BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCCLXII. APRIL, 1854. VOL. LXXV.
CONTENTS.
THE COMMERCIAL RESULTS OF A WAR WITH RUSSIA, 381
THE PUPPETS OF ALL NATIONS, 392
THE QUIET HEART.—PART V., 414
CHRONOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES: WHAT SHALL WE COLLECT? 426
THE REFORM BILLS OF 1852 AND 1854, 441
THE BLUE BOOKS AND THE EASTERN QUESTION, 461
LIFE IN THE SAHARA, 479
THE COST OF THE COALITION MINISTRY, 492
EDINBURGH:
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, 45 GEORGE STREET, AND 37 PATERNOSTER ROW,
LONDON;
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SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
BLACKWOOD’S
EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
NO. CCCCLXII. APRIL, 1854. VOL. LXXV.
THE COMMERCIAL RESULTS OF A WAR WITH RUSSIA.
After the enjoyment of nearly forty years of peace, during which two
generations of men, whose fate it was to live in more troublous times,
have passed to their account, we are entering upon a war which will
inevitably tax all the energies of the country to conduct it to a
successful and honourable conclusion. The enemy against whom our arms
are directed is not one whose prowess and power can with safety be
slighted. A colossal empire possessed of vast resources, wielded by a
sovereign of indomitable character and vast ambition, who has for years
been collecting strength for a gigantic effort to sweep away every
barrier by which the realisation of that ambition has been impeded, is
our opponent. The issue to him is most momentous. It is to decide
whether he is hereafter to be a controlling power in Europe and Asia, to
rule absolutely in the Baltic, to hold the keys of the Euxine and the
Mediterranean, and to push his conquests eastwards, until he clutches
Hindostan,—or to be driven back and confined within the limits of the
original empire which Peter the Great bequeathed to his successors. Such
a struggle will not be conducted by Russia, without calling forth all
the vigour of her arm. An issue so far beyond her contemplation as
defeat and extinction as a first-rate power in the world, will not be
yielded until she has drained her last resources, and exhausted every
available means of defence and procrastination. Russia possesses too in
this, the climax of her fate and testing-point in her aggressive career,
a mighty source of strength in the enthusiasm of her people, whom she
has taught to regard the question at issue between herself and Europe as
a religious one, and the war into which she has entered as a crusade
against “the infidel” and his abettors. The result may be seen in the
personal popularity which the Emperor enjoys, and the ready devotion
with which his efforts are aided by the Christian portion of the
population of his empire.
On the other hand, Great Britain enters into the struggle with every
recognised prestige of success in her favour. She has, as her active
ally, the greatest military nation in the world, whose soldiers and
sailors are about, for the first time for many centuries, to fight side
by side against a common enemy. Little as we are disposed to decry the
strength of that navy which Russia, by her wonderful energy, has
succeeded in creating during the past few years, it would be absurd to
compare it with the magnificent fleets which England and France combined
have at present floating in the waters of the Black Sea, and about to
sail for the Baltic. A comparison of our monetary resources with those
of our opponent would be still more absurd. Another feature in our
position as a maritime country at present, is the vast facilities which
we possess, by means of our mercantile ocean steamers, of transporting
any required number of troops to the locality where their services are
required, with a rapidity and comfort never dreamt of during the last
European war. A veteran of our Peninsular Campaigns, witnessing the
splendid accommodation provided in such noble vessels as the Oriental
Company’s steamer _Himalaya_ at Southampton, the Cunard Company’s
steamer _Cambria_ at Kingston Harbour, Dublin, and the same Company’s
steamer _Niagara_ at Liverpool, and acquainted with the fact that each
of these vessels was capable of disembarking their freight of armed men
within five or six days of their departure hence in any port of the
Mediterranean, must have been struck by the marked difference between
such conveyances and the old troop ships employed in former days.
Moreover, there is scarcely a limit to the extent of this new element of
our power as a military nation. We enter, too, upon the approaching
struggle with Russia backed by the enthusiastic support of all classes
of our population. It is not regarded with us as a religious war, or one
into the incentives to which religion enters at all. It is scarcely
regarded by the mass as a war of interest. With that sordid motive we
cannot as a nation be reproached. It is felt only that an unjust
aggression has been committed by a powerful state upon a weak one; that
the tyranny of the act has been aggravated by the gross breaches of
faith, the glaring hypocrisy, amounting to blasphemy, and the
unparalleled atrocity, by which it has been followed up; and that we
should prove ourselves recreant, and devoid of all manhood, were we to
stand tamely by and see a gallant people, differing though they do from
us in religion, overwhelmed by brute force, and exterminated from the
face of Europe by such butcheries as Russia has shown us, in the
memorable example of Sinope, that she is not ashamed to perpetrate in
the face of the civilised world, and in the name of Christianity.
There is one consideration, however, connected with the present warlike
temper of our population, which cannot with safety be permitted to
escape remark. We have already stated that two generations of men have
passed away since this country was in actual war with an enemy in
Europe. The bulk of the present race of Englishmen have never
experienced the inconveniences, and occasional privations, which attend
upon war even in countries, like ours, which are happily free from the
affliction of having an armed enemy to combat upon its own soil. We
believe most firmly that we are not a degenerate people. We see evidence
of this in the ready zeal with which large numbers of our hardy and
enterprising youth are everywhere flocking to be enrolled under the flag
of their country, both for land and sea service. We trust that this
feeling will endure, and that we shall be found willing to bear up
cheerfully under any temporary sacrifices which we shall be called upon
to make; but we cannot blind ourselves to the fact that a great change
has taken place in our social condition, in our traditionary instincts,
in our pursuits, and in our institutions, during the forty years of
peace which we have enjoyed. We have become more essentially a
manufacturing and commercial people. A larger number of our population
than formerly are dependent for their daily bread upon the profitable
employment of capital in our foreign trade. The more extensive
adaptation of machinery to manufacturing processes of every kind has led
to the aggregation of large masses of our population in particular
districts; and such masses, ignorant as we have unfortunately allowed
them to grow up, are notoriously subject to the incendiary persuasions
of unprincipled and bad men, and have been sedulously taught that
cheapness of all the necessaries of life can only be secured by
unrestricted communication with foreign countries. Moreover, we have had
a large infusion of the democratic element into our constitution. Our
House of Commons no longer represents the yeomanry and the property
classes of the country; but, instead, must obey the dictates of the
shopkeeping and artisan classes of our large towns. It is no longer the
same body of educated English gentlemen, whose enduring patriotism,
during the last war, stood firm against the clamours of the mobs of
London, Manchester, and other large centres of population, and turned a
deaf ear to the persuasions of faction within its own walls; but a mixed
assemblage of a totally opposite, or, at all events, a materially
changed character, so far as regards a considerable number of its
members. We have in it now a larger proportion of the capitalist
class—men suspected of being rather more sensitively alive to a rise or
fall in the prices of funds, stock, railway shares, &c., than to any
gain or loss of national honour; more wealthy manufacturers, who would
be disposed to regard the loss of a fleet as a minor calamity, compared
with the loss of a profitable market for their cottons, woollens, or
hardwares; and, lastly, more Irish representatives of the Maynooth
priesthood, ready to sell their country, or themselves, for a concession
to Rome, or a Government appointment. The honourable member for the West
Riding—Mr Cobden—showed a thorough appreciation of the character and
position of a portion of the House, and of his own constituents, when he
wound up his speech on the adjourned debate upon the question of our
relations with Russia and Turkey, on the 20th ult., with these words,
which deserve to be remembered:—“He would take upon himself all the
unpopularity of opposing this war; and, more than that, _he would not
give six months’ purchase for the popularity of those who advocated it
on its present basis_.”
Under such circumstances it is material to examine what is the amount of
interruption to the commerce of the country, which may be assumed as
likely to occur, as the result of a state of war with Russia. What, in
other words, is the amount and the nature of the pressure, to which the
masses of our population may be called upon to submit, to prepare them
for the purposes of those persons—happily few in number at present—whose
voice is for peace at any sacrifice of the national honour, and any
sacrifice of the sacred duties of humanity? We shall perhaps be excused
if we examine first _the nature_ of the pressure which is relied upon by
such persons; and we cannot exemplify this better than by a quotation
from the speech already referred to by the same Mr Cobden—their first
volunteer champion in the expected agitation. The honourable gentleman
remarked:—
“He could not ignore the arguments by which they were called upon by
honourable and right honourable gentlemen to enter into a war with
Russia. The first argument was one which had been a dozen times
repeated, relative to the comparative value of the trade of the two
countries. We were to go to war to prevent Russia from possessing
countries from which she would exclude our commerce, as she did from
her own territory. That argument was repeated by a noble lord, who
told the House how insignificant our trade with Russia was, compared
with that with Turkey. Now, that opinion was erroneous as well as
dangerous, for we had no pecuniary interest in going to war. Our
interests were all on the other side, as he was prepared to show. The
official returns did not give him the means of measuring the extent of
our exports to Russia, but he had applied to some of the most eminent
merchants in the City, and he confessed he had been astonished by the
extent of our trade with Russia. He used to be told that our exports
to Russia amounted to less than £2,000,000. Now, Russia was still
under the Protectionist delusion, which had also prevailed in this
country in his recollection. (A laugh.) Russia still kept up her
protective duties upon her manufactures, but he would tell the House
what we imported from Russia, and they might depend on it that
whatever we imported we paid for. (Hear, hear.) He had estimated the
imports from Russia as of much greater value than most people thought,
and he was under the impression that they might amount to from
£5,000,000 to £6,000,000 per annum. Now, here was a calculation of our
imports from Russia which he had obtained from sources that might be
relied upon,—
_Estimated Value of Imports
from Russia into the United
Kingdom._
Tallow, £1,800,000
Linseed, 1,300,000
Flax and hemp, 3,200,000
Wheat, 4,000,000
Wool, 300,000
Oats, 500,000
Other grain, 500,000
Bristles, 450,000
Timber, deals, &c., 500,000
Iron, 70,000
Copper, 140,000
Hides, 60,000
Miscellaneous, 200,000
———————————
£13,020,000
Now, last year our imports from Russia were larger than usual, and
another house, taking an average year, had made them £11,000,000. In
that calculation, the imports of wheat were taken at £2,000,000
instead of £4,000,000, and that made the difference. He was also
credibly informed that Russian produce to the value of about
£1,000,000 came down the Vistula to the Prussian ports of the Baltic,
and was shipped thence to this country; so that our imports from
Russia averaged about £12,000,000 sterling per annum, and included
among them articles of primary importance to our manufactures. How was
machinery to work, and how were locomotives to travel, without tallow
to grease their wheels? (A laugh.) Look, too, at the imports of
linseed to the value of £1,300,000. No persons were more interested
than honourable gentlemen opposite in the reduction of the price of
the food of cattle. Then take the articles of flax and hemp. There
were districts in the West Riding which would suffer very serious
injury and great distress if we should go to war and cut off our
intercourse with Russia. (Hear.) Even with regard to the article of
Russian iron, which entered into consumption at Sheffield, he was told
it would be hardly possible to manufacture some of the finer
descriptions of cutlery if the supply of Russian iron were interfered
with.”
We shall not here take the trouble of criticising Mr Cobden’s figures,
but take them as they stand, although they are exaggerated enough. His
argument is obviously, that we must submit to any amount of aggression
which Russia may choose to make upon neutral countries, and even upon
our own Indian possessions, because that country supplies us yearly with
thirteen millions’ worth of raw materials and food! The same was the
humiliating position which the men of Tyre and Sidon, as recorded in
Scripture, occupied towards Herod, when “they came of one accord to him,
and having made Blastus, the king’s chamberlain, their friend, desired
peace, _because their country was nourished by the king’s country_.”
How, asks Mr Cobden, is machinery to work without tallow to grease the
wheels? We are to have an anti-war cry from the farmers for the lack of
Russian linseed; the West Riding of Yorkshire is to be stirred up into
insurrection by the want of flax and hemp; and the fine cutlers of
Sheffield cannot get on without the £70,000 worth of iron which they
import from Russia! The main reliance of the peace-at-any-price party,
we have no doubt, rests upon the probability of high prices of food, and
their hope of producing in the minds of the masses the impression that
the cause of those high prices is mainly the interruption of our usual
imports of grain from the Russian ports of the Baltic and the Black Sea.
It is rather singular that it should not have struck so astute a man as
Mr Cobden, that Russia is very likely to feel the loss of so excellent a
customer as England appears to have been to her, quite as much as we are
likely to feel the want of her tallow, her flax and hemp, her linseed,
or even her wheat. The vendor of an article is generally the party who
feels most aggrieved when his stock is permitted to accumulate upon his
shelves. The Russian landowners cannot very conveniently dispense with
the annual thirteen millions sterling which they draw from this country.
Mr Cobden may depend upon it that, if we want it, a portion of their
growth of staple articles will find its way to this country, through
intermediate channels, although Russian ships no longer gain the
advantages derived from its transport. The fact, however, of our
absolute dependence upon Russia for these articles is too palpably a
bugbear, either of Mr Cobden’s own creation, or palmed upon him by his
friends, the “eminent merchants of the City,” to be worthy of serious
notice, did it not betray the direction in which we are to look for the
agitation, by which that gentleman and his friends hope to paralyse the
hands of Government during the coming crisis of the country.
In the effort to form a correct estimate of the extent of interruption
to our commerce to be anticipated from the existence of a state of war
between this country and Russia, we must have, in the first place,
reliable facts to depend upon, instead of the loose statements of
Russian merchants, who are, as a class, so _peculiarly_ connected with
her as almost to be liable to the imputation of having Russian rather
than British interests nearest to their hearts. We have a right also to
look at the fact that, so far at least as present appearances go, Russia
is likely to be isolated on every side during the approaching struggle,
her principal seaports, both in the Baltic and the Black Sea, to be
commanded by the united British and French fleets; whilst that produce,
by the withholding of which she could doubtless for a time, and to a
certain extent, inconvenience our manufacturers and consumers, may find
its way to us either direct from Russian ports in neutral vessels, or
through those neighbouring countries which are likely to occupy a
neutral position in the quarrel. We have also to bear in mind that, with
respect to many of the articles which we have lately been taking so
largely from Russia, other sources of supply are open to us. It is
remarkable to observe the effect produced by even temporarily enhanced
prices in this country in extending the area on every side from which
foreign produce reaches us. A few shillings per quarter on wheat, for
example, will attract it from the far west States of America, from which
otherwise it would never have come, owing to the inability of the grower
to afford the extra cost of transport. All these considerations have to
be borne in mind; and although it will perhaps have to be conceded that
somewhat enhanced prices may have to be paid for some of the articles
with which Russia at present supplies us, we think we shall be enabled
to show that the enhancement is not at all likely to be such as to
amount to a calamity, or cause serious pressure upon our people.
Before proceeding further, it may be desirable to explain the mode in
which our trade with Russia, both import and export, is carried on.
Russia is, commercially, a poor country. The description of her given by
M‘Culloch, in an early edition of his _Dictionary of Commerce_,
published two-and-twenty years ago, is as appropriate and correct as if
it had been written yesterday, notwithstanding the vast territorial
aggrandisement which has taken place in the interim. Her nobles and
great landowners hold their property burdened by the pressure of many
mortgages; and they are utterly unable to bring their produce to market,
or to raise their crops at all, without the advances of European
capitalists. These consist chiefly of a few English Houses, who have
branch establishments at St Petersburg, Riga, and Memel on the Baltic,
and Odessa on the Black Sea. The mode of operation is the following.
About the month of October the cultivators and factors from the interior
visit those ports, and receive advances on the produce and crops to be
delivered by them ready for shipment at the opening of the navigation;
and it is stated that the engagements made between these parties and
British capitalists have rarely been broken. This process of drawing
advances goes on until May, by which month there are large stocks ready
for shipment at all the ports, the winter in many districts being the
most favourable for their transport. The import trade is carried on in a
similar manner by foreign capital; long credits, in many instances
extending to twelve months, being given to the factors in the interior.
A well-known statistical writer, the editor of the _Economist_, Mr John
Wilson, in his publication of the 25th ult., says, upon the subject of
the amount of British capital thus embarked in Russia at the period when
her battalions crossed the Pruth: “The most accurate calculations which
we have been able to make, _with the assistance of persons largely
engaged in the trade_, shows that at that moment the British capital in
Russia, and advanced to Russian subjects, was at least £7,000,000,
including the sums for which Houses in this country were under
acceptance to Russia.” We can perfectly believe this to have been the
fact, under such a system of trading as that which we have described. We
can believe, too, that a considerable number of British ships and
sailors were at the same time in Russian ports, and would, in case we
had treated the occupation of Moldavia and Wallachia by Russian troops
as a _casus belli_, very probably have been laid under embargo. We could
sympathise with those “persons largely engaged in the trade,” in
rejoicing that, as one effect of a temporising policy, the whole of this
capital, these ships, and these sailors, had been released from all
danger of loss or detention. But we cannot bring ourselves to consider
it _decent_ in a gentleman holding an important office in the
Government, whilst admitting, as he does, that we have been bamboozled
by Russian diplomacy, to point triumphantly to this saving of “certain
monies”—the property of private individuals, who made their ventures at
their own risk and for their own profit—as in any sort balancing the
loss of the national honour, which has been incurred by our tardiness in
bringing decisive succour to an oppressed ally. Ill-natured people might
suggest a suspicion that Mincing Lane and Mark Lane had been exercising
too great an influence in Downing Street. And the public may hereafter
ask of politicians, who thus ground their defence against the charges of
infirmness of purpose and blind credulity, or “connivance,” as Mr
Disraeli has, perhaps too correctly, termed it, upon this alleged saving
of a few millions of the money of private adventurers—Will it balance
the expenditure of the tens of millions of the public money which the
prosecution of this war will probably cost, and which might have been
saved by the adoption of a more prompt and vigorous policy in the first
instance? Will it balance the loss of life—will it support the widows
and orphans—will it lighten by one feather the burden upon posterity,
which may be the result of this struggle? It would be a miserable thing
should it have to be said of England, that there was a period in her
history when she hesitated to strike a blow in a just cause until she
had taken care that the offender had paid her shopkeepers or her
merchants their debts! We pass over this part of the subject, however,
as scarcely belonging to the question which we have proposed to
ourselves to discuss.
Our imports from Russia, upon the importance of which so much stress has
been laid, were in 1852 as given below, from official documents. We have
ourselves appended the value of the various items upon a very liberal
scale; and we may explain that we select that year instead of 1853, for
reasons which we shall hereafter explain.
_Quantities of Russian Produce imported into Great Britain
during the year 1852._
Corn, wheat, and flour, qrs. 733,571 value £1,540,499
Oats, „ 305,738 366,855
Other grain, „ 262,348 327,935
Tallow, cwts. 609,197 1,187,700
Linseed, and flax seed, &c. qrs. 518,657 1,125,000
Bristles, lbs. 1,459,303 292,000
Flax, cwts. 948,523 1,897,046
Hemp, „ 543,965 861,277
Wool (undressed), lbs. 5,353,772 200,390
Iron (unwrought), tons 1,792 17,920
Copper (do.), „ 226 20,000
Do. (part wrought), „ 1,042 120,000
Timber (hewn), loads 28,299 94,800
Do. (sawn), „ 189,799 759,196
——————————
£8,810,618
We have taken for the above estimate the prices which prevailed in the
first six months of 1852, after which they were raised above an average
by peculiar circumstances. The year selected, moreover, was one of
larger imports than usual of many articles. For example, our imports of
Russian grain in 1852 amounted, in round numbers, to £2,235,300
sterling, against only £952,924 in 1850. Yet we have less than nine
millions as the amount of this vaunted import trade from Russia, the
interruption of which is to be fraught with such serious consequences to
our internal peace, and to the “popularity” of the liberal
representatives of our large towns.
But fortunately for the country, and rather _mal apropos_ for those who
would fain convert any diminution of our supplies of produce from Russia
into the ground of an anti-war agitation, we have succeeded in procuring
from that country during the past year supplies unprecedented in
quantity. The following have been our imports from Russia in 1853, as
compared with the previous year:—
Corn, wheat, and flour, qrs. 1,070,909 against 733,571 in 1852.
Oats, „ 379,059 305,738
Other grain, „ 263,653 262,238
Tallow, cwts. 847,267 609,197
Seeds, qrs. 785,015 518,657
Bristles, lbs. 2,477,789 1,459,303
Flax, cwts. 1,287,988 948,523
Hemp, „ 836,373 543,965
Wool, lbs. 9,054,443 5,353,772
Iron, tons 5,079 1,792
Copper (unwrought), „ 974 226
Copper (part wrought), „ 656 1,042
Timber (hewn), loads 45,421 28,299
Timber (sawn), „ 245,532 189,799
If mercantile opinions are at all to be relied upon, these extra
supplies ought to have a tendency to bring down prices, which the
prospect of war has enhanced beyond what existing circumstances seem to
warrant, even presuming that we had no other dependence than upon Russia
for the articles with which she has heretofore supplied us. For example,
we have paid during the past year, if we take present prices, for our
imports of wheat alone from Russia, about £6,470,000 sterling, whereas,
at the prices of the early part of 1852, we should have paid for the
same quantity of wheat just half the money. And at the present moment,
and since war has been regarded as inevitable, we have had a downward
tendency in all our principal markets. It has been discovered that we
hold more home-grown wheat than was anticipated; and, with a favourable
seed-time and a propitious spring, hopes are entertained that we shall
not in the present year be so dependent upon the foreigner as we have
been during that which has passed. Tallow also is an article for which
we have been lately paying the extravagant prices of 62s. to 63s. per
cwt. In the early part of 1852, the article was worth about 37s. 6d. for
the St Petersburg quality. No English grazier, however, ever knew
butcher’s meat or fat at their present prices; and a propitious year for
the agriculturist will most probably bring matters to a more favourable
state for the consumer.
It is not, however, true that a state of war with Russia can shut us out
from our supply of the produce of that country. It will come to us from
her ports, unless we avail ourselves of our right to blockade them
strictly, in the ships of neutral countries. A portion of it—and no
inconsiderable portion—will reach us overland, Russia herself being the
greatest sufferer, from the extra cost of transit. There can be no doubt
of every effort being made by her great landowners to make market of
their produce, and convert it at any sacrifice into money; for it must
be borne in mind that they are at the present moment _minus_ some seven
or eight millions sterling of British and other money, usually advanced
upon the forthcoming crops. We need scarcely point at the difficulty in
which this want must place Russia in such a struggle as that in which
she is at present engaged. The paper issues of her government may for a
time be forced upon her slavish population as money. But that population
requires large imports of tea, coffee, sugar, spices, fruits, wines, and
other foreign products; and it is not difficult to predict that there
will be found few capitalists in Europe or Asia, willing to accommodate
her with a loan wherewith to pay even for these necessaries, much less
to feed her grasping ambition by an advance of money for the purchase of
additional arms and military stores. Moreover, we are not by any means
so absolutely dependent upon Russia for many of the principal articles
with which she has heretofore supplied us, as certain parties would wish
us to believe. We could have an almost unlimited supply of flax and hemp
from our own colonies, if we chose to encourage the cultivation of them
there. In the mean time, Egypt furnishes us with the former article; and
Manilla supplies us with a very superior quality of both. Belgium and
Prussia are also producers, and with a little encouragement would no
doubt extend their cultivation. Our own colonies, however, are our
surest dependence for a supply of these and similar articles. An advance
of seeds and money to the extent of less than one quarter of the sums
which we have been in the habit of advancing to the Russian cultivator,
would bring forward to this country a supply of the raw materials of
flax and hemp, which would be quite in time, with our present stock, to
relieve us from any danger of deficiency for at least a season to come.
With respect to tallow, we have a right to depend upon America, both
North and South, for a supply. Australia can send us an aid, at all
events, to such supply; and we may probably have next year a larger
quantity within our own resources. With respect to seeds, we shall be
able to derive these from the countries whence flax and hemp are
cultivated for our markets; and our timber, derived at present from
Russia, we can certainly dispense with. There is nothing valuable in
Russian timber except its applicability for the masting and sparring of
ships requiring large growth; and, with our modern method of splicing
yards and masts, we can do perfectly well with the less tall timber of
Norway and Sweden.
The real fact is, that the alleged short supply of the raw materials to
be expected from Russia is a perfect bugbear. We could dispense with
Russia as a country of supply, were we to employ British capital to
assist our own colonists, and other countries, to provide us with such
supply. There was once, however, a Russian Company; and the trade seems
to have been conducted as a monopoly ever since.
But we must get rid of this strange argument, that the value of the
trade with a country consists in the large amount of indebtedness which
we contract with its dealers. We have now to consider the relative value
of Russia and Turkey as _consumers_ of British manufactured goods and
produce. The following we find to have been the value of British and
Irish produce and manufactures exported to the two countries for the
five years from 1846 to 1850:—
1846. 1847. 1848. 1849. 1850.
Turkey, £2,141,897 £2,992,280 £3,116,365 £2,930,612 £3,113,679
Russia, 1,725,148 1,844,543 1,925,226 1,566,575 1,454,771
Turkey thus took from us in 1850 £1,658,908 in excess of Russia’s
purchases, having increased that excess from £416,719 in 1846. The
increased imports of the former country amounted in the five years to
nearly a million sterling, or 50 per cent, whilst the imports of Russia
fell off by £370,377, or above 20 per cent. There is this great
difference, too, in the imports from this country of Russia and
Turkey—The former takes from us raw materials, which we do not produce
ourselves, deriving merely a mercantile or brokerage profit upon the
supply; manufactured articles which contain the smallest amount of
British labour; and machinery to aid the progress of her population as
our rivals in manufacturing pursuits. The latter takes our fully
manufactured and perfected fabrics. So far as our cotton and woollen
manufacturers are concerned, Russia took in 1850—
Cotton yarn, £245,625
Woollen and worsted do., 304,016
Machinery and mill-work, 203,992
The remainder of her imports from us consisted of foreign produce.
Turkey took from us, however, a large amount of labour and skill, or its
reward, as will be seen from the following table:—
_Imports of Manufactured Textiles to Russia and Turkey in 1850._
Cotton. Woollen. Linen. Silk. Total.
Turkey, £2,232,369 £154,558 £22,500 £13,221 £2,422,348
Russia, 61,196 66,256 5,414 8,579 140,455
——————————
Total excess to Turkey, £2,280,903
Our exports to Russia have certainly increased in amount within the last
two years, although our customs’ reports do not convey to us the full
truth as to their character. We have been feeding that country with
materials of mischief. She has had not only mill machinery, but the
machinery of war-steamers from us; but most likely either Sir Charles
Napier, or Admiral Dundas, will be enabled to render us a profitable
account of the property thus invested.
But a comparison of our exports to Russia and Turkey respectively does
not by any means meet the true facts of our position. Within the past
few years we have been carrying on a vast and increasing trade with
those Asiatic countries which draw their supplies of merchandise from
the various ports of the Levant, and from the Adriatic. Smyrna has
become a commercial station so important that we have at this moment
three lines of powerful steamers running to it from the port of
Liverpool alone; and a very valuable trade is also carried on by English
houses in the port of Trieste. Egypt, too, is largely tributary to us
commercially. There is, in fact, no portion of the world whose
transactions with Great Britain have expanded so greatly in amount and
value within the past few years as those very countries which Russia is
seeking to grasp and bring within her own control. Our “Greek houses,”
through whose agency the bulk of this trade is carried on, are now
regarded throughout the manufacturing districts as second to none in the
extent and importance of their business; and, what is more, that
business must rapidly extend, as increased facilities of communication
are provided from the shores of the Levant and the Black Sea with the
interior countries of Asia. Notwithstanding all the faults of the
Turkish character and rule, we are inclined to believe that from the
reign of the present Sultan, Abdul Medjid, a vast amelioration of the
condition of her people, and the cultivation by them of increased
dealings and friendships with the more civilised communities of Western
Europe will take place. Be these expectations, however, fulfilled or
not, we cannot afford to lose such a trade as the following figures,
which we take from Mr Burns’ _Commercial Glance_, show that we are at
present carrying on with Turkey in the article of cotton goods alone:—
_Exports of Cotton Goods to Turkey and the Levant in 1851 to
1853._
1851. 1852. 1853.
Plain calicoes, yards, 49,337,614 57,962,893 51,224,807
Printed and dyed do., 40,433,798 39,394,743 47,564,743
Cotton yarn, lbs. 8,015,674 12,171,045 10,563,177
These markets, in fact, have taken, during the past year, one-sixteenth
of our entire exports of plain calicoes, and one-eleventh of our exports
of printed and dyed calicoes, whilst her imports of yarn—the article
upon the production of which in this country the least amount of labour
is expended—have been comparatively insignificant. The imports of cotton
goods into Russia are, on the contrary, almost entirely confined to yarn
for the consumption of the Russian manufacturer.
So far, therefore, as our export trade is likely to be affected during
the coming struggle, we have manifestly got by the hands a more valuable
customer than we are likely to lose in Russia; and we cannot discover in
what way, with the means at present at her disposal, she can interrupt,
or limit, that trade further than by destroying for a time the consuming
power of those provinces of Turkey east of the river Pruth, which she
has occupied with her troops. Our shipowners and manufacturers may lose
for a time some portion of the valuable trade with the population of
Wallachia and Moldavia which is carried on through the ports of Galatz
and Ibrail upon the Danube. It will probably, however, be one of the
earliest aims of the combined powers of England and France to clear that
portion of Turkey of the presence of the invader, and to maintain the
long-established inviolability of the two eastern mouths of the
Danube—the St George’s and Sulina—as outlets for her commerce with
neutral countries. The remainder of our trade with Turkey must remain
impervious to the efforts of Russia, unless her fleet, at present shut
up in Sebastopol, first achieve the exploit of destroying, or capturing,
the magnificent navies which England and France have assembled in the
Black Sea, or her Baltic fleet succeeds in forcing its passage through
the Cattegat or the Sound, and in making its way to the shores of the
Mediterranean. Neither of these contingencies can be regarded as very
likely to be realised by Russia in the face of the superior power which
will shortly be arrayed against her.
There is certainly the possibility that our commerce with Turkey may
suffer to some extent through the drain upon the resources of her
population, created by a necessarily large war-expenditure. No material
symptoms of such suffering have occurred thus far, notwithstanding she
has been for months past actually engaged in hostilities, the
preparation for which must have been very costly. Her imports of textile
fabrics fell off very little in 1853 from their amount in former years;
and even this may in part be accounted for by the unsettled prices, in
this country, which have resulted from strikes throughout our
manufacturing districts, and other causes of an accidental or a purely
domestic character. Moreover, to balance any such falling off in her
ordinary imports, Turkey will most probably require from us large
supplies of stores, munitions of war, arms, &c., as well as of produce
of various kinds, to fill up the vacuum created by the partial
interruption of her own foreign trade.
We have a further guarantee of commercial safety during this struggle,
unless it should assume new features, in the fact that the commercial
marine of Russia is blocked up, like her fleets, in the Baltic and the
Black Sea. There is not at this moment a single Russian merchantman in
the ports of Great Britain or France—the few vessels which were shut out
from their usual winter quarters having been sold some time ago, to
escape the risk of seizure. She is thus without the materials for
inflicting the annoyance upon our colonial and foreign trade which she
might have possessed, could she have armed any considerable portion of
her mercantile navy for privateering purposes. It has been reported,
indeed, that two of her cruisers have been met with somewhere in the
neighbourhood of the Pacific, and suggested that their object may be to
waylay and capture some of our gold ships. But that the report in
question is not believed—and that any serious interference with our
vessels engaged in the carrying trade, to and from the various ports of
the world, is not feared by our best informed capitalists—is evident
from the fact, that there has as yet been no marked advance in the rates
of insurance upon such property. It has been reported, too, that Russian
agents have been lately engaged in the United States of America in
negotiating for the purchase, or building, of large ships capable of
being converted into vessels of war. Be this so, although we greatly
doubt the fact. We cannot be taken off our guard, in the event of any
such purchase being made, or such conversion taking place. Our
fast-sailing ocean steamers will bring us the necessary information
quite in time to enable us to take the steps most proper for the
occasion; and whilst mentioning those noble vessels, we must remark upon
the important change which the application of steam to navigation will
effect in all future struggles between maritime countries. We do not
refer here to the power which it gives of taking fleets into action, or
of making more rapid sail to the localities where their services are
required, although the effect of this power is incalculable in value. We
allude merely to the advantage which we shall derive in such struggles
from the vastly increased rapidity and regularity with which we are at
present supplied with information of an enemy’s movements, from all
quarters of the world. We shall no longer have to witness the spectacle
of rival fleets seeking each other in vain—proceeding from sea to sea
only to discover that they have missed each other on the way. Traversed
as the ocean is now in every direction by fast-sailing steamers, there
can be little fear of such fleets, if their commanders are really
anxious for an engagement, being unable to procure tolerably accurate
information of each other’s whereabouts. We shall no longer require the
aid of powerful fleets as convoys of our merchantmen, in seas where it
can be so readily known that an enemy is not to be met with; and, as
another result, we shall probably see an end put to the injurious system
of privateering. Few parties will be found to risk life and property in
assaults upon the commerce of a powerful maritime country, with the
certainty before them that every movement which they make must be so
promptly made known, and every offence which they commit must bring down
upon them such speedy punishment.
There is, however, one element of commercial mischief which may make
itself felt during the coming struggle, although such mischief, if it
unfortunately should occur, could not be attributed properly to the mere
fact of the existence of a state of war. It may, and very probably will,
be proved that we cannot carry on a free-trade system, which involves
the necessity of providing for enlarged imports concurrently with
expensive military and naval operations both in the north and south of
Europe, and possibly in Asia as well, with a currency restricted as ours
is by the mistaken legislation of 1844. Already the note of alarm of
this danger has been sounded from a quarter whose authority cannot be
treated lightly on such a subject. Mr William Brown, the eminent
American merchant, and member for South Lancashire, emphatically warned
her Majesty’s Government, during the recent debate on the Budget, of the
probability, and almost certainty, of a severe monetary crisis as the
consequence of persistence in carrying out in their full stringency the
measures passed, at the instigation of Sir Robert Peel, in that and the
following year. But for the operation of those measures, Mr Brown
contended that the calamity of 1847 would never have occurred. The
country, he says, was paralysed by the effect which they produced; and
the seven or eight millions sterling in bullion, held at the time in the
coffers of the Bank, “might as well have been thrown into the sea,” as
retained there unproductive during a period of pressure. Should the same
state of things occur again, therefore, during the approaching
struggle—should the commerce and industry of the country be prostrated,
and the government be rendered incapable of prosecuting with the
required energy a just war, to which we are bound alike by every
consideration of national honour, sound policy, and good faith towards
an oppressed ally—we must not be told that the suffering and degradation
which will be brought down upon our heads are the results of a war
expenditure merely, or have been caused by any natural interruption of
our ordinary trading pursuits. The true cause of the calamity, it must
become obvious to all the world, will be our dogged maintenance of an
impracticable crotchet; and should the nation submit to be thus thwarted
and fettered in its determination to maintain its high prestige—should
it submit to sink down from its position as a leading power,—we may with
reason be asked the question, “Of what avail is your possession of the
noblest fleet which ever rode the seas in ancient or in modern days—of
what avail is the possession of the best-disciplined and bravest
soldiers which ever marched to battle—of what avail is your vast
mercantile marine, your vast accumulations of capital, your almost
limitless command over all the improved appliances which modern science
and ingenuity have constructed for the purposes of war, if you cannot
resent a national insult, or oppose the aggressions of an enemy, without
commercial ruin, suspended industry, and popular disaffection and
outrage being spread over the face of your whole empire?” We hope,
however, for better things. We feel confident that a high-minded and
honourable people will not submit to be thus stultified and degraded in
the eyes of the world. We entertain, too, a reasonable hope that the
unpatriotic faction, who would gladly involve the country in that
degradation, will not be favoured in their unworthy efforts by the
possession of the instrumentality—a suffering and dissatisfied working
population—upon which they calculate to insure success. By the blessing
of a bountiful Providence, clothing our fields and those of Western
Europe and America with luxuriant harvests, we may this year be snatched
from our position of dependence upon the growth of an enemy’s soil for
the food of our people, and be enabled to enter upon a period of plenty
and cheapness, instead of that scarcity and high prices of all the
necessaries of life from which we have been suffering during the past
twelve months—certainly without such suffering being attributable to a
state of war, or to any but ordinary causes.
THE PUPPETS OF ALL NATIONS.[1]
The history of Puppets and their shows may at first appear but a trivial
subject to fix the attention and occupy the pen of a learned academician
and elegant writer. The very word history may seem misapplied to a
chronicle of the pranks of Punchinello, and of the contortions of
fantoccini. Puppet-shows! it may be said; troops of tawdry figures,
paraded from fair to fair, to provoke the laughter of children and the
grin of rustics—is that a theme for a bulky octavo at the hands of so
erudite and _spirituel_ an author as M. Charles Magnin? Had M. Magnin
chosen to reply otherwise than with perfect candour to anticipated
comments of this kind—the comments of the superficial and
hastily-judging—he might easily have done so by saying that, whilst
studying with a more important aim—for that history of the stage of
which he has already published portions—he found the wooden actors so
constantly thrusting themselves into the society of their
flesh-and-blood betters, so continually intruding themselves, with
timber joints, invisible strings, and piping voices, upon stages where
human players strutted, that, to be quit of their importunity, he was
fain to shelve them in a volume. This, however, is not the motive he
alleges. He boldly breasts the difficulty, and stands up for the merits
of his marionettes, quite deserving, he maintains, of a separate study
and a special historian. He denies that time can be considered lost or
lightly expended which is passed in tracing the vicissitudes of an
amusement that, for three thousand years, has been in favour with
two-thirds of the human race. And he summons to his support an imposing
phalanx of great men—poets, philosophers, dramatists, musicians—who have
interested themselves in puppets, taken pleasure in their performances,
and even written for their mimic theatre. He reminds his readers how
many pointed remarks and precious lessons, apt comparisons and graceful
ideas, have been suggested by such shows to the greatest writers of all
countries and ages, and heads the list of his puppets’ patrons with the
names of Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Marcus Aurelius, Petronius, in
ancient times; and with those of Shakespeare, Cervantes, Ben Jonson,
Molière, Swift, Voltaire, and Goethe, amongst the moderns; to say
nothing of Charles Nodier, Punchinello’s laureate, the assiduous
frequenter of Parisian puppet-shows, who has devoted so many playful and
sparkling pages to that favourite study of his literary leisure. M.
Magnin begins to be alarmed at the shadows he has evoked. Is it not
presumption, he asks himself, to enter a path upon which his
predecessors have been so numerous and eminent? The subject, for whose
frivolity he lately almost apologised, appears too elevated for his
range when he reviews the list of illustrious names more or less
connected with it, when he recalls the innumerable flowers of wit with
which their fancy has wreathed it. So he marks out for himself a
different track. Others have played with the theme; he approaches it in
a graver spirit. “I am not so impertinent,” he exclaims, “as to seek _to
put_ (as the Greeks would have said) _my foot in the dance of those
great geniuses_. Too well do I see the folly of attempting to jingle,
after them, the bells of that bauble.” Following the example of the
learned Jesuit, Mariantonio Lupi—who wrote a valuable although a brief
dissertation on the Puppets of the Ancients—but allotting to himself a
much broader canvass, M. Magnin purposes to write, in all seriousness,
sincerity, and simplicity, a history of the “wooden comedians,” not only
of antiquity, but of the middle ages, and of modern times.
A subject of far less intrinsic interest than the one in question could
not fail to become attractive in the hands of so agreeable and skilful a
_savant_ as M. Magnin. But it were a mistake to suppose that the history
of the Puppet family, from Euripides’ days to ours, has not a real and
strong interest of its own. The members of that distinguished house have
been mixed up in innumerable matters into which one would hardly have
anticipated their poking their wooden noses and permanently blushing
countenances. They have been alternately the tools of priestcraft and
the mouthpiece of popular feeling. Daring _improvisatori_, in certain
times and countries, theirs was the only liberty of speech, their voice
the sole organ of the people’s opposition to its rulers. Their
diminutive stature, the narrow dimensions of their stage, the smallness
of their powers of speech, did not always secure impunity to their free
discourse, which sometimes, as their best friends must confess,
degenerated into license. So that we occasionally, in the course of
their history, find the audacious dolls driven into their boxes—with
cords cut and heads hanging—or at least compelled to revise and chasten
their dramatic repertory. Sometimes decency and morality rendered such
rigour incumbent upon the authorities; but its motive was quite as
frequently political. It is curious to note with what important events
the Puppet family have meddled, and what mighty personages they have
managed to offend. At the present day, when the press spreads far and
wide the gist and most salient points of a successful play, in whatever
European capital it may be performed, allusions insulting or irritating
to friendly nations and governments may be fair subject for the censor’s
scissors. It was only the other day that a Russian official journal
expressed, in no measured terms, its high indignation at the
performance, at a fourth-rate theatre on the Paris boulevards, of a
drama entitled “The Cossacks,” in which those warriors of the steppes
are displayed to great disadvantage. The circumstances of the moment not
being such as to make the French government solicitous to spare the
feelings of the Czar, the piece continued to be nightly played, to the
delight of shouting audiences, and to the no small benefit of the
treasury of the _Gaieté_. One hundred and twenty-three years ago,
Russian susceptibility, it appears, was held quite as easy to ruffle as
at the present day. In 1731, the disgrace of Menschikoff was made the
subject of a sort of melodrama, performed in several German towns by the
large English puppets of Titus Maas, privileged comedian of the court of
Baden-Durlach. The curious playbill of this performance ran as follows:
“With permission, &c., there will be performed on an entirely new
theatre, and with good instrumental music, a _Haupt-und-Staatsaction_,
recently composed and worthy to be seen, which has for title—The
extraordinary vicissitudes of good and bad fortune of Alexis
Danielowitz, prince Menzicoff, great favourite, cabinet minister, and
generalissimo of the Czar of Moscow, Peter I., of glorious memory,
to-day a real Belisarius, precipitated from the height of his greatness
into the most profound abyss of misfortune; the whole with Jack-pudding,
a pieman, a pastrycook’s boy, and amusing Siberian poachers.” Titus Maas
obtained leave to perform this wonderful piece at Berlin, but it was
quickly stopped by order of Frederick-William I.’s government, for fear
of offending Russia. In 1794 a number of puppet-shows were closed in
Berlin—for offences against morality, was the reason given, but more
probably, M. Magnin believes, because the tone of their performances was
opposed to the views of the government. In what way he does not mention,
but we may suppose it possible that the _Puppenspieler_ had got infected
with the revolutionary doctrines then rampant in France. The Prussian
police still keeps a sharp eye on exhibitions of this kind, which at
Berlin are restricted to the suburbs. In France we find traces of a
regular censorship of the marionette theatres. Thus, in the Soleinne
collection of manuscript plays is one entitled: _The capture of a
company of players by a Tunis rover, in the month of September 1840_.
This piece, whose name, as M. Magnin remarks, reads more like the
heading of a newspaper paragraph than the title of a play, was performed
in 1741 at the fair of St Germains, by the puppets of the celebrated
Nicolet, and annexed to it is a permit of performance, bearing no less a
signature than that of Crébillon. It is not improbable that the
puppet-show had fairly earned its subjection to a censorship by the
irreverence and boldness with which it took the most serious, important,
and painful events as subjects for its performances. In 1686, D’Harlay,
then attorney-general at the parliament of Paris, wrote as follows to La
Reynie, the lieutenant of police:—“To M. de la Reynie, councillor of the
king in his council, &c. It is said this morning at the palace, that the
marionettes which play at the fair of St Germain represent the
discomfiture of the Huguenots, and as you will probably consider this a
very serious matter for marionettes, I have thought it right, sir, to
advise you of it, that you may so act as in your prudence shall seem
fit.” It does not appear what result this advice had; but as the date of
the note is little more than three months later than that of the edict
of revocation, when Louis XIV. was exulting in the downfall of heresy in
France, and when those who still clung to Protestantism were looked upon
as hardened sinners, no better than common malefactors, it is quite
probable La Reynie thought it needless to interfere with the
puppet-scoffers at the Huguenots. D’Harlay, it will be remembered, was
intimate with some of the chiefs of the proscribed party, and a
particular friend of the Marquis de Ruvigny, although he some years
afterwards betrayed, according to St Simon, the trust that friend had
reposed in him. But we are wandering from our wooden play-actors.
The first two sections of M. Magnin’s work, devoted to the puppets of
Antiquity and of the Middle Ages, are far briefer, and upon the whole,
less interesting than the portion of his volume allotted to those of
modern times. All those parts display extensive reading and patient
research. The author commences by defining and classing his marionettes.
“Everybody knows that marionettes are small figures of wood, bone,
ivory, baked earth, or merely of linen, representing real or fantastical
beings, and whose flexible joints obey the impulse given to them by
strings, wires, or catgut, pulled by a skilful and invisible hand.” He
divides them into three classes: hierarchical, aristocratic, and
popular. In ancient times and in the middle ages, the first of these
classes was decidedly the most important and influential. Auguries were
obtained and miracles wrought by its aid, indispensable to priestly
ambition and to idolatrous or erroneous creeds, dependent upon prodigies
for support. Even at the present day, and in highly civilised countries,
puppets of this kind are not wholly in disrepute, nor are the services
of bleeding saints and nodding madonnas uniformly declined by the
pastors of credulous flocks. The practice is very ancient—if that can
give it respectability. The statue of Jupiter Ammon, when carried in
procession on the shoulders of priests, previously to uttering its
oracles, indicated to its bearers, by a motion of its head, the road it
wished them to take. The golden statue of Apollo, in the temple of
Heliopolis, moved when it had an oracle to deliver; and if the priests
delayed to raise it upon their shoulders, it sweated and moved again.
When the high-priest consulted it, it recoiled if it disapproved of the
proposed enterprise; but if it approved, it pushed its bearers forward,
and drove them, as with reins. M. Magnin quotes, from the writers of
antiquity, a host of instances of this kind, in which machinery,
quicksilver, and the loadstone were evidently the means employed. “In
Etruria and in Latium, where the sacerdotal genius has at all times
exercised such a powerful influence, hierarchical art has not failed to
employ, to act upon the popular imagination, sculpture with springs.”
The ancient idols of Italy were of wood, like those of Greece, coloured,
richly dressed, and very often capable of motion. At Præneste the
celebrated group of the infants Jupiter and Juno, seated upon the knees
of Fortune, their nurse, appears to have been movable. It seems evident,
from certain passages in ancient writers, that the little god indicated
by a gesture the favourable moment to consult the oracle. At Rome,
feasts were offered to the statues of the gods, at which these did not
play so passive a part as might be supposed. Religious imagination or
sacerdotal address aided their immobility. Titus Livius, describing the
banquet celebrated at Rome in 573, mentions the terror of the people and
senate on learning that the images of the gods had averted their heads
from the dishes presented to them. When we meet with these old tales of
statues invited to repasts, and manifesting their good or bad will by
movements, we understand by what amalgamation of antique recollections
and local legends was formed, in the Spain of the middle ages, the
popular tale, so touching and so dramatic, of the _Convidado de Piedra_.
Between these tricks of the priests of Jupiter and Apollo, and the
devices resorted to by the Christian priests of the middle ages, a close
coincidence is to be traced. M. Magnin touches but cursorily on this
part of the subject, referring to the crucifix said to have bowed its
head in approval of the decisions of the Council of Trent, to the votive
crucifix of Nicodemus, which, according to popular belief at Lucca,
crossed the town on foot to the cathedral, blessing the astonished
people on its passage, and which, upon another occasion, gave its foot
to kiss to a poor minstrel—perhaps himself a puppet-showman—and
mentioning as a positive and undoubted fact the movement of the head and
eyes of the crucifix in the monastery of Boxley in Kent, testified to by
old Lambarde in his Perambulations of that county. It is to be observed
that these winking, walking, and nodding images were not always
constructed with a view to delude credulous Christians into belief in
miracles, but also for dramatic purposes, with the object of exciting
religious enthusiasm by a representation of the sufferings of the
Redeemer and the martyrs, and probably, at the same time, to extract
alms from the purses of the faithful. When thus employed, they may be
said to form the link between mechanical church sculpture, used by
priests for purposes of imposture, and the player-puppets of more modern
times. It is the point where the hierarchical and the popular classes of
puppets blend. Scenes from the life and passion of the Saviour were
favourite subjects for such representations; but incidents in the lives
of the Virgin and saints were also frequently acted, both in secular and
monastic churches, and that almost down to our own times,
notwithstanding canonical prohibitions. “In a synod held at Orihuela, a
little Valencian bishopric, at the commencement of the seventeenth
century, it was found necessary to renew the orders against the
admission into churches of small images (_statuettes_) of the Virgin and
female saints, curled, painted, covered with jewels, and dressed in
silks, and resembling courtezans.” The abuse, nevertheless, continued;
and we believe there would be little difficulty in authenticating
instances of it in Spain within the present century. That it was an
actual puppet-show which the ecclesiastical authorities thus strove to
suppress, or at least to expel from churches, is clearly proved by a
passage M. Magnin quotes from the proceedings of the synod: “We forbid
the representation, in churches or elsewhere, of the actions of Christ,
of those of the most holy Virgin, and of the lives of the saints, by
means of those little movable figures vulgarly called _titeres_.” This
last word is the exact Spanish equivalent to the French marionettes and
the English puppet-show. It was a _titerero_ who fell in with Don
Quixote at a Manchegan hostelry, and exhibited before him “the manner in
which Señor Don Gayferos accomplished the deliverance of his spouse,
Melisendra,” and whose figures of paste were so grievously mishandled by
the chivalrous defender of dames. And it may further be remarked, as a
sign of the ancient alliance in Spain between the church and the
theatre, that an altarpiece and the stage or theatre upon which a
puppet-show is exhibited are both expressed, to the present day, by the
word _retablo_. To the _titeres_, by no means the least diverting and
original of the European marionette family, we shall hereafter come. The
precedence must be given to Italy, the cradle and the paradise of
puppets.
The eccentric and learned physician and mathematician, Jerome Cardan,
was the first modern writer who paid serious and scientific attention to
the mechanism of marionettes. He refers to them in two different works,
and in one of these, a sort of encyclopedia, entitled _de Varietate
Rerum_, when speaking of the humbler branches of mechanics, he expresses
his surprise at the marvels performed by two Sicilians, by means of two
wooden figures which they worked between them. “There was no sort of
dance,” he says, “that these figures were not able to imitate, making
the most surprising gestures with feet and legs, arms and head, the
whole with such variety of attitude, that I cannot, I confess,
understand the nature of the ingenious mechanism, for there were not
several strings, sometimes slack and sometimes tight, but only one to
each figure, and that was always at full stretch. I have seen many other
figures set in motion by several strings, alternately tight and slack,
which is nothing marvellous. I must further say that it was a truly
agreeable spectacle to behold how the steps and gestures of these dolls
kept time with the music.” Such variety and precision of movement
prevent the possibility of confounding this exhibition with that
puppet-show of the lowest class common in the streets at the present
day, where a Savoyard boy makes a doll dance upon a board by means of a
string fastened to his knee.[2] M. Magnin supposes that the single
string, always at full stretch, was a little tube, through which passed
a number of small strings connected with the interior of the puppet. A
similar plan is general in Italy at the present day amongst the
aristocracy of the marionettes—those whose performances are in regular
theatres, and not in wandering show-boxes. The theatre and the mode of
working of out-of-door puppet-shows is the same in most countries, and
it appears more than probable, from the authorities adduced by M.
Magnin, that the marionettes of Greece and ancient Italy had much the
same sort of stage as that on which the _pupazzi_ of Italian towns, the
London Punch, and the Guignol and Gringalet of Paris, are to the present
day exhibited; namely, a sort of large sentry-box or little fortress,
called _castello_ in Italy, _castillo_ in Spain, and _castellet_ in
France. In Persia, in Constantinople, in Cairo, the same form prevails.
In modern times the extent of the stage has been diminished, and the
apparatus lightened, so as to admit of theatre, scenery, actors, and
orchestra being carried long distances by two men. Formerly, in Spain,
as we gather from Cervantes and other authorities, a cart was necessary
to convey the theatrical baggage of a _titerero_, which was on a larger
scale than at the present day, many more figures appearing on the stage,
and the mode of working them being different from that now in use in
strolling puppet-shows, where the usual and very simple process is for
the showman to insert his fingers in the sleeves of the actors, only
half of whose body is visible. Master Peter’s show was of a much more
elevated style, and seems to have possessed all the newest improvements;
as for instance, when the Moor steals softly behind Melisendra and
prints a kiss in the very middle of her lips, we are told that “she
spits, and wipes them with the sleeves of her shift, lamenting aloud,
and tearing for anger her beautiful hair.” If the Lady Melisendra really
did spit—and that the word was not a figure of speech of Master Peter’s
boy, whose flippancy his master and the Knight of the Rueful Countenance
had more than once to reprove—the civilisation of Spanish puppets must
have been in a very forward state, for we find M. Magnin recording, as a
novel triumph of puppet-mechanism, similar achievements in Germany in
the present century. When Goethe’s _Faust_ gave a fresh vogue to the
marionette exhibition, from which he had derived his first idea of the
subject, Geisselbrecht, a Viennese mechanician, got up the piece with
those docile performers, under the title of _Doctor Faust_, the great
Necromancer, in Five Acts, with songs, and performed it at Frankfort,
Vienna, and at Weimar, Goethe’s residence. “He strove to excel Dreher
and Schütz (other proprietors of marionettes) by the mechanical
perfection of his little actors, whom he made raise and cast down their
eyes. He even made them _cough_ and _spit_ very naturally, feats which
Casperle,[3] as may be supposed, performed as often as possible. M. Von
der Hagen, scoffing at this puerile marvel, applied Schiller’s lines,
from _Wallenstein’s Camp_, to the Austrian mechanician:—
‘Wie er räuspert und wie er spuckt
Das habt Ihr ihm glücklich abgeguckt;
Aber sein Genie....’”[4]
As regards his puppets’ expectorating accomplishments, Geisselbrecht
appears merely to have revived the traditions handed down from the days
of Gines de Passamonte. But we are again losing the thread of our
discourse amongst those of the countless marionettes that glide, skip,
and dance over the pages of M. Magnin. Having spoken in this paragraph
of the general form and fashion of the ambulant puppet-show, and having
in so doing strayed from Italy into Germany and Spain, we will go
somewhat farther, to look at the most compact and portable of all
exhibitions of the kind. This is to be found in China. There the
peripatetic showman elevates himself upon a small platform, and puts on
a sort of case or sheath of blue cotton, tight at the ankles, and
widening as it approaches the shoulders. Thus accoutred, he looks like a
statue in a bag. He then places upon his shoulders a box in the form of
a theatre, which encloses his head. His hands, concealed under the dress
of the puppets, present these to the spectators, and make them act at
his will. The performance over, he shuts up actors and sheath in the
box, and carries it away under his arm.
The higher class of marionettes, that have permanent establishments in
all the towns of Italy and in various other Continental countries, and a
colony of whom lately settled in London, would surely feel a thrill of
indignation through every fibre and atom of their composite bodies, were
they to hear themselves assimilated to the hardy plebeian puppets that
pitch their tent in the gutter or by the road-side, and jest for all
comers on the chance of coppers. Here you have him at the street
corner—Punch, the ribald and the profligate, maltreating his wife,
teasing his dog, hanging the hangman, and beating the devil himself. Or,
open this portfolio, containing Pinelli’s charming collection of Italian
picturesque costumes. Here is Pulcinella, with his black half-mask, his
tight white jerkin, his mitre-shaped cap. What a group he has gathered
around him:—idle monks, stately and beautiful Roman women, swarthy and
vigorous _Trasteverini_, children on tiptoe with delight, a lingering
peasant, who has stopped his ass to enjoy for a moment the fascinating
spectacle and pungent jokes. Nor is the audience always of so humble a
description. Persons of rank and education have frequently been known to
mingle with it; and tradition relates that the celebrated Leone Allacci,
librarian of the Vatican under Alexander VII., author of many great
theological works, and of the _Dramaturgia_, went nightly for recreation
to the puppet-show. In social position, however, the _al fresco_
performers are necessarily far inferior to the more elegant and tender
puppets who have a settled habitation, a smart and spacious stage, a
fixed price, and who, instead of having their master’s hands rudely
thrust under their petticoats, are decorously and genteelly manœuvred by
means of springs and wires. The difference is manifest: it is
Richardson’s booth to the Italian Opera; the _Funambules_ to the
_Comédie Française_. Moreover, the materials of the marionette
aristocracy are very superior indeed to those of the common out-of-door
jokers. They are by no means of the same clay or from the same mould.
They are not cut out of a block, daubed with gaudy paint, and dressed in
coarse and tawdry rags. M. Magnin lets us into the secret of their
structure and motions. “Their head is usually of card-board; their body
and thighs are wooden, their arms of cord; their extremities (that is to
say, their hands and their legs) are of lead, or partially so, which
enables them to obey the slightest impulse given them, without losing
their centre of gravity.” From the top of their head issues a little
iron rod, by means of which they are easily transported from one part of
the stage to another. To conceal this rod and the movement of the
threads from the spectators, the plan was devised of placing in front of
the stage a sort of screen, composed of very fine perpendicular threads,
drawn very tight, which, blending with those that move the puppets,
deceive the most attentive eye. By another still more ingenious
invention, all the strings, excepting those of the arms, were made to
pass within the body and out at the top of the head, where they were
assembled in a slender iron tube, which served at the same time as the
rod to move the figures. A totally different system was subsequently
introduced by Bartholomew Neri, a distinguished painter and mechanician.
It was that of grooves, in which the marionettes were fixed. Their
movements were directed by persons beneath the stage, who also pulled
their strings. These various systems, sometimes combined, have produced
the most astonishing results. One of our countrymen, passing through
Genoa in 1834, was taken to the marionette theatre _delle Vigne_, and
witnessed the performance of a grand military drama, _The Siege of
Antwerp_, in which Marshal Gerard and old General Chassé vied with each
other in sonorous phrases, rolling eyes, and heroism. The fantoccini of
the _Fiando_ theatre at Milan are as celebrated and as much visited by
foreigners as the dome, the arch of the Simplon, or the shrine of St
Charles. In 1823, a correspondent of the _Globe_ newspaper spoke of them
thus: “Such is the precision of movement of these little actors, their
bodies, arms, head, all gesticulate with such judgment, and in such
perfect unison with the sentiments expressed by the voice, that, but for
the dimensions, I might have thought myself in the Rue de Richelieu.
Besides _Nebuchadnezzar_, a classic tragedy, they performed an
anacreontic ballet. I wish our opera-dancers, so proud of their legs and
arms, could see these wooden dancers copy all their attitudes and
graces.” Dancing is a department of their performances in which the
Italian marionettes excel. A French author, Mr Jal, who published,
nearly twenty years ago, a lively narrative of a ramble from Paris to
Naples, was wonder-struck by what he saw at the _Fiando_. The grand
romantic drama in six tableaux, _Prince Eugene of Savoy at the Siege of
Temeswar_, which composed the bulk of the evening’s performance,
astonished him much less than the ballet between its acts. “The dancing
of these wooden Perrots and Taglionis,” he says, “is truly not to be
imagined; horizontal dance, side dance, vertical dance, every possible
dance, all the flourishes of feet and legs that you admire at the opera,
are to be seen at the _Fiando_ theatre; and when the doll has danced her
dance, when she has been well applauded, and the pit calls for her, she
comes out from the side scenes, bows, puts her little hand on her heart,
and disappears only when she has completely parodied the great singers
and the proud dancers of _La Scala_.” But doubtless the greatest
compliment these doll-dancers ever received, was the practical one paid
them by the Roman authorities, who compelled the female marionettes to
wear drawers! The completeness of the illusion in the case of these
puppets suggested some curious reflections to a clever French critic, M.
Peisse, with respect to reality in painting, and the laws of material
illusion. Speaking of the Roman _burattini_, “These,” he says, “are
little figures worked by a man placed above the stage, which is arranged
exactly like that of our theatres. For some minutes after the rising of
the curtain, the puppets preserve their true dimensions, but soon they
grow larger to the eye, and in a short time they have the appearance of
real men. The space in which they move, the furniture, and all the
surrounding objects, being in exact proportion with their stature, the
illusion is perfect, and is sustained so long as the eye has no point of
comparison. But if, as sometimes happens, the hand of the manager shows
itself amongst the little actors, it seems that of a giant.... If a man
suddenly came amongst the marionettes, he would appear a Gargantua.”
Another well-known and esteemed French writer on Italy, M. Beyle
(Stendhal),[5] tells of the realisation of this last ingenious
supposition. He relates, that after the performance (at the Palazzo
Fiano at Rome) of _Cassandrino allievo di un pittore_ (Cassandrino pupil
of a painter), a child coming upon the stage to trim the lamps, two or
three strangers uttered a cry; they took the child for a giant. In all
the principal towns of Italy through which he passed, M. Beyle waited
upon the marionettes—now in theatres, then in private houses—and the
pages he devotes to them are full of that fineness of observation which
characterised his charming talent. We can hardly do better than extract
his first impressions. “Yesterday, towards nine o’clock,” he says, “I
quitted those magnificent saloons, adjacent to a garden full of orange
trees, which are called the _Café Rospoli_. The _Fiano_ palace is just
opposite. At the door of a sort of cellar stood a man, exclaiming,
‘_Entrate, ô signori!_ it is about to begin!’ For the sum of
twenty-eight centimes (three-pence), I was admitted to the little
theatre. The low price made me fear bad company and fleas. I was soon
reassured; my neighbours were respectable citizens of Rome. The Roman
people is perhaps in all Europe that which best loves and seizes
delicate and cutting satire. The theatrical censors being more rigid
than at Paris, nothing can be tamer than the comedies at the theatre.
Laughter has taken refuge with the marionettes, whose performances are
in great measure extemporaneous. I passed a very agreeable evening at
the Fiano palace; the stage on which the actors paraded their small
persons was some ten feet broad and four high. The decorations were
excellent, and carefully adapted to actors twelve inches in height.” The
pet character with the Romans is Cassandrino, an elderly gentleman of
fifty-five or sixty years of age, fresh, active, dandified, well
powdered, well dressed, and well got up, with excellent manners, and
much knowledge of the world, whose only failing is, that he falls in
love with all the women he meets. “It must be owned,” says M. Beyle,
“that the character is not badly devised in a country governed by an
oligarchical court composed of bachelors, and where the power is in the
hands of old age.” I need hardly say that Cassandrino, although a
churchman, is not bound by monastic rules—is in fact a layman—but I
would wager that there is not a spectator who does not invest him in
imagination with a cardinal’s red cap, or at least with the violet
stockings of a _monsignore_. The _monsignori_ are, it is well known, the
young men of the papal court; it is the place that leads to all others.
Rome is full of _monsignori_ of Cassandrino’s age, who have their
fortune still to make, and who seek amusement whilst waiting for the
cardinal’s hat. Cassandrino is the hero of innumerable little plays. His
susceptible heart continually leads him into scrapes. Disguised as a
young man, he goes to take lessons of a painter, with whose sister he is
in love, is detected by the lady’s aunt whom he had formerly courted,
escapes from her into the studio, is roughly treated by the pupils,
threatened with a dagger’s point by the painter, and at last, to avoid
scandal, which he fears more than the poniard, abandons all hope of the
red hat, and consents to marry the aunt. In another piece, tired of the
monotony of his solitary home, he makes a journey to Civita Vecchia, and
meets with all manner of ludicrous mishaps; and in a third, entitled
_Cassandrino dilettante e impresario_, his too great love of music and
the fair sex gets him into quarrels with _tenori_ and _bassi_, and
especially with the _prima donna_ whom he courts, and with the _maestro_
who is his rival. This _maestro_ is in the prime of youth; he has light
hair and blue eyes, he loves pleasure and good cheer, his wit is yet
more seductive than his person. All these qualities, and the very style
of his dress, remind the audience of one of the few great men modern
Italy has produced. There is a burst of applause; they recognise and
greet Rossini.
Of the performances of marionettes in the houses of the Italian nobility
and middle classes, it is naturally much less easy to obtain details
than of those given in public. It is generally understood, however, that
the private puppets are far from prudish, and allow themselves tolerable
license in respect of politics. At Florence, at the house of a rich
merchant, a party was assembled to witness the performance of a company
of marionettes. M. Beyle was there. “The theatre was a charming toy,
only five feet wide, and which, nevertheless, was an exact model of a
large theatre. Before the play began, the lights in the apartment were
extinguished. A company of twenty-four marionettes, eight inches in
height, with leaden legs, and which had cost a sequin apiece, performed
a _rather free_ comedy, abridged from Machiavelli’s _Mandragora_.” At
Naples the performance was satirical, and its hero a secretary of state.
In pieces of this kind, there is generally a speaker for every puppet;
and as it often happens that the speakers are personally acquainted with
the voice, ideas, and peculiarities of the persons intended to be
caricatured, great perfection and point is thus given to the
performance.
When the passion of the Italians for marionettes is found to be so
strong, so general, so persevering, and, we may add, so refined and
ingenious, it is not to be wondered at that most other European
countries are largely indebted to Italy for their progress, improvement,
and, in some cases, almost for the first rudiments of this minor branch
of the drama. Even the Spain of the Middle Ages, in most things so
original and self-relying, was under some obligations to Italy in this
respect. The first name of any mark which presents itself to the student
of the history of Spanish puppet-shows is that of a skilful
mathematician of Cremona, Giovanni Torriani, surnamed Gianello, of whom
the learned critic Covarrubias speaks as “a second Archimedes;” adding,
that this illustrious foreigner brought _titeres_ to great perfection.
That so distinguished a man should have wasted his time on such
frivolities requires some explanation. The Emperor Charles V.’s love of
curious mechanism induced many of the first mechanicians of Germany and
Italy to apply themselves to the production of extraordinary automatons.
Writers have spoken of an artificial eagle which flew to meet him on his
entrance into Nuremberg, and of a wonderful iron fly, presented to him
by Jean de Montroyal, which, took wing of itself, described circles in
the air, and then settled on his arm—marvels of science which other
authors have treated as mere fables. Gianello won the emperor’s favour
by the construction of an admirable clock, followed him to Spain, and
passed two years with him in his monastic retreat, striving, by
ingenious inventions, to raise the spirits of his melancholy patron,
depressed by unwonted inactivity. “Charles V.,” says Flaminio Strada,
historian of the war in Flanders, “busied himself, in the solitude of
the cloisters of St Just, with the construction of clocks. He had for
his master in that art Gianello Torriani, the Archimedes of that time,
who daily invented new mechanisms to occupy the mind of Charles, eager
and curious of all those things. Often, after dinner, Gianello displayed
upon the prince’s table little figures of horses and armed men. There
were some that beat the drum, others that sounded the trumpet; some were
seen advancing against each other at a gallop, like enemies, and
assailing each other with lances. Sometimes the ingenious mechanician
let loose in the room small wooden birds, which flew in all directions,
and which were constructed with such marvellous artifice that one day
the superior of the convent, chancing to be present, appeared to fear
that there was magic in the matter.” The attention of Charles V., even
in the decline of his genius, was not, however, wholly engrossed by such
toys as these. He and Torriani discussed and solved more useful and more
serious problems—one, amongst others, which Gianello realised after the
prince’s death, and which consisted in raising the waters of the Tagus
to the heights of Toledo. The improvements introduced by the skilful
mechanician of Cremona into the construction of marionettes were soon
adopted by the _titereros_. Puppets were already a common amusement in
Spain, and had right of station on all public places, and at all fairs,
and entrance into most churches. It is to be observed, that Italian
influence can be traced in the Peninsula only in the material and
mechanical departments of the marionette theatres. The characters and
the subjects of the plays have always been strictly national,
notwithstanding that, from the beginning of the seventeenth century down
to the commencement of the nineteenth—and probably even at the present
day—the exhibitors of these shows were principally foreigners, including
many gypsies. Punchinello succeeded in getting naturalised under the
name of Don Cristoval Pulichinela; but he does not appear ever to have
played a prominent part, and probably was rather a sort of supernumerary
to the show, like Master Peter’s ape. Occupation was perhaps hard to
find for him in the class of pieces preferred by Spanish taste. The
nature of these it is not difficult to conjecture. Spain, superstitious,
chivalrous, and semi-Moorish, hastened to equip its puppets in knightly
harness and priestly robes. “Moors, knights, giants, enchanters, the
conquerors of the Indies, the characters of the Old and the New
Testament, and especially saints and hermits, are,” says M. Magnin, “the
usual actors in these shows. The _titeres_ so frequently wear monkish
garb, especially in Portugal, that the circumstance has had an influence
on their name in this country, where they are more often called
_bonifrates_ than _titeres_. The composition of _bonifrate_ (although
the word is old, perhaps older than _titere_) indicates an Italian
origin.” Legends of saints and the book of ballads (_Romancero_)
supplied most of the subjects of the plays performed by Spanish puppets.
Of this we have an example in the drama selected by Cervantes for
performance by Master Peter’s _titeres_ before Don Quixote. In the
course of his researches, M. Magnin was surprised to find (although he
ought, perhaps, to have expected it) that bull-fights have had their
turn of popularity on the boards of the Spanish puppet-show. He traces
this in a curious old _picaresque_ romance, the memoirs of the _picara
Justina_. This adventurous heroine gives sundry particulars of the life
of her great-grandfather, who had kept a theatre of _titeres_ at
Seville, and who put such smart discourse into the mouths of his actors
that, to hear him, the women who sold fruit and chestnuts and _turrones_
(cakes of almonds and honey, still in use in Spain) quitted their goods
and their customers, leaving their hat or their _brasero_ (pan of hot
embers) to keep shop. The popular manager was unfortunately of irregular
habits, and expended his substance in riotous living. His money went,
his mules, his puppets—the very boards of his theatre were sold, and his
health left him with his worldly goods, so that he became the inmate of
an hospital. When upon the eve of giving up the ghost, his granddaughter
relates, he lost his senses, and became subject to such furious fits of
madness, that one day he imagined himself to be a puppet-show bull (_un
toro de titeres_), and that he was to fight a stone cross which stood in
the court of the hospital. Accordingly, he attacked it, crying out, “_Ah
perra! que te ageno!_” (words of defiance), and fell dead. The sister of
charity, a good simple woman, seeing this, exclaimed, “Oh the thrice
happy man! he has died at the foot of the cross, and whilst invoking
it!” At a recent date (1808), a French _savant_, travelling in Spain,
went to the puppet theatre at Valencia. _The Death of Seneca_ was the
title of the piece performed. In presence of the audience, the
celebrated philosopher, the pride of Cordova, ended historically by
opening his veins in a bath. The streams of blood that flowed from his
arms were simulated cleverly enough by the movement of a red ribbon. An
unexpected miracle, less historical than the mode of death, wound up the
drama. Amidst the noise of fireworks, the pagan sage was taken up into
heaven in a _glory_, pronouncing, as he ascended, the confession of his
faith in Jesus Christ, to the perfect satisfaction of the audience. The
smell of powder must have been a novelty to Seneca’s nostrils; but
doubtless the rockets contributed greatly to the general effect of the
scene, and Spain, the country of anomalies, is not to be disconcerted by
an anachronism.
Into whatever country we follow the footsteps of the numerous and motley
family of the Puppets, we find that, however exotic their habits may be
on their first arrival in the land, they speedily become a reflex of the
peculiar genius, tastes, and characteristics of its people. Thus in
Italy, the land of song and dance, of strict theatrical censors, and
despotic governments, we find the _burattini_ dealing in sharp but
polished jests at the expense of their rulers, excelling in the ballet,
and performing Rossini’s operas, without suppressions or curtailment,
with an orchestra of five or six instruments and singers behind the
scenes. The Spanish _titere_ couches his lance and rides forth to meet
the Moor and rescue captive maidens, marches with Cortes to the conquest
of Montezuma’s capital, or enacts, with more or less decorum, a moving
incident from Holy Writ. In the _Jokken_ and _Puppen_ of Germany we
recognise the metaphysical and fantastical tendencies of that country,
its broad and rather heavy humour, its quaint superstitions, domestic
sprites, and enchanted bullets. And in France, where puppet-shows were
early cherished, and encouraged by the aristocracy as well as by the
people, we need not wonder to find them elegant, witty, and
frivolous—modelling themselves, in fact, upon their patrons. M. Magnin
dwells long upon the puppets of his native land, which possess, however,
less character and strongly marked originality than those of some of the
other countries he discourses of. It is here he first traces the
etymology of the word _marionette_—unmistakably French, although it has
been of late years adopted in Germany and England. He considers it to be
one of the numerous affectionate diminutives of the name of Marie, which
crept into the French language in its infancy, and which soon came to be
applied to those little images of the Virgin that were exhibited, gaily
dressed and tinsel bedecked, to the adoration of the devout. In a
pastoral poem of the 13th century, he finds the pretty name of
Marionette applied by her lover to a young girl called Marion. “Several
streets of old Paris, in which were sold or exposed images of the Virgin
and saints, were called, some _Rues des Marmouzets_ (there are still two
streets of this name in Paris), others _Rues des Mariettes_, and
somewhat later, _Rues des Marionettes_. As irony makes its way
everywhere, the amiable or religious sense of the words _Marotte_,
_Mariotte_, and _Marionette_, was soon exchanged for a jesting and
profane one. In the 15th century there was sung, in the streets and
taverns, an unchaste ditty called the _Chant Marionnette_. The bauble of
a licensed fool was called, and is still called, _marotte_; ‘by reason,’
says Ménage, ‘of the head of a marionette—that is to say, of a little
girl’—which surmounts it; and at last mountebanks irreverently called
their wooden actors and actresses _marmouzets_ and _mariottes_. At the
end of the 16th century and commencement of the 17th, several Protestant
or sceptical writers were well pleased to confound, with an intention of
mockery, the religious and the profane sense of the words _marmouzets_
and _marionettes_. Henry Estienne, inveighing, in his _Apologie pour
Herodote_, against the chastisements inflicted on the Calvinists for the
mutilation of madonnas and images of saints, exclaims: ‘Never did the
Egyptians take such cruel vengeance for the murder of their cats, as has
been seen wreaked, in our days, on those who had mutilated some
_marmouzet_ or _marionette_.’” It is curious here again to trace the
connection between Roman image-worship and the puppet-show. The
marionette, at first reverently placed in niches, with spangled robe and
burning lamp, is presently found perched at the end of a jester’s bauble
and parading a juggler’s board. The question here is only of a name,
soon abandoned by the sacred images to its disreputable usurpers. But we
have already seen, especially in the case of Spain, what a scandalous
confusion came to pass between religious ceremonies and popular
entertainments, until at times these could hardly be distinguished from
those; and, as far as what occurred within them went, spectators might
often be perplexed to decide whether they were in a sacred edifice or a
showman’s booth. With respect to the French term _marionette_, it had
yet to undergo, after its decline and fall from a sacred to a profane
application, a still deeper degradation, before its final confinement to
the class of puppets it at the present day indicates. In the 16th
century it came to be applied not only to mechanical images of all
kinds, sacred and profane, but, by a strange extension of its meaning,
to the supposed supernatural dolls and malignant creatures that
sorcerers were accused of fostering, as familiar imps and as idols. From
a huge quarto printed in Paris in 1622, containing a collection of
trials for magic which took place between 1603 and 1615, M. Magnin
extracts a passage showing how certain poor idiots were accused of
“having kept, close confined and in subjection in their houses,
_marionettes_, which are little devils, having usually the form of
toads, sometimes of apes, always very hideous.” The rack, the gallows,
and the faggot were the usual lot of the unfortunate supposed possessors
of these unwholesome puppets.
There are instances on record of long discussions and fierce disputes
between provinces or towns for the honour of having been the birthplace
of some great hero, poet, or philosopher. In like manner, M. Magnin
labours hard, and expends much erudition, to prove that the French
_Polichinelle_, notwithstanding the similarity of name, is neither the
son, nor in any way related to the Italian _Pulcinella_, but is
thoroughly French in origin and character. That Harlequin and Pantaloon
came from south of the Alps he readily admits; also, that a name has
been borrowed from Italy for the French Punch. But he stands up manfully
for the originality of this jovial and dissipated puppet, which he
maintains to be a thoroughly Gallic type. Whether conclusive or not—a
point to the settlement of which we will not give many lines—the
arguments and facts he brings forward are ingenious and amusing. After
displaying the marked difference that exists in every respect, except in
that of the long hooked nose and the name, between the Punchinello of
Paris and that of Naples—the latter being a tall straight-backed active
fellow, dressed in a black half-mask, a grey pointed hat, a white frock
and trousers, and a tight girdle, and altogether of a different
character from his more northern namesake—he has the audacity to broach,
although with some hesitation, the bold idea that Polichinelle is a
portrait of the great Béarnais. “To hide nothing of my thought, I must
say that, under the necessary exaggeration of a loyal caricature,
Polichinelle exhibits the popular type, I dare not say of Henry IV., but
at any rate of the Gascon officer imitating his master’s bearing in the
guardroom of the palace of St Germain, or of the old Louvre. As to the
hunch, it has been from time immemorial the appendage, in France, of a
facetious, witty fellow. In the thirteenth century, Adam de la Halle was
called the _hunchback of Arras_, not that he was deformed, but on
account of his humorous vein.
On m’appelle bochu, mais je ne le suis mie.
The second hump, the one in front, conspicuous under his spangled
doublet, reminds us of the glittering and protuberant cuirass of
men-at-arms, and of the pigeon-breasted dress then in fashion, which
imitated the curve of the cuirass.[6] The very hat of Polichinelle (I do
not refer to his modern three-cornered covering, but to the beaver, with
brim turned up, which he still wore in the seventeenth century), was the
hat of the gentlemen of that day, the hat _à la Henri IV._ Finally,
certain characteristic features of his face, as well as the bold jovial
amorous temper of the jolly fellow, remind us, in caricature, of the
qualities and the defects of the Béarnais. In short, notwithstanding his
Neapolitan name, Polichinelle appears to me to be a completely national
type, and one of the most vivacious and sprightly creations of French
fancy.”
The first puppet-showmen in France whose names have been handed down to
posterity, were a father and son called Brioché. According to the most
authentic of the traditions collected, Jean Brioché exercised, at the
beginning of Louis XIV.’s reign, the two professions of tooth-drawer and
puppet-player. His station was at the end of the Pont Neuf, near the
gate of Nesle, and his comrade was the celebrated monkey Fagotin. With
or without his consent, Polichinelle was about this time dragged into
politics. Amongst the numerous Mazarinades and political satires that
deluged Paris in 1649, there was one entitled _Letter from Polichinelle
to Jules Mazarin_. It was in prose, but ended by these three lines, by
way of signature:—
“Je suis Polichinelle,
Qui fait la sentinelle
A la porte de Nesle.”
It is also likely that the letter was the work of Brioché or Briocchi
(who was perhaps a countryman and _protégé_ of the cardinal’s), written
with a view to attract notice and increase his popularity (a good
advertisement, in short), than that it proceeded from the pen of some
political partisan. But in any case it serves to show that the French
Punch was then a great favourite in Paris. “I may boast,” he is made to
say in the letter, “without vanity, Master Jules, that I have always
been better liked and more respected by the people than you have; for
how many times have I, with my own ears, heard them say: ‘Let us go and
see Polichinelle!’ whereas nobody ever heard them say: ‘Let us go and
see Mazarin!’” The unfortunate Fagotin came to an untimely end, if we
are to put faith in a little book now very rare (although it has gone
through several editions), entitled, _Combat de Cirano de Bergerac
contre le singe de Brioché_. This Cirano was a mad duellist of extreme
susceptibility. “His nose,” says Ménage, “which was much disfigured, was
cause of the death of more than ten persons. He could not endure that
any should look at him, and those who did had forthwith to draw and
defend themselves.” This lunatic, it is said, one day took Fagotin for a
lackey who was making faces at him, and ran him through on the spot. The
story may have been a mere skit on Cirano’s quarrelsome humour; but the
mistake he is said to have made, appears by no means impossible when we
become acquainted with the appearance and dress of the famous monkey.
“He was as big as a little man, and a devil of a droll,” says the author
of the _Combat de Cirano_; “his master had put him on an old Spanish
hat, whose dilapidations were concealed by a plume; round his neck was a
frill _à la Scaramouche_; he wore a doublet with six movable skirts,
trimmed with lace and tags—a garment that gave him rather the look of a
lackey—and a shoulder-belt from which hung a pointless blade.” It was
this innocent weapon, according to the writer quoted from, that poor
Fagotin had the fatal temerity to brandish against the terrible Cirano.
Whatever the manner of his death, his fame lived long after him; and
even as certain famous French comedians have transmitted their names to
the particular class of parts they filled during their lives, so did
Fagotin bequeath his to all monkeys attached to puppet-shows. Loret, in
his metrical narrative of the wonders of the fair of St Germain’s in the
year 1664, talks of “the apes and fagotins;” La Fontaine praises
_Fagotin’s tricks_ in his fable of _The Lion and his Court_, and Molière
makes the sprightly and malicious Dorine promise Tartuffe’s intended
wife that she shall have, in carnival time,
“Le sal et la grand ’branle, à savoir deux musettes,
Et parfois _Fagotin et les marionnettes_.”
Great honour, indeed, for a quadrumane comedian, to obtain even
incidental mention from France’s first fabulist and greatest dramatist.
It was at about the time of Tartuffe’s performance (1669) that
puppet-shows appear to have been at the zenith of their popularity in
France, and in the enjoyment of court favour. In the accounts of
expenditure of the royal treasury is noted a payment of 1365 livres “to
Brioché, player of marionettes, for the stay he made at St
Germain-en-Laye during the months of September, October, and November,
to divert the royal children.” Brioché had been preceded by another
puppet-showman, who had remained nearly two months. The dauphin was then
nine years old, and evidently very fond of Polichinelle—to whose
exploits and drolleries, and to the tricks of Fagotin, it is not,
however, to be supposed that the attractions of Brioché’s performances
were confined. He and his brother showman had doubtless a numerous
company of marionettes, performing a great variety of pieces, since they
were able to amuse the dauphin and his juvenile court for nearly five
months without intermission. Like all distinguished men, Brioché,
decidedly one of the celebrities of his time, and to whom we find
constant allusions in the prose and verse of that day, had his enemies
and his rivals. Amongst the former was to be reckoned no less a
personage than Bossuet, who denounced marionettes (with a severity that
might rather have been expected from some straight-laced Calvinist than
from a prelate of Rome) as a shameful and impure entertainment,
calculated to counteract his laborious efforts for the salvation of his
flock. M. Magnin’s extensive researches in puppet chronicles leave him
convinced that the eloquent bishop must have been in bilious temper when
thus attacking the poor little figures whose worst offences were a few
harmless drolleries. Anthony Hamilton, in a letter, half verse and half
prose, addressed to the daughter of James II. of England, describes the
fête of St Germain-en-Laye, and gives us the measure of the marionettes’
transgressions. “The famous Polichinelle,” he says, “the hero of that
stage, is a little free in his discourse, but not sufficiently so to
bring a blush to the cheek of the damsel he diverts by his witticisms.”
We would not take Anthony Hamilton’s evidence in such matters for more
than it is worth. There was, no doubt, a fair share of license in the
pieces arranged for these puppets, or in the jests introduced by their
invisible readers; and as regards their actions, M. Magnin himself tells
us of the _houzarde_, an extremely _gaillarde_ dance, resembling that
called the _antiquaile_ mentioned in Rabelais. Notwithstanding which,
the marionettes were in great favour with very honest people, and
Charles Perrault, one of the most distinguished members of the old
French Academy, praised them in verse as an agreeable pastime. The jokes
Brioché put into the mouths of his actors were greatly to the taste of
the Parisians; so much so that when an English mechanician exhibited
other puppets which he had contrived to move by springs instead of
strings, the public still preferred Brioché, “on account of the
drolleries he made them say.” That he was not always and everywhere so
successful, we learn by a quaint extract from the _Combat de Cirano_,
already mentioned. Brioché, says the facetious author, “one day took it
into his head to ramble afar with his little restless wooden Æsop,
twisting, turning, dancing, laughing, chattering, &c. This heteroclite
marmouzet, or, better to speak, this comical hunchback, was called
Polichinelle. His comrade’s name was Voisin. (More likely, suggests M.
Magnin, the _voisin_, the neighbour or gossip of Polichinelle.) After
visiting several towns and villages, they got on Swiss ground in a
canton where marionettes were unknown. Polichinelle having shown his
phiz, as well as all his gang, in presence of a people given to burn
sorcerers, they accused Brioché to the magistrate. Witnesses declared
that they had heard little figures jabber and talk, and that they must
be devils. Judgment was pronounced against the master of this wooden
company animated by springs. But for the interference of a man of sense
they would have made a roast of Brioché. They contented themselves with
stripping the marionettes naked. _O poveretta!_” The same story is told
by the Abbé d’Artigny, who lays the scene at Soleure, and says that
Brioché owed his release to a captain of the French-Swiss regiment then
recruiting in the cantons. Punch at that time had powerful protectors.
Brioché’s son and successor, Francis, whom the Parisians familiarly
called _Fanchon_, having been offensively interfered with, wrote at once
to the king. It would seem that, without quitting the vicinity of the
Pont Neuf, he desired to transfer his standing to the Faubourg St
Germains end, and that the commissaire of that district prohibited his
exhibition. On the 16th October 1676, the great Colbert wrote to the
lieutenant-general of police, communicating his majesty’s commands that
Brioché should be permitted to exercise his calling, and should have a
proper place assigned to him where he might do so.
The history of the French marionettes, during the first half of the
eighteenth century, is given in considerable detail by M. Magnin, but
does not contain any very striking episodes. It is to be feared their
morals got rather relaxed during the latter years of Louis XIV.’s reign,
and under the Regency, and Bossuet might then have thundered against
them with greater reason than in 1686. Towards the middle of the
century, a great change took place in the character of their
performances: witty jests, and allusions to the scandal of court and
city, were neglected for the sake of mechanical effects and surprises;
the vaudeville and polished farce, for which the French stage has long
been and still is famous, were replaced by showy dramas and _pièces à
spectacle_, in which the military element seems to have predominated,
judging from the titles of some of them—The Bombardment of Antwerp, The
Taking of Charleroi, The General Assault of Bergen-op-Zoom. It was the
commencement of the decline of puppet performances in France; the public
taste underwent a change; the eye was to be gratified, wit and satire
were in great measure dispensed with. “Vaucanson’s automatons, the
flute-player, the duck, &c., were imitated in every way, and people ran
in crowds to see Kempel’s chess-player. At the fair of St Germains, in
1744, a Pole, named Toscani, opened a picturesque and automatical
theatre, which seems to have served as a prelude to M. Pierre’s famous
show. ‘Here are to be seen,’ said the bills, ‘mountains, castles, marine
views; also figures that perfectly imitate all natural movements,
without being visibly acted upon by any string; and, which is still more
surprising, here are seen a storm, rain, thunder, vessels perishing,
sailors swimming, &c.’ On all hands such marvels as these were
announced, and also (I blush to write it) combats of wild animals.” Bull
and bear baits, wolf and dog fights, in refined France, just a century
ago, for all the world as in England in the days of buxom Queen Bess. M.
Magnin copies an advertisement of one of these savage exhibitions, which
might pass for a translated placard of the beast-fighting establishment
that complained of the opposition made to them by Will Shakespeare and
his players. Martin was the name of the man who kept the pit at the
_barrière de Sèvres_; and after lauding the wickedness of his bull, the
tenacity of his dogs, and the exceeding fierceness of his new wolf, he
informs the public that he has “pure bear oil for sale.” When Paris ran
after such coarse diversions as these, what hope was there for the elves
of the puppet-show? Punch shrugged his hump, and crept moodily into a
corner. Bull-rings and mechanism were too many for him. Twenty years
later we find him again in high favour and feather at the fair of St
Germains, where Audinot, an author and ex-singer at the united comic and
Italian operas, having quarrelled with his comrades and quitted the
theatre, exhibited large marionettes, which he called _bamboches_, and
which were striking likenesses of the performers at the Opéra Comique,
Laruette, Clairval, Madam Bérard, and himself. Polichinelle appeared
amongst them in the character of a gentleman of the bedchamber, and
found the same sort of popularity that Cassandrino has since enjoyed at
Rome. The monarchy was in its decline, the follies and vices of the
courtiers of the 18th century had brought them into contempt, and a
parody of them was welcome to the people. The fair over, Audinot
installed his puppets in a little theatre on the boulevard, which he
called the _Ambigu Comique_, to indicate the variety of the
entertainments there given, and there he brought out several new pieces,
one, amongst others, entitled _Le Testament de Polichinelle_. It was
quite time for Punch to make his will; his theatre was in a very weakly
state. It became the fashion to replace puppets by children; and one
hears little more of marionettes in France until Seraphin revives them
in his _Ombres Chinoises_. Few persons who have been in Paris will have
failed to notice, when walking round the Palais Royal between two and
three in the afternoon, or seven and nine in the evening, a shrivelled
weary-looking man, standing just within the railings that separate the
gallery from the garden, and continually repeating, in a tone between a
whine, a chant, and a croak, a monotonous formula, at first not very
intelligible to a foreigner. This man has acquired all the rights that
long occupation can give: the flagstone whereon, day after day, as long
as we can remember—and doubtless for a score or two of years before—he
has stood sentry, is worn hollow by the shuffling movement by which he
endeavours to retain warmth in his feet. He is identified with the
railings against which he stands, and is as much a part of the Palais
Royal as the glass gallery, Chevet’s shop, or the cannon that daily
fires itself off at noon. A little attention enables one to discover the
purport of his unvarying harangue. It begins with “_Les Ombres Chinoises
de Seraphin_”—this very drawlingly spoken—and ends with “_Prrrrenez vos
billets_”—a rattle on the _r_, and the word _billets_ dying away in a
sort of exhausted whine. In 1784, the ingenious Dominique Seraphin
exhibited his Chinese shadows several times before the royal family at
Versailles, was allowed to call his theatre “_Spectacle des Enfans de
France_,” and took up his quarters in the Palais Royal, in the very
house opposite to whose door the monotonous and melancholy man above
described at the present day “touts” for an audience. There for seventy
years Seraphin and his descendants have pulled the strings of their
puppets. But here, as M. Magnin observes, it is no longer movable
_sculpture_, but movable _painting_—the shadows of figures cut out of
sheets of pasteboard or leather, and placed between a strong light and a
transparent curtain. The shadows, owing doubtless to their intangible
nature, have passed unscathed through the countless political changes
and convulsions that have occurred during the three quarters of a
century that they have inhabited a nook in the palace which has been
alternately Cardinal, Royal, National, Imperial—all things by turn, and
nothing long. They have lasted and thriven, as far as bodiless shades
can thrive, under Republic and Empire, Directory and Consulate,
Restoration and Citizen Monarchy, Republic, and Empire again. We fear it
must be admitted that time-serving is at the bottom of this long
impunity and prosperity. In the feverish days of the first Revolution,
marionettes had _sans-culotte_ tendencies, with the exception of
Polichinelle, who, mindful doubtless of his descent from Henry IV.,
played the aristocrat, and carried his head so high, that at last he
lost it. M. Magnin passes hastily over this affecting phase in the
career of his puppet friends, merely quoting a few lines from Camille
Desmoulins, which bear upon the subject. “This selfish multitude,”
exclaims the _Vieux Cordelier_, indignant at the apathetic indifference
of the Parisians in presence of daily human hecatombs, “is formed to
follow blindly the impulse of the strongest. There was fighting in the
Carrousel and the Champ de Mars, and the Palais Royal displayed its
shepherdesses and its Arcadia. Close by the guillotine, beneath whose
keen edge fell crowned heads, on the same square, and at the same time,
_they also guillotined Polichinelle_, who divided the attention of the
eager crowd.” Punch, who had passed his life hanging the hangman, was at
a nonplus in presence of the guillotine. He missed the running noose he
was so skilful in drawing tight, and mournfully laid his neck in the
bloody groove. Some say that he escaped, that his dog was dressed up,
and beheaded in his stead, and that he himself reached a foreign shore,
where he presently regained his freedom of speech and former jollity of
character. M. Magnin himself is clearly of opinion that he is not dead,
but only sleeps. “Would it not be well,” he asks, “to awaken him here in
France? Can it be that the little Æsop has nothing new to tell us? Above
all, do not say that he is dead. Polichinelle never dies. You doubt it?
You do not know then what Polichinelle is? He is the good sense of the
people, the brisk sally, the irrepressible laugh. Yes, Polichinelle will
laugh, sing, and hiss, as long as the world contains vices, follies, and
things to ridicule. You see very well that Polichinelle is not near his
death. Polichinelle is immortal!”
To England M. Magnin allots nearly as many pages as to his own country,
and displays in them a rare acquaintance with our language, literature,
and customs. It would in no way have surprised him, he says, had the
playful and lightsome muse of the puppet-show been made less welcome by
the Germanic races than by nations of Greco-Roman origin. The grave and
more earnest temper generally attributed to the former would have
accounted for their disregard of a pastime they might deem frivolous,
and fail to appreciate. He was well pleased, then, to find his wooden
clients, his well-beloved marionettes, as popular and as well understood
on the banks of the Thames, the Oder, and the Zuyder Zee, as in Naples,
Paris, or Seville. “In England especially,” he says, “the taste for this
kind of spectacle has been so widely diffused, that one could hardly
name a single poet, from Chaucer to Lord Byron, or a single
prose-writer, from Sir Philip Sydney to Hazlitt, in whose works are not
to be found abundant information on the subject, or frequent allusions
to it. The dramatists, above all, beginning with those who are the glory
of the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., supply us with the most curious
particulars of the repertory, the managers, and the stage of the
marionettes. Shakespeare himself has not disdained to draw from this
singular arsenal ingenious or energetic metaphors, which he places in
the mouths of his most tragic personages at the most pathetic moments. I
can name ten or twelve of his plays in which this occurs.” (The list
follows.) “The cotemporaries and successors of this great poet—Ben
Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Davenant, Swift, Addison, Gay,
Fielding, Goldsmith, Sheridan—have also borrowed many moral or satirical
sallies from this popular diversion. Thanks to this singular tendency of
the English dramatists to busy themselves with the proceedings of their
little street-corner rivals, I have found in their writings much
assistance—as agreeable as unexpected—in the task I have undertaken.
Deprived, as one necessarily is in a foreign country, of direct sources
and original pamphlets, having at my disposal only those standard works
of great writers that are to be met with on the shelves of every
library, I have found it sufficient, strange to say! to collate the
passages so abundantly furnished me by these chosen authors to form a
collection of documents concerning English puppets more circumstantial
and more complete, I venture to think, than any that have hitherto been
got together by the best-informed native critics.” Others, if they
please, may controvert the claim here put forward; we shall content
ourselves with saying that the amount of research manifested in M.
Magnin’s long essay on English puppets does as much credit to his
industry as the manner of the compilation does to his judgment, acumen,
and literary talent. It must be observed, however, that he has not
altogether limited himself, when seeking materials and authorities, to
the chosen corps of English dramatists, poets, and essayists, but has
consulted sundry antiquarian authorities, tracts of the time of the
commonwealth, the works of Hogarth, those of Hone, Payne Collier, Thomas
Wright, and other modern or cotemporary writers. At the same time, this
portion of his book contains much that will be novel to most English
readers, and abounds in curious details and pertinent reflections on old
English character and usages. If we do not dwell upon it at some length,
it is because we desire, whilst room remains, to devote a page or two to
Germany and the Northerns. We must not omit, however, to mention that M.
Magnin joins issue with Mr Payne Collier on the question of the origin
of the English Punch. Mr Collier makes him date from 1688, and brings
him over from Holland in the same ship with William of Orange. M. Magnin
takes a different view, and makes out a very fair case. He begins by
remarking that several false derivations have been assigned to the name
of Punch. “Some have imagined I know not what secret and fantastical
connection between Punch’s name, and even between the fire of Punch’s
wit, and the ardent beverage of which the recipe, it is said, came to us
from Persia. It is going a great deal too far in search of an error.
Punch is simply the name of our friend _Pulchinello_, a little altered
and contracted by the monosyllabic genius of the English language. In
the early period of his career in England we find the names Punch and
Punchinello used indifferently for each other. Is it quite certain that
Punch came to London from the Hague, in the suite of William III.? I
have doubts of it. His learned biographer admits that there are traces
of his presence in England previous to the abdication of James II....
Certain passages of Addison’s pretty Latin poem on puppet-shows
(_Machinæ Gesticulantes_) prove that Punch’s theatre was in great
progress on the old London puppet-shows in the days of Queen Elizabeth.”
The personal appearance, and some of the characteristics of Punch,
certainly induce a belief that he is of French origin; and even though
it be proved that he was imported into England from Holland, may it not
be admitted as highly probable that he went to the latter country with
the refugees, who for several years previously to the Revolution of 1688
had been flocking thither from France? We risk the question with all
diffidence, and without the slightest intention of pronouncing judgment
on so important a matter. And as we have no intention or desire to take
up the cudgels in behalf of the origin of that Punch, who, as the
unfortunate and much-battered Judy can testify, himself handles those
weapons so efficiently, we refer the reader to M. Magnin for the _pros_
and _cons_ of the argument, and start upon a rapid tour through Germany
and northern Europe. M. Magnin accelerates his pace as he approaches the
close of his journey, and pauses there only where his attention is
arrested by some striking novelty or original feature, to omit mention
of which would be to leave a gap in the history he has undertaken to
write.
Germany is the native land and head-quarters of wood-cutters. We mean
not hewers of wood for the furnace, but cunning carvers in
smooth-grained beech and delicate deal; artists in timber, we may truly
say, when we contemplate the graceful and beautiful objects for which we
are indebted to the luxuriant forests and skilful knives of Baden and
Bavaria. The Teutonic race also possess, in a very high degree, the
mechanical genius, to be convinced of which we have but to look at the
ingenious clocks, with their astronomical evolutions, moving figures,
crowing cocks, and the like, so constantly met with in all parts of
Germany, in Switzerland, and in Holland. This double aptitude brought
about an early development of anatomical sculpture in Germany, applied,
as usual, to various purposes, religious and civil, serious and
recreative, wonderful images of saints, figures borne in municipal
processions, and dramatic puppets. These latter are traced by M. Magnin
as far back as the 12th century. Even in a manuscript of the 10th
century he finds the word _Tocha_ or _Docha_ used in the sense of doll
or puppet (_puppa_), and also in that of mime (_mima_, _mimula_).
Somewhat later the word _Tokke-spil_ (puppet-show) occurs in the poems
of the Minnesingers. One of these, Master Sigeher, when stigmatising the
Pope’s abuse of his influence with the Electors of the Empire, writes—
“Als der Tokken spilt der Welche mit Tutschen Vürsten.”
“The Italian plays with the German princes as with puppets.”
There still exists in the library at Strasburg a manuscript dating from
the end of the 12th century, and adorned with a great number of curious
miniatures, one of which, under the strange title of _Ludus Monstrorum_,
represents a puppet-show. Two little figures, armed _cap-à-pie_, are
made to move and fight by means of a string, whose ends two showmen
hold. The painting proves not only the existence of marionettes at that
period, but also that they were sufficiently common to supply a symbol
intelligible to all, since it is put as an illustration to a moral
reflection on the vanity of human things. From the equipment of the
figures it may also be inferred that military subjects were then in
favour on the narrow stage of the puppet-show. And M. Magnin, zealous to
track his fox to its very earth, risks the word _Niebelungen_, but
brings no evidence to support his surmise. In the 14th and 15th
centuries we obtain more positive data as to the nature of the
_puppenspiel_, and of its performances. Romantic subjects, historical
fables, were then in fashion—the four sons of Aymon, Genevieve of
Brabant, the Lady of Roussillon, to whom her lover’s heart was given to
eat, and who killed herself in her despair. The history of Joan of Arc
was also a favourite subject. That heroine had an episodical part in a
piece performed at Ratisbon in 1430. “There exists,” says M. Magnin, “a
precious testimony to a performance of marionettes at that period. In a
fragment of the poem of Malagis, written in Germany in the 15th century,
after a Flemish translation of our old romance of Maugis, the fairy
Oriande de Rosefleur, who has been separated for fifteen years from her
beloved pupil, Malagis, arrives, disguised as a juggler, at the castle
of Rigremont, where a wedding is being celebrated. She offers the
company the diversion of a puppet-show; it is accepted; she asks for a
table to serve as a stage, and exhibits upon it two figures, a male and
female magician. Into their mouths she puts stanzas, which tell her
history and cause her to be recognised by Malagis. M. Von der Hagen has
published this fragment from the MS. preserved at Heidelberg, in
_Germania_, vol. viii., p. 280. The scene in question is not to be found
either in the French poem or the French prose romance.” The 16th century
was an epoch in the annals of German puppets. Scepticism and sorcery
were the order of the day. Faust stepped upon the stage and held it
long.
It appears to have been the custom, rarely deviated from by the
puppet-shows of any nation or time, to have a comic character or
buffoon, who intruded, even in the most tragical pieces, to give by
his jests variety and relief to the performance. There was nothing odd
or startling in this in the Middle Ages, when every great
personage—emperor, king, or prelate—had his licensed jester attached
to his household. M. Magnin is in some doubt as to the name first
given to this character in Germany, unless it was Eulenspiegel (a name
which in modern times has acquired some celebrity as a literary
pseudonyme), or rather Master Hemmerlein, whose caustic sarcasm
partakes at once of the humour of the devil and the hangman. Master
Hemmerlein, according to Frisch, had a face like a frightful mask; he
belonged to the lowest class of marionettes, under whose dress the
showman passes his hand to move them. This author adds that the name
of Hemmerlein was sometimes given to the public executioner, and that
it is applied to the devil in the _Breviarium Historicum_ of Sebald.
This will bear explanation. The word Hämmerlein or Hämmerling (the
latter is now the usual orthography) has three very distinct
meanings—a jack-pudding, a flayer, and a gold-hammer (bird). The
German headsman, in former days, combined with his terrible duties the
occupation of a flayer or knacker, charged to remove dead horses and
other carrion; hence he was commonly spoken of as Master
Hämmerlein.[7]
It is difficult to say by what grim mockery or strange assimilation his
name was applied to the buffoon of the puppet-show. We have little
information, however, concerning Hämmerlein the droll, who appears to
have had but a short reign when he was supplanted by the famous
_Hanswurst_, to whom out-spoken Martin Luther compared Duke Henry of
Brunswick. “Miserable, choleric spirit” (here Martin addresses himself
to Satan), “you, and your poor possessed creature Henry, you know, as
well as all your poets and writers, that the name of _Hanswurst_ is not
of my invention; others have employed it before me, to designate those
rude and unlucky persons who, desiring to exhibit finesse, commit but
clumsiness and impropriety.” And that there might be no mistake as to
his application of the word, he adds: “Many persons compare my very
gracious lord, Duke Henry of Brunswick, to _Hanswurst_, because the said
lord is replete and corpulent.” One of the consequences in Germany of
Luther’s preachings, and of the more fanatical denunciations of some of
his disciples and cotemporaries, was terrible havoc amongst church
pictures and statues, including automatical images and groups, then very
numerous in that country, and an end was at that time put to dramatic
church ceremonies, not only in districts that embraced the new doctrine,
but in many that adhered to Rome. Some of the performances were of the
most grotesque description. They were particularly frequent in Poland,
where, at Christmas time, in many churches, and especially in those of
monasteries, the people were amused between mass and vespers, by the
play of the _Szopka_ or stable. “In this kind of drama,” says M. Magnin,
“_lalki_ (little dolls of wood or card-board) represented Mary, Jesus,
Joseph, the angels, the shepherds, and the three Magi on their knees,
with their offerings of gold, incense, and myrrh, not forgetting the ox,
the ass, and St. John the Baptist’s lamb. Then came the massacre of the
innocents, in the midst of which Herod’s own son perished by mistake.
The wicked prince, in his despair, called upon death, who soon made his
appearance, in the form of a skeleton, and cut off his head with his
scythe. Then a black devil ascended, with a red tongue, pointed horns,
and a long tail, picked up the king’s body on the end of his pitchfork,
and carried it off to the infernal regions.” This strange performance
was continued in the Polish churches until the middle of the 18th
century, with numerous indecorous variations. Expelled from consecrated
edifices, it is nevertheless preserved to the present day, as a popular
diversion, in all the provinces of the defunct kingdom of Poland. From
Christmas-tide to Shrove Tuesday it is welcomed by both the rural and
the urban population, by the peasantry, the middle classes, and even in
the dwellings of the nobility.
In Germany, the last twenty years of the seventeenth century witnessed
a violent struggle between the church and the stage, or it should
rather be said a relentless persecution of the latter by the former,
which could oppose only remonstrances to the intolerant rigour of the
consistories. The quarrel had its origin at Hamburg. A clergyman
refused to administer the sacrament to two stage-players. An ardent
controversy ensued; the dispute became envenomed; the Protestant
clergy made common cause; the anti-theatrical movement spread over all
Germany. In vain did several universities, appealed to by the
comedians, prove, from the most respectable authorities, the innocence
of their profession, of which the actors themselves published sensible
and judicious defences; in vain did several princes endeavour to
counterbalance, by marks of esteem and consideration, the exaggerated
severity of the theologians; the majority of the public sided with its
pastors. Players were avoided as dissolute vagabonds; and although,
whilst condemning the performers, people did not cease to frequent the
performances, a great many comedians, feeling themselves humiliated,
abandoned the stage to foreigners and to marionettes. The regular
theatres rapidly decreased in number, and puppet-shows augmented in a
like ratio. “At the end of the 17th century,” says Flögel, “the
_Haupt-und-Staatsactionen_ usurped the place of the real drama. These
pieces were played sometimes by mechanical dolls, sometimes by
actors.” The meaning of the term _Haupt-und-Staatsaction_ is rather
obscure, but it was in fact applied to almost every kind of piece
performed by puppets. It was bound to include a great deal of incident
and show, to be supported by occasional instrumental music, and to
have a comic personage or buffoon amongst its characters. The tenth
chapter of M. Magnin’s fifth and final section shows us a strange
variety in the subjects selected for these plays—in which, it is to be
noted, each puppet had its own separate speaker behind the scenes.
Weltheim, the manager of a company of marionettes in the last twenty
years of the 17th century, and the beginning of the 18th, usually
recruited interpreters for his puppets amongst the students of Leipzig
and Jena. He was the first who performed a translation of Molière’s
comedies in Germany. In 1688, we find him giving at Hamburg, a piece
founded on the fall of Adam and Eve, followed by a buffoonery called
_Jack-pudding in Punch’s Shop_. Then we come to such pieces as _The
Lapidation of Naboth_; _Asphalides, King of Arabia_; _The Fall of
Jerusalem_, and _The Death of Wallenstein_—a strange medley of
ancient, modern, sacred and profane history. The following
performance, at which M. Schütze, the historian of the Hamburg
theatre, declares that he was present in his youth, must have been as
curious as any we have named. “A little musical drama on the fall of
Adam and Eve (performed at Hamburg rather more than a century ago),
the characters in which, including that of the serpent, were filled by
puppets. The reptile was seen coiled round the tree, darting out his
pernicious tongue. After the fall of our first parents, Hanswurst
addressed them in a strain of coarse pleasantry that greatly diverted
the audience. Two bears danced a ballet, and at the end, an angel
appeared, as in Genesis, drew a sword of gilt paper, and cut at a
single blow the knot of the piece.” Later than this a tailor named
Reibehand, who kept a puppet theatre, contrived to burlesque the
touching parable of the Prodigal Son. His playbill ran thus: “The
arch-prodigal, chastised by the four elements, with Harlequin, the
joyous companion of a great criminal.” The merit of this most
irreverent _Haupt-Action_ consisted in the transformations it
contained. Thus the fruit the young prodigal was about to eat changed
itself into death’s heads, the water he was about to drink, into
flames; rocks split open and revealed a gallows with a man hanging
from it. The limbs of this corpse swinging in the wind, fell off one
by one, then assembled upon the ground and reconnected themselves, and
then the dead man arose and pursued the prodigal. A very German and
not very pleasing device. When Charles XII. of Sweden fell dead in the
trenches at Friedrichshall, slain, according to popular superstition,
by an enchanted bullet, his death was immediately taken advantage of
by the indefatigable marionettes. A great historical piece was brought
out at Hamburg, in which Friedrichshall was twice bombarded. In it a
soldier excited great admiration as a prodigy of mechanism, by
lighting his pipe and puffing smoke from his mouth. This feat was soon
imported into France, and may be seen at the present day executed in
great perfection at Seraphin’s theatre in the Palais Royal.
The triviality, absurdity, and profanity that tarnished the German stage
during the first half of the eighteenth century, were followed by a
reaction in favour of better taste and common sense. Gottsched and
Lessing gave the signal of the revival of art and poetry. The theatre
resumed its importance; actors their proper place, from which they had
been ousted by the intolerance of the consistories; puppets returned to
the modest sphere which circumstances had permitted and encouraged them
temporarily to quit, and resumed their old stock pieces, consisting of
Biblical dramas and popular legends. Faust was exceedingly popular, and
novelties were occasionally introduced. Lewis’s _Bravo of Venice_ was
taken for the subject of a grand drama, performed by the Augsburg
marionettes, which also played, with great success, a drama founded on
the well-known story of Don Juan and his marble guest. And this brings
us to the time when a boy, Wolfgang Goethe by name—kept at home by his
parents during certain gloomy episodes of the Seven Years’ War, when
Frankfort was occupied by the French—delighted his leisure with a
marionette theatre, a Christmas gift from his grandfather, and so
fostered his inborn dramatic taste and genius. In his memoirs, and in
_Wilhelm Meister_, he tells us, in some charming passages, what pleasure
he took in the management of his mimic comedians.
“We are indebted,” says M. Magnin, “for what follows, to a
confidential communication made by the illustrious composer Haydn, at
Vienna, in 1805, to M. Charles Bertuch, one of his fervent admirers.”
And he relates that when Hadyn was _mâitre de chapelle_ to Prince
Nicholas-Joseph Esterhazy, that enlightened and generous patron of
art, and especially of music, he composed four little operas for a
marionette theatre, which existed in the Esterhazys’ magnificent
Castle of Eisenstadt in Hungary. They were written between 1773 and
1780. “In the list of all his musical works, which the illustrious old
man signed and gave to M. Charles Bertuch, during the residence of the
latter at Vienna, occur the following lines, which I exactly
transcribe:—_Operette_ composed for the marionettes: _Philémon and
Baucis_, 1773; _Geniêvre_, 1777; _Didon_, parody, 1778; _La Vengeance
accomplie ou la Maison Brulie_ (no date). In the same list the _Diable
Boiteux_ is set down, probably because it was played by Prince
Esterhazy’s marionettes, but it was composed at Vienna, in the
author’s early youth, for Bernardone, the manager of a popular theatre
at the Corinthian Gate, and twenty-four sequins were paid for it. It
was thought that these curious operas, all unpublished, had been
destroyed in a fire which consumed a part of the Castle of Eisenstadt,
including Haydn’s apartment; but that was not the case, for they were
seen in 1827 in the musical library of the Esterhazys, with a score of
other pieces whose titles one would like to know.”
Goethe has told us, in an interesting passage of his memoirs, that the
idea of his great work of Faust was suggested to him by the puppet-show.
M. Magnin, who takes an affectionate interest in the triumphs of the
marionettes with whom he has so long associated, and whose career he has
traced from their cradle, exults in the claim they have thus acquired to
the world’s gratitude—not always, it must be owned, shown to those who
best deserve it. He concludes his history with a double
recapitulation—first, of the celebrated persons who have taken pleasure
in this class of dramatic performances; and, secondly, of the most
distinguished of those who have wielded pen in its service. And he calls
upon his readers to applaud, and upon the ladies especially to wave
kerchief and throw bouquet at the graceful FANTASIA, the pretty fairy,
the sprightly muse of the marionettes. We doubt not but that the appeal
will be responded to; although her fairyship may fairly be considered to
be already sufficiently rewarded by meeting with a biographer in every
way so competent.
THE QUIET HEART.
PART V.—CHAPTER XXV.
But this Menie Laurie, rising up from her bed of unrest, when the
morning light breaks, cold and real, upon a changed world, has wept out
all her child’s tears, and is a woman once again. No one knows yet a
whisper of what has befallen her, not even poor Jenny, who sobbed over
her last night, and implored her not to weep.
Now, how to tell this—how to signify, in the fewest and calmest words,
the change that has come upon her. Sitting, with her cheek leant on her
hand, by the window where she heard it, before any other eyes are awake,
Menie ponders this in her heart. Always before in little difficulties
counsel and help have been within her reach; few troublous things have
been to do in Menie’s experience; and no one ever dreamt that _she_
should do them, when they chanced to come to her mother’s door.
But now her mother’s honour is involved—she must not be consulted—she
must not know. With a proud flush Menie draws up herself—herself who
must work in this alone. Ah, sweet dependence, dear humility of the old
times! we must lay them by out of our heart, to wait for a happier dawn.
This day it is independence—self-support—a strength that stands alone;
and no one who has not felt such an abrupt transition can know how hard
it is to take these unused weapons up.
“Will you let me speak to you, aunt?” Menie’s heart falters within her,
as she remembers poor Miss Annie’s unaccepted sympathy. Has she indeed
been driven to seek refuge here at last?
“My love! how can you ask such a question, darling, when I am always
ready to speak to you?” exclaimed Miss Annie, with enthusiasm.
“But not here—out of doors, if you will permit me,” said Menie in a half
whisper. “I—I want to be out of my mother’s sight—she must not know.”
“You delightful creature,” said Miss Annie, “are you going to give me
your confidence at last?”
Poor Menie, sadly dismayed, was very ill able to support this strain of
sympathy. She hastened out, not quite observing how it tasked her
companion to follow her—out to the same green overgrown corner, where
once before she had spoken of this same subject to Randall himself. With
a slight shudder she paused there before the little rustic seat, from
which she had risen at his approach; but Menie knew that she must harden
herself against the power of associations; enough of real ill was before
her.
“I want to tell you, aunt, if you will please to listen to me, that the
engagement of which you were told when we came here is dissolved—broken.
I do not know if there is any stronger word,” said Menie, a bewildered
look growing on her face. “I mean to say, that it is all over, as if it
had never been.”
And Menie folded her hands upon her breast, and stood patiently to
listen, expecting a burst of lamentation and condolence; but Menie was
not prepared for the laugh which rung shrilly on her ears—the words that
followed it.
“My sweet simple child, I have no doubt you quite believe it—forgive me
for laughing, darling; but I know what lovers’ quarrels are. There, now,
don’t look so grave and angry; my love, you will make it all up
to-morrow.”
And Miss Annie Laurie patted Menie’s shrinking shoulder encouragingly.
It was a harder task this than Menie had anticipated; but she went on
without flinching.
“This is no lovers’ quarrel, aunt; do not think so. My mother is in some
degree involved in this. I cannot consult her, or ask her to help me; it
is the first time I have ever been in such a strait;” and Menie’s lip
quivered as she spoke. “You are my only friend. I am serious—as serious
as mind can be, which feels that here it decides its life. Aunt, I apply
to you.”
Miss Annie Laurie looked up very much confused and shaken; very seldom
had any one spoken to her with such a sober seriousness of tone; she
could not think it unreal, for neither extravagance nor despair were in
these grave sad words of Menie. The poor frivolous heart felt this voice
ring into its depths, past all superficial affectations and sentiments.
No exuberance of sympathy, no shower of condoling words or endearments,
could answer this appeal; and poor Miss Annie faltered before this claim
of real service—faltered and shrank into a very weak old woman, her
self-delusions standing her in no stead in such a strait; and the only
answer she could make was to cry, in a trembling and strangely altered
voice, “Oh, child, do not speak so. What can I do for you?”
Most true, what can you do, indeed, poor soul! whose greatest object for
all these years has been to shut out and darken the daylight truth,
which mocked your vain pretences? You could give charity and gentle
words—be thankful; your heart is alive in you because of these: but what
can you do in such a difficulty as this? where is your wisdom to
counsel, your strength to uphold? This grave girl stands before you,
sadly bearing her burden, without an effort to conceal from you that she
feels it hard to bear; but you, whose age is not grave, whose heart has
rejected experience, whose mind has refused to learn the kindly insight
of advancing years—shrink into yourself, poor aged butterfly; feel that
it is presumption to call yourself her counsellor, and say again—again,
with a tremble in your weakened voice, “What can I do for you?”
“Aunt, I apply to you,” said Menie Laurie; “I ask your help, when I
resolve to decide my future life according to my own will and conviction
of what is best. I have no one else to assist me. I apply to you.”
Miss Annie melted into a fit of feeble crying; her hands shook, her
ringlets drooped down lank about her cheeks. “I will do
anything—anything you like; tell me what to do, Menie—Menie, my dear
child.”
It was pitiful to see her distress. Menie, whom no one comforted, felt
her heart moved to comfort her.
“I will not grieve you much,” said Menie gently; “only I beg you to give
me your countenance when I see Randall—Mr Home. I want you to be as my
mother might have been in other circumstances; but I will not trouble
you much, aunt—I will not trouble you.”
Miss Annie could not stop her tears; she was very timid and afraid,
sobbing helplessly. “What will I do? what can I do? Oh, Menie, love, you
will make it up to-morrow;” for poor Miss Annie knew no way of
conquering grief except by flying out of its sight.
Menie led her back to the house tenderly. Menie had never known before
this necessity of becoming comforter, when she had so much need to be
comforted. It was best for her—it gave her all the greater command over
her own heart.
And to hear poor innocent July, in her own young unclouded joy—to hear
her unsuspicious mother at their breakfast-table—to have Randall’s name
cross her now and then, like a sudden blow—Randall, Randall;—Menie knew
nothing of all these depths, nor how such sorrows come in battalions;
so, one by one, her inexperienced heart gained acquaintance with them
now,—gained acquaintance with that sorest of human truths, that it is
possible to love and to condemn—possible to part, and know that parting
is the best—yet withal to cling and cling, and hold, with the saddest
gripe of tenderness, the heart from which you part. Poor Menie! they
said she looked very dark and heavy; that last night’s exertions had
wearied her—it was very true.
Miss Annie sent a message that she was not well, and would breakfast in
her own room. In the forenoon, when she came down stairs again, even
Menie was startled at the change. Miss Annie’s ringlets were smoothed
out and braided on her poor thin cheek—braided elaborately with a care
and study worthy of something more important; her step tottered a
little; when any one spoke to her, a little gush of tears came to her
eyes; but, notwithstanding, there was a solemnity and importance in the
hush of Miss Annie’s manner, which no one had ever seen in her before.
Half-a-dozen times that day she asked, in a startling whisper, “Menie,
when is he to come?” Poor Menie, sick at heart, could scarcely bear this
slow prolonging of her pain.
CHAPTER XXVI.
“Aunt, he has come.”
No one knows; July is out on a ramble in this pleasant heath, where she
cannot lose herself; Mrs Laurie has gone out for some private errands of
her own. In her first day, Menie has managed well. True, they all know
that Menie has been wearied last night; that her eye looks dull and
heavy; that her cheek has lost its slight bloom of colour; that she says
something of a headache; but nobody knows that headache has come to be
with Menie Laurie as with many another, only a softer word for
heartache—no one suspects that the quiet heart, which feared no evil
when this spring began, is now a battle-ground, and field of contest,
and that sometimes, when she sits quiet in outward seeming, she could
leap up with a start and scream, and feels as if madness would come to
her underneath their unsuspicious eyes.
“Aunt, he has come.”
Miss Annie Laurie is very nervous; she has to be supported on Menie’s
arm as they go down stairs. “You will make it all up, Menie; yes, my
darling;” but Miss Annie’s head nods spasmodically, and there is a
terrified troubled expression about her face, which looks so meagre in
its outline under that braided hair.
Slightly disturbed, something haughty, rather wondering what Menie has
got to say for herself, Randall sits waiting in the drawing-room. It is
no small surprise to him to see Miss Annie—especially to see her so
moved and nervous; and Randall restrains, with visible displeasure, the
words which rose to his lips on Menie’s entrance, and coldly makes his
bow to the lady of the house.
“My dear Mr Home, I am very much grieved; I hope you are ready to make
it all up,” murmurs Miss Annie; but she trembles so much that it is not
easy to hear what she says, except the last words, which flush Randall’s
cheek with a sudden disdainful anger. A lovers’ quarrel!—that he should
be fancied capable of this.
“My aunt has come with me,” said Menie steadily, “to give the weight of
her presence to what I say. Randall, I do not pretend that my own
feelings are changed, or that I have ceased to care for you. I do not
need to seem to quarrel, or to call you by a less familiar name. We know
the reason both of us; there is no use for discussing it—and I have come
to have it mutually understood that our engagement is broken. We will go
away very soon. I came to say good-by.”
Before she concluded, Menie had bent her head, and cast down her
wavering eyes upon Miss Annie’s hand, which she held firmly in her own.
Her voice was very low, her words quick and hurried; she stood beside
Miss Annie’s chair, holding fast, and twining in her own Miss Annie’s
nervous fingers; but she did not venture to look up to meet Randall’s
eyes.
“What does this mean? it is mere trifling, Menie,” said Randall
impatiently. “You hear a gossip’s story of something I said; true or
false, it did not affect you—it had no bearing on you; you know very
well that nothing has happened to make you less precious to me—that
nothing can happen which will ever change my heart. Menie, this is the
second time; is this the conduct I have a right to expect from you? Deal
with me frankly; I have a title to it. What do you mean?”
“My darling, he will make it up,” said Miss Annie, with a little
overflow of tears.
But Menie was very steady—so strange, so strange—she grew into a
startling acquaintance with herself in these few hours. Who could have
thought there were so many passionate impulses in Menie Laurie’s quiet
heart?
“We will not discuss it, Randall,” she said again; “let us simply
conclude that it is best for both of us to withdraw. Perhaps you will be
better content if I speak more strongly,” she continued, with a little
trembling vehemence, born of her weakness, “if I say it is
impossible—impossible—you understand the word—to restore the state of
mind, the hope, the trust, and confidence that are past. No—let us have
no explanation—I cannot bear it, Randall. Do we not understand each
other already? Nothing but parting is possible for us—for me. I think I
am saying what I mean to say—good-by.”
“Look at me, Menie.”
It is hard to do it—hard to lift up those eyes, so full of tears—hard to
see his lips quiver—hard to see the love in his face; but Menie’s eyes
fall when they have endured this momentary ordeal; and again she holds
out her hand and says, “Good-by.”
“Good-by—I answer you,” said Randall, wringing her hand, and throwing it
out of his grasp. “Good-by—you are disloyal, Menie, disloyal to Nature
and to me; some time you will remember this; now I bid you farewell.”
Something crossed her like an angry breath—something rang in her ears,
confused and echoing like the first drops of a thunder-shower; and Menie
can see nothing in all the world but Miss Annie weeping upon her hand,
and, like a culprit, steals away—steals away, not knowing where she
goes—desolate, guilty, forsaken, feeling as if she had done some
grievous wrong, and was for ever shut out from peace or comfort in this
weary world.
Yes—there is no one to see you. Lie down upon the ground, Menie
Laurie—down, down, where you can be no lower, and cover your eyes from
the cheerful light. How they pour upon you, these dreadful doubts and
suspicions of yourself!—wisely—wisely—what should make it wise, this
thing you have done? You yourself have little wisdom, and you took no
counsel. If it was not wise, what then?—it is done, and there is nothing
for it now but to be content.