Few, we dare say, ever entered a shop of the description named in the
title of this paper with any other idea than that they were entering
merely a repository of Lundy Foot, cigars, and small twist. Few, we
suppose, ever looked on such a place in any other light, or ever
considered its keeper in any other point of view than that simply of
a tobacconist. Yet is there another light, and a dismal one it is, in
which both the snuff shop and the snuff dealer himself may be looked
upon; and it is in such a light that we ourselves always do look upon
them. This is, viewing the one as a charnel-house of defunct authors;
the other as a goul, battening on their mortal remains. We sometimes
vary this horrifying, but, alas! too correct view of the snuff shop and
the snuff dealer, by supposing the one a sort of literary shambles or
slaughter-house, and the other a cold-blooded, merciless literary butcher.
Taking either of these views of the snuff shop, what a change takes place
in its aspect, and in that of every thing and person pertaining to it!
What a dismal and hideous den it then becomes, and what a truculent,
savage-looking fiend becomes that smiling and simpering tobacconist!
No bowels of compassion has he for the mangled and mutilated authors
that are lying thick around him, cruelly Burked by his own merciless
hands. No; there he sits in the midst of the dire carnage as calm and
unconcerned as if he had nothing whatever to do with it--the callous
monster!
Pursuing the idea just broached, let us enter this horrid den, and for a
moment contemplate its interior in a spirit in accordance with that idea;
for, not being authors, we have nothing to fear for ourselves, it being
that class only that need stand in awe of the snuff shop--to all others
it is a harmless place enough.
Lo! then, behold (giving us the advantage here of a little stretch
of imagination), the walls bespattered with the blood and brains of
murdered authors; and see that blood-stained bench which the demon of
the place calls a counter; and in various other depositories around lie
their dismembered limbs and mangled carcases. Oh, it is a shocking and
heart-rending sight!
Some of those unfortunates have evidently died hard: they have the
appearance of having struggled desperately for life. But, alas, in vain!
An irresistible destiny thrust them into the fatal snuff shop, where they
perished quickly and miserably by the hand of the ruthless savage within.
Others, again, seem to have quietly resigned themselves to their fate,
and, indeed, to have been more than half dead before they were brought
in; while others, again, appear to have been wholly defunct, having died
a natural death. These, then, have been conveyed thither merely to be cut
up, and converted to the degrading uses of the tobacconist.
Although some of the unhappy authors whose mangled remains strew this
den of horrors seem to have attained a kind of maturity before they were
cruelly torn to pieces as we now see them, by far the greater number are
a sort of murdered innocents, having been strangled in their birth, or
shortly after. A good many there are, too, who seem to have been dead
born, or to have perished while yet in embryo.
Piteous as it is to look on the heavy, sturdy corpses of the murdered
prose writers that lie thickly up and down this chamber of death, yet
infinitely more piteous is it to contemplate the delicate, fragile forms
of the poets thus cruelly mangled and mutilated that lie no less thickly
around us. Poor dear, unfledged things! What a fate has been thine!--what
a destiny, to be consigned, ere ye had yet opportunity to open your
little musical throats, to the tender mercies of _that_ literary
Burke--that ruthless monster whom the world, thinking of him only in
connection with cigars and pigtail, calls a tobacconist. Where now,
sweet little humming birds, be those soft and tender notes with which
ye sought, alas, how vainly! to charm the huge, rude ear of an uncouth
and barbarous world that would not listen to ye? Alas, they have ceased
for ever! How little does that savage, the demon of the place, mind your
sweet, small voices, that give forth a piteous wail, like the last notes
of the dying swan, every time he lays his merciless hands on you. Little,
indeed! Let but a customer come in for half an ounce of “Blackguard,”
and he will, without the smallest hesitation or compunction, seize one
of you, dear unfortunates, and tear you limb from limb for his own and
that customer’s conveniency: ay, for a paltry three half-pence, mayhap
less--a pennyworth of “Scotch”--will he perpetrate this atrocious deed.
That sanguinary bench, that horrid counter, is strewn over with your
slim carcases and fragile limbs; and your murderer is hanging over your
mutilated remains, laughing and chatting and joking with his customers as
pleasantly and unconcernedly as if you were so much waste paper. Oh, it
is atrocious!
Such, then, dear reader, is the light--a terrible one, indeed, but as
thou wilt acknowledge, we have no doubt, a correct one--in which we look
upon snuff shops, which, as thou well knowest, have long lain, and not
unjustly, under the stigma of being fatal to authors. If thou art one,
pray, then, eschew it; for if thou dost once enter its dismal portals,
thou wilt never, never more be heard of in this world!