"--Years that bring the philosophic mind,"
than the still-hung head, the dim indifferent eye, the dragged and
blunt-cornered mouth, and the gaunt imbecility of body dropping its
weight on three tired legs in order to give repose to the lame one? When
it has blinkers on, they seem to be shutting up its eyes for death, like
the windows of a house. Fatigue and the habit of suffering have become
as natural to the creature as the bit to its mouth.
Once in half-an-hour it moves the position of its leg, or shakes its
drooping ears. The whip makes it go, more from habit than from pain. Its
coat has become almost callous to minor stings. The blind and staggering
fly in autumn might come to die against its cheek.
Of a pair of hackney-coach horses, one so much resembles the other that
it seems unnecessary for them to compare notes. They have that within
them which is beyond the comparative. They no longer bend their heads
towards each other as they go. They stand together as if unconscious of
one another's company. But they are not.
An old horse misses his companion, like an old man. The presence of an
associate, who has gone through pain and suffering with us, need not
say anything. It is talk, and memory, and everything. Something of this
it may be to our old friends in harness. What are they thinking of while
they stand motionless in the rain? Do they remember? Do they dream? Do
they still, unperplexed as their old blood is by too many foods, receive
a pleasure from the elements; a dull refreshment from the air and sun?
Have they yet a palate for the hay which they pull so feebly? or for the
rarer grain which induces them to perform their only voluntary gesture
of any vivacity, and toss up the bags that are fastened on their mouths,
to get at its shallow feast?
If the old horse were gifted with memory (and who shall say he is not,
in one thing as well as another?), it might be at once the most
melancholy and pleasantest faculty he has; for the commonest hack has
probably been a hunter or racer; has had his days of lustre and
enjoyment; has darted along the course, and scoured the pasture; has
carried his master proudly, or his lady gently; has pranced, has
galloped, has neighed aloud, has dared, has forded, has spurned at
mastery, has graced it and made it proud, has rejoiced the eye, has been
crowded to as an actor, has been all instinct with life and quickness,
has had his very fear admired as courage, and been sat upon by valour as
its chosen seat.
"His ears up-prick'd; his braided hanging mane
Upon his compass'd crest now stands on end;
His nostrils drink the air; and forth again,
As from a furnace, vapours doth he send;
His eye, which scornfully glistens like fire,
Shows his hot courage and his high desire.
Sometimes he trots as if he told the steps,
With gentle majesty, and modest pride;
Anon he rears upright, curvets and leaps,
As who would say, lo! thus my strength is tried,
And thus I do to captivate the eye
Of the fair breeder that is standing by.
What recketh he his rider's angry stir,
His flattering holla, or his _Stand, I say_?
What cares he now for curb, or pricking spur?
For rich caparisons, or trappings gay?
He sees his love, and nothing else he sees,
For nothing else with his proud sight agrees.
Look, when a painter would surpass the life,
In limning out a well-proportion'd steed,
His art with nature's workmanship at strife,
As if the dead the living should exceed;
So did this horse excel a common one,
In shape, in courage, colour, pace, and bone.
Round-hoof'd, short-jointed, fetlock shag and long,
Broad breast, full eyes, small head, and nostril wide;
High crest, short ears, straight legs, and passing strong;
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide;
Look, what a horse should have, he did not lack,
Save a proud rider on so proud a back."
Alas! his only riders now are the rain and a sordid harness. The least
utterance of the wretchedest voice makes him stop and become a fixture.
His loves were in existence at the time the old sign, fifty miles hence,
was painted. His nostrils drink nothing but what they cannot help--the
water out of an old tub. Not all the hounds in the world could make his
ears attain any eminence. His mane is scratchy and lax. The same great
poet who wrote the triumphal verses for him and his loves, has written
their living epitaph:--
"The poor jades
Lob down their heads, dropping the hide and hips,
The gum down roping from their pale dead eyes;
And in their pale dull mouths the gimmal bit
Lies foul with chew'd grass, still and motionless."
_K. Henry V, Act 1._
There is a song called the "High-mettled Racer," describing the progress
of a favourite horse's life, from its time of vigour and glory, down to
its furnishing food for the dogs. It is not as good as Shakespeare; but
it will do to those who are half as kind as he.
We defy anybody to read that song, or be in the habit of singing it or
hearing it sung, and treat horses as they are sometimes treated. So much
good may an author do, who is in earnest, and does not go in a pedantic
way to work.
We will not say that Plutarch's good-natured observation about taking
care of one's old horse did more for that class of retired servants than
all the graver lessons of philosophy. For it is philosophy which first
sets people thinking; and then some of them put it in a more popular
shape. But we will venture to say that Plutarch's observation saved many
a steed of antiquity a superfluous thump; and in this respect the author
of the "High-mettled Racer" (Mr. Dibdin we believe, no mean man in his
way) may stand by the side of the old illustrious biographer.
Next to ancient causes, to the inevitable progress of events, and to the
practical part of Christianity (which persons, the most accused of
irreligion, have preserved like a glorious infant, through ages of blood
and fire) the kindliness of modern philosophy is more immediately owing
to the great national writers of Europe, in whose schools we have all
been children:--to Voltaire in France, and Shakespeare in England.
Shakespeare, in his time, obliquely pleaded the cause of the Jew, and
got him set on a common level with humanity. The Jew has since been not
only allowed to be human, but some have undertaken to show him as the
"best good Christian though he knows it not."
We shall not dispute the title with him, nor with the other worshippers
of Mammon, who force him to the same shrine. We allow, as things go in
that quarter, that the Jew is as great a Christian as his neighbour, and
his neighbour as great a Jew as he. There is neither love nor money lost
between them.
But, at all events, the Jew is a man; and with Shakespeare's assistance
the time has arrived when we can afford to acknowledge the horse for a
fellow-creature, and treat him as one. We may say for him, upon the same
grounds and to the same purpose, as Shakespeare said for the Israelite,
"Hath not a horse organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? hurt
with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same
means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian
is?" Oh--but some are always at hand to cry out--it would be effeminate
to think too much of these things!--Alas! we have no notion of asking
the gentlemen to think too much of anything. If they will think at all,
it will be a great gain.
As to effeminacy (if we must use that ungallant and partial word, for
want of a better) it is cruelty that is effeminate. It is selfishness
that is effeminate. Anything is effeminate which would get an
excitement, or save a proper and manly trouble, at the undue expense of
another. How does the case stand then between those who ill-treat their
horses and those who spare them?
[Illustration: THE STAGE-COACH DRIVER]
To return to the coach. Imagine a fine coach and pair, which are
standing at the door of a house, in all the pride of their strength and
beauty, converted into what they may both become, a hackney, and its old
shamblers. Such is one of the meditations of the philosophic
eighteen-penny rider. A hackney-coach has often the arms of nobility
on it. As we are going to get into it we catch a glimpse of the faded
lustre of an earl's or marquis's coronet, and think how many light and
proud hearts have ascended those now rickety steps.
In this coach perhaps an elderly lady once rode to her wedding, a
blooming and blushing girl. Her mother and sister were on each side of
her; the bridegroom opposite in a blossom-coloured coat. They talk of
everything in the world of which they are not thinking. The sister was
never prouder of her. The mother with difficulty represses her own pride
and tears. The bride, thinking he is looking at her, casts down her
eyes, pensive in her joy.
The bridegroom is at once the proudest, and the humblest, and the
happiest man in the world. For our parts, we sit in a corner, and are in
love with the sister. We dream she is going to speak to us in answer to
some indifferent question, when a hoarse voice comes in at the front
window and says, "Whereabouts, sir?"
And grief has consecrated thee, thou reverend dilapidation, as well as
joy! Thou hast carried unwilling as well as willing hearts; hearts that
have thought the slowest of thy paces too fast; faces that have sat back
in a corner of thee, to hide their tears from the very thought of being
seen.
In thee the destitute have been taken to the poor-house, and the wounded
and sick to the hospital; and many an arm has been round many an
insensible waist. Into thee the friend or the lover has hurried, in a
passion of tears, to lament his loss.
In thee he has hastened to condole the dying or the wretched. In thee
the father, or mother, or the older kinswoman, more patient in her
years, has taken the little child to the grave, the human jewel that
must be parted with.
But joy appears in thee again, like the look-in of the sunshine. If the
lover has gone in thee unwillingly, he has also gone willingly. How many
friends hast thou not carried to merry-meetings! How many young parties
to the play! How many children, whose faces thou hast turned in an
instant from the extremity of lachrymose weariness to that of staring
delight.
Thou hast contained as many different passions in thee as a human heart;
and for the sake of the human heart, old body, thou art venerable. Thou
shalt be as respectable as a reduced old gentleman, whose very
slovenliness is pathetic. Thou shalt be made gay, as he is over a
younger and richer table, and thou shalt be still more touching for the
gaiety.
We wish the hackney-coachman were as interesting a machine as either his
coach or horses; but it must be owned, that of all the driving species
he is the least agreeable specimen. This is partly to be attributed to
the life which has most probably put him into his situation; partly to
his want of outside passengers to cultivate his gentility; and partly to
the disputable nature of his fare, which always leads him to be lying
and cheating. The waterman of the stand, who beats him in sordidness of
appearance, is more respectable. He is less of a vagabond, and cannot
cheat you.
Nor is the hackney-coachman only disagreeable in himself, but, like
Falstaff reversed, the cause of disagreeableness in others; for he sets
people upon disputing with him in pettiness and ill-temper. He induces
the mercenary to be violent, and the violent to seem mercenary. A man
whom you took for a pleasant, laughing fellow, shall all of a sudden put
on an irritable look of calculation, and vow that he will be charged
with a constable rather than pay the sixpence.
Even fair woman shall waive her all-conquering softness, and sound a
shrill trumpet in reprobation of the extortionate charioteer, whom, if
she were a man, she says, she would expose. Being a woman, then, let her
not expose herself. Oh, but it is intolerable to be so imposed upon! Let
the lady, then, get a pocket-book, if she must, with the hackney-coach
fares in it; or a pain in the legs, rather than the temper; or, above
all, let her get wiser, and have an understanding that can dispense with
the good opinion of the hackney-coachman. Does she think that her rosy
lips were made to grow pale about two-and-sixpence; or that the
expression of them will ever be like her cousin Fanny's if she goes on?
The stage-coachman likes the boys on the road, because he knows they
admire him. The hackney-coachman knows that they cannot admire him, and
that they can get up behind his coach, which makes him very savage.
The cry of "Cut behind!" from the malicious urchins on the pavement
wounds at once his self-love and his interest. He would not mind
overloading his master's horses for another sixpence, but to do it for
nothing is what shocks his humanity. He hates the boy for imposing upon
him, and the boys for reminding him that he has been imposed upon; and
he would willingly twinge the cheeks of all nine. The cut of his whip
over the coach is malignant.
He has a constant eye to the road behind him. He has also an eye to what
may be left in the coach. He will undertake to search the straw for you,
and miss the half-crown on purpose. He speculates on what he may get
above his fare, according to your manners or company; and knows how much
to ask for driving faster or slower than usual.
He does not like wet weather so much as people suppose; for he says it
rots both his horses and harness, and he takes parties out of town when
the weather is fine, which produces good payments in a lump.
Lovers, late supper-eaters, and girls going home from boarding-school,
are his best pay. He has a rascally air of remonstrance when you dispute
half the overcharge, and according to the temper he is in, begs you to
consider his bread, hopes you will not make such a fuss about a trifle;
or tells you, you may take his number or sit in the coach all night.
A great number of ridiculous adventures must have taken place in which
hackney-coaches were concerned. The story of the celebrated harlequin
Lunn, who secretly pitched himself out of one into a tavern window, and
when the coachman was about to submit to the loss of his fare,
astonished him by calling out again from the inside, is too well known
for repetition.
There is one of Swift, not perhaps so common. He was going, one dark
evening, to dine with some great man, and was accompanied by some other
clergymen, to whom he gave their cue. They were all in their canonicals.
When they arrive at the house, the coachman opens the door, and lets
down the steps. Down steps the Dean, very reverend in his black robes;
after him comes another personage, equally black and dignified; then
another; then a fourth. The coachman, who recollects taking up no
greater number, is about to put up the steps, when another clergyman
descends. After giving way to this other, he proceeds with great
confidence to toss them up, when lo! another comes. Well, there cannot,
he thinks, be more than six. He is mistaken. Down comes a seventh, then
an eighth; then a ninth; all with decent intervals; the coach, in the
meantime, rocking as if it were giving birth to so many demons. The
coachman can conclude no less. He cries out, "The devil! the devil!" and
is preparing to run away, when they all burst into laughter. They had
gone round as they descended, and got in at the other door.
We remember in our boyhood an edifying comment on the proverb of "all is
not gold that glistens." The spectacle made such an impression upon us,
that we recollect the very spot, which was at the corner of a road in
the way from Westminster to Kennington, near a stonemason's. It was a
severe winter, and we were out on a holiday, thinking, perhaps, of the
gallant hardships to which the ancient soldiers accustomed themselves,
when we suddenly beheld a group of hackney-coachmen, not, as Spenser
says of his witch,
"Busy, as _seemed_, about some wicked gin,"
but pledging each other in what appeared to us to be little glasses of
cold water. What temperance, thought we! What extraordinary and noble
content! What more than Roman simplicity! Here are a set of poor
Englishmen, of the homeliest order, in the very depth of winter,
quenching their patient and honourable thirst with modicums of cold
water! O true virtue and courage! O sight worthy of the Timoleons and
Epaminondases! We know not how long we remained in this error; but the
first time we recognised the white devil for what it was--the first time
we saw through the crystal purity of its appearance--was a great blow to
us.
We did not then know what the drinkers went through; and this reminds
us that we have omitted one great redemption of the hackney-coachman's
character--his being at the mercy of all chances and weathers.
Other drivers have their settled hours and pay. He only is at the mercy
of every call and every casualty; he only is dragged, without notice,
like the damned in Milton, into the extremities of wet and cold, from
his alehouse fire to the freezing rain; he only must go anywhere, at
what hour and to whatever place you choose, his old rheumatic limbs
shaking under his weight of rags, and the snow and sleet beating into
his puckered face, through streets which the wind scours like a
channel.