“_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.
HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL.
CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.
N^{o.} 10.] SATURDAY, JUNE 1, 1850. [PRICE 2_d._
A POPULAR DELUSION.
Victimised by a deceptive idea originating in ‘The Complete Angler,’ and
which has been industriously perpetuated by a numerous proprietary of
punts and houses of public entertainment and eel pies—the London
disciples of Izaak Walton usually seek for sport in the upper regions of
the Thames. They resort to Shepperton, or Ditton, or Twickenham, or
Richmond. Chiefly, it would seem, as a wholesome exercise of the
greatest Christian virtue, patience; for recent experience proves that
anglers who soar above sticklebats, and are not content with occasional
nibbles from starving gudgeons, or the frequent entanglements of
writhing eels, mostly return to their homes and families with their
baskets innocent of the vestige of a single scale.
If—as may be safely asserted—the aim, end, and purpose of all fishing is
fish, the tenacity with which this idea is clung to, is astonishing; we
may indeed say, amazing when we reflect that there exists—-below
bridge—a particular spot, more convenient, more accessible, and
affording quite as good accommodation as any of the above-bridge fishing
stations, and which abounds at particular states of the tide, at
particular times of the day, and at no particular seasons of the year,
but all the year round, in fish of every sort, size, species, and
condition, from the cod down to the sprat; from a salmon to a shrimp;
from turbots to Thames flounders. Neither is there a single member of
any one of these enormous families of fishes that may not be captured
with the smallest possible expenditure of patience. And although the
bait necessary for that purpose (a white bait manufactured of metal at
an establishment on that bank of the Thames known as Tower Hill,) is
unfortunately not always procurable by every class of her Majesty’s
subjects; yet it is so eagerly caught at, that, with a moderate supply,
the least expert may be sure of filling his fish-basket very
respectably.
In order to partake of all the advantages offered by this famed spot, it
is necessary to rise betimes. The fishing excursion of which we are now
about to give a sketch, commenced at about four o’clock on a Monday
morning. The rain which fell at the time did not much matter, on account
of the sheltered position of that margin of the Thames to which we were
bound. With a small basket, and the waistcoat pocket primed with a
little of the proper sort of bait; with no other rod than a walking
stick, and no fly whatever, (except one upon four wheels procured from a
neighbouring cab stand,) we arrived at the great fish focus; which, we
may as well mention, to relieve suspense, is situated on the Middlesex
shore of the Thames at a short distance below London Bridge, close to
the Custom House, opposite the Coal Exchange, and has been known from
time immemorial as BILLINGSGATE.
When we arrived at the collection of sheds and stalls—like a dilapidated
railway station—of which this celebrated place consists, it was nearly
five o’clock. Its ancient reputation had prepared us for scenes of
confusion and for volubility of abuse, which have since the times of the
Tritons ever been associated with those whose special business is with
fish. It was, therefore, with very great surprise that we walked
unmolested through that portion of the precinct set aside as the market.
We went straight to the river’s edge, rod in hand, without having had
once occasion to use it as a weapon, and without hearing one word that
might not have been uttered in the Queen’s drawing-room on a court day.
No crowding, no elbowing, no screaming, no fighting: no ungenteel
nick-names, no foul-mouthed females hurling anathemas at their
neighbours’ optics; no rude requests to despatch ourself suddenly down
to the uttermost depth the human mind is capable of conceiving; no wish
expressed that we might be inflated very tight indeed; no criticisms on
the quality of our hat; no impertinent questions as to our present stock
of soap; nothing whatever, in short, calculated to sustain the ancient
reputation of Billingsgate.
With easy deliberation we sauntered down to the dumb-barge which forms a
temporary landing-place while a better one is being built. There we
beheld a couple of clippers, quite as trim as any revenue-cutter; over
the sides of which were being handed all sorts of fish; cod, soles,
whitings, plaice, John Dorys, mackerel; some neatly packed in baskets.
That nothing should be wanting utterly to subvert established notions of
Billingsgate, the order, quietness, and system with which these cutters
were emptied, and their cargoes taken to the stalls, could not be
exceeded.
This office is performed by fellowship-porters. Being responsible
individuals, they prevent fraud. Formerly a set of scamps, called
laggers, ‘conveyed’ the fish; but they used to drop some of the best
sort softly into the stream, and pick them up at low water. An idea may
be formed of the profits of their dishonesty, from the fact that laggers
offered seven shillings a day to be employed, instead of demanding the
wages of labour. When a salesman had one or two hundred turbots
consigned to him, a lagger would give the hint to an accomplice, who
would quickly substitute several small fish for the same number of the
largest size; a species of fraud which the salesman had it not in his
power to detect, as the tally was not deficient.
At that time an immense number of bad fish was condemned every morning
by the superintendent. There was an understanding between the consignees
and salesmen that when the market was well supplied, any overplus should
be kept back in store boats at Gravesend, and not brought to market till
the supply was diminished, and the price raised. This dishonest mode of
‘regulating’ the market caused a great many stale fish to be brought to
it; hence the quantity condemned. Now, however, the celerity with which
fish can be conveyed prevents any such practice, and of late years the
superintendent has only had occasion to condemn in rare instances.
Every possible expedient and appliance is now resorted to, to bring fish
to market fresh. As we have a minute or two to wait on the Billingsgate
punt before the market opens, let us trace the history of a fish from
the sea to the salesman’s stall. Suppose him to be a turbot hauled with
a hundred other captives early on Monday afternoon on board one of the
Barking fishing fleet moored on a bank some twenty miles off Dover. He
is no sooner taken on board than he is trans-shipped immediately with
thousands of his flat companions in a row-boat into a clipper, which is
being fast filled from other vessels of the fleet. When her cargo is
complete, she sets sail for the mouth of the Thames, and on entering it
is met by a tug steamer, which tows her up to Billingsgate early on
Tuesday morning, bringing our turbot _alive_—for he has been put into a
tank in the hold of the clipper. He is sold as soon as landed, and finds
his way to table in the neighbourhood of the Mansion House or Belgrave
Square some four-and-twenty hours after he has been sporting in the sea,
not less than a hundred and fifty miles off.
Enormous accessions in the supply of fish to the London market have been
effected, first by the employment of clippers as carrier-boats, (instead
of each fishing-boat bringing its own cargo as formerly,) and secondly,
by the use of steam-tugs for towing the transit-craft up the river. In
the old time a south-westerly wind deprived all London of fish. While it
prevailed the boats, which usually took shelter in Holy or East Haven on
the Essex shore, waited for a change of wind, till the fish became
odoriferous. The cargo was then thrown overboard, and the boats returned
on another fishing voyage.
The Thames was, at that time, the only highway by which fish was brought
to Billingsgate; but the old losses and delays are again obviated by
another source of acceleration. Our turbot is brought at waggon pace
compared with the more perishable mackerel. The Eddystone lighthouse is
at least two hundred and fifty miles from Thames Street. Between it and
the Plymouth Breakwater lie some hundreds of fishing boats, plying their
trawl-nets. A shoal of mackerel, the superficies of which may be
measured by the mile, find their way among them, and several thousands
dart into the nets. They are captured, hauled on board, shovelled into a
clipper, and while she stands briskly in for shore, busy hands on board
are packing the fish in baskets. Thousands of these baskets are landed
in time for the mail train, rattle their way per railroad to Paddington,
and by seven o’clock on the following morning—that is, in sixteen hours
after they were rejoicing in the ‘ocean wave’—are in a London
fishmonger’s taxed-cart on their road to the gridiron or fish-kettle, as
the taste of the customer dictates.
No distance appears too great from which to bring fish to Billingsgate.
Packed in long boxes, both by rail and river, between layers of ice,
salmon come daily in enormous quantities from the remotest rivers of
Ireland, of Scotland, and even from Norway. So considerable an item is
ice in the fishmonger’s trade, that a large proprietor at Barking has an
ice-well capable of stowing eight hundred tons. Another in the same line
of business has actually contracted with the Surrey Canal Company for
all the ice generated on their waters!
As we cogitate concerning these ‘great facts’ on the dumb-barge, and
while the baskets and boxes are being systematically landed, it strikes
five. A bell—the only noisy appurtenance of Billingsgate—stunningly
announces that the market is open. The landing of fish proceeds somewhat
faster, and fishmongers, from all parts of London, and from many parts
of the provinces—from Oxford, Cambridge, Reading, Windsor, &c.—group
themselves round the stalls of such salesmen as appear to have the
choicest fish. These are rapidly sold by (Dutch) auction; and taken to
the buyers’ carts outside the market.
Nothing can exceed the gentlemanly manner in which the auction is
conducted, except the mode of doing business at Christie and Manson’s.
Before the commencement, the salesman, with his flannel apron protecting
his almost fashionable attire from scaly contact, is seen—behold him
yonder!—seated behind his stall enjoying a mild Havannah, with an
appearance of sublime indifference to all around him. Presently, his
porter deposits a ‘lot’ of fish between him, and an eager group of
buyers. He puts down his cigar and mounts his rostrum.
“What shall we say, gentlemen, for this score of cod? Shall we say seven
shillings a piece?”
No answer.
“Six?”
Perfect silence. The auctioneer gives pause for consideration, and takes
a whiff at his Havannah. Time is, however, precious, where fish is
concerned, and he is not long in abating another shilling.
“A crown?”
“Done!” exclaims Mr. Jollins of Pimlico.
“Five pounds, if you please!” demands the seller. A note is handed over,
and the twenty cod are hoisted into Mr. Jollins’ cart, which stands in
Thames Street, before a second lot is quite disposed of.
This mild proceeding is going on all over the market. On looking to see
if the remotest relic of such a being as a fish-fag is to be seen, we
observe a gentleman who, though girded with the flannel uniform of the
craft, has so fashionable a surtout, so elegant a neckerchief, and such
a luxuriance of moustache and whiskers, that we mistake him for an
officer in her Majesty’s Life Guards, selling fish by way of—what in
Billingsgate used to be called—a ‘jolly lark.’ Enquiry proves, however,
that he is the accredited consignee of one of the largest fishing fleets
which sail out of the Thames.
We are bound to confess that the high tone of refinement which had
hitherto been so well supported on the occasion of our visit, became in
a little while, slightly depressed. As the legislature of the British
empire consists of Crown, Lords, and Commons; so also the executive of
Billingsgate is composed of three estates: first, of the Lord Mayor
(Piscine secretary of state, Mr. Goldham); secondly, of an aristocracy,
and, thirdly, of a commonalty, of salesmen. The latter—called in ancient
Billingsgate _Bummarees_, in modern ditto, ‘Retailers’—are middlemen
between the smaller fishmonger and the high salesman aristocracy. They
purchase the various sorts of fish, and arrange them in small assorted
parcels to suit the convenience of suburban fishmongers, or of those
peripatetic tradesmen, to whom was formerly applied the obsolete term
almost of ‘Costermonger.’ The transactions between these parties were
not conducted under the influence of those strict rules of etiquette
which governed the earlier dealings of the morning. Indeed, we detected
the proprietor of a very respectable looking donkey answering a civil
enquiry from a retailer as to what he was ‘looking for’ with
“Not you!”
It is right, however, to add, in justice to the reputation of a locality
which has been so long and so undeservedly regarded as the head quarters
of verbal vulgarity, that a friend of the offender asked him solemnly
_if he remembered were he wos_; and if he warn’t ashamed of his-self for
going and bringing his Cheek into that ’ere markit?
Connected with the perambulating purveyors, there is a subject of very
great importance; namely, cheap food for the poor. Although painful
revelations of want of proper sustenance in every part of this
overcrowded country, are daily breaking forth to light; although the low
dietaries of most workhouses, and some prisons, are very often
complained of; yet the old Celtic prejudice against fish still exists in
great force among the humbler orders. Few poor persons will eat fish
when they can get meat; many prefer gruel, and some slow starvation.
Divers kinds of wholesome and nutritious fish are now sold at prices not
above the means of the poorest persons; yet, so small is the demand,
that the itinerant vendor—through whom what little that is sold reaches
the humble consumer—makes it a matter of perfect indifference when he
starts from home whether his venture for the day shall be fish or
vegetables. His first visit is to Billingsgate; but if he find things,
as regards price or kind, not to his taste, he adjourns to speculate in
Covent Garden. He has, therefore, no regular market for what might most
beneficially become a staple article. During the fruit season, little or
no fish reaches the humbler classes; because then their purveyors find
dealings with the ‘Garden’ more profitable than dealings at the ‘Gate.’
Not long since a large quantity of wholesome fish of various sorts was
left upon the hands of the market superintendent. By the advice of the
Lord Mayor, it was forwarded for consumption to Giltspur Street Compter.
The prisoners actually refused to eat it, and accompanied their refusal
with a jocose allusion to the want of a proper accompaniment of sauce.
Among the stronger instances of the popular aversion to this kind of
food, we may mention that in 1812, one of the members of the Committee
for the Relief of the Manufacturing Poor, agreed with some fishermen to
take from ten to twenty thousand mackerel a day, at a penny a piece; a
price at which the fishermen said they could afford to supply the London
market, to any extent, were they sure of a regular sale. On the 15th
June, 1812, upwards of seventeen thousand mackerel, delivered at the
stipulated price, were sent to Spitalfields, and sold to the working
weavers at the original cost of a penny a piece. Though purchased with
great avidity by the inhabitants of that district, it soon appeared that
Spitalfields alone would not be equal to the consumption of the vast
quantities of mackerel which daily poured into the market; they were,
therefore, sent for distribution at the same rate, in other parts of the
town; workhouses and other public establishments were also served, and
the supply increased to such a degree, that five hundred thousand
mackerel arrived and were sold in one day.
This cheap and benevolent supply was eagerly absorbed while the distress
lasted; but as soon as trade revived, the demand fell off and finally
ceased altogether.
Is this aversion to fish unconquerable? If it be not, what an enormous
augmentation of wholesome food might be procured to relieve the
increasing wants of the humble and needy. All the time the above
experiment was tried, only a small portion of the coast was available
for the supply of the densest inland populations of this island. Now,
there is scarcely a creek or an estuary from which fish cannot be
rapidly transported, however great the distance.
Compared with the boundless means of supply, and the lightning-like
powers of transit, the price of fish is at present inordinately dear.
But this is solely the fault of the public. The demand is too
inconsiderable to call forth any great and, therefore, economical
system. The voyager, per steam, between the Thames and Scotland, or
between London and Cork, cannot fail to wonder when he sees, as he
surely will see on a warm, calm day, _scores of square miles_ of
haddocks, mackerel, pilchards, herrings, &c.; when he has left on shore
thousands of human beings pining for food. These enormous shoals
approach the land, too, on purpose to be caught. In the History of
British Fishes, Mr. Yarrell says, ‘The law of Nature which obliges
mackerel and many others to visit the shallower water of the shores at a
particular season, appears to be one of those wise and beautiful
provisions of the Creator by which not only is the species perpetuated
with the greatest certainty, but a large portion of the parent animals
are thus brought within the reach of man, who, but for the action of
this law, would be deprived of many of those species most valuable to
him as food. For the mackerel dispersed over the immense surface of the
deep, no effective fishery could be carried on; but approaching the
shore as they do from all directions, and roving along the coast
collected in immense shoals, millions are caught, which yet form but a
very small portion compared with the myriads that escape.’ The fecundity
of some of the species is marvellous. It has been ascertained by actual
experiment, that the roe of the cod fish contains from six to nine
millions of eggs.
Nor are river fish less abundant. Mr. Yarrell says, that two persons
once calculated from actual observation, that from sixteen to eighteen
hundred of the delicate ingredients for Twickenham pies passed a given
point on the Thames in one minute of time; an average of more than one
hundred thousand per hour. And this _eel-fare_, as it is called, is
going on incessantly for more than two months. The king of fish is
equally prolific, and quite as easily captured. The choicest salmon that
appear in Billingsgate are from the river Bann, near Coleraine. We found
it eighteen pence per pound; yet it is recorded that fourteen hundred
and fifty salmon were taken in that river at one drag of a single net!
The appetite for fish is, it would seem, an acquired taste; but it would
be of enormous advantage if any means could be devised for encouraging
the consumption of this description of food. In order to commence the
experiment we would suggest the regular introduction of fish into
workhouse and prison dietaries. Formerly, such a measure was not
practicable during the whole of the year, but, with a trifling outlay,
such a system of supply might be organised as would ensure freshness and
constancy.
The proprietor of the handsome donkey, who led us into this statistical
reverie, informed us—and he was corroborated by his friend—that the only
certainty was the red-herring and periwinkle trade; but then the
competition was so werry great. “_I_ don’t know how it is,” he observed,
“but people’ll buy salt things with all the wirtue dried out on ’em,
but——”
“That’s because they has a relish,” interrupted the Mentor.
“But fresh fish,” renewed the other gentleman, with a glance of
displeasure at being interrupted; “fresh fish—all alive, as we cries
’em—fresh fish, mind you!—they can’t abear!”
We also learnt from these gentlemen that the professors of the Hebrew
faith were the only constant fish-eaters.
“And wy?” continued the councillor, “cos when they eats fish, they
thinks they’re a fasting!”
This reminding us that we were actually fasting, we complimented our
friend on his donkey (which he assured us was a ‘Moke’ of the reg’lar
Tantivy breed), and having completed the filling of our basket, were
about to return home to breakfast, with an excellent appetite, and a
high respect for the manners of modern fishmongers, when he hailed us
easily with, “Halloa, you Sir!”
We went back.
“I tell you wot,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, in the
direction of the Market Tavern,—“but p’raps you have though.”
“Have what?” said we.
“Dined at Simpson’s, the Fish Hord’n’ry,” said he.
“Never,” said we.
“Do it!” said he. “You go and have a tuck-out at Simpson’s at four
o’clock in the arternoon (wen me and my old ooman is a going to take our
tea, with a winkle or wot not) and you’ll come out as bright as a star,
and as sleek as this here Moke.”
We thanked him for his hint towards the improvement of our personal
appearance, which was a little dilapidated at that hour of the morning,
and were so much impressed by the possibility of rivalling the Moke,
that we returned at four o’clock in the afternoon, and climbed up to the
first floor of Mr. Simpson’s house.
A glance at the clock assured us that Mr. Simpson was a genius. He kept
it back ten minutes, to give stragglers a last chance. Already, the long
table down the whole length of the long low room was nearly full, and
people were sitting at a side table, looking out through windows, like
stern-windows aboard ship, at flapping sails, and rigging. The host was
in the chair, with a wooden hammer ready to his hand; and five several
gentlemen, much excited by hunger and haste, who had run us down on the
stairs, had leaped into seats, and were menacing expected turbots with
their knives.
We slipped into a vacant chair by a gentleman from the Eastern Counties,
who immediately informed us that Sir Robert Peel was all wrong, and the
agricultural interest blown to shivers. This gentleman had little pieces
of sticking-plaster stuck all over him, and we thought his discontent
had broken out in an eruption, until he informed us that he had been
‘going it, all last week’ with some ruined friends of his who were also
in town, and that ‘champagne and claret always had that effect upon
him.’
On our left hand, was an undertaker from Whitechapel. “Here’s a bill,”
says he; “this General Interment! What’s to become of my old hands who
haven’t been what you may call rightly sober these twenty years? Ain’t
there _any_ religious feeling in the country?”
The company had come, like the fish, from various distances. There was a
respectable Jew provision-merchant from Hamburg, over the way. Next him,
an old man with sunken jaws that were always in motion, like a gutta
percha mouth that was being continually squeezed. He had come from York.
Hard by, a very large smooth-faced old gentleman in an immense ribbed
satin waistcoat, out of Devonshire, attended by a pink nephew who was
walking the London Hospitals. Lower down, was a wooden leg that had
brought the person it belonged to, all the way from Canada. Two
‘parties,’ as the waiter called them, who had been with a tasting-order
to the Docks, and were a little scared about the eyes, belonged to
Doncaster. Pints of stout and porter were handed round, agreeably to
their respective orders. Everybody took his own pint pot to himself, and
seemed suspicious of his neighbour. As the minute hand of the clock
approached a quarter past four, the gentleman from the Eastern Counties
whispered us, that if the country held out for another year, it was as
much as he expected.
Suddenly a fine salmon sparkled and twinkled like a silver harlequin
before Mr. Simpson. A goodly dish of soles was set on lower down; then,
in quick succession, appeared flounders, fried eels, stewed eels, cod
fish, melted butter, lobster-sauce, potatoes. Savoury steams curled and
curled about the company’s heads, and toyed with the company’s noses.
Mr. Simpson hammered on the table. Grace!
For one silent moment, Mr. Simpson gazed upon the salmon as if he were
the salmon’s admiring father, and then fell upon him, and helped twenty
people without winking. Five or six flushed waiters hurried to and fro,
and played cymbals with the plates; the company rattled an accompaniment
of knives and forks; the fish were no more, in a twinkling. Boiled beef,
mutton, and a huge dish of steaks, were soon disposed of in like manner.
Small glasses of brandy round, were gone, ere one could say it
lightened. Cheese melted away. Crusts dissolved into air. Mr. Simpson
was gay. He knew the worst the company could do. He saw it done, twice
every day. Again he hammered on the table. Grace!
Then, the cloth, the plates, the salt-cellars, the knives and forks, the
glasses and pewter-pots, being all that the guests had not eaten or
drunk, were cleared; bunches of pipes were laid upon the table; and
everybody ordered what he liked to drink, or went his way. Mr. Simpson’s
punch, in wicked tumblers of immense dimensions, was the most in favour.
Mr. Simpson himself consorted with a company of generous
spirits—connected with a Brewery, perhaps—and smoked a mild cigar. The
large gentleman out of Devonshire: so large now, that he was obliged to
move his chair back, to give his satin waistcoat play: ordered a small
pint bottle of port, passed it to the pink nephew, and disparaged punch.
The nephew dutifully concurred, but looked at the undertaker’s glass,
out of the corner of his eye, as if he could have reconciled himself to
punch, too, under pressure, on a desart island. The ‘parties’ from the
Docks took rum-and-water, and wandered in their conversation. He of the
Eastern Counties took cold gin-and-water for a change, and for the
purification of his blood. Deep in the oiled depths of the old-fashioned
table, a reflection of every man’s face appeared below him, beaming.
Many pipes were lighted, the windows were opened at top, and a fragrant
cloud enwrapped the company, as if they were all being carried upward
together. The undertaker laughed monstrously at a joke, and the
agriculturist thought the country might go on, say ten years, with good
luck.
Eighteen pence a-head had done it all—the drink, and smoke, and civil
attendance excepted—and again this was Billingsgate! Verily, there is
‘an ancient and fish-like smell’ about our popular opinions sometimes;
and our hereditary exaltations and depressions of some things would bear
revision!
GREENWICH WEATHER-WISDOM.
In England everybody notices the weather, and talks about the weather,
and suffers by the weather, yet very few of us _know_ anything about it.
The changes of our climate have given us a constant and an insatiable
national disease—consumption; the density of our winter fog has gained
an European celebrity; whilst the general haziness of the atmosphere
induces an Italian or an American to doubt whether we are ever indulged
with a real blue sky. ‘Good day’ has become the national salutation;
umbrellas, water-proof clothes and cough mixtures are almost necessities
of English life; yet, despite these daily and hourly proofs of the
importance of the weather to each and all of us, it is only within the
last ten years that any effectual steps have been taken in England to
watch the weather and the proximate elements which regulate its course
and variations.
Yet, in those ten years positive wonders have been done, and good hope
established that a continuance of patient enquiry will be rewarded by
still further discoveries. To take a single result it may be mentioned,
that a careful study of the thermometer has shown that a descent of the
temperature of London from forty-five to thirty-two degrees, generally
kills about 300 persons. They may not all die in the very week when the
loss of warmth takes place, but the number of deaths is found to
increase to that extent over the previous average within a short period
after the change. The fall of temperature, in truth, kills them as
certainly as a well aimed cannon-shot. Our changing climate or deficient
food and shelter has weathered them for the final stroke, but they
actually die at last of the weather.
Before 1838 several European states less apt than ourselves to talk
about the weather, had taken it up as a study, and had made various
contributions to the general knowledge of the subject; but in that year
England began to act. The officials who now and then emerge from the
Admiralty under the title of the ‘Board of Visitors,’ to see what is in
progress at the Greenwich Observatory, were reminded by Mr. Airy, the
astronomer royal, that much good might be done by pursuing a course of
magnetic and meteorological observations. The officials ‘listened and
believed.’
The following year saw a wooden fence pushed out behind the Observatory
walls in the direction of Blackheath, and soon afterwards a few
low-roofed, unpainted, wooden buildings were dotted over the enclosure.
These structures are small enough and humble enough to outward view, yet
they contain some most beautifully constructed instruments, and have
been the scene of a series of observations and discoveries of the
greatest interest and value. The stray holiday visitor to Greenwich
Park, who feels tempted to look over the wooden paling sees only a
series of deal sheds, upon a rough grass-plat; a mast some 80 feet high,
steadied by ropes, and having a lanthorn at the top, and a windlass
below; and if he looks closer he perceives a small inner enclosure
surrounded by a dwarf fence, an upright stand with a moveable top
sheltering a collection of thermometers, and here and there a pile of
planks and unused partitioning that helps to give the place an
appearance of temporary expediency—an aspect something between a
collection of emigrant’s cottages and the yard of a dealer in
second-hand building materials. But,—as was said when speaking of the
Astronomical Observatory,—Greenwich is a practical place, and not one
prepared for show. Science, like virtue, does not require a palace for a
dwelling-place. In this collection of deal houses during the last ten
years Nature has been constantly watched, and interrogated with the zeal
and patience which alone can glean a knowledge of her secrets. And the
results of those watches, kept at all hours, and in all weathers, are
curious in the extreme: but before we ask what they are, let us cross
the barrier, and see with what tools the weather-students work.
The main building is built in the form of a cross, with its chief front
to the magnetic north. It is formed of wood; all iron and other metals
being carefully excluded; for its purpose is to contain three large
magnets, which have to be isolated from all influence likely to
interfere with their truthful action. In three arms of the cross these
magnets are suspended by bands of unwrought, untwisted silk. In the
fourth arm is a sort of double window filled with apparatus for
receiving the electricity collected at the top of the mast which stands
close by. Thus in this wooden shed we find one portion devoted to
electricity—to the detection and registry of the stray lightning of the
atmosphere—and the other three to a set of instruments that feel the
influence and register the variations of the magnetic changes in the
condition of the air. ‘True as the needle to the pole,’ is the burden of
an old song, which now shows how little our forefathers knew about this
same needle, which, in truth, has a much steadier character than it
deserves. Let all who still have faith in the legend go to the
magnet-house, and when they have seen the vagaries there displayed, they
will have but a poor idea of Mr. Charles Dibdin’s sea-heroes whose
constancy is declared to have been as true as their compasses were to
the north.
Upon entering the magnet-house, the first object that attracts attention
are the jars to which the electricity is brought down. The fluid is
collected, as just stated, by a conductor running from the top of the
mast outside. In order that not the slightest portion may be lost in its
progress down, a lamp is kept constantly burning near the top of the
pole, the light of which keeps warm and dry a body of glass that cuts
off all communication between the conductor and the machinery which
supports it. Another light for the purpose of collecting the electricity
by its flame, is placed above the top of the pole. This light, burning
at night, has given rise to many a strange supposition in the
neighbourhood. It is too high up to be serviceable as a lanthorn to
those below. Besides, who walks in Greenwich Park after the gates are
closed? It can light only the birds or the deer. ‘Then, surely,’ says
another popular legend, ‘it is to guide the ships on the river, when on
their way up at night;—a sort of land-mark to tell whereabouts the
Observatory is when the moon and stars are clouded, and refuse to show
where their watchers are.’
All these speculations are idle, for the lights burn when the sun is
shining, as well as at night; and the object of the lower one is that no
trace of moisture, and no approach of cold, shall give the electricity a
chance of slipping down the mast, or the ropes, to the earth, but shall
leave it no way of escape from the wise men below, who want it, and will
have it, whether it likes or no, in their jars, that they may measure
its quantity and its quality, and write both down in their journals. It
is thus that electricity comes down the wires into those jars on our
right as we enter. If very slight, its presence there is indicated by
tiny morsels of pendent gold-leaf; if stronger, the divergence of two
straws show it; if stronger still, the third jar holds its greater
force, whilst neighbouring instruments measure the length of the
electric sparks, or mark the amount of the electric force. At the desk,
close by, sits the observer, who jots down the successive indications.
In his book he registers from day to day, throughout the year, how much
electricity has been in the air, and what was its character, even to
such particulars as to whether its sparks were blue, violet, or purple
in colour. At times, however, he has to exercise great care, and it is
not always that he even then escapes receiving severe shocks.
Passing on, we approach the magnets. They are three in number; of large
size, and differently suspended, to show the various ways in which such
bodies are acted upon. All hang by bands of unwrought silk. If the silk
were twisted, it would twist the magnets, and the accuracy of their
position would be disturbed. Magnets, like telescopes, must be true in
their adjustment to the hundredth part of a hair’s breadth. One magnet
hangs north and south; another east and west; and a third, like a
scale-beam, is balanced on knife-edges and agate planes, so beautifully,
that when once adjusted and enclosed in its case, it is opened only once
a year, lest one grain of dust, or one small spider, should destroy its
truth; for spiders are as troublesome to the weather-student as to the
astronomer. These insects like the perfect quiet that reigns about the
instruments of the philosopher, and with heroic perseverance persist in
spinning their fine threads amongst his machines. Indeed, spiders
occasionally betray the magnetic observer into very odd behaviour. At
times he may be seen bowing in the sunshine, like a Persian
fire-worshipper; now stooping in this direction, now dodging in that,
but always gazing through the sun’s rays up towards that luminary. He
seems demented, staring at nothing. At last he lifts his hand; he
snatches apparently at vacancy to pull nothing down. In truth his eye
had at last caught the gleam of light reflected from an almost invisible
spider line running from the electrical wire to the neighbouring planks.
The spider who had ventured on the charged wire paid the penalty of such
daring with his life long ago, but he had left his web behind him, and
that beautifully minute thread has been carrying off to the earth a
portion of the electric fluid, before it had been received, and tested,
and registered, by the mechanism below. Such facts show the exceeding
delicacy of the observations.
For seven years, the magnets suspended in this building were constantly
watched every two hours—every even hour—day and night, except on
Sundays, the object being that some light might be thrown upon the laws
regulating the movements of the mariner’s compass; hence, that whilst
men became wiser, navigation might be rendered safer. The chief
observer—the _genius loci_—is Mr. Glaisher, whose name figures in the
reports of the Registrar-General. He, with two assistants, from year to
year, went on making these tedious examinations of the variations of the
magnets, by means of small telescopes, fixed with great precision upon
pedestals of masonry or wood fixed on the earth, and unconnected with
the floor of the building, occupying a position exactly between the
three magnets. This mode of proceeding had continued for some years with
almost unerring regularity, and certain large quarto volumes full of
figures were the results, when an ingenious medical man, Mr. Brooke, hit
upon a photographic plan for removing the necessity for this perpetual
watchfulness. Now, in the magnet-house, we see light and chemistry doing
the tasks before performed by human labour; and doing them more
faithfully than even the most vigilant of human eyes and hands. Around
the magnets are cases of zinc, so perfect that they exclude all light
from without. Inside those cases, in one place, is a lamp giving a
single ray of prepared light which, falling upon a mirror soldered to
the magnet, moves with its motions. This wandering ray, directed towards
a sheet of sensitive photographic paper, records the magnet’s slightest
motion! The paper moves on by clockwork, and once in four-and-twenty
hours an assistant, having closed the shutters of the building, lights a
lanthorn of _yellow glass_, opens the magnet-boxes, removes the paper on
which the magnets have been enabled to record their own motions, and
then, having put in a fresh sheet of sensitive paper, he shuts it
securely in, winds up the clockwork, puts out his yellow light and lets
in the sunshine. His lanthorn glass is yellow, because the yellow rays
are the only ones which can be safely allowed to fall upon the
photographic paper during its removal from the instrument, to the dish
in which its magnetic picture is to be _fixed_ by a further chemical
process. It is the blue ray of the light that gives the daguerrotypic
likeness;—as most persons who have had their heads off, under the hands
of M. Claudet, or Mr. Beard, or any of their numerous competitors in the
art of preparing sun-pictures, well know.
Since the apparatus of Mr. Brooke for the self-registration of the
magnetic changes has been in operation at Greenwich, the time of Mr.
Glaisher and his assistants has been more at liberty for other branches
of their duties. These are numerous enough. Thermometers and barometers
have to be watched as well as magnets. To these instruments the same
ingenious photographic contrivance is applied.
The wooden building next to the magnet-house on the south-west contains
a modification of Mr. Brooke’s ingenious plan, by which the rise and
fall of the temperature of the air is self-registered. Outside the
building are the bulbs of thermometers freely exposed to the weather.
Their shafts run through a zinc case, and as the mercury rises or falls,
it moves a float having a projecting arm. Across this arm is thrown the
ray of prepared light which falls then upon the sensitive paper. Thus we
see the variations of the needle and the variations in heat and cold
both recording their own story, within these humble-looking wooden
sheds, as completely as the wind and the rain are made to do the same
thing, on the top of the towers of the Observatory. The reward given to
the inventor of this ingenious mode of self-registration has been
recently revealed in a parliamentary paper, thus:—‘To Mr. Charles Brooke
for his invention and establishment at the Royal Observatory, of the
apparatus for the self-registration of magnetical and meteorological
phenomena, 500_l._’ Every year the invention will save fully 500_l._
worth of human toil; and the reward seems small when we see every year
millions voted for warlike, sinecure, and other worse than useless
purposes.
Photography, however, cannot do all the work. Its records have to be
checked by independent observations every day, and then both have to be
brought to their practical value by comparison with certain tables which
test their accuracy, and make them available for disclosing certain
scientific results. The preparation of such tables is one of the
practical triumphs of Greenwich. Many a quiet country gentleman amuses
his leisure by noting day by day the variations of his thermometer and
barometer. Heretofore such observations were isolated and of no general
value, but now by the tables completed by Mr. Glaisher, and published by
the Royal Society, they may all be converted into scientific values, and
be made available for the increase of our weather-wisdom. For nearly
seventy years the Royal Society had observations made at Somerset House,
but they were a dead letter—mere long columns of figures—till these
tables gave them significance. And the same tables now knit into one
scientific whole, the observations taken by forty scientific volunteers,
who, from day to day, record for the Registrar-General of births and
deaths, the temperature, moisture, &c., of their different localities,
which vary from Glasgow to Guernsey, and from Cornwall to Norwich.
What the Rosetta stone is to the history of the Pharaohs, these
Greenwich tables have been to the weather-hieroglyphics. They have
afforded something like a key to the language in which the secrets are
written; and it remains for industrious observation and scientific zeal
to complete the modern victory over ancient ignorance. Already, the
results of the Greenwich studies of the weather have given us a number
of curious morsels of knowledge. The wholesale destruction of human life
induced by a fall in the temperature of London has just been noticed.
Besides the manifestation of that fact, we are shown, that instead of a
warm summer being followed by a cold winter, the tendency of the law of
the weather is to group warm seasons together, and cold seasons
together. Mr. Glaisher has made out, that the character of the weather
seems to follow certain curves, so to speak, each extending over periods
of fifteen years. During the first half of each of these periods, the
seasons become warmer and warmer, till they reach their warmest point,
and then they sink again, becoming colder and colder, till they reach
the lowest point, whence they rise again. His tables range over the last
seventy-nine years—from 1771 to 1849. Periods shown to be the coldest,
were years memorable for high-priced food, increased mortality, popular
discontent, and political changes. In his diagrams, the warm years are
tinted brown, and the cold years grey, and as the sheets are turned over
and the dates scanned, the fact suggests itself that a grey period saw
Lord George Gordon’s riots; a grey period was marked by the Reform Bill
excitement; and a grey period saw the Corn Laws repealed.
A few more morsels culled from the experience of these weather-seers,
and we have done.
Those seasons have been best which have enjoyed an average
temperature—nor too hot nor too cold.
The indications are that the climate of England is becoming warmer, and,
consequently, healthier; a fact to be partly accounted for by the
improved drainage and the removal of an excess of timber from the land.
The intensity of cholera was found greatest in those places where the
air was stagnant; and, therefore, any means for causing its motion, as
lighting fires and improving ventilation, are thus proved to be of the
utmost consequence.
Some day near the 20th of January—the lucky guess in 1838 of Murphy’s
Weather Almanac—will, upon the average of years, be found to be the
coldest of the whole year.
In the middle of May there are generally some days of cold, so severe as
to be unexplainable. Humboldt mentions this fact in his Cosmos; and
various authors have tried to account for it,—at present in vain. The
favourite notion, perhaps, is that which attributes this period of cold
to the loosening of the icebergs of the North. Another weather
eccentricity is the usual advent of some warm days at the beginning of
November.
Certain experiments in progress to test the difference between the
temperature of the Thames and of the surrounding atmosphere are expected
to show the cause of the famous London fog. During the night the Thames
is often from ten to seventeen degrees warmer, and in the day time from
eight to ten degrees colder than the air above it.
If the theory of weather-cycles holds good, we are to have seasons
colder than the average from this time till 1853, when warmth will begin
again to predominate over cold. A chilly prophecy this to close with,
and therefore, rather let an anecdote complete this chapter on the
Weather-Watchers of Greenwich.
Amongst other experiments going on some time ago in the Observatory
enclosure, were some by which Mr. Glaisher sought to discover how much
warmth the Earth lost during the hours of night, and how much moisture
the Air would take up in a day from a given surface. Upon the long grass
within the dwarf fence already mentioned were placed all sorts of odd
substances in little distinct quantities. Ashes, wood, leather, linen,
cotton, glass, lead, copper, and stone, amongst other things, were there
to show how each affected the question of radiation. Close by upon a
post was a dish six inches across, in which every day there was
punctually poured one ounce of water, and at the same hour next day, as
punctually was this fluid re-measured to see what had been lost by
evaporation. For three years this latter experiment had been going on,
and the results were posted up in a book; but the figures gave most
contradictory results. There was either something very irregular in the
air, or something very wrong in the apparatus. It was watched for
leakage, but none was found, when one day Mr. Glaisher stepped out of
the magnet-house, and looking towards the stand, the mystery was
revealed. The evaporating dish of the philosopher was being used as a
bath by an irreverent bird!—a sparrow was scattering from his wings the
water left to be drunk by the winds of Heaven. Only one thing remained
to be done; and the next minute saw a pen run through the tables that
had taken three years to compile. The labour was lost—the work had to be
begun again.
MY WONDERFUL ADVENTURES IN SKITZLAND.
CHAPTER THE FIRST.
The Beginning is a Bore—I fall into Misfortune.
I am fond of Gardening. I like to dig. If among the operations of the
garden any need for such a work can be at any time discovered or
invented, I like to dig a hole. On the 3d of March, 1849, I began a hole
behind the kitchen wall, where-into it was originally intended to
transplant a plum-tree. The exercise was so much to my taste, that a
strange humour impelled me to dig on. A fascination held me to the task.
I neglected my business. I disappeared from the earth’s surface. A boy
who worked a basket by means of a rope and pulley, aided me; so aided, I
confined my whole attention to spade labour. The centripetal force
seemed to have made me its especial victim. I dug on until Autumn. In
the beginning of November I observed that, upon percussion, the sound
given by the floor of my pit was resonant. I did not intermit my labour,
urged as I was by a mysterious instinct downwards. On applying my ear, I
occasionally heard a subdued sort of rattle, which caused me to form a
theory that the centre of the earth might be composed of mucus. In
November, the ground broke beneath me into a hollow and I fell a
considerable distance. I alighted on the box-seat of a four-horse coach,
which happened to be running at that time immediately underneath. The
coachman took no notice whatever of my sudden arrival by his side. He
was so completely muffled up, that I could observe only the skilful way
in which he manipulated reins and whip. The horses were yellow. I had
seen no more than this, when the guard’s horn blew, and presently we
pulled up at an inn. A waiter came out, and appeared to collect four
bags from the passengers inside the coach. He then came round to me.
“Dine here, Sir?”
“Yes, certainly,” said I. I like to dine—not the sole point of
resemblance between myself and the great Johnson.
“Trouble you for your stomach, Sir.”
While the waiter was looking up with a polite stare into my puzzled
face, my neighbour, the coachman, put one hand within his outer coat, as
if to feel for money in his waistcoat pocket. Directly afterwards his
fingers came again to light, and pulled forth an enormous sack.
Notwithstanding that it was abnormally enlarged, I knew by observation
of its form and texture that this was a stomach, with the œsophagus
attached. This, then, the waiter caught as it was thrown down to him,
and hung it carelessly over his arm, together with the four smaller bags
(which I now knew to be also stomachs) collected from the passengers
within the coach. I started up, and as I happened to look round,
observed a skeleton face upon the shoulders of a gentleman who sat
immediately behind my back. My own features were noticed at the same
time by the guard, who now came forward, touching his hat.
“Beg your pardon, Sir, but you’ve been and done it.”
“Done what?”
“Why, Sir, you should have booked your place, and not come up in this
clandestine way. However, you’ve been and done it!”
“My good man, what have I done?”
“Why, sir, the Baron Terroro’s eyes had the box-seat, and I strongly
suspect you’ve been and sat upon them.”
I looked involuntarily to see whether I had been sitting upon anything
except the simple cushion. Truly enough, there was an eye, which I had
crushed and flattened.
“Only one,” I said.
“Worse for you, and better for him. The other eye had time to escape,
and it will know you again, that’s certain. Well, it’s no business of
mine. Of course you’ve no appetite now for dinner? Better pay your fare,
Sir. To the Green Hippopotamus and Spectacles, where we put up, it’s
ten-and-six.”
“Is there room inside?” I enquired. It was advisable to shrink from
observation.
“Yes, Sir. The inside passengers are mostly skeleton. There’s room for
three, Sir. Inside, one-pound-one.”
I paid the money, and became an inside passenger.
CHAPTER THE SECOND.
Of Divisions which occur in Skitzland—I am taken up.
Professor Essig’s Lectures on Anatomy had so fortified me, that I did
not shrink from entering the Skitzton coach. It contained living limbs,
loose or attached to skeletons in other respects bare, except that they
were clothed with broadcloth garments, cut after the English fashion.
One passenger only had a complete face of flesh, he had also one living
hand; the other hand I guessed was bony, because it was concealed in a
glove obviously padded. By observing the fit of his clothes, I came to a
conclusion that this gentleman was stuffed throughout; that all his
limbs, except the head and hand, were artificial. Two pairs of Legs, in
woollen stockings, and a pair of Ears, were in a corner of the coach,
and in another corner there were nineteen or twenty Scalps.
I thought it well to look astonished at nothing, and, having pointed in
a careless manner to the scalps, asked what might be their destination?
The person with the Face and Hand replied to me; and although evidently
himself a gentleman, he addressed me with a tone of unconcealed respect.
“They are going to Skitzton, Sir, to the hair-dresser’s.”
“Yes, to be sure,” I said. “They are to make Natural Skin Wigs. I might
have known.”
“I beg your pardon, Sir. There is a ball to-morrow night at Culmsey. But
the gentry do not like to employ village barbers, and therefore many of
the better class of people send their hair to Skitzton, and receive it
back by the return coach properly cut and curled.”
“Oh,” said I. “Ah! Oh, indeed!”
“Dinners, gentlemen!” said a voice at the window, and the waiter handed
in four stomachs, now tolerably well filled. Each passenger received his
property, and pulling open his chest with as much composure as if he
were unbuttoning his waistcoat, restored his stomach, with a dinner in
it, to the right position. Then the reckonings were paid, and the coach
started.
I thought of my garden, and much wished that somebody could throw
Professor Essig down the hole that I had dug. A few things were to be
met with in Skitzland which would rather puzzle him. They puzzled me;
but I took refuge in silence, and so fortified, protected my ignorance
from an exposure.
“You are going to Court, Sir, I presume?” said my Face and Hand friend,
after a short pause. His was the only mouth in the coach, excepting
mine, so that he was the only passenger able to enter into conversation.
“My dear Sir,” I replied, “let me be frank with you. I have arrived here
unexpectedly out of another world. Of the manners and customs, nay, of
the very nature of the people who inhabit this country, I know nothing.
For any information you can give me, I shall be very grateful.”
My friend smiled incredulity, and said,
“Whatever you are pleased to profess, I will believe. What you are
pleased to feign a wish for, I am proud to furnish. In Skitzland, the
inhabitants, until they come of age, retain that illustrious appearance
which you have been so fortunate as never to have lost. During the night
of his twenty-first birthday, each Skitzlander loses the limbs which up
to that period have received from him no care, no education. Of those
neglected parts the skeletons alone remain, but all those organs which
he has employed sufficiently continue unimpaired. I, for example,
devoted to the study of the law, forgot all occupation but to think, to
use my senses and to write. I rarely used my legs, and therefore Nature
has deprived me of them.”
“But,” I observed, “it seems that in Skitzland you are able to take
yourselves to pieces.”
“No one has that power, Sir, more largely than yourself. What organs we
have we can detach on any service. When dispersed, a simple force of
Nature directs all corresponding members whither to fly that they may
re-assemble.”
“If they can fly,” I asked, “why are they sent in coaches? There were a
pair of eyes on the box-seat.”
“Simply for safety against accidents. Eyes flying alone are likely to be
seized by birds, and incur many dangers. They are sent, therefore,
usually under protection, like any other valuable parcel.”
“Do many accidents occur?”
“Very few. For mutual protection, and also because a single member is
often all that has been left existing of a fellow Skitzlander our laws,
as you, Sir, know much better than myself, estimate the destruction of
any part absent on duty from its skeleton as a crime equivalent to
murder——”
After this I held my tongue. Presently my friend again enquired whether
I was going up to Court?
“Why should I go to Court?”
“Oh, Sir, it pleases you to be facetious. You must be aware that any
Skitzlander who has been left by Nature in possession of every limb,
sits in the Assembly of the Perfect, or the Upper House, and receives
many state emoluments and dignities.”
“Are there many members of that Upper Assembly?”
“Sir, there were forty-two. But if you are now travelling to claim your
seat, the number will be raised to forty-three.”
“The Baron Terroro—” I hinted.
“My brother, Sir. His eyes are on the box-seat under my care.
Undoubtedly he is a Member of the Upper House.”
I was now anxious to get out of the coach as soon as possible. My wish
was fulfilled after the next pause. One Eye, followed by six Pairs of
Arms, with strong hard Hands belonging to them, flew in at the window. I
was collared; the door was opened, and all hands were at work to drag me
out and away. The twelve Hands whisked me through the air, while the one
Eye sailed before us, like an old bird, leader of the flight.
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
My Imprisonment and Trial for Murder.
What sort of sky have they in Skitzland? Our earth overarches them, and,
as the sunlight filters through, it causes a subdued illumination with
very pure rays. Skitzland is situated nearly in the centre of our globe,
it hangs there like a shrunken kernel in the middle of a nutshell. The
height from Skitzland to the over-arching canopy is great; so great,
that if I had not fallen personally from above the firmament, I should
have considered it to be a blue sky similar to ours. At night it is
quite dark; but during the day there is an appearance in the Heaven of
white spots; their glistening reminded me of stars. I noticed them as I
was being conveyed to prison by the strong arms of justice, for it was
by a detachment of members from the Skitzton Police that I was now
hurried along. The air was very warm, and corroborated the common
observation of an increase of heat as you get into the pith of our
planet. The theory of Central Fire, however, is, you perceive quite
overturned by my experience.
We alighted near the outskirts of a large and busy town. Through its
streets I was dragged publicly, much stared at, and much staring. The
street life was one busy nightmare of disjointed limbs. Professor Essig,
could he have been dragged through Skitzton, would have delivered his
farewell lecture upon his return. ‘Gentlemen, Fuit Ilium—Fuit
Ischium—Fuit Sacrum—Anatomy has lost her seat among the sciences. My
occupation’s gone.’ Professor Owen’s Book ‘On the Nature of Limbs,’ must
contain, in the next edition, an Appendix ‘Upon Limbs in Skitzland.’ I
was dragged through the streets, and all that I saw there, in the
present age of little faith, I dare not tell you. I was dragged through
the streets to prison and there duly chained, after having been
subjected to the scrutiny of about fifty couples of eyes drawn up in a
line within the prison door. I was chained in a dark cell, a cell so
dark that I could very faintly perceive the figure of some being who was
my companion. Whether this individual had ears wherewith to hear, and
mouth wherewith to answer me, I could not see, but at a venture I
addressed him. My thirst for information was unconquerable; I began,
therefore, immediately with a question:
“Friend, what are those stars which we see shining in the sky at
mid-day?”
An awful groan being an unsatisfactory reply, I asked again.
“Man, do not mock at misery. You will yourself be one of them.”
‘The Teachers shall shine like Stars in the Firmament.’ I have a
propensity for teaching, but was puzzled to discover how I could give so
practical an illustration of the text of Fichte.
“Believe me,” I said, “I am strangely ignorant. Explain yourself.”
He answered with a hollow voice:
“Murderers are shot up out of mortars into the sky, and stick there.
Those white, glistening specks, they are their skeletons.”
Justice is prompt in Skitzland. I was tried incredibly fast by a jury of
twelve men who had absolutely heads. The judges had nothing but brain,
mouth and ear. Three powerful tongues defended me, but as they were not
suffered to talk nonsense, they had little to say. The whole case was
too clear to be talked into cloudiness. Baron Terroro, in person,
deposed, that he had sent his eyes to see a friend at Culmsey, and that
they were returning on the Skitzton coach, when I, illegally, came with
my whole bulk upon the box-seat, which he occupied. That one of his eyes
was, in that manner, totally destroyed, but that the other eye, having
escaped, identified me, and brought to his brain intelligence of the
calamity which had befallen. He deposed further, that having received
this information, he despatched his uncrushed eye with arms from the
police-office, and accompanied with several members of the detective
force, to capture the offender, and to procure the full proofs of my
crime. A sub-inspector of Skitzton Police then deposed that he sent
three of his faculties, with his mouth, eye, and ear, to meet the coach.
That the driver, consisting only of a stomach and hands, had been unable
to observe what passed. That the guard, on the contrary, had taxed me
with my deed, that he had seen me rise from my seat upon the murdered
eye, and that he had heard me make confession of my guilt. The guard was
brought next into court, and told his tale. Then I was called upon for
my defence. If a man wearing a cloth coat and trousers, and talking
excellent English, were to plead at the Old Bailey that he had broken
into some citizen’s premises accidentally by falling from the moon, his
tale would be received in London as mine was in Skitzton. I was severely
reprimanded for my levity, and ordered to be silent. The Judge summed up
and the Jury found me Guilty. The Judge, who had put on the black cap
before the verdict was pronounced, held out no hope of mercy, and
straightway sentenced me to Death, according to the laws and usage of
the Realm.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
The last Hours of the Condemned in Skitzland—I am executed.
The period which intervenes between the sentence and execution of a
criminal in Skitzland, is not longer than three hours. In order to
increase the terror of death by contrast, the condemned man is suffered
to taste at the table of life from which he is banished, the most
luscious viands. All the attainable enjoyment that his wit can ask for,
he is allowed to have, during the three hours before he is shot, like
rubbish, off the fields of Skitzland.
Under guard, of course, I was now to be led whithersoever I desired.
Several churches were open. They never are all shut in Skitzton. I was
taken into one. A man with heart and life was preaching. People with
hearts were in some pews; people with brains, in others; people with
ears only, in some. In a neighbouring church, there was a popular
preacher, a skeleton with life. His congregation was a crowd of ears,
and nothing more.
There was a day-performance at the Opera. I went to that. Fine lungs and
mouths possessed the stage, and afterwards there was a great
bewilderment with legs. I was surprised to notice that many of the most
beautiful ladies were carried in and out, and lifted about like dolls.
My guides sneered at my pretence of ignorance, when I asked why this
was. But they were bound to please me in all practicable ways, so they
informed me, although somewhat pettishly. It seems that in Skitzland,
ladies who possess and have cultivated only their good looks, lose at
the age of twenty-one, all other endowments. So they become literally
dolls, but dolls of a superior kind; for they can not only open and shut
their eyes, but also sigh; wag slowly with their heads, and some times
take a pocket-handkerchief out of a bag, and drop it. But as their limbs
are powerless, they have to be lifted and dragged about after the
fashion that excited my astonishment.
I said then, “Let me see the Poor.” They took me to a workhouse. The
men, there, were all yellow; and they wore a dress which looked as
though it were composed of asphalte; it had also a smell like that of
pitch. I asked for explanation of these things.
A Superintendent of Police remarked that I was losing opportunities of
real enjoyment for the idle purpose of persisting in my fable of having
dropped down from the sky. However, I compelled him to explain to me
what was the reason of these things. The information I obtained, was
briefly this:—that Nature, in Skitzland, never removes the stomach.
Every man has to feed himself; and the necessity for finding food,
joined to the necessity for buying clothes, is a mainspring whereby the
whole clockwork of civilised life is kept in motion. Now, if a man
positively cannot feed and clothe himself, he becomes a pauper. He then
goes to the workhouse, where he has his stomach filled with a cement.
That stopping lasts a life-time, and he thereafter needs no food. His
body, however, becomes yellow by the superfluity of bile. The
yellow-boy, which is the Skitzland epithet for pauper, is at the same
time provided with a suit of clothes. The clothes are of a material so
tough that they can be worn unrepaired for more than eighty years. The
pauper is now freed from care, but were he in this state cast loose upon
society, since he has not that stimulus to labour which excites industry
in other men, he would become an element of danger in the state. Nature
no longer compelling him to work, the law compels him. The remainder of
his life is forfeit to the uses of his country. He labours at the
workhouse, costing nothing more than the expense of lodging, after the
first inconsiderable outlay for cement wherewith to plug his stomach,
and for the one suit of apparel.
When we came out of the workhouse, all the bells in the town were
tolling. The Superintendent told me that I had sadly frittered away
time, for I had now no more than half-an-hour to live. Upon that I
leaned my back against a post, and asked him to prepare me for my part
in the impending ceremony by giving me a little information on the
subject of executions.
I found that it was usual for a man to be executed with great ceremony
upon the spot whereon his crime had been committed. That in case of
rebellions or tumults in the provinces, when large numbers were not
unfrequently condemned to death, the sentence of the law was carried out
in the chief towns of the disturbed districts. That large numbers of
people were thus sometimes discharged from a single market-place, and
that the repeated strokes appeared to shake, or crack, or pierce in some
degree that portion of the sky towards which the artillery had been
directed. I here at once saw that I had discovered the true cause of
earthquakes and volcanoes; and this shows how great light may be thrown
upon theories concerning the hidden constitution of this earth, by going
more deeply into the matter of it than had been done by any one before I
dug my hole. Our volcanoes, it is now proved, are situated over the
market-places of various provincial towns in Skitzland. When a
revolution happens, the rebels are shot up,—discharged from mortars by
means of an explosive material evidently far more powerful than our
gunpowder or gun-cotton; and they are pulverised by the friction in
grinding their way through the earth. How simple and easy truth appears,
when we have once arrived at it.
The sound of muffled drums approached us, and a long procession turned
the corner of a street. I was placed in the middle of it,—Baron Terroro
by my side. All then began to float so rapidly away, that I was nearly
left alone, when forty arms came back and collared me. It was considered
to be a proof of my refractory disposition, that I would make no use of
my innate power of flight. I was therefore dragged in this procession
swiftly through the air, drums playing, fifes lamenting.
We alighted on the spot where I had fallen, and the hole through which I
had come I saw above me. It was very small, but the light from above
shining more vividly through it made it look, with its rough edges, like
a crumpled moon. A quantity of some explosive liquid was poured into a
large mortar, which had been erected (under the eye of Baron Terroro)
exactly where my misfortune happened. I was then thrust in, the Baron
ramming me down, and pounding with a long stock or pestle upon my head
in a noticeably vicious manner. The Baron then cried “Fire!” and as I
shot out, in the midst of a blaze, I saw him looking upward.
CHAPTER THE FIFTH.
My revenge on the Skitzlanders.
By great good fortune, they had planted their artillery so well, that I
was fired up through my hole again, and alighted in my own garden, just
a little singed. My first thought was to run to an adjoining bed of
vegetable marrows. Thirty vegetable marrows and two pumpkins I rained
down to astonish the Skitzlanders, and I fervently hope that one of them
may have knocked out the remaining eye of my vindictive enemy, the
Baron. I then went into the pantry, and obtained a basket full of eggs,
and having rained these down upon the Skitzlanders, I left them.
It was after breakfast when I went down to Skitzland, and I came back
while the dinner bell was ringing.
BIRTH SONG.
Hail, new-waked atom of the Eternal whole,
Young voyager upon Time’s mighty river!
Hail to thee, Human Soul,
Hail, and for ever!
Pilgrim of life, all hail!
He who at first called forth
From nothingness the earth,
Who clothed the hills in strength, and dug the sea;
Who gave the stars to gem
Night, like a diadem,
Thou little child, made thee;
Young habitant of earth,
Fair as its flowers, though brought in sorrow forth,
Thou art akin to God who fashioned thee!
The Heavens themselves shall vanish as a scroll,
The solid earth dissolve, the stars grow pale,
But thou, oh Human Soul,
Shalt be immortal! Hail!
Thou young Immortal, hail!
He, before whom are dim
Seraph and cherubim,
Who gave the archangels strength and majesty,
Who sits upon Heaven’s throne,
The Everlasting One,
Thou little child, made thee!
Fair habitant of Earth,
Immortal in thy God, though mortal by thy birth,
Born for life’s trials, hail, all hail to thee!
SONG OF DEATH.
Shrink not, O Human Spirit,
The Everlasting Arm is strong to save!
Look up, look up, frail nature, put thy trust
In Him who went down mourning to the dust,
And overcame the grave!
Quickly goes down the sun;
Life’s work is almost done;
Fruitless endeavour, hope deferred, and strife!
One little struggle more,
One pang, and then is o’er
All the long, mournful, weariness of life.
Kind friends, ’tis almost past;
Come now and look your last!
Sweet children, gather near,
And his last blessing hear,
See how he loved you who departeth now!
And, with thy trembling step and pallid brow,
O, most beloved one,
Whose breast he leaned upon,
Come, faithful unto death,
Receive his parting breath!
The fluttering spirit panteth to be free,
Hold him not back who speeds to victory!
—The bonds are riven, the struggling soul is free!
Hail, hail, enfranchised Spirit!
Thou that the wine-press of the field hast trod!
On, blest Immortal, on, through boundless space,
And stand with thy Redeemer face to face;
And stand before thy God!
Life’s weary work is o’er,
Thou art of earth no more;
No more art trammelled by the oppressive clay,
But tread’st with winged ease
The high acclivities
Of truths sublime, up Heaven’s crystalline way.
Here no bootless quest;
This city’s name is Rest;
Here shall no fear appal;
Here love is all in all;
Here shalt thou win thy ardent soul’s desire;
Here clothe thee in thy beautiful attire.
Lift, lift thy wond’ring eyes!
Yonder is Paradise,
And this fair shining band
Are spirits of thy land!
And these who throng to meet thee are thy kin,
Who have awaited thee, redeemed from sin!
—The city’s gates unfold—enter, oh! enter in!
THE SICKNESS AND HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE OF BLEABURN.
IN THREE PARTS.—CHAPTER III.
Mr. Finch was standing in front of his bookcase, deeply occupied in
ascertaining a point in ecclesiastical history, when he was told that
Ann Warrender wished to speak to him.
“O dear!” he half-breathed out. He had for some time been growing
nervous about the state of things at Bleaburn; and there was nothing he
now liked so little as to be obliged to speak face to face with any of
the people. It was not all cowardice; though cowardice made up sadly too
much of it. He did not very well know how to address the minds of his
people; and he felt that he could not do it well. He was more fit for
closet study than for the duties of a parish priest; and he ought never
to have been sent to Bleaburn. Here he was, however; and there was Ann
Warrender waiting in the passage to speak to him.
“Dear me!” said he, “I am really very busy at this moment. Ask Ann
Warrender if she can come again to-morrow.”
To-morrow would not do. Ann followed the servant to the door of the
study to say so. Mr. Finch hastily asked her to wait a moment, and shut
the door behind the servant. He unlocked a cupboard, took out a green
bottle and a wineglass, and fortified himself against infection with a
draught of something whose scent betrayed him to Ann the moment the door
was again opened.
“Come in,” said he, when the cupboard was locked.
“Will you please come, sir, and see John Billiter? He is not far from
death; he asked for you just now; so I said I would step for you.”
“Billiter! The fever has been very fatal in that house, has it not? Did
not he lose two children last week?”
“Yes, sir; and my father thinks the other two are beginning to sicken.
I’m sure I don’t know what will become of them. I saw Mrs. Billiter
stagger as she crossed the room just now; and she does not seem,
somehow, to be altogether like herself this morning. That looks as if
she were beginning. But if you will come and pray with them, Sir, that
is the comfort they say they want.”
“Does your father allow you to go to an infected house like that?” asked
Mr. Finch. “And does he go himself?”
Ann looked surprised, and said she did not see what else could be done.
There was no one but her father who could lift John Billiter, or turn
him in his bed; and as for her, she was the only one that Mrs. Billiter
had to look to, day and night. The Good Lady went in very often, and did
all she could; but she was wanted in so many places, besides having her
hands full with the Johnsons, that she could only come in and direct and
cheer them, every few hours. She desired to be sent for at any time,
night or day; and they did send when they were particularly distressed,
or at a loss; but for regular watching and nursing, Ann said the
Billiters had no one to depend on but herself. She could not stay
talking now, however. How soon might she say that Mr. Finch would come?
Mr. Finch was now walking up and down the room. He said he would
consider, and let her know as soon as he could.
“John Billiter is as bad as can be, Sir. He must be very near his end.”
“Ah! well; you shall hear from me very soon.”
As Ann went away, she wondered what could be the impediment to Mr.
Finch’s going with her. He, meantime, roused his mind to undertake a
great argument of duty. It was with a sense of complacency, even of
elevation, that he now set himself to work to consider of his
duty—determined to do it when his mind was made up.
He afterwards declared that he went to his chamber to be secure against
interruption, and there walked up and down for two hours in meditation
and prayer. He considered that it had pleased God that he should be the
only son of his mother, whose whole life would be desolate if he should
die. He thought of Ellen Price, feeling almost sure that she would marry
him whenever he felt justified in asking her; and he considered what a
life of happiness she would lose if he should die. He remembered that
his praying with the sick would not affect life on the one side, while
it might on the other. The longer he thought of Ellen Price and of his
mother, and of all that he might do if he lived, the more clear did his
duty seem to himself to become. At the end of the two hours, he was
obliged to bring his meditations to a conclusion; for Ann Warrender’s
father had been waiting for some time to speak to him, and would then
wait no longer.
“It is not time lost, Warrender,” said Mr. Finch, when at last he came
down stairs. “I have been determining my principle, and my mind is made
up.”
“Then, Sir, let us be off, or the man will be dead. What! you cannot
come, Sir! Why, bless my soul!”
“You see my reasons, surely, Warrender.”
“Why, yes; such as they are. The thing that I can’t see the reason for,
is your being a clergyman.”
While Mr. Finch was giving forth his amiable and gentlemanly notions of
the position of a clergyman in society, and of filial consideration,
Warrender was twirling his hat, and fidgetting, as if in haste; and his
summing up was——
“I don’t know what your mother herself might say, Sir, to your
consideration for her; but most likely she has, being a mother, noticed
that saying about a man leaving father and mother, and houses and lands,
for Christ’s sake; and also——But it is no business of mine to be
preaching to the clergyman, and I have enough to do, elsewhere.”
“One thing more, Warrender. I entrust it to you to let the people know
that there will be no service in church during the infection. Why, do
not you know that, in the time of the plague, the churches were closed
by order, because it was found that the people gave one another the
disease, by meeting there?”
John had never heard it; and he was sorry to hear it now. He hastened
away to the Good Lady, to ask her if he must really tell the afflicted
people that all religious comfort mast be withheld from them now, when
they were in the utmost need of it. Meantime, Mr. Finch was entering at
length in his diary, the history of his conflict of mind, his decision,
and the reasons of it.
Henceforth, Mr. Finch had less time for his diary, and for clearing up
points of ecclesiastical history. There were so many funerals that he
could never be sure of leisure; nor, when he had it, was he in a state
to use it. Sometimes he almost doubted whether he was in his right mind,
so overwhelmingly dreadful to him was the scene around him. He met
Farmer Neale one day. Neale was at his wit’s end what to do about his
harvest. Several of his labourers were dead, and others were kept aloof
by his own servants, who declared they would all leave him if any person
from Bleaburn was brought among them; and no labourers from a distance
would come near the place. Farmer Neale saw no other prospect than of
his crops rotting on the ground.
“You must offer high wages,” said Mr. Finch. “You must be well aware
that you do not generally tempt people into your service by your rate of
wages. You must open your hand at such a time as this.”
Neale was ready enough now to give good wages; but nobody would reap an
acre of his for love or money. He was told to be thankful that the fever
had spared his house; but he said it was no use bidding a man be
thankful for anything, while he saw his crops perishing on the ground.
Next, Mr. Finch saw, in his afternoon ride, a waggon-load of coffins
arrive at the brow from O——. He saw them sent down, one by one, on men’s
shoulders, to be ranged in the carpenter’s yard. The carpenter could not
work fast enough; and his stock of wood was so nearly exhausted that
there had been complaints, within the last few days, that the coffins
would not bear the least shock, but fell to pieces when the grave was
opened for the next. So an order was sent to O—— for coffins of various
sizes; and now they were carried down the road, and up the street,
before the eyes of some who were to inhabit one or another of them. The
doctor, hurrying from house to house, had hardly a moment to spare, and
no comfort to give. He did not see what there was to prevent the whole
population from being swept away. He was himself almost worn out; and
just at such a moment, his surgery boy had disappeared. He had no one
that he could depend on to help him in making up the medicines, or even
to deliver them. The fact was, he said in private, the place was a
pest-house; and, except to Miss Pickard, he did not know where to look
for any aid or any hope whatever. It would not do to say so to the
people; but, frankly speaking, this was what he felt. When the pastor’s
heart was thus sunk very low, he thought he would just pass the Plough
and Harrow, and see who was there. If there were any cheerful people in
Bleaburn, that was where they would be found. At the Plough and Harrow,
the floor was swept and the table was clean; and the chimney was
prettily dressed with green boughs; but there were only two customers
there; and they were smoking their pipes in silence. The landlord said
the scores were run up so high, he could not give more credit till
better days. The people wanted their draught of comfort badly enough,
and he had given it as long as he could; but he must stop somewhere: and
if the baker had to stop scores (as he knew he had) the publican had
little chance of getting his own. At such a time, however, he knew men
ought to be liberal; so he went on serving purl and bitters at five in
the morning. The men said it strengthened their stomachs against the
fever before they went to work (such of them as could work) and God
forbid he should refuse them that! But he knew the half of those few
that came at five in the morning would never be able to pay their score.
Yet did the publican, amidst all these losses, invite the pastor to sit
down and have a cheerful glass; and the pastor did not refuse. There was
too little cheerfulness to be had at present to justify him in declining
any offer of it. So he let the landlord mix his glass for him, and mix
it strong.
It was easy to make the mixture strong; but not so easy to have a
‘cheerful glass.’ The host had too many dismal stories to tell for that;
and, when he could be diverted from the theme of the fate of Bleaburn,
it was only to talk of the old king’s madness, and the disasters of the
war, and the weight of the taxes, and the high price of food, and the
riots in the manufacturing districts; a long string of disasters all
undeniably true. He was just saying that he had been assured that
something would soon appear which would explain the terrors of the time,
when a strange cry was heard in the street, and a bustle among the
neighbours; and then two or three people ran in and exclaimed, with
white lips, that there was a fearful sign in the sky.
There indeed it was, a lustrous thing, shining down into the hollow. Was
there ever such a star seen,—as large as a saucer—some of the people
said, and with a long white tail, which looked as if it was about to
sweep all the common stars out of the sky! The sounds of amazement and
fear that ran along the whole street, up and down, brought the
neighbours to their doors; and some to the windows, to try how much they
could see from windows that would not open. Each one asked somebody else
what it was; but all agreed that it was a token of judgment, and that it
accounted for everything; the cold spring, the bad crops, the king’s
illness, the war, and this dreadful sickly autumn. At last, they
bethought them of the pastor, and they crowded round him for an
explanation. They received one in a tone so faltering as to confirm
their fears, though Mr. Finch declared that it certainly must be a
comet: he had never seen a comet; but he was confident this must be one,
and that it must be very near the earth:—he did not mean near enough to
do any harm;—it was all nonsense talking of comets doing any harm.
“Will it do us any good, Sir?” asked the carpenter, sagely.
“Not that I know of. How should it do us any good?
“Exactly so, Sir: that is what we say. It is there for no good, you may
rely upon it: and, for the rest, Heaven knows!”
“I hope farmer Neale may be seeing it,” observed a man to his neighbour.
“It may be a mercy to him, if it is sent to warn him of his hard ways.”
“And the doctor, too. I hope it will take effect upon him,” whispered
another. The whisper was caught up and spread. “The doctor! the doctor!”
every one said, glancing at the comet, and falling to whispering again.
“What are they saying about the doctor?” whispered Mr. Finch to the
landlord. “What is the matter about him?” But the landlord only shook
his head, and looked excessively solemn in the yellow light which
streamed from his open door. After this, Mr. Finch was very silent, and
soon stole away homewards. Some who watched him said that he was more
alarmed than he chose to show. And this was true. He was more shaken
than he chose to admit to his own mind. He would not have acknowledged
to himself that he, an educated man, could be afraid of a comet: but,
unnerved before by anxiety of mind, and a stronger dose of spirit and
water than he had intended to take, he was as open to impression as in
the most timid days of his childhood. As he sat in his study, the
bright, silent, steady luminary seemed to be still shining full upon his
very heart and brain: and the shadowy street, with its groups of gazers,
was before his eyes; and the hoarse or whimpering voices of the
terrified people were in his ear. He covered his eyes, and thought that
he lived in fearful times. He wished he was asleep: but then, there were
three funerals for to-morrow! He feared he could not sleep, if he went
to bed. Yet, to sit up would be worse; for he could not study to-night,
and sitting up was the most wearing thing of all to the nerves.
Presently he went to his cupboard. Now, if ever, was the time for a
cordial; for how should he do his duty, if he did not get sleep at
night, with so many funerals in the morning? So he poured out his
medicine, as he called it, and uncorked his laudanum bottle, and
obtained the oblivion which is the best comfort of the incapable.
PART II.