of “celebrated pens.”
The truth is that my malady forced me to temporise:--wherefore the
kind reader will be pleased to consider the aforesaid chapters but as
so many “false starts,” and that Memory has only now got away, to make
play as well as she can.
Whilst I am thus closeted in the Confessional, it may be as well, as
the Pelican said, to make a clean breast of it, and at once plead
guilty to all those counts--and some from long-standing have become
very Old Bailey counts--that haunt my conscience. The most numerous
of these crimes relate to letters that would not, could not, or at
least did not answer. Others refer to the receipt of books, and as an
example of their heinousness it misgives me that I was favoured with a
little volume by W. and M. Howitt, without ever telling them _how-it_
pleased me. A few offences, concern engagements which it was impossible
to fulfil, although doubly bound by principle and interest. Seriously
I have perforce been guilty of many, many, and still many sins of
omission: but Hope, reviving with my strength, promises, granting me
life, to redeem all such pledges. In the mean time, in extenuation,
I can only plead particularly that deprecation which is offered up,
in behalf of all Christian defaulters every Sunday,--“We have left
undone those things which we ought to have done,--_And there is no_
HEALTH _in us_.”
It is pleasant after a match at Chess, particularly if we have won,
to try back, and reconsider those important moves which have had a
decisive influence on the result. It is still more interesting, in the
game of Life, to recall the critical positions which have occurred
during its progress, and review the false or judicious steps that have
led to our subsequent good or ill fortune. There is, however, this
difference, that chess is a matter of pure skill and calculation,
whereas, the chequered board of human life is subject to the caprice
of Chance--the event being sometimes determined by combinations which
never entered into the mind of the player[4]. To such an accident it
is perhaps attributable that the hand now tracing these reminiscences
is holding a pen instead of an etching-point; jotting down these prose
pleasures of memory, in lieu of furnishing articles “plated-on-steel,”
for the pictorial periodicals.
It will be remembered that my mental constitution, however weak my
physical one, was proof against that type-us fever which parches most
scribblers till they are set up, done up, and may-be, cut-up, in print
and boards. Perhaps I had read, and trembled at the melancholy annals
of those unfortunates who, rashly undertaking to write for bread,
had poisoned themselves, like Chatterton, for want of it, or choked
themselves, like Otway, on obtaining it. Possibly, having learned to
think humbly of myself--there is nothing like early sickness and sorrow
for “taking the conceit” out of one--my vanity did not presume to
think, with certain juvenile Tracticians, that I “had a call” to hold
forth in print for the edification of mankind. Perchance, the very
deep reverence my reading had led me to entertain for our Bards and
Sages, deterred me from thrusting myself into the fellowship of Beings
that seemed only a little lower than the angels. However, in spite of
that very common excuse for publication, “the advice of a friend,”
who seriously recommended the submitting of my MSS. to a literary
authority, with a view to his imprimatur, my slight acquaintance with
the press was pushed no farther. On the contrary, I had selected a
branch of the Fine Arts for my serious pursuit. Prudence, the daughter
of Wisdom, whispering perhaps, that the engraver, Pye, had a better
chance of a beefsteak inside, than Pye the Laureate; not that the
verse-spinning was quite given up. Though working in _aqua fortis_,
I still played with Castaly, now writing--all monkeys are imitators,
and all young authors are monkeys--now writing a Bandit, to match
the Corsair, and anon, hatching a Lalla Crow, by way of companion
to Lalla Rookh. Moreover, about this time, I became a member of a
private select Literary Society (alluded to at page 97 of the present
work) that “waited on Ladies and Gentlemen at their own houses.” Our
Minerva, allegorically speaking, was a motley personage, in blue
stockings, a flounced gown, Quaker cap, and kerchief, French flowers,
and a man’s hat. She held a fan in one hand, and a blowpipe in the
other. Her votaries were of both sexes, old and young, married and
single, assenters, dissenters, High Church, Low Church, No Church;
Doctors in Physics, and Apothecaries in Metaphysics; dabblers in
Logic, Chemistry, Casuistry, Sophistry, Natural and unnatural History,
Phrenology, Geology, Conchology, Demonology; in short, all kinds of
Colledgy-Knowledgy-Ology, including “Cakeology,” and tea and coffee.
Like other Societies, we had our President--a sort of Speaker who
never spoke; at least within my experience he never unbosomed himself
of anything but a portentous shirt frill. According to the usual order
of the entertainment, there was--first, Tea and Small Talk; secondly,
an original Essay, which should have been followed, thirdly, by a
Discussion, or Great Talk; but nine times in ten, it chanced, or
rather mumchanced, that, between those who did not know what to think,
and others, who did not know how to deliver what they thought, there
ensued a dead silence, so “very dead indeed,” as Apollo Belvi says,
that it seemed buried into the bargain. To make this awkward pause
more awkward, some misgiving voice, between a whisper and a croak,
would stammer out some allusion to a Quaker’s Meeting, answered from
right to left by a running titter, the speaker having innocently, or
perhaps wilfully forgotten, that one or two friends in drab coats, and
as many in slate-coloured gowns, were sitting, thumb-twiddling, in the
circle. Not that the Friends contented themselves with playing _dumby_
at our discussions. They often spoke, and very characteristically,
to the matter in hand. For instance, their favourite doctrine of
non-resistance was once pushed--if Quakers ever push--a little “beyond
beyond.” By way of clencher, one fair, meek, sleek Quakeress, in dove
colour, gravely told a melodramatical story of a conscientious Friend,
who rather than lift even his little finger against a Foe, passively,
yea, lamblike, suffered himself to be butchered in bed by an assassin,
and died consistently, as he thought, with Fox principles, very like a
Goose. As regards my own share in the Essays and Arguments, it misgives
me that they no more satisfied our decidedly serious members, than
they now propitiate Mr. Rae Wilson. At least, one Society night, in
escorting a female Fellow towards her home, she suddenly stopped me,
taking advantage perhaps of the awful locality, and its associations,
just in front of our chief criminal prison, and looking earnestly in my
face, by the light of a Newgate lamp, inquired somewhat abruptly, “Mr.
Hood! are you not an Infidel[5]?”
In the mean time, whilst thus playing at Literature, an event was
ripening which was to introduce me to Authorship in earnest, and make
the Muse, with whom I had only flirted, my companion for life. It
had often occurred to me that a striking, romantical, necromantical,
metaphysical, melodramatical, Germanish story, might be composed, the
interest of which should turn on the mysterious influence of the fate
of A over the destiny of B, the said parties having no more natural
or apparent connexion with each other than Tenterden Steeple and the
Goodwin Sands. An instance of this occult contingency occurred in my
own case; for I did not even know by sight the unfortunate gentleman
on whose untimely exit depended my entrance on the literary stage.
In the beginning of the year 1821, a memorable duel, originating in
a pen-and-ink quarrel, took place at Chalk Farm, and terminated in
the death of Mr. John Scott, the able Editor of the London Magazine.
The melancholy result excited great interest, in which I fully
participated, little dreaming that his catastrophe involved any
consequences of importance to myself. But on the loss of its conductor,
the Periodical passed into other hands. The new Proprietors were my
friends; they sent for me, and after some preliminaries, I was duly
installed as a sort of sub-Editor of the London Magazine.
It would be affectation to say, that engraving was resigned with
regret. There is always something mechanical about the art--moreover
it is as unwholesome as wearisome to sit copper-fastened to a board,
with a cantle scooped out to accommodate your stomach, if you have one,
painfully ruling, ruling, and still ruling lines straight or crooked,
by the long hundred to the square inch, at the doubly hazardous risk
which Wordsworth so deprecates, of “growing double.” So farewell
Woollett! Strange! Bartolozzi! I have said, my vanity did not rashly
plunge me into authorship; but no sooner was there a legitimate opening
than I jumped at it, à la Grimaldi, head foremost, and was speedily
behind the scenes.
To judge by my zeal and delight in my new pursuit, the bowl had at
last found its natural bias[6]. Not content with taking articles,
like candidates for holy orders--with rejecting articles like the
Belgians--I dreamt articles, thought articles, wrote articles, which
were all inserted by the editor, of course, with the concurrence of his
deputy. The more irksome parts of authorship, such as the correction
of the press, were to me labours of love. I received a revise from Mr.
Baldwin’s Mr. Parker, as if it had been a proof of his regard; forgave
him all his slips, and really thought that printers’ devils were not
so black as they are painted. But my top-gallant glory was in “our
Contributors!” How I used to look forward to Elia! and backward for
Hazlitt, and all round for Edward Herbert, and how I used to _look
up_ to Allan Cunningham! for at that time the London had a goodly
list of writers--a rare company. It is now defunct, and perhaps no
ex-periodical might so appropriately be apostrophized with the Irish
funereal question--“Arrah, honey, why did you die?” Had you not an
editor, and elegant prose writers, and beautiful poets, and broths
of boys for criticism and classics, and wits and humorists.--Elia,
Cary, Procter, Cunningham, Bowring, Barton, Hazlitt, Elton, Hartley
Coleridge, Talfourd, Soane, Horace Smith, Reynolds, Poole, Clare, and
Thomas Benyon, with a power besides. Hadn’t you Lions’ Heads with
Traditional Tales? Hadn’t you an Opium Eater, and a Dwarf, and a Giant,
and a Learned Lamb, and a Green Man? Had not you a regular Drama, and
a Musical Report, and a Report of Agriculture, and an Obituary, and
a Price Current, and a current price, of only half-a-crown? Arrah,
why did you die? Why, somehow the contributors fell away--the concern
went into other hands--worst of all, a new editor tried to put the
Belles Lettres in Utilitarian envelopes; whereupon, the circulation
of the Miscellany, like that of poor Le Fevre, got slower, slower,
slower,--and slower still--and then stopped for ever! It was a sorry
scattering of those old Londoners! Some went out of the country: one
(Clare) went into it. Lamb retreated to Colebrooke. Mr. Cary presented
himself to the British Museum. Reynolds and Barry took to engrossing
when they should pen a stanza, and Thomas Benyon gave up literature.
It is with mingled feelings of pride, pleasure, and pain, that I revert
to those old times, when the writers I had long known and admired
in spirit were present to me in the flesh--when I had the delight
of listening to their wit and wisdom from their own lips, of gazing
on their faces, and grasping their right hands. Familiar figures
rise before me, familiar voices ring in my ears, and alas! amongst
them are shapes that I must never see, sounds that I can never hear,
again. Before my departure from England, I was one of the few who
saw the grave close over the remains of one whom to know as a friend
was to love as a relation. Never did a better soul go to a better
world! Never perhaps (giving the lie direct to the common imputation
of envy, malice, and hatred, amongst the brotherhood), never did
an author descend--to quote his favourite Sir T. Browne--into “the
land of the mole and the pismire” so hung with golden opinions, and
honoured and regretted with such sincere eulogies and elegies, by his
contemporaries. To HIM, the first of these, my reminiscences,
is eminently due, for I lost in him not only a dear and kind friend,
but an invaluable critic; one whom, were such literary adoptions in
modern use, I might well name, as Cotton called Walton, my “father.” To
borrow the earnest language of old Jean Bertaut, as Englished by Mr.
Cary--
“Thou, chiefly, noble spirit, for whose loss
Just grief and mourning all our hearts engross,
Who seeing me devoted to the Nine,
Didst hope some fruitage from those buds of mine;
Thou didst excite me after thee t’ascend
The Muses’ sacred hill; nor only lend
Example, but inspirit me to reach
The far-off summit by thy friendly speech.
* * * * *
May gracious Heaven, O honour of our age!
Make the conclusion answer thy presage,
Nor let it only for vain fortune stand,
_That I have seen thy visage--touch’d thy hand_!”
I was sitting one morning beside our Editor, busily correcting
proofs, when a visitor was announced, whose name, grumbled by a low
ventriloquial voice, like Tom Pipes calling from the hold through the
hatchway, did not resound distinctly on my tympanum. However, the door
opened, and in came a stranger,--a figure remarkable at a glance, with
a fine head, on a small spare body, supported by two almost immaterial
legs. He was clothed in sables, of a bygone fashion, but there was
something wanting, or something present about him, that certified he
was neither a divine, nor a physician, nor a schoolmaster: from a
certain neatness and sobriety in his dress, coupled with his sedate
bearing, he might have been taken, but that such a costume would be
anomalous, for a _Quaker_ in black. He looked still more like (what
he really was) a literary Modern Antique, a New-Old Author, a living
Anachronism, contemporary at once with Burton the Elder, and Colman
the Younger. Meanwhile he advanced with rather a peculiar gait, his
walk was plantigrade, and with a cheerful “How d’ye,” and one of the
blandest, sweetest smiles that ever brightened a manly countenance,
held out two fingers to the Editor. The two gentlemen in black soon
fell into discourse; and whilst they conferred, the Lavater principle
within me, set to work upon the interesting specimen thus presented to
its speculations. It was a striking intellectual face, full of wiry
lines, physiognomical quips and cranks, that gave it great character.
There was much earnestness about the brows, and a deal of speculation
in the eyes, which were brown and bright, and “quick in turning;” the
nose, a decided one, though of no established order; and there was
a handsome smartness about the mouth. Altogether it was no common
face--none of those _willow-pattern_ ones, which Nature turns out by
thousands at her potteries;--but more like a chance specimen of the
Chinese ware, one to the set--unique, antique, quaint. No one who had
once seen it, could pretend not to know it again. It was no face to
lend its countenance to any confusion of persons in a Comedy of Errors.
You might have sworn to it piecemeal,--a separate affidavit for every
feature. In short his face was as original as his figure; his figure
as his character; his character as his writings; his writings the most
original of the age. After the literary business had been settled,
the Editor invited his contributor to dinner, adding “we shall have a
hare--”
“And--and--and--and many Friends!”
The hesitation in the speech, and the readiness of the illusion,
were alike characteristic of the individual, whom his familiars will
perchance have recognised already as the delightful Essayist, the
capital Critic, the pleasant Wit and Humorist, the delicate-minded and
large-hearted Charles Lamb! He was shy like myself with strangers,
so that, despite my yearnings, our first meeting scarcely amounted
to an introduction. We were both at dinner, amongst the hare’s many
friends, but our acquaintance got no farther, in spite of a desperate
attempt on my part to attract his notice. His complaint of the Decay
of Beggars presented another chance: I wrote on coarse paper, and
in ragged English, a letter of thanks to him as if from one of his
mendicant clients, but it produced no effect. I had given up all hope,
when one night, sitting sick and sad, in my bed-room, racked with the
rheumatism, the door was suddenly opened, the well-known quaint figure
in black walked in without any formality, and with a cheerful “Well,
boy, how are you?” and the bland sweet smile, extended the two fingers.
They were eagerly clutched of course, and from that hour we were firm
friends.
Thus characteristically commenced my intimacy with C. Lamb. He had
recently become my neighbour, and in a few days called again, to
ask me to tea, “to meet Wordsworth.” In spite of any idle jests to
the contrary, the name had a spell in it that drew me to Colebrooke
Cottage[7] with more alacrity[8] than consisted with prudence, stiff
joints and a North wind. But I was willing to run, at least hobble,
some risk, to be of a party in a parlour with the Author of Laodamia
and Hartleap Well. As for his Betty Foy-bles, he is not the first
man by many, who has met with a _simple_ fracture through riding his
theory-hack so far and so fast, that it broke down with him. If he has
now and then put on a nightcap, so have his own next-door mountains.
If he has babbled, sometimes, like an infant of _two_ years old, he
has also thought, and felt, and spoken, the beautiful fancies and
tender affections, and artless language, of the children who can say
“We are _seven_.” Along with food for babes, he has furnished strong
meat for men. So I put on my great coat and in a few minutes found
myself, for the first time at a door, that opened to me as frankly as
its master’s heart; for, without any preliminaries of hall, passage,
or parlour, one single step across the threshold brought me into the
sitting-room, and in sight of the domestic hearth. The room looked
brown with “old bokes,” and beside the fire sate Wordsworth, and his
sister, the hospitable Elia, and the excellent Bridget. As for the bard
of Rydal, his outward man did not, perhaps, disappoint one; but the
_palaver_, as the Indians say, fell short of my anticipations. Perhaps
my memory is in fault; ’twas many years ago, and, unlike the biographer
of Johnson, I have never made Bozziness my business. However, excepting
a discussion on the value of the promissory notes issued by our younger
poets, wherein Wordsworth named Shelley, and Lamb took John Keats for
choice, there was nothing of literary interest brought upon the carpet.
But a book man cannot always be bookish. A poet, even a Rydal one,
must be glad at times to descend from Saddleback, and feel his legs.
He cannot, like the Girl in the Fairy Tale, be always talking diamonds
and pearls. It is a “Vulgar Errour” to suppose that an author must
be always authoring, even with his feet on the fender. Nevertheless,
it is not an uncommon impression, that a writer sonnetises his wife,
sings odes to his children, talks essays and epigrams to his friends,
and reviews his servants. It was in something of this spirit that an
official gentleman to whom I mentioned the pleasant literary meetings
at Lamb’s, associated them instantly with his parochial mutual
instruction evening schools, and remarked, “Yes, yes, all very proper
and praiseworthy--of course, you go there _to improve your minds_.”
And very pleasant and improving, though not of set purpose, to both
mind and heart, were those extempore assemblies at Colebrooke Cottage.
It was wholesome for the soul but to breathe its atmosphere. It was
a House of Call for All Denominations. _Sides_ were lost in that
_circle_, Men of all parties postponed their partisanship, and met
as on a neutral ground. There were but two persons, whom L. avowedly
did not wish to encounter beneath his roof, and those two, merely on
account of private and family differences. For the rest, they left all
their hostilities at the door, with their sticks. This forbearance was
due to the truly tolerant spirit of the Host, which influenced all
within its sphere. Lamb, whilst he willingly lent a crutch to halting
Humility, took delight in tripping up the stilts of Pretension. Anybody
might trot out his Hobby; but he allowed nobody to ride the High Horse.
If it was a High German, one like those ridden by the Devil and Doctor
Faustus, he would chaunt
“Gëuty Gëuty
Is a great Beauty,”
till the rider moderated his gallop. He hated anything like
Cock-of-the-Walk-ism; and set his face and his wit against all
Ultraism, Transcendentalism, Sentimentalism, Conventional Mannerism,
and above all, Separatism. In opposition to the Exclusives, he was
emphatically an Inclusive.
As he once owned to me, he was fond of antagonising. Indeed in the
sketch of himself, prefacing the Last Essays of Elia--a sketch for its
truth to have delighted Mason the Self-Knowledge man--he says, “with
the Religionist I pass for a Free-thinker, while the other faction set
me down for a Bigot.” In fact, no politician ever laboured more to
preserve the Balance of Power in Europe, than he did to correct any
temporary preponderances. He was always _trimming_ in the nautical,
not in the political, sense. Thus in his “magnanimous letter,” as
Hazlitt called it, to High Church Southey, he professed himself a
Unitarian[9]. With a Catholic he would probably have called himself
a Jew; as amongst Quakers, by way of a set-off against their own
formality, he would indulge in a little extra levity. I well remember
his chuckling at having spirited on his correspondent Bernard Barton,
to commit some little enormities, such as addressing him as C. Lamb,
_Esquire_.
My visits at Lamb’s were shortly interrupted by a sojourn to
unrheumatize myself at Hastings; but in default of other intercourse
I received a letter in a well-known hand, quaint as the sentences it
conveyed.
“And what dost thou at the Priory? Cucullus non facit Monachum.
English me that, and challenge old Lignum Janua to make a better.
“My old New River has presented no extraordinary novelties lately.
But there hope sits day after day speculating upon traditionary
gudgeons. I think she has taken the fisheries. I now know the
reason why our forefathers were denominated East and West Angles.
Yet is there no lack of spawn, for I wash my hands in fishets that
come through the pump every morning, thick as motelings--little
things that perish untimely, and never taste the brook. You do
not tell me of those romantic Land Bays that be as thou goest to
Lovers’ Seat, neither of that little Churchling in the midst of a
wood (in the opposite direction nine furlongs from the town), that
seems dropt by the Angel that was tired of carrying two packages;
marry, with the other he made shift to pick his flight to Loretto.
Inquire out and see my little Protestant Loretto. It stands apart
from trace of human habitation, yet hath it pulpit, reading-desk,
and trim front of massiest marble, as if Robinson Crusoe had
reared it to soothe himself with old church-going images. I forget
its Xtian name, and what She Saint was its gossip.
“You should also go to No. 13, Standgate Street, a Baker, who has
the finest collection of marine monsters in ten sea counties;
sea-dragons, polypi, mer-people, most fantastic. You have only to
name the old Gentleman in black (not the Devil), that lodged with
him a week (he’ll remember) last July, and he will show courtesy.
He is by far the foremost of the Savans. His wife is the funniest
thwarting little animal! They are decidedly the Lions of green
Hastings. Well, I have made an end of my say;--my epistolary time
is gone by when I could have scribbled as long (I will not say as
agreeable) as thine was to both of us. I am dwindled to notes and
letterets. But in good earnest I shall be most happy to hail thy
return to the waters of old Sir Hugh. There is nothing like inland
murmurs, fresh ripples, and our native minnows.
“He sang in meads how sweet the brooklets ran,
To the rough ocean and red restless sands.
I design to give up smoking; but I have not yet fixed upon the
equivalent vice. I must have quid pro quo, or quo pro _quid_, as
Tom Woodgate would correct me. My service to him.
“C. L.”
The letter came to hand too late for me to hunt the “Lions;” but on
a subsequent visit to the same Cinque Port with my wife, though we
verified the little Loretto, we could not find the Baker, or even his
man, howbeit we tried at every shop that had the least sign of bakery
or cakery in its window. The whole was a batch of _fancy_ bread; one of
those fictions which the writer was apt to pass off upon his friends.
The evening meetings at Colebrooke Cottage--where somebody, who _was_
somebody, or a literary friend, was sure to drop in--were the more
grateful to me, as the London Magazine was now in a rapid decline;
some of its crack contributors had left it off, and the gatherings of
the clan to eat, drink, and be merry, were few and far between. There
was indeed one Venison Feast whereat, I have heard, the scent lay more
than breast high, and the sport was of as rich a quality; but it was my
chance to be absent from the pack. At former dinners, however, I had
been a guest, and a sketch of one of them may serve to introduce some
of the principal characters of our “London in the Olden Time.”
On the right hand then of the Editor sits Elia, of the pleasant smile,
and the quick eyes--Procter said of them that “they looked as if they
could pick up pins and needles”--and a wit as quick as his eyes, and
sure, as Hazlitt described, to stammer out the best pun and the best
remark in the course of the evening. Next to him, shining verdantly out
from the grave-coloured suits of the literati, like a patch of turnips
amidst stubble and fallow, behold our Jack i’ the Green--John Clare!
In his bright, grass-coloured coat, and yellow waistcoat (there are
greenish stalks too, under the table), he looks a very Cowslip, and
blooms amongst us as Goldsmith must have done in his peach-blossom.
No wonder the door-keeper of the Soho Bazaar, seeing that _very
countrified_ suit, linked arm-in-arm with the Editorial sables, made a
boggle at admitting them into his repository, having seen, perchance,
such a made-up Peasant “playing at playing” at thimble-rig about the
Square. No wonder the gentleman’s gentleman, in the drab-coat and
sealing-wax smalls, at W---- ’s, was for cutting off our Green Man,
who was modestly the last in ascending the stairs as an interloper,
though he made amends afterwards by waiting almost exclusively on the
Peasant, perfectly convinced that he was some eccentric Notable of the
Corinthian order, disguised in Rustic. Little wonder either, that in
wending homewards on the same occasion through the Strand, the Peasant
and Elia, _Sylvanus et Urban_, linked comfortably together; there arose
the frequent cry of “Look at Tom and Jerry--there goes Tom and Jerry!”
for truly, Clare in his square-cut green coat, and Lamb in his black,
were not a little suggestive of Hawthorn and Logic, in the plates to
“Life in London.”
But to return to the table. Elia--much more of House Lamb than of
Grass Lamb--avowedly caring little or nothing for Pastoral; cottons,
nevertheless, very kindly to the Northamptonshire Poet, and still
more to his ale, pledging him again and again as “Clarissimus,”
and “Princely Clare,” and sometimes so lustily, as to make the
latter cast an anxious glance into his tankard. By his bright happy
look, the Helpstone Visitor is inwardly contrasting the unlettered
country company of Clod, and Hodge and Podge, with the delights of
“London” society Elia, and Barry, and Herbert, and Mr. Table Talk,
_cum multis_--_aliis_--i.e. a multiplicity of all. But besides the
tankard, the two “drouthie neebors” discuss Poetry in general[10], and
Montgomery’s “Common Lot” in particular, Lamb insisting on the beauty
of the tangental sharp turn at “O! she was fair!” thinking, mayhap, of
his own Alice W----, and Clare swearing “Dal” (a clarified d--n) “Dal!
if it isn’t like a Dead Man preaching out of his coffin!” Anon, the
Humorist begins to banter the Peasant on certain “Clare-obscurities” in
his own verses, originating in a contempt for the rules of Priscian,
whereupon the accused, thinking with Burns,
“What ser’es their grammars?
They’d better ta’en up spades and shools,
Or knappin hammers,”
vehemently denounces all Philology as nothing but a sort of man-trap
for authors, and heartily dals Lindley Murray for “inventing it!”
It must have been at such a time, that Hilton _conceived_ his clever
portrait of C----, when he was “C in alt.” He was hardy, rough, and
clumsy enough to look truly rustic--like an Ingram’s rustic chair.
There was a slightness about his frame, with a delicacy of features
and complexion, that associated him more with the Garden than with the
Field, and made him look the Peasant of a Ferme Ornée. In this respect
he was as much beneath the genuine stalwart bronzed Plough-Poet,
Burns, as above the Farmer’s Boy, whom I remember to have seen in my
childhood, when he lived in a miniature house, near the Shepherd and
Shepherdess, now the Eagle tavern, in the City Road, and manufactured
Æolian harps, and kept ducks. The Suffolk Giles had very little of
the agricultural in his appearance; he looked infinitely more like a
handicraftsman, _town-made_.
Poor Clare!--It would greatly please me to hear that he was happy and
well, and thriving; but the transplanting of Peasants and Farmers’ Boys
from the natural into an artificial soil, does not always conduce to
their happiness, or health, or ultimate well doing. I trust the true
Friends, who, with a natural hankering after poetry, because it is
forbidden them, have ventured to pluck and eat of the pastoral sorts,
as most dallying with the innocence of nature,--and who on that account
patronised Capel Lofft’s protégé--I do trust and hope they took off
whole editions of the Northamptonshire Bard. There was much about Clare
for a Quaker to like; he was tender-hearted, and averse to violence.
How he recoiled once, bodily-taking his chair along with him,--from a
young surgeon, or surgeon’s friend, who let drop, somewhat abruptly,
that he was just come “from seeing a child skinned!”--Clare, from his
look of horror, evidently thought that the poor infant, like Marsyas,
had been flayed _alive_! He was both gentle and simple. I have heard
that on his first visit to London, his publishers considerately sent
their porter to meet him at the inn; but when Thomas necessarily
inquired of the gentleman in green, “Are you Mr. Clare?” the latter,
willing to foil the traditionary tricks of London sharpers, replied to
the suspicious query with “a positive negative.”[11]
The Brobdignagian next to Clare, overtopping him by the whole head and
shoulders--a physical “Colossus of Literature,” the grenadier of our
corps--is Allan, not Allan Ramsay, “no, nor Barbara Allan neither,”
but Allan Cunningham,--“a credit,” quoth Sir Walter Scott (he might
have said a long credit) “to Caledonia.” He is often called “honest
Allan,” to distinguish him, perhaps, from one Allan-a-Dale, who was
apt to mistake his neighbours’ goods for his own--sometimes, between
ourselves, yelept the “C. of Solway,” in allusion to that favourite
“Allan Water,” the Solway Sea. There is something of the true moody
poetical weather observable in the barometer of his face, alternating
from Variable to Showery, from Stormy to Set Fair. At times he looks
gloomy and earnest and traditional--a little like a Covenanter--but he
suddenly clears up and laughs a hearty laugh that lifts him an inch or
two from his chair, for he rises at a joke when he sees one, like a
trout at a fly, and finishes with a smart rubbing of his ample palms.
He has store, too, of broad Scotch stories, and shrewd sayings; and
he writes--no, he wrote rare old-new or new-old ballads. Why not now?
Has his Pegasus, as he once related of his pony, run from under him?
Has the Mermaid of Galloway left no little ones? Is Bonnie Lady Ann
married, or May Morison dead? Thou vast formed for a poet, Allan, by
nature, and by stature too, according to Pope--
“To snatch a grace _beyond the reach_ of Art.”
And are there not Longman, or Tallboys, for thy Publishers? But alas!
we are fallen on evil days for Bards and Barding, and nine tailors
do more for a man than the Nine Muses. The only Lay likely to answer
now-a-days would be an Ode (with the proper testimonials) to the
Literary Fund!
The Reverend personage on the Editor’s right, with the studious brow,
deep-set eyes, and bald crown, is the mild and modest Cary--the same
who turned Dante into Miltonic English blank verse. He is sending
his plate towards the partridges, which he will relish and digest as
though they were the Birds of Aristophanes. He has his eye, too, on
the French made-dishes[12]. Pity, shame and pity, such a Translator
found no better translation in the Church! Is it possible that, in some
no-popery panic, it was thought by merely being Dragoman to Purgatory
he had _Romed_ from the true faith?
A very pleasant day we “Londoners” once spent at a Chiswick parsonage,
formerly tenanted by Hogarth, along with the hospitable Cary, and, as
Elia called them, his Caryatides![13] The last time my eyes rested on
the Interpreter (of the House Beautiful as well as of the Inferno), he
was on the Library steps of the British Museum. Ere this, I trust he
hath reached the tiptop--nay, hath perhaps attained, being a Literary
Worthy, even unto a Trusteeship, and had to buy, at Ellis’s, a few
yards of the Blue Ribbon of Literature!
Procter,--alias Barry Cornwall, formerly of the Marcian Colonnade, now
of some prosaical Inn of Court--the kindly Procter, one of the foremost
to welcome me into the Brotherhood, with a too-flattering Dedication
(another instance against the jealousy of authors), is my own left-hand
file. But what he says shall be kept as strictly confidential; for he
is whispering it into my Martineau ear. On my other side, when I turn
that way, I see a profile, a shadow of which ever confronts me on
opening my writing-desk,--a sketch taken from memory, the day after
seeing the original[14]. In opposition to the “extra man’s size” of
Cunningham, the party in question looks almost boyish, partly from
being in bulk somewhat beneath Monsieur Quetelet’s “Average Man,” but
still more so from a peculiar delicacy of complexion and smallness of
features, which look all the smaller from his wearing, in compliment,
probably, to the _Samsons_ of Teutonic Literature, his locks unshorn.
Nevertheless whoever looks again,
Sees more than marks the crowd of common men.
There is speculation in the eyes, a curl of the lip, and a general
character in the outline, that reminds one of some portraits of
Voltaire. And a Philosopher he is every inch. He looks, thinks,
writes, talks and walks, eats and drinks, and no doubt sleeps
philosophically--_i.e._ deliberately. There is nothing abrupt
about his motions,--he goes and comes calmly and quietly--like the
phantom in Hamlet, he is here--he is there--he is gone! So it is
with his discourse. He speaks slowly, clearly, and with very marked
emphasis--the tide of talk flows like Denham’s river, “strong without
rage, without overflowing, full.” When it was my frequent and agreeable
duty to call on Mr. De Quincey (being an uncommon name to remember,
the servant associated it, on the Memoria Technica principle, with a
sore throat and always pronounced it Quinsy), and I have found him at
home, quite at home, in the midst of a German Ocean of _Literature_, in
a storm,--flooding all the floor, the table and the chairs,--billows
of books tossing, tumbling, surging open,--on such occasions I have
willingly listened by the hour whilst the Philosopher, standing, with
his eyes fixed on one side of the room, seemed to be less speaking
than reading from a “handwriting on the wall.” Now and then he would
diverge, for a Scotch mile or two, to the right or left, till I was
tempted to inquire with Peregrine in John Bull (Colman’s not Hook’s),
“Do you never deviate?”--but he always came safely back to the point
where he had left, not lost the scent, and thence hunted his topic to
the end. But look!--we are in the small hours, and a change comes o’er
the spirit of that “old familiar face.” A faint hectic tint leaves
the cheek, the eyes are a degree dimmer, and each is surrounded by
a growing shadow--signs of the waning influence of that Potent Drug
whose stupendous Pleasures and enormous Pains have been so eloquently
described by the English Opium Eater. Marry, I have one of his
Confessions with his own name and mark to it:--an apology for a certain
stain on his MS., the said stain being a large purplish ring,--“Within
that circle none durst drink but he,”--in fact the impression,
coloured, of “a tumbler of laudanum negus, warm, without sugar.”[15]
That smart active person opposite with a game-cock-looking head, and
the hair combed smooth, fighter fashion, over his forehead--with
one finger hooked round a glass of champagne, not that he requires
it to inspirit him, for his wit bubbles up of itself--is our Edward
Herbert, the Author of that true piece of Biography, the Life of Peter
Corcoran. He is “good with both hands,” like that Nonpareil Randall,
at a comic verse or a serious stanza--smart at a repartee--sharp at a
retort, and not averse to a bit of mischief. ’Twas he who gave the
runaway ring at Wordsworth’s Peter Bell. Generally, his jests, set
off by a happy manner, are only ticklesome, but now and then they are
sharp-flavoured,--like the sharpness of the pine-apple. Would I could
give a sample. Alas! What a pity it is that so many good things uttered
by Poets, and Wits, and Humorists, at chance times--and they are always
the best and brightest, like sparks struck out by Pegasus’ own hoof,
in a curvet amongst the flints--should be daily and hourly lost to the
world for want of a recorder! But in this Century of Inventions, when
a self-acting drawing-paper has been discovered for copying visible
objects, who knows but that a future Niepce, or Daguerre, or Herschel,
or Fox Talbot, may find out some sort of Boswellish writing-paper to
repeat whatever it hears!
There are other Contributors--poor Hazlitt for instance--whose shades
rise up before me: but I never met with them at the Entertainments just
described. Shall we ever meet anywhere again? Alas! some are dead; and
the rest dispersed; and the days of _Social_ Clubs are over and gone,
when the Professors and Patrons of Literature assembled round the same
steaming bowl, and Johnson, always best out of print, exclaimed, “Lads!
who’s for Poonch!”
* * * * *
Amongst other notable men who came to Colebrooke Cottage, I had twice
the good fortune of meeting with S. T. Coleridge. The first time
he came from Highgate with Mrs. Gilman, to dine with “Charles and
Mary.” What a contrast to Lamb was the full-bodied Poet, with his
waving white hair, and his face round, ruddy, and unfurrowed as a
holy Friar’s! Apropos to which face he gave us a humorous description
of an unfinished portrait, that served him for a sort of barometer,
to indicate the state of his popularity. So sure as his name made
any temporary stir, out came the canvas on the easel, and a request
from the artist for another sitting: down sank the Original in the
public notice, and back went the copy into a corner, till some fresh
publication or accident again brought forward the Poet; and then forth
came the picture for a few more touches. I sincerely hope it has been
finished! What a benign, smiling face it was! What a comfortable,
respectable figure! What a model, methought, as I watched and admired
the “Old Man eloquent,” for a Christian bishop! But he was, perhaps,
scarcely orthodox enough to be trusted with a mitre. At least, some of
his voluntaries would have frightened a common everyday congregation
from their propriety. Amongst other matters of discourse, he came to
speak of the strange notions some literal-minded persons form of the
joys of Heaven; joys they associated with mere temporal things, in
which, for his own part, finding no delight in this world, he could
find no bliss hereafter, without a change in his nature, tantamount to
the loss of his personal identity. For instance, he said, there are
persons who place the whole angelical beatitude in the possession of a
pair of wings to flap about with, like “_a sort of celestial poultry_.”
After dinner he got up, and began pacing to and fro, with his hands
behind his back, talking and walking, as Lamb laughingly hinted, as
if qualifying for an itinerant preacher; now fetching a simile from
Loddiges’ garden, at Hackney; and then flying off for an illustration
to the sugar-making in Jamaica. With his fine, flowing voice, it was
glorious music, of the “never-ending, still-beginning” kind; and you
did not wish it to end. It was rare flying, as in the Nassau Balloon;
you knew not whither, nor did you care. Like his own bright-eyed
Marinere, he had a spell in his voice that would not let you go. To
attempt to describe my own feeling afterward, I had been carried,
spiralling, up to heaven by a whirlwind intertwisted with sunbeams,
giddy and dazzled, but not displeased, and had then been rained down
again with a shower of mundane stocks and stones that battered out of
me all recollection of what I had heard, and what I had seen!
On the second occasion, the author of Christabel was accompanied by one
of his sons. The Poet, talking and walking as usual, chanced to pursue
some argument, which drew from the son, who had not been introduced
to me, the remark, “Ah, that’s just like your crying up those foolish
Odes and Addresses!” Coleridge was highly amused with this mal-àpropos,
and, without explaining, looked slily round at me, with the sort of
suppressed laugh one may suppose to belong to the Bey of _Tittery_. The
truth was, he felt naturally partial to a book he had attributed in the
first instance to the dearest of his friends.
“MY DEAR CHARLES,--This afternoon, a little, thin,
mean-looking sort of a foolscap, sub-octavo of poems, printed on
very dingy outsides, lay on the table, which the cover informed me
was circulating in our book-club, so very Grub Streetish in all its
appearance, internal as well as external, that I cannot explain
by what accident of impulse (assuredly there was no _motive_ in
play) I came to look into it. Least of all, the title, Odes and
Addresses to Great Men, which connected itself in my head with
Rejected Addresses, and all the Smith and Theodore Hook squad. But,
my dear Charles, it was certainly written by you, or under you,
or _una cum_ you. I know none of your frequent visitors capacious
and assimilative enough of your converse to have reproduced you
so honestly, supposing you had left yourself in pledge in his
lock-up house. Gillman, to whom I read the spirited parody on the
introduction to Peter Bell, the Ode to the Great Unknown, and to
Mrs. Fry; he speaks doubtfully of Reynolds and Hood. But here come
Irving and Basil Montagu.
“_Thursday night, 10 o’clock._--No! Charles, it is _you_. I have
read them over again, and I understand why you have _anon’d_
the book. The puns are nine in ten good--many excellent--the
_Newgatory_ transcendent. And then the _exemplum sine exemplo_ of
a volume of personalities and contemporaneities, without a single
line that could inflict the infinitesimal of an unpleasance on any
man in his senses; saving and except perhaps in the envy-addled
brain of the despiser of your _Lays_. If not a triumph over him,
it is at least an _ovation_. Then, moreover, and besides, to speak
with becoming modesty, excepting my own self, who is there but you
who could write the musical lines and stanzas that are intermixed?
“Here Gillman, come up to my garret, and driven back by the
guardian spirits of four huge flower-holders of omnigenous roses
and honeysuckles--(Lord have mercy on his hysterical olfactories!
what will he do in Paradise? I must have a pair or two of
nostril-plugs, or nose-goggles laid in his coffin)--stands at the
door, reading that to M’Adam, and the washerwoman’s letter, and he
admits _the facts_. You are found _in the manner_, as the lawyers
say! so, Mr. Charles! hang yourself up, and send me a line, by way
of token and acknowledgment. My dear love to Mary. God bless you
and your Unshamabramizer,
“S. T. COLERIDGE.”
It may be mentioned here, that instead of feeling “the infinitesimal of
an unpleasance” at being Addressed in the Odes, the once celebrated Mr.
Hunt presented to the Authors a bottle of his best “Permanent Ink,” and
the eccentric Doctor Kitchiner sent an invitation to dinner.
From Colebrooke, Lamb removed to Enfield Chase,--a painful operation
at all times, for as he feelingly misapplied Wordsworth, “the _moving_
accident was not his trade.” As soon as he was settled, I called upon
him, and found him in a bald-looking yellowish house, with a bit of a
garden, and a wasp’s nest convanient, as the Irish say, for one stung
my pony as he stood at the door. Lamb laughed at the fun; but, as the
clown says, the whirligig of time brought round its revenges. He was
one day bantering my wife on her dread of wasps, when all at once he
uttered a horrible shout,--a wounded specimen of the species had slily
crawled up the leg of the table, and stung him in the thumb. I told
him it was a refutation well put in, like Smollett’s timely snowball.
“Yes,” said he, “and a stinging commentary on Macbeth--
“_By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes._”
There were no pastoral yearnings concerned in this Enfield removal.
There is no doubt which of Captain Morris’s Town and Country Songs
would have been most to Lamb’s taste. “The sweet shady side of
Pall-Mall,” would have carried it hollow. In courtesy to a friend, he
would select a green lane for a ramble, but left to himself, he took
the turnpike road as often as otherwise. “Scott,” says Cunningham, “was
a stout walker.” Lamb was a _porter_ one. He calculated Distances,
not by Long Measure, but by Ale and Beer Measure. “Now I have walked
a pint.” Many a time I have accompanied him in these matches against
Meux, not without sharing in the stake, and then, what cheerful and
profitable talk! For instance, he once delivered to me orally the
substance of the Essay on the Defect of Imagination in Modern Artists,
subsequently printed in the Athenæum. But besides the criticism, there
were snatches of old poems, golden lines and sentences culled from rare
books, and anecdotes of men of note. Marry, it was like going a ramble
with gentle Izaak Walton, minus the fishing.
To make these excursions more delightful to one of my temperament,
Lamb never affected any spurious gravity. Neither did he ever act the
Grand _Senior_. He did not exact that common copy-book respect, which
some asinine persons would fair command on account of the mere length
of their years. As if, forsooth, what is bad in itself, could be the
better for keeping; as if intellects already _mothery_, got anything
but _grandmothery_ by lapse of time! In this particular, he was opposed
to Southey, or rather (for Southey has been opposed to himself) to his
Poem on the Holly Tree.
“So serious should my youth appear among
The thoughtless throng;
So would I seem among the young and gay
_More grave than they_.”
There was nothing of Sir Oracle about Lamb. On the contrary, at sight
of a solemn visage that “creamed and mantled like the standing pool,”
he was the first to pitch a mischievous stone to disturb the duck-weed.
“He was a boy-man,” as he truly said of Elia; “and his manners lagged
behind his years.” He liked to herd with people younger than himself.
Perhaps, in his fine generalizing way, he thought that, in relation
to Eternity, we are all contemporaries. However, without reckoning
birthdays, it was always “Hail fellow, well met;” and although he
was my elder by a quarter of a century, he never made me feel, in
our excursions, that I was “taking a walk with the schoolmaster.”
I remember, in one of our strolls, being called to account, very
pompously, by the proprietor of an Enfield Villa, who asserted that my
dog Dash, who never hunted anything in his dog-days, had chased the
sheep; whereupon, Elia taking the dog’s part, said very emphatically,
“Hunt _Lambs_, Sir? Why he has never hunted _me_!” But he was always
ready for fun, intellectual or practical--now helping to pelt D*****,
a modern Dennis, with puns; and then to persuade his sister, God bless
her! by a vox et preterea nihil, that she was as deaf as an adder.
In the same spirit, being requested by a young Schoolmaster to take
charge of his flock for a day, “during the unavoidable absence of the
Principal,” he willingly undertook the charge, but made no other use
of his brief authority than to give the boys a whole holiday.
As Elia supplied the place of the Pedagogue, so once I was substitute
for Lamb himself. A prose article in the Gem, was not from his hand,
though it bore his name. He had promised a contribution, but being
unwell, his sister suggested that I should write something for him, and
the result was the “Widow” in imitation of his manner. It will be seen
that the forgery was taken in good part.
“DEAR LAMB,--You are an impudent varlet, but I will keep
your secret. We dine at Ayrton’s on Thursday, and shall try to
find Sarah and her two spare beds for that night only. Miss M. and
her tragedy may be d---- d, so may _not_ you and your rib. Health
attend you.
Yours,
T. HOOD, Esq.
“_Enfield._
“Miss Bridget Hood sends love.”
How many of such pleasant reminiscences revive in my memory, whilst
thinking of him, like secret writing brought out by the kindly warmth
of the fire! But they must be deferred to leave me time and space
for other attributes--for example, his charity, in its widest sense,
the moderation in judgment which, as Miller says, is “the Silken
String running through the Pearl Chain of all Virtues.” If he was
intolerant of anything, it was of Intolerance. He would have been (if
the foundation had existed, save in the fiction of Rabelais,) of the
Utopian order of Thelemites, where each man under scriptural warrant
did what seemed good in his own eyes. He hated evil speaking, carping,
and petty scandal. On one occasion having slipped out an anecdote,
to the discredit of a literary man, during a very confidential
conversation, the next moment, with an expression of remorse, for
having impaired even my opinion of the party, he bound me solemnly to
bury the story in my own bosom. In another case he characteristically
rebuked the backbiting spirit of a censorious neighbour. Some Mrs.
Candour telling him, in expectation of an ill-natured comment, that
Miss ***, the teacher at the Ladies’ School, had married a publican,
“Has she so?” said Lamb, “then I’ll have my beer there!”
As to his liberality in a pecuniary sense, he passed (says Lamb of
Elia) with some people, through having a settled but moderate income,
for a great miser. And in truth he knew the value of money, its power,
its usefulness. One January night he told me with great glee that
at the end of the late year he had been able to lay by--and thence
proceeded to read me a serio-comic lecture on the text, of “Keep
your hand out of your Pocket.” The truth is, Lamb, like Shakspeare
in the universality of his sympathies, could feel, pro tempore, what
belonged to the character of a Gripe-all. The reader will remember his
capital Note in the “Dramatic Specimens,” on “the decline of Misers,
in consequence of the _Platonic_ nature of an affection for Money,”
since Money was represented by “_flimsies_,” instead of substantial
coin, the good old solid sonorous dollars and doubloons, and pieces
of eight, that might be handled, and hugged, and rattled, and perhaps
kissed. But to this passion for hoarding he one day attributed a new
origin. “A Miser,” he said, “is sometimes a grand personification of
Fear. He has a fine horror of Poverty. And he is not content to keep
Want from the door, or at arm’s length,--but he places it, by heaping
wealth upon wealth, _at a sublime distance_!” Such was his theory: now
for his practice. Amongst his other guests, you occasionally saw an
elderly lady, formal, fair, and flaxen-wigged, looking remarkably like
an animated wax doll,--and she did visit some friends or relations,
at a toyshop near St. Dunstan’s. When she spoke, it was as if by an
artificial apparatus, through some defect in her palate, and she had a
slight limp and a twist in her figure, occasioned--what would Hannah
More have said!--by running down Greenwich Hill! This antiquated
personage had been Lamb’s Schoolmistress--and on this retrospective
consideration, though she could hardly have taught him more than to
read his native tongue--he allowed her in her decline, a yearly sum,
equal to--what shall I say?--to the stipend which some persons of
fortune deem sufficient for the active services of an all-accomplished
gentlewoman in the education of their children. Say, thirty pounds per
annum.
Such was Charles Lamb. To sum up his character, on his own principle
of antagonism, he was, in his views of human nature, the opposite of
Crabbe; in Criticism, of Gifford; in Poetry, of Lord Byron; in Prose,
of the last new Novelist; in Philosophy, of Kant; and in Religion, of
Sir Andrew Agnew. Of his wit I have endeavoured to give such samples as
occurred to me; but the spirit of his sayings was too subtle and too
much married to the circumstances of the time to survive the occasion.
They had the brevity without the levity of wit--some of his puns
contained the germs of whole essays. Moreover, like Falstaff, he seemed
not only witty himself but the occasion of it by example in others.
“There is M******” said he, “who goes about dropping his good things
as an Ostrich lays her eggs, without caring what becomes of them.” It
was once my good fortune to pick up one of Mr. M.’s foundlings, and it
struck me as particularly in Lamb’s own style, containing at once a
pun and a criticism. “What do you think,” asked somebody, “of the book
called ‘A Day in Stowe Gardens?’” Answer: “A Day ill-bestowed.”
It is now some years ago, since I stood with other mourners in Edmonton
Church Yard, beside a grave in which all that was mortal of Elia was
deposited. It may be a dangerous confession to make, but I shed no
tear; and scarcely did a sigh escape from my bosom. There were many
sources of comfort. He had not died young. He had happily gone before
that noble sister, who not in selfishness, but the devotion of a
unique affection, would have prayed to survive him but for a day, lest
he should miss that tender care which had watched over him upwards
from a little child. Finally he had left behind him his works, a rare
legacy! and above all, however much of him had departed, there was
still more of him that could not die--for as long as Humanity endures
and man owns fellowship with man, the spirit of Charles Lamb will still
be extant!
* * * * *
On the publication of the Odes and Addresses, presentation copies were
sent at the suggestion of a friend, to Mr. Canning and Sir Walter
Scott. The minister took no notice of the little volume; but the
novelist did, in his usual kind manner. An eccentric friend in writing
to me, once made a number of colons, semicolons, &c., at the bottom of
the paper, adding
“And these are my points that I place at the foot,
That you may put stops that I can’t stop to put.”
It will surprise no one, to observe that the author of Waverley had as
little leisure for punctuation.
“SIR WALTER SCOTT has to make thankful acknowledgments for
the copy of the Odes to Great People with which he was favoured
and more particularly for the amusement he has received from the
perusal. He wishes the unknown author good health good fortune
and whatever other good things can best support and encourage his
lively vein of inoffensive and humorous satire.
_Abbotsford Melrose 4th May_”
The first time I ever saw the Great Unknown, was at the private view of
Martin’s Picture of “Nineveh,” when by a striking coincidence, one of
our most celebrated women, and one of our greatest men, Mrs. Siddons
and Sir Walter Scott, walked simultaneously up opposite sides of the
room, and met and shook hands in front of the painting. As Editor of
the Gem, I had afterwards occasion to write to Sir Walter, from whom I
received the following letter, which contains an allusion to some of
his characteristic partialities:--
“MY DEAR MR. HOOD,--It was very ungracious in me to leave
you in a day’s doubt whether I was gratified or otherwise with
the honour you did me to inscribe your Whims and Oddities to me I
received with great pleasure this new mark of your kindness and it
was only my leaving your volume and letter in the country which
delayed my answer as I forgot the address.
I was favoured with Mr. Cooper’s beautiful sketch of the
heart-piercing incident of the dead greyhound which is executed
with a force and fancy which I flatter myself that I who was in my
younger days and in part still am a great lover of dogs and horses
and an accurate observer of their habits can appreciate, I intend
the instant our term ends to send a few verses if I can make any
at my years in acknowledgment. I will get a day’s leisure for this
purpose next week when I expect to be in the country. Pray inform
Mr. Cooper of my intention though I fear I will be unable to do
anything deserving of the subject.
I am very truly your obliged humble servant,
WALTER SCOTT.”
_Edinburgh 4 March._
At last, during one of his visits to London, I had the honour of a
personal interview with Sir Walter Scott at Mr. Lockhart’s in Sussex
Place. The number of the house had escaped my memory; but seeing a fine
dog down an area, I knocked without hesitation at the door. It happened
however to be the wrong one. I afterwards mentioned the circumstance
to Sir Walter. It was not a bad point, he said, for he was very fond
of dogs; but he did not care to have his own animals with him, about
London, “for fear he should be taken for Bill Gibbons.” I then told him
I had lately been reading the Fair Maid of Perth, which had reminded
me of a very pleasant day spent many years before, beside the Linn of
Campsie, the scene of Conachar’s catastrophe. Perhaps he divined what
had really occurred to me,--that the Linn, as a cataract, had greatly
disappointed me; for he smiled, and shook his head archly, and said
he had since seen it himself, and was rather ashamed of it. “But I
fear, Mr. Hood, I have done worse than that before now, in finding a
Monastery where there was none to be found; though there was plenty
(here he smiled again) of Carduus Benedictus, or Holy Thistle.”
In the meantime he was finishing his toilet, in order to dine at the
Duchess of Kent’s; and before he put on his cravat I had an opportunity
of noticing the fine massive proportions of his bust. It served
to confirm me in my theory that such mighty men are, and must be,
physically, as well as intellectually, gifted beyond ordinary mortals;
that their strong minds must be backed by strong bodies. Remembering
all that Sir Walter Scott had done, and all that he had suffered,
methought he had been in more than one sense “a Giant in the Land.”
After some more conversation, in the course of which he asked me if I
ever came to Scotland, and kindly said he should be glad to see me at
Abbotsford, I took my leave, with flattering dreams in my head that
never were, and now, alas! never can be, realised!
* * * * *
And now, not to conclude in too melancholy a tone, allow me, gentle
reader, to present to you the following genuine letter, the names,
merely, for obvious reasons, being disguised.
_To T. Hood, Esq._
“Thou’rt a comical chap--so am I; but thou possessest brains
competent to write what I mean;--I don’t--therefore, Brother Comic,
wilt thou oblige me (if ’twas in my power I would you)--I’ll tell
you just what I want, and no more. Of late, Lord *** has been
endeavouring to raise a body of yeomanry in this county. Now
there’s a man at Bedfont--a compounder of nauseous drugs--and
against whom I owe a grudge, who wishes to enter, but who’s no
more fit for a fighter than I for a punster. Now if you will just
give him a palpable hit or two in verse, and transmit them to me
by post, directed to A. B., Post Office, Bedfont, your kindness
shall ever be remembered with feelings of the deepest sincerity and
gratitude. His name is ‘JAMES BOOKER, CHEMIST,’ Bedfont
_of course_. If you disapprove of the above, I trust you will
not abuse the confidence placed in you, by ‘SPLITTING.’
You’ll say, how can I?--by showing this letter to him. He knows the
handwriting full well--but you’ll not do so, I hope. Perhaps, if
you feel a disposition to oblige me, you will do so at your first
convenience, ere the matter will be getting stale.
“Yours truly,
“A. B.
“Perhaps you will be kind enough to let me have an answer from you,
even if you will NOT condescend to accede to my wish.
“Perhaps you’ve not sufficient particulars. He’s a little fellow,
flushed face, long nose, precious ugly, housekeeper as ugly, lives
between the two Peacock Inns, is a single man, very anxious to get
possession of Miss Boltbee, a ward in Chancery with something like
£9000 (WISH he may get it), is famous for his Gout
Medicine, sells jalap (should like to make him swallow an ounce),
always knows other people’s business better than his own, used
to go to church, now goes to chapel, and in the whole, is a great
rascal.
“Bedfont is thirteen miles from London.”
[Illustration: PRESERVED IN SPIRITS.]
[4] To borrow an example from fiction, there is that slave of
circumstances, Oliver Twist. There are few authors whom one
would care to see running two heats with the same horse. It
is intended therefore as a compliment, that I wish Boz would
re-write the history in question from page 122, supposing his
hero NOT to have met with the Artful Dodger on his road to seek
his fortune.
[5] In justice to the Society, it ought to be recorded, that two
of its members have since distinguished themselves in print: the
authoress of “London in the Olden Time,” and the author of a
“History of Moral Science.”
[6] There was a dash of ink in my blood. My father wrote two novels,
and my brother was decidedly of a literary turn, to the great
disquietude for a time of an anxious parent. She suspected him,
on the strength of several amatory poems of a very desponding
cast, of being the victim of a hopeless attachment; so he was
caught, closeted, and catechised, and after a deal of delicate
and tender sounding, he confessed, not with the anticipated
sighs and tears, but a very unexpected burst of laughter, that
he had been guilty of translating some fragments of Petrarch.
[7] A cottage of Ungentility, for it had neither double coach-house
nor wings. Like its tenant, it stood alone. He said, glancing at
the Paternoster one, that he did not like “the Row.” There was
a bit of a garden, in which, being, as he professed, “more fond
of Men Sects than of Insects,” he made probably his first and
last observation in Entomology. He had been watching a spider
on a gooseberry bush, entrapping a fly. “Good God,” he said, “I
never saw such a thing! Directly he was caught, in her fatal
spinning, she darted down upon him, and in a minute turned him
out, completely lapped in a shroud! It reminded me of the Fatal
Sisters in Gray.”
[8] A sort of rheumatic celerity, of which Sir W. Scott’s favourite
dramatiser seemed to have a very accurate notion. Those who
remember “poor Terry’s” deliberate delivery, will be able to
account, for the shout of laughter which once rang throughout
the Adelphi green-room, at his emphatic manner of giving,
from a manuscript-play, the stage direction of “Enter----,
with--a--lack--ri--ty!”
[9] As regards his Unitarianism, it strikes me as more probable
that he was what the unco guid people call “Nothing at all.”
which means that he was every thing but a Bigot. As he was in
spirit an Old Author, so was he in faith an Ancient Christian,
too ancient to belong to any of the modern sub-hubbub-divisions
of--Ists,--Arians, and--Inians.
[10] Talking of Poetry, Lamb told me one day that he had just met
with the most vigorous line he had ever read. “Where?” “Out of
the Camden’s Head, all in one line--
“To _One Hundred Pots of Porter_ £2 1 8”
[11] Somebody happened to say that the Peasant ought to figure in
the Percy Anecdotes, as an example of uncultivated genius. “And
where will they stick me?” asked Clare, “will they stick me in
the instinct?”
[12] I once cut out from a country newspaper what seemed to me a very
good old English poem. It proved to be a _naturalization_, by
Cary, of a French Song to April, by Remy Belleau.
[13] The father expressing an uncertainty to what profession he
should devote a younger Cary, Lamb said, “Make him an
Apothe-Cary.”
[14] Unable to make any thing “like a likeness” of a sitter for the
purpose, I have a sort of Irish faculty for taking faces behind
their backs. But my pencil has not been guilty of half the
personalities attributed to it; amongst others “a formidable
likeness of a Lombard Street Banker.” Besides that one would
rather draw on a Banker than at him, I have never seen the
Gentleman alluded to, or even a portrait of him in my life.
[15] On a visit to Norfolk, I was much surprised to find that Opium,
or Opie, as it was vulgarly called, was quite in common use in
the form of pills amongst the lower classes, _in the vicinity
of the Fens_. It is not probable that persons in such a rank
of life had read the Confessions,--or, might not one suspect
that as Dennis Brulgruddery was driven to drink by the stale,
flat and unprofitable prospects of Muckslush Heath, so the
Fen-People in the dreary foggy cloggy boggy wastes of Cambridge
and Lincolnshire, had flown to the Drug for the sake of the
magnificent _scenery_ that filled the splendid visions of its
Historian?
[Illustration: A LEADING ARTICLE.]
THE CARNABY CORRESPONDENCE.
THERE is no estimate more ludicrous than that which is formed by
unthinking persons of the powers of Authors. Thus when a gentleman
has once written a Book, say, on Domestic Medicine, it is popularly
supposed that he is competent to compose a work on any subject
whatever, from Transcendental Philosophy down to Five Minutes’ Advice
on the Teeth. Something of the kind is observable in the Autobiography
of Brasbridge, the Silversmith, of Fleet Street, who tells us that
after the publication of his Memoirs, he was hailed by a fellow-citizen
with “So you have written a book!--why, for the future I shall call you
Shakspeare!” as if the recorder of a set of “fiddle-headed” anecdotes
became, ipso facto, on a par with the creator of Othello. For another
instance I can refer to my own humble experience. The anti-antiquarian
nature of my literary researches is sufficiently well known; yet it
did not prevent a grave retrospective-looking gentleman from one day
concluding an account of some inedited architectural remains near
Whitehall, with--“I wonder now that _you_, as a writer, have never
taken up the subject!” The worthy F.A.S. might as well have suggested
a plot for a Farce to Sylvanus Urban;--but such is the general
opinion of the universality of a genius that prints. Bearing this
tendency in mind, it will not seem so extraordinary that the following
correspondence should be placed in the hands of the Editor of the Comic
Annual by a respectable tradesman, who affirmed with tears in his eyes,
that “it was a grave subject, worthy of the serious consideration of
the Public.”
[Illustration: THERE’S A DEFICIENCY ON THE QUARTER.]
No. I.--_To Mister_ BENJAMIN CARNABY, _7, Brigantine Row,
Deptford, London. (With Spead.)_
DEER BRUTHER,
I am trully sory to arrow up yure relativ felings But it do seam to Me
as my deer Bob is beeing shamfully Iltretid at his Skull. Inclosd is
the pore fellars too letters the last jist cum to hand, And were sich
a blo to fathurly felings I have nevver bean my hone Man evver sins.
Id appeer he hav wel ni bin Starvd. Prays God his pore Muther is coald
under the Hearth, it wud spile the rest of hir hashes if so be she
cood read his tail of pewtered meet. If she ad a delite hear abuv it
were childrins legs strate And there Bellis well fild partickly groin
up Yuths--and She wood av run creazy to think of the Constitushun bein
rewind for evver and ever with turnd tabil Bear. And you too I no you
will blead at art for the mizriz of yure pore Nevy But I hop you will
old up under it tho it be as it war a thunderboult on us boath. In
respex of Larning it seam his mind hav bin reglectid to be nurrisht up
as well as is bodely Fram even to cumpare the too Leters my Bob rite a
site better gud Inglish nor his Master witch to my mind He mite hav dun
grates at Home in loo of paing sich mints of Munny for Skulling But wat
disapints me Most next to his fammishin is the Greek and Lattin as I
did sit my Art upon to hav won clasicle Skollard branch in the famely.
Them too hushers desarves a wiping at a carts tale, and so do that
mawks with hir luv gammux in juvenal presents Much gud it wur my sendin
him abuv a duzzin mile off from Lunnun to uncorrup his morrils. Has for
the Dockter I cud find in my hart to strip his dipplomer over his years
with my hone ands wen I think that in loo of techin the yung idear how
to shut he has mayhap stunted the Pore boys groth for his lif to cum.
But overpourin felings forebids my drawin moor picters of Bobs suffrin.
I have had no stummuck ever sins the Post nockt me down with the Nus.
But it wood not be becummin a parrent and a Farthe to be revealing in
lucksriz wile the Sun of his hone lines ware revealing in fliblod beaf
and vargis. To be sure these is felings that you as an unmarred man
cant enter into at full lenth, but as hone Unkil by fleash and blud you
will enter into the hard boord partickly as yure hone coarse of lif as
had its scrimps and cum shorts and tort you what it is to be pincht
in youre Fud. Wi i mite as well hav sent him to a short communing
Yorksheer Skull at twenty pound per anum a yeer and had his close
chuckt in to his Bed and bord. In the interium I hav forwardid him a
cumfitting letter with a Won Pun Not to treet himself to sumat moor
stayin and suportin nor stal pastery. But I do hop and beg Deer Bruther
to hav your sentimints on the cas as you be moor caperble to advize
me than I am, and not to delay riting if so be yure officious dutis
purvent pearsonally quitin the yard. I wud have tuck a place on the
Rumfud Stag and sit off at wons but Gowt forebid my cotching and so do
Missis Rumsey for as yusial wen my felings is Frustratid all my Nervs
is flone to my Fut. Pore Missis Rumsey simperthizes at evvery thing and
is quit as upsit in her sperrits for as she say altho but Houskeper
her Bowls yarns to Bob all as one with an hone hoffspring. She do say
as Bobs a littel piggin brested and shoes simtoms of pullmary afection
she trembil for fear pourness of blud sows seeds of sumthink fatle in
his lunges. Indeed her mutherly hangsity offen remind a lass of her
as lies volting in All allows barking. With witch I conclud with all
brutherly luv, hopping to here by return of Poast. I no you seldim or
nevver anser peples favers partickly mine but I do hop as this hear is
a matter of vittle importins you will devot a few minuets to
Yure luving but aflicted Bruther
JOHN CARNABY.
P. S. If so be you thort best to poshay off xpressivly to Bob, watever
is disburstid out of pockit my Puss shall kiver the hole. Praps you
may lick him to be tuck away at wons for it wud be a thowsend pitis to
brake his sperrit and he is rayther tender artid as you may gudge by
wat he rite of his pore late muther. Well, hevin nose I war never in
faver of turning Cots but if so be they wood reform the Skulls I wood
jine the Wigs.
ENCLOSURE, No. I.--_To_ JOHN CARNABY, _Esquire.
Number 49, Polyanthus Place, Mile End Road, London._
HONOURED PARENT,
As the sight of his native Terra Firma to the hardy Mariner on the
pathless waste of the vast expanse of Ocean, so are the filial
affections of a Son and School boy to inform we break up on Friday the
21st Instant; when I hope to find Yourself, comprising all my Relations
and Friends, enjoying that greatest of Blessings, a state of salubrity.
When we add to this the pleasing Sensation of scholastic Duties
fulfilled with Attention, Industry, and Diligence, accompanied by a
preponderating Progress in all juvenile Studies, Objects, and Pursuits,
a sanguine expectation is indulged that the parental Sentiments of
Satisfaction will be spontaneously conferred on the present half
Year, participating however with a due regard to health, comfort,
and morals. Indeed it would be precocious to anticipate otherwise
by the unrelenting Vigilance and Inculcation evinced by our Guide,
Philosopher, and Friend, Doctor Darby and Assistants, as likewise the
more than maternal Solicitude betrayed by Mrs. Doctor D. who begs Leave
to cordially unite with the Same in Respectful Compliments.
I am happy to say the improvement I have made in the Latin and
Greek Tongues, including French and Italian, has been very great
and such as I trust to deserve and obtain his Parent’s, Master’s,
Friend’s and Wellwisher’s warmest approbation and Esteem. And this
Reflection will be enhanced to reflect, that by being impressed upon
by pious, virtuous, and loyal Principles, every juvenile Member of the
Establishment is a firm and uncompromising Supporter and Defender of
King, Church and State.
I will now conclude by giving my best Love to all Relations and
Friends, and accept the Same from
Honoured Parent,
Your Dutiful and Affectionate Son,
ROBERT CARNABY.
[Illustration: DRAWING UP ARTICLES OF SEPARATION.]
ENCLOSURE No. II.--_From the Same to the Same._
DEAR FATHER,
I hope you wont be angry at writing of my own Acord and if you like
you may stop the postage out of what you mean to give me next time,
but the other letter was all a flam and didnt speak my real mind. The
Doctor frumpt it all up out of his own head, and we all copied it out
for all our fathers. What I want to tell you is as the holidays is so
nigh, I do wish you would make up your mind for me to be took away for
good and all. I dont like the victuals for one thing and besides I am
allmost sure we are not well teached. The table beer always gives me
the stomach ake if I don’t tie a string tight round it and I only wish
you see some of Mr. Murphy’s ruling when he smells so of rum Another
thing is the batter puddings which the fellows call it putty, because
it sticks pains in our insides, and sometimes we have stinking beef.
Tom Spooner has saved a bit on the sly to show parents, but it’s so
strong we are afeard it wont keep over the three weeks to the holidays,
and we are treated like gally slaves, and hare and hounds is forbid
because last time the hare got up behind the Chelmsford Coach and went
home to his friends in Leadenhall Market. As for sums we know the
ciphering Master has got a Tutors Key because theres a board at the
bottom of his desk comes out with a little coaxing, and more than that
hes a cruel savage and makes love to Masters daughter, and shes often
courted in the school room because its where her father don’t come
so much as anywheres else. The new Footman is another complaint. The
Doctor dont allow him nothing a year for his wages except his profits
out of the boys with fruit and pastery, and besides being rotten and
stale, hes riz burnt almonds twice since Micklemas. Then we are almost
quite sure Monseur Le Smith dont know Italian at least we have always
observed he never talks to the image boys, and the old Cook never
favours no one now except Carter with sop in pans ever since his Mother
come to see him. And thats why I do hope at my next school you will
raise my pocket money, its unpossible to tip handsome out of sixpence
a week. Jackson saved enough to buy a Donkey and then divided him into
shares and I had a shilling share but the Doctor were so unjust as
seize on him altho there was no law agin bringing asses to the school.
It was the same on Guy Fox day with our squibs and rockets which we
was more mortified to hear them going off after we were in bed. I am
certain sure we should have had a barring out in our school room long
and long ago only the Doctor hardly ever wants to come in. Thats the
way the ushers do just as they like in school hours and Mr. Huckings
does a leathersellers bookkeeping and Mr. Snitch makes poetry for the
newspapers. Its not my fault then if I am backwards in my Greek and
Latin though I have got a Prize for Spelling and Grammer but we all
have prizes for something to please our parents when we go home. The
only treat we have is reddishes out of the garden when they are got old
and burning hot and popgunny and them wont last long as masters going
to keep pigs. I suppose then we shall have measely pork to match the
stinking beef. The fellows say its because the Doctor swops Stokes’s
schooling agin butchers meat and as the edication is so very bad old
Stokes on his part wont send in any better quality. Thats whats called
mutual accommodation in the newspapers. Give my love to Mrs. Rumsey
with thanks for the plum cake only next time more sweetmeat, and say
I am almost sure I sometimes sleep in a damp bed. I am certain sure
Mrs. Rumsey would advise you the same as I do, namely for me to be
took away, without running more risks, if it was only for fear of Mac
Kenzie, for hes a regular tyrant and hectors over us all. Hes three
parts a nigger and you cant punch his head so as to do any good, and
only last Monday he was horsed for wanting to googe little Jones’s eyes
out and for nothing at all but just looking at his towel to see if the
black come off. I am ready to take my drop down dead if it is not all
faithfully true, Mac Kenzie and the beef and the Footman and all, and
I do hope you will trust to my word and be agreeable to my offer to be
took away and I do hope it will be before next Saturday for that’s Mr.
Paynes visiting day, the Drawing Master as I call him, but some of the
fellows have nick named him Sinbad because he hunted the elephants so
for their teeth. Philip Frank says theres a capital school at Richmond
where the Master permits fishing and boating and cigars and gunpowder
and poney chaises for only sixty guineas a year. I often think if my
poor dear late Mother was alive it is just the genteel sort of School
she would like me to be finished off at. But thats as you prefer and
if you will only promise upon your honour to remove me I wont run
away. I forgot to say I have very bad head akes sometimes besides the
stomach akes and last week I was up in the nussery for being feverish
and spotty, and I had to take antimonious wine but nothing made me sick
except the gruel. Precious stuff it is and tastes like slate pencil
dust and salt. I was in great hopes it was scarlet fever or something
catching that I might be sent home to you, but the fisician said my
rash was only chickings or stinging nettles. Altogether I am so unhappy
at not getting on in my learning that I do beg and pray to be took
away, and I will be very dutiful and grateful all the rest of my days.
Do, pray, do, and consider me down on my bended knees. And I will wish
you every comfort in life if you will only provide for mine, and I will
pray for your gout to go away for ever and ever, and then I will nurse
your last days and be such a good son to you as never was except me.
And in that case I owe three shillings to the footman and shouldn’t
like to leave the school in debt. I shall expect to see you come in all
the coaches that go the road or at least that you will fetch me in a
letter, and if I am disappointed I really do believe I shall go off my
head or something. With which I remain
Dear Father,
Your dutiful and affectionate Son,
ROBERT CARNABY.
[Illustration: THE OLD ORIGINAL RAILWAY.]
No. II.--_To Mister_ JOHN CARNABY, _Number 49, Polyanthus
Place, Mile End, London._
DEAR BROTHER,
This is to acknowledge the favour of your family letter with
enclosures, which came to hand as pleasant and welcome as a 4-inch
shell, that is no great treat of itself, and discharges a worse lot
of botheration from its inside. Between both I got as Port Royal a
headache as a man need desire from a bottle of new rum, for which, as
it’s not unbrotherly to swear at a nevy, “dear Bob” and his school be
d--d. As to my not answering letters, I _always_ do, provided they are
either saucy or challenging; in which case, like answering a broadside,
it’s a point of duty and honour to return as good as you get;--but for
swopping sweet civil lollipop letters, lick for lick, it’s more than I
would do with any female alive, let alone a man. And when yours are not
lollipopping, they’re snivelling, or else both together, as the case
is now. However blood’s blood: and so for once I will commit what you
want, rather than accept your invite, and go up to help you and that
old dry red cow, Mother Rumsey, to chew the cud of the matter all over
again by word of mouth. As for harrowing up my feelings, or ploughing
them up either, thank my stars it’s a stiffer soil than that comes to.
Why, my feelings are as tough--and not without need--as a bull-beef
steak fresh killed, and take quite as much pitching into before they’re
as tender as you suppose. Likely it is, that a man who has rammed his
head, as I have in Africa, into a stuck camel for a secondhand swig at
his cistern, would come within sixty degrees of the notion of pitying
a lubberly school-boy for having as much as ever he could swill of
sour swipes! Then for bad food, the stinkingest beef I ever met with
was none to be had, good or bad, except the smell of the empty barrel.
That’s something like what you call being pincht in my fud; and so it
was I reckon when I gave my watch, and a good seven shilling piece
besides, for about a pound of pork cartridges. So I’m not going to
pipe my eye at dear Bob’s short commons neither. It’s all very well
for pap-boating mothers to admire fat babbies while they’re on the
lap; but the whole human breed would be spoiled, if Mother Nature
did not unspoil it again by sending us now and then to the School
of Adversity, without a knife and fork and a spoon. I came in for a
quarter’s learning there myself, in the Desart as aforesaid, and one of
the lessons I learnt was from the ostriches; namely, when you can’t
get a regular cargo of food, you must go in ballast with old shoes,
leather caps, or any other odd matters you can pick up. There’s nothing
in life like bringing chaps up hardy, if they’re to stand the hammering
we’re all born to, provided we are born alive. I once heard a clever
Yankee arguing to the same point. “Rear up your lads,” says he, “like
nails; and then they’ll not only go through the world, but you may
clench ’em on t’other side.” And for my part, if I was a father, which
thank God I am not, to my knowledge, I would mark down a week of Banyan
days to every month in the Almanack, just to accustom the youngsters to
take in and let out their bread bags, till it came natural; like the
Laps and Esquimaux, who spend their lives in a feast and a fast, turn
and turn about, whereby their insides get as elastic as India rubber,
and accommodate themselves to their loading, chock full or clean, as
falls out. I’ve known the time I would have given all my prize-money
for a set of linings of the same conveniency, as when it was coming
to the toss-up of a cowry whether I was to eat Tom Pike, or Tom Pike
was to eat me. Just read the North Pole Voyages, and you will see that
pampering bellies is not the exact course to make Captain Backs. So
for all that’s been made on that tack, hitherto, you owe nothing but a
higher rating to Doctor Darby, provided there’s any step above Doctor
in his service; I’ll even go so far as stand my share towards a bit
of plate to him, for not making my nevy a loblolly milk-sop. That’s
my notion about hard fare. To be sure there was Mother Brownrigg was
hung for going a little too near the wind in her ‘prentices’ insides;
but if the balance was squared, a few of the other old women would be
run up to the yard-arm, for slow poisoning the rising generation with
sugar-plum cakes and kickshaw tarts. And that your dear Bob has got
a rare sweet tooth of his own is as plain as the Pike of Teneriffe,
for it sticks out like a Barbary wild boar’s tusks all through his
precious complaints. Whereby you had better clap a stopper on in time,
unless mayhap you want him to grow up in the fashion, which seems
now-a-days for our young men to know, and think, and talk, aye and
write too, about kitchen craft,--with their _pully olays_ and _volley
vongs_--as if they was so many cook’s mates at a French hotel. There’s
no disputing likings, but rather than be such a macaroni dishclout
dandy, as delicate as a lap-dog, I’d be a turnspit’s whelp at once, and
sit up on my hind legs a-begging for the sop in the pan. Now if you’re
for his being one of those unabled-bodied objects of creation, I’ve
no more to say; for you have got the right bearings, and have only to
stand on till you bring dear Bob and Molly Coddle into one. But if so
be on the contrary you have gumption enough to want to claw off that
point, then down helm at once, and cut Mother Rumsey adrift, plum
cakes and all. I’ve long had on my mind to drop you a word of advice
against that old catamaran, who knows fast enough that two bears’ heads
are never so likely to rub together as when they’re a-licking the same
cub. By the cub I mean my nevy, and the two old ones are you and Mother
R. Besides it’s been my observation through life. Many’s the young man
and woman will live for years together in the same house, or make the
India voyage together in the same ship, without hooking on, or even
coming in sight of such a notion; but neither I, nor anybody else, ever
saw two old ones, he and she, in the like case, without their coming at
long and at last to a splice in church. So it is with an old cat and
dog, that while they had a tooth in their heads could hardly abide in
the same parish, whereas when they get on the superannuated list, you
will see them as thick as thieves, and messing together in the same
dish. The philosophy of it is more than I pretend to know, unless it be
they’re past fighting, and fit for no active sort of work;--but so it
is, as sure as the sea is salt. You had best then part company at once,
if you don’t want to see dear Bob mast-headed up to the back garret, or
cooped down in the coal-cellar, on monkey’s allowance; such being the
first steps a stepmother always takes in any story-book I ever read.
I’m for my nevy having fair-play after all. So as I’ve subscribed to
the bit of plate to Dr. Darby for case-hardening the fellow’s carcass,
you may set me down towards the spitefullest boatswain’s cat that ever
was handled, in case it turns out he has neglected the boy’s mind.
I’ve seen a man seized up for a much smaller offence than crimping and
inveigling a long hundred of lads at a time to a Sham Abram school, and
swindling them out of the best part of the property about them, namely
their juvenile time. It is only a streak above kidnapping, seeing that
for any profit in learning the youngsters might as well spend their
best years in the Plantations. Not but that Parents deserve a cobbing
themselves for putting a boy under a master without asking to look at
his certificates. As for the Latin and Greek, mayhap they’re no loss
to take on about. The dead and gone tongues for a tradesman’s son,
that’s going behind a counter, is much of a muchness with fitting up a
Newcastle collier’s cabin after the pattern of a Leith smack’s; only
that the gilding and polishing may be grimed and grubbed off again in
the course of trade. Still, considering they were paid for as work
done, in common honesty my nevy ought to have had them put in his
head; or at least something in lieu, such as Navigation or the like.
His own mother tongue is quite a different matter; and thereupon I’ll
give you my mind, upright and downright, of the two School-letters.
To be sure the Doctor likes weight of metal, and fires away with the
high-soundingest words he can get, whereby his meaning is apt to loom
bigger than it is, like a fishing-boat in a fog; and where there’s
such a ground swell of language, a seaman is apt to think there’s no
great depth of ideas; but bating that, there’s nothing to shake a
rope’s end at, but quite the reverse, especially as to teaching the
youngsters to give three cheers for their king and country. Now, Dear
Bob’s letter-work on the other hand, with its complaints of hard fare,
is only fit to be sung by a snivelling Swiss beggar boy to his hurdy
gurdy; besides many a chafe in the grammar and orthography, and being
writ in such a scrambling up and down fist as a drunken purser might
scrawl in a gale of wind. Now it’s my opinion a landsman that hasn’t
his hands made as hard as horn with hauling home sheets nor his fingers
as stiff and sticky as pitch can make ’em, has it in his power to write
as fine penmanship as copperplate except for the want of good will. So
that the fault may be set down to my nevy’s own account, and mayhap
many of the rest, for no doubt there are skulkers at school as well as
on board ship. My advice then is this, namely, just throw a shot across
Dr. Darby’s forefoot, to let him know you mean to overhaul him, and
demand a sight of the school log, and so forth; by which you will have
satisfaction one way or another; and putting the case he has gone to
leeward of his duty, why, then come hammer and tongs, and blaze away at
him to your heart’s content. The next step in course will be to take my
nevy from under his orders, and find him a berth in a well officered
ship; and I am ready so far to do an uncle’s part by the lad, as help
to look out for a proper well-appointed craft. That’s my advice whether
you steer by it or not--and so no more at present, and not sorry to
belay--from
Dear John, Your loving Brother,
BEN CARNABY.
[Illustration: LAYING DOWN THE LAW.]
No. III.--_To Mr._ BENJAMIN CARNABY, _Brigantine Row,
Deptford, London._
DEER BRUTHER,
This is to acnolidge the faver of your verry hash letter as I am
complld to call it, both as regard deer Bob and that verry wurthy sole,
pore Mrs. Rumsey. I am sory to find you can bare a grug so long, for
I am shure she is too obleeging and civil spokin to hav disagred to
your smokin in the parler if so be she had none you maid it sich a
int. As for her inwigglin me into becummin a step farther to my one
child watever old brut bares and cats and dogs may do, I hop my Virtu
will purtect me from infiddlety to a former ti. As for pore Bob, he
hav no more sweat toth then all boys is born with, and if he do rite
with a bad hand, i nevver cud rite any grate shacks myself on an emti
stummach. But that’s what you can’t or won’t inter into, no more than
I can inter into cammil’s insids or hostridges eating their old shues
and lether caps. In regard to yure advis thanking you all the sam,
but meen to foller my hone, not but wat it ware nateral for you to
recumend acording to yure one line of lif, to wom fiting and dueling
is sekonand nater. As such hammer and tonges and blazin away pistles
wood be quit in yure spear, but as for my wantin satisfaxion of Doctor
Darby, and shuting his fore feet, or his hind feet ether, or inded any
wares els, is moor than I coud promis tho no dout ment kindly, but I
am nun of yure wingin amers. Besids being agin the Bibil and Gospil
and only fit for gentilmen born. Still I tak as frendly ment, as well
as yure offir to git yure nevy a siteation on bord ship witch wood
be a shure way to hurry my dissent to the Tom. The see always was a
haw to my mind, and if it litind or a grate hevvy gal came, I shod
transpire with frite; or be thinkin on fogie nites of the ship lossing
her way and gittin out of her depth. Howsumever I feal grateful for the
horible idear, tho I cant xcept, and in meen time have rit to Dr. D.
to remonsterit and ask him to say candiddle wether he hav starvd deer
Bob and ruind his mind or no. I faver with a coppy of mine and will
foreward hisn wen it cum, and as my gowt is mendin, mayhap I may go
down to rumfud sum of thes days, and luck into every think with my one
ize.
I am Deer Benjamin
Yure luving Bruther
JOHN CARNABY.
[Illustration: BUTT AND BEN.]
(Copy.)
_To Dr._ DARBY _Socratis Hous School Establismint, Rumfud
Essex._
DOCTER DARBY SUR.
If so be a farther and a Parrint may tak so grate a libberty, its my
wish to rite about my Sun. Not bein a skollard, oing to neglected
genus in yuth, I am uncompitent to be a Gudge and war indust to sho
the skull letter to my Bruther Benjamin, of the late Rial Navy who had
moor buck larning for his Sheers, besids seein forren parts and he
do say wot give grate concern to All as is concarned, namely my Suns
edication is fur from a thurro nollige of evvery thing, and partickly
his hostifografy or summat to that effect. As such is hily blammabil
to yureself or tooters whos provins war to propergit wot they had in
their hone heds into them under them, insted of witch his unkel say
he hav bin teecht moor ignorans then anny think else. Witch is verry
ard considring mints of munny lad out, and hevin nose I have not bin
sparring with him, but pade away at a grate rat, ever sins he war
britchd. Hunderds cant kiver him from fust to last And nothin but
blited hops arter all. Cirkimstancis purvented my having moor nor one
acomplishment and that war my farthers bisness, but tho brort up hill
miself I no the Valley of edicashun. Warefor if it be no offens I wish
to no candiddle from your hone Mouth wether you hav so unedicatted
him as his Unkil suspex. At sam tim will esteam a faver to no if he
continny in gud helth witch ware always a littel dellicat and pecking,
but I trust as how Rumfud hare and gud beaf and muttin and holesum wit
bred and milk hav made him quit fat. His pore late muther lickwise
made a pint of gud unturnd tabel bear, as all assiduities is injurus
to yuth. As she used to say, pore sole, fud and flanning saves fisick.
Allso I hop and trust you disalow the boys of advanst years tirenizing
over the weekly wons, or savedge tooters as is apt to sho lickings and
dislickings. The tooters morrils in course is a car not overluckd, but
sweetharting demand constant vigilings to gard agin its cumming in
clandestiny where it ort not. Mrs. Rumsey also begs to apollogiz for
naming damp beds, but in coarse Misses Doctor Darby have a muther’s
feelings about damp lining for boys boddis. All witch will give grate
sattisfaxun to here, as in case of the revers parrintel duty will feal
hobbligated to remov afore the mischief go to fur. I shall luck eggerly
for your anser and trust you will embrace all the queerys. I ashore it
will giv grate pleshure not to hav to remove my custom, with witch and
respective compliments,
I remane Dr. Darby Sur
Your verry humbel Servant
JOHN CARNABY.
[Illustration: “WE DON’T KNOW WHAT WE CAN DO TILL WE TRY.”]
[Illustration: “THERE’S A RIGHT WAY AND A WRONG FOR EVERY THING.”]
No. IV.--_To Mister_ BENJAMIN CARNABY, _Brigantine Row,
Deptford._
DEER BENJAMIN,
Inclosd is Dr. Darby’s explainative Not, witch for anny thing I no to
the contrairy is evvery thing as we cud luck for, without going into
the retales. He apear to hav no douts of a misscomprehenshun on our
parts, witch prove us to be boath in the rong as will be a grate comfit
to you and deer Benjamin.
Yure luving Bruther
JOHN CARNABY.
(THE ENCLOSURE.)--_To_ JOHN CARNABY, _Esquire._
DEAR SIR,
In ancient Greece and Rome, so celebrated for their classical
Attainments, it would have been considered derogatory to the Academical
Dignity, for Scholastic Discipline to be subject to Animadversion from
a Civic Character, professedly unconversant with Polite Literature in
all its Branches. As the Principal of a Pedagogical Establishment, I
might, therefore, objurgate with Propriety any irrelevant Discussion
to be deprecated from such a superfluous source. Conscious, however,
of standing on the Basis of an undeniable Prospectus, which professes
to embrace Universal Knowledge, throughout the Circle of the Arts and
Sciences, I am prepared to assert that a more Comprehensive System
of Education could not be devised than that which is ascribed to
the Establishment of Socrates House. If further Testimonials were
necessary, I might triumphantly appeal to the Mental Cultivation of
flourishing Members of Society, evinced in the successful Pursuit of
Affluence, in the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, so advantageous
to the Commerce, Wealth, and Power, of the United Kingdom. Such
Testimonies, it is presumed, are sufficiently obvious to the most
Unprejudiced Mind, to demand those unerring Principles of fostering
Talent, inviting Emulation, and stimulating Enquiry, combined with
Moral, Intellectual, and Dietetical qualities, such as to command
the unreserved Approbation and Confidence of all parties engaged in
the important Task of Juvenile Tuition. Trusting that the Prolixity
of this explanatory Statement will propitiate the most Paternal
Solicitude, with sentiments in accordance with the rapid Progress of
Human Civilization, permit me to subscribe myself, with every feeling
of respect,
Dear Sir,
Your most obedient, faithful, humble servant,
SIMON DARBY, LL.D.
[Illustration: WIGWAM.]
No. V.--_To Mr._ JOHN CARNABY, _49, Polyanthus Place, Mile End
Road, London._
DEAR BROTHER,
If I was to write what comes uppermost, I should stand a chance of a
place I won’t name. But you always was a you-know-what, and as the
proverb says, there’s never a one like you now you are old. As for the
school, it’s the nest of a land pirate; and for any good to his mind,
dear Bob might as well be in the Hulks. However it won’t do to let you
go and make a so-and-so of yourself all over the country--whereby,
luckily for you, there’s an old shipmate of mine laid up at Rumford,
and so I can kill him and my Nevy with the same stone. So let Mister
Doctor Darby look out for squalls, and that’s all from
Your loving Brother,
BEN CARNABY.
[Illustration: “BLESS ME, HOW BALD YOU ARE!”
“YES--I WAS PLUCKED AT COLLEGE.”]
No. VI.--(_From the Same to the Same._)
DEAR BROTHER,
This is to say I made this place, namely Rumford, yesterday morning
about 10 A.M., and immediately bore away to Socrates House,
and asked for my nevy,--but you shall have it logged down all fair and
square.
[Illustration: “IN FOR A PENNY--IN FOR A POUND.”]
Well, after a haul at the bell, and so forth, I was piloted into a
room, on the ground tier, by the footman, and a pastryfaced son of a
land cook he looked sure enough. Where, as soon as may be, Mrs. Doctor
Darby joins company, a tight little body enough, all bobbing up and
down with courtesys like the buoy at the Nore, and as oily tongued as
any rat in the Greenland Docks. By her own account, she rated a step
above Mother to six score of boys, big and little, and every man jack
of them more made of, and set store by, than if they had been parts
of her own live stock. All which flummery would go down with you, and
the marines, mayhap, but not with old sailors like me. As for dear
Bob, she buttered him of both sides, thick and threefold, as the best,
sweetest, darlingest, and what not young gentleman of the whole kit,
besides finding out a family likeness between him and his uncle, which
if it’s any feature at all, is all my eye. Next she enquired after
you, the worthiest parent she ever knew, not excepting her own father,
whereby I blest my stars you were not within hail; or you would have
been flabbergasted in no time, with your eyes running like scuppers,
and your common senses on their beam ends. At long and last in comes my
Nevy himself, as smooth and shining as a new copper; whereby says she,
“I hope you will excuse untidiness, and so forth, because of sending
for him just as he stood.” That’s how he came no doubt in his Sunday’s
breeches; besides twigging the wet soap-suds in his ears. “Here my
sweet love,” she sings out, “here’s your dear kind uncle so good as to
come to enquire after your welfare.” So dear Bob, heaves ahead, and
gets a kiss, not from me tho, and a liquorish lozenge for what she
called his nasty hack. Nothing however but a colic with parched peas,
as he owned to afterwards. “Now, then, Nevy,” says I, “what cheer--how
do you like your berth?” when up jumps Madam like a scalded cat; and
no or yes, I must drink the favour of a glass of Sherry Rank Cape,
John, as ever was shipped. Then Master Robert, bless him, must have a
leetle glass too, but provided I approve, and a ration of sweet cake.
Whereby says she, “Now I will leave you to your mutual confidences”--as
looked all fair and above board enough, if I had not made out a foot
near the door. And in the twinkling of a handspike in sails Dr. Darby
himself, with as many scrapes to me as if I was Port Admiral; and as
anxious about my old gout,--for I’ve got an easy shoe for a bunion--as
if he’d been intimate with it in my great-grandfather’s time. Well, we
palavered a bit about the French news, and the weather, and the crops,
whatever you like, let alone book learning; but that was not my course,
and impatient to see Tom Pike, besides, so I ran slap aboard him at
once with an ask to see the school. As I looked for, he was took all
aback; however Madam wasn’t thrown so dead in the wind, but jumped up
to the bell tackle, and after a bit of a whisper with the servant, we
got under way for the school; but contrived to land somehow in the
kitchen, with a long row of quartern loaves drawn up on a dresser to
receive us, like a file of marines. Then Madam begins to spin a long
yarn about plain food, but plenty of it, for growing youths--dear Bob’s
very lathy, John, for all that--and then comes the Doctor’s turn to
open with a preachment on animal foods, and what will digest, and what
won’t; tho’ for my own part, I never met with any meat but would do it
in time, more or less. So by way of clapping a stopper I made bold to
remind that time is short tho’ life is long, and thereby luffing slap
up to my Nevy, “Bob,” says I, “what’s the variation of the compass?”
So Master Bob turns it about a bit, and then says he, “Why, it’s one
leg shorter than t’other.” Which is about as nigh it, Brother, as you
are to Table Bay! And how it gave the Doctor a bad fit of coughing,
which his wife caught of him as natural as if it had been the hooping
sort--at last says she, “Maybe Master Robert has not progressed yet
into navigation.” “Maybe not, Ma’am,” says I, “and so we’ll try on
another tack--Nevy, what’s metaphysics?” “Brimstone and Treacle,”
says Bob, as ready as gunpowder, and the lady looked as satisfied as
Bob did--but the Doctor had another bad fit, and good reason why, for
there’s no more physic in metaphysics than a baby might take in its
pap. By this time we were going up stairs, but lay-to awhile alongside
a garden pump on the landing, to have a yarn about dowsing glims,
and fire guards, and going the rounds at night; and as dear Bob hung
astarn, I yawed, and let fly at him again with “What’s religion?” “The
colic on Sundays,” says he, as smart as you like; tho’ what he meant
by colic the Old Gentleman knows. However both the Doctor and Madam
pulled a pleasant face at him, and looked as pleased as if he had found
out the longitude; but that was too fine weather to last, for thinks
I, in course he can carry on a little further on that board, so says
I, “What’s the main-top-gallant rule of Christianity?” “Six weeks at
Christmas,” says he, as bold as brass from getting encouraged before.
So you see, John, he don’t know his own persuasion. In course we were
all at wry faces again; but the Doctor had the gumption to shove his
out of a window, and sing out an order to nobody in the back yard. As
for Madam, she shot ahead into the sleeping rooms, where I saw half
a hundred of white dimity cots, two warming-pans, and nine clothes
baskets--Master Robert’s berth among the rest. Next we bore away
by a long passage to the kitchen again, where two rounds of boiled
beef had been put to officer the quartern loaves, and so through the
washery and pot-and-pannery into the garden ground, where I came in
for as long a yarn about the wholesomeness of fresh vegetables and
salads, as if the whole crew of youngsters had been on the books with
the scurvy. From the cabbages we got to the flowerbeds; and says the
Doctor, “I don’t circumscribe, or circumvent, one or t’other; I don’t
circumvent my pupils to scholastical works, but encourage perusing the
book of Nature.”--“That’s very correct, then, Doctor,” said I, “and
my own sentiment exactly. Nevy, what’s Natural Philosophy?”--“Keeping
rabbits,” says Bob; which sounds likely enough, but it’s not the thing
by sixty degrees. I can’t say but I felt the cats’-paws coming over my
temper; but I kept it under till we fetched the paddock, to look at the
cows; and that brought up another yarn about milk-dieting; and says
Madam, “when summer comes, our Doctor is so good as to permit the young
gentlemen to make his hay.”--“No doubt alive, Ma’am,” says I; “saves
hands, and good fun too, eh, nevy?--What’s Agriculture?” However this
time dear Bob chose to play sulky, and wouldn’t answer good or bad;
whereby the Doctor crowds up, with a fresh question. “Now then, Master
Robert,” says he pretty sharp, “I will ask you something you _do_
know. What is Algebra,--Al--gebra?”--“Please Sir,” says Bob, “it’s a
wild donkey all over stripes.”--“There’s a dear boy!” cries Madam, the
more fool she; but old Darby looked as black as thunder at midnight.
“I’m afraid,” says he, letting go the toplifts, as one may say, of his
eyebrows; “I’m afraid there has been a little slackness here with the
cat; but, by your leave, Sir, and so forth, I will investigate a little
into it myself. Now Master Robert, take a pull at your mental tackle,
for I’m going to overhaul your Mathematics:--How do you describe a
triangle?”--“Please Sir,” says Bob, “it’s the thing that tingle-tangles
to the big drum.” Well, there was the devil to pay again, and no pitch
hot! Old Darby looked as if he meant either to drop down dead on the
spot of apoplexy, or to murder dear Bob; he swelled and reddened up
so about the wattles without hoisting out a word. For my own part,
nevy as he was, I couldn’t help serving him out a back-handed slap
of the head, and then I turned-to at the schoolmaster. “So, Mister
Doctor,” says I, “this is what you call a liberal education in your
manifest?”--“Sir,” says he, looking as stiff as a corporal just made,
“whatever your, some cursed long hard word may be, I cannot consider
myself liable for the lagging astern of, I must say, the dullest sailor
in my whole convoy.”--“Why, blood and thunder!” said I, for old Nick
could not have helped it--“you told me that Bob, my nevy there, was the
handiest and smartest of the whole kit!”--“That was _me_, Sir,” says
the lady hauling in between us--“and then I only spoke as to temper,
as Greek and Latin are beyond a female’s provinces”--which was true
enough; so I felt bound to beg her pardon, which was granted: and
we had smooth water again till we neared the school-room. Now then,
thought I, look out for squalls, for my mind was made up to stand no
nonsense from the petty officers, that is to say, gentlemen ushers. So
I ranged up alongside the most mathematical looking one I could pick
out, by way of having a bout with him at trigonometry; but he chose
to be as shy, and deaf and dumb, as a Gibraltar monkey just grabbed.
“With submission, my good Sir,” says the Doctor, putting in his oar,
“Mr. Huckin may consider it a work of supereror-something, and a
going beyond ourselves, to re-examine him after the very satisfactory
certificates that satisfied _me_ myself.”--“That’s to say,” says I,
“in plain English, that I’m to get nothing but what I can screw out
of my nevy?”--“My dear Sir,” says the Doctor, “you misconstruct me
entirely--the whole of the juvenile pupils are open to candid scrutiny.
Suppose we begin with the classics. Master Bush, Sir, you will English
me _hic_, _hac_, _hoc_.”--“This, that, and t’other,” says Master Bush;
no great shakes of an answer, I guess, but it seemed to serve for a
come-off. Then came my turn, so I asked who was the discoverer of
America? and may I never break biscuit again, if he didn’t say “Yankee
Doodle!” Well, to cut off the end of a long yarn, this was as good as
there was to be got out of the best of them. One told me that Guy Fox
found out gunpowder; and another that a solar eclipse was along of the
sun’s standing in its own light. What else I might have learned, that
I never knew before, must be left over for a guess; for in the middle
of the next ask, it was all hats aloft! and three cheers for a half
holiday; but if I had any hand in begging it, may I die ashore in a dry
ditch! However that was too much of a dog’s trick to be took quietly,
so I prepared a broadside, with a volley of oaths to it, by way of
small arms; but before I could well bring it to bear, the Doctor hauls
out his watch, and says he, “It’s extremely bad luck, but there’s a
voting this morning for a parish beadle, and I make a point not to let
my private duties get to windward of my public ones.” So saying, with
a half-and-half sort of a bow, to me, he cut and run; Madam getting
athwart hawse so as to cover his getting off. In course it was no use
to waste speech upon her; but I made bold to d--n the whole covey of
undermasters, in the lump, as a set of the sharkingest, loggerheaded,
flute-playing, skulking, lubberly sons of grinning weavers and tailors
that ever broke bread. So the finish over all is, that I took my nevy
away, traps and all; and not an hour too soon; and with Bob in tow
I made Tom Pike’s, who was as glad to see his old messmate as I was
to see him; and what’s more, when he heard the bit of a brush I had
enjoyed, he informed me that Doctor Darby, LL.D., and what not, was all
one and the same with Darby the shipchandler, that went to pieces down
at Wapping. You see then, as the chaplain says, that all’s for the best
either here or hereafter; and so no more, till Monday, when I shall
bring my nevy Bob to you, to make what you will of him, which I hope
will be as like a man as possible. If otherwise, I won’t promise not to
change my name by act of parliament, and so be no relation to dear Bob,
nor to you neither; and that’s the real mind of
Your loving Brother,
BEN CARNABY.
[Illustration: RECRIMINATION.]
[Illustration: BLIND HOOKEY.]
A RISE AT THE FATHER OF ANGLING.
THE memory of Izaak Walton has hitherto floated down the stream of
time without even a nibble at it; but, alas! where is the long line
so pure and even that does not come sooner or later to have a weak
length detected in it? The severest critic of Molière was an old
woman; and now a censor of the same sex takes upon herself to tax the
immortal work of our Piscator with holding out an evil temptation to
the rising generation Instead of concurring in the general admiration
of his fascinating pictures of fishing, she boldly asserts that the
rod has been the spoiling of her child, and insists that in calling
the Angler gentle and inoffensive, the Author was altogether wrong in
his _dubbing_. To render her strictures more attractive she has thrown
them into a poetical form; having probably learned by experience that
a rhyme at the end of a line is a very taking bait to the generality
of readers. Hark! how she rates the meek Palmer whom Winifred Jenkins
would have called “an angle upon earth!”
_To Mr._ IZAAK WALTON, _at Mr._ MAJOR’S _the
Bookseller’s in Fleet Street._
Mr. Walton, it’s harsh to say it, but as a Parent I can’t help
wishing
You’d been hung before you publish’d your book, to set all the
young people a fishing!
There’s my Robert, the trouble I’ve had with him it surpasses a
mortal’s bearing,
And all thro’ those devilish angling works--the Lord forgive me for
swearing!
I thought he were took with the Morbus one day, I did with his nasty
angle!
For “oh dear,” says he, and burst out in a cry, “oh my gut is all
got of a tangle!”
It’s a shame to teach a young boy such words--whose blood wouldn’t
chill in their veins
To hear him, as I overheard him one day, a-talking of blowing out
brains?[16]
And didn’t I quarrel with Sally the cook, and a precious scolding I
give her,
“How dare you,” says I, “for to stench the whole house by keeping
that stinking liver?”
’Twas enough to breed a fever, it was! they smelt it next door at
the Bagots’,--
But it wasn’t breeding no fever--not it! ’twas my son a-breeding of
maggots!
I declare that I couldn’t touch meat for a week, for it all seemed
tainting and going,
And after turning my stomach so, they turned to blueflies, all
buzzing and blowing;
Boys are nasty enough, goodness knows, of themselves, without
putting live things in their craniums;
Well, what next? but he pots a whole cargo of worms along with my
choice geraniums.
[Illustration: “THE GREAT GLOBE ITSELF, YEA, ALL WHICH IT INHERIT,
SHALL DISSOLVE!”]
And another fine trick, tho’ it wasn’t found out, till the housemaid
had given us warning,
He fished at the golden fish in the bowl, before we were up and down
in the morning.
I’m sure it was lucky for Ellen, poor thing, that she’d got so
attentive a lover.
As bring her fresh fish when the others deceas’d, which they did a
dozen times over!
Then a whole new loaf was short! for I know, of course, when our
bread goes faster,--
And I made a stir with the bill in my hand, and the man was sent off
by his master;
But, oh dear, I thought I should sink thro’ the earth, with the
weight of my own reproaches,
For my own pretty son had made away with the loaf, to make pastry to
feed the roaches!
I vow I’ve suffered a martyrdom--with all sorts of frights and
terrors surrounded!
For I never saw him go out of the doors but I thought he’d come home
to me drownded.
And, sure enough, I set out one fine Monday to visit my married
daughter,
And there he was standing at Sadler’s Wells, a-performing with real
water.
It’s well he was off on the further side, for I’d have brain’d him
else with my patten,
For I thought he was safe at school, the young wretch! a studying
Greek and Latin,
And my ridicule basket he had got on his back, to carry his fishes
and gentles;
With a belt I knew he’d made from the belt of his father’s
regimentals--
Well, I poked his rods and lines in the fire, and his father gave
him a birching,
But he’d gone too far to be easy cured of his love for chubbing and
perching.
One night he never came home to tea, and altho’ it was dark and
dripping,
His father set off to Wapping, poor man! for the boy had a turn for
shipping;
As for me I set up, and I sobbed and I cried for all the world like
a babby,
Till at twelve o’clock he rewards my fears with two gudging from
Waltham Abbey!
And a pretty sore throat and fever he caught, that brought me a
fortnight’s hard nussing,
Till I thought I should go to my grey-hair’d grave, worn out with
the fretting and fussing;
But at last he was cur’d, and we did have hopes that the fishing was
cured as well,
But no such luck! not a week went by before we’d have another such
spell.
Tho’ he never had got a penny to spend, for such was our strict
intentions,
Yet he was soon set up in tackle agin, for all boys have such quick
inventions:
And I lost my Lady’s Own Pocket Book, in spite of all my hunting and
poking,
Till I found it chuck full of tackles and hooks, and besides it had
had a good soaking.
Then one Friday morning, I gets a summoning note from a sort of a
law attorney,
For the boy had been trespassing people’s grounds while his father
was gone a journey,
And I had to go and hush it all up by myself, in an office at Hatton
Garden;
And to pay for the damage he’d done, to boot, and to beg some
strange gentleman’s pardon.
And wasn’t he once fished out himself, and a man had to dive to find
him,
And I saw him brought home with my motherly eyes and a mob of people
behind him?
Yes, it took a full hour to rub him to life--whilst I was
a-screaming and raving,
And a couple of guineas it cost us besides, to reward the humane man
for his saving,
And didn’t Miss Crump leave us out of her will, all along of her
taking dudgeon
At her favourite cat being chok’d, poor Puss, with a hook sow’d up
in a gudgeon?
And old Brown complain’d that he pluck’d his live fowls, and not
without show of reason,
For the cocks looked naked about necks and tails, and it wasn’t
their moulting season;
And sure and surely, when we came to enquire, there was cause for
their screeching and cackles,
For the mischief confess’d he had picked them a bit, for I think he
called them the hackles.
A pretty tussle we had about that! but as if it warn’t picking
enough,
When the winter comes on, to the muff-box I goes, just to shake out
my sable muff--
“O mercy!” thinks I, “there’s the moth in the house!” for the fur
was all gone in patches;
And then at Ellen’s chinchilly I look, and its state of destruction
just matches--
But it wasn’t no moth, Mr. Walton, but flies--sham flies to go
trolling and trouting,
For his father’s great coat was all safe and sound, and that first
set me a-doubting.
A plague, say I, on all rods and lines, and on young or old watery
danglers!
And after all that you’ll talk of such stuff as no harm in the world
about anglers!
And when all is done, all our worry and fuss, why, we’ve never had
nothing worth dishing;
So you see, Mister Walton, no good comes at last of your famous book
about fishing.
As for Robert’s, I burnt it a twelvemonth ago; but it turned up too
late to be lucky,
For he’d got it by heart, as I found to the cost of
Your servant,
JANE ELIZABETH STUCKEY.
[Illustration: THERE’S NEVER A WHALE WITHOUT A BLUBBER.]
[16] Chewing and spitting out bullock’s brains into the water for
ground-bait is called _blowing of brains_. Salter’s Angler’s
Guide.
RIGHT AND WRONG.
A SKETCH AT SEA.
THE Rights of Man,--whether abstract or real, divine or vulgar, vested
or contested, civil or uncivil, common or uncommon--have been so fully
and so frequently discussed, that one would suppose there was nothing
new to be felt or expressed on the subject. I was agreeably surprised,
therefore, during a late passage from Ireland, to hear the rights of
an individual asserted in so very novel a manner as to seem worthy of
record. The injured party was an involuntary fellow-passenger; and
the first glance at him as he leisurely ascended the cabin stairs,
bespoke him an original. His face, figure, dress, gait, ad gestures,
were all more or less eccentric; yet, without any apparent affectation
of singularity. His manner was perfectly earnest and business-like,
though quaint. On reaching the deck, his first movement was towards the
gangway, but a moment sufficed to acquaint him with the state of the
case. The letter-bags having been detained an hour beyond the usual
time of departure, the steam had been put on at a gallop, and Her
Majesty’s mail packet the Guebre had already accomplished some hundred
fathoms of her course. This untoward event, however, seemed rather
to surprise than annoy our Original, who quietly stepped up to the
Captain, with the air of demanding what was merely a matter of course:
“Hollo, Skipper! Off she goes, eh? But you must turn about, my boy, and
let me get out.”
[Illustration: “HE’S A-GOING TO TAKE A TOWER.”]
“Let you get out!” echoed the Skipper, and again repeating it, with
what the musicians call a staccato--“Let--you--get--out!”
“Exactly so. I’m going ashore.”
“I’m rather afraid you are _not_, Sir,” said the Skipper, looking
decidedly serious, “unless you allude to the other side!”
[Illustration: AN AQUATIC TRIP.]
“The other side!” exclaimed the Oddity, involuntarily turning towards
England. “Poo! poo! nonsense, man,--I only came to look at your
accommodations. I’m not going across with you--I’m not, upon my word!”
“I must beg your pardon, Sir;” said the Captain, quite solemnly. “But
it is my firm opinion that you _are_ ‘going across.’”
“Poo, poo! all gammon.--I till you I am going back to Dublin.”
“Upon my soul, then,” said the Skipper, rather briskly, “you must swim
back like a grampus, or borrow a pair of wings from the gulls.”
The man at the helm grinned his broadest at what he thought a good joke
of his officer’s--while the Original turned sharply round, parodied a
hyena’s laugh at the fellow, and then returned to the charge.
“Come, come, Skipper--it’s quite as far out as I care for--if you want
to treat me to a sail!”
“Treat you to a sail!” roared the indignant officer. “Zounds! Sir, I’m
in earnest--as much in earnest as ever I was in my life.”
“So much the better,” answered the Original. “_I’m_ not joking myself,
and I have no right to be joked upon.”
“Joke or no joke,” said the Captain--“all I know is this. The mail bags
are on board--and it’s more than my post is worth to put back.”
“Eh? What? How?” exclaimed the Oddity, with a sort of nervous dance.
“You astonish me! Do--you--really--mean to say--I’m obligated to
go--whether I’ve a right or not?”
“I do indeed, Sir--I’m sorry for it, but it can’t be helped. My orders
are positive. The moment the mail is on board I must cast off.”
“Indeed!--well--but you know--why, that’s _your_ duty, not _mine_. _I_
have no right to be cast off! I’ve no right to be here at all. I’ve no
right to be anywhere--except in Merrion Square!”
The Captain was bothered. He shrugged up his shoulders, then gave a
low whistle, then plunged his hands in his pockets--then gave a loud
order to somebody, to do something, somewhere or other; and then began
to walk short turns on the deck. His Captive, in the meantime, made
hasty strides towards the stern, as if intending to leap overboard; but
he suddenly stopped short, and took bewildered look at the receding
coast. The original wrong was visibly increasing in length, breadth,
and depth, every minute; and he again confronted the Captain.
[Illustration: DEEP DISTRESS PRODUCED BY MACHINERY.]
“Well, Skipper--you’ve thought better of it--I’ve no right in the
world, have I?--You will turn her round?”
“Totally impossible, Sir--quite out of my power.”
“Very well, very well, very well indeed!” the Original’s temper was
getting up as well as the sea. “But mind, Sir--I protest. I protest
against _you_, Sir--and against the ship--and the ocean, Sir--and
everything! I’m getting further and further out--but, remember, I’ve
no _right_! You will take the consequences. I have no right to be
kidnapped--ask the Crown lawyers, if you think fit!”
After this denouncement, the Speaker began to pace up and down like
the Captain, but at the opposite side of the deck. He was on the boil,
however, as well as the engine,--and every time that he passed near
the man whom he considered as his Sir Hudson Lowe, he gave vent to the
inward feeling in a jerk of the head, accompanied by a short pig-like
grunt. Now and then it broke out in words, but always the same four
monosyllables, “This--is--too--bad”--with a most emphatic fall of the
foot to each. At last it occurred to a stout pompous-looking personage
to interpose as a mediator. He began by dilating on the immense
commercial importance of a punctual delivery of letters--thence he
insisted on the heavy responsibility of the Captain; with a promise
of an early return packet from Holyhead--and he was entering into
a congratulation of the fineness of the weather, when the Original
thought it was time to cut him short.
“My good Sir--you’ll excuse me. The case is nobody’s but my own. _You_
are a regular passenger. You have a right to be in this packet--you
have a right to go to Holyhead--or to Liverpool--or to Gibraltar,--or
to the world’s end--_if--you--like_. But _I_ choose to be in Dublin.
What right have I to be here then? Not--one--atom! I’ve no right to
be in this vessel--and the Captain there knows it. I’ve no right
(stamping) to be on this deck! I have no more right to be tossing at
sea (waving his arms up and down) than the Pigeon House!”
“It is a very unpleasant situation, I allow, Sir,” said the Captain
to the stout Passenger. “But, as I have told the gentleman, my hands
are tied. I can do nothing--though nobody is more sorry for his
inconvenience.”
“Inconvenience be hanged!” exclaimed the Oddity, in a passion at last.
“It is NO inconvenience, Sir! Not--the--smallest. But that
makes no difference as to my being here. It’s that--and that alone,--I
dispute all right to!”
[Illustration: SEA RIDDLE. “DO YOU GIVE IT UP?”]
“Well, but my dear, good Sir,” expostulated the pompous man; “admitting
the justice of your premises, the hardship is confessedly without
remedy.”
“To be sure it is,” said the Captain, “every inch of it. All I can say
is, that the gentleman’s passage shall be no expense to him!”
“Thankee--of _course_ not,” said the Original with a sneer. “I’ve no
right to put my hand in my pocket! Not that I mind expense. But it’s
my right I stand up for, and I defy you both to prove that I have any
right--or any shadow of a right--to be in your company! I’ll tell you
what, Skipper”--but before he could finish the sentence, he turned
suddenly pale, made a most grotesque wry face, and rushed forward to
the bow of the vessel. The Captain exchanged a significant smile with
the stout gentleman; but before they had quite spoken their minds of
the absent character, he came scrambling back to the binnacle, upon
which he rested with both hands, while he thrust his working visage
within a foot of the skipper’s face.
[Illustration: “CHARMING SPOTS ABOUT THIS PART OF THE RIVER.”]
“There, Skipper!--now, Mr. What d’ye call--What do you both say to
_that_? What right have I to be sick--as sick as a dog? I’ve no right
to be squeamish! I’m not a passenger. I’ve no right to go tumbling
over ropes and pails and what not to the ship’s head!”
“But my good Sir,”--began the pompous man.
“Don’t Sir me, Sir! _You_ took your own passage. You have a _right_ to
be sick--You’ve a right to go to the side every five minutes--you’ve a
right to DIE of it! But it’s the reverse with me--I have no
right of the sort!”
[Illustration: “WHAT RIGHT HAVE YOU IN MY STEEL TRAP?”]
“O certainly not, Sir,” said the pomposity, offended in his turn. “You
are indubitably the best judge of your own privileges. I only beg to be
allowed to remark, that where I felt I had so little right, I should
hesitate to intrude myself.” So saying, he bowed very formally, and
commenced his retreat to the cabin, while the Skipper pretended to
examine the compass very minutely. In fact our Original had met with
a chokepear. The fat man’s answer was too much for him, being framed
on a principle clean contrary to his own peculiar system of logic. The
more he tried to unravel its meaning, the more it got entangled. He
didn’t like it, without knowing why; and he quite disagreed with it,
though ignorant of its purport. He looked up at the funnel--and at
the flag--and at the deck,--and down the companion stairs,--and then
he wound up all by a long shake of his head, as mysterious as Lord
Burleigh’s, at the astonished man at the wheel. His mind seemed made
up. He buttoned his coat up to the very chin, as if to secure himself
to himself, and never opened his lips again till the vessel touched the
quay at Holyhead. The Captain then attempted a final apology--but it
was interrupted in the middle.
“Enough said, Sir--quite enough. If you’ve _only_ done your duty,
you’ve no right to beg pardon--and I’ve no right to ask it. All I mean
to say is, here am I in Holyhead instead of Dublin. I don’t care what
that fat fellow says--who don’t understand his own rights. I stick to
all I said before. I have no right to be up in the Moon, have I? Of
course not--and I’ve no more right to stand on this present quay, than
I have to be up in the Moon!”
PATRONAGE.
THE authenticity of the following letter will, probably, be disputed.
The system of patronage to which it refers, is one very likely to shock
the prejudices of serious sober-minded persons, who will naturally
refuse to credit such practical anachronisms as the superannuation of
sucklings. Goldsmith, it is true, has mentioned certain Fortunatuses
as being born with silver ladles in their mouths; but it would be
easier to suppose a child thus endowed with a whole service of plate
than to fancy one invested with a service of years. The most powerful
imagination would be puzzled to reconcile an Ex-Speakership with an
Infant untaught to lisp; or to recognise a retired Bow-street runner
in a nursling unable to walk. The existence of such very advanced
posts for the Infantry is, however, affirmed; but with what truth,
from my total want of political experience, I am unable to judge. Mr.
Wordsworth, indeed, who says that “the child is father of the man,”
seems to aim a quiz at the practice; and possibly the nautical phrase
of “getting a good _birth_,” may refer to such prosperous nativities.
For the rest, grown gentlemen have unquestionably been thrust,
sometimes, into public niches to which they were as ill adapted as
Mr. D.; the measures taken by Patrons not leading invariably, like
Stultz’s, to admirable fits. But the Lady waits to speak her mind.
[Illustration: JACK PUDDING.]
(COPY).
_To the Right Honourable_ LORD VISCOUNT ****, _&c., &c., &c.,
Whitehall._
MAY IT PLEASE YOUR LORDSHIP,
I humbly beg a thousand pardons and apologies for so great a liberty,
and taking up time so valuable to the nation with the present
application. Nothing short of absolute necessity could compel to such
a course; but I make bold to say, a case of greater hardship never had
the honour to be laid before official eyes. My poor husband, however,
is totally unaware of my writing; as he would certainly forbid any such
epistolary step, whether on my part or his own; though in point of
fact the shattered state of his nerves is such as to preclude putting
pen to paper if ever so inclined. But as a wife and a mother, it would
not become me to preserve silence, with my husband perishing by inches
before my eyes; and particularly when a nobleman of your Lordship’s
rank would be sure to sympathise for an unfortunate gentleman, of birth
and breeding, that after waiting above forty odd years for his rights,
has only come at last into a public post that must, and will be his
death!
[Illustration: “ONE BLACK BALL EXCLUDES.”]
To favour with the particulars, my husband has the honour to be
related very distantly to the Peerage; and as Your Lordship knows, it
is the privilege of Aristocracy to provide for all their connexions by
comfortable public situations, which are sometimes enjoyed very early
in life. To such Mr. D. had a hereditary right from his cradle, for
his noble relative the Duke of----, was so condescending as to stand
sponsor by proxy; and instead of the usual spoons, or a silver mug,
made a promise to the Infant of some office suited to its tender age;
for instance a superannuation, or the like, where there is nothing to
do, but the salary to receive. In point of fact, the making the Baby
a retired King’s Messenger was verbally undertaken at the font: but
before the child could come into office His Grace unfortunately went
out of power, by dying of apoplexy, leaving nothing but a promise,
which a new ministry was unjust and ungrateful enough not to make
good. In this shocking manner, Your Lordship, was my husband thrown
upon the world, without proper provision according to his station and
prospects, and was degraded to the necessity of his own exertions for
support, till his fortieth year, when the new Duke thought proper to
stir in his behalf. The truth is, a severe illness had left Mr. D.’s
mind and nerves in such a pitiful shattered state, as to make him unfit
for any business whatever, except public affairs; and accordingly
it became the duty of his friends to procure him some post under
government. So a proper application was made to his Grace, and through
his influence and the fortunate circumstance of an election at the
time, Mr. D. was appointed to the dreadful situation he at present
enjoys. Of course we entirely acquit His Grace, who never set eyes on
my husband in his life, and therefore could not be expected to know
the precise state of his constitution; but I appeal to Your Lordship,
whether it was proper patronage for a man shattered in mind and nerves,
and subject to tremors, and palpitations, and bodily shocks of all
sorts, to be made a Superintendent of Powder-Mills, with the condition
of living attached to the works?
For my own part, Your Lordship, I looked on the Duke’s letter of
congratulations as neither more nor less than my poor husband’s
death-warrant. Indeed he was so dreadfully alarmed himself, as to be
quite distressing to witness. He did nothing, the whole afternoon,
but walk up and down the room, shaking his head at himself in the
looking-glass, or looking up at the ceiling, and muttering, as if he
was already exploding sky high along with the Mills. But a refusal
was out of the question, as it would have afforded his Grace too good
an excuse for neglecting our interests for the future. To aggravate
the case, the very day after our taking possession, there was what is
called a blow at the works, and though so trifling as only to carry a
roof off a shed, it struck a cord on Mr. D.’s nerves that has never
done vibrating ever since. I do not exaggerate to say, that if he had
been struck with the palsy and St. Vitus, both at once, he could not
have showed more corporeal agitation. He trembled in every limb like an
aspen tree; while his eyes rolled, and his head went from side to side,
like the China Mandarin’s; besides scouring up and down stairs, and
rushing out of doors and in again, and trying all the chairs but could
not sit any where, and stamping, and muttering, and dancing about, till
I really expected he would scramble up the walls of the room, and fly
across the ceiling, like our tortoiseshell cat in her fits. If I lived
to Methusalem, Your Lordship, I should never forget it! Unluckily,
being new to his office, a mistaken notion of duty possessed him that
he ought not to quit the spot; indeed he solemnly declared, that if a
blow was to take place in his absence, he would rather commit his own
suicide than face the report of it in the newspapers, which had already
indulged in some seditious sneers at his appointment. All that could be
done, therefore, was to pack off Lucy, and Emily and Eliza, on week’s
visits among friends; myself remaining behind, as a wife’s proper post,
near my poor husband; but on the discomfortable condition of keeping
under ground in the cellar, because gunpowder in convulsions always
blasts upwards. What my feelings were, as we are troubled with rats,
Your Lordship may suppose; particularly when Mr. D. was officially
called upon to inspect the damage; and never shall I forget his gashly
appearance when he returned from his awful task! He was literally as
white as a sheet; and totally incapable to get out a word, till he had
swallowed three whole glasses of brandy! That settled his reason,--but
it was only to tell me that lie had scraped and grazed the skin off
every nubble of his back-bone, by a bad fall from a ladder, which he
had attempted to come down in wooden safety shoes. Such, Your Lordship,
was our miserable day; and it brought as wretched a night. Bed would
not be heard of--and we set up in two easy chairs, shuddering with
fright and cold, being December, and every door and window thrown wide
open, to give a thorough vent through the house, in case of another
shock. For Mr. D. was unfortunately possessed that one blow always
leads to another; and what with fancying flying sparks, for it was
starlight, and sniffing fire, he had worked himself up, before morning,
into a high fever and a light head. The nearest medical man was obliged
to be called in--and he had to give frightful doses of laudanum before
Mr. D.’s nerves could be lulled into a startlish sort of doze;--and at
waking, he was ordered to drink the strongest stimuluses; as indeed are
in use to the present time. But this continual brandy, brandy, brandy,
as Your Lordship knows, is a dreadful remedy; though, as my poor
husband says, he cannot fill up his place without its help. At times
I could almost believe, tho’ I would not breathe such a thing except
to Your Lordship, that between the stimuluses, and the delirium, and
the whole shock to the system, Mr. D. is a little beside his senses.
The mad Doctors do say, that we are all, every one of us, crazy on a
certain subject; and if such is the case, there can be no doubt that my
husband’s weak point is explosions, the extravagance of his precautions
making him an everlasting torment to himself as well as to all about
him. Of course it is to his disadvantage, and magnifies his terrors,
not to have been brought regularly up to the business; not that he
receives much comfort from those who have, for he says custom and
habit have made them so daring and hardened, that they would not mind
playing at snap-dragon in the Magazine, or grinding their knives on the
millstone that crushes the gunpowder into grains.
[Illustration: BAT AND BAWL.]
Since the above accident we have had, thank goodness, no more blows;
but, as Your Lordship is aware, a first impression will stick by us
for all our lives to come. At the best of times, let my husband be
reading, or writing, or eating his dinner, or in bed, or what not, the
exploding notion will come across him like a flash of lightning; as
for instance last Friday was a week. Mr. and Mrs. Trotter had dropped
in to tea; after which we had a rubber; and were all very comfortable,
my husband and me just in the nine holes, when all of a sudden there
was a fall of something and a scream. Up jumps Mr. D. of course,
chucking his cards here, there, and every where, and calling a blow! a
blow!--and as usual Emily and Lucy and Eliza and me rushed off to the
coal-cellar, while Mrs. T. went into a fit. It is true, by the blessing
of Providence, it was only the Housemaid letting her pail fall to
screech at a bat; but what is very disagreeable, the Trotters are old
friends, and have declined to set another foot within our doors. As for
servants, it is next to impossible to keep one about me; and as Your
Lordship’s own Lady will confirm, there is nothing more unpleasant to
a Mistress of a House than to be continually changing. But nine out
of ten prefer giving warning, to attending to so many punctiliums as
are laid down; and those that are willing to stay, break through so
many of the rules, that I am obliged to discharge them, to prevent Mr.
D. being ruffled by doing it himself. Besides it adds considerably to
servants’ work, to have chimneys swept so often as once a week,--and
moreover, Mr. D. insists on keeping all flints and steels, and tinder,
and matches, in his own bed-room, so that the housemaid has to go
to him every morning for her lights. He is just as particular about
extinguishing at night; and I lost the best cook I ever had, through
her sitting up in her bed-room to mend her stays, though she might have
known Mr. D. would come in to put her out--all of which is extremely
unpleasant, and to me in particular.
[Illustration: PRESSURE FROM WITHOUT.]
These, Your Lordship, are serious domestic evils; and I wish I could
say they were confined to the house. But the workmen at the Mills
are so ungrateful as to hate my husband for the over care he obliges
them to take of their own lives; and make no secret of wanting his
removal, by trying to torment him into resignation. Not a day passes
without squabbles about smoking, for Mr. D. is apt to sniff tobacco,
and insists on searching pockets for pipes, which the labourers one and
all decline; and besides scuffles, there have been several pay offs on
the spot. The consequence is ill will and bad blood to their superior,
and it is become a standing practical joke to play upon the family
feelings and fears. I have twice suffered all the disagreeables of
escaping from nothing at all in my night dress, exposed to rheumatism,
and the natives of a low neighbourhood; indeed only last Sunday the
fire bell was rung by nobody, and no wind at all to speak of. Another
party at enmity is Doctor Worral and all his establishment; because Mr.
D. felt it his public duty to have the Doctor up before a Justice, for
allowing his Young Gentlemen to send up fire-balloons. We had one day
of dreadful excitement on my husband’s part, through a wicked little
wretch of a pupil flashing the sunshine into the Mill with a bit of
looking-glass; and of course we are indebted for the Swing letters we
receive to the same juvenile quarters. To make bad worse, Mr. D. takes
them all for Gospel, and the extra watchings, and patrollings, and
precautions, after getting a threatening notice, are enough to wear
out all our hearts. As regards the School, I am ready to agree that it
is too near the Works; and to tell the truth, I shake in my shoes as
much as Mr. D., every fifth of November, at each squib and cracker that
goes off. On the same score our own sons are an everlasting misery to
us when they are at home; which they seldom are, poor fellows, on that
account. But if there is one thing above another that boys delight
to play with, it is gunpowder; and being at the very fountainhead,
Your Lordship may conceive the constant care it is to prevent their
getting at it, and what is worse, not always crowned with success.
Indeed even more innocent playthings are obliged to be guarded against;
for as their father says, “a little brat, just breeched, may strike
light enough to blow up a whole neighbourhood, through only spinning a
peg-tog in a paved yard.”
Such, your Lordship, is our present melancholy state. I have not dwelt,
as I might do, on expenses, such as the dresses that are spoiled in
the coal-cellar; the paying months’ wages instead of warnings; nor
the trays upon trays of glass and china that are chucked down, as the
way the servants always empty their hands when making their escapes
from my husband’s false alarms. Sometimes it’s a chair falls overhead;
or the wind slams the back door; or a smell of burnt wood from the
kitchen; or the ironing-blanket; or fat catched; or fall of soot; or
a candle-snuff; or a smoky coal; or, as I have known before now, only
the smell of the drains; with a hundred other little things that will
spring up in families, take what care you will. I ought not to forget
thunder-storms, which are another source of trouble; for, besides
seeing a dozen fanciful flashes for one real one, it is the misfortune
of Mr. D. not to put faith in conductors, or, to use his own words, “in
Franklin, philosophy, and fiddlesticks,--and a birch rod as likely to
frighten away lightning as an iron one.” In the meantime, through the
constant frights and flurries, I begin to find my own nerves infected
by bad example, and getting into startlish habits; and my daughter
Lucy, who was always delicate, seems actually going into a poor low
way. Agreeable society might do much to enliven our spirits; but my
husband is become very shy of visitors, ever since Captain Gower was so
inconsiderate as to walk in, one foggy night, with a lighted cigar in
his mouth. In fact he quite sets his face against the male sex: for, if
they do not smoke cigars, he says, and carry lucifers, they strut on
their iron heels and flourish about with iron-pointed walking-sticks
and umbrellas. All which, Your Lordship, is extremely hard on myself
and daughters, who, like all young people, are fond of a little gaiety;
but the very utmost they are allowed, is a single quadrille party at
Christmas, and then they are all obliged to dance in list shoes.
[Illustration: A SET-OFF IN ACCOUNT.]
I humbly trust to Your Lordship’s liberality, and goodness of heart, to
view the particulars of the above melancholy statement with attentive
consideration. As it may occur to inquire how we have suffered so
long without complaining, I beg to inform Your Lordship, that, being
such a time of profound peace, we have lived on from year to year in
the hope that no more ammunition would be required; and consequently
the place would become a comfortable sinecure. But it appears that
Spain and Portugal, and other countries, have gone to war on condition
of being supplied with gunpowder; and accordingly, to our bitter
disappointment, the works are as vigorous as ever. Your Lordship will
admit the hardship of such a cruel position to a man of Mr. D.’s very
peculiar constitution; and I do hope and trust will also regard his
interests with a favourable eye, in consideration of his long-standing
claims upon the country. What his friends most desire for him is, some
official situation,--of course with a sufficient income to support
his consequence, and a numerous family,--but without any business
attached to it, or only as much as might help to amuse his mind for
one or two hours in the day. Such a removal, considering my husband’s
unfitness for anything else, could occasion no sort of injury to the
public service; particularly as his vacancy would be so easy to fill
up. There are hundreds and thousands of land and sea officers on
half pay, who have been used to popping, and banging, and blowing up
rockets and bomb-shells, all their lives; and would, therefore, not
object to the Powder Mills; especially as the salary is handsome, with
a rent-free house and garden, coal and candles, and all the other
little perquisites that belong to public posts. As regards ourselves
on the contrary, any interest is preferable to the gunpowder interest;
and I take upon myself to say, that Mr. D. would be most proud and
happy to receive any favour from Your Lordship’s administration; as
well as answering for his pursuing any line of political principles,
conservative or unconservative, that might be chalked out. Any such act
of patronage would command the eternal gratitude of Mr. D., self, and
family; and, repeating a thousand apologies for thus addressing, I beg
leave to remain
Your Lordship’s most humble, obedient, and devoted servant,
LUCY EMILY DEXTER.
P.S.--Since writing the above, I am sorry to inform your Lordship, that
we have had another little blow, and Mr. D.’s state is indescribable.
He is more shaken than ever, and particularly through going all down
the stairs in three jumps. He was sitting reading at the time, and, as
he thinks, in his spectacles; but as they are not to be found, he is
possessed that they have been driven into his head.
[Illustration: LORD, HOW YOU MADE ME JUMP.]
ANIMAL MAGNETISM.
“Charlatan is rising in public favour, and has many _backers_ who
_book_ him to win.”--_Sporting Intelligence._
[Illustration]
OF all the signs of the times--considering them literally as
_signs_, and the public literally as “a _public_”--there are none
more remarkable than the Hahnemann’s Head,--the Crown and Compasses,
devoted to Gall and Spurzheim’s entire,--and the Cock and Bull, that
hangs out at the House of Call for Animal Magnetizers. The last
concern, especially--a daring, glaring, flaring, gin-palace-like
establishment--is a moral phenomenon. That a tap dispensing a raw,
heady, very unrectified article, should obtain any custom whatever,
in a reputed genteel and well-lighted neighbourhood, seems quite
impossible; yet such is the incomprehensible fact;--respectable
parties, scientific men, and even physicians, in good practice in
all other respects, have notoriously frequented the bar, from which
they have issued again, walking all sorts of ways at once, or more
frequently falling asleep on the steps, but still talking such
“rambling skimble-skamble stuff” as would naturally be suggested by
the incoherent visions of a drunken man. Such exhibitions, however are
comparatively rare in London to their occurrence in Paris, which city
has always taken the lead of our own capital in matters of novelty.
It is asserted by a good authority, that at a French concern, in the
same line, no less than seventy-eight “medical men, and sixty-three
other very intelligent individuals,” became thoroughly muzzy and
mystified, and so completely lost all “_clairvoyance_” of their own,
that they applied to an individual to read a book and a letter to
them; to tell them the hour on their own watches; to mention the pips
on the cards; and by way of putting the state of their “intuitive
foresight” beyond question, they actually appealed to the _back_sight
of a man who was sound asleep! A bout on so large a scale has not been
attempted, hitherto, in the English metropolis; but as all fashions
transplanted from Paris flourish vigorously in our soil, it is not
improbable that we may yet see a Meeting of the College of Physicians
rendered very how-come-you-so indeed by an excess of Mesmer’s
“particular.” The influence of such an example could not fail to have
a powerful influence on all classes; and a pernicious narcotic would
come into general use; the notorious effect of which is to undermine
the reason of its votaries, and rob them of their common senses. To
avert such a national evil, surely demands the timely efforts of
our philanthropists; and above all, of those persons who have set
their faces against the Old Tom--not of Lincoln, but of London--and
in their zeal for the public sobriety, aim at even converting the
brewers’ kilderkins into pumpkins.--Seriously, might not the Temperance
Societies extend the sphere of their operations by a whole hemisphere,
and perhaps with equal advantage to mankind, by attacking mental
dram-drinking, as well as the bodily tippling of ardent spirits? The
bewildered rollings, reelings, and idiotic effusions of mere animal
drunkenness can hardly be more degrading to rational human beings,
than the crazy toddlings and twaddlings of a bemused mind, whether
only maudlin with infinitesimal doses of quackery, or rampant to mad
staggers with the _lush_ious compounds and Devil’s Elixirs of the
Mesmerian Distillery. Take the wildest freaks of the most fuddled,
muddled, bepuddled soaker,--such as “trying to light his pipe at
a pump,”--attempting to wind up a plug with his watch-key,--or
requesting, from a damp bed in the gutter, to be tucked in,--and are
they a bit, or a whit, or a jot, or a what-not, more absurd, more
extravagant, or more indicative of imbecility of reason, than the
vagary of a somnambulist, gravely going through the back-gammon of
reading Back’s Journal, or a back-number of the Retrospective Review,
through the back of his head?
[Illustration: “I WAS TOLD I SHOULD FIND HERE SOME TRAP ROCKS!”]
In case the Great Water Companies alluded to should think proper to
adopt the foregoing suggestions, the following genuine letters are
placed very much at their service, as materials to be worked up into
Tracts:--
(COPY.)
_To Mr. Robert_ HOLLAND, _Linen-Draper, No. 194, Tottenham
Court Road, London._
DEAR BOB,
Hoping you are well, and well-doing, we have heard such wonderful
accounts in our parts lately about animal magnetizing, without any
clear notion what it is.
My own notion is, it must be something new of my Lord
Spenser’s--Althorp as was--who was always very curious about his beasts.
Others do say the Duke of Bedford, with a fresh cattle show--nobody
knows.
Now you are just at the fountain-head to learn, and as most of us down
here is more or less engaged in breeding stock, it would be a main
thing to be put up to the secret at its first start.
[Illustration: WRINGING OUT THE OLD YEAR.]
Also whether it is expensive to buy--and who found it out--and if
likely to do away with oilcake and mangel-wurzel, and such like
particulars.
Praise be blest, we are all stout and hearty, except your poor aunt,
who died three year ago. Which is all the news at present from,
Dear Bob,
Your loving Uncle,
REUBEN OXENHAM.
(COPY.)
_To Mr. Reuben_ OXENHAM, _Grazier, Grasslands, near
Lincolnshire._
DEAR UNCLE,
I was agreeably surprised by your breaking silence; for I had made up
my mind you was a distrest farmer gone off swan hopping (excuse the
joke) to Swan River, or to get settled among the Dutch boars and lions
at the Cape of Good Hope. Thank heaven such is not the case; though
damped with my dear aunt’s going off. I little thought, poor soul! the
why and wherefore my goose three Christmases ago was the last! But we
must all be cut off some day or other, which is a religious consolation
for the remnants that are left behind.
[Illustration: SWAN-HOPPING.]
I have examined, as you desired, a sample of animal magnetism; which
turns out to be the reverse of every thing you expect. Indeed such
might have been anticipated by a little forethought on the subject.
There is nothing to describe about animals to such as you, that deal
in them of all qualities; but it is quite likely that you have forgot
all about magnets, since the days of your youth. But perhaps, when
they are named to you, your memory may serve to recollect little bone
boxes, at sixpence a piece, with a blackamoor’s head atop, and a
little bar of philosopher’s steel inside, that points out the north,
and sets a needle dancing like mad. It likewise picks up emery, and
sticks fast to the blade of a knife. But that is all its powers are
competent to--and of course on too small a scale to have any dancing,
or lifting, or sticking effect on objects so big as bullocks, or even
a pig, or a sheep. Accordingly, you will not be surprised to hear that
animal magnetism has nothing at all to do with beasts or load-stones
either, but is all of a piece with juggling, quacksalving, and
mountebanking, such as universal physic, spitting Coventry ribbons,
tumbling, and posturing, thimble-rig, and the like fabrics. One of the
principal tricks is sending people off to sleep against their wills;
not so new a trick though, but it has been heard of years and years
ago at Bow Street; and easy enough to perform any day, with a pint of
porter,--provided one was rogue enough to want to hocus-pocus the money
out of other people’s pockets into one’s own. To come to the point,
there’s an outlandish Count set up in it at the west end; and no doubt
will realise a fortune. He has his carriage-people for customers, as
well as Howel and James; indeed, I have heard of the Somebodies as well
as Nobodies running after common fortune-tellers’ tales, and not too
high to be above going up into their back garrets. Some say he is a
Frenchman, others say a German; but the last for choice, for he smokes
enough to drive all the rats out of the neighbourhood. Besides, the
Germans, I’m told, will believe anything, provided it’s impossible;
which is some excuse for their wanting other people to give the same
long credits; and besides, Germans as well as French, and indeed all
other foreigners, for that matter, though ever such honest people in
the main; yet when they _do_ turn rogues at English expense, they
invariably go more than the whole hog, namely, boar, sow, sucking
pigs and all. So I determined to go wide awake, and to keep my eyes
open, too, by not taking bit or sup in the house, if offered ever
so politely. It is surely not showing disrespect to hospitality, to
object to hocussed victuals and drinks. I might have spared my fears,
however; for there was nothing provided but the ledgerdemain, &c., and
that was charged a guinea for, which you can repay at convenience. I
preferred to see somebody else conjured before me; so another patient
was taken first. She was a fine strapping young woman enough, dressed
half and half between a fine lady and a servantmaid; but as sly-looking
a baggage as you could select from an assortment of gypseys; and unless
her face belied her, quite capable of scratching a Cock Lane ghost.
Indeed something came across me that I had seen her before; and if
memory don’t deceive, it was at some private theatricals contrary to
law. For certain she could keep her countenance; for if the outlandish
figure of a doctor, with his queer faces, had postured, and pawed,
and poked towards _me_, with his fingers, for all the world like the
old game of “My grandmother sends you a staff, and you’re neither to
smile nor to laugh,” as he did to her, I should have bursted, to a
dead certainty; instead of going off, as she did, into an easy sleep.
As soon as she was sound, the Count turned round to me and the company
with his broken English--“Ladies and gentlemens,” says he, “look here
at dis yoong maidens, Mizz Charlot Ann Elizabet Martin”--for that is
his way of talking. “Wid my magnetismuses I tro her into von state of
sombamboozleism”--or something to that effect. “Mizz Charlot Ann, dou
art a slip.” “As fast as a church, Mister Count,” says she, talking
and hearing as easy as broad awake. “Ferry goot,” says he. “Now I take
dis boke,--Missis Glasse Cokery,--and I shall make de maidens read
som little of him wid her back. Dere he is bytween her sholders. Mizz
Charlot Ann, what you see now mit your eyes turned de wrong way for to
look?” “Why, then,” says she, “Mr. Count, I see quite plain a T, and
an O. Then comes R, and O, and S, and T--and the next word is H, and
A, and I, and R.” “Ferry goot,” tries the Count over again. “Dat is
to rost de hare. Ladies and gentlemens, you all here? As Gott is my
shudge, so is here in de boke. Now den, Mizz Charlot Ann, vons more.
Vot you taste in your mouse?” “Why, then, Master,” says Charlotte Ann,
“as sure as fate, I taste sweet herbs chopped up small!” “Ferry goot
indeed!--bot what mor by sides de sweet herrubs?” “Why,” says she,
“it’s a relish of salt, and pepper, and mace,--and, let me see--there’s
a flavour of currant jelly.” “Besser and besser!” cries the Count.
“Ladies and gentlemens, are not dese voonderfools? You shall see every
wart of it in de print. Mizz Charlot Ann, vot you feel now?” “Lawk a
mercy, Mister Count,” says she, “there’s a sort of stuffy feel, so
there is, in my inside!” “Yaw! like van fool belly! Ferry goot! Now you
feel vot?” “Feel! Mister Count?” says she--“why I don’t feel nothing at
all--the stuffiness is gone clean away!” “Yaw, my shild!” says he. “Dat
is by cause I take avay de cokery boke from your two sholders. Ladies
and gentlemens, dese is grand powers of magnetismus! Ach himmel! As
Hamlet say, dere is more in our philosofies dan dere is in de heaven or
de earth! Our mutter Nature is so fond to hide her face! Bot von adept,
so as me, can lift up a whale!”
[Illustration: SLEEPING DRAUGHTS.]
To shorten a long story, the sombamboosleism lasted for two hours;
while Miss Charlot Ann told fortunes in her sleep, and named people’s
inward complaints, and prescribed for them with her eyes shut. Mine
was dropsy; and I was to take antimonious wine three times a-day, to
throw the water off my stomach. So, if you like to ask your apothecary,
or the parish doctor, they will be able to tell you whether it looks
like proper practice or the reverse. For my own part, I mean to
suspend myself till I feel more symptoms; and in the meantime I have
experimented on myself so far as to try behind my back with the Ready
Reckoner. But I could not even see the book, much less make out a
figure. To be sure I was broad awake, but it stands to reason that the
circumstance only gave the better chance in its favour--at least it
has always been reckoned so with a book held the proper natural way.
I was the more particular with the book-work, because it looked like
the master-key to let you into the whole house:--for no doubt, if you
can do _that_ trick, you can do all the rest, and have a hare dressed
between your shoulders as easily as a blister. But to my mind it is all
sham Abraham; or the little boys that go every day with whole satchels
full of books at their backs would know rather more about them than
they do generally at leaving off school.
And now, Uncle, I have explained to you all about Animal Magnetism;
and, says you, there are many things that come by names they have no
right to, without going to Scotland, where you know they call a pitcher
a pig. So it is very lucky on the whole, that you wrote to me, instead
of posting up to London on a fool’s errand,--as did a respectable
Lancashire grazing gentleman, the other day, in the newspapers, who
was hoaxed all the way up to town, by a false notion that Animal
Magnifying, as he called it, was some new, cheap, and quick way of
fatting cattle. It will maybe turn out quite as deceitful an article
as to its other qualities; and in that case, if I had the luck to be
a magistrate, I would cold pig the sleeping partners with Cold Bath
Fields and send off the active ones, to take a walk at a cart’s tail,
with something they could feel, if they could not read it, on their
backs and shoulders. That’s how I would measure out the law, if I
was Lord Chief Justice. In which sentiments I conclude, with love
to yourself, and all my cousins, if I have any living--with my best
condolences for my poor late Aunt. As to business, I have only broken
twice as yet; which is doing pretty well, considering the hard times
and the state of trade. Wishing you the like prosperity, with health,
and every other blessing, I remain, dear Uncle,
Your affectionate nephew,
ROBERT HOLLAND.
P.S. Since the foregoing, I have discussed the subject with a
neighbour, a Veterany Surgeon; and he says it is all very well for the
old men and women Physicians, but won’t go down with the Horse Doctors.
“However,” says he, “if you are bent on trying it, I will give you a
receipt. Take a two-year old full blood colt, half broke, or not broke
at all--if vicious, so much the better. Shoe him behind with a couple
of stout horse-shoe loadstones, and then stand convenient, and take
a tug or two at his tail, till you feel him begin to operate. That’s
Animal Magnetism, and will do you quite as much good or harm as the
other new kick, and save you all the fees besides.”
[Illustration: SOMNAMBULISM.]
[Illustration: A MAIDEN ASSLEP.]
THE FORLORN SHEPHERD’S COMPLAINT.
AN UNPUBLISHED POEM, FROM SIDNEY.
IT may be necessary to bespeak the indulgent consideration of the
reader, for the appearance of the following Curiosity in such a work.
The truth is, the pages of the Comic Annual naturally present to me
the most obvious means of making the Poem known; betides, as it were,
offering personal security for my own belief in its authenticity.
And, considering my literary credit as so pledged, I do not hesitate
to affirm that I think the effusion in question may confidently be
referred to Sidney: and even--on the internal evidence of its pastoral
character--to the Arcadia. The verses have never till now appeared in
print. The lover of Old English Poetry would vainly hunt for it in any
edition extant of the works of Sir Philip; and, probably, the family
records and remains at Penshurst might be searched to as little purpose
for a copy in MS. From the extreme quaintness of the original, which
would have required the help of a glossary to render it generally
intelligible, I have thought it advisable to translate many of the
phrases into more current language; but scrupulously preserving the
_sense_ of the text. Enough of the peculiar style, however, still
remains, to aid in forming a judgment of the author’s æra. As for the
apparent incongruity of the double vocation ascribed to the tuneful
Swain in the Poem, besides abundant classical evidence that the
Corydons of ancient times were often, also, heroes, or warriors, or
adventurers, we have the positive contemporary testimony of modern
travellers, that in those very pastures where the scene is laid, it
is at this day the practice to entrust the charge of the flocks to
personages who have formerly been engaged in the same perilous career
as the “Forlorn Shepherd.” His lament, it will be seen, is full of
regrets and stealing tears for the stirring times of Auld Lang Syne.
THE FORLORN SHEPHERD’S COMPLAINT.
“Vell! Here I am--no Matter how it suits,
A-keeping Company with them dumb Brutes,
Old Park vos no bad Judge--confound his vig!
Of vot vood break the Sperrit of a Prig!
“The like of Me, to come to New Sow Wales
To go a-tagging arter Vethers’ Tails
And valk in Herbage as delights the Flock,
But stinks of Sweet Herbs vorser nor the Dock!
“To go to set this solitary Job
To Von whose Vork vos alvay in a Mob!
It’s out of all our Lines, for sure I am
Jack Shepherd even never kep a Lamb!”
[Illustration: A PUBLIC DINNER.]
“I arn’t ashamed to say I sit and veep
To think of Seven Year of keepin Sheep,
The spooniest Beasts in Nater, all to Sticks,
And not a Votch to take for all their Ticks!
“If I’d fore-seed how Transports would turn out
To only Baa! and Botanize about,
I’d quite as leaf have had the t’other Pull,
And come to Cotton as to all this Vool!
“Von only happy moment I have had
Since here I come to be a Farmer’s Cad,
And then I cotch’d a vild Beast in a Snooze,
And pick’d her Pouch of three young Kangaroos!
“Vot chance have I to go to Race or Mill?
Or show a sneaking Kindness for a Till;
And as for Vashings, on a hedge to dry,
I’d put the Natives’ Linen in my Eye!
“If this whole Lot of Mutton I could scrag,
And find a Fence to turn it into Swag,
I’d give it all in Lonnon Streets to stand,
And if I had my pick, I’d say the Strand!
“But ven I goes, as maybe vonce I shall,
To my old crib to meet with Jack, and Sal,
I’ve been so gallows honest in this Place,
I shan’t not like to show my sheepish Face.
“It’s wery hard for nothing but a Box
Of Irish Blackguard to be keepin’ Flocks,
’Mong naked Blacks, sich Savages to hus,
They’ve nayther got a Pocket nor a Pus.
“But Folks may tell their Troubles till they’re sick
To dumb brute Beasts,--and so I’ll cut my Stick!
And vot’s the Use a Feller’s Eyes to pipe
Vere von can’t borrow any Gemman’s Vipe?”
[Illustration: OUT OF SIGHT OUT OF MIND.]
ANACREONTIC.
BY A FOOTMAN.
It’s wery well to talk in praise
Of Tea and Water-drinking ways,
In proper time and place;
Of sober draughts, so clear and cool,
Dipp’d out of a transparent pool
Reflecting heaven’s face.
Of babbling brooks, and purling rills,
And streams as gushes from the hills,
It’s wery well to talk;--
But what becomes of all sich schemes,
With ponds of ice, and running streams,
As doesn’t even walk?
When Winter comes with piercing cold,
And all the rivers, new or old,
Is frozen far and wide;
And limpid springs is solid stuff,
And crystal pools is hard enough
To skate upon and slide;--
What then are thirsty men to do,
But drink of ale, and porter too,
Champagne as makes a fizz;
Port, sherry, or the Rhenish sort,
And p’rhaps a drop of summut short--
The water-pipes is friz!
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Works of Thomas Hood; Vol. 02 (of 11) - Comic and Serious, in Prose and Verse, With All the Original - Illustrations" ***
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