TREAT THEM.
Walking-sticks of all varieties--apple, ash, blackthorn, brier, cherry,
elm, hazel, holly, oak, vine, and whitethorn--are best when cut in the
winter, between November and February; the sap is then sluggish, the
leaves are off, and the character of the stick can be most easily
descried.
To boys who desire to carry a stick of their own choice and dressing,
the following practical notes will be of value.
Never attempt to trim a stick as soon as you have cut it. Leave the
branches on it an inch or two long, and hang the stick up to dry for a
week or so, knob end uppermost with a weight on the narrow end. Let it
hang in a moderately cool place, and when it is dry and pliable, take it
down and begin to trim it. Cut off the branches you do not want, and
make the crook if you do not care to finish merely with a knob. To make
the crook, plunge the end for a quarter of an hour in boiling water,
bend it to shape, and keep it in place by a piece of string twisted by a
stick in the middle, like the spring of a jumping frog, or the stretcher
of a ribbon saw. When the stick has dried in shape, trim it to taste
with a sharp knife, and give it a good rub down with sand-paper. When it
is smooth and presentable, if you want it to remain its natural colour,
give it a coat of boiled linseed-oil, and let this dry thoroughly into
it. If you want the stick to be black, boil a pound of logwood chips for
an hour in a quart of water, and brush the stick over with the boiling
liquor. When the stick is dry, give it another boiling coat of the
decoction. When that is dry, dissolve an ounce of green copperas in a
quart of hot water and coat the stick with the solution. Keep the stick
away from the fire, and let it dry each time slowly and well, and you
will find that the mixture of the copperas and the logwood has dyed it
an intense black. After you have stained it, give it a coat of boiled
oil, and when that is thoroughly dry, begin to polish it.
For the polish, mix an ounce and a half of shellac with a quarter of an
ounce of gum mastic, and dissolve them slowly in half a pint of
methylated spirits, or, what is better, quicker, and cheaper, buy
threepenny worth of French polish from the nearest oil-shop.
Having polished the stick, finish it with a coat of hard varnish or
copal varnish such as the artists use, of which a little goes a long
way. Hard varnish can be bought cheaply. If you must make it, mix
together an ounce of gum mastic, two ounces of gum juniper, a quarter of
an ounce of turpentine, and a pint of methylated spirits. Give the stick
one or two even coats of varnish, and you will find it last for many
months. Some sticks do very well varnished over the oil and stain, then
the polish is saved. If you want to stain a stick brown, add dragon’s
blood to the polish; if you like it golden coloured, drop in some yellow
ochre or gamboge. The difficulty in stick-making, however, is not in the
polishing; it is in the bending and trimming.
Apple makes excellent sticks if judiciously dried. Ash sticks are best
cut from saplings; when cut from hedges or pollards, they are inclined
to become brittle. Like apple sticks, they require careful seasoning to
be serviceable. Blackthorn sticks are heavy, and liable to splinter.
They are best when cut from saplings. Brier sticks are also best when
cut from saplings. Cherry sticks should be stripped of only a part of
their bark, and require sand-papering, oiling, polishing, and
varnishing. Elm sticks should have the rough bark left on; they also are
best when taken from saplings, but it is very seldom indeed that an elm
stick is fit for anything else than to be looked at. Hazel sticks are
light and handsome, and do good service, no matter whence they are cut.
They should be well rubbed down with sandpaper and carefully varnished.
Holly sticks are as good as any. Cut them from the branch with the crook
or knob attached, and let them have a long time to dry. Oak sticks are
the strongest and toughest, but the most difficult to dry and trim. If
you dry them too rapidly they split, if you dry them with the bark off
they split, if you have the knots close together they split. If you get
a good oak cudgel you can smash any stick of any other wood not
exceeding it in size. Vine sticks are also of value, but they have an
unpleasant tendency to warp and twist. Whitethorn sticks are like unto
blackthorn sticks--heavy, treacherous, and brittle.
[Illustration]
If you want to bark a stick, steep it in hot water, and rub off the coat
with a piece of sacking. If you want to bend or straighten a stick,
cover it with hot wet sand, and get it into shape while it is hot.
Of canes we need make no mention, nor need we deal with the birch. They
are but luxuries, frequently doomed to be misunderstood. Their days are
over. Alas, poor cane! Alas, poor birch!
Nothing has been said so far about carving its handle, and as a stick of
our own cutting and carving has a certain charm about it, and in its
making affords an agreeable exercise for a wet day, we herewith give a
couple of designs which can easily be improved upon, and which are
grotesque enough to look well even as failures; and this to a beginner
is a quality not to be despised. We may as well, however, adopt the
usual plan of descending from generals to particulars, and find space
for a few notes on stick history.
When Œdipus solved the riddle of the Sphinx, he thought of a
walking-stick--as many others of the puzzled have done. ‘There’s a
being,’ said the riddler, ‘which has four feet, and three feet, with
only one voice; but its feet vary, and when it has the most it is the
weakest.’ ‘That,’ said Œdipus, ‘must be man, who, when he is a child,
crawls on his hands and knees; when he is a man walks uprightly; and
when he is old totters with a walking-stick!’
On the origin and development of the walking-stick a goodly volume might
be written. Perhaps the most interesting form the stick took was that of
the pilgrim’s staff. This staff was about four feet long, armed at the
lower end with a spike, and fitted about a foot from its top with a knob
for the hand to rest upon. The lower part was solid, the upper part was
hollow, and was used for relics of saints, or a musical instrument, or
something to eat, according to the taste of the owner. It was in a
pilgrim’s staff that saffron was secretly brought from Greece to Saffron
Walden, and it was in a similar way that silkworms found their way to
Europe. This idea of using a stick as a carrier has been utilised in our
own days, not only for telescopes, match-boxes, swords, and guns, but
also for surgeons’ instruments.
Another striking form was that of the ferula, which derives its name
from the giant fennel, of whose stalk it generally consisted. The tough
lightness of the fennel wood rendered it particularly suited for the
support of the aged, and hence it gradually became the prototype of
those lighter wands which have continued amongst us as a sign of office
or seniority; and at the same time it retained its popularity with the
chastisers of erratic youth. In the East the ferula was replaced by the
reed; but in Egypt the reed gave place to slender sticks of cherry wood,
some of which had a carved handle. This carving of the head is, however,
peculiar to no country and no age. It is a practice indulged in by all
men, savage and civilised.
In our own Tudor period the walking-stick began to flourish much. Then
for the first time do we get it elaborately carved and adorned with
precious metals. In the inventory of the old palace at Greenwich, there
is entered, “A cane garnished with sylver and gilte, with astronomie
upon it. A cane garnished with golde, having a perfume on the toppe;
under that a diall with a pair of twitchers and a pair of compasses of
golde; and a foot rule of golde, a knife and a file of golde, with a
whetstone tipped with golde.” A somewhat elaborate battery to carry in a
walking stick! In the seventeenth century sticks became even more
ornamental, and in the eighteenth they began to be made entirely of
agate, or clouded marble, or ivory. How these were used and abused can
be learnt from No. 103 of the _Tattler_, where Isaac Bickerstaffe issues
licences regarding them, and is appealed to by petitioners, one of whom
asks for permission to retain his cane on account of its having become
as indispensable to him as any of his other limbs. “The knocking of it
upon his shoe, leaning one leg upon it, or whistling upon it with his
mouth, are such great reliefs to him in conversation, that he does not
know how he should be good company without it.” Later on this fashion of
elaborate walking sticks was adopted by the old ladies, and it was quite
common to see the dames out walking with wood, ivory, whalebone, or
green glass sticks, five or six feet in length, having the ends bent
over like a shepherd’s crook, and twisted back again towards the ground.
In these days, now that the means of communication have been so much
improved and the world become one huge country, foreign sticks have lost
much of their rarity. They come to us in tons, and a stick importer’s
warehouse is a sight to see. The goods in the rough do not look
inviting; in fact, anything more resembling a lot of firewood it would
be difficult to imagine. Those who have not the chance of seeing the
interior of one of these stores, can obtain a very good notion of what
they are like by inspecting a shop window next door to the Autotype
Gallery in what used to be New Oxford Street. There can be seen canes of
all sorts, rough and rooty, from the eastern and western tropics--rajahs
from Borneo; malaccas from Sumatra (nearly all the malaccas come from
Siak, they are the stems of _Calamus scipionum_); whanghees (the stems
of _Phyllostachis_) from Hongkong; lawyers (a species of _Calamus_) from
Penang; ratans and dragons from Calcutta; white bamboos, black bamboos,
fluted bamboos from other seaports in the great Bay of Bengal; partridge
canes, jambees, and dog’s-head canes; Spanish reeds (_Arundo donax_);
jacks (vine stems), cinnamons, pimentos (the stem of the allspice),
cabbage-stalks, and coffee-branches from the West Indies, with the
green-backed orange and knobby lemon sticks from the same colonies;
triangular leaf stalks of the date palm from Tunis; myrtle, pomegranate,
and olive sticks from Algeria and Italy; blue gums from Australia;
mahoganies from Cuba; ebonies, tulips, and crocodiles; cabbage-stalks
from Guernsey; and, perhaps, tooroos from Guiana.
But English sticks, and the foreign importations supposed to be such,
are the favourites after all, and it is them that we would ask our
readers to choose for their experiments. The chief, as already
explained, are oak, ash, beech, blackthorn, cherry, maple, crab, and
hazel, all of them within reach of those that walk or dwell in country
places, and all easily dressed and made presentable.
The most useful of them are the ash and beech, which can be stained and
cut to resemble any stick, and form the raw material of almost all the
shams. A goodly proportion of the blackthorn sold in the streets are
beech sticks carved and dyed. It is easy to dye a stick black. Brush it
over it with a hot decoction of logwood and nutgalls, and when it is dry
give it a brushing with vinegar in which rusty nails have lain for two
or three days. If you wish to dye it red, add some dragon’s-blood gum to
the polish; if you wish it to be yellow, use ochre instead of dragon’s
blood.
All sticks should be cut in the winter and left to dry in the rough in a
cool place. If the bark is to come away let the stick be half dry before
you begin to work upon it. If the bark is to remain on, let the stick
get thoroughly dry before you attempt to trim it.
Ash sticks can be got from the hedge or the thin branches of a pollard,
but the best are young saplings taken up root and all, the root coming
in handy for carving. Oak sticks are easy to carve, but difficult to dry
without splitting; they are the toughest and strongest of all sticks,
and are generally got from copse-wood stumps. Holly sticks are best with
the bark off; they are best when cut from the secondary branches that
shoot up parallel to the main trunk. Sometimes they are found as
saplings, and then the roots are retained as groundwork for decoration.
Elm sticks are easily got and easily worked, but seldom turn out
satisfactorily. Hazel, on the contrary, gives first-rate stick wood, and
is soft and easily cut, and if tolerably thick and well dried it will
not bend. Blackthorn is the best stick in vogue at what has taken the
place of the historic Donnybrook, but there are many tougher and more
trustworthy weapons for the peculiar recreation in which it is usually
employed. It is an easy stick to prepare and polish, but like
case-hardened iron to carve. We are told that those who attempt its
carving generally borrow the tools from some unsuspecting friend! _Verb.
sap._, or rather _verb._ to those who have dried out its _sap_ and not
discovered brittleness. Cherry sticks and apple sticks come easily to
hand, and are not unfrequently charred with a hot iron and stained with
acids to enable them to be sold as foreigners. Birch and poplar are best
left alone. British vines almost always warp; and brier and whitethorn,
like all the _Rosaceæ_, have wood that snaps and splinters on the
slightest provocation.
To shape a stick use hot sand or steam, and fix it in the desired
position when hot. To straighten it lash it when hot to a board, or hang
it up with a heavy weight at its end. To dress it or polish it employ
one of the methods described in the former part of this section.
When carving a handle, choose some design that will be smooth to the
hand. As examples try a man’s head. One of the most extraordinary
collections of walking-sticks ever made was formed by Robertson of
Kincraigie, who was popularly supposed to be ‘daft.’ It was his practice
to carve on his stick the head of any friend or foe he met with, and in
time he owned quite a portrait gallery of wooden heads, which proved the
cause of much wonderment to his visitors, for every batch he entertained
had their features promptly reproduced in oak or hazel! As suitable
designs for stick-heads there may be instanced dogs’ heads, birds’
heads, particularly broad-beaked ones, such as goose and albatross,
snakes’ heads, fishes, and squirrel and beaver tails. To get good
results proper carving tools should be used, cutting up instead of down
with the grain; but capital work can be done with an ordinary penknife,
the secret of success consisting in never cutting away a chip unless its
removal has been well thought over. Carving stick-heads is not like
carving panels, and fine work is out of the question with regard to
them. There is not much room for improvement in the art. We saw in the
1851 Exhibition a stick carved in China 4,000 years ago, and it was as
well done as anything now obtainable from the London stick-seller.