CHAPTER I.

[Illustration: Charlotte’s Convoy.]

THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE.

AUGUST, 1861.

Philip.

CHAPTER XVII.

BREVIS ESSE LABORO.

Never, General Baynes afterwards declared, did fever come and go so

pleasantly as that attack to which we have seen the Mrs. General advert

in her letter to her sister, Mrs. Major MacWhirter. The cold fit was

merely a lively, pleasant chatter and rattle of the teeth; the hot fit

an agreeable warmth; and though the ensuing sleep, with which I believe

such aguish attacks are usually concluded, was enlivened by several

dreams of death, demons, and torture, how felicitous it was to wake and

find that dreadful thought of ruin removed which had always, for the

last few months, ever since Dr. Firmin’s flight and the knowledge of

his own imprudence, pursued the good-natured gentleman! What! this boy

might go to college, and that get his commission; and their meals need be

embittered by no more dreadful thoughts of the morrow, and their walks

no longer were dogged by imaginary bailiffs, and presented a gaol in the

vista! It was too much bliss; and again and again the old soldier said

his thankful prayers, and blessed his benefactor.

Philip thought no more of his act of kindness, except to be very

grateful, and very happy that he had rendered other people so. He could

no more have taken the old man’s all, and plunged that innocent family

into poverty, than he could have stolen the forks off my table. But other

folks were disposed to rate his virtue much more highly; and amongst

these was my wife, who chose positively to worship this young gentleman,

and I believe would have let him smoke in her drawing-room if he had

been so minded, and though her genteelest acquaintances were in the

room. Goodness knows what a noise and what piteous looks are produced if

ever the master of the house chooses to indulge in a cigar after dinner;

but then, you understand, _I_ have never declined to claim mine and my

children’s right because an old gentleman would be inconvenienced: and

this is what I tell Mrs. Pen. If I order a coat from my tailor, must I

refuse to pay him because a rogue steals it, and ought I to expect to be

let off? Women won’t see matters of fact in a matter-of-fact point of

view, and justice, unless it is tinged with a little romance, gets no

respect from them.

So, forsooth, because Philip has performed this certainly most generous,

most dashing, most reckless piece of extravagance, he is to be held up

as a perfect _preux chevalier_. The most riotous dinners are ordered for

him. We are to wait until he comes to breakfast, and he is pretty nearly

always late. The children are to be sent round to kiss uncle Philip,

as he is now called. The children? I wonder the mother did not jump up

and kiss him too. _Elle en était capable._ As for the osculations which

took place between Mrs. Pendennis and her new-found young friend, Miss

Charlotte Baynes, they were perfectly ridiculous; two school children

could not have behaved more absurdly; and I don’t know which seemed to be

the youngest of these two. There were colloquies, assignations, meetings

on the ramparts, on the pier, where know I?—and the servants and little

children of the two establishments were perpetually trotting to and

fro with letters from dearest Laura to dearest Charlotte, and dearest

Charlotte to her dearest Mrs. Pendennis. Why, my wife absolutely went

the length of saying that dearest Charlotte’s mother, Mrs. Baynes, was a

worthy, clever woman, and a good mother—a woman whose tongue never ceased

clacking about the regiment, and all the officers, and all the officers’

wives; of whom, by the way, she had very little good to tell.

“A worthy mother, is she, my dear?” I say. “But, oh, mercy! Mrs. Baynes

would be an awful mother-in-law!”

I shuddered at the thought of having such a commonplace, hard, ill-bred

woman in a state of quasi authority over me.

On this Mrs. Laura must break out in quite a petulant tone—“Oh, how

_stale_ this kind of thing is, Arthur, from a man _qui veut passer pour

un homme d’esprit_! You are always attacking mothers-in-law!”

“Witness Mrs. Mackenzie, my love—Clive Newcome’s mother-in-law. That’s a

nice creature; not selfish, not wicked, not——”

“Not nonsense, Arthur!”

“Mrs. Baynes knew Mrs. Mackenzie in the West Indies, as she knew all the

female army. She considers Mrs. Mackenzie was a most elegant, handsome,

dashing woman—only a little too fond of the admiration of our sex. There

was, I own, a fascination about Captain Goby. Do you remember, my love,

that man with the stays and dyed hair, who——”

“Oh, Arthur! When our girls marry, I suppose you will teach their

husbands to abuse, and scorn, and mistrust _their_ mother-in-law. Will

he, my darlings? will he, my blessings?” (This apart to the children, if

you please.) “Go! I have no patience with such talk!”

“Well, my love, Mrs. Baynes is a most agreeable woman; and when I have

heard that story about the Highlanders at the Cape of Good Hope a few

times more” (I do not tell it here, for it has nothing to do with the

present history), “I daresay I shall begin to be amused by it.”

“Ah! here comes Charlotte, I’m glad to say. How pretty she is! What a

colour! What a dear creature!”

To all which of course I could not say a contradictory word, for a

prettier, fresher lass than Miss Baynes, with a sweeter voice, face,

laughter, it was difficult to see.

“Why does mamma like Charlotte better than she likes us?” says our dear

and justly indignant eldest girl.

“I could not love her better if I were her _mother-in-law_,” says Laura,

running to her young friend, casting a glance at me over her shoulder;

and that kissing nonsense begins between the two ladies. To be sure the

girl looks uncommonly bright and pretty with her pink cheeks, her bright

eyes, her slim form, and that charming white India shawl which her father

brought home for her.

To this osculatory party enters presently Mr. Philip Firmin, who has been

dawdling about the ramparts ever since breakfast. He says he has been

reading law there. He has found a jolly quiet place to read. Law, has he?

And much good may it do him! Why has he not gone back to his law, and his

reviewing?

“You must—you _must_ stay on a little longer. You have only been here

five days. Do, Charlotte, ask Philip to stay a little.”

All the children sing in a chorus, “Oh, do, uncle Philip, stay a little

longer!” Miss Baynes says, “I hope you will stay, Mr. Firmin,” and looks

at him.

“Five days has he been here? Five years. Five lives. Five hundred years.

What do you mean? In that little time of—let me see, a hundred and twenty

hours, and at least a half of them for sleep and dinner (for Philip’s

appetite was very fine)—do you mean that in that little time his heart,

cruelly stabbed by a previous monster in female shape, has healed, got

quite well, and actually begun to be wounded again? Have two walks on

the pier, as many visits to the Tintelleries (where he hears the story

of the Highlanders at the Cape of Good Hope with respectful interest), a

word or two about the weather, a look or two, a squeezekin, perhaps, of

a little handykin—I say, do you mean that this absurd young idiot, and

that little round-faced girl, pretty, certainly, but only just out of the

schoolroom—do you mean to say that they have—— Upon my word, Laura, this

is too bad. Why, Philip has not a penny piece in the world.”

“Yes, he has a hundred pounds, and expects to sell his mare for ninety

at least. He has excellent talents. He can easily write three articles a

week in the _Pall Mall Gazette_. I am sure no one writes so well, and it

is much better done and more amusing than it used to be. That is three

hundred a year. Lord Ringwood must be applied to, and must and shall

get him something. Don’t you know that Captain Baynes stood by Colonel

Ringwood’s side at Busaco, and that they were the closest friends? And

pray, how did _we_ get on, I should like to know? How did _we_ get on,

baby?”

“How did we det on?” says the baby.

“Oh, woman! woman!” yells the father of the family. “Why, Philip Firmin

has all the habits of a rich man with the pay of a mechanic. Do you

suppose he ever sate in a second-class carriage in his life, or denied

himself any pleasure to which he had a mind? He gave five francs to a

beggar girl yesterday.”

“He had always a noble heart,” says my wife. “He gave a fortune to a

whole family a week ago; and” (out comes the pocket-handkerchief—oh, of

course, the pocket-handkerchief)—“and—‘God loves a cheerful giver!’”

“He is careless; he is extravagant; he is lazy;—I don’t know that he is

remarkably clever——”

“Oh, yes! he is your friend, of course. Now, abuse him—_do_, Arthur!”

“And, pray, when did you become acquainted with this astounding piece of

news?” I inquire.

“When? From the very first moment when I saw Charlotte looking at him, to

be sure. The poor child said to me only yesterday, ‘Oh, Laura! he is our

preserver!’ And their preserver he has been, under Heaven.”

“Yes. But he has not got a five-pound note!” I cry.

“Arthur, I am surprised at you. Oh, men, men are awfully worldly! Do you

suppose Heaven will not send him help at its good time, and be kind to

him who has rescued so many from ruin? Do you suppose the prayers, the

blessings of that father, of those little ones, of that dear child, will

not avail him? Suppose he has to wait a year, ten years, have they not

time, and will not the good day come?”

Yes. This was actually the talk of a woman of sense and discernment when

her prejudices and romance were not in the way, and she looked forward to

the marriage of these folks, some ten years hence, as confidently as if

they were both rich, and going to St. George’s to-morrow.

As for making a romantic story of it, or spinning out love conversations

between Jenny and Jessamy, or describing moonlight raptures and

passionate outpourings of two young hearts and so forth—excuse me, _s’il

vous plait_. I am a man of the world, and of a certain age. Let the young

people fill in this outline, and colour it as they please. Let the old

folks who read, lay down the book a minute, and remember. It is well

remembered, isn’t it, that time? Yes, good John Anderson, and Mrs. John.

Yes, good Darby and Joan. The lips won’t tell now, what they did once.

To-day is for the happy, and to-morrow for the young, and yesterday, is

not that dear and here too?

I was in the company of an elderly gentleman, not very long since, who

was perfectly sober, who is not particularly handsome, or healthy, or

wealthy, or witty; and who, speaking of his past life, volunteered to

declare that he would gladly live every minute of it over again. Is a

man who can say that a hardened sinner, not aware how miserable he ought

to be by rights, and therefore really in a most desperate and deplorable

condition; or is he _fortunatus nimium_, and ought his statue to be put

up in the most splendid and crowded thoroughfare of the town? Would you,

who are reading this, for example, like to live _your_ life over again?

What has been its chief joy? What are to-day’s pleasures? Are they so

exquisite that you would prolong them for ever? Would you like to have

the roast beef on which you have dined brought back again to table, and

have more beef, and more, and more? Would you like to hear yesterday’s

sermon over and over again—eternally voluble? Would you like to get on

the Edinburgh mail, and travel outside for fifty hours as you did in your

youth? You might as well say you would like to go into the flogging-room,

and take a turn under the rods: you would like to be thrashed over again

by your bully at school: you would like to go to the dentist’s, where

your dear parents were in the habit of taking you: you would like to

be taking hot Epsom salts, with a piece of dry bread to take away the

taste: you would like to be jilted by your first love: you would like

to be going in to your father to tell him you had contracted debts to

the amount of _x_ + _y_ + _z_, whilst you were at the university. As I

consider the passionate griefs of childhood, the weariness and sameness

of shaving, the agony of corns, and the thousand other ills to which

flesh is heir, I cheerfully say for one, I am not anxious to wear it for

ever. No. I do not want to go to school again. I do not want to hear

Trotman’s sermon over again. Take me out and finish me. Give me the

cup of hemlock at once. Here’s a health to you, my lads. Don’t weep,

my Simmias. Be cheerful, my Phædon. Ha! I feel the co-o-old stealing,

stealing upwards. Now it is in my ankles—no more gout in my foot: now my

knees are numb. What, is—is that poor executioner crying too? Good-bye.

Sacrifice a cock to Æscu—to Æscula— ... Have you ever read the chapter in

Grote’s _History_? Ah! When the Sacred Ship returns from Delos, and is

telegraphed as entering into port, may we be at peace and ready!

What is this funeral chant, when the pipes should be playing gaily as

Love, and Youth, and Spring, and Joy are dancing under the windows? Look

you. Men not so wise as Socrates have their demons, who will be heard

and whisper in the queerest times and places. Perhaps I shall have to

tell of a funeral presently, and shall be outrageously cheerful; or of an

execution, and shall split my sides with laughing. Arrived at my time of

life, when I see a penniless young friend falling in love and thinking of

course of committing matrimony, what can I do but be melancholy? How is a

man to marry who has not enough to keep ever so miniature a brougham—ever

so small a house—not enough to keep himself, let alone a wife and family?

Gracious powers! is it not blasphemy to marry without fifteen hundred

a year? Poverty, debt, protested bills, duns, crime, fall assuredly on

the wretch who has not fifteen—say at once two thousand a year; for you

can’t live decently in London for less. And a wife whom you have met a

score of times at balls or breakfasts, and with her best dresses and

behaviour at a country house;—how do you know how she will turn out; what

her temper is; what her relations are likely to be? Suppose she has poor

relations, or loud coarse brothers who are always dropping in to dinner?

What is her mother like; and can you bear to have that woman meddling and

domineering over your establishment? Old General Baynes was very well; a

weak, quiet, and presentable old man: but Mrs. General Baynes, and that

awful Mrs. Major MacWhirter,—and those hobbledehoys of boys in creaking

shoes, hectoring about the premises? As a man of the world I saw all

these dreadful liabilities impending over the husband of Miss Charlotte

Baynes, and could not view them without horror. Gracefully and slightly,

but wittily and in my sarcastic way, I thought it my duty to show up the

oddities of the Baynes family to Philip. I mimicked the boys, and their

clumping blucher-boots. I touched off the dreadful military ladies,

very smartly and cleverly as I thought, and as if I never supposed that

Philip had any idea of Miss Baynes. To do him justice, he laughed once

or twice; then he grew very red. His sense of humour is very limited;

that even Laura allows. Then he came out with strong expression, and

said it was a confounded shame, and strode off with his cigar. And when

I remarked to my wife how susceptible he was in some things, and how

little in the matter of joking, she shrugged her shoulders and said,

“Philip not only understood perfectly well what I said, but would tell it

all to Mrs. General and Mrs. Major on the first opportunity.” And this

was the fact, as Mrs. Baynes took care to tell me _afterwards_. She was

aware who was her _enemy_. She was aware who spoke ill of her, and her

blessed darling _behind our backs_. And “do you think it was to see _you_

or any one belonging to your _stuck-up house_, sir, that we came to you

so often, which we certainly did, day and night, breakfast and supper,

and no thanks to you? No, sir! ha, ha!” I can see her flaunting out of

my sitting-room as she speaks, with a strident laugh, and snapping her

dingily-gloved fingers at the door. Oh, Philip, Philip! To think that you

were such a coward as to go and tell her! But I pardon him. From my heart

I pity and pardon him.

For the step which he is meditating, you may be sure that the young man

himself does not feel the smallest need of pardon or pity. He is in

a state of happiness so crazy that it is useless to reason with him.

Not being at all of a poetical turn originally, the wretch is actually

perpetrating verse in secret, and my servants found fragments of his

manuscript on the dressing-table in his bedroom. _Heart_ and _art_,

_sever_ and _for ever_, and so on; what stale rhymes are these? I do not

feel at liberty to give in entire the poem which our maid found in Mr.

Philip’s room, and brought sniggering to my wife, who only said, “Poor

thing!” The fact is, it was too pitiable. Such maundering rubbish! Such

stale rhymes, and such old thoughts! But then, says Laura, “I daresay all

people’s love-making is not amusing to their neighbours; and I know who

wrote not very wise love-verses when he was young.” No, I won’t publish

Philip’s verses, until some day he shall mortally offend me. I can recall

some of my own written under similar circumstances with twinges of shame;

and shall drop a veil of decent friendship over my friend’s folly.

Under that veil, meanwhile, the young man is perfectly contented, nay,

uproariously happy. All earth and nature smiles round about him. “When

Jove meets his Juno, in Homer, sir,” says Philip, in his hectoring way,

“don’t immortal flowers of beauty spring up around them, and rainbows of

celestial hues bend over their heads? Love, sir, flings a halo round the

loved one. Where she moves, rise roses, hyacinths, and ambrosial odours.

Don’t talk to me about poverty, sir! He either fears his fate too much or

his desert is small, who dares not put it to the touch and win or lose it

all! Haven’t I endured poverty? Am I not as poor now as a man can be—and

what is there in it? Do I want for anything? Haven’t I got a guinea in my

pocket? Do I owe any man anything? Isn’t there manna in the wilderness

for those who have faith to walk in it? That’s where you fail, Pen. By

all that is sacred, you have no faith; your heart is cowardly, sir; and

if you are to escape, as perhaps you may, I suspect it is by your wife

that you will be saved. Laura has a trust in heaven, but Arthur’s morals

are a genteel atheism. Just reach me that claret—the wine’s not bad. I

say your morals are a genteel atheism, and I shudder when I think of your

condition. Talk to _me_ about a brougham being necessary for the comfort

of a woman! A broomstick to ride to the moon! And I don’t say that a

brougham is not a comfort, mind you; but that, when it is a necessity,

mark you, Heaven will provide it! Why, sir, hang it, look at me! Ain’t I

suffering in the most abject poverty? I ask you is there a man in London

so poor as I am? And since my father’s ruin do I want for anything? I

want for shelter for a day or two. Good. There’s my dear Little Sister

ready to give it me. I want for money. Does not that sainted widow’s

cruse pour its oil out for me? Heaven bless and reward her. Boo!” (Here,

for reasons which need not be named, the orator squeezes his fists into

his eyes.) “I want shelter; ain’t I in good quarters? I want work;

haven’t I got work, and did you not get it for me? You should just see,

sir, how I polished off that book of travels this morning. I read some

of the article to Char——, to Miss ——, to some friends, in fact. I don’t

mean to say that they are very intellectual people, but your common

humdrum average audience is the public to try. Recollect Molière and his

housekeeper, you know.”

“By the housekeeper, do you mean Mrs. Baynes?” I ask, in my _amontillado_

manner. (By the way, who ever heard of _amontillado_ in the early

days of which I write?) “In manner she would do, and I daresay in

accomplishments; but I doubt about her temper.”

“You’re almost as worldly as the Twysdens, by George, you are! Unless

persons are of a certain _monde_, you don’t value them. A little

adversity would do you good, Pen; and I heartily wish you might get it,

except for the dear wife and children. You measure your morality by

May-fair standards; and if an angel unawares came to you in pattens and

a cotton umbrella, you would turn away from her. _You_ would never have

found out the Little Sister. A duchess—God bless her! A creature of an

imperial generosity, and delicacy, and intrepidity, and the finest sense

of humour, but she drops her _h_’s often, and how could you pardon such a

crime? Sir, you are my better in wit and a dexterous application of your

powers; but I think, sir,” says Phil, curling the flaming mustachios, “I

am your superior in a certain magnanimity; though, by Jove, old fellow,

man and boy, you have always been one of the best fellows in the world

to P. F.; one of the best fellows, and the most generous, and the most

cordial,—that you have: only you _do_ rile me when you sing in that

confounded May-fair twang.”

Here one of the children summoned us to tea—and “Papa was laughing, and

uncle Philip was flinging his hands about and pulling his beard off,”

said the little messenger.

“I shall keep a fine lock of it for you, Nelly, my dear,” says uncle

Philip. On which the child said, “Oh, no! I know whom you’ll give it to,

don’t I, mamma?” and she goes up to her mamma, and whispers.

Miss Nelly knows? At what age do those little match-makers begin to know,

and how soon do they practise the use of their young eyes, their little

smiles, wiles, and ogles? This young woman, I believe, coquetted whilst

she was yet a baby in arms, over her nurse’s shoulder. Before she could

speak, she could be proud of her new vermilion shoes, and would point

out the charms of her blue sash. She was jealous in the nursery, and her

little heart had beat for years and years before she left off pinafores.

For whom will Philip keep a lock of that red, red gold which curls round

his face? Can you guess? Of what colour is the hair in that little locket

which the gentleman himself occultly wears? A few months ago, I believe,

a pale straw-coloured wisp of hair occupied that place of honour; now it

is a chesnut-brown, as far as I can see, of precisely the same colour

as that which waves round Charlotte Baynes’ pretty face, and tumbles

in clusters on her neck, very nearly the colour of Mrs. Paynter’s this

last season. So, you see, we chop and we change: straw gives place to

chesnut, and chesnut is succeeded by ebony; and, for our own parts, we

defy time; and if you want a lock of my hair, Belinda, take this pair of

scissors, and look in that cupboard, in the bandbox marked No. 3, and cut

off a thick glossy piece, darling, and wear it, dear, and my blessings go

with thee! What is this? Am I sneering because Corydon and Phyllis are

wooing and happy? You see I pledged myself not to have any sentimental

nonsense. To describe love-making is immoral and immodest; you know it

is. To describe it as it really is, or would appear to you and me as

lookers-on, would be to describe the most dreary farce, to chronicle

the most tautological twaddle. To take a note of sighs, hand-squeezes,

looks at the moon, and so forth—does this business become our dignity as

historians? Come away from those foolish young people—they don’t want

us; and dreary as their farce is, and tautological as their twaddle, you

may be sure it amuses them, and that they are happy enough without us.

Happy? Is there any happiness like it, pray? Was it not rapture to watch

the messenger, to seize the note, and fee the bearer?—to retire out of

sight of all prying eyes and read:—“Dearest! Mamma’s cold is better this

morning. The Joneses came to tea, and Julia sang. I did not enjoy it,

as my dear was at his _horrid dinner_, where I hope he amused himself.

Send me a word by Buttles, who brings this, if only to say you are your

Louisa’s own, own,” &c. &c. &c. That used to be the kind of thing.

In such coy lines artless Innocence used to whisper its little vows.

So she used to smile; so she used to warble; so she used to prattle.

Young people, at present engaged in the pretty sport, be assured your

middle-aged parents have played the game, and remember the rules of it.

Yes, under papa’s bow-window of a waistcoat is a heart which took very

violent exercise when that waist was slim. Now he sits tranquilly in

his tent, and watches the lads going in for their innings. Why, look at

grandmamma in her spectacles reading that sermon. In _her_ old heart

there is a corner as romantic still as when she used to read the _Wild

Irish Girl_ or the _Scottish Chiefs_ in the days of her misshood. And as

for your grandfather, my dears, to see him now you would little suppose

that that calm, polished, dear old gentleman was once as wild—as wild

as Orson.... Under my windows, as I write, there passes an itinerant

flower-merchant. He has his roses and geraniums on a cart drawn by a

quadruped—a little long-eared quadruped, which lifts up its voice, and

sings after its manner. When I was young, donkeys used to bray precisely

in the same way; and others will heehaw so, when we are silent and our

ears hear no more.

CHAPTER XVIII.

DRUM IST’S SO WOHL MIR IN DER WELT.

Our new friends lived for a while contentedly enough at Boulogne, where

they found comrades and acquaintances gathered together from those many

regions which they had visited in the course of their military career.

Mrs. Baynes, out of the field, was the commanding officer over the

general. She ordered his clothes for him, tied his neckcloth into a neat

bow, and, on tea-party evenings, pinned his brooch into his shirt-frill.

She gave him to understand when he had had enough to eat or drink at

dinner, and explained, with great frankness, how this or that dish did

not agree with him. If he was disposed to exceed, she would call out, in

a loud voice: “Remember, general, what you took this morning!” Knowing

his constitution, as she said, she knew the remedies which were necessary

for her husband, and administered them to him with great liberality.

Resistance was impossible, as the veteran officer acknowledged. “The

boys have fought about the medicine since we came home,” he confessed,

“but she has me under her thumb, by George. She really is a magnificent

physician, now. She has got some invaluable prescriptions, and in India

she used to doctor the whole station.” She would have taken the present

writer’s little household under her care, and proposed several remedies

for my children, until their alarmed mother was obliged to keep them out

of her sight. I am not saying this was an agreeable woman. Her voice

was loud and harsh. The anecdotes which she was for ever narrating

related to military personages in foreign countries with whom I was

unacquainted, and whose history failed to interest me. She took her wine

with much spirit, whilst engaged in this prattle. I have heard talk not

less foolish in much finer company, and known people delighted to listen

to anecdotes of the duchess and the marchioness who would yawn over

the history of Captain Jones’s quarrels with his lady, or Mrs. Major

Wolfe’s monstrous flirtations with young Ensign Kyd. My wife, with the

mischievousness of her sex, would mimic the Baynes’ conversation very

drolly, but always insisted that she was not more really vulgar than many

much greater persons.

For all this, Mrs. General Baynes did not hesitate to declare that we

were “stuck-up” people; and from the very first setting eyes on us, she

declared, that she viewed us with a constant darkling suspicion. Mrs. P.

was a harmless, washed-out creature with nothing in her. As for that high

and mighty Mr. P. and _his_ airs, she would be glad to know whether the

wife of a British general officer who had seen service in _every part

of the globe_, and met the _most distinguished_ governors, generals,

and their ladies, several of whom _were noblemen_—she would be glad to

know whether such people were not good enough for, &c. &c. Who has not

met with these difficulties in life, and who can escape them? “Hang it,

sir,” Phil would say, twirling the red mustachios, “I like to be hated by

some fellows;” and it must be owned that Mr. Philip got what he liked.

I suppose Mr. Philip’s friend and biographer had something of the same

feeling. At any rate, in regard of this lady the hypocrisy of politeness

was very hard to keep up; wanting us for reasons of her own, she covered

the dagger with which she would have stabbed us: but we knew it was

there clenched in her skinny hand in her meagre pocket. She would pay us

the most fulsome compliments with anger raging out of her eyes—a little

hate-bearing woman, envious, malicious, but loving her cubs, and nursing

them, and clutching them in her lean arms with a jealous strain. It was

“Good-bye, darling! I shall leave you here with your friends. Oh, how

kind you are to her, Mrs. Pendennis! How can I ever thank you, and Mr. P.

I am sure;” and she looked as if she could poison both of us, as she went

away, curtseying and darting dreary parting smiles.

This lady had an intimate friend and companion in arms, Mrs. Colonel

Bunch, in fact, of the—the Bengal cavalry, who was now in Europe with

Bunch and their children, who were residing at Paris for the young folks’

education. At first, as we have heard, Mrs. Baynes’ predilections had

been all for Tours, where her sister was living, and where lodgings

were cheap and food reasonable in proportion. But Bunch happening to

pass through Boulogne on his way to his wife at Paris, and meeting his

old comrade, gave General Baynes such an account of the cheapness and

pleasures of the French capital, as to induce the general to think of

bending his steps thither. Mrs. Baynes would not hear of such a plan.

She was all for her dear sister and Tours; but when, in the course of

conversation, Colonel Bunch described a ball at the Tuileries, where he

and Mrs. B. had been received with the most flattering politeness by the

royal family, it was remarked that Mrs. Baynes’ mind underwent a change.

When Bunch went on to aver that the balls at Government House at Calcutta

were nothing compared to those at the Tuileries or the Prefecture of

the Seine; that the English were invited and respected everywhere; that

the ambassador was most hospitable; that the clergymen were admirable;

and that at their boarding-house, kept by Madame la Générale Baronne

de Smolensk, at the Petit Château d’Espagne, Avenue de Valmy, Champs

Elysées, they had balls twice a month, the most comfortable apartments,

the most choice society, and every comfort and luxury at so many francs

per month, with an allowance for children—I say Mrs. Baynes was very

greatly moved. “It is not,” she said, “in consequence of the balls at the

ambassador’s or the Tuileries, for I am an old woman; and in spite of

what you say, colonel, I can’t fancy, after Government House, anything

more magnificent in any French palace. It is not for _me_, goodness

knows, I speak: but the children should have education, and my Charlotte

an entrée into the world; and what you say of the invaluable clergyman,

Mr. X——, I have been thinking of it all night; but above all, above all,

of the chances of education for my darlings. Nothing should give way to

that—nothing!” On this a long and delightful conversation and calculation

took place. Bunch produced his bills at the Baroness de Smolensk’s. The

two gentlemen jotted up accounts, and made calculations all through the

evening. It was hard even for Mrs. Baynes to force the figures into such

a shape as to make them accord with the general’s income; but, driven

away by one calculation after another, she returned again and again to

the charge, until she overcame the stubborn arithmetical difficulties,

and the pounds, shillings, and pence lay prostrate before her. They

could save upon this point; they could screw upon that; they _must_ make

a sacrifice to educate the children. “Sarah Bunch and her girls go to

Court, indeed! Why shouldn’t mine go?” she asked. On which her general

said, “By George, Eliza, that’s the point you are thinking of.” On which

Eliza said, “No,” and repeated “No” a score of times, growing more angry

as she uttered each denial. And she declared before Heaven she did _not_

want to go to any Court. Had she not refused to be presented at home,

though Mrs. Colonel Flack went, because she did not choose to go to the

wicked expense of a train? And it was base of the general, _base_ and

_mean_ of him to say so. And there was a fine scene, as I am given to

understand; not that I was present at this family fight: but my informant

was Mr. Firmin; and Mr. Firmin had his information from a little person

who, about this time, had got to prattle out all the secrets of her young

heart to him; who would have jumped off the pier-head with her hand in

his if he had said “Come,” without his hand if he had said “Go:” a little

person whose whole life had been changed—changed for a month past—changed

in one minute, that minute when she saw Philip’s fiery whiskers and heard

his great big voice saluting her father amongst the commissioners on the

_quai_ before the custom-house.

Tours was, at any rate, a hundred and fifty miles farther off than Paris

from—from a city where a young gentleman lived in whom Miss Charlotte

Baynes felt an interest; hence, I suppose, arose her delight that her

parents had determined upon taking up their residence in the larger and

nearer city. Besides, she owned, in the course of her artless confidences

to my wife, that, when together, mamma and aunt MacWhirter quarrelled

unceasingly; and had once caused the old boys, the major and the

general, to call each other out. She preferred, then, to live away from

aunt Mac. She had never had such a friend as Laura, never. She had never

been so happy as at Boulogne, never. She should always love everybody

in our house, that she should, for ever and ever—and so forth, and so

forth. The ladies meet; cling together; osculations are carried round

the whole family circle, from our wondering eldest boy, who cries, “I

say, hullo! what are you kissing me so about?” to darling baby, crowing

and sputtering unconscious in the rapturous young girl’s embraces. I

tell you, these two women were making fools of themselves, and they were

burning with enthusiasm for the “preserver” of the Baynes family, as they

called that big fellow yonder, whose biographer I have aspired to be.

The lazy rogue lay basking in the glorious warmth and sunshine of early

love. He would stretch his big limbs out in our garden; pour out his

feelings with endless volubility; call upon _hominum divumque voluptas,

alma Venus_; vow that he had never lived or been happy until now; declare

that he laughed poverty to scorn and all her ills; and fume against his

masters of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, because they declined to insert

certain love verses which Mr. Philip now composed almost every day. Poor

little Charlotte! And didst thou receive those treasures of song; and

wonder over them, not perhaps comprehending them altogether; and lock

them up in thy heart’s inmost casket as well as in thy little desk; and

take them out in quiet hours, and kiss them, and bless Heaven for giving

thee such jewels? I daresay. I can fancy all this, without seeing it. I

can read the little letters in the little desk, without picking lock or

breaking seal. Poor little letters! Sometimes they are not spelt right,

quite; but I don’t know that the style is worse for that. Poor little

letters! You are flung to the winds sometimes and forgotten with all

your sweet secrets and loving artless confessions; but not always—no,

not always. As for Philip, who was the most careless creature alive, and

left all his clothes and haberdashery sprawling on his bed-room floor, he

had at this time a breast-pocket stuffed out with papers which crackled

in the most ridiculous way. He was always looking down at this precious

pocket, and putting one of his great hands over it as though he would

guard it. The pocket did not contain bank-notes, you may be sure of that.

It contained documents stating that mamma’s cold is better; the Joneses

came to tea, and Julia sang, &c. Ah, friend, however old you are now,

however cold you are now, however tough, I hope you, too, remember how

Julia sang, and the Joneses came to tea.

Mr. Philip stayed on week after week, declaring to my wife that she

was a perfect angel for keeping him so long. Bunch wrote from his

boarding-house more and more enthusiastic reports about the comforts of

the establishment. For his sake, Madame la Baronne de Smolensk would

make unheard-of sacrifices, in order to accommodate the general and his

distinguished party. The balls were going to be perfectly splendid that

winter. There were several old Indians living near; in fact, they could

form a regular little club. It was agreed that Baynes should go and

reconnoitre the ground. He did go. Madame de Smolensk, a most elegant

woman, had a magnificent dinner for him—quite splendid, I give you my

word, but only what they have every day. Soup, of course, my love; fish,

capital wine, and, I should say, some five or six and thirty made dishes.

The general was quite enraptured. Bunch had put his boys to a famous

school, where they might “whop” the French boys, and learn all the modern

languages. The little ones would dine early; the baroness would take

the whole family at an astonishingly cheap rate. In a word, the Baynes’

column got the route for Paris shortly before our family-party was

crossing the seas to return to London fogs and duty.

You have, no doubt, remarked how, under certain tender circumstances,

women will help one another. They help where they ought not to help.

When Mr. Darby ought to be separated from Miss Joan, and the best

thing that could happen for both would be a _lettre de cachet_ to whip

off Mons. Darby to the Bastille for five years, and an order from her

parents to lock up Mademoiselle Jeanne in a convent, some aunt, some

relative, some pitying female friend is sure to be found, who will

give the pair a chance of meeting, and turn her head away whilst those

unhappy lovers are warbling endless good-byes close up to each other’s

ears. My wife, I have said, chose to feel this absurd sympathy for the

young people about whom we have been just talking. As the days for

Charlotte’s departure drew near, this wretched, misguiding matron would

take the girl out walking into I know not what unfrequented bye-lanes,

quiet streets, rampart-nooks, and the like; and la! by the most singular

coincidence, Mr. Philip’s hulking boots would assuredly come tramping

after the women’s little feet. What will you say, when I tell you, that I

myself, the father of the family, the renter of the old-fashioned house,

Rue Roucoule, Haute Ville, Boulogne-sur-Mer—as I am going into my own

study—am met at the threshold by Helen, my eldest daughter, who puts her

little arms before the glass-door at which I was about to enter, and

says, “You must not go in there, papa! Mamma says we none of us are to go

in there.”

“And why, pray?” I ask.

“Because uncle Philip and Charlotte are talking secrets there; and nobody

is to disturb them—_nobody_!”

Upon my word, wasn’t this too monstrous? Am I Sir Pandarus of Troy

become? Am I going to allow a penniless young man to steal away the heart

of a young girl who has not twopence halfpenny to her fortune? Shall I, I

say, lend myself to this most unjustifiable intrigue?

“Sir,” says my wife (we happened to have been bred up from childhood

together, and I own to have had one or two foolish initiatory flirtations

before I settled down to matrimonial fidelity)—“Sir,” says she, “when you

were so wild—so spoony, I think is your elegant word—about Blanche, and

used to put letters into a hollow tree for her at home, I used to see the

letters, and I never disturbed them. These two people have much warmer

hearts, and are a great deal fonder of each other, than you and Blanche

used to be. I should not like to separate Charlotte from Philip now. It

is too late, sir. She can never like anybody else as she likes him. If

she lives to be a hundred, she will never forget him. Why should not the

poor thing be happy a little, while she may?”

An old house, with a green old courtyard and an ancient mossy wall,

through breaks of which I can see the roofs and gables of the quaint

old town, the city below, the shining sea, and the white English cliffs

beyond; a green old courtyard, and a tall old stone house rising up in

it, grown over with many a creeper on which the sun casts flickering

shadows; and under the shadows, and through the glass of a tall gray

window, I can just peep into a brown twilight parlour, and there I see

two hazy figures by a table. One slim figure has brown hair, and one has

flame-coloured whiskers. Look! a ray of sunshine has just peered into the

room, and is lighting the whiskers up!

“Poor little thing,” whispers my wife, very gently. “They are going away

to-morrow. Let them have their talk out. She is crying her little eyes

out, I am sure. Poor little Charlotte!”

Whilst my wife was pitying Miss Charlotte in this pathetic way, and was

going, I daresay, to have recourse to her own pocket-handkerchief, as

I live, there came a burst of laughter from the darkling chamber where

the two lovers were billing and cooing. First came Mr. Philip’s great

boom (such a roar—such a haw-haw, or hee-haw, I never heard any other

_two_-legged animal perform). Then follows Miss Charlotte’s tinkling

peal; and presently that young person comes out into the garden, with

her round face not bedewed with tears at all, but perfectly rosy, fresh,

dimpled, and good-humoured. Charlotte gives me a little curtsey, and my

wife a hand and a kind glance. They retreat through the open casement,

twining round each other, as the vine does round the window; though

which is the vine and which is the window in this simile, I pretend not

to say—I can’t see through either of them, that is the truth. They pass

through the parlour, and into the street beyond, doubtless: and as for

Mr. Philip, I presently see _his_ head popped out of his window in the

upper floor with his great pipe in his mouth. He can’t “work” without his

pipe, he says; and my wife believes him. Work indeed!

Miss Charlotte paid us another little visit that evening, when we

happened to be alone. The children were gone to bed. The darlings!

Charlotte must go up and kiss them. Mr. Philip Firmin was out. She did

not seem to miss him in the least, nor did she make a single inquiry for

him. We had been so good to her—so kind. How should she ever forget our

great kindness? She had been so happy—oh! so happy! She had never been

so happy before. She would write often and often, and Laura would write

constantly—wouldn’t she? “Yes, dear child!” says my wife. And now a

little more kissing, and it is time to go home to the Tintelleries. What

a lovely night! Indeed the moon was blazing in full round in the purple

heavens, and the stars were twinkling by myriads.

“Good-bye, dear Charlotte; happiness go with you!” I seize her hand. I

feel a paternal desire to kiss her fair, round face. Her sweetness, her

happiness, her artless good-humour, and gentleness has endeared her to us

all. As for me, I love her with a fatherly affection. “Stay, my dear!” I

cry, with a happy gallantry. “I’ll go home with you to the Tintelleries.”

You should have seen the fair round face _then_! Such a piteous

expression came over it! She looked at my wife; and as for that Mrs.

Laura she pulled the tail of my coat.

“What do you mean, my dear?” I ask.

“Don’t go out on such a dreadful night. You’ll catch cold!” says Laura.

“Cold, my love!” I say. “Why, it’s as fine a night as ever——”

“Oh! you—you _stoopid_!” says Laura, and begins to laugh. And there goes

Miss Charlotte tripping away from us without a word more!

Philip came in about half an hour afterwards. And do you know I very

strongly suspect that he had been waiting round the corner. Few things

escape _me_, you see, when I have a mind to be observant. And, certainly,

if I had thought of that possibility and that I might be spoiling sport,

I should not have proposed to Miss Charlotte to walk home with her.

At a very early hour on the next morning my wife arose, and spent, in my

opinion, a great deal of unprofitable time, bread, butter, cold beef,

mustard and salt, in compiling a heap of sandwiches, which were tied

up in a copy of the _Pall Mall Gazette_. That persistence in making

sandwiches, in providing cakes and other refreshments for a journey, is

a strange infatuation in women; as if there was not always enough to

eat to be had at road inns and railway stations! What a good dinner we

used to have at Montreuil in the old days, before railways were, and

when the diligence spent four or six and twenty cheerful hours on its

way to Paris! I think the finest dishes are not to be compared to that

well-remembered fricandeau of youth, nor do wines of the most dainty

vintage surpass the rough, honest, blue ordinaire which was served at

the plenteous inn-table. I took our bale of sandwiches down to the

office of the Messageries, whence our friends were to start. We saw six

of the Baynes family packed into the interior of the diligence; and the

boys climb cheerily into the rotonde. Charlotte’s pretty lips and hands

wafted kisses to us from her corner. Mrs. General Baynes commanded the

column, pushed the little ones into their places in the ark, ordered the

general and young ones hither and thither with her parasol, declined to

give the grumbling porters any but the smallest gratuity, and talked

a shrieking jargon of French and Hindustanee to the people assembled

round the carriage. My wife has that command over me that she actually

made me demean myself so far as to deliver the sandwich parcel to one

of the Baynes boys. I said, “Take this,” and the poor wretch held out

his hand eagerly, evidently expecting that I was about to tip him with a

five-franc piece or some such coin. _Fouette, cocher!_ The horses squeal.

The huge machine jingles over the road, and rattles down the street.

Farewell, pretty Charlotte, with your sweet face and sweet voice and kind

eyes! But why, pray, is Mr. Philip Firmin not here to say farewell too?

Before the diligence got under way, the Baynes boys had fought, and

quarrelled, and wanted to mount on the imperial or cabriolet of the

carriage, where there was only one passenger as yet. But the conductor

called the lads off, saying that the remaining place was engaged by a

gentleman, whom they were to take up on the road. And who should this

turn out to be? Just outside the town a man springs up to the imperial;

his light luggage, it appears, was on the coach already, and that luggage

belonged to Philip Firmin. Ah, monsieur! and that was the reason, was it,

why they were so merry yesterday—the parting day? Because they were not

going to part just then. Because, when the time of execution drew near,

they had managed to smuggle a little reprieve! Upon my conscience, I

never heard of such imprudence in the whole course of my life! Why, it is

starvation—certain misery to one and the other. “I don’t like to meddle

in other people’s affairs,” I say to my wife; “but I have no patience

with such folly, or with myself for not speaking to General Baynes on the

subject. I shall write to the general.”

“My dear, the general knows all about it,” says Charlotte’s, Philip’s

(in my opinion) most injudicious friend. “We have talked about it, and,

like a man of sense, the general makes light of it. ‘Young folks will be

young folks,’ he says; ‘and, by George! ma’am, when I married—I should

say, when Mrs. B. ordered me to marry her—she had nothing, and I but my

captain’s pay. People get on, somehow. Better for a young man to marry,

and keep out of idleness and mischief; and, I promise you, the chap who

marries my girl gets a treasure. I like the boy for the sake of my old

friend Phil Ringwood. I don’t see that the fellows with the rich wives

are much the happier, or that men should wait to marry until they are

gouty old rakes.’ And, it appears, the general instanced several officers

of his own acquaintance; some of whom had married when they were young

and poor; some who had married when they were old and sulky; some who had

never married at all. And he mentioned his comrade, my own uncle, the

late Major Pendennis, whom he called a selfish old creature, and hinted

that the major had jilted some lady in early life, whom he would have

done much better to marry.”

And so Philip is actually gone after his charmer, and is pursuing her

_summâ diligentiâ_? The Baynes family has allowed this penniless young

law student to make love to their daughter, to accompany them to Paris,

to appear as the almost recognized son of the house. “Other people,

when they were young, wanted to make imprudent marriages,” says my wife

(as if that wretched _tu quoque_ were any answer to my remark!) “This

penniless law student might have a good sum of money if he chose to press

the Baynes family to pay him what, after all, they owe him.” And so

poor little Charlotte was to be her father’s ransom! To be sure, little

Charlotte did not object to offer herself up in payment of her papa’s

debt! And though I objected as a moral man and a prudent man, and a

father of a family, I could not be very seriously angry. I am secretly of

the disposition of the time-honoured _père de famille_ in the comedies,

the irascible old gentleman in the crop wig and George-the-Second coat,

who is always menacing “Tom the young dog” with his cane. When the deed

is done, and Miranda (the little sly-boots!) falls before my squaretoes

and shoe-buckles, and Tom the young dog kneels before me in his white

ducks, and they cry out in a pretty chorus, “Forgive us, grandpapa!” I

say, “Well, you rogue, boys will be boys. Take her, sirrah! Be happy

with her; and, hark ye! in this pocket-book you will find ten thousand,”

&c. &c. You all know the story: I cannot help liking it, however old it

may be. In love, somehow, one is pleased that young people should dare

a little. Was not Bessy Eldon famous as an economist, and Lord Eldon

celebrated for wisdom and caution? and did not John Scott marry Elizabeth

Surtees when they had scarcely twopence a year between them? “Of course,

my dear,” I say to the partner of my existence, “now this madcap fellow

is utterly ruined, now is the very time he ought to marry. The accepted

doctrine is that a man should spend his own fortune, then his wife’s

fortune, and then he may begin to get on at the bar. Philip has a hundred

pounds, let us say; Charlotte has nothing; so that in about six weeks we

may look to hear of Philip being in successful practice——”

“Successful nonsense!” cries the lady. “Don’t go on like a cold-blooded

calculating machine! You don’t believe a word of what you say, and a more

imprudent person never lived than you yourself were as a young man.”

This was departing from the question, which women will do. “Nonsense!”

again says my romantic being of a partner-of-existence. “Don’t tell ME,

sir. They WILL be provided for! Are we to be for ever taking care of the

morrow, and not trusting that we shall be cared for? _You_ may call your

way of thinking prudence. I call it _sinful worldliness_, sir.” When my

life-partner speaks in a certain strain, I know that remonstrance is

useless, and argument unavailing, and I generally resort to cowardly

subterfuges, and sneak out of the conversation by a pun, a side joke,

or some other flippancy. Besides, in this case, though I argue against

my wife, my sympathy is on her side. I know Mr. Philip is imprudent and

headstrong, but I should like him to succeed, and be happy. I own he is a

scapegrace, but I wish him well.

So, just as the diligence of Laffitte and Caillard is clearing out of

Boulogne town, the conductor causes the carriage to stop, and a young

fellow has mounted up on the roof in a twinkling; and the postilion says,

“Hi!” to his horses, and away those squealing greys go clattering. And a

young lady, happening to look out of one of the windows of the intérieur,

has perfectly recognized the young gentleman who leaped up to the roof so

nimbly; and the two boys who were in the rotonde would have recognized

the gentleman, but that they were already eating the sandwiches which my

wife had provided. And so the diligence goes on, until it reaches that

hill, where the girls used to come and offer to sell you apples; and some

of the passengers descend and walk, and the tall young man on the roof

jumps down, and approaches the party in the interior, and a young lady

cries out, “La!” and her mamma looks impenetrably grave, and not in the

least surprised; and her father gives a wink of one eye, and says, “It’s

him, is it, by George!” and the two boys coming out of the rotonde, their

mouths full of sandwich, cry out, “Hullo! It’s Mr. Firmin.”

“How do you do, ladies?” he says, blushing as red as an apple, and

his heart thumping—but that may be from walking up hill. And he puts

a hand towards the carriage-window, and a little hand comes out and

lights on his. And Mrs. General Baynes, who is reading a religious

work, looks up and says, “Oh! how do you do, Mr. Firmin?” And this is

the remarkable dialogue that takes place. It is not very witty; but

Philip’s tones send a rapture into one young heart: and when he is

absent, and has climbed up to his place in the cabriolet, the kick of

his boots on the roof gives the said young heart inexpressible comfort

and consolation. Shine stars and moon. Shriek grey horses through the

calm night. Snore sweetly, papa and mamma, in your corners, with your

pocket-handkerchiefs tied round your old fronts! I suppose, under all

the stars of heaven, there is nobody more happy than that child in that

carriage—that wakeful girl, in sweet maiden meditation—who has given her

heart to the keeping of the champion who is so near her. Has he not been

always their champion and preserver? Don’t they owe to his generosity

everything in life? One of the little sisters wakes wildly, and cries in

the night, and Charlotte takes the child into her arms and soothes her.

“Hush, dear! He’s there—he’s there,” she whispers, as she bends over

the child. Nothing wrong can happen with _him_ there, she feels. If the

robbers were to spring out from yonder dark pines, why, he would jump

down, and they would all fly before him! The carriage rolls on through

sleeping villages, and as the old team retires all in a halo of smoke,

and the fresh horses come clattering up to their pole, Charlotte sees a

well-known white face in the gleam of the carriage lanterns. Through the

long avenues, the great vehicle rolls on its course. The dawn peers over

the poplars: the stars quiver out of sight: the sun is up in the sky, and

the heaven is all in a flame. The night is over—the night of nights. In

all the round world, whether lighted by stars or sunshine, there were not

two people more happy than these had been.

A very short time afterwards, at the end of October, our own little

sea-side sojourn came to an end. That astounding bill for broken glass,

chairs, crockery, was paid. The London steamer takes us all on board on

a beautiful, sunny autumn evening, and lands us at the Custom-house Quay

in the midst of a deep, dun fog, through which our cabs have to work

their way over greasy pavements, and bearing two loads of silent and

terrified children. Ah, that return, if but after a fortnight’s absence

and holiday! Oh, that heap of letters lying in a ghastly pile, and yet

so clearly visible in the dim twilight of master’s study! We cheerfully

breakfast by candlelight for the first two days after my arrival at home,

and I have the pleasure of cutting a part of my chin off because it is

too dark to shave at nine o’clock in the morning.

My wife can’t be so unfeeling as to laugh and be merry because I have

met with an accident which temporarily disfigures me? If the dun fog

makes her jocular, she has a very queer sense of humour. She has a

letter before her, over which she is perfectly radiant. When she is

especially pleased I can see by her face and a particular animation and

affectionateness towards the rest of the family. On this present morning

her face beams out of the fog-clouds. The room is illuminated by it, and

perhaps by the two candles which are placed one on either side of the

urn. The fire crackles, and flames, and spits most cheerfully; and the

sky without, which is of the hue of brown paper, seems to set off the

brightness of the little interior scene.

“A letter from Charlotte, papa,” cries one little girl, with an air of

consequence. “And a letter from uncle Philip, papa!” cries another; “and

they like Paris so much,” continues the little reporter.

“And there, sir, didn’t I tell you?” cries the lady, handing me over a

letter.

“Mamma always told you so,” echoes the child, with an important nod of

the head; “and I shouldn’t be surprised if he were to be _very rich_,

should you, mamma?” continues this arithmetician.

I would not put Miss Charlotte’s letter into print if I could, for do you

know that little person’s grammar was frequently incorrect; there were

three or four words spelt wrongly; and the letter was so _scored_ and

_marked_ with _dashes_ under _every_ other _word_, that it is clear to

me her education had been neglected; and as I am very fond of her, I do

not wish to make fun of her. And I can’t print Mr. Philip’s letter, for

I haven’t kept it. Of what use keeping letters? I say, Burn, burn, burn.

No heart-pangs. No reproaches. No yesterday. Was it happy, or miserable?

To think of it is always melancholy. Go to! I daresay it is the thought

of that fog, which is making this sentence so dismal. Meanwhile there is

Madam Laura’s face smiling out of the darkness, as pleased as may be; and

no wonder, she is always happy when her friends are so.

Charlotte’s letter contained a full account of the settlement of the

Baynes family at Madame Smolensk’s boarding-house, where they appear to

have been really very comfortable, and to have lived at a very cheap

rate. As for Mr. Philip, he made his way to a crib, to which his artist

friends had recommended him, on the Faubourg St. Germain side of the

water—the Hotel Poussin, in the street of that name, which lies, you

know, between the Mazarin Library and the Musée des Beaux Arts. In former

days, my gentleman had lived in state and bounty in the English hotels

and quarter. Now he found himself very handsomely lodged for thirty

francs per month, and with five or six pounds, he has repeatedly said

since, he could carry through the month very comfortably. I don’t say,

my young traveller, that _you_ can be so lucky now-a-days. Are we not

telling a story of twenty years ago? Aye marry. Ere steam-coaches had

begun to scream on French rails; and when Louis Philippe was king.

As soon as Mr. Philip Firmin is ruined he must needs fall in love. In

order to be near the beloved object, he must needs follow her to Paris,

and give up his promised studies for the bar at home; where, to do him

justice, I believe the fellow would never have done any good. And he has

not been in Paris a fortnight when that fantastic jade Fortune, who had

seemed to fly away from him, gives him a smiling look of recognition, as

if to say, “Young gentleman, I have not quite done with you.”

The good fortune was not much. Do not suppose that Philip suddenly drew

a twenty-thousand pound prize in a lottery. But, being in much want of

money, he suddenly found himself enabled to earn some in a way pretty

easy to himself.

In the first place, Philip found his friends Mr. and Mrs. Mugford in a

bewildered state in the midst of Paris, in which city Mugford would never

consent to have a _laquais de place_, being firmly convinced to the day

of his death that he knew the French language quite sufficiently for all

purposes of conversation. Philip, who had often visited Paris before,

came to the aid of his friends in a two-franc dining-house, which he

frequented for economy’s sake; and they, because they thought the banquet

there provided not only cheap, but most magnificent and satisfactory. He

interpreted for them, and rescued them from their perplexity, whatever

it was. He treated them handsomely to caffy on the bullyvard, as Mugford

said on returning home and in recounting the adventure to me. “He can’t

forget that he has been a swell: and he does do things like a gentleman,

that Firmin does. He came back with us to our hotel—Meurice’s,” said Mr.

Mugford, “and who should drive into the yard and step out of his carriage

but Lord Ringwood—you know Lord Ringwood; everybody knows him. As he

gets out of his carriage—‘What! is that you, Philip?’ says his lordship,

giving the young fellow his hand. ‘Come and breakfast with me to-morrow

morning.’ And away he goes most friendly.”

How came it to pass that Lord Ringwood, whose instinct of

self-preservation was strong—who, I fear, was rather a selfish

nobleman—and who, of late, as we have heard, had given orders to refuse

Mr. Philip entrance at his door—should all of a sudden turn round and

greet the young man with cordiality? In the first place, Philip had

never troubled his lordship’s knocker at all; and second, as luck would

have it, on this very day of their meeting his lordship had been to dine

with that well-known Parisian resident and _bon vivant_, my Lord Viscount

Trim, who had been governor of the Sago Islands when Colonel Baynes was

there with his regiment, the gallant 100th. And the general and his old

West India governor meeting at church, my Lord Trim straightway asked

General Baynes to dinner, where Lord Ringwood was present, along with

other distinguished company, whom at present we need not particularize.

Now it has been said that Philip Ringwood, my lord’s brother, and Captain

Baynes in early youth had been close friends, and that the colonel had

died in the captain’s arms. Lord Ringwood, who had an excellent memory

when he chose to use it, was pleased on this occasion to remember General

Baynes and his intimacy with his brother in old days. And of those old

times they talked; the general waxing more eloquent, I suppose, than his

wont over Lord Trim’s excellent wine. And in the course of conversation

Philip was named, and the general, warm with drink, poured out a most

enthusiastic eulogium on his young friend, and mentioned how noble and

self-denying Philip’s conduct had been in his own case. And perhaps Lord

Ringwood was pleased at hearing these praises of his brother’s grandson;

and perhaps he thought of old times, when he had a heart, and he and

his brother loved each other. And though he might think Philip Firmin

an absurd young blockhead for giving up any claims which he might have

on General Baynes, at any rate I have no doubt his lordship thought,

‘This boy is not likely to come begging money from me!’ Hence, when he

drove back to his hotel on the very night after this dinner, and in the

court-yard saw that Philip Firmin, his brother’s grandson, the heart of

the old nobleman was smitten with a kindly sentiment, and he bade Philip

to come and see him.

I have described some of Philip’s oddities, and amongst these was a very

remarkable change in his appearance, which ensued very speedily after

his ruin. I know that the greater number of story readers are young, and

those who are ever so old remember that their own young days occurred but

a very, very short while ago. Don’t you remember, most potent, grave,

and reverend senior, when you were a junior, and actually rather pleased

with new clothes? Does a new coat or a waistcoat cause you any pleasure

now? To a well-constituted middle-aged gentleman, I rather trust a smart

new suit causes a sensation of uneasiness—not from the tightness of the

fit, which may be a reason—but from the gloss and splendour. When my late

kind friend, Mrs. ——, gave me the emerald tabinet waistcoat, with the

gold shamrocks, I wore it once to go to Richmond to dine with her; but

I buttoned myself so closely in an upper coat, that I am sure nobody in

the omnibus saw what a painted vest I had on. Gold sprigs and emerald

tabinet, what a gorgeous raiment! It has formed for ten years the chief

ornament of my wardrobe; and though I have never dared to wear it since,

I always think with a secret pleasure of possessing that treasure. Do

women, when they are sixty, like handsome and fashionable attire, and a

youthful appearance? Look at Lady Jezebel’s blushing cheek, her raven

hair, her splendid garments! But this disquisition may be carried to too

great a length. I want to note a fact which has occurred not seldom in my

experience—that men who have been great dandies will often and suddenly

give up their long-accustomed splendour of dress, and walk about, most

happy and contented, with the shabbiest of coats and hats. No. The

majority of men are not vain about their dress. For instance, within a

very few years, men used to have pretty feet. See in what a resolute

way they have kicked their pretty boots off almost to a man, and wear

great, thick, formless, comfortable walking boots, of shape scarcely more

graceful than a tub!

When Philip Firmin first came on the town there were dandies still; there

were dazzling waistcoats of velvet and brocade, and tall stocks with

cataracts of satin; there were pins, studs, neck-chains, I know not what

fantastic splendours of youth. His varnished boots grew upon forests of

trees. He had a most resplendent silver-gilt dressing-case, presented to

him by his father (for which, it is true, the doctor neglected to pay,

leaving that duty to his son). “It is a mere ceremony,” said the worthy

doctor, “a cumbrous thing you may fancy at first; but take it about with

you. It looks well on a man’s dressing-table at a country house. It

_poses_ a man, you understand. I have known women come in and peep at it.

A trifle you may say, my boy; but what is the use of flinging any chance

in life away?” Now, when misfortune came, young Philip flung away all

these magnificent follies. He wrapped himself _virtute suâ_; and I am

bound to say a more queer-looking fellow than friend Philip seldom walked

the pavement of London or Paris. He could not wear the nap off all his

coats, or rub his elbows into rags in six months; but, as he would say

of himself with much simplicity, “I do think I run to seed more quickly

than any fellow I ever knew. All my socks in holes, Mrs. Pendennis; all

my shirt-buttons gone, I give you my word. I don’t know how the things

hold together, and why they don’t tumble to pieces. I suspect I must

have a bad laundress.” Suspect! My children used to laugh and crow as

they sewed buttons on to him. As for the Little Sister, she broke into

his apartments in his absence, and said that it turned her hair grey to

see the state of his poor wardrobe. I believe that Mrs. Brandon put in

surreptitious linen into his drawers. He did not know. He wore the shirts

in a contented spirit. The glossy boots began to crack and then to burst,

and Philip wore them with perfect equanimity. Where were the beautiful

lavender and lemon gloves of last year? His great naked hands (with

which he gesticulates so grandly) were as brown as an Indian’s now. We

had liked him heartily in his days of splendour; we loved him now in his

threadbare suit.

I can fancy the young man striding into the room where his lordship’s

guests were assembled. In the presence of great or small, Philip has

always been entirely unconcerned, and he is one of the half-dozen men

I have seen in my life upon whom rank made no impression. It appears

that, on occasion of this breakfast, there were one or two dandies

present who were aghast at Philip’s freedom of behaviour. He engaged

in conversation with a famous French statesman; contradicted him with

much energy in his own language; and when the statesman asked whether

monsieur was membre du Parlement? Philip burst into one of his roars of

laughter, which almost breaks the glasses on a table, and said, “Je suis

journaliste, monsieur, à vos ordres!” Young Timbury of the embassy was

aghast at Philip’s insolence; and Dr. Botts, his lordship’s travelling

physician, looked at him with a terrified face. A bottle of claret was

brought, which almost all the gentlemen present began to swallow, until

Philip, tasting his glass, called out, “Faugh. It’s corked!” “So it is,

and very badly corked,” growls my lord, with one of his usual oaths. “Why

didn’t some of you fellows speak? Do you like corked wine?” There were

gallant fellows round that table who would have drunk corked black dose,

had his lordship professed to like senna. The old host was tickled and

amused. “Your mother was a quiet soul, and your father used to bow like a

dancing-master. You ain’t much like him. I dine at home most days. Leave

word in the morning with my people, and come when you like, Philip,” he

growled. A part of this news Philip narrated to us in his letter, and

other part was given verbally by Mr. and Mrs. Mugford on their return to

London. “I tell you, sir,” says Mugford, “he has been taken by the hand

by some of the tiptop people, and I have booked him at three guineas a

week for a letter to the _Pall Mall Gazette_.”

And this was the cause of my wife’s exultation and triumphant “Didn’t

I tell you?” Philip’s foot was on the ladder; and who so capable of

mounting to the top? When happiness and a fond and lovely girl were

waiting for him there, would he lose heart, spare exertion, or be afraid

to climb? He had no truer well-wisher than myself, and no friend who

liked him better, though, I daresay, many admired him much more than I

did. But these were women for the most part; and women become so absurdly

unjust and partial to persons whom they love, when these latter are in

misfortune, that I am surprised Mr. Philip did not quite lose his head

in his poverty, with such fond flatterers and sycophants round about

him. Would you grudge him the consolation to be had from these sweet

uses of adversity? Many a heart would be hardened but for the memory of

past griefs; when eyes, now averted, perhaps, were full of sympathy, and

hands, now cold, were eager to soothe and succour.

The Dissolution of the Union.

Hardly any event, even in these days of great events, is more melancholy

or memorable than the disruption of the United States. The history of

England is entitled (with a doubtful exception in favour of that of Rome)

to be considered as the most important chapter in the annals of the human

race; for it describes the growth of institutions and the development

of principles by which the largest and far the most flourishing part

of mankind regulate their affairs. In another century, our language

and literature, and, to a great extent, our laws and institutions,

will express the thoughts and control the conduct of the population of

more than half the world; and we have, therefore, an interest closely

resembling that which connects blood relations in the prosperity of the

great nations sprung from the same stock as ourselves.

To every one who takes this view of the feelings which ought to exist

between England and the United States, it must be matter of sincere

regret that anything should diminish the friendliness of our relations.

There is, however, reason to fear that the Americans have been deeply

mortified by the feeling with which the secession of the Southern States

has been regarded in this country; and if newspaper articles are taken

as sufficient evidence of public feeling on the subject, it must be

admitted that the feeling, if not wise, is at least intelligible. Our

principal journals have, no doubt, uniformly treated the disruption of

the Union and the prospect of civil war as great evils; but they have

frequently taken a ground which is not in itself reasonable, and which

to all Americans, and especially to all Northerners, must be excessively

offensive, respecting the whole dispute. They almost invariably discuss

the subject as if the case were the simple one of a dependency wishing

to free itself from the yoke of a superior, and they constantly dwell

upon that most inconclusive and irritating of all topics, the charge

of inconsistency. With what pretence of fairness, it is said, can you

Americans object to the secession of the Southern States, when your

own nation was founded in secession from the British empire? It would

be as reasonable to ask how a man, who has successfully defended one

action, can ever have the face to be plaintiff in another. The fact,

that resistance to a constituted government may sometimes be right, no

more proves that it can never be wrong, than the fact that it is right

to shoot an invader proves that there is no such crime as murder. The

analogy between George III. and Washington, and President Lincoln and

President Davis, is just near enough to be at once delusive and annoying.

If the object is to vex the Americans, and chuckle with more or less

ingenuity over their troubles, the course which our most influential

papers have taken is a wise one. If we wish to understand the merits of

the question, and the way in which it presents itself to those whom it

principally concerns, we must take a very different view of it.

To Englishmen in general, American politics present a sort of maze

without a plan. The strange names of Indian places and rulers were

described by Sydney Smith as non-conductors of sympathy, and in American

politics a somewhat similar effect is produced by the opposite cause.

There is nothing impressive in the names of the politicians, and nothing

distinctive in their measures. Men are elected to high office, who,

beyond their own State, were utterly unknown; and the announcement of

their respective “platforms” and “tickets” leaves most English readers

of American news as hopelessly in the dark as if it were made in some

unknown tongue.

Much of this confusion is undoubtedly due to the general ignorance which

prevails in this country as to the nature and gist of American politics.

Hardly any one knows what is the real nature of the Union—how it is

related to the individual States—what are the sort of questions which

arise out of that relation, and what would be implied in its disruption.

In the absence of a clear general view of these matters, it is idle to

attempt to form an opinion on the present condition of the seceding

States, or to criticize the policy of those who wish either to destroy or

to maintain the Union by force of arms. It is the object of this paper to

give a general sketch of these matters in relation to the present state

of affairs. The United States of America formed, up to the time of the

late secession, a body politic of an unexampled kind. Both in ancient

and modern times confederacies have frequently been established. The old

German empire, the existing Germanic Confederation, Switzerland, and the

Dutch United Provinces, are instances. The United States of America are

distinguished from other confederacies by the circumstance that they

exercise a direct jurisdiction not only over the States, but also over

the individuals who compose those States. This distinction is one of

practical and substantial importance; and without a distinct notion of

the way in which it works the character of the Union and its politics can

hardly be understood. Its leading features are shortly as follows.

The colonial history of the United States supplies several instances

in which they associated themselves together for common defence. The

New England colonies did so in the seventeenth century, and their

association lasted without the notice of the mother country for forty

years. Another union of a somewhat similar kind was attempted in the

course of the eighteenth century, not out of any feeling of hostility

to Great Britain, but simply for purposes of mutual assistance. During

the War of Independence a third confederacy was formed, by the help of

which the struggle with England was brought to a successful conclusion.

Subsequently to the year 1783 the league between the thirteen States

continued under another form; but their connection, as in former cases,

was nothing more than a confederacy the units of which were States,

and not individuals. The constitution which is at present undergoing

the process of dissolution was framed by the principal statesmen of the

nation in 1787, and by June, 1790, was finally ratified and accepted

by all the States. No one who reads it with attention, and follows

out its practical application in the subsequent history and present

condition of the States, can fail to see that the language common

amongst Englishmen in relation to the dissolution of the Union proceeds

upon an inadequate notion of the importance of the benefits which the

constitution confers, the magnitude of the interests which it protects,

and the practical importance of the questions which would be at once

raised by its dissolution. There cannot be a greater mistake than that

of viewing the States as a mere league, some of the members of which are

struggling to retain the rest as allies against their will; or as a sort

of transatlantic Austria, insisting on the subjugation of a transatlantic

Venice.

The following sketch of the principal provisions of the constitution may

serve to give a definite notion of what it is for which the Northerners

are preparing to fight. Every one knows that the United States are

governed by a President and a Congress, consisting of two Houses,

the Senate and the House of Representatives; but viewing them, as we

naturally do, principally from without, the way in which the powers of

government are divided between Congress and the State legislatures, and

the consequences which that division involves, are less familiar to us.

The powers conferred by the constitution on Congress are as follows. It

may impose taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, which, however, must be

uniform on all the inhabitants of the States. It may borrow money on

the credit of the United States of America. It may regulate commerce,

lay down a general rule of naturalization, regulate the coinage, and

punish offences relating to it. It has also the care of post-offices

and post roads, and the superintendence of copyright, both in books

and in inventions. It has jurisdiction over offences committed at sea.

It has the power of war and peace, the control of the United States’

army and navy, and military law. It regulates the calling out and the

organization of the State militia for common purposes. It is the sole

government of the district of Columbia, in which Washington is situated;

and it has power to make laws binding on the individual citizens of every

State in the Union, for the purpose of executing any of these powers.

All sovereign powers not included under these heads are reserved to the

individual States, but they are expressly prohibited from exercising

their sovereignty in certain ways. No State may enter into alliances, or

make peace or war, or emit bills of credit, or make anything but gold and

silver coin a tender in payment of debts, or pass any bill of attainder,

_ex post facto_ law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or

grant any title of nobility.

It has not been uncommon in Europe for States to give themselves

constitutions which have been ridiculed in this country (often not

reasonably) on the ground that the provisions which had the largest

sound were in fact mere empty words. This cannot be said of the American

constitution. Its practical efficiency is secured by the only means which

can secure it—the institution of independent courts of justice bound

to put a judicial construction upon its provisions, and armed with the

powers necessary to make that construction prevail in fact. These courts

treat the constitution as they would treat any other law, and freely

exercise the power of deciding whether the acts of the individual States,

or even those of Congress itself, are unconstitutional and therefore

illegal. The courts in question are divisible into three classes. In

the first class stands the Supreme Court of the United States; in the

second are the circuit courts; and in the third, the district courts.

The Supreme Court has original jurisdiction in diplomatic cases, in

admiralty and maritime cases, in cases arising between individual

States, and in cases in which the United States are a party. It also

entertains appeals from the circuit and district courts. The circuit

courts and district courts are local, and closely resemble each other in

the general character of their jurisdiction, though the circuit courts

are the more important of the two. They entertain all civil causes above

500 dollars in which the United States is a party, or in which an alien

is a party, or in which the citizen of one State sues the citizen of

another. They have also criminal jurisdiction in all cases in which the

offence is committed against the laws of the United States, and they

decide questions relating to revenue laws and the laws of patents and

copyrights. In the territories which are not yet formed into States the

law is administered by district courts.

The consequence of this system is, that in relation to all the mass of

powers conferred upon Congress by the constitution, the citizens of the

United States are governed by, and are in their individual capacity

responsible to, the authorities of the United States to the exclusion of

those of their own States, and in many points they can appeal not only

from the law courts, but from the State legislatures, to the general law

of the United States. For example: Dartmouth College obtained from the

Supreme Court a decision that a law of the State of New Hampshire, by

which its charter was altered without its consent, was void, as being

opposed to that article of the constitution which prohibits the States

from “passing laws impairing the obligation of contracts.” In the same

manner another State assigned lands for the use of the Indians, and

declared that those lands should not be taxed. The land was afterwards

sold to other persons, and after the sale the State repealed the law

freeing the land from taxation. This law was held to be void on the same

ground.

The constitutional right of Congress to tax carriages in a particular

manner, to tax unrepresented districts, to pass a law giving debts to

the United States priority over others, and to incorporate a national

bank, are instances of the sort of questions on which the Supreme Court

has given judicial decisions. These decisions, whether they are between

State and State, between the United States and some particular State,

or between States and individuals, are enforced by regular executive

officers like any other judicial decisions.

The practical consequences of the system, of which these are a few of the

most prominent features, are far more important than the language which

we generally use about it would imply. We are so much accustomed to the

extraordinary rapidity with which the United States advance in wealth

and power, that we are a little apt to look upon their prosperity as an

ultimate fact requiring no explanation. In fact, like everything else,

it has its causes, and, no doubt, one of the most important of them is

the influence of the Union. There can be no doubt that it contributes

immensely to the prosperity of every State which belongs to it, and that

its maintenance forms almost the only means by which the settlement and

government of the continent can be provided for. In the first place,

so long as it exists, war between any of the States which compose it

is impossible. If we recollect what has been the general character of

the history of modern Europe, this in itself must be considered as an

advantage which can hardly be bought too dear. In the next place, it

provides every American citizen with a sphere of activity unequalled for

extent and variety in the history of mankind. He may make his choice

between more than thirty great nations, of any one of which he can, by

mere residence, constitute himself a citizen. In each of them he is as

much at home as an Englishman in Ireland, if not more. In each he is,

to a great extent, under the same laws; he enjoys the same political

rights; and the most important of these are guaranteed by all the other

members of the Union. Under any circumstances, these would be valuable

results; but, under the special circumstances of North America, their

value is greatly enhanced. The population is by far the most migratory

in the world. It is inordinately bent upon every kind of enterprise by

which money is to be made, and the consequence is that anything which

could shackle the free movement of the people to any part of the country,

or diminish the ease with which they can at present establish themselves

wherever they please, would be intolerable to them. The existence of the

Union favours these tendencies in the highest degree. Its dissolution

would place a serious check upon them. The existing constitution not

only protects the whole of the United States from intestine war, but

gives to each of them, and to all the citizens of each, rights which are

unexampled elsewhere. We are so much accustomed to think and speak of

the United States as a single nation, that we forget the means by which

they gained, and by which (if at all) they must retain, that character.

There is no other part of the world in which communities larger and

more powerful than most nations can settle their differences with each

other and with individuals by the ordinary course of law, in the proper

sense of the word, and not by diplomatic negotiations. It is, for many

purposes, as easy to sue or to be sued by the semi-sovereign States

of the American Union as to sue or be sued by an English corporation;

and this circumstance enables a set of relations to be formed amongst

them which do not exist elsewhere, and invests them, when they are

formed, with guarantees which but for the existence of the Union could

not be given. When we remember the vital importance which, under the

special circumstances of the country, attaches to roads, railways, the

navigation of the great rivers and lakes, and other matters, in each of

which numerous half-independent States have different and often jarring

interests, the practical importance of a system of judicature by which

their relations may be regulated becomes apparent. Probably there is

no considerable commercial company in the Union which would not find

the security of its property depreciated, and its power of enforcing

its rights and guaranteeing the discharge of its obligations sensibly

diminished, by the dissolution of the Union, and the closing of the

Federal courts.

With regard to foreign politics, the matter is too plain for doubt.

The dissolution of the Union would go far to destroy altogether the

diplomatic influence and external political power of the United States;

and, indeed, some influential writers have gone so far as to maintain

that such a result ought to be regarded in this country not merely with

equanimity but with satisfaction. It would, we are told, diminish the

insolence and the swagger which so often offend foreigners. Whatever

truth there may be in this, it must be gall and wormwood to Americans.

Such being the general nature and advantages of the Union, it is not to

be expected that the Americans in general should view its dissolution

with equanimity; nor can there be a doubt that if they mean to resist

it by force, now is the time at which that force must be used. If the

Southern States were allowed to secede without resistance, the Union

would be at an end, and it is impossible to predict where the process of

dissolution would stop. The history of the Union shows that slavery is by

no means the only question which may threaten its integrity. At the time

of the Hartford Convention the New England States seriously threatened

secession. If the Southerners succeed in their present undertaking, it is

highly probable that the Western States, of which the Mississippi is the

natural outlet, may follow their example, and if they did so the process

might easily go farther.

These considerations explain the importance which the Americans attach to

the Union, and the necessity under which they are placed of defending it

by force at this point if they mean to defend it at all. It is urged in

opposition to this, that it is inconsistent in republicans to attempt to

force men to continue members of a community which they wish to leave,

and that it is particularly inconsistent in the Americans to do so,

because they owe their own national existence to a revolt against Great

Britain. There are several independent answers to this argument, each of

which ought to prevent either _bonâ-fide_ inquirers or accurate reasoners

from using it. In the first place, it proves nothing, for the question

is not whether the Americans are consistent, but whether they are

right—that is, whether they are taking the course which is, on the whole,

best and wisest. To charge them with inconsistency, even if the charge

were true, could produce nothing but irritation; for if such a charge

were made out, it would come to this: “You are quite right in trying to

reduce the South to obedience, but you must admit that the principles

which your grandfathers fought for in 1776 were false.” If they are

right, what is the use of vexing them about their grandfathers? If they

are wrong, why increase the difficulty of convincing them by undertaking

to show that the error is condemned by the example of their grandfathers?

The whole argument is invidious, and serves no other purpose than that of

creating prejudice and rancour.

In the second place the charge is altogether untrue. The tone of jovial,

half-chuckling banter which is the curse of newspaper writing, so much

obscures the arguments which are put forward on this subject, that it is

generally difficult to do exact justice to them. Sometimes it appears as

if the writer meant to say that under a republican form of government

no one ought to be made to do anything he disliked. This, of course,

would be fatal not only to the rights of such governments to suppress

insurrection, but to their right to administer civil or criminal justice.

At other times the ground taken appears to be substantially this—that

republican institutions generally, and the government of the United

States in particular, are founded on the principle that every body of men

competent in point of number and local situation to form an independent

political body, has a right, as against any other body of which it forms

a part, to announce its intention of doing so, and immediately to carry

that intention into execution, and that the body of which it forms a

part has no right forcibly to prevent it. This, it is asserted, is the

only principle on which the American Declaration of Independence can be

justified, and it equally justifies the Confederate States in seceding

from the Union.

This argument proceeds on an entire misconception of the principles

by which nations ought to regulate their relations to each other.

The conduct of independent communities towards each other must, on

all occasions of importance, be regulated not by rule, but by direct

reference to the principles upon which rules are founded; that is to

say, by the direct consideration of the consequences of the particular

act; and it is by this principle, and not in virtue of some imaginary

right, that successful resistance to constituted authorities is to be

justified. The establishment of American independence was, on the whole,

a good thing both for Great Britain and for the United States; and this,

and this only, was the justification of those who contributed to it. How

does it follow from this that the secession of the Southern States would

also be justifiable? The only intelligible meaning of which the principle

under consideration is capable is, that the original State ought always

to consider itself practically bound by the opinion of the revolting

State, that the success of their revolt is for the common good; which is

manifestly absurd. There are, in truth (as might be shown by independent

arguments), no such thing as rights between communities, and it is

therefore absurd to charge the United States with their violation. The

conduct of both, or of either party, may be wise, beneficial, honourable,

deceitful, foolish, or injurious; but, apart from the express rights

conferred by the constitution, which, as far as they go, are beyond all

doubt in favour of the Northern States, there is, and can be, no question

of right between them.

This mode of viewing the subject is that which might properly be applied

to the case of a European power in which the relations between the

governors and the governed have never been explicitly determined, but

depend upon general principles of reasoning. For example, if Ireland were

to proclaim its independence, they would supply the means of forming an

opinion about it. In America the case is altogether different. There

is no question of oppression; there is no assertion that the South has

been in any way threatened or injured; and, on the other hand, there is

a constitution solemnly instituted only seventy-five years ago, under

which the Southerners have acted ever since, of which they have reaped

every advantage to the very utmost, and which they now claim a right to

throw to the winds, without assigning any other cause than their own will

to do so. Their case is not that of resistance to authority, legitimate

or illegitimate; it is the wrongful repudiation of a relationship which

they have no right to dissolve. It is as if a wife, after hen-pecking her

husband for twenty years, claimed a right to divorce him.

The whole history of the question of slavery and of the party questions

connected with it for the last forty years are proofs of this.[1] It is

far less familiar to Englishmen than from its importance it deserves to

be. The names, indeed, of the Missouri Compromise, Mason and Dixie’s

Line, the Border Ruffians, and the War in Kansas, are familiar enough

to us all, but hardly any one attaches any definite meaning to them.

The subject, however, forms a connected whole, and when its bearings

are understood, it throws great light on the present proceedings, both

of the North and of the South. In order to understand the matter, it

is necessary to say a few words as to the constitution of Congress.

Each State has in the House of Representatives one member for every

30,000 inhabitants. Three-fifths of the slaves count as inhabitants,

and by this means the Southerners, though their white population is

far smaller than the population of the Northern States, have about as

many representatives. Moreover, each State, large or small, sends two

representatives to the Senate.

When the constitution was established, slave-holding was nearly

universal; but it was acknowledged by all the leading statesmen of the

day, that it was an evil, though they described it as an inherited, and

for the time an inevitable one. In the Northern States, where the slaves

were few, and where white labour could obviously compete with that of

negroes, slavery was rapidly abolished, and by degrees the distinction

between slave and free States came to coincide with the distinction

between North and South. As this gradually became the leading feature in

American politics, the Southern States exerted themselves to the utmost

to obtain a majority, or, at any rate, to secure an equality of votes,

in the Senate. The only way in which this could be done was by adding

to the Union as many slave States as possible. As Miss Martineau truly

says, “the key to the entire policy of the United States for the last

quarter of a century is the effort of the South to maintain a majority in

the Senate at Washington.” The original United States, as is well known,

were thirteen in number, namely, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut,

Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Virginia,

North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Maryland. The western

boundaries of several of these, and especially those of Virginia, were

almost entirely undefined. Soon after the recognition of independence,

the boundaries of Virginia were fixed, the lands excluded thrown into a

common stock, and an arrangement was made that slavery should never be

established on them. Whether or no this arrangement was constitutional,

is a question which has been much discussed, but it was made and has been

acted on. Several States, including Ohio, Kentucky, and others, were

formed out of them.

In 1803, the immense territory of Louisiana, which included not only the

State so named, but districts subsequently formed into several others,

was purchased by the United States from France; and in 1819, the State of

Missouri, which had formed part of this territory, applied for admission

to the Union, and a great debate arose as to the terms on which it was

to be admitted. If it was admitted as a slave State, slavery would be

in a majority in the Senate; if not, in a minority. Ultimately, it was

admitted as a slave State; but, at the same time, it was provided that

slavery should be prohibited in every other part of the Union north of

36° 30′ north latitude (which is known as Mason and Dixie’s line). This

arrangement was made in 1819, and is the well-known Missouri compromise.

Its effect was to make slavery distinctly a Southern institution, and

from that time the great effort of Southern politicians has been to get

into the Union as many States as possible south of 36° 30′. This was the

object of almost all Southern policy for many years, and in particular

was the secret of the annexation of Texas, which it was intended to form

into five States, sending ten members to the Senate. At last the North,

which in political warfare has always been far inferior in skill and

energy to the South, tried to counteract this by adding free States on

the other hand. This gave rise to what was known as the compromise of

1850. California was added on the terms of choosing its own constitution,

and it chose against slavery; but this was counterbalanced by the

enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law. In 1854, the Missouri compromise

was repealed, and new States, whether north or south of 36° 30′, were

allowed to choose whether they would permit slavery or not. This was at

the time when Kansas and Nebraska, both of which lay to the north of that

line, were on the point of becoming States. Great efforts were made, both

by the North and by the South, to determine the inhabitants of Kansas to

vote for slavery. On the one side, the Northerners supplied settlers; on

the other, the Southerners instigated the “mean whites,” who form the

most degraded class in the Southern States, to enter the territory and

force the choice of the electors—an object which they effected after

outrages of various kinds, which broke out at one time into a sort of

small civil war.

Such have been the leading events of the controversy between the North

and the South during the last forty years. Throughout the greater part,

and especially throughout the latter part of it, the South have had,

beyond all comparison, the larger share of the influence and power of

the Union. Every successive President, for many years past, has more or

less represented Southern views. The whole course of Federal legislation

has been in the interests of the South. The foreign policy of the Union,

especially its American policy, has been usually dictated principally

by their wish to add new slave States to the Union; and even the

decrees of the Supreme Court have not been free from traces of Southern

influence. Many circumstances have contributed to put the South in this

position; the most remarkable being the comparatively small number and

superior adroitness of the Southern planters, who have much greater

political aptitude and more independence than the Northern statesmen—the

simplicity and directness of their political objects—and, above all,

their comparative indifference to the maintenance of the Union. Though

they have enjoyed to the utmost all the advantages which the Union

had to give—though they have directed its policy, forced the Northern

States, in the case of the Fugitive Slave Law, to discharge humiliating

functions for them, and gone far towards effecting the object, to

borrow a well-known expression, of “making slavery national and freedom

sectional,” they care far less about the Union than the Northerners.

They enjoy over them all the advantages which a simple society has over

one which is at once wealthy, ambitious, and complex. The planter’s

pursuits are so simple that the considerations which influence other

Americans affect him but slightly. Whatever becomes of the rest of the

Union, he can grow and sell his cotton, so long as he has slaves and

customers. He cares, and has reason to care, comparatively little for the

enterprises which excite a passionate enthusiasm amongst the Northerners,

and which tend to the conversion of the whole continent, in the shortest

possible space of time, into one enormous hive of moderate comfort.

To the North, the dissolution of the Union means the establishment of

internal frontiers, the destruction of the Federal jurisdiction, and with

it a severe shock to all sorts of commercial enterprises, the opening

of fruitful sources of jealousy, and the diminution of the external

prestige of the nation. To the South it means nothing very formidable.

As secession would be their act, and not that of their rivals, it would

not hurt, but rather flatter, their national pride. They would have it in

their power to reopen the slave trade; and as their internal enterprises

are few, in comparison with those of the North, they would care

comparatively little for the destruction of the Federal jurisdiction.

These circumstances have enabled the Southerners for years to hold the

threat of dissolving the Union over the North as a means of coercion, and

there can be no doubt at all that the threat has been most effective. For

a long period Northern politicians have made every sort of concession to

the South, in order to avoid the question which is now forced upon them,

for no assignable reason except that for the first time for the last

quarter of a century a Northern president has been chosen.

It is scarcely possible to imagine any state of things more insufferable

to men of spirit, than such a course of conduct as this. Indeed in many

of the steps of the long struggle between the North and the South it is

impossible to deny that the Northerners showed great want of resolution,

and down to the attack on Fort Sumter they continued to display a degree

of forbearance which was hardly dignified. It is of course difficult, if

not impossible, for any one who was not in America, or who had not an

intimate personal knowledge of the state of feeling there, to express any

positive opinion as to the course of the extraordinary change which that

transaction produced. It seems, however, to be like the case of a man

who, after putting up with all sorts of hard words and rough conduct, is

interrupted in the midst of expostulations and offers of compromise by

a box on the ear. Some ridicule was cast by the English papers on what

was described as the unstatesmanlike and technically legal view of the

question between the North and South, and of the way in which it was to

be treated, which the President put forward in his proclamation on taking

office. Some of our most influential newspaper writers thought that it

fell below the occasion, and that a manifesto announcing a course of

policy based on general considerations would have been more appropriate.

Such criticisms betray ignorance of the fundamental principles of the

American constitution. The consequence of the institution of the Supreme

and Federal courts, and of the reduction of the constitution to the form

of a written document technically interpreted by professional lawyers,

has been to remove numerous questions which we treat as questions of

policy to the domain of strict law, and to invest legal doctrines with

a prominence and importance unknown to any other nation. So long as

no actual physical force was applied to the property or forces of the

Union, the Federal law was not broken. The crime of treason is defined

to consist in “levying war against the United States, or adhering

to their enemies only.” The President has well-defined legal powers

and responsibilities, and is bound by oath to act upon them. It is,

therefore, natural enough that both he and the Northern States generally

should have submitted patiently to acts on the part of the Southern

States which no Continental government would have permitted on the part

of any member of the nation, and which even in the British Islands would

have been illegal.

The eagerness with which the Northerners deprecated “coercion” in the

early stages of the business, probably showed little more than reluctance

to strike the first blow. A parallel might have arisen in England in the

days of the Irish volunteers before the Union. It would have been quite

consistent, then, for the newspapers and men of business to entreat

the Government to take every possible means of avoiding collision,

to allow the volunteers to assemble and the Irish Parliament to pass

any resolutions it pleased, and yet to burst out into any degree of

indignation and excitement if the English troops had been actually

attacked and the Lord Lieutenant shipped back to England. It is very

probable that Englishmen would have been less forbearing before the blow

was struck, and less noisy afterwards; but this is a mere question of

temperament.

These remarks show that the Northerners are entitled to more sympathy

than they have received from the most influential part of the English

press. They are fighting for an object of real importance. If they were

to fight at all, now is their time, and they have received for many

years past a series of provocations of the most exasperating kind. It

does not, however, follow from this that they are wise in fighting, nor

does it follow that they have any just ground to complain of the conduct

which our Government has pursued towards them. The wisdom of fighting

depends principally on the prospect of success; and on that point, there

can be no doubt of the great weight of the arguments pressed on the

Northern States by several English papers, and especially with admirable

vigour and great knowledge by the _Economist_. These difficulties may

be summed up in one. The constitution of the United States proceeds on

the assumption that each member of the Union wishes to maintain it. To

enforce it _in invitos_ is very like a contradiction in terms. Suppose

that the South is utterly defeated and crushed in the field, and that

Mr. Davis and some others are hanged for treason; and, further, suppose

that in the year 1864 the South succeeds, as it has so often succeeded,

in electing a Southern President and out-manœuvring the North: the result

would be grotesque if it were not so melancholy. It would be precisely

as if a man sued successfully for the restitution of conjugal rights

against a woman who, after making his life a burden to him, had left him

without cause. No doubt he would get the advantage of her company at bed

and board, but who would wish for it? To enforce conjugal rights against

a woman bent on making her husband wretched, is in a most emphatic way

cutting off one’s nose to be revenged on one’s face, and, to a cool

observer, the process now going on in the States is of much the same

character. This assumes success, but another familiar proverb shows how

doubtful even such success as this must be. One man may take a horse to

the water, but twenty cannot make him drink. If they are so minded, the

North have a fair prospect of being able to crush the Southern armies, to

take their forts, and to reduce any cities which may hold out; but how

will they make them send members to Congress, recognize the jurisdiction

of the Federal courts, and admit the Federal officers who administer the

offices vested by the constitution in the Congress? A permanent military

occupation of every town and village in all the Southern States would be

necessary to carry out these objects; and this seems to English observers

to be altogether out of the question. If this difficulty were overcome,

the State legislatures would still be protected by the very constitution

which the army of occupation would come to enforce; nor would it be

possible, without fatal inconsistency, to prohibit free discussion in

newspapers, public meetings, and the like. All this would be fatal to

continuous compulsion.

These observations are so obvious and weighty, that any considerate

Englishman would, as far as his private opinion went, be decided by them;

but those who insist upon them with so much force ought to remember that

there is another side to the subject. To advise brave and high-spirited

men to permit, or not to resist, the forcible, wrongful destruction of

institutions to which they rightly attach the highest value, on the

ground that it is extremely difficult to maintain them, is what men who

recognize the claims of courage and spirit ought to be loth to do. That

the North has right on its side, there can be no doubt. That it has

sustained grievous wrongs and insults, is equally plain. Surely it is

a question rather for them than for us, whether there is a reasonable

prospect of redressing those wrongs by force of arms. A nation, like an

individual, may easily overrate difficulties. It is by no means clear

that the tone of the South will be so haughty as it is at present, or

that their determination to resist will be unanimous after they have

felt the weight of the Northern army. There is no doubt on each side a

superabundance of the very fiercest kind of talk, and of protestations of

unflinching constancy; but it by no means follows that it would survive

the horrors of battles and sieges, and the awful prospect of servile

insurrection. At any rate, no one can know whether it will or not till

they try. Ireland would have been independent long ago if we had taken

the advice of disinterested foreigners about it. In 1857 many writers on

the Continent and in the United States supposed that they had proved in

the most convincing manner that we never could reconquer India. Nothing

that is worth keeping in this world can be kept without an effort; and it

is premature to say that fighting is of no use till it has been fairly

tried. We have a fair right to dwell on all the difficulties and horrors

of the task; but in common justice it must be admitted that the North are

fighting in a good cause and for a high stake.

Though it would be hard to deny that some injustice has been done to

the Northerners by the tone of the most influential of our newspapers,

nothing can be more false in substance or rude in manner than the

imputations thrown by the Americans on the policy of the English

government. There is something so puerile in the notion that the

recognition of the belligerent rights of the Southerners involves an

approval of their proceedings, that it is difficult to argue seriously

against it. Unless the Northerners mean to execute their prisoners as

murderers and traitors, they must treat them as belligerents. That is,

they must recognize the very rights which they blame us for recognizing.

No doubt their real grievance is that their vanity has been wounded by

the manner in which their performances have been criticized by English

writers. The preceding observations are intended to show how far they

have a just cause of complaint, but it is highly probable that the fact

that we have not taken their demonstrations in quite the same heroic

vein as that in which they are made has had as much to do with their

ill-temper and bad manners, as the misconception as to the true state of

the case, which certainly has pervaded much of our current literature.

For this cause of offence no apology and no regret is due. One of the

principal services which one nation can render to another, especially

where their language and literature are identical, is that of letting

them know when they are exposing themselves. In America, both politics

and periodical literature have fallen, to a great extent, into the hands

of an ill-educated class. The excessive vulgarity of a great part of

what they say and write gives far too low a notion of the strong points

of the American character, and has a fatal tendency to make their policy

as unworthy a representative of the real powers of their minds as their

literature unquestionably is. It is very desirable that every reasonable

opportunity should be taken of showing the noisy and ill-bred people

who have constituted themselves the representatives of the opinions and

feelings of the United States, that we rate them exactly at what they

are worth, and that their brag and fustian have just as much and just

as little effect upon us as the raw-head-and-bloody-bones swagger which

were the precursors of the famous battle of the cabbage-garden in 1848.

The proposal that the North and South should forget their differences

in a joint piratical attack upon Canada and Cuba, is worthy only of

the infamous source from which it proceeds. Those who make it ought to

recollect that something more than newspaper articles will be wanted to

conquer a British colony. Hard words seem at present to be more in their

line than broken bones, and they are much less to the purpose.

FOOTNOTES

[1] _See_ Miss Martineau’s pamphlet, _A History of the American

Compromises_. Reprinted, with additions, from the _Daily News_. Chapman,

1856.

Burlesques.

It is a long stride from Aristophanes to the young men who write the

satirical dramatic pieces of the present day—and yet but one step. It

might be a safe thing to say that that one step is from the sublime to

the ridiculous; but it would scarcely be just. In one important respect

Aristophanes and the burlesque writers of the present day are, like Cæsar

and Pompey in the estimation of the learned negro, very much alike,

especially Aristophanes. Aristophanes, who was certainly the father of

the burlesque, claimed to have a moral purpose in his buffoonery; but

any one who reads over his _Frogs_ or _Clouds_ must inevitably arrive at

the conclusion of the candid German critic, Mueller—that in every word

he wrote, and every piece of “business” he set down, the Greek author

had it chiefly in view to make his audience laugh. George the Third may

have been excused for regarding Wilkes as a Wilkesite; but no one knew,

or ought to have known, better than Aristophanes, that Socrates was not

a sophist. The burlesque writers of our day crack jokes upon Alderman

Carden and Mr. Tupper, not with any hope, or design, of making the one

a juster magistrate, or the other a better poet, but simply to get a

laugh for the actors and for themselves. That Aristophanes had often no

other aim is abundantly proved in every scene of the _Frogs_ and the

_Clouds_. In the former, he claimed to have a very high purpose—nothing

less than the reform of the Greek drama, which, though then only in its

infancy, was said to be in a state of decline. We, in these days, deplore

the decline of the drama when the stage is more than two thousand years

old. Aristophanes lamented its decline when it was yet associated with

wine lees and a cart. We talk fondly and regretfully of the good old

days of Kemble and Kean. Aristophanes and his fellows talked of the good

old times of Æschylus and Euripides. No doubt the critics in Euripides’

day sighed for the past glories of the age of Thespis. But let us see

how Aristophanes set about reforming the Greek drama by means of his

burlesques. In the _Frogs_, which is especially devoted to that object,

we find Bacchus lamenting the decline of the tragic art. He has a great

longing for Euripides, and determines to visit the infernal world and

bring that much-regretted poet back to earth. He sets out in company

with his servant, Xanthias, crosses the Acherusian lake in Charon’s

boat, serenaded on his way by a chorus of frogs, and arrives in the

Shades. Here he finds Æschylus and Euripides, and proposes that they

should give him a taste of their quality. Pluto takes the chair, and

the two poets stand opposite to each other and deliver the most pompous

specimens of their poetical powers. They sing, they declaim, and each

tries to outdo the other in fine words and ponderous sentences. They are

both so very grand and so very heavy, that Bacchus is quite unable to

decide between them. In this difficulty he calls for a pair of scales,

and proceeds to weigh separate verses of each poet against each other;

when, notwithstanding all the efforts of Euripides to produce ponderous

lines, those of Æschylus always make those of his rival kick the beam.

Bacchus, in the meantime, has become a convert to the merits of Æschylus,

though he had sworn to Euripides to take him back with him to the upper

world. So, dismissing Euripides with a parody of one of his own verses

in the _Hippolytus_, Bacchus returns to the living world with Æschylus.

The whole idea of this burlesque is undoubtedly well conceived, and Greek

scholars can tell with what admirable felicity Aristophanes imitates the

peculiarities of style of Æschylus and Euripides in the speeches he puts

into their mouths; but they must, at the same time, confess that there is

more of fun and banter about the whole proceeding than earnest purpose.

You are made to laugh _at_ the two poets; and we can well imagine how

some actor of the time, by a pompous air and manner in representing

Æschylus, may have produced shouts of laughter at that poet’s expense.

A parallel scene to that in the infernal regions is often witnessed in

actual life in the Slave States of America. Two niggers will sit opposite

to each other and talk, one against the other, for hours at a stretch,

each trying to outdo his opponent in long words and fine-sounding

sentences. Aristophanes just puts the two great Greek tragic poets in

this ridiculous position. The ignorant who witnessed this burlesque of

the _Frogs_ must have come away with the notion, not that Æschylus and

Euripides were very fine and impressive poets, but that they were two

pompous and ridiculous old fogies. After that affair of the scales, one

is sadly inclined to question Aristophanes’ respect for these two poets.

There is a double purpose in the _Frogs_—to reform dramatic composition,

and also to reform the practices of the stage. In this latter task

Aristophanes shows, even more unmistakeably than in the former, that his

chief aim is to raise a laugh. The Greek dramatic authors of the time

had been in the habit of resorting to certain expedients of a gross and

filthy character, in order to sustain the flagging interest of their

plays. When Bacchus and Xanthias come on in the _Frogs_, a colloquy

ensues as to the value of these expedients, and the propriety of using

them. Xanthias is desirous to indulge in the usual “gags” to make the

audience laugh; but Bacchus, who is anxious to reform the stage, protests

against them. “Let us have no more of this sort of thing,” he says,

“it is filthy and gross, and altogether unworthy of the dramatic art.”

Aristophanes, however, takes good care that his two characters shall talk

sufficiently about these gross practices, and he raises as much laughter

by talking about them, as though he had embodied them in the dialogue

and action of his play, and adopted them as his own. In the scene where

Hercules pops his head out at the door and frightens Bacchus, the author

forgets his high moral purpose altogether, and makes Bacchus do the very

things which the _Frogs_ was written to reprobate and put down. So in

the _Babylonians_ and _Acharnians_, where he attacks the demagogue Cleon,

and in the _Clouds_, where he attacks Socrates, he is obviously bent

upon nothing so much as the amusement of his audience at the expense of

two well-known public characters. The Greek scholar, however, will judge

Aristophanes by another standard. His mastery over the Attic dialect was

complete, and it was all the more striking when placed in contrast with

the rude Greek pronunciation and the broken Greek of foreigners. Perhaps

no writer of any age combined so much exuberant wit, broad humour,

playful fancy, and originality of invention, as Aristophanes. He also

stands alone in his power of twisting language into new and grotesque

forms. His droll imitations of animal sounds, and his eccentric verses

formed of the grunts of pigs and the croaking of frogs, are quite in the

spirit of our modern punning. Still it is not easy to regard him as a

reformer and a regenerator of public morals, even though St. Chrysostom

was wont to keep his plays under his pillow. Plutarch admired neither his

puns nor his purpose. That high authority was evidently of Dr. Johnson’s

opinion with respect to a punster. He regards Aristophanes’ antitheses

and plays upon words as an outrage upon the language, and adds, that

the “audiences which admired such a poet must have been morally and

intellectually depraved.” Critics say the same thing of the audiences

which admire the burlesques of the present day, but possibly with less

justification.

The stage method adopted by the burlesque writers of our time is

strikingly similar to that followed by Aristophanes. Scenes of dialogue

and scenic display are alternated in both. In the modern burlesque, the

front scenes are enlivened by broad comic duets and nigger dances. Then

the “flats” are drawn off, and we have an elaborate “set”—a castle, a

mountain pass, or a picturesque sea-shore, where the ballet takes the

place of the Greek chorus. Thus, in the _Frogs_, we have a front scene

of broad comic business between Bacchus and Xanthias, and then a grand

full stage “set” of the Acherusian lake, with Charon coming alongside

in his boat. Lastly, we have what the modern playbill calls a “grand

transformation scene,” in the infernal regions, where blue-fire would

have come in very appropriately, had it been then invented. Although the

Greeks, probably, did not use scenes, but dropped the curtain between

the divisions of their plays, yet some of the burlesques of Aristophanes

will be found to be well adapted to the modern method. Substituting an

æsthetical critic for Bacchus, and Shakspeare and Ben Jonson, or Samuel

Johnson and John Dryden, for Æschylus and Euripides, very good fun might

be got out of a version of the _Frogs_ at the Olympic or the Strand. It

might be a question, however, if the gods would understand it. Still, if

the æsthetical critic had a comic servant, and said and did such things

as Bacchus says and does, he could not fail to make them laugh.

We have said that it is but one step from Aristophanes to the burlesque

writers of the present time. That is, as near as possible, the truth.

The Romans had no burlesque drama, in the Aristophanic sense. Their most

extravagant comedies never dealt with real personages; but aimed at

representing life and manners, and teaching morals by means of a dramatic

fable, which was exemplary, and not didactic. They were comedies of real

life, in the truest sense of the word; the puns and witticisms in which,

though sometimes rather coarse and broad, as in Plautus, never bordered

upon the outrageous and the extravagant. In the search for specimens of

burlesque dramatic literature of the kind we are now considering, we

may hop almost from Aristophanes to Gay, from the _Æolosicon_ to the

_Beggar’s Opera_. As Aristophanes claimed, in the _Frogs_, to have the

purpose of ridiculing the bad tragedies of the time, so Gay professed, in

his _Beggar’s Opera_, to declare war against the Italian opera, which, at

that time, was asserting its sway over the public taste, to the serious

damage of the legitimate drama. Witnessing the _Beggar’s Opera_, as it

is performed in our day, we can readily understand its great popularity

on its first production. Its songs are enough to account for that. But

it is certainly not easy to understand how it came to be regarded as a

telling and pungent burlesque upon Italian opera. It does not turn the

laugh against opera, in the shape it now assumes. When Macheath sings

song after song to Polly, with a few unmeaning words of prose “dialogue”

between, we have no suspicion that he is ridiculing the absurd formula

of the Italian opera. The actor does nothing to indicate anything of the

kind. He is solely intent on singing his songs well, and we are solely

intent on hearing them sung. Instead of being a burlesque upon opera,

it is an opera itself, recommended only in that it possesses the one

enjoyable element of an opera—good music. This is only another proof that

the burlesque writer can never trust to his satire and his “purpose,”

to make his piece “go” with the public. Aristophanes introduced the

gross jokes, which he condemned, to rescue his satire from dulness; and

Gay adopted sprightly airs, for the same purpose. Walker, who first

played Macheath, was a better actor than he was a singer; and it is

probable that, to this circumstance, the _Beggar’s Opera_ owes its great

reputation as a burlesque. Walker imitated the manner of the Italian

actors to perfection, and caused roars of laughter by gestures and by

mimicry of operatic action, which are now altogether lost sight of. Had

Quin, for whom the part was originally intended, played Macheath, the

burlesque of the piece would, probably, never have been brought out; and

the _Beggar’s Opera_ would have been originally what it is now—simply a

pleasing burletta. The most opposite opinions were expressed with regard

to the piece at the time. Swift said, “It placed all kinds of vice in

the strongest and most odious light.” Another critic asserted that,

“after an exhibition of the _Beggar’s Opera_, the gains of robbers were

multiplied.” Dr. Johnson declares both these decisions to be exaggerated,

and hits the real truth—a truth which applies to the burlesque drama

universally. “The play,” he says, “was written only to divert, without

any moral purpose, and is therefore not likely to do good; nor can it be

conceived, without more speculation than life requires and admits, to be

productive of much evil. Highwaymen and housebreakers seldom frequent

the playhouse, or mingle in elegant diversions; nor is it possible for

any one to imagine that he may rob in safety, because he sees Macheath

reprieved upon the stage.” The doctor’s first remark was literally true.

The piece was written solely to divert. Gay aimed at a “purpose” in his

original design, and when he had carried it out, Colley Cibber rejected

the piece. Gay’s friends, Swift and Spence, did not think the piece would

succeed, though the Duke of Argyle (with a preternatural perception of

jokes for a Scotchman) swore that it would. It was not until Gay subdued

his “purpose,” and put in some extra ballads, that Rich accepted the

piece; and then, in this shape, it made “Gay rich and Rich gay,” as the

jokers said at the time.

Having hopped from Aristophanes to Gay, we may now skip from Gay to

Sheridan without overleaping any remarkable example of the burlesque

drama. The _Critic_ is possibly the smartest burlesque ever written;

and yet its purpose is a shallow pretence. Like the _Beggar’s Opera_,

the _Critic_ was written to amuse, and it fulfils no other object. It

cannot be said to be a satire upon the critics of the period, since the

remarks of Dangle and Sneer, during the rehearsal of the tragedy, are

pointedly framed with the view of calling forth a smart response from

Puff, and are not in any way examples of the theatrical criticism of the

time. Sheridan arranges everything to give occasion for an exhibition of

his own smartness. He spreads the stage with crackers, as it were, and

cares not who steps upon them and sets them banging for the amusement of

the audience. Thus the tragedy opens with two sentinels asleep, to give

occasion for a joke when they awake:—

_Dang._ Hey! why, I thought these fellows had been asleep?

_Puff._ Only a pretence; there’s the art of it: they were spies

of Lord Burleigh’s.

_Sneer._ But isn’t it odd they were never taken notice of, not

even by the commander-in-chief?

_Puff._ O Lud, sir! if people who want to listen, or overhear,

were not always connived at in a tragedy, there would be no

carrying on any plot in the world.

_Dang._ That’s certain.

Here a laugh is raised at the artificiality of the stage; but the satire

suggests no remedy. Both speakers are satisfied that these things must be

so in a tragedy. In every instance where the satire is directed against

the practices of the stage, the remarks, though highly diverting, are

simply truisms. Thus, when Leicester asks the knights if they are all

resolved to conquer or be free, and they answer, “All,” Dangle chimes in,

“_Nem. con._ egad.” To which Puff replies, “Oh, yes! where they do agree

on the stage, their unanimity is wonderful.” This remark never fails

to produce a hearty laugh; and yet it would be difficult to say what

we laugh at. The dramatic art inexorably demands that where unanimity

is to be expressed it should be expressed as briefly and _unanimously_

as possible. If we laugh at anything here, it is at the fixed and

unalterable canons of the dramatic art, which the peculiar turn of

Sneer’s remark places in a ridiculous light. It is hard to discover at

what particular folly or vice the _Critic_ is aimed. All the characters

are satirists by turns; Puff pokes his fun at the drama; and Sneer and

Dangle poke their fun at Puff, only to encounter a sharper retort. All

are so confoundedly witty, that you cannot tell which are the butts and

which the sharp-shooters. Nothing is more apparent in the dialogue of the

tragedy than the desire of the author to show off his own cleverness.

Some passages which are intended as burlesques of fine writing are as

near as possible the real thing. Thus, England’s fate at the approach of

the Armada—

“Like a clipp’d guinea, trembles in the scale.”

The guinea is certainly a vulgar image, but the thought is a happy one.

The whole of the passage in which this occurs contains no hint of the

ridiculous until we come to the “trembling guinea,” and that but very

slightly turns the scale to the side of absurdity. When Sheridan tried

fine writing in earnest he was not so successful. His own _Pizarro_ was

a greater burlesque than Mr. Puff’s _Spanish Armada_. _Pizarro_, in its

highest flights, is “downright booth at a fair.”

Travelling downwards from Sheridan’s time, we meet with no notable

example of a burlesque in dramatic form until we come to _Bombastes

Furioso_, first produced about the year 1809. We have never been able

to discover that the author of this production had any special moral,

political, literary, or other “purpose” whatever. At any rate, he claims

none for himself; and we do not know that any one has made the claim

for him. Bombast in general would seem to be the mark at which the

arrows are let fly; but the incidents of the piece are so extravagant

and capricious, that we are tempted to believe the author sat down to

write without having any fixed idea what he was going to make it. A

king and a general making love to a cook-maid in a kitchen presents

but a very vulgar and commonplace antithesis, and would be altogether

offensive, but for the mock chivalry which is sustained in the demeanour

and language of the king and the general. The conduct of these two

characters accords with a kind of harmless lunacy which is natural in so

far as it exists in nature. Two lunatics of this class might extemporize

the challenge and duel scene in their ward at Bedlam, and the random

performance would be very funny. We are, therefore, inclined to regard

_Bombastes Furioso_ as a “lune.” Still, the piece is characterized by

many merits. Its thorough-paced extravagance is not the least of them.

The peculiar diction, too, is singularly well suited to burlesque. Wit,

there is little or none; but its place is more than supplied by humorous

expression and absurd similitudes.

The entrance of Bombastes, followed by his army, consisting of one

drummer, one fifer, and two soldiers of unequal stature, is in the true

spirit of burlesque. In the whole range of burlesque-dramatic literature,

there is, perhaps, no single passage which produces so much effect as

Bombastes’ address to his army. Yet it consists of only three lines—

_Bombas._ (_confidentially_).

Meet me this ev’ning at the Barley-Mow;

I’ll bring your pay—you see I’m busy now.

(_In a loud, commanding tone_)

Begone, brave army, and don’t kick up a row!

Nor could anything be more ludicrous than the entrance of Bombastes

in the wood, intent on suicide, preceded by a fifer playing “Michael

Wiggins:”

_Bombas._

Gentle musician, let thy dulcet strain

Proceed—play “Michael Wiggins” o’er again.

Music’s the food of love—give o’er, give o’er,

For I must batten on that food no more.

Who has not enjoyed the whimsical idea of challenging the whole human

race by hanging a pair of jack boots on a tree, and writing on them—

Who dares this pair of boots displace,

Must meet Bombastes face to face.

In _Bombastes Furioso_, we have burlesque clothed in its proper dress,

not in the toga of a didactic philosopher, but in the spangled frippery

of a mummer. For the first time it discards “purpose,” and speaks in its

own proper language—doggrel rhyme.

Mr. Planché was the pioneer of the new school, and his sole purpose was

to divert holiday audiences (chiefly composed of boys and girls home for

the Christmas and Easter vacations) with appropriate dramatic versions

of pretty fairy tales. His compositions were rather extravaganzas than

burlesques, and depended for their success more upon the romantic

interest of the story and the wit of the dialogue than upon their satire.

Mr. Planché may claim the merit—if merit it be—of having first introduced

the pun into these compositions: and it must be allowed that he punned

with discretion; which is certainly more than we can say of his younger

successors in the craft of joke-making. When Mr. Planché was at the

height of his fame as a burlesque writer, these pieces were brought out

only at holiday time; in some cases as a substitute for the pantomime,

which, in certain quarters, was beginning to be voted low and vulgar. It

sufficed then to tell the dramatic story in sprightly rhymes, slightly

sprinkled with puns and allusions to the events of the day. Ballet,

glittering fairy scenery, parodies set to popular airs and red and blue

fire, did the rest. The satire contained in these pieces was of a very

harmless kind, and rarely aimed at any game higher than the Thames Tunnel

or the Lord Mayor’s show. Of late years, however, pieces of this class

have asserted a much more extended sway. They are now played in season

and out of season, and at one, if not two theatres they hold the stage

all the year round, and constitute the chief attraction. The young school

of burlesque writers follow a method peculiarly their own, though, of

course, they are largely indebted to the traditions of their immediate

predecessors. The chief elements which enter into the composition of

these pieces are, pretty scenery, negro melodies, “break-down” dances,

and outrageous puns. It is also a necessary condition to their success,

that one or more saucy actresses with good legs should be employed in

their performance. The music and the scenery go for much, the puns

go for more, but the comic dance goes for most of all. The literature

which enters into the composition of the more successful pieces of this

description is not by any means to be despised as an intellectual effort.

The young men who can so industriously torture the English language into

such strange and startling meanings, through a thousand lines of rhyme,

evidently possess an amount of talent and application which, if properly

directed, might be of real service to letters; or, if not to letters,

to some industrial pursuit. Tom Hood, who was considered the prince of

punsters, in his day, could have had no conception of the height to which

punning has attained (or, perhaps, we ought to say the depth to which

it has fallen) in our time. A pun a day would, perhaps, have been the

extent of the indulgence which Hood would have allowed himself; but these

burlesque writers fire them off in volleys, and glory in startling the

English language from its propriety. As regards punning, the whole tribe

of jokers follow exactly the same method, as may be seen by reference to

the burlesques of the present season. Hear how Mr. William Brough, in his

burlesque of _Endymion_, clatters his _pans_:—

_Pan._

Oh! long-ear’d but short-sighted fauns, desist;

To the great Pan, ye little pitchers, list;

Pan knows a thing or two. In point of fact,

He’s a deep Pan, and anything but cracked;

A perfect _oracle_ Pan deems himself; he

Is earthenwarish; so, of course, is delfy (Delphi).

Trust then to Pan your troubles to remove—

A warming-Pan he’ll to your courage prove;

A prophet, he foresees the ills you fear;

So for them all you have your Pan a seer (panacea).

Here every thought is designed as a peg whereon to hang a pun. The author

would seem to have been fearful of having nothing but his punning for his

pains in two instances, where he finds it necessary to add explanatory

notes. Now see with what labour Mr. Byron, in his _Cinderella_, carries

coals to the joke market:—

_Cind._

Cinders and coals I am accustomed to,

They seem to me to tinge all things I view.

_Prince._

The fact I can’t say causes me surprise,

For _Kohl_ is frequently in ladies’ eyes.

_Cind._

At morn, when reading, as the fire up burns,

The printer’s stops to semi-_coal-uns_ turns;

I might as well read _Coke_.

_Prince._

Quite right you are.

He’s very useful reading at the _bar_.

Who is your favourite poet? _Hobbs?_

_Cind._

Not quite;

No; I think _Cole_ridge is my favourite;

His melan-_coally_ suits my situation;

My dinner always is a _coald coal_-lation.

Smoke pictures all things seem, whate’er may be ’em,

A cyclorama, through the _Coal I see ’em_.

_Prince._

Is there no way from out a path so black?

_Cind._

There’s no way out; my life’s a _cul_ de sac.

Of course, authors who have so little respect for the legitimate meaning

of English words cannot be expected to pay regard to the rules of English

grammar; nor is it to be imagined that their course of solid reading has

been such as to enable them to know that Hobbes was not particularly

distinguished for his poetry. But all this is included in the broad,

general licence which these poets take out. In another piece, _Bluebeard

from a New Point of Hue_,—the puns you see even extend to the playbill

and the title-page of the production—the same author takes occasion, on

the same principle, to pun until all is _blue_. Fatima calls Abomilique a

“blue bore.”

_Abom._

Everything takes that colour in my eyes;

This, ’stead of being fash’nablest of flies,

And red, when I look at it, in two twos,

Changes its form and colour—it’s a _blouse_.

’Stead of yellow covering, my foot

Seems, in my eyes, clad in a _Blu_cher boot.

Every hotel I may put up at, boasts

The selfsame sign—of course, it’s the _Blue_-Posts.

Whene’er a portrait-painter I employ,

He makes me look like Gainsborough’s Blue Boy.

My palanquin, the one I bought for you,

Becomes an omnibus, the Royal _Blue_.

Ladies seem blue-stockings and bloomers through it;

Each song I hear appears composed by _Blewitt_;

In my siesta, every afternoon,

I dream I’m in the air in a big _b’loon_.

This is simply a long punning exercise, of a sustained effort to the

jingling of words of similar sound, but wholly destitute of similarity of

sense. There is not that startling conjunction of similar dissimilarities

which constitutes the true pun. It cannot be said that there is any wit

in making Bluebeard see everything blue, because his beard is blue. If he

had been remarkable for his blue eyes, there might have been some point

in it.

Sydney Smith, who was as little accustomed to found his jokes upon a just

estimate of things as any of the burlesque writers, once said that it

required a surgical operation to get a joke into the head of a Scotchman.

Yet plain James Hogg has given us a better specimen of a pun than any of

these professional English wits. Some one at table mentioned that it was

reported Dr. Parr had married a woman beneath him in station. “Ay, ay,”

said Hogg, “she is, nae doot, below Parr.” Here is a pun perfect in all

its parts, preserving at once exactness of sound and sense, and giving

at the same time a humorous colouring to a commonplace fact. The above

specimens, however, are the best in the pieces before us. The majority

of the puns are of the most audacious kind, many of them suggestive of a

joker in the last stage of drivelling senility.

This excessive and bad punning upon words merely is a poor substitute

for true wit and humour. Half of the puns are lost upon the audience

owing to their obscurity and the rapidity with which they follow upon

each other’s heels. And even when they are “taken,” the delight they give

is simply of the kind which is afforded by a Chinese puzzle: they are

ingenious, and that is all. Punning upon words merely is not a difficult

thing, if you could only condescend to give your mind to it. The art

might be taught in six easy lessons, as Mr. Smart teaches writing, and as

other professors teach crochet and Berlin-wool work. We can quite imagine

how any of these burlesque writers might have improved James the First

in the art. James was a great punster; but his style would be considered

primitive in these days. On one occasion, his Majesty made a punning

speech to the professors of the University of Edinburgh.[2] They had been

engaged in a philosophical disputation, and his Majesty complimented

them one after the other by name. We may give this as a specimen of his

Majesty’s style before receiving lessons:—

“Methinks these gentlemen by their very names have been destined for the

acts which they have had in hand to-day. Adam was the father of all, and

very fitly Adamson had the first part in this act. The defender is justly

called Fairly: his thesis had some fair lies, and he defended them very

fairly and with many fair lies given to his oppugners. And why should not

Mr. Lands be the first to enter the lands? but now I clearly see that

all lands are not barren, for certainly he hath shown a fertile wit.

Mr. Young is very old in Aristotle. Mr. Reed need not be red (oh!) with

blushing for his actions this day. Mr. King disputed very kingly and of

a kingly purpose anent the royal supremacy of reason over anger and all

passions.”

After six lessons his Majesty would have come out in the following

flowing style:—

“Adam having been the _fust_ man, it is only natural that Adamson

should talk _fust_ian. We are in hopes, however, that _Adam_son will

_Eve_ntually _Cain_ (explanatory note: _gain_) experience, and be _Abel_

to do better; for it is fit and proper that Adamson should be the first

man in learning, re_garden_ him in connection with _Eden_burgh. Mr.

Young is _youngry_ after knowledge, and we fear is in some danger,

through studying Aristotle too much, of coming to be _’ung_ before he

is much _older_. We were afraid that Mr. Reed would have been _red_uced

for an argument; but we perceive he is _red_ivivus, and has _red_eemed

his character from being _red_iculous. Verily, Mr. Fairly”—but enough;

this would have been quite sufficient for the punning preceptor to frame

and glaze and put in his window as a testimony to his skill in teaching

the whole art of pun-making. It is on record, that King James prepared

himself for his jokes by a course of study and stimulants, and did not

venture to fire them off until after the sixth bottle. If such simple

exercises required so much stimulation, what must be the process which

the punsters of our day find it necessary to resort to? The Turkish bath

is said to bring out a vast amount of latent and unsuspected filth from

the skin. Is there any similar process for acting upon the brain?

Satire is a weapon which has been used with good effect by skilful hands

in books and in speeches, both in ancient and modern times; but we cannot

discover that it has done any great or signal execution when wielded

by the burlesque writer on the stage. Aristophanes certainly did not

revive the palmy days of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. It is true

it has been asserted that he did; but will any one please to mention

the successors of these three great masters who are worthy to be named

in the same category? It might be easier to specify the harm than to

estimate the good which flowed from the comedies of Aristophanes. Not

only the Greek drama, but Greece itself, dated its decline from those

days. And, besides, it is not at all certain that when Aristophanes

exhibited Socrates suspended in a basket, spouting incomprehensible

doctrine—incomprehensible at that time—he did not sow the seeds of the

hemlock to which the greatest of all the Greeks was condemned. It is true

that Socrates was not sentenced until nearly twenty years afterwards;

but Aristophanes was one of the first to throw mud at him, and it was

only through the persistency with which his detractors followed the

dramatist’s example that some of the mud eventually stuck. The Athenians

knew and felt, when it was too late, that the most virtuous man of their

age had been sacrificed to an idle and reckless clamour. Here then, to

begin with, is a suspicion of murder attaching to burlesque. In the

present day, the only murder of which it can be found guilty is the

murder of the English language.

If Dr. Johnson were alive to pronounce sentence, we know what would

become of the burlesque writers: they would swing every man Jack—or

shall we say Joe?—of them. It is to be laid to their charge that they

have familiarized the educated public with the use of slang. Slang words

and phrases are now of frequent occurrence in our literature. We meet

with them not alone in a low class of publications, but in the leading

articles of newspapers, in the orations of senators, and even in books

of a solid and standard character. If these burlesques have done us this

amount of harm, and have done us no other good than to excite the “loud

laugh” indiscriminately at the expense of things worthy and unworthy,

what shall we say of them? May we not sigh for those palmy days of the

drama which are past and gone?

Nevertheless, we can have no sympathy with those who complain that

these burlesques have elbowed the legitimate drama off the stage. The

true legitimacy of the drama may well be questioned, when it cannot

maintain its claims against this bastard pretender. We have seen (on rare

occasions) that good sterling plays will always draw the public; and if,

in default of these, the public prefer comparatively harmless puns and

parodies to the pollution of translations from the French, perhaps it may

be allowed that, of the two evils, they choose the least.

FOOTNOTES

[2] _History of University of Edinburgh._

When thou Sleepest.

When thou sleepest, lulled in night,

Art thou lost in vacancy?

Does no silent inward light,

Softly breaking, fall on thee?

Does no dream on quiet wing

Float a moment mid that ray,

Touch some answering mental string,

Wake a note, and pass away?

When thou watchest, as the hours

Mute and blind are speeding on,

O’er that rayless path, where lowers

Muffled midnight, black and lone;

Comes there nothing hovering near,

Thought or half reality,

Whispering marvels in thine ear,

Every word a mystery,

Chanting low an ancient lay,

Every plaintive note a spell,

Clearing memory’s clouds away,

Showing scenes thy heart loves well?

Songs forgot, in childhood sung,

Airs in youth beloved and known,

Whispered by that airy tongue,

Once again are made thine own.

Be it dream in haunted sleep,

Be it thought in vigil lone,

Drink’st thou not a rapture deep

From the feeling, ’tis thine own?

All thine own; thou need’st not tell

What bright form thy slumber blest;—

All thine own; remember well

Night and shade were round thy rest.

Nothing looked upon thy bed,

Save the lonely watch-light’s gleam;

Not a whisper, not a tread

Scared thy spirit’s glorious dream.

Sometimes, when the midnight gale

Breathed a moan and then was still,

Seemed the spell of thought to fail,

Checked by one ecstatic thrill;

Felt as all external things,

Robed in moonlight, smote thine eye;

Then thy spirit’s waiting wings

Quivered, trembled, spread to fly;

Then th’ aspirer wildly swelling

Looked, where mid transcendency

Star to star was mutely telling

Heaven’s resolve and fate’s decree.

Oh! it longed for holier fire

Than this spark in earthly shrine;

Oh! it soared, and higher, higher,

Sought to reach a home divine.

Hopeless quest! soon weak and weary

Flagged the pinion, drooped the plume,

And again in sadness dreary

Came the baffled wanderer home.

And again it turned for soothing

To th’ unfinished, broken dream;

While, the ruffled current smoothing,

Thought rolled on her startled stream.

I have felt this cherished feeling,

Sweet and known to none but me;

Still I felt it nightly healing

Each dark day’s despondency.

CHARLOTTE BRONTË.

The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson.

BY ONE OF THE FIRM.

CHAPTER I.

PREFACE.

It will be observed by the literary and commercial world that, in this

transaction, the name of the really responsible party does not show on

the title-page. I—George Robinson—am that party. When our Mr. Jones

objected to the publication of these memoirs unless they appeared as

coming from the firm itself, I at once gave way. I had no wish to offend

the firm, and, perhaps, encounter a lawsuit for the empty honour of

seeing my name advertised as that of an author. We talked the matter over

with our Mr. Brown, who, however, was at that time in affliction, and

not able to offer much that was available. One thing he did say: “As we

are partners,” said Mr. Brown, “let’s be partners to the end.” “Well,”

said I, “if you say so, Mr. Brown, so it shall be.” I never supposed that

Mr. Brown would set the Thames on fire, and soon learnt that he was not

the man to amass a fortune by British commerce. He was not made for the

guild of Merchant Princes. But he was the senior member of our firm, and

I always respected the old-fashioned doctrine of capital in the person of

our Mr. Brown.

When Mr. Brown said, “Let’s be partners to the end. It won’t be for long,

Mr. Robinson,” I never said another word. “No,” said I, “Mr. Brown;

you’re not what you was—and you’re down a peg; I’m not the man to take

advantage and go against your last wishes. Whether for long or whether

for short we’ll pull through in the same boat to the end. It shall be put

on the title-page—‘By One of the Firm.’” “God bless you, Mr. Robinson,”

said he; “God bless you.”

And then Mr. Jones started another objection. The reader will soon

realize that anything I do is sure to be wrong with Mr. Jones. It

wouldn’t be him else. He next declares that I can’t write English, and

that the book must be corrected, and put out by an editor? Now, when I

inform the discerning British Public that every advertisement that has

been posted by Brown, Jones, and Robinson, during the last three years

has come from my own unaided pen, I think few will doubt my capacity to

write the “Memoirs of Brown, Jones, and Robinson,” without any editor

whatsoever.

On this head I was determined to be firm. What! after preparing, and

correcting, and publishing such thousands of advertisements in prose and

verse and in every form of which the language is susceptible, to be told

that I couldn’t write English! It was Jones all over. If there is a party

envious of the genius of another party in this sublunary world that party

is our Mr. Jones.

But I was again softened by a touching appeal from our senior partner.

Mr. Brown, though prosaic enough in his general ideas, was still

sometimes given to the Muses; and now, with a melancholy and tender

cadence, he quoted the following lines:—

“Let dogs delight,” said he, “to bark and bite,” said he,

“For ’tis their nature to—

But ’tis a shameful sight to see when partners of one firm like we

Fall out, and chide, and fight!”

So I gave in again.

It was then arranged that one of Smith and Elder’s young men should look

through the manuscript, and make any few alterations which the taste of

the public might require. It might be that the sonorous, and, if I may

so express myself, magniloquent phraseology in which I was accustomed to

invite the attention of the nobility and gentry to our last importations

was not suited for the purposes of light literature, such as this. “In

fiction, Mr. Robinson, your own unaided talents would doubtless make you

great,” said to me the editor of this Magazine; “but if I may be allowed

an opinion, I do think that in the delicate task of composing memoirs a

little assistance may perhaps be not inexpedient.”

This was prettily worded; so what with this, and what with our Mr.

Brown’s poetry, I gave way; but I reserved to myself the right of an

epistolary preface in my own name. So here it is.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,—I am not a bit ashamed of my part in

the following transaction. I have done what little in me lay

to further British commerce. British commerce is not now what

it was. It is becoming open and free like everything else

that is British—open to the poor man as well as to the rich.

That bugbear Capital is a crumbling old tower, and is pretty

nigh brought to its last ruin. Credit is the polished shaft

of the temple on which the new world of trade will be content

to lean. That, I take it, is the one great doctrine of modern

commerce. Credit—credit—credit. Get credit, and capital will

follow. Doesn’t the word speak for itself? Must not credit be

respectable? And is not the word “respectable” the highest term

of praise which can be applied to the British tradesman?

Credit is the polished shaft of the temple. But with what are

you to polish it? The stone does not come from the quarry

with its gloss on: man’s labour is necessary to give it that

beauteous exterior. Then wherewith shall we polish credit?

I answer the question at once. With the pumice-stone and

sand-paper of advertisement.

Different great men have promulgated the different

means by which they have sought to subjugate the world.

“Audacity—audacity—audacity,” was the lesson which one hero

taught. “Agitate—agitate—agitate,” was the counsel of a second.

“Register—register—register,” of a third. But I say—Advertise,

advertise, advertise! And I say it again and again—Advertise,

advertise, advertise! It is, or should be, the Shibboleth

of British commerce. That it certainly will be so I, George

Robinson, hereby venture to prophesy, feeling that on this

subject something but little short of inspiration has touched

my eager pen.

There are those—men of the old school, who cannot rouse

themselves to see and read the signs of the time, men who

would have been in the last ranks, let them have lived when

they would—who object to it that it is untrue,—who say that

advertisements do not keep the promises which they make. But

what says the poet,—he whom we teach our children to read?

What says the stern moralist to his wicked mother in the play?

“Assume a virtue if you have it not?” And so say I. “Assume a

virtue if you have it not.” It would be a great trade virtue in

a haberdasher to have forty thousand pairs of best hose lying

ready for sale in his warehouse. Let him assume that virtue if

he have it not. Is not this the way in which we all live, and

the only way in which it is possible to live comfortably. A

gentleman gives a dinner party. His lady, who has to work all

day like a dray-horse and scold the servants besides, to get

things into order, loses her temper. We all pretty well know

what that means. Well; up to the moment when she has to show,

she is as bitter a piece of goods as may be. But, nevertheless,

she comes down all smiles, although she knows that at that

moment the drunken cook is spoiling the fish. She assumes a

virtue, though she has it not; and who will say she is not

right?

Well; I say again and again to all young tradesmen—Advertise,

advertise, advertise;—and don’t stop to think too much about

capital. It is a bugbear. Capital is a bugbear; and it is

talked about by those who have it,—and by some that have not so

much of it neither,—for the sake of putting down competition,

and keeping the market to themselves.

There’s the same game going on all the world over; and it’s

the natural game for mankind to play at. They who’s up a bit

is all for keeping down them who is down; and they who is down

is so very soft through being down, that they’ve not spirit to

force themselves up. Now I saw that very early in life. There

is always going on a battle between aristocracy and democracy.

Aristocracy likes to keep itself to itself; and democracy is

just of the same opinion, only wishes to become aristocracy

first.

We of the people are not very fond of dukes; but we’d all like

to be dukes well enough ourselves. Now there are dukes in

trade as well as in society. Capitalists are our dukes; and as

they don’t like to have their heels trod upon any more than

the other ones, why they are always preaching up capital. It

is their star and garter, their coronet, their ermine, their

robe of state, their cap of maintenance, their wand of office,

their noli me tangere. But stars and garters, caps and wands,

and all other noli me tangeres, are gammon to those who can

see through them. And capital is gammon. Capital is a very nice

thing if you can get it. It is the desirable result of trade. A

tradesman looks to end with a capital. But it’s gammon to say

that he can’t begin without it. You might as well say a man

can’t marry unless he has first got a family. Why, he marries

that he may have a family. It’s putting the cart before the

horse.

It’s my opinion that any man can be a duke if so be it’s born

to him. It requires neither wit nor industry, nor any pushing

nor go-ahead whatsoever. A man may sit still in his arm-chair,

half asleep half his time, and only half awake the other,

and be as good a duke as need be. Well; it’s just the same

in trade. If a man is born to a dukedom there, if he begins

with a large capital, why, I for one would not thank him to be

successful. Any fool could do as much as that. He has only to

keep on polishing his own star and garter, and there are lots

of people to swear that there is no one like him.

But give me the man who can be a duke without being born to it.

Give me the man who can go ahead in trade without capital; who

can begin the world with a quick pair of hands, a quick brain

to govern them, and can end with a capital.

Well, there you are; a young tradesman beginning the world

without capital. Capital, though it’s a bugbear, nevertheless

it’s a virtue. Therefore as you haven’t got it, you must

assume it. That’s credit. Credit I take to be the belief of

other people in a thing that doesn’t really exist. When you go

into your friend Smith’s house, and find Mrs. S. all smiles,

you give her credit for the sweetest of tempers. Your friend

S. knows better; but then you see she’s had wit enough to

obtain credit. When I draw a bill at three months, and get it

discounted, I do the same thing. That’s credit. Give me credit

enough, and I don’t care a brass button for capital. If I could

have but one wish, I would never ask a fairy for a second or

a third. Let me have but unreserved credit, and I’ll beat any

duke of either aristocracy.

To obtain credit the only certain method is to advertise.

Advertise, advertise, advertise. That is, assume, assume,

assume. Go on assuming your virtue. The more you haven’t got

it, the more you must assume it. The bitterer your own heart

is about that drunken cook and that idle husband who will do

nothing to assist you, the sweeter you must smile. Smile sweet

enough, and all the world will believe you. Advertise long

enough, and credit will come.

But there must be some nous in your advertisements; there must

be a system, and there must be some wit in your system. It

won’t suffice now-a-days to stick up on a black wall a simple

placard to say that you have forty thousand best new hose just

arrived. Any wooden-headed fellow can do as much as that. That

might have served in the olden times that we hear of, twenty

years since; but the game to be successful in these days must

be played in another sort of fashion. There must be some

finish about your advertisements, something new in your style,

something that will startle in your manner. If a man can make

himself a real master of this art, we may say that he has

learnt his trade, whatever that trade may be. Let him know how

to advertise, and the rest will follow.

It may be that I shouldn’t boast; but yet I do boast that I

have made some little progress in this business. If I haven’t

yet practised the art in all its perfections, nevertheless I

flatter myself I have learned how to practise it. Regarding

myself as something of a master of this art, and being actuated

by purely philanthropic motives in my wish to make known my

experience, I now put these memoirs before the public.

It will, of course, be urged against me that I have not been

successful in what I have already attempted, and that our house

has failed. This is true. I have not been successful: our house

has failed. But with whom has the fault been? Certainly not in

my department.

The fact is, and in this my preface I will not keep the truth

back from a discerning public, that no firm on earth—or indeed

elsewhere—could be successful in which our Mr. Jones is one of

the partners. There is an overweening vanity about that man

which is quite upsetting. I confess I have been unable to stand

it. Vanity is always allied to folly, and the relationship

is very close in the person of our Mr. Jones. Of Mr. Brown I

will never bring myself to say one disrespectful word. He is

not now what he was once. From the bottom of my heart I pity

his misfortunes. Think what it must be to be papa to a Goneril

and a Regan—without the Cordelia. I have always looked on Mrs.

Jones as a regular Goneril; and as for the Regan, why it seems

to me that Miss Brown is likely to be Miss Regan to the end of

the chapter.

No; of Mr. Brown I will say nothing disrespectful; but he

never was the man to be first partner in an advertising firm.

That was our mistake. He had old-fashioned views about capital

which were very burdensome. My mistake was this—that in joining

myself with Mr. Brown, I compromised my principles, and held

out as it were a left hand to capital. He had not much, as will

be seen; but he thought a deal of what he had got, and talked a

deal of it too. This impeded my wings. This prevented me from

soaring. One cannot touch pitch and not be defiled. I have been

untrue to myself in having had any dealings on the basis of

capital; and hence has it arisen that hitherto I have failed.

I make these confessions hoping that they may be serviceable

to trade in general. A man cannot learn a great secret, and

the full use of a great secret, all at once. My eyes are now

open. I shall not again make so fatal a mistake. I am still

young. I have now learned my lesson more thoroughly, and I yet

anticipate success with some confidence.

Had Mr. Brown at once taken my advice, had his few thousand

pounds been liberally expended in commencing a true system of

advertising, we should have been—I can hardly surmise where we

should have been. He was for sticking altogether to the old

system. Mr. Jones was for mixing the old and the new, for

laying in stock and advertising as well, with a capital of

4,000_l._ What my opinion is of Mr. Jones I will not now say,

but of Mr. Brown I will never utter one word of disparagement.

I have now expressed what few words I wish to utter on my own

bottom. As to what has been done in the following pages by the

young man who has been employed to look over these memoirs and

put them into shape, it is not for me to speak. It may be that

I think they might have read more natural-like had no other

cook had a finger in the pie. The facts, however, are facts

still. These have not been altered.

Ladies and gentlemen, you who have so long distinguished our

firm by a liberal patronage, to you I now respectfully appeal,

and in showing to you a new article I beg to assure you with

perfect confidence that there is nothing equal to it at the

price at present in the market. The supply on hand is immense,

but as a sale of unprecedented rapidity is anticipated, may I

respectfully solicit your early orders? If not approved of the

article shall be changed.

Ladies and gentlemen,

We have the honour to subscribe ourselves,

With every respect,

Your most obedient humble servants,

BROWN, JONES, and ROBINSON,

Per GEORGE ROBINSON.