his Ithuriel's spear of well-ground steel, and still dabbles in
aquafortis. An old, old man, he is still strong and hale. If you ask him
a reason for his thus rivalling Fontenelle in his patriarchal greenness,
for his being able at threescore and ten to paint pictures, (witness
that colossal oil-painting of the "Triumph of Bacchus,") to make
speeches, and to march at the head of his company as a captain of
volunteers, he will give you at once the why and because. He is the most
zealous, the most conscientious, and the most invulnerable of total
abstainers. There were days when he took tobacco: witness that portrait
of himself, smoking a very long meerschaum pipe in "Love's Triumph,"
etched about 1845. There were times when he heard the chimes at
midnight, and partook of that "richt gude willie waucht" which tipsy
Scotchmen, when they have formed in a ring, standing upon chairs, each
with one foot on the table, hiccoughingly declare that we are bound to
take for the sake of "auld lang syne." But George Cruikshank has done
with willie wauchts as with bird's-eye and Killikinick. For many years
he has neither drunk nor smoked. He is more than a confessor, he is an
apostle of temperance. His strange, wild, grand performances, "The
Bottle" and "The Drunkard's Children,"--the first quite Hogarthian in
its force and pungency,--fell like thunderbolts among the gin-shops. I
am afraid that George Cruikshank would not be a very welcome guest at
Felix Booth's distillery, or at Barclay and Perkins's brewery. For, it
must be granted, the sage is a little intolerant. "No peace with the
Fiery Moloch!" "_Ecrasons l'infame!_" These are his mottoes. He would
deprive the poor man of the scantiest drop of beer. You begin with a sip
of "the right stuff," he teaches us in "The Bottle," and you end by
swigging a gallon of vitriol, jumping on your wife, and dying in Bedlam
of _delirium tremens_. I have not heard his opinions concerning cider,
or root-beer, or effervescing sarsaparilla, or ginger-pop; but I imagine
that each and every one of those reputed harmless beverages would enter
into his _Index Expurgatorius_. "Water, water, everywhere, and not a
drop [of alcohol] to drink." 'Tis thus he would quote Coleridge. He is
as furious against tobacco as ever was King James in his "Counterblast."
He is of the mind of the old divine, that "he who plays with the Devil's
rattles will soon learn to draw his sword." In his pious rage against
intemperance, and with a view to the instruction of the rising
generation, he has even published teetotal versions of "Cinderella" and
"Jack the Giant-Killer,"--a proceeding which Charles Dickens indignantly
reprobated in an article in "Household Words," called "Frauds upon the
Fairies." Nearly the last time I met George Cruikshank in London was at
a dinner given in honor of Washington's birthday. He had just been
gazetted captain of his rifle company, and was good enough to ask me if
I knew any genteel young men, of strictly temperance principles, who
would like commissions in his corps. I replied, that, so far as
principles were concerned, I could recommend him five hundred
postulants; but that, as regarded practice, most of the young men of my
acquaintance, who had manifested an ambition for a military career,
drank hard.
The which, oddly enough, leads me at last to Mexico.--We had had, on the
whole, rather a hard morning of it. The Don, who was my host in the
_siempre leal y insigne ciudad de Mejico_,--and a most munificent and
hospitable Don he was,--took me out one day in the month of March last
to visit a _hacienda_ or farm which he possessed, called, if I remember
aright, La Escalera. I repeat, we had a hard morning of it. We rose at
six,--and in mountainous Mexico the ground at early morn, even during
summer, is often covered with a frosty rime. I looked out of the window,
and when I saw the leaves of the trees glistening with something which
was _not_ dew, and Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl mantled with eternal
snows in the distance, I shivered. A cup of chocolate, a _tortilla_ or
thin griddle-cake of Indian meal, and a paper cigar, just to break your
fast, and then to horse. To horse! Do you know what it is, being a poor
horseman, to bestride a full-blood, full-bred white Arab, worth ever so
many hundred _pesos de oro_, and, with his flowing mane and tail, and
small, womanly, vixenish head, beautiful to look upon, but which in
temper, like many other beauteous creatures I have known, is an
incarnate fiend? The Arab they gave me had been the property of a French
general. I vehemently suspect that he had been dismissed from the
Imperial army for biting a _chef d'escadron_ through one of his
jackboots, or kicking in three of the ribs of a _marechal des logis_.
That was hard enough, to begin with. Then the streets of Mexico are
execrably paved, and the roads leading out of the city are full of what
in Ireland are termed "curiosities," to wit, holes; and my Arab had a
habit, whenever he met an equine brother, and especially an equine
sister, on the way, of screaming like a possessed Pythoness, and then of
essaying to stand on his hind legs. However, with a Mexican saddle,--out
of which you can scarcely fall, even though you had a mind to it,--and
Mexican stirrups, and a pair of spurs nearly as big as Catharine-wheels,
the Arab and I managed to reach the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe,
five miles out, and thence, over tolerably good roads, another five
miles, to the Escalera. I wish they would make Mexican saddles of
something else besides wood very thinly covered with leather. How
devoutly did I long for the well-stuffed pig-skin of Hyde Park! We had
an hour or two more hard work riding about the fields, when we reached
the farm, watching the process of extracting _pulque_ from the _maguey_
or cactus,--and a very nasty process it is,--inspecting the granaries
belonging to the _hacienda_, and dodging between the rows of Indian
corn, which grows here to so prodigious a height as to rival the famous
grain which is said to grow somewhere down South, and to attain such an
altitude that a Comanche perched upon the head of a giraffe is invisible
between the rows. About noon we had breakfast, and that was the hardest
work of all. _Item_, we had mutton-chops, beefsteaks, veal cutlets,
omelets, rice, hominy, fried tomatoes, and an infinity of Mexican hashes
and stews seasoned with _chiles_ or red-pepper pods. _Item_, we had a
huge _pavo_, a turkey,--a wild turkey; and then, for the first time, did
I understand that the bird we Englishmen consume only at Christmas, and
then declare to be tough and flavorless, is to be eaten to perfection
only in the central regions of the American continent. The flesh of this
_pavo_ was like softened ivory, and his fat like unto clotted cream.
There were some pretty little tiny kickshaws in the way of pine-apples,
musk-melons, bananas, papaws, and custard-apples, and many other
tropical fruits whose names I have forgotten. I think, too, that we had
some stewed _iguana_ or lizard; but I remember, that, after inflicting
exemplary punishment on a bowl of sour cream, we wound up by an attack
on an _albacor_, a young kid roasted whole, or rather baked in a lump of
clay with wood-ashes heaped over him, and brought to table on a
tea-tray! Shade of Gargantua, how we ate! I blessed that fiery Arab for
giving me such an appetite. There was a good deal of smoking going on at
odd times during breakfast; but nobody ventured beyond a _cigarro_ of
paper and fine-cut before we attacked the _albacor_. When coffee was
served, each man lighted a _puro_, one of the biggest of Cabana's
Regalias; and serious and solemn puffing then set in. It was a memorable
breakfast. The _Administrador_, or steward of the estate, had evidently
done his best to entertain his patron the Don with becoming
magnificence, nor were potables as dainty as the edibles wanting to
furnish forth the feast. There was _pulque_ for those who chose to drink
it. I never could stomach that fermented milk of human unkindness, which
combines the odor of a dairy that has been turned into a grogshop with
the flavor of rotten eggs. There was wine of Burgundy and wine of
Bordeaux; there was Champagne: these three from the Don's cellar in
Mexico, and the last cooled, not with vulgar ice, but with snow from the
summit of Popocatepetl,--snow that had been there from the days of
Montezuma and Guatimozin; while as _chasse_ and _pousse_ to the
exquisitely flavored Mexican coffee, grown, ground, and roasted on the
_hacienda_, we had some very ripe old French Cognac, (1804, I think, was
the brand,) and some Peruvian _pisco_, a strong white cordial, somewhat
resembling _kirsch-wasser_, and exceeding toothsome. We talked and
laughed till we grew sleepy, (the edibles and potables had of course
nothing to do with our somnolence,) and then, the farm-house of the
_hacienda_ having seemingly as many rooms as the Vatican, each man hied
him to a cool chamber, where he found a trundle-bed, or a hammock, or a
sofa, and gravely laid himself out for an hour's _siesta_. Then the
Administrador woke us all up, and gleefully presented us with an
enormous bowl of sangaree, made of the remains of the Bordeaux and the
brandy and the pisco, and plenty of ice,--ice this time,--and sugar, and
limes, and slices of pineapple, Madam,--the which he had concocted
during our slumber. We drained this,--one gets so thirsty after
breakfast in Mexico,--and then to horse again for a twelve miles' ride
back to the city. I omitted to mention two or three little circumstances
which gave a zest and piquancy to the entertainment. When we arrived at
the _hacienda_, although servitors were in plenty, each cavalier
unsaddled and fed his own steed; and when we addressed ourselves to our
_siesta_, every one who didn't find a double-barrelled gun at the head
of his bed took care to place a loaded revolver under his pillow. For
accidents will happen in the best-regulated families; and in Mexico you
can never tell at what precise moment Cacus may be upon you.
Riding back to the _siempre leal y insigne ciudad_ at about three
o'clock in the afternoon, when the sun was at its hottest, was no joke.
Baking is not precisely the word, nor boiling, nay, nor frying;
something which is a compound of all these might express the sensation
I, for one, felt. Fortunately, the Don had insisted on my assuming the
orthodox Mexican riding-costume: cool linen drawers, cut Turkish
fashion; over these, and with just sufficient buttons in their
respective holes to swear by, the leathern _chapareros_ or overalls;
morocco slippers, to which were strapped the Catharine-wheel spurs; no
vest; no neckerchief; a round jacket, with quarter doubloons for
buttons; and a low-crowned felt hat, with an enormous brim, a brim which
might have made a Quaker envious, and have stricken mortification to the
soul of a Chinese mandarin. This brim kept the sun out of your eyes; and
then, by way of hatband, there was a narrow, but thick turban or
"pudding," which prevented the rays of Sol from piercing through your
skull, and boiling your brains into batter. The fact of the whole of
this costume, and the accoutrements of your horse to boot, being
embroidered with silver and embellished with golden bosses, thus
affording a thousand tangents for Phoebus to fly off from, rather
detracted from the coolness of your array; but one must not expect
perfection here below. In a stove-pipe hat, a shooting-coat, and
riding-cords, I should have suffered much more from the heat. As it was,
I confess, that, when I reached home, in the Calle San Francisco,
Mexico, I was exceedingly thankful. I am not used to riding twenty-four
miles in one day. I think I had a warm bath in the interval between
doffing the _chapareros_ and donning the pantaloons of every-day life. I
think I went to sleep on a sofa for about an hour, and, waking up,
called for a cocktail as a restorative. Yes, Madam, there are cocktails
in Mexico, and our Don's body-servant made them most scientifically. I
think also that I declined, with thanks, the Don's customary invitation
to a drive before dinner in the Paseo. Nor barouche, nor mail-phaeton,
nay, nor soft-cushioned brougham delighted me. I felt very lazy and
thoroughly knocked up.
The Don, however, went out for his drive, smiling at my woful plight. Is
it only after hard riding that remorse succeeds enjoyment? I was left
alone in his great caravansary of a mansion. I wandered from room to
room, from corridor to corridor,--now glancing through the
window-_jalousies_, and peeping at the _chinas_ in their _ribosos_, and
the shovel-hatted priests in the street below creeping along on the
shady side of the way,--now hanging over the gallery in the inner
court-yard, listening to the horses stamping in their stables or
rattling their tethers against the mangers, listening now to the English
grooms as they whistled the familiar airs of home while they rubbed
their charges down, and now to the sleepy, plaintive drone of the Indian
servants loitering over their work in the kitchens. Then I wandered back
again,--from drawing-room to dining-room, from bedchamber to boudoir.
And at last I found that I had crossed a bridge over another court-yard,
and gotten into another house, abutting on another street. The Don was
still lord here, and I was free to ramble. More drawing-rooms, more
bedchambers, more boudoirs, a chapel, and at last a library. Libraries
are not plentiful in Mexico. Here, on many shelves, was a goodly store
of standard literature in many languages. Here was Prescott's History of
the Conquest, translated into choice Castilian, and Senor Ramirez his
comments thereupon. Here was Don Lucas Alaman his History of Mexico,
and works by Jesuit fathers innumerable. How ever did they get printed?
Who ever bought, who ever read, those cloudy tomes in dog Latin? Here
was Lord Kingsborough's vast work on Mexican Antiquities,--the work his
Lordship is reported to have ruined himself in producing; and Macaulay,
and Dickens, and Washington Irving, and the British Essayists, and the
Waverley Novels, and Shakspeare, and Soyer's Cookery, and one little
book of mine own writing: a very well-chosen library indeed.
What have we here? A fat, comely, gilt-lettered volume, bound in red
morocco, and that might, externally, have passed for my grandmother's
edition of Dr. Doddridge's Sermons. As I live, 't is a work illustrated
by George Cruikshank,--a work hitherto unknown to me, albeit I fancied
myself rich, even to millionnairism, in Cruikshankiana. It is a rare
book, a precious book, a book that is not in the British Museum, a book
for which collectors would gladly give more doubloons than I lost at
_monte_ last night; for here the most moral people play _monte_. It is
_un costumbre del pais_,--a custom of the country; and, woe is me! I
lost a pile 'twixt midnight and cock-crow.
"Life in Paris; or the Rambles, Sprees, and Amours of Dick Wildfire,
Squire Jenkins, and Captain O'Shuffleton, with the Whimsical Adventures
of the Halibut Family, and Other Eccentric Characters in the French
Metropolis. Embellished with Twenty-One Comic Vignettes and Twenty-One
Colored Engravings of Scenes from Real Life, by George Cruikshank.
London: Printed for John Cumberland. 1828." This "Life in Paris" was
known to me by dim literary repute; but I had never seen, the actual
volume before. Its publication was a disastrous failure. Emboldened by
the prodigious success of "Life in London,"--the adventures in the Great
Metropolis of Corinthian Tom and Jerry--Somebody--and Bob Logic,
Esquire, written by Pierce Egan, once a notorious chronicler of the
prize-ring, the compiler of a Slang Dictionary, and whose proficiency in
_argot_ and flash-patter was honored by poetic celebration from Byron,
Moore, and Christopher North, but whom I remember, when I was first
climbing into public life, a decrepit, broken-down old man,--Mr. John
Cumberland, of Ludgate Hill, (the publisher, by the way, of that series
of the "Acting Drama" to which, over the initials of D--G, and the
figure of a hand pointing, some of the most remarkable dramatic
criticisms in the English language are appended,) thought, not
unreasonably, that "Life in Paris" might attain a vogue as extensive as
that achieved by "Life in London." I don't know who wrote the French
"Life." Pierce Egan could scarcely have been the author; for he was then
at the height of a vicious and ephemeral popularity; and any book,
however trashy, with his name to it, would have been sure to sell. This
"Life in Paris" was very probably the work of some obscure hack, who,
when he was describing the "eccentric characters in the French
metropolis," may not impossibly have been vegetating in the Rules of the
King's Bench Prison. But crafty Mr. Cumberland, to insure the success of
his enterprise, secured the services of George Cruikshank as
illustrator. George had a brother Robert, who had caught something of
his touch and manner, but nothing of his humorous genius, and who
assisted him in illustrating "Life in London"; but "Life in Paris" was
to be all his own; and he undertook a journey to France in order to
study Gallic life and make sketches. The results were now before me in
twenty-one small vignettes on wood, (of not much account,) and of as
many large aquatint engravings, (George can aquatint as well as etch,)
crowded with figures, and displaying the unmistakable and inimitable
Cruikshankian _vim_ and point. There is Dick Wildfire being attired,
with the aid of the _friseur_ and the tailor, and under the sneering
inspection of Sam Sharp, his Yorkshire valet, according to the latest
Parisian fashions. Next we have Dick and Captain O'Shuffleton (an Irish
adventurer) "promenading in the Gardens of the Tuileries"; next, "real
life" in the galleries of the Palais Royal; next, Dick, the Captain,
Lady Halibut, and Lydia "enjoying a lounge on the Italian Boulevard." To
these succeed a representation of a dinner at Very's; Dick and his
companions "smashing the glim on a spree by lamplight"; Dick and the
Captain "paying their respects to the Fair _Limonadiere_ at the Cafe des
Mille Colonnes"; Dick introduced by the Captain to a _Rouge et Noir_
table; the same and his valet "_showing fight in a Caveau_"; "Life
behind the Curtain of the Grand Opera, or Dick and the Squire larking
with the _Figurantes_"; Dick and the Squire "enjoying the sport at the
Combat of Animals, or Duck Lane of Paris"; Dick and Jenkins "in a
Theatrical Pandemonium, or the Cafe de la Paix in all its glory"; "Life
among the Dead, or the Halibut Family in the Catacombs"; "Life among the
Connoisseurs," or Dick and his friends "in the Grand Gallery of the
Louvre"; "a Frolic in the _Cafe d'Enfer_, or Infernal Cellar"; "Life on
Tiptoe, or Dick quadrilling it in the Salons de Mars in the Champs
Elysees"; the "_Entree_ to the Italian Opera"; the "Morning of the Fete
of St. Louis"; the "Evening of the same, with Dick, Jenkins, and the
Halibuts witnessing the _Canaille_ in all their glory"; and, finally,
"Life in a Billiard-Room, or Dick and the Squire _au fait_ to the
Parisian Sharpers."
I have said that these illustrations are full of point and drollery.
They certainly lack that round, full touch so distinctive of George
Cruikshank, and which he learned from Gillray; but such a touch can be
given only when the shadows as well as the outlines of a plate are
etched; and the intent of an aquatint engraving is, as the reader may or
may not know, to produce the effect of a drawing in Indian ink.[C] Still
there is much in these pictures to delight the Cruikshankian
connoisseur,--infinite variety in physiognomy, wonderful minuteness and
accuracy in detail, and here and there sparkles of the true Hogarthian
satire.
But a banquet in which the plates only are good is but a Barmecide
feast, after all. The letter-press to this "Life in Paris" is the vilest
rubbish imaginable,--a farrago of St. Giles's slang, Tottenham Court
Road doggerel, ignorance, lewdness, and downright dulness. Mr. John
Cumberland, of Ludgate Hill, took, accordingly, very little by his
motion. The "Life" fell almost stillborn from the press; and George
Cruikshank must have regretted that he ever had anything to do with it.
The major part of the impression must years ago have been used to line
trunks, inwrap pies, and singe geese; but to our generation, and to
those which are to come, this sorry volume will be more than a
curiosity: it will be literarily and artistically an object of great and
constantly increasing value. By the amateur of Cruikshankiana it will be
prized for the reason that the celebrated Latin pamphlet proving that
Edward VI. never had the toothache was prized, although the first and
last leaves were wanting, by Theodore Hook's Tom Hill. It will be
treasured for its scarcity. To the student of social history it will be
of even greater value, as the record of a state of manners, both in
England and France, which has wholly and forever passed away. The
letter-press portraits, drawn by the hack author, of a party of English
tourists are but foul and stupid libels; but their aquatint portraits,
as bitten in by George Cruikshank, are, albeit exaggerated, true in many
respects to Nature. In fact, we _were_ used, when George IV. was king,
to send abroad these overdressed and under-bred clowns and
Mohawks,--whelps of the squirarchy and hobbledehoys of the
universities,--Squire Gawkies and Squire Westerns and Tony Lumpkins,
Mrs. Malaprops and Lydia Languishes, by the hundred and the thousand.
"The Fudge Family in Paris" and the letters of Mrs. Ramsbotham read
nowadays like the most outrageous of caricatures; but they failed not to
hit many a blot in the times which gave them birth. It was really
reckoned fashionable in 1828 to make a visit to Paris the occasion for
the coarsest of "sprees,"--to get tipsy at Very's,--to "smash the
glims,"--to parade those infamous _Galeries de Bois_ in the Palais Royal
which were the common haunt of abandoned women,--to beat the gendarmes,
and, indeed, the first Frenchman who happened to turn up, merely on the
ground that he _was_ a Frenchman. But France and the French have changed
since then, as well as England and the English. Are these the only
countries in the world whose people and whose manners have turned
_volte-face_ within less than half a century? I declare that I read from
beginning to end, the other day, a work called "Salmagundi," and that I
could not recognize in one single page anything to remind me of the New
York of the present day. Thus in the engravings to "Life in Paris" are
there barely three which any modern Parisian would admit to possess any
direct or truthful reference to Paris life as it is. People certainly
continue to dine at Very's; but Englishmen no longer get tipsy there, no
longer smash the plates or kick the waiters. In lieu of dusky
billiard-rooms, the resort of duskier sharpers, there are magnificent
saloons, containing five, ten, and sometimes twenty billiard-tables. The
_Galeries de Bois_ have been knocked to pieces these thirty years. The
public gaming-houses have been shut up. There are no longer any brutal
dog-and-bear-baitings at the Barriere du Combat. There is no longer a
_Belle Limonadiere_ at the Cafe des Mille Colonnes. _Belles
Limonadieres_ (if I may be permitted to use one of the most inelegant,
but the most expressive, of American colloquialisms) are "played out."
The Catacombs have long since been shut to strangers. The _Caveau_
exists no more. Old reprobates scarcely remember the _Cafe d'Enfer_. The
_Fete_ of St. Louis is as dead as Louis XVIII., as dead as the _Fetes_
of July, as the _Fetes_ of the Republic. There is but one national
festival now,--and that is on the 15th of August, and in honor of St.
Napoleon. There are no more "glims" to smash; the old oil _reverberes_
have been replaced by showy gas-lamps, and the _sergents de ville_ would
make short work of any roisterers who attempted to take liberties with
them. The old Paris of the Restoration and the Monarchy is dead; but the
Thane of Cawdor--I mean George Cruikshank--lives, a prosperous
gentleman.