AN INSPIRATION.
In the fine old times--the good old times--a short journey took a long
time; and it was evening when the Gravesend coach put Holdsworth down
at the door of an old inn in Southwark named the “Green Dragon.”
He was now in London, but in an unfamiliar part of it, and he stood for
some minutes gazing up and down the wide long street, with its hurrying
crowds, and thronging vehicles, and endless shops, without getting one
idea more from it than ever he had got out of Pitt Street or George
Street, or any other street in Sydney.
It mattered little to him where he should sleep that night. He had as
yet formed no plans as to how he should act with respect to beginning
the inquiries which were to give him back his life’s history. So he
entered the bar of the “Green Dragon” and asked for a bedroom, with
which he was at once accommodated.
On descending the stairs he was encountered by a very polite waiter,
who begged to receive his orders for refreshments. The house was a
very old-established one, and the waiter, with a smile of concern, as
though the necessity were a melancholy one that obliged him to suggest
such obvious truths at that time of day, ventured to observe that the
gentleman might travel the whole breadth and length of the United
Kingdom without meeting with better wines and choicer cooking than were
to be found at that inn. On the strength of this and a small appetite
Holdsworth ordered supper, and was conducted to the coffee-room, where
he seated himself, the only occupant of the dark bare apartment, at
a table furnished with a mustard-pot large enough to have supplied
a hospital with poultices, and amused himself as best he could with
staring at some grisly, faded prints after Hogarth, and a map of
London, to which several generations of flies had contributed squares,
streets, and blind alleys nowhere to be found in the metropolis proper.
Having eaten his supper, he was leaning back in his chair, with a half
resolution in his mind to stroll forth into the streets for an hour,
and see what suggestions his wanderings might obtain for him, when the
waiter came up, and leaning confidentially upon the table, informed him
that there was an “’Armonious Meeting going on in the public room at
the bottom of the passage, and if the gentleman liked, the sperits he
was pleased to horder could be served him there.”
“Who are they?” asked Holdsworth.
“All sorts, sir. The ’armony is done by some gents as lives in the
neighbourhood, who look in every Wednesday night to drink and converse.
The governor takes the chair, and every gent as is stoppin’ in the
house is made welcome. I think you’ll be pleased, sir.”
“This is dull enough, at all events,” said Holdsworth, looking around
him. It was too early to go to bed, and he felt too tired to take his
half-projected stroll. So, conceiving that a quarter of an hour’s
inspection of the convivialists in the public room might cheer him up,
he rose and followed the waiter down the passage.
The scene into which he was admitted certainly wanted no feature
of liveliness. The room was long and low pitched, with two immense
grates in it, and wooden mantelpieces carved into all kinds of quaint
embodiments of Greek and Roman mythology. Common brass sconces were
affixed to the walls with a couple of candles in each. Around were
pictures of fighting and theatrical celebrities of that and an earlier
day; Humphreys and Mendoza, stripped to the waist, and working into
each other’s eyes in wonderful style, watched by a distant and pensive
crowd in hats of the Tom and Jerry school, uncomfortably tight
breeches, and coat collars above their ears; Kemble in furs; Incledon
dressed as a sailor; Braham, as little Isaac, in the “Duenna;” and
Dicky Suett, with a thing like a balloon coming out of his mouth, and
“Oh la!” written upon it. At the head of a long table sat a stout
man in a striped yellow waistcoat, a bottle green coat, and a white
neckcloth; several black bottles, steaming jugs, and a plate of lemons
were in front of him. And down the table on either side were seated a
number of individuals, some of them dressed in extravagant style, a few
clad soberly, and most of them smoking cigars, or rapping snuff-boxes,
laughing, talking, and drinking from fat one-legged tumblers.
As Holdsworth entered, either a speech, a song, or a sentiment had
just been delivered, for there was a great hammering going on, mingled
with cries of “Bravo!” The “cheer,” who was the promoter of, and the
sole gainer by these Wednesday festivities, bowed to Holdsworth, and
getting on to his legs, came round and bade him welcome in the name of
all the good fellows there and then assembled, and gave him the sign,
which Holdsworth, not having been made, did not take. He then led him
to a vacant chair between two of the more soberly clad of the company,
and having received and transmitted his commands to the waiter with a
host-like and hospitable air, as though such a low arrangement as a
reckoning had no existence, resumed his place at the head of the table,
knocked loudly with his knuckles, and called upon Mr. Harris for a song.
On this, up started a thin young man with a yellow beard, and, leaning
on his hands, gazed slowly around him with a leering and perfectly
self-possessed bloodshot eye. Whereat there was a laugh.
“Gentleman!” he began.
“Order! silence!” cried the landlord. “Mr. ’Arris has your ear!”
“And I wish I could say ladies: I am asked to sing a song, and I’ll
do so with the greatest of pleasure. But before I begin, permit me
to make an observation; as I don’t want to wound any gentleman’s
feelings, though no fear of that kind will prevent me from expressing
my sentiments, which are those of a Briton and a reformer, who has no
opinion of the present, looks upon the past with contempt, and only
lives for the future.”
“Hear!” from several reformers.
“There’s a good deal to be said against this age; and there’s no
abuse which the past don’t deserve! The past! gentlemen, it did for
our grandmothers. The present! it does for our fathers. But we,
gentlemen--we who possess young and ardent minds----”
“Give us your song!” cried a voice.
“We, gentlemen--we, the young blood of this great nation--we,” cried
the orator, swinging his fist, and nearly knocking a cigar out of the
mouth of a man at his side, with a face on him filled with idiotic
admiration, “are for the future!”
An old man uttered a cheer; the speaker then coughed, swallowed a
draught of brandy-and-water, expanded his chest, ran his fingers
through his hair, and began as follows, throwing out his arms in
approved comic style:--
THE DAYS WHEN I WAS YOUNG.
Of the days when I was young, sir,
Sing the splendour and the fame,
When the fields and woods among, sir,
Traps were set to guard our game;
When our clergymen got drunk, sir,
And our Prince was made of waistcoats,
When our soldiery had spunk, sir,
And wore epaulets and faced coats.
CHORUS--Sing the days when I was young!
Such a song was never sung!
When Madeira, port, and sherry
Were such wines as made men wits:
When our songs were coarse and merry,
And our pockets full of writs!
When we fought like hungry Spartans,
And told tales like Jemmy Twitcher’s;
When cognac was drunk in quarterns,
And October ale in pitchers!
Sing the days, etc.
When the House was full of quarrels,
And our hustings the arenas
For dead cats and bilious morals
And the music of hyenas!
When our Avershaws were strangling,
And our Mrs. Frys were preaching:
And our priests and bishops wrangling,
And our patriots a-screeching!
Sing the days, etc.
When a Tory _was_ a Tory,
Armour’d tight in old tradition,
Quoting nothing but the hoary,
And a friend to superstition:
Hating Irishman and priests, sir,
All excisemen and dissenters,
Holy fasts and holy feasts, sir,
Whigs and Jews and ten-pound renters!
Sing the days, etc.
When our fiddlers were true artists,
And our singers all had voices:
Ere our labourers were Chartists,
And the land was full of noises.
When our “bloods” were breaking knockers,
Smashing bells all free and hearty,
And when little else could shock us
But reports of Bonaparte.
Sing the days, etc.
When our coaches turn’d us over,
And our watchmen snored in alleys:
When it took a day to Dover,
And a week or two to Calais.
When Jack Ketch was hanging women
Who stole bread for starving babies,
And our rogues were just as common
As new honey in old May bees.
Sing the days, etc.
Never more shall we survey, sir,
Times so splendid and so stirring,
Social life and tastes more gay, sir,
Laws and statesmen more unerring.
Fights and factions more unsparing,
Tories truer to traditions,
Foreign policy more daring----
(Here the vocalist took a deep breath),
And more brutal superstitions!
The sounds excited by this song were somewhat discordant, owing to the
bravos being mingled with hisses. Mr. Harris resumed his seat with a
contemptuous expression, and the chairman, rapping the table, called
out:
“Gentlemen! ’issing isn’t ’armony to any ear but a goose’s!”
“I don’t like the sentiments of that song,” exclaimed a man at the
bottom of the table.
“Why not, sir?” demanded Mr. Harris, warmly.
“First of all, I don’t understand ’em,” said the other.
“Oh!” said Mr. Harris with a sneer.
“Much of what that song says is to be applied to the present as well as
to the past,” observed an old gentleman, looking staggered at his own
boldness in talking amid a silence. “For my part, I don’t think a man
fights fair who uses a two-edged sword.”
Several voices murmured acquiescence.
“I’m for the future,” said Mr. Harris, “and told you so at the
beginning.”
“See here, gentlemen,” called out the landlord; “the meaning of Mr.
Harris’s song, so far as I understand its hallusions, is this: he
supposes himself to be old----”
“No, I don’t,” growled Mr. Harris.
“Quite the contrary, _I_ think,” snarled a little grocer near the
chairman. “I reckon there’s more swaddling-clothes nor expirience in
_them_ sentiments, or I’m gone deaf since I sat down.”
“The meaning of my song is just what it says,” retorted Mr. Harris.
“I’m not ashamed of being a reformer. Better men than I or any other
gentleman in this room, begging _nobody’s_ pardon, have been reformers.
Thank God, my politics are not of a kind to call up my blushes when I
own them.”
As the Tories in the company judged that something offensive was meant
by Mr. Harris, several persons spoke at once, and a clamour ensued
which threatened to establish the meeting on any other basis than that
of harmony. Indeed, one man, who was nearly intoxicated, went so far as
to get upon his chair and exclaim, while he brandished his fist, that
if he had it in his power, he would hang every Whig in the country.
And there is no telling what further extravagances of language and
gesture he might have indulged in, but for the prompt interference of
a neighbour, who, catching hold of his coat-tail, pulled him under the
table.
However, by dint of shouting pacific language at the top of his voice,
the chairman succeeded at last in restoring tranquillity. More grog
was brought in, snuff-boxes were handed about, hands were shaken
across the table, and loud cheers greeted the sentiment delivered by a
gentleman who appeared to be vice-chairman: “That ’armony of feeling
was the music of humanity.” Mr. Harris apologised for having sung
anything distasteful to the company, who he hoped were all his very
good friends; and amid the clanking of spoons in glasses, and polite
calls of “After you” for lighted spills, the conversation streamed into
milder channels, and everybody did his best to look harmonious.
Though Holdsworth was a good deal amused by this scene, and by the
manners and dress of the people around him, he hardly felt himself
equal to enduring very much more of this social harmony, and sat
twisting his glass on the table, watching the faces of the company, and
waiting for another “row” to make his escape without attracting notice.
He was presently addressed by a man sitting on his left--a middle-aged
individual, with a thin, smooth-shaven face and a keen eye, and very
high shirt-collars.
“A stranger, I make bold to think, sir?”
“Yes,” answered Holdsworth.
“I judge so by an air of travel about you, if you’ll pardon me. Forgive
me, sir, if I inquire your secret--understand me--your secret opinion
as to that song just sung by the gentleman opposite.”
“To tell you the truth,” replied Holdsworth, who imagined that his
companion wanted to draw him into a political argument, “I only caught
a few of the verses, and am therefore scarcely able to give an opinion.”
“Humph!” exclaimed the other. “Now, sir, _I_ call that song
clever--damned clever, and I’ll tell you why: it’s ironical. Without
irony, sir, I wouldn’t give a pin’s head for the best piece of humour
in the world. You’ll excuse what I am about to say, sir, I’m sure. You
are a traveller--I flatter myself I can tell that with half an eye.
Now, sir, as a man who has visited other countries, and observed human
nature in a hundred different forms, you can’t help being a Whig.
Confess, sir, that you share my political views, which are those of a
man who has only one cry--‘Down with rubbish!’”
“I hate rubbish as much as any man,” replied Holdsworth.
His companion looked struck and delighted.
“Your hand, sir. Permit me to shake it. I love a Whig, sir. Here’s to
your good health.”
“Are you a native of this country, sir?” he continued, glancing at
Holdsworth’s dress, which had a decidedly colonial cut.
“I believe so.”
“But not a resident?” said the other, whose turn of mind was decidedly
inquisitive.
“No.”
“Now what part might you have come from, sir, if you’ll excuse the
liberty?” asked the man confidently.
“From Australia.”
“God bless my heart and soul! You don’t say so! Dear me! Australia!
Is it possible? I consider myself a bit of a traveller; but in your
presence, sir, I feel my insignificance.”
Holdsworth laughed, but made no answer.
“They say that Australia is a wonderful country, sir: that you grow
cherries with the stones outside, and that your parrots are like
sea-gulls. Fine climate though, I believe, sir, if you will pardon me?”
“Very fine.”
“And yet not equal to ours?”
“Perhaps not.”
“They talk of scenery, sir. Now I was never out of England in my life,
though there’s not a hole or corner in it that I don’t know. But what
can equal English scenery? Take Devonshire. Take Cumberland. Were you
ever in those counties?”
“Never.”
“Yorkshire?”
“No.”
“Talk of desolation--see the moors: great plains of the colour of tripe
stretching for miles, with one dwarf tree for every league of ground,
and that’s all. Now, sir, my taste may be wrong, or perhaps it’s right;
I wouldn’t flaunt it in any man’s face, though I’d hold on to it if I
was on my death-bed. Of all the counties in England, which think you
I’m the most partial to?”
“I cannot imagine.”
“Kent, sir!” exclaimed the man, drawing back triumphantly.
The name sent a thrill through Holdsworth. He pricked his ears and
looked at his companion earnestly.
“The Devonshire people may crack up their county, but give _me_ Kent.
I am a native of Kent, sir!”
“Indeed!”
“I was born at Canterbury. Ever seen the cathedral?”
“Canterbury Cathedral!” muttered Holdsworth, struggling to grasp an
illusive, half-formed fancy that flitted across his mind.
“Take the country about Hanwitch, now ...”
“Hanwitch!” echoed Holdsworth. The name pierced him as a sword might.
He pressed his fingers tightly over his eyes, his face turned white,
and his whole body trembled.
His companion stared at him.
“Do you know Hanwitch?” he asked, wondering if this singular-looking
person with the haggard face, Australian clothes, and thick beard was
in possession of his right mind.
“The name struck me,” answered Holdsworth, removing his hands and
frowning in his effort to master the meaning of the extraordinary
emotion excited by the name of that town.
“There’s not a spot of land anywhere within thirty miles of Canterbury
all round,” continued the man, looking at Holdsworth watchfully, “that
I don’t know. I name Hanwitch because there’s a bit of river scenery
near it which is prettier than anything I’ve seen in any other part
of England. If you’ve got the leisure, and would like to see what this
country can show in the way of good views, take a run down to Hanwitch.”
He pulled out a pocket-book, and extracting a card, handed it to
Holdsworth, observing in a tone that at least showed he had regained
his confidence in his neighbour:
“Show that, sir, at the bar of the ‘Three Stars’ at Hanwitch, and if
you don’t get every attention, be good enough to write to me, and see
if they don’t lose my patronage.”
Holdsworth looked at the card, whereon he might have seen a very
commonplace name, printed in capitals, with “Commercial Traveller”
squeezed into the corner; but he saw nothing. A name had been
pronounced which quickened the dormant memory in him into a vitality
that threatened to make it burst through the shell that imprisoned it,
and proclaim all that he passionately longed to know.
Powerless must his mind have been not to find in the name of the
Hanwitch inn the magic to give him back his memory. Could not his
heart recall the sweet day he had spent in Hanwitch with Dolly at his
side?--the sweetest, happiest day of all the days he had passed in the
brief three months during which they had been together? One might have
thought that, saving her own dear face, there was nothing more potent
to roll back the deep mantle of darkness, and lay bare the shining
panorama of those far-off times, than the name of the inn in whose deep
bay window they had sat linked in each other’s arms, watching the soft
sunshine shimmering through the summer leaves, and the clear river
wandering gently along its emerald-banked channel.
Further conversation was out of the question for a while, by the
chairman hammering on the table and calling silence for a song. The
disagreeable effects produced by the last song had completely passed
away, and the landlord thought that another “ditty,” as he called it,
might safely be sung.
A very corpulent man stood up, with a face upon him of which the
quantity of flesh had worked the expression into an aspect of fixed
amazement. An immense blue-spotted cravat adorned his throat, and long
streaks of hair fell slanting down his cheeks. His small clothes and
arm-sleeves were distressingly tight, and suggested that any display
of pathos or humour, of gesticulation or laughter, would be in the
highest degree inconvenient. It was not hard to guess that this fat man
sang comic songs, that he dropped _every_ h, and that he was in the
eating-line, in a commercial sense.
He was saluted with a round of laughter, which, being hammered down, he
began in a soft, oily, tenor voice--
“A dawg’s-meat man he loved a voman,
Sairey her name vos--not uncommon;
He had vun eye, and he hown’d a barrer.
Coopid up’s vith his bow and lets fly a arrer.
‘O dear!’ cries this dawg’s-meat man,
Fingerin’ his buzzum and looking vith his eye;
‘Vot can this be a-sticking in my tan?’
Ven Sairey draws near a-lookin’ very shy.
‘Tell me,’ sez he, ‘the name o’ this here thing?’
‘Vy,’ sez Sairey vinkin’, ‘it’s vun o’ Coopid’s darts.’”
etc. etc.
This song gave such exquisite satisfaction to the company that, on
his concluding it, he was entreated, amid cheers, to sing another;
on which, squaring his breast, but preserving his wooden face of fat
astonishment, he began as follows:
“There vos a ’ot pieman as vurked in the Strand,
Singing hey, ho! ’ot pies, all ’ot!
Vun night he was kickin’ his ’eels at his stand
Ven who should come up but a lady all grand,
Vith a dress all of satin, and rings on her ’and,
And she asts for a pie
Did this lady, oh my!
Let us cry.
Singing hey, ho! ’ot pies, all ’ot!
“Now, our friend was genteel, as all piemen should be,
Singing hey, ho! ’ot pies, all ’ot!
And he sez to this lady, so grand for to see,
‘My pies, mum, are meant for sitch people as me,
For poor cabbies and sitch; not for folks of degree,’
And she jest sez, ‘O fie!
Hand me quickly a pie,
Or I’ll cry.’
Singing hey, ho! ’ot pies, all ’ot!”
I spare the reader the remaining six verses of this delectable song.
The company joined in the chorus with the full force of their lungs,
and so exhilarated the fat vocalist, that at the end of the second
verse he pushed away his chair, and folding his arms on his breast,
actually danced an accompaniment to the words, amid shrieks of laughter
and wild stretching forward of necks at the farther end of the table
to see him. Holdsworth’s companion laughed until he grew faint, and
then, to recover his strength, drank brandy and water, and then laughed
again. The song was encored, genuine vulgarity seldom failing to
please; and then a brief breathing-space of silence falling, Holdsworth
said to his companion:
“Will you tell me how I am to get to Hanwitch from here?”
“Certainly. All you’ve got to do is, step across to the ‘Canterbury
Arms’--it’s five minutes’ walk from this house on the left--the coach
starts for Canterbury at half-past seven in the morning, every day.”
“Thank you,” said Holdsworth, who found it impossible, amid the renewed
hubbub of conversation that had burst out, to ask some questions about
Hanwitch, which might help him to understand the longing that possessed
him to visit it.
“You’re not going--the night’s very young, sir?” said the man, seeing
Holdsworth rise. But Holdsworth merely wished him “Good night,” and
slipped out of the room unnoticed by the company, who were at that
moment busy in entreating the fat man to give them another song.
The cool air and silence of the passage were a great relief after the
heat and noise of the public room. It was now drawing near to eleven
o’clock. Holdsworth went to the bar and asked for a candle, and was
lighted to his bed-room by a chambermaid with ringlets and black
eyes, who probably felt surprised that her charms attracted no notice
whatever from the gentleman, who seemed to find pleasure in no other
object than the carpet on which he trod.
Holdsworth closed the door, and a whole hour passed before he rose to
remove his clothes. There was something in the recollection of the
thrill which the name of Hanwitch had sent through him, that impelled
him to bend the whole energies of his mind to the word, and he strove
with memory passionately and fiercely, but could not wrench a syllable
from her. He repeated the name until it lost even its sense as the
designation of a town. Nevertheless, every moment made his longing
to visit it deeper. There must be _some_ reason why this name had so
stirred him. The names of other English counties and cities had been
pronounced before him and by him over and over again, but they touched
no chord, they awoke no echo in his mind, however dim and elusive.
If memory would only define the object he sought! This it would not
do. He was a wanderer, obeying the dictation of blind instinct, which
urged without guiding him. Of all his past, nothing was present to
his mind. He knew not what he sought. His was an affliction crueller
than blindness, for a blind man could say: “A beloved one has strayed
from me. I seek her. I see not, indeed, those who surround me, but my
mission has form and substance in my mind, and my inquiries cannot
_always_ prove fruitless.” But Holdsworth was commanded by a mysterious
emotion which controlled without enlightening him. _Something_ had been
lost--_something_ was to be found. He felt his want, but could not
explain it to himself. No man could help him, since no man could guess
what was the thing he looked for.
When he left his chair he sank upon his knees and asked God in broken
tones to help him--to direct him into the path that should lead him to
the light--to aid him in his yearning to re-illuminate his memory.