beginning of last century, a wealthy burgomaster of Middelburg, in
the Netherlands, named Hudde, actuated solely by literary curiosity,
made a journey to China; and after travelling through the whole of the
provinces, he set sail for Europe, laden with a manuscript collection
of his observations, the labour of thirty years, the whole of which
was sunk in the ocean. Again, Guarino Verenese, one of those learned
Italians who volunteered to travel through Greece for the recovery of
ancient manuscripts, had his perseverance repaid by the acquisition
of many priceless treasures. Returning to Italy, however, he was
shipwrecked; and such was his grief at the loss of this collection,
that his hair became suddenly white.
Differing from those authors who have destroyed their manuscripts
before death, are those who have delivered them into the hands of
relatives and friends, together with the fullest instructions as to
their disposal. It is well known that Lord Byron handed the manuscript
of his autobiography to Tom Moore, with the strictest injunctions not
to publish it till after his death. Immediately after he expired, Moore
sold the manuscript to John Murray the publisher for two thousand
pounds; but subsequently knowing something of the nature of the
autobiography, and the effect which its publication would exert upon
the memory of the deceased author, his own better feelings, united to
the persuasions of Byron’s friends, prompted him to regain possession
of the document, which he did, at the same time refunding the money to
Mr Murray. The manuscript was then burned.
In the matter of the manuscripts of musical works, it may be related
that shortly after Handel had settled at Hamburg in the capacity of
conductor of the opera in that city, he cultivated the acquaintance
of a well-known musician named Mattheson, and the two became great
friends. But presently a quarrel arose between them, the result of
which was that they drew their swords; and Mattheson’s weapon might in
all probability have dealt fatally with the other’s life, had it not
chanced to strike and break upon the score of _Almira_, Handel’s first
opera, which he had hurriedly stowed beneath his coat, and over which,
it is said, the quarrel had really arisen. After this, the combatants
became reconciled, and Mattheson eventually bore the principal
character in the opera when it was produced.
Returning to literature, it is perhaps not generally known that Swift’s
_Tale of a Tub_ was introduced to the world with such cunning secrecy,
that the manuscript was actually thrown from a passing coach into the
doorway of the bookseller who afterwards published it. _Gulliver’s
Travels_ was given to the public in the same mysterious manner. From
one of Swift’s letters to Pope, as well as from another epistle to
Dr T. Sheridan, we learn that during the time occupied in finishing,
revising, and transcribing his manuscript, prior to thinking about a
fitting bookseller to publish it, Tickell, then Secretary of State,
expressed a strong curiosity to see the work concerning which there
was so much secrecy. But the Dean frankly replied that it would be
quite impossible for Mr Tickell to find his ‘treasury of _waste-papers_
without searching through nine different houses,’ inasmuch as he had
his manuscripts conveyed from place to place through nine or ten
different hands; and then it would be necessary to send to him for a
key to the work, else he could not understand a chapter of it. In the
end, _Gulliver_ came forth from its hiding-place through the medium
of Mr Charles Ford, who offered to carry the manuscript to Mr Motte
the bookseller, on behalf of his friend, and to whom he afterwards
complained that the man’s timidity was such as to compel him to make
some important abridgments throughout the work. The book was, however,
no sooner published, than it was received with unlimited acclamation by
all classes.
Of Defoe’s world-famous _Robinson Crusoe_, published in 1719, we are
told that it was only taken up by Taylor—who purchased the manuscript,
and netted one thousand pounds by the publication—after every other
bookseller in town had refused it. In a similar manner, one bookseller
refused to give twenty-five pounds for the manuscript of Fielding’s
_Tom Jones_; while another bought it, and cleared not less than
eighteen thousand pounds by the venture during his lifetime!
With a few particulars touching upon the value of manuscripts which
have at various periods been put up for public sale after the death of
their authors, we will bring our paper to a conclusion.
When, some years ago, the manuscript of Scott’s _Guy Mannering_
came into the market, the United States gladly secured the precious
treasure at a cost of three hundred and eighty guineas; and in 1867,
at a sale of the manuscripts which had belonged to Mr Cadell the
well-known publisher, the _Lady of the Lake_ was sold for two hundred
and seventy-seven guineas, and _Rokeby_ realised one hundred and
thirty-six guineas, both becoming the property of Mr Hope-Scott. At
the same sale, Sir William Fraser paid two hundred guineas for the
manuscript of _Marmion_; whilst the same appreciative collector of
literary antiquities paid, in 1875, so high a price as two hundred and
fifty guineas for Gray’s _Elegy in a Country Churchyard_, a composition
occupying no more than four quarto sheets of manuscript.
Of Charles Dickens’s manuscripts, _The Christmas Carol_ was purchased
by Mr Harvey of St James’s Street for the sum of one hundred and fifty
pounds, and resold by him for two hundred and fifty pounds; _The Battle
of Life_ is still held on sale by that gentleman; and _Our Mutual
Friend_ was purchased, on behalf of Mr George Washington Childs of
Philadelphia, by Mr Hotten, for two hundred pounds. As is well known,
the manuscript of _The Pickwick Papers_ was bequeathed by Mr Forster
to the South Kensington Museum, and will become the property of the
British nation on the death of his widow, who has meanwhile, and in
the most generous manner, permitted it and other manuscripts from the
pen of Charles Dickens to be publicly exhibited where they will become
permanently enshrined.
Not very long ago, the manuscript of a short poem by Burns brought
seventy guineas; yet this sum must be regarded as but a small
proportion of that value which might be realised for only one
line—not to speak of one play—written by Shakspeare’s own hand. In
his _Memorials of Westminster Abbey_, the late Dean Stanley has told
us how Spenser the poet died in King Street, Westminster, and was
solemnly interred in Poets’ Corner, hard by. ‘His hearse,’ he says,
‘was attended by poets; and mournful elegies, together with the pens
that wrote them, were thrown into his tomb. What a funeral was that at
which Beaumont, Fletcher, Jonson, and, in all probability, Shakspeare
attended! what a grave in which the pen of Shakspeare may be mouldering
away!’ Certainly, if but one line of that ‘mournful elegy’ written
by the Immortal Bard could be recovered and offered for sale, we
should then have a pleasing and memorable opportunity of marking the
estimation in which the poet is held by mankind.
ANIMAL MEMORIALS AND MEMENTOES.
Commenting on the honour paid by the Athenians to a dog that followed
his master across the sea to Salamis, Pope says: ‘This respect to a dog
in the most polite people of the world is very observable. A modern
instance of gratitude to a dog, though we have but few such, is, that
the chief Order of Denmark—now called the Order of the Elephant—was
instituted in memory of the fidelity of a dog named Wild-brat to one of
their kings, who had been deserted by his subjects. He gave his Order
this motto, or to this effect (which still remains): “Wild-brat was
faithful.”’
Had Pope been writing half-a-dozen years later, he need not have
gone to Denmark for a modern instance of gratitude to a dog. Mr
Robert—afterwards Viscount—Molesworth being prevented entering an
outhouse by his favourite greyhound pulling him away by his coat
lappet, ordered a footman to examine the place. On opening the
door, the man was shot dead by a hidden robber. The faithful hound
afterwards died in London, and his master sent his body to Yorkshire,
to be inurned in Edglington Wood, near Doncaster; the receptacle of
his remains bearing an inscription in Latin, which has been thus
translated: ‘Stay, traveller! Nor wonder that a lamented Dog is thus
interred with funeral honour. But, ah! what a Dog! His beautiful form
and snow-white colour; pleasing manners and sportive playfulness;
his affection, obedience, and fidelity, made him the delight of his
master, to whom he closely adhered with his eager companions of the
chase, delighted in attending him. Whenever the mind of his lord was
depressed, he would assume fresh spirit and animation. A master, not
ungrateful for his merits, has here, in tears, deposited his remains in
this marble urn.—M. F. C. 1714.’
An Italian greyhound, buried in Earl Temple’s garden at Stowe, had
never saved his master’s life, but was nevertheless held worthy of
a memorial stone, bearing the eulogistic epitaph from the pen of
Arbuthnot:
‘To the Memory of SIGNOR FIDO—An Italian of good extraction, who came
to England not to bite us, like most of his countrymen, but to gain an
honest livelihood. He hunted not for fame, yet acquired it; regardless
of the praises of his friends, but most sensible of their love.
Though he lived among the Great, he neither learned nor flattered any
vice. He was no bigot, though he doubted of none of the Thirty-nine
Articles. And if to follow Nature and to respect the laws of Society
be philosophical, he was a perfect philosopher, a faithful friend, an
agreeable companion, a loving husband, distinguished by a numerous
offspring, all which he lived to see take good courses. In his old
age, he retired to the home of a clergyman in the country, where he
finished his earthly race, and died an honour and an example to his
species. Reader—This stone is guiltless of flattery, for he to whom it
is inscribed was not a Man, but a Greyhound.’
That eulogy is more than could honestly be said of the animal whose
monument proclaims:
Here lies the body of my dear retriever;
Of his master alone he was ne’er a deceiver;
But the Game-laws he hated, and poached out of bounds—
His spirit now ranges the glad hunting-grounds.
Not in company, we should say, with that of the blameless creature
commemorated by the couplet:
Beneath this stone, there lies at rest
BANDY, of all good dogs the best.
Among the sojourners at the _Grand Hôtel Victoria_, Mentone, in the
year 1872, was the Archduchess Marie Régnier, who, during her three
months’ stay there, took such a liking to mine host’s handsome dog
Pietrino, that she begged him of M. Milandi, and carried her prize
with her to Vienna. In less than a fortnight after reaching that
capital, Pietrino was back in his old quarters again, having travelled
eight hundred miles across strange countries, over mountains, through
towns and villages, only to die at his master’s feet five days after
his coming home. He was buried among the rose-bushes in the grounds
so familiar to him, his resting place marked by a marble column,
inscribed, ‘Ci-gît PIETRINO, Ami Fidèle. 1872.’
Exactly a hundred years before that, a dog died at Minorca out of sheer
grief for the loss of his master, who, ordered home to England, did not
care to encumber himself with his canine friend. Honouring the deserted
animal’s unworthily placed affection, his owner’s brother-officers saw
him decently interred, and erected a stone to his memory, bearing an
epitaph written by Lieutenant Erskine, ending:
His life was shortened by no slothful ease,
Vice-begot care, or folly-bred disease.
Forsook by him he valued more than life,
His generous nature sank beneath the strife.
Left by his master on a foreign shore,
New masters offered—but he owned no more;
The ocean oft with seeming sorrow eyed,
And pierced by man’s ingratitude, he died.
Of tougher constitution was a small Scotch terrier that, in 1868,
followed his master’s coffin to the churchyard of Old Greyfriars,
Edinburgh, heedless of the notice forbidding entrance to dogs. The
morning after the funeral, Bobby was found lying on the newly-made
mound. He was turned out of the churchyard; but the next morning saw
him upon the grave, and the next and the next. Taking pity upon the
forlorn little creature, the custodian of the burial-ground gave him
some food. From that time, Bobby considered himself privileged, and
was constantly in and about the churchyard, only leaving it at mid-day
to obtain a meal at the expense of a kind-hearted restaurant keeper;
but every night was passed upon the spot holding all he had once held
dear. Many were the attempts to get him to transfer his allegiance
from the dead to the living; but none availed. As long as his life
lasted, and it lasted four years, Bobby stayed by, or in the immediate
neighbourhood of, his master’s grave. Such fidelity, unexampled even
in his faithful race, deserved to be kept in remembrance; and thanks
to the most munificent of Lady Bountifuls, his memory is kept green by
his counterfeit presentment on a drinking-fountain of Peterhead granite
erected on George the Fourth Bridge, as a ‘tribute to the affectionate
fidelity of GREYFRIARS BOBBY. In 1868, the faithful dog followed the
remains of his master to Greyfriars Churchyard, and lingered near the
spot until his death in 1872.’
London is not without its memorials to dogs. On the wall leading to
the Irongate Stairs, near the Tower, may be read: ‘In Memory of EGYPT,
a favourite dog belonging to the Irongate Watermen, killed on the 4th
August 1841, aged 16.
Here lies interred, beneath this spot,
A faithful dog, who should not be forgot.
Full fifteen years he watched here with care,
Contented with hard bed and harder fare.
Around the Tower he daily used to roam
In search of bits so savoury, or a bone.
A military pet he was, and in the Dock,
His rounds he always went at twelve o’clock;
Supplied with cash, which held between his jaws—
The reason’s plain—he had no hands but paws—
He’d trot o’er Tower Hill to a favourite shop,
There eat his meal and down his money drop.
To club he went on each successive night,
Where, dressed in jacket gay, he took his pipe;
With spectacles on nose he played his tricks,
And pawed the paper, not the politics.
Going his usual round, near Traitors’ Gate,
Infirm and almost blind, he met his fate;
By ruthless kick hurled from the wharf, below
The stones on which the gentle Thames does flow,
Mortally injured, soon resigned his breath,
Thus left his friends, who here record his death.’
A tablet placed near the north-east end of the platform of the Edgware
Road Railway Station, is inscribed:
In Memory of
Poor FAN,
Died May 8, 1876.
For ten years at the Drivers’ call.
Fed by many,
Regretted by all.
Poor Fan lies under an evergreen hard by. She was notable for
travelling continually on a railway engine between the Edgware Road
and Hammersmith; occasionally getting off at an intermediate station,
crossing the line, and returning by the next train; never taking any
train but a Hammersmith train when outward bound, or going farther east
than her own particular station when journeying homewards.
An Englishman travelling in France in 1698, was disgusted at seeing,
in a ducal garden, a superb memorial in the shape of a black marble
cat couching on a gilded white marble cushion, on the top of a black
marble pedestal bearing the one word ‘MENINE.’ Such posthumous honour
is rarely paid to puss; but two other instances of it may be cited.
In making excavations near the Place de la Bastille, in the ground
formerly occupied by the gardens of the Hôtel de Lesdiguières, the
workmen brought to light the handsome tomb of a cat which had belonged
to Françoise-Marguerite de Gondy, widow of Emmanuel de Crequi, Duke of
Lesdiguières. It bore no laudatory epitaph, but the odd quatrain:
Cy-gist une chatte jolie.
Sa maitresse, qui n’aima rien,
L’aima jusqu’à la folie.
Pourquoi le dire? On le voit bien.
Or to put it into English: ‘Here lies a handsome cat. Her mistress, who
loved nothing, loved her out of caprice. Why say so? All the world knew
it well.’
‘Grandfather,’ a feline Nestor, belonging to a lady in Scotland, was
something more than handsome. When he had passed his twenty-first year,
he could climb a tree, catch a bird, hunt a mouse, or kill a rat,
as cleverly as in his younger days; and when he died, at the age of
twenty-two, had well earned himself a memorial stone and an epitaph.
Both were accorded him, the last-named running thus:
‘Life to the last enjoyed,’ here Pussy lies,
Renowned for mousing and for catching flies;
Loving o’er grass and pliant branch to roam,
Yet ever constant to the smiles of home.
. . . . .
The Preux Chevalier of the race of Cats,
He has outlived their customary span,
As Jenkins and Old Parr had that of Man;
And might on tiles have murmured in moonshine
Nestorian tales of youth and Troy divine;
Of rivals fought; of kitten-martyrdoms;
While, meekly listening, round sat Tabs and Toms.
But with the modesty of genuine worth,
He vaunted not his deeds of ancient birth;
His whiskers twitched not, at the world’s applause,
He only yawned, and licked his reverend paws;
Curled round his head his tail, and fell asleep,
Lapped in sweet dreams, and left us here to weep.
Yet pleased to know, that ere he sank to rest,
As far as mortal cats are, he was blest.
The horse, even though he may have won a fortune for his master, as a
rule goes literally to the dogs at last. Some few of the wonders of
the turf have escaped that indignity. A plain stone inscribed simply
‘SIR PETER,’ tells visitors to Knowsley, Sir Peter Teazle lies beneath
it. A sculptured stone, rifled from a cardinal’s monument, overlooks
the grave of Emilius at Easby Abbey. A cedar, planted by a once famous
jockey, rises hard by the resting-place of Bay-Middleton and Crucifix;
Kingston reposes under the shade of a grand oak at Eltham; Blair-Athol,
the pride of Malton, lies embowered at Cobham; and green is the grave
of Amato, well within hail of the course he traversed triumphantly.
The skeleton of Eclipse is still, we believe, on view at Cannons,
but it must be minus at least one hoof, since King William IV. gave
a piece of plate, with a hoof of Eclipse set in gold, to be run for
at Ascot in 1832; the trophy being carried off by Lord Chesterfield’s
Priam. Equine mementoes usually take this form, and many a sideboard
can show the polished hoof of a famous racehorse. The Prince of Wales
is said to possess a hoof of the charger that bore Nolan to his death
at Balaklava; it is surmounted with a small silver figure of the
Captain, carrying the fatal order for the advance of the Light Brigade.
An interesting military souvenir enough; but not so interesting as a
polished and shod hoof, mounted so as to serve as a snuff-box, the
property of the Guards’ Club; for this bears the inscription: ‘Hoof
of MARENGO, rare charger of Napoleon, ridden by him at Marengo,
Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram, in the campaign of Russia, and lastly at
Waterloo;’ while on the margin of the silver shoe is to be read:
‘Marengo was wounded in the near hip at Waterloo, when his great master
was on him, in the hollow road in advance of the French position. He
had been frequently wounded before in other battles.’
SOME FOOD-NOTES.
We have received the following notes from a gentleman—an occasional
contributor—who devotes much of his attention to such matters, making
them indeed an especial and constant study.
_The Antipodean Rabbit Nuisance._—That which for several years past has
been the bane of agriculturists at the antipodes, is not unlikely to
prove in the end something akin to a blessing. Rabbits in many places,
notwithstanding what has been done to exterminate them, are nearly as
numerous as ever; but instead of killing them by means of poison and
burying them in the ground, they are now systematically ‘trapped,’
and, being cooked and tinned, command a large sale. At the Western
Meat-preserving Company’s Works, Colac, Victoria, as many as seventeen
thousand pairs of rabbits are dealt with in the course of the early
weeks of the season, which, it may be explained, lasts for a period
of seven months; and although the supply diminishes as the season
progresses, over three hundred thousand pairs are annually prepared
for sale, finding a ready market. A large number of persons are
employed during the continuance of this industry; no fewer than three
hundred and fifty people obtaining remunerative work in connection with
this one establishment. On an average, over five thousand two-pound
tins are turned out every day within the period indicated. These are
made up for sale in three different ways—as plain rabbits, as rabbits
cooked with onions, and rabbits done up with bacon; and for each
description there is now setting in a large European demand. Many of
the men engaged in the rabbit-work at Colac are exceedingly dexterous,
and work with great rapidity, some individual hands among them being
able to skin with ease one hundred pairs of rabbits in an hour. In
order to gain a wager, one very expert person skinned four hundred and
twenty-eight of these animals in sixty minutes! It should be mentioned,
that before being skinned, the heads and feet of the conies are chopped
off. Work of every kind is performed by the most cleanly methods, and
only the best animals are selected to be tinned, while none are sent
out without being carefully examined. The trappers are paid by results,
and are, as a rule, welcome to visit those farms which are overrun
with the pest. In the earlier weeks of the season, a gang of expert
trappers will each earn over five pounds a week. The rabbits as they
are caught are slung across poles in convenient places, and then lifted
and conveyed in carts to ‘the works.’ There are several establishments
of the kind in Victoria, and hopes are now being entertained by farmers
of a speedy deliverance from the rabbit nuisance, as the large numbers
which are being killed must in time tell on the breeding supplies.
Similar establishments are also about to be started in New Zealand.
_Edible Snails._—None but those who have made special inquiry into
the subject are aware of the great dimensions which the continental
snail-trade has of late assumed. Many tons of these vine-fed delicacies
reach Paris every year during the snail season, which lasts from
September to about April, during some part of which period under
natural circumstances the animals would be asleep. In this country
there would be a universal shudder, if it were proposed to add the
common garden-snail to the national commissariat, no matter how
attractive might be the shape assumed by the _Escargot de Bourgogne_,
or other snail of the orchard or vineyard; yet we eat countless
quantities of whelks and periwinkles, which are not such clean-feeding
animals as the snails of the garden. A recent authority states that
enormous quantities of snails are forwarded annually from Marseilles
and Genoa to Paris, and that tens of thousands of these creatures
find their way to the markets of Bordeaux, Lyons, Vienna, and Munich.
Such is the demand, that many persons now ‘cultivate’ snails for the
markets, and find the business a remunerative one. As many as twenty or
thirty thousand can be bred in a very small space.