the patriot women, deprived of their husbands and their petticoats,
retired, it is to be hoped and presumed, to the friendly shelter of
bed. It was then close on nightfall, if not actually night; and the
disorderly marching of the transformed colliers could not be
perceived. But, when the British army took up its position, then was
the time when the excellent stratagem of Lord Cawdor told at its true
worth. By the uncertain light of fires and torches, the French scouts,
let them venture as near as they might, could see nothing in detail. A
man in a scarlet petticoat looked as soldier-like as a man in a
scarlet coat, under those dusky circumstances. All that the enemy
could now see were lines on lines of men in red, the famous uniform of
the English army.
The council of the French braves must have been a perturbed assembly
on that memorable night. Behind them, was the empty bay--for the four
ships, after landing the invaders, had set sail again for France,
sublimely indifferent to the fate of the fourteen hundred. Before
them, there waited in battle array an apparently formidable force of
British soldiers. Under them was the hostile English ground on which
they were trespassers caught in the fact. Girt about by these serious
perils, the discreet commander of the Invasion fell back on those
safeguards of caution and deliberation of which he had already given
proofs on approaching the English shore. He had doubted at Ilfracombe;
he had doubted again in Cardigan Bay; and now, on the eve of the
first battle, he doubted for the third time--doubted, and gave in. If
History declines to receive the French commander as a hero, Philosophy
opens her peaceful doors to him, and welcomes him in the character of
a wise man.
At ten o'clock that night, a flag of truce appeared in the English
camp, and a letter was delivered to Lord Cawdor from the prudent chief
of the invaders. The letter set forth, with amazing gravity and
dignity, that the circumstances under which the French troops had
landed, having rendered it "unnecessary" to attempt any military
operations, the commanding officer did not object to come forward
generously and propose terms of capitulation. Such a message as this
was little calculated to impose on any man--far less on the artful
nobleman who had invented the stratagem of the red petticoats. Taking
a slightly different view of the circumstances, and declining
altogether to believe that the French Directory had sent fourteen
hundred men over to England to divert the inhabitants by the spectacle
of a capitulation, Lord Cawdor returned for answer that he did not
feel himself at liberty to treat with the French commander, except on
the condition of his men surrendering as prisoners of war. On
receiving this reply, the Frenchman gave an additional proof of that
philosophical turn of mind which has been already claimed for him as
one of his merits, by politely adopting the course which Lord Cawdor
suggested. By noon the next day, the French troops were all marched
off, prisoners of war--the patriot-matrons had resumed their
petticoats--and the short terror of the invasion had happily passed
away.
The first question that occurred to everybody, as soon as the alarm
had been dissipated, was, what this extraordinary burlesque of an
invasion could possibly mean. It was asserted, in some quarters, that
the fourteen hundred Frenchmen had been recruited from those
insurgents of La Vendée who had enlisted in the service of the
Republic, who could not be trusted at home, and who were therefore
despatched on the first desperate service that might offer itself
abroad. Others represented the invading army as a mere gang of
galley-slaves and criminals in general, who had been landed on our
shores with the double purpose of annoying England and ridding France
of a pack of rascals. The commander of the expedition, however,
disposed of this latter theory by declaring that six hundred of his
men were picked veterans from the French army, and by referring, for
corroboration of this statement, to his large supplies of powder,
ball, and hand-grenades, which would certainly not have been wasted,
at a time when military stores were especially precious, on a gang of
galley-slaves.
The truth seems to be, that the French (who were even more densely
ignorant of England and English institutions at that time than they
are at this) had been so entirely deceived by false reports of the
temper and sentiments of our people, as to believe that the mere
appearance of the troops of the Republic on these Monarchical shores,
would be the signal for a revolutionary rising of all the disaffected
classes from one end of Great Britain to the other. Viewed merely as
materials for kindling the insurrectionary spark, the fourteen hundred
Frenchmen might certainly be considered sufficient for the
purpose--providing the Directory of the Republic could only have made
sure beforehand that the English tinder might be depended on to catch
light!
One last event must be recorded before this History can be considered
complete. The disasters of the invading army, on shore, were matched,
at sea, by the disasters of the vessels that had carried them. Of the
four ships which had alarmed the English coast, the two largest (the
frigates) were both captured, as they were standing in for Brest
Harbour, by Sir Harry Neale. This smart and final correction of the
fractious little French invasion was administered on the ninth of
March, seventeen hundred and ninety-seven.
MORAL.
This is the history of the Great (Forgotten) Invasion. It is short, it
is not impressive, it is unquestionably deficient in serious interest.
But there is a Moral to be drawn from it, nevertheless. If we are
invaded again, and on a rather larger scale, let us not be so
ill-prepared, this next time, as to be obliged to take refuge in our
wives' red petticoats.
CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE.--I.
THE UNKNOWN PUBLIC.
Do the customers at publishing-houses, the members of book-clubs and
circulating libraries, and the purchasers and borrowers of newspapers
and reviews, compose altogether the great bulk of the reading public
of England? There was a time when, if anybody had put this question to
me, I, for one, should certainly have answered, Yes.
I know better now. So far from composing the bulk of English readers,
the public just mentioned represents nothing more than the minority.
This startling discovery dawned upon me gradually. I made my first
approaches towards it, in walking about London, more especially in the
second and third rate neighbourhoods. At such times, whenever I passed
a small stationer's or small tobacconist's shop, I became mechanically
conscious of certain publications which invariably occupied the
windows. These publications all appeared to be of the same small
quarto size; they seemed to consist merely of a few unbound pages;
each one of them had a picture on the upper half of the front leaf,
and a quantity of small print on the under. I noticed just as much as
this, for some time, and no more. None of the gentlemen who profess to
guide my taste in literary matters, had ever directed my attention
towards these mysterious publications. My favourite Review is, as I
firmly believe, at this very day, unconscious of their existence. My
enterprising librarian--who forces all sorts of books on my attention
that I don't want to read, because he has bought whole editions of
them a great bargain--has never yet tried me with the limp unbound
picture-quarto of the small shops. Day after day, and week after week,
the mysterious publications haunted my walks, go where I might; and,
still, I was too careless to stop and notice them in detail. I left
London and travelled about England. The neglected publications
followed me. There they were in every town, large or small. I saw them
in fruit-shops, in oyster-shops, in cigar-shops, in lozenge-shops.
Villages even--picturesque, strong-smelling villages--were not free
from them. Wherever the speculative daring of one man could open a
shop, and the human appetites and necessities of his fellow-mortals
could keep it from shutting up again--there, as it appeared to me, the
unbound picture-quarto instantly entered, set itself up obtrusively in
the window, and insisted on being looked at by everybody. "Buy me,
borrow me, stare at me, steal me. Oh, inattentive stranger, do
anything but pass me by!"
Under this sort of compulsion, it was not long before I began to stop
at shop-windows and look attentively at these all-pervading specimens
of what was to me a new species of literary production. I made
acquaintance with one of them among the deserts of West Cornwall; with
another in a populous thoroughfare of Whitechapel; with a third in a
dreary little lost town at the north of Scotland. I went into a lovely
county of South Wales; the modest railway had not penetrated to it,
but the audacious picture-quarto had found it out. Who could resist
this perpetual, this inevitable, this magnificently unlimited appeal
to notice and patronage? From looking in at the windows of the shops,
I got on to entering the shops themselves--to buying specimens of this
locust-flight of small publications--to making strict examination of
them from the first page to the last--and finally, to instituting
inquiries about them in all sorts of well-informed quarters. The
result has been the discovery of an Unknown Public; a public to be
counted by millions; the mysterious, the unfathomable, the universal
public of the penny-novel-Journals.[2]
I have five of these journals now before me, represented by one sample
copy, bought hap-hazard, of each. There are many more; but these five
represent the successful and well-established members of the literary
family. The eldest of them is a stout lad of fifteen years' standing.
The youngest is an infant of three months old. All five are sold at
the same price of one penny; all five are published regularly once a
week; all five contain about the same quantity of matter. The weekly
circulation of the most successful of the five, is now publicly
advertised (and, as I am informed, without exaggeration) at half a
Million. Taking the other four as attaining altogether to a
circulation of another half million (which is probably much under the
right estimate) we have a sale of a Million weekly for five penny
journals. Reckoning only three readers to each copy sold, the result
is _a public of three millions_--a public unknown to the literary
world; unknown, as disciples, to the whole body of professed critics;
unknown, as customers, at the great libraries and the great
publishing-houses; unknown, as an audience, to the distinguished
English writers of our own time. A reading public of three millions
which lies right out of the pale of literary civilisation, is a
phenomenon worth examining--a mystery which the sharpest man among us
may not find it easy to solve.
In the first place, who are the three millions--the Unknown Public--as
I have ventured to call them?
The known reading public--the minority already referred to--are easily
discovered and classified. There is the religious public, with
booksellers and literature of its own, which includes reviews and
newspapers as well as books. There is the public which reads for
information, and devotes itself to Histories, Biographies, Essays,
Treatises, Voyages and Travels. There is the public which reads for
amusement, and patronises the Circulating Libraries and the railway
book-stalls. There is, lastly, the public which reads nothing but
newspapers. We all know where to lay our hands on the people who
represent these various classes. We see the books they like on their
tables. We meet them out at dinner, and hear them talk of their
favourite authors. We know, if we are at all conversant with literary
matters, even the very districts of London in which certain classes of
people live who are to be depended upon beforehand as the picked
readers for certain kinds of books. But what do we know of the
enormous outlawed majority--of the lost literary tribes--of the
prodigious, the overwhelming three millions? Absolutely nothing.
I myself--and I say it to my sorrow--have a very large circle of
acquaintance. Ever since I undertook the interesting task of exploring
the Unknown Public, I have been trying to discover among my dear
friends and my bitter enemies (both alike on my visiting list), a
subscriber to a penny-novel-journal--and I have never yet succeeded in
the attempt. I have heard theories started as to the probable
existence of penny-novel-journals in kitchen dressers, in the back
parlours of Easy Shaving Shops, in the greasy seclusion of the boxes
at the small Chop Houses. But I have never yet met with any man,
woman, or child who could answer the inquiry, "Do you subscribe to a
penny journal?" plainly in the affirmative, and who could produce the
periodical in question. I have learnt, years ago, to despair of ever
meeting with a single woman, after a certain age, who has not had an
offer of marriage. I have given up, long since, all idea of ever
discovering a man who has himself seen a ghost, as distinguished from
that other inevitable man who has had a bosom friend who has
unquestionably seen one. These are two among many other aspirations of
a wasted life which I have definitely resigned. I have now to add one
more to the number of my vanished illusions.
In the absence, therefore, of any positive information on the subject,
it is only possible to pursue the present investigation by accepting
such negative evidence as may help us to guess with more or less
accuracy, at the social position, the habits, the tastes, and the
average intelligence of the Unknown Public. Arguing carefully by
inference, we may hope, in this matter, to arrive at something like a
safe, if not a satisfactory, conclusion.
To begin with, it may be fairly assumed--seeing that the staple
commodity of each one of the five journals before me, is composed of
Stories--that the Unknown Public reads for its amusement more than for
its information.
Judging by my own experience, I should be inclined to add, that the
Unknown Public looks to quantity rather than quality in spending its
penny a-week on literature. In buying my five specimen copies, at five
different shops, I purposely approached the individual behind the
counter, on each occasion, in the character of a member of the Unknown
Public--say, Number Three Million and One--who wished to be guided in
laying out a penny entirely by the recommendation of the shopkeeper
himself. I expected, by this course of proceeding, to hear a little
popular criticism, and to get at what the conditions of success might
be, in a branch of literature which was quite new to me. No such
result rewarded my efforts in any case. The dialogue between buyer and
seller always took some such practical turn as this:
_Reader, Number Three Million and One._--"I want to take in one of the
penny journals. Which do you recommend?"
_Enterprising Publisher._--"Some likes one, and some likes another.
They're all good pennorths. Seen this one?"
"Yes."
"Seen that one?"
"No."
"Look what a pennorth!"
"Yes--but about the stories in this one? Are they as good, now, as the
stories in that one?"
"Well, you see, some likes one, and some likes another. Sometimes I
sells more of one, and sometimes I sells more of another. Take 'em all
the year round, and there ain't a pin, as I knows of, to choose
between 'em. There's just about as much in one as there is in another.
All good pennorths. Bless your soul, just take 'em up and look for
yourself! All good pennorths, choose where you like!"
I never got any farther than this, try as I might. And yet, I found
the shopkeepers, both men and women, ready enough to talk on other
topics. On each occasion, so far from receiving any practical hints
that I was interrupting business, I found myself sociably delayed in
the shop, after I had made my purchase, as if I had been an old
acquaintance. I got all sorts of curious information on all sorts of
subjects,--excepting the good pennorth of print in my pocket. Does the
reader know the singular facts in connection with Everton Toffey? It
is like Eau de Cologne. There is only one genuine receipt for making
it, in the world. It has been a family inheritance from remote
antiquity. You may go here, there, and everywhere, and buy what you
think is Everton Toffey (or Eau de Cologne); but there is only one
place in London, as there is only one place in Cologne, at which you
can obtain the genuine article. That information was given me at one
penny-journal shop. At another, the proprietor explained his new
system of Staymaking to me. He offered to provide my wife with
something that would support her muscles and not pinch her flesh; and,
what was more, he was not the man to ask for his bill, afterwards,
except in the case of giving both of us perfect satisfaction. This man
was so talkative and intelligent: he could tell me all about so many
other things besides stays, that I took it for granted he could give
me the information of which I stood in need. But here again I was
disappointed. He had a perfect snow-drift of penny journals all over
his counter--he snatched them up by handfuls, and gesticulated with
them cheerfully; he smacked and patted them, and brushed them all up
in a heap, to express to me that "the whole lot would be worked off by
the evening;" but he, too, when I brought him to close quarters, only
repeated the one inevitable form of words: "A good pennorth; that's
all I can say! Bless your soul, look at any one of them for yourself,
and see what a pennorth it is!"
Having, inferentially, arrived at the two conclusions that the Unknown
Public reads for amusement, and that it looks to quantity in its
reading, rather than to quality, I might have found it difficult to
proceed further towards the making of new discoveries, but for the
existence of a very remarkable aid to inquiry, which is common to all
the penny-novel-journals alike.
The peculiar facilities to which I now refer, are presented in the
Answers to Correspondents. The page containing these is, beyond all
comparison, the most interesting page in the penny journals. There is
no earthly subject that it is possible to discuss, no private affair
that it is possible to conceive, which the inscrutable Unknown Public
will not confide to the Editor in the form of a question, and which
the editor will not set himself seriously and resolutely to answer.
Hidden under cover of initials, or Christian names, or conventional
signatures--such as Subscriber, Constant Reader, and so forth--the
editor's correspondents seem, many of them, to judge by the published
answers to their questions, utterly impervious to the senses of
ridicule or shame. Young girls beset by perplexities which are usually
supposed to be reserved for a mother's or an elder sister's ear,
consult the editor. Married women who have committed little frailties,
consult the editor. Male jilts in deadly fear of actions for breach of
promise of marriage, consult the editor. Ladies whose complexions are
on the wane, and who wish to know the best artificial means of
restoring them, consult the editor. Gentlemen who want to dye their
hair, and get rid of their corns, consult the editor. Inconceivably
dense ignorance, inconceivably petty malice, and inconceivably
complacent vanity, all consult the editor, and all, wonderful to
relate, get serious answers from him. No mortal position is too
difficult for this wonderful man; there is no change of character as
general referee, which he is not prepared to assume on the instant.
Now he is a father, now a mother, now a schoolmaster, now a confessor,
now a doctor, now a lawyer, now a young lady's confidante, now a young
gentleman's bosom friend, now a lecturer on morals, and now an
authority in cookery.
However, our present business is not with the editor, but with his
readers. As a means of getting at the average intelligence of the
Unknown Public--as a means of testing the general amount of education
which they have acquired, and of ascertaining what share of taste and
delicacy they have inherited from Nature--these extraordinary Answers
to Correspondents may fairly be produced in detail, to serve us for a
guide. I must premise, that I have not maliciously hunted them up out
of many numbers; I have merely looked into my five sample copies of
five separate journals,--all, I repeat, bought, accidentally, just as
they happened to catch my attention in the shop windows. I have not
waited for bad specimens, or anxiously watched for good: I have
impartially taken my chance. And now, just as impartially, I dip into
one journal after another, on the Correspondents' page, exactly as the
five happen to lie on my desk. The result is, that I have the pleasure
of presenting to those ladies and gentlemen who may honour me with
their attention, the following members of the Unknown Public, who are
in a condition to speak quite unreservedly for themselves:--
A reader of a penny-novel-journal who wants a receipt for gingerbread.
A reader who complains of fulness in his throat. Several readers who
want cures for grey hair, for warts, for sores on the head, for
nervousness, and for worms. Two readers who have trifled with Woman's
Affections, and who want to know if Woman can sue them for breach of
promise of marriage. A reader who wants to know what the sacred
initials I. H. S. mean, and how to get rid of small-pox marks. Another
reader who desires to be informed what an esquire is. Another who
cannot tell how to pronounce picturesque and acquiescence. Another who
requires to be told that _chiar'oscuro_ is a term used by painters.
Three readers who want to know how to soften ivory, how to get a
divorce, and how to make black varnish. A reader who is not certain
what the word Poems means; not certain that Mazeppa was written by
Lord Byron; not certain whether there are such things in the world as
printed and published Lives of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Two afflicted readers, well worthy of a place by themselves, who want
a receipt apiece for the cure of knock-knees; and who are referred (it
is to be hoped, by a straight-legged editor) to a former answer,
addressed to other sufferers, which contains the information they
require.
Two readers respectively unaware, until the editor has enlightened
them, that the author of Robinson Crusoe was Daniel Defoe, and the
author of the Irish Melodies, Thomas Moore. Another reader, a trifle
denser, who requires to be told that the histories of Greece and Rome
are ancient histories, and the histories of France and England modern
histories.
A reader who wants to know the right hour of the day at which to visit
a newly-married couple. A reader who wants a receipt for liquid
blacking.
A lady reader who expresses her sentiments prettily on crinoline.
Another lady reader who wants to know how to make crumpets. Another
who has received presents from a gentleman to whom she is not engaged,
and who wants the editor to tell her whether she is right or wrong.
Two lady readers who require lovers, and wish the editor to provide
them. Two timid girls, who are respectively afraid of a French
invasion and dragon-flies.