I dwelt persistently in the preceding section of these essays upon

the scenes and characters, the vices and follies, the humours and

eccentricities, the beauties and uglinesses, that Hogarth must have seen

in his young manhood, and asked and thought about, and which must have

sunk into his mind and taken root there. Satirists can owe but little to

inspiration. They can move the world with the lever of wit, but they must

have a fulcrum of fact. Their philosophy is properly of the inductive

order. Without facts, facts to reason upon, their arguments would be

tedious and pointless. Wherein lies the force or direction of satirizing

that Chinese mandarin whom you never saw—that Zulu Kaffir who never came

out of his kraal but once, and then to steal a cow? It was Hogarth’s

faculty to catch the manners living as they rose; it was his province

to watch their rising, and to walk abroad, an early bird, to pick up

the worms of knavery and vice, to range the ample field, and see what

the open and what the covert yielded. From twenty to thirty the social

philosopher must OBSERVE. If he grovel in the mud even, he must observe

and take stock of the humane passer-by who stoops to pick him up. After

thirty he had better go into his study, turn on his lamp, and turn out

the contents of his mind’s commonplace book upon paper. This is the only

valid excuse for what is termed, after a Frenchman’s Quartier-Latin-argot

phrase “Bohemianism:” the only excuse for Fielding’s Covent Garden

escapades, for Callot’s gipsy flights, for Shakspeare’s deer-stealing.

Young Diogenes the cynic is offensive and reprehensible, but he is no

monstrosity. He is going to the deuce, but he may come back again. I will

pardon him his tub, his dingy body-linen, his nails bordered sable; but

the tub-career should have its term, and Diogenes should go and wash,

and if he can afford it, wear fine linen with a purple hem thereunto,

as Plato did. It is pleasanter to walk in the groves of Academe, than

to skulk about the purlieus of the Mint. Besides, Bohemianism has its

pains as well as its pleasures, and Fortune delights in disciplining with

a scourge of scorpions those whom she destines to be great men: _Alla

gioventù molto si perdona_. Cæsar was snatched from the stews of Rome

to conquer the world. But for the middle-aged Bohemian—the old, ragged,

uncleanly, shameful Diogenes—there is no hope and no excuse.

In that which I daresay you thought a mere digression, I strove my best

to guide you through the labyrinthine London, which Hogarth must have

threaded time after time before he could sit down, pencil or graver in

hand, and say, “This is ‘Tom King’s coffee-house,’ this is a ‘modern

midnight conversation,’ this is the ‘progress of a rake,’ and this the

‘career of a courtesan.’ I have seen these things, and I know them to

be true.”[2] Nor in the least do I wish to convey that in ranging the

streets and beating the town Hogarth had any fixed notions of collecting

materials for future melodramas and satires. Eminently to be distrusted

are those persons who prowl about the tents of Kedar, and pry into the

cave of Adullam, when they should be better employed, pleading their

desire to “see life,” and to “pick up character.” They are generally

blind as bats to all living, breathing life; and the only character they

pick up is a bad one for themselves. I apprehend that Hogarth just took

life as it came; only the Light was in him to see and to comprehend. A

right moral feeling, an intuitive hatred of all wicked and cruel things,

guided and strengthened him. Amid the loose life of a loose age the

orgies at Moll King’s and Mother Douglass’s might have been frolics _at

the time_ to him, and only frolics. A fight in a night-cellar was to him

precisely as the yellow primrose was to Peter Bell: a yellow primrose,

and nothing more. He was to be afterwards empowered and commanded to turn

his youthful follies to wise ends, and to lash the vices which he had

once tolerated by his presence.

The philosophic prelude to his work was undoubtedly his town wanderings,

1720-30. The great manipulative skill, the grace of drawing visible when

taken in comparison with the comic excrescences in the _Hudibras_—the

brilliance and harmony of colour he manifested in the _Progresses_ and

the _Marriage à la Mode_—have yet to be accounted for. A lad does not

step at once from the engraving bench to the easel, and handle the hog’s

hair brush with the same skill as he wields the burin and the etching

point. The Hogarthian transition from the first to the second of these

stages is the more remarkable when it is remembered that, although bred

an engraver, and although always quick, dexterous, and vigorous with the

sharp needle and the trenchant blade, he could never thoroughly master

that clear, harmonious, full-bodied stroke in which the French engravers

excelled, in which Hogarth’s own assistants in after life (Ravenet,

Scotin, and Grignion) surpassed him, but which was afterwards, to the

pride and glory of English chalcography, to be brought to perfection by

Woollett and Strange. Yet Hogarth the engraver seemed in 1730 to change

with pantomimic rapidity into Hogarth the painter. The matter of his

pictures may often be questionable: the manner leaves scarcely anything

for exceptional criticism. His colour is deliciously pure and fresh; he

never loads, never spatters paint about with his palette knife; never

lays tint over tint till a figure has as many vests as the gravedigger

in _Hamlet_. Whites, grays, carnations _stand_ in his pictures and defy

time; no uncertain glazings have changed his foregrounds into smears

and streaks and stains. He was great at Manchester in 1857; great at

the British Institution in 1814, when not less than fifty of his works

were exhibited, great in body, richness, transparency; he is great,

nay prodigious, in the English section of the National Gallery, where

gorgeous Sir Joshua, alas! runs and welters and turns into adipocere; and

Gainsborough (in his portraits—his landscapes are as rich as ever)—grows

pallid and threadbare, and Turner’s suns are grimed, and even Wilkie

cracks and tesselates. I think Hogarth came fresh, assured and decided,

to his picture-painting work, from a kind of second apprenticeship under

Thornhill, and from compassing the “conversations” and “assemblies.” The

historico-allegorico-mural decorations were a species of scene-painting;

they involved broad and decisive treatment. The hand learnt perforce to

strike lines and mark-in muscles at once. The maul-stick could seldom be

used, the fluttering wrist, the nerveless grasp were fatal, the eye could

not be performing a perpetual goose-step between canvas and model. Look

at Salvator, at Loutherbourg, at Stanfield, and Roberts, to show what

good a scene-painting noviciate can do in teaching an artist to paint

in one handling, _à la brochette_ as it were. Who can relish a Madonna

when one fancies half-a-dozen other Madonnas simpering beneath the

built-up tints? Next, Hogarth went to his portraits. They were a course

of physiognomy invaluable to him—of fair faces, stern faces, sensual,

stupid, hideous and pretty little baby faces. From the exigencies of the

“conversations” and “assemblies” he learnt composition, and the treatment

of accessories; learnt to paint four-and-twenty fiddlers, not “all of

a row,” but disposed in ellipse or in pyramid-form. The perception of

female beauty and the power of expressing it were his by birthright, by

heaven’s kindness; I am despondent only at his animals, which are almost

invariably impossible deformities.[3]

The Duke of Montagu and my Lord Castlemaine having ordered

“conversations” from Hogarth, there was of course but one thing necessary

to put the seal to his artistic reputation. That thing, so at least

the patron may have thought, was the patronage of the eminent Morris.

Morris is quite snuffed out now—evaporated even as the carbonic acid

gas from yesterday’s flask of champagne; but in 1727, he was a somewhat

notable person. He was a fashionable upholsterer in Pall Mall, and

not only sold, but manufactured, those tapestry arras hangings which,

paper-staining being in embryo, were still conspicuous ornaments of

the walls of palaces, the nobility’s saloons. Morris kept a shop much

frequented by the noble tribes, at the sign of the “Golden Ball,” in

Pall Mall. There seems to have been a plethora of Golden Balls in

London about this time, just as though all the Lombards had quarrelled

among themselves, and set up in business each man for himself, with

no connection with the golden ball over the way. In 1727, and, for a

century and a half before, the best and most celebrated painters were

employed to execute designs for tapestry. You know who drew for the

Flemish weavers that immortal dozen of cartoons, seven of which are at

Hampton Court, and which have been recently so wonderfully photographed.

Rubens and Vandyke, the stately Lebrun, and the meek Lesueur, made

designs also for these woven pictures. There are penitent thieves and

jesting Pilates from Hans Holbein’s inspiration in many faded hangings.

Thornhill had been himself commissioned by Queen Anne to make sketches

for a set of tapestry hangings emblematic of the union between England

and Scotland. And does not the fabric of the Gobelins yet flourish? Did

not Napoleon the Third vouchsafe the gift of a magnificent piece of

tapisserie to one of our West-end clubs? Morris, the upholsterer, had

many of the “first foreign hands” in his employ; but, being a Briton,

bethought himself magnanimously to encourage real native British talent.

My lord duke had employed Hogarth; Morris likewise determined on giving

a commission to the rising artist. He sought out William, conferred

with him, explained his wishes, and a solemn contract was entered into

between William Hogarth for the first part, and Joshua Morris for the

second, in which the former covenanted to furnish the latter with a

design on canvas of the _Element of Earth_, to be afterwards worked in

tapestry. The painter squared his canvas and set to work; but when the

design was completed Morris flatly refused to pay the thirty pounds

agreed upon as remuneration. It seems that the timorous tradesman, who

must clearly have possessed a large admixture of the “element of earth”

in his composition, had been informed by some good-natured friend of

Hogarth that the tapestry-designer was no painter, but a “low engraver.”

Horror! To think of a mean wretch who had earned his livelihood by

flourishing initials on flagons and cutting plates in _taille douce_ for

the booksellers, presuming to compete with the flourishing foreigners

employed by the eminent and ineffable Morris! ’Twas as though some

destitute index-maker of the Hop Gardens, some starved ballad-monger of

Lewkner’s Lane, had seduced Mr. Jacob Tonson into giving him an order for

a translation of the _Æneid_ into heroic verse. Amazed and terrified,

the deceived Joshua Morris rushed to Hogarth’s painting-room and accused

him of misrepresentation, fraud, covin, and other crimes. How would

ever my lord duke and her ladyship—perhaps Madam Schuylenburg-Kendal

herself—tolerate tapestry in their apartments designed by a base churl,

the quondam apprentice of a silversmith in Cranbourn Alley, the brother

of two misguided young women who kept a slop-shop? Hogarth coolly stated

that he should hold the upholsterer to his bargain. He admitted that the

_Element of Earth_ was “a bold undertaking,” but expressed an opinion

that he should “get through it well enough.” He brought the thing to a

termination; and it was, I daresay, sufficiently of the earth earthy.

Joshua resolutely withheld payment. No copper-scratcher should defraud

him of thirty pounds. The young man, formerly of Little Cranbourn Alley,

was not to be trifled with. If Morris had been a lord and had refused (as

one of Hogarth’s sitters absolutely did) to pay for his portrait, on the

ground that it wasn’t like him, the artist might have taken a satirical

revenge, and threatened to add tails to all the figures in the _Element

of Earth_, and send the canvas to Mr. Hare, the wild-beast-man, as a

showcloth. But the Pall Mall upholsterer was a tradesman, and Hogarth,

all artist as he knew himself to be, was a tradesman, too. So he went

to his lawyer’s, and sued Morris for the thirty pounds, “painter’s work

done.” Bail was given and justified, and on the 28th of May, 1728, the

great case of Hogarth against Morris came on _in communi banco_, before

the chief justice in Eyre. The defendant pleaded _non assumpsit_. Issue

was joined, and the gentlemen of the long-robe went to work. For the

defendant, the alleged fraudulent substitution of an engraver for a

painter was urged. The eminence of Morris’s tapestry and upholstery was

adduced. It was sworn to that he employed “some of the finest hands in

Europe.” Bernard Dorridor, De Friend, Phillips, Danten, and Pajou, “some

of the finest hands,” appeared in the witness-box and deposed to what

first-rate fellows they all were, and to William Hogarth being a mere

mechanic, the last of the lowest, so to speak. But the ready painter was

not without friends. He subpœnaed more of the “finest hands.” Up came

King, Vanderbank, the opera scene-painter, Laguerre, son and successor

to Charles the Second’s Laguerre, and Verrio’s partner, and the serene

Thornhill himself, who, I doubt it not, was bidden by my Lord to sit on

the bench, was oracular in his evidence as to the young man’s competency,

smiled on the chief justice, and revolved in his majestic mind the

possibility of the lords of the Treasury giving him a commission (had

they the power) to paint the walls and ceilings of all the courts of

justice with allegories of Themis, Draco, Solon, Justinian, and Coke

upon Lyttleton, to be paid for out of the suitors’ fee fund. We know

now how tawdry and trashy these painted allegories were; but Thornhill

and Laguerre were really the most reliable authorities to be consulted

as to the standard of excellence then accepted in such performances.

The verdict very righteously went against the defendant, whose plea was

manifestly bad, and Joshua Morris was cast in thirty pounds. I delight to

fancy that the successful party straightway adjourned to the Philazers’

Coffee-house, in Old Palace Yard, and there, after a slight refection

of hung beef and Burton ale, betook themselves to steady potations of

Lisbon wine in magnums—there were prohibitive duties on claret—until each

man began to see allegories of his own, in which Bacchus was the capital

figure. I delight to fancy that the Anglo-Frenchman Laguerre clapped

Hogarth on the back, and told him that he was “von clevare fellow,”

and that Sir James shook his young friend by the hand, enjoined him to

cultivate a true and proper gusto, and bade him Godspeed. Majestic man!

he little thought that when his own celebrity had vanished, or was but as

the shadow of the shadow of smoke, his young friend was to be famous to

the nations and the glory of his countrymen.[4]

For all the handshakings and libations of Lisbon, Sir James was to live

to be very angry with his young friend, although the quarrel was to last

but a little while. Hogarth had looked upon Thornhill’s daughter Jane,

and she was fair, and regarded him, too, with not unfavourable eyes. He

who has gained a lawsuit should surely be successful in love. Meanwhile—I

don’t think he was much given to sighing or dying—he went on painting,

in spite of all the Morrises in upholsterydom. Poor Joshua himself came

to grief. He seems to have been bankrupt; and on the 15 th of May, 1729,

the auctioneer knocked down to the highest bidder all the choice stock

of tapestry in Pall Mall. Hogarth’s _Element of Earth_ may have been

“Lot 90;” but one rather inclines to surmise that Morris slashed the

fatal canvas with vindictive peissors to shreds and mippets the day his

lawyer’s bill came in.

To record the tremendous success of that _Newgate Pastoral_, the

suggestion of the first idea of which lies between Swift, Pope,

Arbuthnot, and Gay, does not come within my province. The history of the

_Beggar’s Opera_, that made “Rich Gay and Gay Rich,” is too well known

to bear repetition. Hogarth, however, has left his mark on the famous

operatic score. For Rich, the Covent Garden manager, he painted (1729) a

picture of the prison scene in which Lucy and Polly are wrangling over

Macheath, of which several replicas in oil, some slightly varied, as

well as engravings, were afterwards executed. Portraits of many of the

great personages of the day are introduced in open boxes _on_ the stage.

Macheath was a portrait of the comedian Walker; and the Polly was the

beauteous Lavinia Fenton, the handsome, kindly, true-hearted actress with

whom the Duke of Bolton, to the amusement and amazement of the town, fell

in love, and fairly ran away. The Duchess of Bolton was then still alive,

and lived for many years afterwards; and poor Polly had to suffer some

part of the penalty which falls on those with whom dukes elope; but at

the duchess’s death, her lord showed that he was not of Mrs. Peachum’s

opinion, that “’tis marriage makes the blemish,” and right nobly elevated

Polly to the peerage. She lived long and happily with him, survived him,

and died late in the last century, very old, and beloved, and honoured

for her modesty, charity, and piety. “The lovely young Lavinia once had

friends,” writes Thomson in the _Seasons_; but our Lavinia lost not her

friends to her dying day. If Tenison, and Atterbury, and Sherlock, had

nothing to say against Eleanor Gwyn, let us trust that the severest

moralist could find charitable words wherewith to speak of Lavinia,

Duchess of Bolton.[5]

A sterner subject, the prologue to a dismal drama of human life, was now

to engross the pencil of this painter, who was now making his presence

known and felt among his contemporaries. I speak of the strange solemn

picture of the _Committee of the House of Commons_ taking evidence

of the enormities wreaked on the wretched prisoners in the Fleet by

Huggins and Bambridge. Let us drag these mouldering scoundrels from

their dishonoured graves, and hang them up here on Cornhill, for all

the world to gaze at, even as the government of the Restoration (but

with less reason) hung the carcases of Cromwell and Bradshaw on Tyburn

gibbet. Huggins—save the mark!—was of gentle birth, and wrote himself

“Armiger.” He had bought the patent of the wardenship of the Fleet from

a great court lord, and when the trade of torturing began, through

usance, to tend towards satiety, he sold his right to one Bambridge, a

twin demon. The atrocities committed by the pair may very rapidly be

glanced at. Huggins’s chief delight was to starve his prisoners, unless

they were rich enough to bribe him. Bambridge’s genius lay more towards

confining his victims charged with fetters in underground dungeons,

with the occasional recreation of attempting to pistol and stab them.

The moneyed debtors both rascals smiled upon. Smugglers were let out

through a yard in which dogs were kept; ran their cargoes; defrauded the

revenue, and came back to “college.” One, who owed 10,000_l._ to the

crown, was permitted to make his escape altogether. A certain T. Dumay

went several times to France, being all the time in the “custody,” as

the sham was facetiously termed, of the Warden of the Fleet. What was

such a fraud in an age when the highest legal authorities (who would not

take the fetters off Christopher Layer) gravely doubted whether the rules

of the King’s Bench might not extend to Bombay, in the East Indies?[6]

These surreptitiously enlarged prisoners were called “pigeons.” They had

bill transactions with the tipstaves; they drew on Huggins, and then

pleaded their insolvency. On the other hand, the poor debtors were very

differently treated. A broken-down baronet, Sir William Rich, on refusing

to pay the “baronet’s fee,” or “garnish,” of five pounds, was heavily

fettered, kept for months in a species of subterranean dog-kennel; the

vivacious Bambridge sometimes enlivening his captivity by threatening

to run a red-hot poker through his body. This cheerful philanthropist,

who was wont to range about the prison with a select gang of turnkeys,

armed with halberts and firelocks, ordered one of his myrmidons to fire

on “Captain Mackpheadris”—(what a name for a captain in difficulties!

Lieutenant Lismahago is nothing to it). As, however, even these callous

bravoes hesitated to obey so savage a behest, and as there was absolutely

nothing to be squeezed in the way of garnish out of this lackpenny

Captain Mackpheadris, Bambridge locked the poor wretch out of his room,

and turned him out to starve in an open yard called the “Bare.” Here,

Mack, who was seemingly an old campaigner, built himself out of broken

tiles and other rubbish, a little hovel in an angle of the wall, just as

the evicted Irish peasantry in famine and fever times were wont to build

little kraals of turf-sods and wattles over dying men in ditches; but

Bambridge soon heard of the bivouac, and ordered it to be pulled down. J.

Mendez Sola, a Portuguese, was by the same kind guardian fettered with

a hundredweight of iron, and incarcerated in a deadhouse, _with dead

people in it_, moreover! Others languished in dens called “Julius Cæsar’s

chapel,” the upper and lower “Ease,” and the “Lyon’s Den,” where they

were stapled to the floor. Attached to the prison itself was an auxiliary

inferno in the shape of a spunging-house kept by Corbett, a creature of

Bambridge. The orthodox process seemed to be, first to fleece you in the

spunging-house, and then to flay you alive in the gaol. Of course, Mr.

Bambridge went snacks with Mr. Corbett. Very few scruples were felt in

getting fish for this net. In one flagrant instance, a total stranger was

seized as he was giving charity at the grate for poor prisoners, dragged

into Corbett’s, and only released on paying “garnish,” and undertaking

not to institute any proceedings against his kidnappers. When a prisoner

had money to pay the debt for which he had been arrested, he often lay

months longer in hold for his “fees.” The caption fee was 5_l._ 16_s._

4_d._; the “Philazer”—who ever that functionary may have been, but his

was a patent place in the Exchequer—the judge’s clerk, the tipstaves,

the warden, all claimed their fees. Fees had to be paid for the favour

of lighter irons, and every fresh bird in the spunging-house cage paid

his “footing,” in the shape of a six shilling bowl of punch. When, as

from time to time, and to the credit of human nature, occurred, a person

visited the gaol, “on behalf of an unknown lady,” to discharge all claims

against persons who lay in prison for their fees only, Bambridge often

sequestered his prisoners till the messenger of mercy had departed.

But he was always open to pecuniary conviction, and from the wife of

one prisoner he took, as a bribe, forty guineas and a “toy,” being the

model of a “Chinese Jonque in amber set with silver,” for which the poor

woman had been offered eighty broadpieces. In these our days, Bambridge

would have discounted bills, and given one-fourth cash, one-fourth

wine, one-fourth camels’ bridles, and one-fourth ivory frigates. When

an Insolvent Act was passed, Bambridge demanded three guineas a piece

from those desirous of availing themselves of the relief extended by the

law: else he would not allow them to be “listed,” or inserted in the

schedule of Insolvents. And by a stroke of perfectly infernal cunning

this gaoler-devil hit upon a plan of preventing his victims from taking

proceedings against him by taking proceedings against _them_. After

some outrage of more than usual enormity, he would slip round to the

Old Bailey and prefer a bill of indictment against the prisoners he

had maltreated, for riot, or an attempt to break prison. He had always

plenty of understrappers ready to swear for him; and the poor, penniless,

friendless gaol-bird was glad to compromise with his tormentor by

uncomplaining silence.[7]

Already had these things been censured by highest legal authorities; at

least the judges had occasionally shaken their wise heads and declared

the abuses in the Fleet to be highly improper: “You may raise your

walls higher,” quoth Lord King; “but there must be no prison within a

prison.” An excellent dictum if only acted upon. At last, the prisoners

began to die of ill-usage, of starvation and disease, or rather, _it

began to be known_, that they were so dying, and died every year of our

Lord. A great public outcry arose. Humane men bestirred themselves. The

legislature was besieged with petitions. Parliamentary commissioners

visited the gaol, and a committee of the House of Commons sat to hear

those harrowing details of evidence of which I have given you a summary.

Bambridge was removed from his post, but the _vindicte publique_ was

not appeased. First, Huggins, the retired esquire, and Barnes, his

assistant, were tried at the Old Bailey for the murder of Edward Arne, a

prisoner. Page, the hanging judge, presided, but from that stern fount

there flowed waters of mercy for the monster of the Fleet. Owing chiefly

to his summing up, a special verdict was returned, and Huggins and the

minor villain were acquitted. Huggins’s son was a well-to-do gentleman of

Headley Park, Hants, had a taste for the fine arts, translated _Ariosto_,

and collected Hogarthian drawings! It was as though Sanson should have

collected miniatures of Louis the Sixteenth, or Simon the cobbler

statuettes of the poor little captive Capet of the Temple.

Next, the coarser scoundrels, Bambridge and Corbett, were tried for

the murder of a Mr. Castell, who had been thrust into Corbett’s

spunging-house while the small-pox was raging there, and died. Bambridge,

too, was acquitted through some legal quibble; but the widow of the

murdered man had another quibble, by which she hoped to obtain redress.

She retained the famous casuist Lee, the sage who in a single action once

pleaded seventy-seven pleas. She sued out an appeal of murder against

the warden and his man. This involved the “wager of battle,” which you

remember in the strange Yorkshire case some forty years ago, and which

was at last put an end to by statute. The appellee could either fight

the appellant _à la_ dog of Montargis, or throw himself on his country,

_i.e._ submit to be tried again. Bambridge and Corbett chose the latter

course, were again tried, and again escaped. They were, however, very

near being torn to pieces by the populace. Lord Campbell says, I venture

to think unjustly, that Mrs. Castell was incited to the appeal by a

“mobbish confederation.”[8] Good heaven! was anything but a confederation

of the feelings of common humanity necessary to incite all honest men

to bring these wretches to justice? I suppose that it was by a “mobbish

confederation” that the villanous Austin, of Birmingham gaol, was tried,

and that after all his atrocities of gagging, “jacketing,” and cramming

salt down his prisoners’ throats, he, too, escaped with an almost nominal

punishment. Lee, the casuist (he was afterwards Chief Justice), was so

disgusted with the result of the trial, that he vowed he would never

have aught to do with facts again, but henceforth would stick to law

alone. I am not lawyer enough to know why the case against Bambridge and

Corbett broke down; I only know that these men were guilty of murder most

foul and most unnatural, and that one of our most ancient legal maxims is

explicit as to their culpability.[9]

A committee of gentlemen in large wigs, sitting round a table in a

gloomy apartment, and examining witnesses likewise in wigs, is not

a very inspiring theme for a painter; but I have always considered

Hogarth’s rendering of the proceedings to be one of the most masterly

of Hogarth’s tableaux. The plate was a great favourite with Horace

Walpole, who described with much discrimination the various emotions of

pity, horror, and indignation on the countenances of the spectators; the

mutely eloquent testimony of the shackles and manacles on the table;

the pitiable appearance of the half-starved prisoner who is giving

evidence; and, especially, the Judas-like appearance of Bambridge (who

was present), his yellow cheeks and livid lips, his fingers clutching

at the button-holes in his coat, and his face advanced, “as if eager to

lie.” There was a large sale for the engraving taken from this picture,

and Hogarth gained largely in reputation from its production.

He had need of reputation, and of money too. A very serious crisis

in his life was approaching. He had found more favour in the eyes of

Jane Thornhill. “_On n’épouse pas les filles de grande maison avec des

coquilles de noix_,” writes a wise Frenchman, and William Hogarth’s

fortune might decidedly at this time have been comfortably “put into a

wine-glass and covered over with a gooseberry leaf,” as was suggested of

the immortal Mr. Bob Sawyer’s profits from his druggist’s shop. Sir James

Thornhill was a greater don in art than Sir Godfrey, or than Richardson,

or Jervas. He hated Sir Godfrey, and strove to outshine him. If extent

of area is to be taken as a test of ability, Thornhill certainly beat

Kneller hollow. To a Lombard Street of allegory and fable in halls and

on staircases the German could only show a china orange of portraiture.

Thornhill was a gentleman. His father was poor enough; but he was clearly

descended from Ralph de Thornhill (12 Henry III. 1228).[10] When he

became prosperous, he bought back the paternal acres, and built a grand

house at Thornhill, hard by Weymouth. He had been a favourite with Queen

Anne. He had succeeded Sir Christopher Wren in the representation of

Melcombe Regis, his native place. His gains were enormous. Though he

received but two guineas a yard for St. Paul’s, and twenty-five shillings

a yard for painting the staircase of the South Sea House (with bubbles,

or with an allegory of Mercury putting the world in his pocket?), instead

of 1,500_l._ which he demanded, he had a magnificent wage for painting

the hall at Blenheim, and from the noted Styles, who is said to have

spent 150,000_l._ in the embellishments of Moor Park, he received, after

a lawsuit and an arbitration, 4,000_l._ To be sure Lafosse got nearly

3,000_l._ for the staircase and saloons of Montagu House (the old British

Museum). Look at the etching of Sir James Thornhill, by Worlidge. He is

painting in an elaborately-laced coat with brocaded sleeves; and his wig

is as so many curds in a whey of horsehair, and no one but a Don could

have such a double chin.

With the daughter of this grandee of easeldom, this favourite of

monarchs, this Greenwich and Hampton Court Velasquez, William Hogarth,

painter, engraver, and philosopher, but as yet penniless, had the

inconceivable impudence not only to fall in love, but to run away. I

rather think that Lady Thornhill connived at the surreptitious courtship,

and was not inexorably angry when the stolen match took place; but as for

the knight, he would very probably just as soon have thought of Mars,

Bacchus, Apollo and Virorum coming down from an allegorical staircase,

and dancing a saraband to the tune of “Green Sleeves” on the north side

of Covent Garden Piazza, as of his young _protégé_ and humble friend

Willy Hogarth presuming to court or to marry his daughter. Oh! it is

terrible to think of this rich man, this father of a disobedient Dinah,

walking his studio all round, vowing vengeance against that rascally

Villikins, and declaring that of his large fortune she shan’t reap the

benefit of one single pin! Oh! cruel “parient,” outraged papa, Lear of

genteel life! He frets, he fumes, he dashes his wig to the ground. He

remembers him, perchance, of sundry small moneys he has lent to Hogarth,

and vows he will have him laid by the heels in a spunging-house ere

the day be out. Send for a capias, send for a mittimus! Send for the

foot-guards, the tipstaves, and the train-bands, for Jane Thornhill has

levanted with William Hogarth!

They were married at old Paddington Church on the 23rd of March, 1729.

Thus runs the parish register: “William Hogarth, Esq. and Jane Thornhill,

of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden.” Marriage and hanging go together they

say, and William and Jane went by Tyburn to have _their_ noose adjusted.

In the _Historical Chronicle_ for 1729, the bridegroom is described as

“an eminent designer and engraver;” but in Hogarth’s own family Bible, a

worn, squat, red-ink-interlined little volume, printed early in the reign

of Charles the First, and now reverentially preserved by Mr. Graves, the

eminent print-publisher of Pall Mall, there is a certain flyleaf, which I

have seen, and which to me is of infinitely greater value than Historical

Chronicle or Paddington Parish Register, for there, in the painter’s own

handwriting, I read—“W. Hogarth married Sir James Thornhill’s daughter,

March 23rd, 1729.”

Papa-in-law was in a fury, set his face and wig against the young

couple, would not see them, would not give them any money, cast them

out of the grand piazza mansion to starve, if they so chose, among

the cabbage-stumps of the adjacent market. It behoved William to work

hard. I don’t think he ever resided with his wife in Cranbourn Alley.

He had given that messuage up to his sisters. What agonies the member

for Melcombe Regis, the scion of Henry the Third’s Thornhills, must

have endured at the thought of that abhorred “old frock-shop!” There is

reason to believe that for some time previous to his marriage Hogarth

had resided in Thornhill’s own house, and had so found opportunities for

his courtship of the knight’s daughter. Of young Thornhill, Sir James’s

son, he was the intimate friend and comrade. Where he spent his honeymoon

is doubtful; but it was either in 1729 or 1730 that he began to take

lodgings at South Lambeth, and to form the acquaintance of Mr. Jonathan

Tyers, the lessee of Vauxhall Gardens.

In the tranquillity and sobriety of a happy married life, Hogarth began

for the first time deeply to philosophize. He had eaten his cake. He had

sown his wild-oats. He was to beat the town no more in mere indifference

of carousal; he was to pluck the moralist’s flower from the strange

wild nettles he had handled. In this age have been found critics stupid

and malevolent enough to accuse every author who writes with a purpose,

and who endeavours to draw attention to social vices, of imposture and

of hypocrisy. He should be content, these critics hold, to describe

the things he sees; he is a humbug if he moralize upon them. It is

not unlikely that the vicious Fribbles of Hogarth’s time held similar

opinions, and took Hogarth to be a reckless painter of riotous scenes,

and who just infused sufficient morality into them “to make the thing go

off.” It was otherwise with him I hope and believe. I am firmly convinced

that the sin and shame of the evils he depicted were as deeply as they

were vividly impressed on Hogarth’s mind—that he was as zealous as any

subscriber to a Refuge, a Reformatory, or a Home can be now, to abate a

dreadful social evil; that his hatred for the wickedness of dissolute

men, his sympathy for women fallen and betrayed; his utter loathing

for those wretched scandals to their sex, the women whose trade it is

to decoy women, was intense and sincere. I do _not_ believe in the

sincerity of Fielding, who could grin and chuckle over the orgies of the

Hundreds of Drury and the humours of the bagnio. I find even the gentle

and pure-minded Addison simpering in the _Freeholder_ about certain

frequenters of Somerset House masquerades. But Hogarth’s satire in the

_Harlot’s Progress_ never makes you laugh. It makes you rather shudder

and stagger, and turn pale. The six pictures which form this tragedy were

painted immediately after his marriage. They were painted in the presence

of a young, beautiful, and virtuous woman, who read her Bible, and loved

her husband with unceasing tenderness; and casting to the winds the mock

morality and lip-virtue that fear to speak of the things depicted in this

_Progress_, I say that no right-minded man or woman will be the worse for

studying its phases.

Some time before Hogarth painted the _Harlot’s Progress_, a hundred and

thirty years ago, Edward Ward and Tom Brown had described in coarse,

untranscribable, but yet graphic terms, the career of these unfortunates.

The former, although a low-lived pottlepot at the best of times, makes

some honest remarks concerning the barbarous treatment of the women

in Bridewell.[11] “It’s not the way to reform ’em,” he says, plainly.

But Hogarth first told the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He

first told the story of a courtesan without either ribald jesting or

sickly sentimentality; and he much more than if he had been a royal

duke mincingly handling trowel and mallet, laid the first stone of the

Magdalen Hospital.

“_Ora_,” writes an appreciative Venetian biographer of Hogarth, “_conduce

una bella dalla barca in cui nacque ad un albergo di Londra, da un

magnifico palazzo in un lupanare, dal lupanare in prigione, dalla

prigione all’ ospitale, dall’ ospitale alla fossa_.” This is the tersest

summary I know. The Venetian loses not a word. From the cottage where

she was born to an inn; from an inn to a palace; thence to a bagnio,

thence to prison, thence to a sick-room, thence to the grave. This is the

history of Kate Hackabout.

Each tableau in the _Harlot’s Progress_ is complete in itself; but there

is a “solution of continuity”—the progression is not consecutive. More

than once a hiatus occurs. Thus, it is Mother Needham, the horrible

procuress, who first accosts the innocent country girl in the inn-yard;

and it is the infamous Colonel Charteris who is leering at her. The

magnificent “palazzo” belongs, however, to a Jew financier; and after

the disturbance of the table kicked over, and the gallant behind the

door, we can understand how she sinks into the mistress of James Dalton

the highwayman. But how comes she to be dressed in brocade and silver

when she is beating hemp in Bridewell? The _Grub Street Journal_ tells

us that the _real_ Hackabout was so attired when by the fiat of nine

justices she was committed to penitential fibre-thumping; but the

pictorial Kate in the preceding tableau, sitting under the bed-tester

with the stolen watch in her hand, is in very mean and shabby attire.

Do people put on their best clothes to go to the House of Correction

in? or, again, when being captured—Sir John Gonson allowed her to dress

herself, discreetly waiting outside the door meanwhile—did she don her

last unpawned brocaded kirtle and her showiest lappets, in order to

captivate the nine stern justices withal? The fall to the garret, after

her release from prison, I can well understand. Some years have elapsed.

She has a ragged little wretch of a boy who toasts a scrap of bacon

before the fire, while the quacks squabble about the symptoms of her

malady, and the attendant harridan rifles her trunk—it is the same old

trunk with her initials in brass nails on it that we see in the yard of

the Bell Inn, Wood Street, in Scene the First?—of its vestiges of finery.

The ragged boy is, perchance, James Dalton, the highwayman’s son, long

since translated to Tyburnia. The real Hackabout’s brother was indeed

hanged with much completeness. But I can’t at all understand how in the

next tableau this poor creature, when her woes are all ended, has a

handsome and even pretentious funeral, moribund, as we saw her, in her

dismal garret but just before. Had Fortune cast one fitful ray on her

as she sank into the cold dark house? Had a bag of guineas been cast

to jingle on her hearse? She was a clergyman’s daughter, it seems. Had

the broken-hearted old curate in the country sent up sufficient money

to bury his daughter with decency? Had the sisterhood of the Hundreds

of Drury themselves subscribed for the enlargement of obsequies which

might excuse an orgy? There is plenty of money from somewhere in this

death-scene, to a certainty. The boy who sits at the coffin foot, winding

the string round his top, has a new suit of mourning, and a laced hat.

That glowering undertaker has been liberally paid to provide gloves and

scarves; the clergyman—I hope he’s only a Fleet chaplain—has evidently

been well entertained; there is a whole Jordan of gin flowing: gin on

the coffin-lid; gin on the floor; and on the wall there is even an

“achievement of arms,” the dead woman’s scutcheon.

On every scene in the _Harlot’s Progress_ a lengthy essay might be

written. Well, is not every stone in this city full of sermons? Are

there no essays to be written on the Kate Hackabouts who are living, and

who die around us every day? Better for the nonce to close that dreary

coffin, wish that we were that unconscious child who is sitting at the

feet of Death, and preparing to spin his pegtop amid the shadows of all

this wretchedness and all this vice.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Richardson, senior, was a pupil of Charles the Second’s Riley. He

was born in 1666, was apprenticed to a scrivener, and at twenty turned

painter. In 1734, he edited an edition of _Paradise Lost_, with notes.

He was not a highly educated man, but had given his son a university

training; and, once letting fall the unfortunate expression, that “he

looked at classical literature through his son,” remorseless Hogarth

drew Richardson, junior, impaled with a telescope, the sire peeping

through at a copy of Virgil. But Richardson seems to have been an honest,

kindly-hearted man; and William Hogarth, as in every case where he had

not a downright rogue to deal with, repented of his severity, cancelled

the copies of his squib, and destroyed the plate. Richardson was quite

a Don in the Art world. He died in 1745, and two years afterwards his

collections were sold. The sale lasted eighteen days. The drawings

fetched 2,060_l._; the pictures, 700_l._ Richardson’s son, to all

appearances, might have served very well as a sample of those monstrous

jackasses that the South Sea Bubbler proposed to import from Spain. He

declared himself “a connoisseur, and nothing but a connoisseur,” and

babbled and scribbled much balderdash in Italianized English. He was not

alone. Pope even proposed to found a science of “picture tasting,” and

to call it “connoissance.” In our days the science has been christened

“fudge.” I have seen the portrait of Richardson the elder, in whose

features some one has said that “the good sense of the nation is

characterized;” but if this dictum be true, the most sensible-looking man

in England must have been a foolish, fat scullion.

[2] “_J’ai vu les mœurs de mon temps, et j’ai publié ces lettres._”—J. J.

ROUSSEAU: _La Nouvelle Héloise_.

[3] Beautiful female faces in Hogarth’s plates and pictures.

Among others, the bride-elect with handkerchief passed through

her wedding-ring; the countess kneeling to her dying lord (in the

_Marriage_); the charming wife mending the galligaskins in the

_Distressed Poet_; the poor wretch whom the taskmaster is about to

strike with a cane, in the Bridewell scene of the _Rake’s Progress_; the

milkmaid, in the _Enraged Musician_; the blooming English girl (for she

is no more an Egyptian than you or I) in “_Pharaoh’s Daughter_;” the pure

soul who sympathizes with the mad spendthrift, in the Bedlam scene of

the _Rake’s Progress_; the hooped belle who is chucking the little black

boy under the chin, in the _Taste in High Life_—a priceless performance,

and one that should be re-engraved in this age, as a satire against

exaggerated crinoline. Lord Charlemont’s famous picture, _Virtue in

Danger_, I have not seen.

[4] The damages and costs must have amounted to a round sum; but it

is to me marvellous that in those days of legal chicanery the action

should have been so brief, and so conclusively decided. Those were the

days when, if you owed any one forty shillings, you were served with

writs charging you with having committed a certain trespass, to wit at

Brentford, being in the company of Job Doe (not always _John_ Doe);

with “that having no settled abode, you had been lurking and wandering

about as a vagabond;” with that (this was in the Exchequer) “out of deep

hatred and malice to the body politic, you had kept our sovereign lord

the king from being seised of a certain sum, to wit, two millions of

money, for which it was desirable to escheat the sum of forty shillings

towards the use of our sovereign and suffering lord aforesaid.” In the

declaration, it was set forth, that you had gone with sticks and staves,

and assaulted and wounded divers people; and the damages were laid at

10,000_l._, of which the plaintiff was reasonable enough to claim only

the moderate sum of forty shillings. The capias took you at once for any

sum exceeding 2_l._, and you had to find and justify bail, if you did not

wish to pine in a spunging-house, or rot in the Fleet. These were the

days, not quite five thousand, and some of them not quite one hundred

and fifty years ago, when criminal indictments were drawn in Latin, and

Norman-French was an important part of legal education (see Pope and

Swift’s _Miscellanies_, “Stradling _versus_ Styles”), and prisoners were

brought up on habeas laden with chains. See Layer’s case in the _State

Trials_, Lord Campbell’s agreeable condensation in the _Lives of the

Chief Justices_. Layer was a barrister, a man of birth and education,

but was implicated in an abortive Jacobite plot. His chains were of such

dreadful weight, that he could sleep only on his back. He was suffering

from an internal complaint, and pathetically appealed to Pratt, C.J., who

was suffering from a similar ailment, to order his irons to be taken off,

were it only on the ground of common sympathy. The gentleman gaoler of

the Tower, who stood by him on the floor of the court while he made this

application, was humanely employed in holding up the captive’s fetters

to ease him, partially, of his dreadful burden. Prisoner’s counsel urged

that the indignity of chains was unknown to his “majesty’s prisoners in

the Tower;” that the gentleman gaoler and the warders did not know how to

set about the hangman’s office of shackling captives; that there were no

fetters in the Tower beyond the “Scavenger’s Daughter,” and the Spanish

Armada relics, and that they had been obliged to procure fetters from

Newgate. But Pratt, C.J., was inexorable. He was a stanch Whig; and, so

civilly, but sternly remanded the prisoner, all ironed as he was, to the

Tower. Christopher Layer was soon afterwards put out of his misery by

being hanged, drawn, and quartered; but he was much loved by the people,

and his head had not been long on Temple Bar when it was carried off

as a relic. It is almost impossible to realize this cool, civil, legal

savagery, in the era so closely following Anna Augusta’s silver age. Sir

Walter Scott was in evidently an analogous bewilderment of horror when

he described the execution of Feargus McIvor: a fiction certainly, but

with its dreadful parallels of reality in the doom of Colonel Townely,

Jemmy Dawson, Dr. Cameron, and scores more unfortunate and misguided

gentlemen who suffered the horrible sentence of the law of high treason

at Carlisle, at Tyburn, or on Kennington Common.

[5] Hogarth painted a beautiful separate portrait of her—a loving,

trustful face, and _such_ lips—which has been engraved in mezzotint. I

should properly have added it to my catalogue of the Hogarthian Beauties.

[6] A similar doubt—was it not by Lord Ellenborough?—has been expressed

within our own times.

[7] These horrors were not confined to the Fleet. The King’s Bench and

the Marshalsea were nearly as bad: and, in the former prison, gangs of

drunken soldiers—what could the officers have been about?—were frequently

introduced to coerce the unhappy inmates. The Bench and Marshalsea were

excellent properties. The patent rights were purchased from the Earl of

Radnor for 5,000_l._, and there were some sixteen shareholders in the

profits accruing from the gaol. Of the Marshalsea, evidence is given of

the turnkeys holding a drinking bout in the lodge, and calling in a poor

prisoner to “divert” them. On this miserable wretch they put an iron

skull-cap and a pair of thumbscrews, and so tortured him for upwards of

half-an-hour. Then, somewhat frightened, they gave him his discharge, as

a _douceur_; but the miserable man fainted in the Borough High Street,

and being carried into St. Thomas’s Hospital, presently died there.

[8] Did the poet Thomson, the kind-hearted, tender, pure-minded man,

belong to the “mobbish confederation?” Hear him in the _Seasons_, in

compliment to the commissioners for inquiring into the state of the

gaols:—

“Where sickness pines, where thirst and hunger burn,

Ye sons of mercy, yet resume the search;

_Drag forth the legal monsters into light_!

Wrench from their hands oppression’s iron rod,

And make the cruel feel the pains they give.”

It is slightly consolatory to be told by antiquary Oldys, that Bambridge

cut his throat in 1749; but the ruffian should properly have swung as

high as Haman.

[9] “If a prisoner die through duresse of the gaoler, it is _murder in

the gaoler_.”—St. German’s _Doctor and Student_. Why was this not quoted

at Birmingham?

[10] Rev. James Dallaway, whose notes to Walpole’s _Anecdotes_ are very

excellent. Mr. Wornum, the last editor of Walpole, annotated by Dallaway,

puzzles me. He must be an accomplished art-scholar: is he not the Wornum

of the Marlborough House School? but he calls Swift’s Legion Club the

“Congenial Club,” utterly ignoring Swift’s ferocious text, an excerpt

from which he quotes.

[11] The clumsy police of the time seem to have entirely ignored the

existence of unchaste women till they became riotous, were mixed up in

tavern brawls, had given offence to the rich rakes, or, especially,

were discovered to be the mistresses of thieves and highwaymen. Then

they were suddenly caught up, taken before a justice, and committed to

Bridewell—either the _ergastolo_ in Bridge Street, or the _presidio_

in Tothill Fields—I take the former. Arrived there, they were kept

till noon on board-day, Wednesday. Then they were arraigned before the

honourable Board of Governors; the president with his hammer in his

high-backed chair. The wretched Kate stands among the beadles clad in

blue, at the lower end of the room, which is divided into two by folding

doors. Then, the accusation being stated, the president cries, “How say

you, gentlemen, shall Katherine Hackabout receive present punishment?”

The suffrages are collected; they are generally against Kate, who

is forthwith seized by the beadles, half unrobed, and receives the

“civility of the house,” _i.e._ the correction of stripes, which torture

is continued (the junior beadle wielding the lash) till the president

strikes his hammer on the table as a signal for execution to stop.

“Knock! Sir Robert; oh, good Sir Robert, knock!” was a frequent entreaty

of the women under punishment; and “Knock, knock!” was shouted after them

in derision by the boys in the street, to intimate that they had been

scourged in Bridewell. Being sufficiently whealed, Kate was handed over

to the taskmaster, to be set to beat hemp, and to be herself caned, or

scourged, or fettered with a log, like a stray donkey, according to his

fancy and the interests of the hemp manufacture. Many women went through

these ordeals dozens of times. “It’s not the way to reform ’em,” observes

Ned Ward; and for once, I think, the satirical publican, who travelled

in “ape and monkey climes,” is right—Vide Smollett: _Roderick Random_;

Cunningham: _Handbook of London_; and, _Bridewell Hospital Reports_,

1720-1799.

Written in the Deepdene Album.

Thou record of the votive throng,

That fondly seek this fairy shrine,

And pay the tribute of a song

Where worth and loveliness combine,—

What boots that I, a vagrant wight

From clime to clime still wandering on,

Upon thy friendly page should write

——Who’ll think of me when I am gone?

Go plow the wave, and sow the sand;

Throw seed to every wind that blows;

Along the highway strew thy hand,

And fatten on the crop that grows.

For even thus the man that roams

On heedless hearts his feeling spends;

Strange tenant of a thousand homes,

And friendless, with ten thousand friends!

Yet here, for once, I’ll leave a trace,

To ask in aftertimes a thought;

To say that here a resting-place

My wayworn heart has fondly sought.

So the poor pilgrim heedless strays,

Unmoved, through many a region fair;

But at some shrine his tribute pays,

To tell that he has worshipped there.

WASHINGTON IRVING.

_June 24th, 1822._

Lovel the Widower.

CHAPTER V.

IN WHICH I AM STUNG BY A SERPENT.

[Illustration]

If, when I heard Baker call out Bessy Bellenden, and adjure Jove, he

had run forward and seized Elizabeth by the waist, or offered her other

personal indignity, I too should have run forward on my side and engaged

him. Though I am a stout elderly man, short in stature and in wind, I

know I am a match for _that_ rickety little captain on his high-heeled

boots. A match for him? I believe Miss Bessy would have been a match for

both of us. Her white arm was as hard and polished as ivory. Had she held

it straight pointed against the rush of the dragoon, he would have fallen

backwards before his intended prey: I have no doubt he would. It was the

hen, in this case, was stronger than the libertine fox, and _au besoin_

would have pecked the little marauding vermin’s eyes out. Had, I say,

Partlet been weak, and Reynard strong, I _would_ have come forward: I

certainly would. Had he been a wolf now, instead of a fox, I am certain I

should have run in upon him, grappled with him, torn his heart and tongue

out of his black throat, and trampled the lawless brute to death.

Well, I didn’t do any such thing. I was just _going_ to run in,—and I

didn’t. I was just going to rush to Bessy’s side to clasp her (I have

no doubt) to my heart: to beard the whiskered champion who was before

her, and perhaps say, “Cheer thee—cheer thee, my persecuted maiden, my

beauteous love—my Rebecca! Come on, Sir Brian de Bois Guilbert, thou

dastard Templar! It is I, Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe.” (By the way, though

the fellow was not a _Templar_, he was a _Lincoln’s Inn man_, having

passed twice through the Insolvent Court there with infinite discredit.)

But I made no heroic speeches. There was no need for Rebecca to jump out

of window and risk her lovely neck. How could she, in fact, the French

window being flush with the ground floor? And I give you my honour,

just as I was crying my war-cry, couching my lance, and rushing _à la

recousse_ upon Sir Baker, a sudden thought made me drop my (figurative)

point: a sudden idea made me rein in my galloping (metaphorical) steed,

and spare Baker for that time.

Suppose I had gone in? But for that sudden precaution, there might

have been a Mrs. Batchelor. I might have been a bullied father of ten

children. (Elizabeth has a fine high temper of her own.) What is four

hundred and twenty a year, with a wife and perhaps half-a-dozen children?

Should I have been a whit the happier? Would Elizabeth? Ah! no. And yet I

feel a certain sort of shame, even now, when I think that I didn’t go in.

Not that I was in a fright, as some people choose to hint. I swear I was

not. But the reason why I did not charge was this:—

Nay, I _did_ charge part of the way, and then, I own, stopped. It was an

error in judgment. It wasn’t a want of courage. Lord George Sackville

was a brave man, and as cool as a cucumber under fire. Well, _he_ didn’t

charge at the battle of Minden, and Prince Ferdinand made the deuce and

all of a disturbance, as we know. Byng was a brave man,—and I ask, wasn’t

it a confounded shame executing him? So with respect to myself. Here is

my statement. I make it openly. I don’t care. I am accused of seeing a

woman insulted, and not going to her rescue. I am not guilty, I say. That

is, there were reasons which caused me not to attack. Even putting aside

the superior strength of Elizabeth herself to the enemy,—I vow there were

cogent and honourable reasons why I did not charge home.

You see I happened to be behind a blue lilac bush (and was turning a

rhyme—heaven help us!—in which _death_ was only to part me and Elizabeth)

when I saw Baker’s face surge over the chair-back. I rush forward as he

cries “by Jove.” Had Miss Prior cried out on her part, the strength of

twenty Heenans, I know, would have nerved this arm; but all she did was

to turn pale, and say, “Oh, mercy! Captain Baker! Do pity me!”

“What! you remember me, Bessy Bellenden, do you?” asks the captain,

advancing.

“Oh, not that name! please, not that name!” cries Bessy.

“I thought I knew you yesterday,” says Baker. “Only, gad, you see, I

had so much claret on board, I did not much know what was what. And oh!

Bessy, I have got such a splitter of a headache.”

“Oh! please—please, my name is Miss Prior. Pray! pray, sir, don’t.”—

“You’ve got handsomer—doosid deal handsomer. Know you now well, your

spectacles off. You come in here—teach my nephew and niece, humbug my

sister, make love to the ah——. Oh! you uncommon sly little toad!”

“Captain Baker! I beg—I implore you,” says Bess, or something of the

sort: for the white hands assumed an attitude of supplication.

“Pooh! don’t gammon _me_!” says the rickety captain (or words to that

effect), and seizes those two firm white hands in his moist, trembling

palms.

[Illustration: BEDFORD TO THE RESCUE.]

Now do you understand why I paused? When the dandy came grinning forward,

with looks and gestures of familiar recognition: when the pale Elizabeth

implored him to spare her:—a keen arrow of jealousy shot whizzing through

my heart, and caused me well-nigh to fall backwards as I ran forwards. I

bumped up against a bronze group in the gardens. The group represented

a lion stung by a serpent. _I_ was a lion stung by a serpent too. Even

Baker could have knocked me down. Fiends and anguish! he had known her

before? The Academy, the life she had led, the wretched old tipsy,

ineffective guardian of a father—all these antecedents in poor Bessy’s

history passed through my mind. And I had offered my heart and troth to

this woman! Now, my dear sir, I appeal to you. What would _you_ have

done? Would _you_ have liked to have such a sudden suspicion thrown over

the being of your affection? “Oh! spare me—spare me!” I heard her say,

in clear—too clear—pathetic tones. And then there came rather a shrill

“Ah!” and then the lion was up in my breast again; and I give you my

honour, just as I was going to step forward—to step?—to _rush_ forward

from behind the urn where I had stood for a moment with thumping heart,

Bessy’s “Ah!” or little cry was followed by a _whack_, which I heard as

clear as anything I ever heard in my life;—and I saw the little captain

spin back, topple over a chair heels up, and in this posture heard him

begin to scream and curse in shrill tones...

Not for long, for as the captain and the chair tumble down, a door

springs open;—a man rushes in, who pounces like a panther upon the

prostrate captain, pitches into his nose and eyes, and chokes his bad

language by sending a fist down his naughty throat.

“Oh! thank you, Bedford!—please, leave him, Bedford! that’s enough.

There, don’t hurt him any more!” says Bessy, laughing—laughing, upon my

word.

“Ah! will you?” says Bedford. “Lie still, you little beggar, or I’ll

knock your head off. Look here, Miss Prior!—Elizabeth—dear—dear

Elizabeth! I love you with all my heart, and soul, and strength—I do.”

“O Bedford! Bedford!” warbles Elizabeth.

“I do! I can’t help it. I must say it! Ever since Rome, I do. Lie still,

you drunken little beast! It’s no use. But I adore you, O Elizabeth!

Elizabeth!” And there was Dick, who was always following Miss P. about,

and poking his head into keyholes to spy her, actually making love to her

over the prostrate body of the captain.

Now, what was I to do? Wasn’t I in a most confoundedly awkward situation?

A lady had been attacked—_a_ lady?—_the_ lady, and I hadn’t rescued her.

Her insolent enemy was overthrown, and I hadn’t done it. A champion,

three inches shorter than myself, had come in, and dealt the blow. I

was in such a rage of mortification, that I should have liked to thrash

the captain and Bedford too. The first I know I could have matched: the

second was a tough little hero. And it was he who rescued the damsel,

whilst I stood by! In a strait so odious, sudden, and humiliating, what

should I, what could I, what did I do?

Behind the lion and snake there is a brick wall and marble balustrade,

built for no particular reason, but flanking three steps and a grassy

terrace, which then rises up on a level to the house-windows. Beyond

the balustrade is a shrubbery of more lilacs and so forth, by which you

can walk round into another path, which also leads up to the house.

So as I had not charged—ah! woe is me!—as the battle was over, I—I

just went round that shrubbery into the other path, and so entered the

house, arriving like Fortinbras in _Hamlet_, when everybody is dead and

sprawling, you know, and the whole business is done.

And was there to be no end to my shame, or to Bedford’s laurels? In that

brief interval, whilst I was walking round the bypath (just to give

myself a pretext for entering coolly into the premises), this fortunate

fellow had absolutely engaged another and larger champion. This was no

other than Bulkeley, my Lady B.’s first-class attendant. When the captain

fell amidst his screams and curses, he called for Bulkeley: and that

individual made his appearance, with a little Scotch cap perched on his

powdered head.

“Hullo! what’s the row year?” says Goliah, entering.

“Kill that blackguard! Hang him, kill him!” screams Captain Blacksheep,

rising with bleeding nose.

“I say, what’s the row year,” asks the grenadier.

“Off with your cap, sir, before a lady!” calls out Bedford.

“Hoff with my cap! you be blo——”

But he said no more, for little Bedford jumped some two feet from the

ground, and knocked the cap off, so that a cloud of ambrosial powder

filled the room with violet odours. The immense frame of the giant shook

at this insult: “I will be the death on you, you little beggar!” he

grunted out; and was advancing to destroy Dick, just as I entered in the

cloud which his head had raised.

“I’ll knock the brains as well as the powder out of your ugly head!” says

Bedford, springing at the poker. At which juncture I entered.

“What—what is this disturbance?” I say, advancing with an air of mingled

surprise and resolution.

“You git out of the way till I knock his ’ead off!” roars Bulkeley.

“Take up your cap, sir, and leave the room,” I say, still with the same

elegant firmness.

“Put down that there poker, you coward!” bellows the monster on board

wages.

“Miss Prior!” I say (like a dignified hypocrite, as I own I was), “I

hope no one has offered you a rudeness?” And I glare round, first at the

knight of the bleeding nose, and then at his squire.

Miss Prior’s face, as she replied to me, wore a look of awful scorn.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, turning her head over her shoulder, and

looking at me with her grey eyes. “Thank you, Richard Bedford! God bless

you! I shall ever be thankful to you, wherever I am.” And the stately

figure swept out of the room.

She had seen me behind that confounded statue, then, and I had not come

to her! O torments and racks! O scorpions, fiends, and pitchforks! The

face of Bedford, too (flashing with knightly gratitude anon as she

spoke kind words to him and passed on), wore a look of scorn as he

turned towards me, and then stood, his nostrils distended, and breathing

somewhat hard, glaring at his enemies, and still grasping his mace of

battle.

When Elizabeth was gone, there was a pause of a moment, and then

Blacksheep, taking his bleeding cambric from his nose, shrieks out, “Kill

him, I say! A fellow that dares to hit one in my condition, and when I’m

down! Bulkeley, you great hulking jackass! kill him, I say!”

“Jest let him put that there poker down, that’s hall,” growls Bulkeley.

“You’re afraid, you great cowardly beast! You shall go, Mr.

What-d’ye-call-’em—Mr. Bedford—you shall have the sack, sir, as sure as

your name is what it is! I’ll tell my brother-in-law everything; and as

for that woman——”

“If you say a word against her, I’ll cane you wherever I see you, Captain

Baker!” I cry out.

“Who spoke to _you_?” says the captain, falling back and scowling at me.

“Who hever told you to put _your_ foot in?” says the squire.

I was in such a rage, and so eager to find an object on which I might

wreak my fury, that I confess I plunged at this Bulkeley. I gave him two

most violent blows on the waistcoat, which caused him to double up with

such frightful contortions, that Bedford burst out laughing; and even the

captain with the damaged eye and nose began to laugh too. Then, taking a

lesson from Dick, as there was a fine shining dagger on the table, used

for the cutting open of reviews and magazines, I seized and brandished

this weapon, and I daresay would have sheathed it in the giant’s bloated

corpus, had he made any movement towards me. But he only called out,

“hI’ll be the death on you, you cowards! hI’ll be the death of both on

you!” And snatching up his cap from the carpet, walked out of the room.

“Glad you did that, though,” says Baker, nodding his head. “Think I’d

best pack up.”

And now the Devil of Rage which had been swelling within me gave place to

a worse devil—the Devil of Jealousy—and I turned on the captain, who was

also just about to slink away:—

“Stop!” I cried out—I screamed out, I may say.

“Who spoke to you, I should like to know? and who the dooce dares to

speak to me in that sort of way?” says Clarence Baker, with a plentiful

garnish of expletives, which need not be here inserted. But he stopped,

nevertheless, and turned slouching round.

“You spoke just now of Miss Prior?” I said. “Have you anything against

her?”

“What’s that to you?” he asked.

“I am her oldest friend. I introduced her into this family. _Dare_ you

say a word against her?”

“Well, who the dooce has?”

“You knew her before?”

“Yes, I did, then.”

“When she went by the name of Bellenden?”

“Of course, I did. And what’s that to you?” he screams out.

“I this day asked her to be my wife, sir! _That’s_ what it is to me!” I

replied, with severe dignity.

Mr. Clarence began to whistle. “Oh! if that’s it—of course not!” he says.

The jealous demon writhed within me and rent me.

“You mean that there _is_ something, then?” I asked, glaring at the young

reprobate.

“No, I don’t,” says he, looking very much frightened. “No, there is

nothin’. Upon my sacred honour, there isn’t, that I know.” (I was

looking uncommonly fierce at this time, and, I must own, would rather

have quarrelled with somebody than not.) “No, there _is_ nothin’ that I

know. Ever so many years ago, you see, I used to go with Tom Papillion,

Turkington, and two or three fellows, to that theatre. Dolphin had it.

And we used to go behind the scenes—and—and I own I had a row with her.

And I was in the wrong. There now, I own I was. And she left the theatre.

And she behaved quite right. And I was very sorry. And I believe she is

as good a woman as ever stept now. And the father was a disreputable

old man, but most honourable—I know he was. And there was a fellow in

the Bombay service—a fellow by the name of Walker or Walkingham—yes,

Walkingham; and I used to meet him at the Cave of Harmony, you know; and

he told me that she was as right as right could be. And he was doosidly

cut up about leaving her. And he would have married her, I dessay, only

for his father the general, who wouldn’t stand it. And he was ready

to hang himself when he went away. He used to drink awfully, and then

he used to swear about her; and we used to chaff him, you know. Low,

vulgarish sort of man, he was; and a very passionate fellow. And if

you’re goin’ to marry her, you know—of course, I ask your pardon, and

that; and upon the honour of a gentleman I know nothin’ against her. And

I wish you joy and all that sort of thing. I do now, really now!” And so

saying, the mean, mischievous little monkey sneaked away, and clambered

up to his own perch in his own bedroom.

Worthy Mrs. Bonnington, with a couple of her young ones, made her

appearance at this juncture. She had a key, which gave her a free pass

through the garden door, and brought her children for an afternoon’s play

and fighting with their little nephew and niece. Decidedly, Bessy did not

bring up her young folks well. Was it that their grandmothers spoiled

them, and undid the governess’s work? Were those young people odious

(as they often were) by nature, or rendered so by the neglect of their

guardians? If Bessy had loved her charges more, would they not have been

better? Had she a kind, loving, maternal heart? Ha! This thought—this

jealous doubt—smote my bosom: and were she mine, and the mother of many

possible little Batchelors, would she be kind to _them_? Would they be

wilful, and selfish, and abominable little wretches, in a word, like

these children? Nay—nay! Say that Elizabeth has but a cold heart; we

cannot be all perfection. But, _per contra_, you must admit that, cold

as she is, she does her duty. How good she has been to her own brothers

and sisters: how cheerfully she has given away her savings to them: how

admirably she has behaved to her mother, hiding the iniquities of that

disreputable old schemer, and covering her improprieties with decent

filial screens and pretexts. Her mother? _Ah! grands dieux!_ You want

to marry, Charles Batchelor, and you will have that greedy pauper for a

mother-in-law; that fluffy Bluecoat boy, those hob-nailed taw-players,

top-spinners, toffee-eaters, those underbred girls, for your brothers-

and sisters-in-law! They will be quartered upon you. You are so absurdly

weak and good-natured—you know you are—that you will never be able to

resist. Those boys will grow up: they will go out as clerks or shopboys:

get into debt, and expect you to pay their bills: want to be articled

to attornies and so forth, and call upon you for the premium. Their

mother will never be out of your house. She will ferret about in your

drawers and wardrobes, filch your haberdashery, and cast greedy eyes on

the very shirts and coats on your back, and calculate when she can get

them for her boys. Those vulgar young miscreants will never fail to come

and dine with you on a Sunday. They will bring their young linendraper

or articled friends. They will draw bills on you, or give their own to

money-lenders, and unless you take up those bills they will consider you

a callous, avaricious brute, and the heartless author of their ruin. The

girls will come and practise on your wife’s piano. _They_ won’t come to

you on Sundays only; they will always be staying in the house. They will

always be preventing a _tête-à-tête_ between your wife and you. As they

grow old, they will want her to take them out to tea-parties, and to

give such entertainments, where they will introduce their odious young

men. They will expect you to commit meannesses, in order to get theatre

tickets for them from the newspaper editors of your acquaintance. You

will have to sit in the back seat: to pay the cab to and from the play:

to see glances and bows of recognition passing between them and dubious

bucks in the lobbies: and to lend the girls your wife’s gloves, scarfs,

ornaments, smelling-bottles, and handkerchiefs, which of course they will

never return. If Elizabeth is ailing from any circumstance, they will get

a footing in your house, and she will be jealous of them. The ladies of

your own family will quarrel with them, of course; and very likely your

mother-in-law will tell them a piece of her mind. And you bring this

dreary certainty upon you, because, forsooth, you fell in love with a

fine figure, a pair of grey eyes, and a head of auburn (not to say red)

hair! O Charles Batchelor! in what a galley hast thou seated thyself, and

what a family is crowded in thy boat!

All these thoughts are passing in my mind, as good Mrs. Bonnington is

prattling to me—I protest I don’t know about what. I think I caught some

faint sentences about the Patagonian mission, the National schools, and

Mr. Bonnington’s lumbago; but I can’t say for certain. I was busy with

my own thoughts. I had asked the awful question—I was not answered.

Bessy had even gone away in a huff about my want of gallantry, but I was

easy on that score. As for Mr. Drencher, she had told me her sentiments

regarding him; and though I am considerably older, yet thought I, I

need not be afraid of _that_ rival. But when she says _yes_? Oh, dear!

oh, dear! _Yes_ means Elizabeth—certainly, a brave young woman—but it

means Mrs. Prior, and Gus, and Amelia Jane, and the whole of that dismal

family. No wonder, with these dark thoughts crowding my mind, Mrs.

Bonnington found me absent; and, as a comment upon some absurd reply of

mine, said, “La! Mr. Batchelor, you must be crossed in love!” Crossed in

love! It might be as well for some folks if they _were_ crossed in love.

At my age, and having loved madly, as I did, that party in Dublin, a man

doesn’t take the second fit by any means so strongly. Well! well! the die

was cast, and I was there to bide the hazard. ‘What can be the matter?

I look pale and unwell, and had better see Mr. D.?’ Thank you, my dear

Mrs. Bonnington. I had a violent—a violent toothache last night-yes,

toothache; and was kept awake, thank you. And there’s nothing like having

it out? and Mr. D. draws them beautifully, and has taken out six of your

children’s? It’s better now; I daresay it will be better still, soon. I

retire to my chamber: I take a book—can’t read one word of it. I resume

my tragedy. Tragedy? Bosh!

I suppose Mr. Drencher thought his yesterday’s patient would be better

for a little more advice and medicine, for he must pay a second visit to

Shrublands on this day, just after the row with the captain had taken

place, and walked up to the upper regions, as his custom was. Very

likely he found Mr. Clarence bathing his nose there, and prescribed for

the injured organ. Certainly he knocked at the door of Miss Prior’s

schoolroom (the fellow was always finding a pretext for entering _that_

apartment), and Master Bedford comes to me, with a wobegone, livid

countenance, and a “Ha! ha! young Sawbones is up with her!”

“So my poor Dick,” I say, “I heard your confession as I was myself

running in to rescue Miss P. from that villain.”

“My blood was hup,” groans Dick,—“up, I beg your pardon. When I saw that

young rascal lay a hand on her I could not help flying at him. I would

have hit him if he had been my own father. And I could not help saying

what was on my mind. It would come out; I knew it would some day. I

might as well wish for the moon as hope to get her. She thinks herself

superior to me, and perhaps she is mistaken. But it’s no use; she don’t

care for me; she don’t care for anybody. Now the words are out, in course

I mustn’t stay here.”

“You may get another place easily enough with your character, Bedford!”

But he shook his head. “I’m not disposed to black nobody else’s boots

no more. I have another place. I have saved a bit of money. My poor old

mother is gone, whom you used to be so kind to, Mr. B. I’m alone now.

Confound that Sawbones, will he _never_ come away? I’ll tell you about

my plans some day, sir, and I know you’ll be so good as to help me.” And

away goes Dick, looking the picture of woe and despair.

Presently, from the upper rooms, Sawbones descends. I happened to be

standing in the hall, you see, talking to Dick. Mr. Drencher scowls at me

fiercely, and I suppose I return him haughty glance for glance. He hated

me: I him: I liked him to hate me.

“How is your patient, Mr.—a—Drencher?” I ask.

“Trifling contusion of the nose—brown paper and vinegar,” says the doctor.

“Great powers! did the villain strike her on the nose?” I cry, in terror.

“_Her_—whom?” says he.

“Oh—ah—yes—indeed; it’s nothing,” I say, smiling. The fact is I had

forgotten about Baker in my natural anxiety for Elizabeth.

“I don’t know what you mean by laughing, sir?” says the red-haired

practitioner. “But if you mean chaff, Mr. Batchelor, let me tell you I

don’t want chaff, and I won’t have chaff!” and herewith, exit Sawbones,

looking black doses at me.

Jealous of me, think I, as I sink down in a chair in the morning-room,

where the combat had just taken place. And so thou, too, art

fever-caught, my poor physician! What a fascination this girl has. Here’s

the butler: here’s the medical man: here am I: here is the captain has

been smitten—smitten on the nose. Has the gardener been smitten too, and

is the page gnawing his buttons off for jealousy, and is Mons. Bulkeley

equally in love with her? I take up a review, and think over this, as I

glance through its pages.

As I am lounging and reading, Mons. Bulkeley himself makes his

appearance, bearing in cloaks and packages belonging to his lady. “Have

the goodness to take that cap off,” I say, coolly.

“_You_ ’ave the goodness to remember that if hever I see you hout o’ this

’ouse I’ll punch your hugly ’ead off,” says the monstrous menial. But I

poise my paper-cutter, and he retires growling.

From despondency I pass to hope; and the prospect of marriage, which

before appeared so dark to me, assumes a gayer hue. I have four hundred

a year, and that house in Devonshire Street, Bloomsbury Square, of which

the upper part will be quite big enough for us. If we have children,

there is Queen Square for them to walk and play in. Several genteel

families I know, who still live in the neighbourhood, will come and see

my wife, and we shall have a comfortable, cosy little society, suited to

our small means. The tradesmen in Lamb’s Conduit Street are excellent,

and the music at the Foundling always charming. I shall give up one of my

clubs. The other is within an easy walk.

No: my wife’s relations will _not_ plague me. Bessy is a most sensible,

determined woman, and as cool a hand as I know. She will only see Mrs.

Prior at proper (and, I trust, distant) intervals. Her brothers and

sisters will learn to know their places, and not obtrude upon me or the

company which I keep. My friends, who are educated people and gentlemen,

will not object to visit me because I live over a shop (my ground floor

and spacious back premises in Devonshire Street are let to a German

toy-warehouse). I shall add a hundred or two at least to my income by my

literary labour; and Bessy, who has practised frugality all her life, and

been a good daughter and a good sister, I know will prove a good wife,

and, please heaven! a good mother. Why, four hundred a year, _plus_ two

hundred, is a nice little income. And my old college friend, Wigmore, who

is just on the Bench? He will, he must get me a place—say three hundred a

year. With nine hundred a year we can do quite well.

Love is full of elations and despondencies. The future, over which such

a black cloud of doubt lowered a few minutes since, blushed a sweet

rose-colour now. I saw myself happy, beloved, with a competence, and

imagined myself reposing in the delightful garden of Red Lion Square on

some summer evening, and half-a-dozen little Batchelors frisking over the

flower-bespangled grass there.

After our little colloquy, Mrs. Bonnington, not finding much pleasure in

my sulky society, had gone to Miss Prior’s room with her young folks, and

as the door of the morning-room opened now and again, I could hear the

dear young ones scuttling about the passages, where they were playing at

horses, and fighting, and so forth. After a while good Mrs. B. came down

from the schoolroom. “Whatever has happened, Mr. Batchelor?” she said to

me, in her passage through the morning-room. “Miss Prior is very pale and

absent. _You_ are very pale and absent. Have you been courting her, you

naughty man, and trying to supplant Mr. Drencher? There now, you turn

as red as my ribbon! Ah! Bessy is a good girl, and _so_ fond of my dear

children. ‘Ah, dear Mrs. Bonnington,’ she says to me—but of course you

won’t tell Lady B.: it would make Lady B. perfectly furious. ‘Ah!’ says

Miss P. to me, ‘I wish, ma’am, that my little charges were like their

dear little nephews and nieces—so exquisitely brought up!’ Pop again

wished to beat his uncle. I wish—I wish Frederick would send that child

to school! Miss P. owns that he is too much for her. Come, children, it

is time to go to dinner.” And, with more of this prattle, the good lady

summons her young ones, who descend from the schoolroom with their nephew

and niece.

Following nephew and niece comes demure Miss Prior, to whom I fling a

knowing glance, which says, plain as eyes can speak—Do, Elizabeth, come

and talk for a little to your faithful Batchelor! She gives a sidelong

look of intelligence, leaves a parasol and a pair of gloves on a table,

accompanies Mrs. Bonnington and the young ones into the garden, sees

the clergyman’s wife and children disappear through the garden gate,

and her own youthful charges engaged in the strawberry-beds; and, of

course, returns to the morning-room for her parasol and gloves, which she

had forgotten. There is a calmness about that woman—an easy, dauntless

dexterity, which frightens me—_ma parole d’honneur_. In that white breast

is there a white marble stone in place of the ordinary cordial apparatus?

Under the white velvet glove of that cool hand are there bones of cold

steel?

“So, Drencher has again been here, Elizabeth?” I say.

She shrugs her shoulders. “To see that wretched Captain Baker. The horrid

little man will die! He was not actually sober just now when he—when

I—when you saw him. How I wish you had come sooner—to prevent that

horrible, tipsy, disreputable quarrel. It makes me very, very thoughtful,

Mr. Batchelor. He will speak to his mother—to Mr. Lovel. I shall have to

go away. I know I must.”

“And don’t you know where you can find a home, Elizabeth? Have the words

I spoke this morning been so soon forgotten?”

“Oh! Mr. Batchelor! you spoke in a heat. You could not think seriously of

a poor girl like me, so friendless and poor, with so many family ties.

Pop is looking this way, please. To a man bred like you, what can I be?”

“You may make the rest of my life happy, Elizabeth!” I cry. “We are

friends of such old—old date, that you know what my disposition is.”

“Oh! indeed,” says she, “it is certain that there never was a sweeter

disposition or a more gentle creature.” (Somehow I thought she said the

words “gentle creature” with rather a sarcastic tone of voice.) “But

consider your habits, dear sir. I remember how in Beak Street you used

to be always giving, and in spite of your income, always poor. You love

ease and elegance; and having, I daresay, not too much for yourself now,

would you encumber yourself with—with me and the expenses of a household?

I shall always regard you, esteem you, love you as the best friend I ever

had, and—_voici venir la mère du vaurien_.”

Enter Lady Baker. “Do I interrupt a _tête-à-tête_, pray?” she asks.

“My benefactor has known me since I was a child, and befriended me since

then,” says Elizabeth, with simple kindness beaming in her look. “We were

just speaking—I was just—ah!—telling him that my uncle has invited me

most kindly to St. Boniface, whenever I can be spared; and if you and the

family go to the Isle of Wight this autumn, perhaps you will intercede

with Mr. Lovel, and let me have a little holiday. Mary will take every

charge of the children, and I do so long to see my dear aunt and cousins!

And I was begging Mr. Batchelor to use his interest with you, and to

entreat you to use _your_ interest to get me leave. That was what our

talk was about.”

The deuce it was! I couldn’t say No, of course; but I protest I had no

idea until that moment that our conversation had been about aunt and

uncle at St. Boniface. Again came the horrible suspicion, the dreadful

doubt—the chill as of a cold serpent crawling down my back—which had made

me pause, and gasp, and turn pale, anon when Bessy and Captain Clarence

were holding colloquy together. What _has_ happened in this woman’s life?

_Do_ I know all about her, or anything; or only just as much as she

chooses? O Batch—Batch! I suspect you are no better than an old gaby!

“And Mr. Drencher has just been here and seen your son,” Bessy continues,

softly; “and he begs and entreats your ladyship to order Captain Baker to

be more prudent. Mr. D. says Captain Baker is shortening his life, indeed

he is, by his carelessness.”

There is Mr. Lovel coming from the city, and the children are running

to their papa! And Miss Prior makes her patroness a meek curtsey, and

demurely slides away from the room. With a sick heart I say to myself,

“She has been—yes—humbugging is the word—humbugging Lady B. Elizabeth!

Elizabeth! can it be possible thou art humbugging _me_ too?”

Before Lovel enters, Bedford rapidly flits through the room. He looks as

pale as a ghost. His face is awfully gloomy.

“Here’s the governor come,” Dick whispers to me. “It must all come hout

now—out, I beg your pardon. So she’s caught _you_, has she? I thought she

would.” And he grins a ghastly grin.

“What do you mean?” I ask, and I daresay turn rather red.

“I know all about it. I’ll speak to you to-night, sir. Confound her!

confound her!” and he doubles his knuckles into his eyes, and rushes out

of the room over Buttons, entering with the afternoon tea.

“What on earth’s the matter, and why are you knocking the things about?”

Lovel asks at dinner of his butler, who, indeed, acted as one distraught.

A savage gloom was depicted on Bedford’s usually melancholy countenance,

and the blunders in his service were many. With his brother-in-law Lovel

did not exchange many words. Clarence was not yet forgiven for his

escapade two days previous. And when Lady Baker cried, “Mercy, child!

what have you done to yourself?” and the captain replied, “Knocked my

face against a dark door—made my nose bleed,” Lovel did not look up or

express a word of sympathy. “If the fellow knocked his worthless head

off, I should not be sorry,” the widower murmured to me. Indeed, the

tone of the captain’s voice, his _ton_, and his manners in general, were

specially odious to Mr. Lovel, who could put up with the tyranny of

women, but revolted against the vulgarity and assumption of certain men.

As yet nothing had been said about the morning’s quarrel. Here we were

all sitting with a sword hanging over our heads, smiling and chatting,

and talking cookery, politics, the weather, and what not. Bessy was

perfectly cool and dignified at tea. Danger or doubt did not seem to

affect _her_. If she had been ordered for execution at the end of the

evening she would have made the tea, played her Beethoven, answered

questions in her usual voice, and glided about from one to another with

her usual dignified calm, until the hour of decapitation came, when

she would have made her curtsey, and gone out and had the amputation

performed quite quietly and neatly. I admired her, I was frightened

before her. The cold snake crept more than ever down my back as I

meditated on her. I made such awful blunders at whist that even good

Mrs. Bonnington lost her temper with her fourteen shillings. Miss Prior

would have played her hand out, and never made a fault, you may be sure.

She retired at her accustomed hour. Mrs. Bonnington had her glass of

negus, and withdrew too. Lovel keeping his eyes sternly on the captain,

that officer could only get a little sherry and seltzer, and went to bed

sober. Lady Baker folded Lovel in her arms, a process to which my poor

friend very humbly submitted. Everybody went to bed, and no tales were

told of the morning’s doings. There was a respite, and no execution could

take place till to-morrow at any rate. Put on thy night-cap, Damocles,

and slumber for to-night, at least. Thy slumbers will not be cut short by

the awful Chopper of Fate.

Perhaps you may ask what need had _I_ to be alarmed? Nothing could happen

to me. I was not going to lose a governess’s place. Well, if I must

tell the truth, I had not acted with entire candour in the matter of

Bessy’s appointment. In recommending her to Lovel, and the late Mrs. L.,

I had answered for her probity, and so forth, with all my might. I had

described the respectability of her family, her father’s campaigns, her

grandfather’s (old Dr. Sargent’s) celebrated sermons; and had enlarged

with the utmost eloquence upon the learning and high character of her

uncle, the Master of Boniface, and the deserved regard he bore his niece.

But that part of Bessy’s biography which related to the Academy I own I

had not touched upon. _A quoi bon?_ Would every gentleman or lady like

to have everything told about him or her? I had kept the Academy dark

then; and so had brave Dick Bedford the butler; and should that miscreant

captain reveal the secret, I knew there would be an awful commotion

in the building. I should have to incur Lovel’s not unjust reproaches

for _suppressio veri_, and the anger of those two _viragines_, the

grandmothers of Lovel’s children. I was more afraid of the women than of

him, though conscience whispered me that I had not acted quite rightly by

my friend.

When, then, the bed-candles were lighted, and every one said good-night,

“Oh! Captain Baker,” say I, gaily, and putting on a confoundedly

hypocritical grin, “if you will come into my room, I will give you that

book.”

“What book?” says Baker.

“The book we were talking of this morning.”

“Hang me, if I know what you mean,” says he. And luckily for me, Lovel

giving a shrug of disgust, and a good-night to me, stalked out of

the room, bed-candle in hand. No doubt, he thought his wretch of a

brother-in-law did not well remember after dinner what he had done or

said in the morning.

As I now had the Blacksheep to myself, I said calmly, “You are quite

right. There was no talk about a book at all, Captain Baker. But I wished

to see you alone, and impress upon you my earnest wish that everything

which occurred this morning—mind, _everything_—should be considered as

strictly private, and should be confided to _no person whatever_—you

understand?—to no person.”

“Confound me,” Baker breaks out, “if I understand what you mean by your

books and your ‘strictly private.’ I shall speak what I choose—hang me!”

“In that case, sir,” I said, “will you have the goodness to send a friend

of yours to my friend Captain Fitzboodle? I must consider the matter

as personal between ourselves. You insulted, and as I find now, for

the second time—a lady whose relations to me you know. You have given

neither to her, nor to me, the apology to which we are both entitled.

You refuse even to promise to be silent regarding a painful scene which

was occasioned by your own brutal and cowardly behaviour; and you must

abide by the consequences, sir! you must abide by the consequences!” And

I glared at him over my flat candlestick.

“Curse me!—and hang me!—and,” &c. &c. &c. he says, “if I know what all

this is about. What the dooce do you talk to _me_ about books, and about

silence, and apologies, and sending Captain Fitzboodle to me? _I_ don’t

want to see Captain Fitzboodle—great fat brute! _I_ know him perfectly

well.”

“Hush!” say I, “here’s Bedford.” In fact, Dick appeared at this juncture,

to close the house and put the lamps out.

But Captain Clarence only spoke or screamed louder. “What do I care

about who hears me? That fellow insulted me already to-day, and I’d have

pitched his life out of him, only I was down, and I’m so confounded weak

and nervous, and just out of my fever—and—and hang it all! what are you

driving at, Mr. What’s-your-name?” And the wretched little creature cries

almost as he speaks.

“Once for all, will you agree that the affair about which we spoke shall

go no further?” I say, as stern as Draco.

“I shan’t say anythin’ about it. I wish you’d leave me alone, you

fellows, and not come botherin’. I wish I could get a glass of

brandy-and-water up in my bed-room. I tell you I can’t sleep without it,”

whimpers the wretch.

“Sorry I laid hands on you, sir,” says Bedford sadly. “It wasn’t worth

the while. Go to bed, and I’ll get you something warm.”

“Will you, though? I couldn’t sleep without it. Do now—do now! and I

won’t say anythin’—I won’t now—on the honour of a gentleman, I won’t.

Good night, Mr. What-d’-ye-call—.” And Bedford leads the helot to his

chamber.

“I’ve got him in bed; and I’ve given him a dose; and I put some laudanum

in it. He ain’t been out. He has not had much to-day,” says Bedford,

coming back to my room, with his face ominously pale.

“You have given him laudanum?” I ask.

“_Sawbones_ gave him some yesterday,—told me to give him a little—forty

drops,” growls Bedford.

Then the gloomy major-domo puts a hand into each waistcoat pocket, and

looks at me. “You want to fight for her, do you, sir? Calling out, and

that sort of game? Phoo!”—and he laughs scornfully.

“The little miscreant is too despicable, I own,” say I, “and it’s absurd

for a peaceable fellow like me to talk about powder and shot at this time

of day. But what could I do?”

“I say it’s SHE ain’t worth it,” says Bedford, lifting up both clenched

fists out of the waistcoat pockets.

“What do you mean, Dick?” I ask.

“She’s humbugging you,—she’s humbugging me,—she’s humbugging everybody,”

roars Dick. “Look here, sir!” and out of one of the clenched fists he

flings a paper down on the table.

“What is it?” I ask. It’s her handwriting. I see the neat trim lines on

the paper.

“It’s not to you; nor yet to me,” says Bedford.

“Then how dare you read it, sir?” I ask, all of a tremble.

“It’s to him. It’s to Sawbones,” hisses out Bedford. “Sawbones dropt it

as he was getting into his gig; and I read it. _I_ ain’t going to make no

bones about whether it’s wrote to me or not. She tells him how you asked

her to marry you. (Ha!) That’s how I came to know it. And do you know

what she calls you, and what _he_ calls you,—that castor-hoil beast? And

do you know what she says of you? That you hadn’t pluck to stand by her

to-day. There,—it’s all down under her hand and seal. You may read it, or

not, if you like. And if poppy or mandragora will medicine you to sleep

afterwards, I just recommend you to take it. _I_ shall go and get a drop

out of the captain’s bottle—I shall.”

And he leaves me, and the fatal paper on the table.

Now, suppose you had been in my case—would you, or would you not, have

read the paper? Suppose there is some news—bad news—about the woman you

love, will you, or will you not, hear it? Was Othello a rogue because he

let Iago speak to him? There was the paper. It lay there glimmering under

the light, with all the house quiet.

Studies in Animal Life.

“Authentic tidings of invisible things;

Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power,

And central peace subsisting at the heart

Of endless agitation.”—THE EXCURSION.

CHAPTER V.

Talking in beetles—Identity of Egyptian animals with those

now existing: does this prove fixity of species?—Examination

of the celebrated argument of species not having altered in

four thousand years—Impossibility of distinguishing species

from varieties—The affinities of animals—New facts proving the

fertility of Hybrids—The hare and the rabbit contrasted—Doubts

respecting the development hypothesis—On hypothesis in Natural

History—Pliny, and his notion on the formation of pearls—Are

pearls owing to a disease of the oyster?—Formation of the

shell; origin of pearls—How the Chinese manufacture pearls.

A witty friend of mine expressed her sense of the remoteness of the

ancient Egyptians, and her difficulty in sympathizing with them, by

declaring that “_they talked in beetles, you know_.” She referred, of

course, to the hieroglyphics in which that curious people now speak to

us from ancient tombs. Whether those swarthy sages were eloquent and

wise, or obscure and otherwise, in their beetle-speech, it is certain

that entomologists of our day recognize their beetles as belonging to

the same species that are now gathered into collections. Such as the

Egyptians knew them, such we know them now. Nay, the sacred cats found

in those ancient tombs, are cats of the same kind as our own familiar

mousers; they purred before Pharaoh as they purr on our hearthrugs; and

the descendants of the very dogs which irreligiously worried those cats,

are to this day worrying the descendants of those sacred cats. The grains

of wheat, which the _savans_ found in the tombs, were planted in the soil

of France, and grew into waving corn in no respect distinguishable from

the corn grown from the grain of the previous year.

Have these familiar facts any important significance? Are we entitled to

draw any conclusion from the testimony of paintings and sculptures, at

least four thousand years old, which show that several of our well-known

Species of animals, and several of the well-marked Races of men, existed

then, and have not changed since then? Nimrod hunted with dogs and

horses, which would be claimed as ancestors by the dogs and horses at

Melton Mowbray. The Negroes who attended Semiramis and Rhamses are in

every respect similar to the Negroes now toiling amid the sugar-canes

of Alabama. If, during four thousand years Species and Races have not

changed, why should we suppose that they ever will change? Why should

we not take our stand on that testimony, and assert that Species are

unchangeable?

Such has been the argument of Cuvier and his followers; an argument

on which they have laid great stress, and which they have further

strengthened by a challenge to adversaries to produce one single case

where a _transmutation_ of species has taken place:—“Here we show you

evidence that Species have persisted unaltered during four thousand

years, and you cannot show us a single case of Species having changed—you

cannot show us one case of a wolf becoming a dog, an ass becoming a

horse, a hare becoming a rabbit. Yet you must admit that if there were

any inherent tendency to change, four thousand years is a long enough

period for that tendency to display itself in; and we ought to see a very

marked difference between the Species which lived under Semiramis, and

those which are living under Victoria. Instead of this, we see that there

has been no change: the dog has remained a dog, the horse has remained a

horse; every Species retains its well-marked characters.”

No one will say that I have not done justice to this argument. I have

stated it as clearly and forcibly as possible, not with any design to

captivate your assent, but to make the answer complete. This argument

is the _cheval de bataille_ of the Cuvier school; but like many other

argumentative war-horses, it proves, on close inspection, to be spavined

and brokenwinded. The first criticism we must pass on it is, that it

implies the existence of Species as a _thing_, which can be spoken of

as fixed or variable; whereas, as we saw last month, Species is an

_abstraction_, like Whiteness or Strength. No one supposes that there

exists any whiteness apart from white things, or strength apart from

strong things; yet the naturalists who maintain the fixity of Species,

constantly talk as if Species existed independently of the individual

animals. Instead of saying that by the word Species is indicated a

certain group of characters, and that whenever we meet with this group

we say, here is an animal of the same Species; they explicitly declare,

or tacitly imply, that although an individual dog may vary, there is

something above all individuals—the Species—and _that_ cannot vary. As

it is possible some readers may protest that no respectable authority

in modern times ever held the opinion here imputed to a school, I will

quote the very explicit language of one of Cuvier’s disciples—the last

editor of Buffon—who, no later than 1856, could declare that “Species

are the primitive forms of Nature. Individuals are nothing but the

representatives—the copies of these forms: _Les espèces sont les formes

primitives de la Nature. Les individus n’en sont que des représentations,

des copies._”[12] According to this very explicit, but very extravagant,

statement, an individual dog is nothing but a copy of the primitive

form—the typical dog—the _idea_ of a dog, as Plato would say; and of

course, if this be true, it matters little how widely individual dogs may

vary, the type, or species, of which it is the representative, remains

unaltered. Indeed it is on this ground that many physiologists explain

the fact of hereditary transmission: the individual may vary, it is

said, but the species is preserved; and if a dog, without its fore paws,

has offspring, every one of which possesses the fore paws, the reason

is, that _l’idée de l’espèce se reproduit dans le fruit, et lui donne

des organes qui manquaient au père ou à la mère_.[13] It is not easy to

understand how the _idea_ of species can reproduce itself, and give the

offspring of a dog the _organs_ which were wanting in the parents; but to

those who believe that Species exist independently of individuals, and

form the only real existences, the conception may be easier.

I have too much respect for the reader to drag him through a refutation

of such philosophy as this; the statement of the opinion is enough. And

yet, unless some such opinion be maintained, the doctrine of Fixity

of Species is without a basis; for if it be said that the group of

characters which constitute the dog are incapable of change, and in this

sense Species are fixed, we have to ask what evidence there can be for

such an assertion? since it is notorious that individual dogs _do_ show

a change in some of the characters of the group. We shall be referred to

the Egyptian tombs for evidence. M. Flourens assures us that not only

are these tombs evidence that Species have not changed in four thousand

years, but that _no_ species has changed—_aucune espèce n’a changé_—which

is surely stepping a long way beyond the precincts of the tombs?

It may be paradoxical, but it is strictly true, that the fact of

particular species having remained unaltered during four thousand years,

does not add the slightest weight to the evidence in favour of the

fixity of Species. “What!” some may exclaim, “do you pretend that four

thousand years is not a period long enough to prove the fixity of animal

forms?” Yes; I affirm that four thousand, or forty thousand, prove no

more than four. It is only by a fallacy that the opposite opinion could

gain acceptance. You would not suppose that I had strengthened my case

if, instead of contenting myself with stating reasons once, I repeated

these same reasons during forty successive pages; you would remind me

that this _iteration_ was not _cumulation_, and that no force was given

to my fortieth assertion which the first wanted. Why, then, do you ask

me to accept the repetition of the same fact four thousand times over,

as an increase of evidence? It is a familiar fact that like produces

like, that dogs resemble dogs, and do not resemble buffaloes; this fact

is, of course, deepened in our conviction by the unvarying evidence we

see around us, and is guaranteed by the philosophical axiom that like

causes produce like effects; but when once such a conception is formed,

it can gain no fresh strength from any particular instance. If we believe

that crows are black, we do not hold that belief more firmly when we are

shown that crows were black four thousand years ago. In like manner, if

it is an admitted fact that individuals always reproduce individuals

closely resembling themselves, it is not a whit more surprising that the

dogs of Victoria should resemble the dogs of Semiramis, than that they

should resemble their parents: the chain of four thousand years is made

up of many links, each link being a repetition of the other. So long as

a single pair of dogs resembling each other unite, so long will there

be specimens of that species; simply because the children inherit the

characteristics of the parents. So long as Negroes marry with Negroes,

and Jews with Jews, so long must there be a perpetuation of the Negro and

Jewish types; but the tenth generation adds nothing to the evidence of

the first, nor the ten-thousandth to the tenth.

I believe that this fallacy, which destroys the whole value of the

Cuvierian argument, has not before been pointed out; and even now, you

may, perhaps, ask if the fixity of Species is not proved by the fact

that like produces like? So far from this, that it is only by the aid

of such a fact in organic nature that we can imagine _new_ species to

have arisen: in other words, those who believe in the variability of

Species, and the introduction of new forms by means of modification from

the old, always invoke the law of hereditary transmission as the means

of establishing accidental variations. Thus, let us suppose the Egyptian

king to have had one hundred dogs, all of them staghounds, and no other

form of dog to have existed at that time in that country; the dog species

would be represented by the staghound. These staghounds would transmit

to their offspring all their _specific characters_. But, as every one

knows, however much dogs may resemble each other, they always present

individual differences in size, colour, strength, intelligence, &c. Now,

if any one of these differences should happen to become marked, and to

increase by the intermarriage of two dogs similarly distinguished by the

marked peculiarity, this peculiarity would in time become established by

hereditary transmission, and would form the starting-point of a new race

of dogs—say the greyhound—unless it were obliterated by intermarriage

with dogs of the old type. In the former case, we should have two races

of dogs among the descendants of those figured on the Egyptian tombs; but

as one of these races would still preserve the original staghound type,

Cuvier would refer to _it_ as a proof that species had not varied. We, on

the other hand, should point to the greyhound as proof that animal forms

_are_ variable, and that a new form had arisen from modification of the

old.

An objection will at once be raised to this illustration, to the effect

that all zoologists admit the possibility of new Varieties, or Races,

being formed; but they deny that new Species can be formed. It is here

that the equivoque of the word Species prevents a clear understanding of

each other’s argument. Whiteness may justly be said to be unalterable;

but white things may vary—they may become gray, or yellow. In like manner

Species must be invariable, because Species is a word indicating a

particular group of characters; but animals may vary in these characters:

they may present some of the characters less, or more, developed; and

they may even want some of them. Now as there is no absolute standard

of what constitutes Species, what Sub-species, and what Varieties, it

becomes impossible to say whether any individual variation in an animal

form shall constitute a new Variety, or a new Species. With regard to

dogs the differences between the various races are so numerous, and so

marked, as would suffice to constitute species and even genera, in other

groups of animals.

We must relinquish the idea of proving anything by the paintings and

sculptures of the ancients. When we find an Egyptian plough closely

resembling the plough still in use in some places, we may identify it

as of the same “Species” as our own; but this does not disprove the

fact that steam-ploughs, and ploughs of various construction, have been

since invented, all of them being modifications of the original type.

Formerly, and for many years, the stage-coach was our approved mode of

conveyance—and it is still kept up in some districts; nevertheless,

modifications of coach-road into tramroad, and tramroad into railroad,

have gradually resulted in a mode of conveyance utterly unlike the

stage-coach. It is the same with animals.