Other Books by the Same Author:
"Journeys to Bagdad"
_Sixth printing_.
"Chimney-Pot Papers"
_Third printing_.
"Hints to Pilgrims"
THERE'S PIPPINS
AND
CHEESE TO COME
BY
CHARLES S. BROOKS
1917
Illustrated by Theodore Diedricksen, Jr.
TO MY FATHER AND MOTHER
CONTENTS
I. There's Pippins and Cheese to Come
II. On Buying Old Books
III. Any Stick Will Do to Beat a Dog
IV. Roads of Morning
V. The Man of Grub Street Comes from His Garret
VI. Now that Spring is Here
VII. The Friendly Genii
VIII. Mr. Pepys Sits in the Pit
IX. To an Unknown Reader
X. A Plague of All Cowards
XI. The Asperities of the Early British Reviewers
XII. The Pursuit of Fire
THERE'S PIPPINS AND CHEESE TO COME
There's Pippins and Cheese To Come
In my noonday quest for food, if the day is fine, it is my habit to shun
the nearer places of refreshment. I take the air and stretch myself. Like
Eve's serpent I go upright for a bit. Yet if time presses, there may be had
next door a not unsavory stowage. A drinking bar is nearest to the street
where its polished brasses catch the eye. It holds a gilded mirror to such
red-faced nature as consorts within. Yet you pass the bar and come upon a
range of tables at the rear.
Now, if you yield to the habits of the place you order a rump of meat.
Gravy lies about it like a moat around a castle, and if there is in you the
zest for encounter, you attack it above these murky waters. "This castle
hath a pleasant seat," you cry, and charge upon it with pike advanced. But
if your appetite is one to peck and mince, the whiffs that breathe upon the
place come unwelcome to your nostrils. In no wise are they like the sweet
South upon your senses. There is even a suspicion in you--such is your
distemper--that it is too much a witch's cauldron in the kitchen, "eye of
newt, and toe of frog," and you spy and poke upon your food. Bus boys bear
off the crockery as though they were apprenticed to a juggler and were only
at the beginning of their art. Waiters bawl strange messages to the cook.
It's a tongue unguessed by learning, yet sharp and potent. Also, there
comes a riot from the kitchen, and steam issues from the door as though the
devil himself were a partner and conducted here an upper branch. Like the
man in the old comedy, your belly may still ring dinner, but the tinkle is
faint. Such being your state, you choose a daintier place to eat.
Having now set upon a longer journey--the day being fine and the sidewalks
thronged--you pass by a restaurant that is but a few doors up the street.
A fellow in a white coat flops pancakes in the window. But even though the
pancake does a double somersault and there are twenty curious noses pressed
against the glass, still you keep your course uptown.
Nor are you led off because a near-by stairway beckons you to a Chinese
restaurant up above. A golden dragon swings over the door. Its race has
fallen since its fire-breathing grandsire guarded the fruits of the
Hesperides. Are not "soys" and "chou meins" and other such treasures of the
East laid out above? And yet the dragon dozes at its post like a sleepy
dog. No flame leaps up its gullet. The swish of its tail is stilled. If it
wag at all, it's but in friendship or because a gust of wind has stirred it
from its dreams.
I have wondered why Chinese restaurants are generally on the second story.
A casual inquiry attests it. I know of one, it is true, on the ground
level, yet here I suspect a special economy. The place had formerly been a
German restaurant, with Teuton scrolls, "Ich Dien," and heraldries on its
walls. A frugal brush changed the decoration. From the heart of a Prussian
blazonry, there flares on you in Chinese yellow a recommendation to try
"Our Chicken Chop Soy." The quartering of the House of Hohenzollern wears a
baldric in praise of "Subgum Noodle Warmein," which it seems they cook to
an unusual delicacy. Even a wall painting of Rip Van Winkle bowling at
tenpins in the mountains is now set off with a pigtail. But the chairs were
Dutch and remain as such. Generally, however, Chinese restaurants are on
the second story. Probably there is a ritual from the ancient days of Ming
Ti that Chinamen when they eat shall sit as near as possible to the sacred
moon.
But hold a bit! In your haste up town to find a place to eat, you are
missing some of the finer sights upon the way. In these windows that
you pass, the merchants have set their choicest wares. If there is any
commodity of softer gloss than common, or one shinier to the eye--so
that your poverty frets you--it is displayed here. In the window of the
haberdasher, shirts--mere torsos with not a leg below or head above--yet
disport themselves in gay neckwear. Despite their dismemberment they are
tricked to the latest turn of fashion. Can vanity survive such general
amputation? Then there is hope for immortality.
But by what sad chance have these blithe fellows been disjointed? If
a gloomy mood prevails in you--as might come from a bad turn of the
market--you fancy that the evil daughter of Herodias still lives around the
corner, and that she has set out her victims to the general view. If there
comes a hurdy-gurdy on the street and you cock your ear to the tune of
it, you may still hear the dancing measure of her wicked feet. Or it is
possible that these are the kindred of Holofernes and that they have supped
guiltily in their tents with a sisterhood of Judiths.
Or we may conceive--our thoughts running now to food--that these gamesome
creatures of the haberdasher had dressed themselves for a more recent
banquet. Their black-tailed coats and glossy shirts attest a rare occasion.
It was in holiday mood, when they were fresh-combed and perked in their
best, that they were cut off from life. It would appear that Jack Ketch the
headsman got them when they were rubbed and shining for the feast. We'll
not squint upon his writ. It is enough that they were apprehended for some
rascality. When he came thumping on his dreadful summons, here they were
already set, fopped from shoes to head in the newest whim. Spoon in hand
and bib across their knees--lest they fleck their careful fronts--they
waited for the anchovy to come. And on a sudden they were cut off from
life, unfit, unseasoned for the passage. Like the elder Hamlet's brother,
they were engaged upon an act that had no relish of salvation in it. You
may remember the lamentable child somewhere in Dickens, who because of an
abrupt and distressing accident, had a sandwich in its hand but no mouth
to put it in. Or perhaps you recall the cook of the Nancy Bell and his
grievous end. The poor fellow was stewed in his own stew-pot. It was the
Elderly Naval Man, you recall--the two of them being the ship's sole
survivors on the deserted island, and both of them lean with hunger--it was
the Elderly Naval Man (the villain of the piece) who "ups with his heels,
and smothers his squeals in the scum of the boiling broth."
And yet by looking on these torsos of the haberdasher, one is not brought
to thoughts of sad mortality. Their joy is so exultant. And all the things
that they hold dear--canes, gloves, silk hats, and the newer garments on
which fashion makes its twaddle--are within reach of their armless sleeves.
Had they fingers they would be smoothing themselves before the glass. Their
unbodied heads, wherever they may be, are still smiling on the world,
despite their divorcement. Their tongues are still ready with a jest, their
lips still parted for the anchovy to come.
A few days since, as I was thinking--for so I am pleased to call my muddy
stirrings--what manner of essay I might write and how best to sort and lay
out the rummage, it happened pat to my needs that I received from a friend
a book entitled "The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened." Now, before
it came I had got so far as to select a title. Indeed, I had written the
title on seven different sheets of paper, each time in the hope that by
the run of the words I might leap upon some further thought. Seven times I
failed and in the end the sheets went into the waste basket, possibly
to the confusion of Annie our cook, who may have mistaken them for a
reiterated admonishment towards the governance of her kitchen--at the
least, a hint of my desires and appetite for cheese and pippins.
"The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Opened" is a cook book. It is due you
to know this at once, otherwise your thoughts--if your nature be
vagrant--would drift towards family skeletons. Or maybe the domestic traits
prevail and you would think of dress-clothes hanging in camphorated bags
and a row of winter boots upon a shelf.
I am disqualified to pass upon the merits of a cook book, for the reason
that I have little discrimination in food. It is not that I am totally
indifferent to what lies on the platter. Indeed, I have more than a tribal
aversion to pork in general, while, on the other hand, I quicken joyfully
when noodles are interspersed with bacon. I have a tooth for sweets, too,
although I hold it unmanly and deny it as I can. I am told also--although
I resent it--that my eye lights up on the appearance of a tray of French
pastry. I admit gladly, however, my love of onions, whether they come
hissing from the skillet, or lie in their first tender whiteness. They
are at their best when they are placed on bread and are eaten largely at
midnight after society has done its worst.
A fine dinner is lost within me. A quail is but an inferior chicken--a poor
relation outside the exclusive hennery. Terrapin sits low in my regard,
even though it has wallowed in the most aristocratic marsh. Through such
dinners I hack and saw my way without even gaining a memory of my progress.
If asked the courses, I balk after the recital of the soup. Indeed, I am so
forgetful of food, even when I dine at home, that I can well believe that
Adam when he was questioned about the apple was in real confusion. He had
or he had not. It was mixed with the pomegranate or the quince that Eve had
sliced and cooked on the day before.
A dinner at its best is brought to a single focus. There is one dish
to dominate the cloth, a single bulk to which all other dishes are
subordinate. If there be turkey, it should mount from a central platter.
Its protruding legs out-top the candles. All other foods are, as it were,
privates in Caesar's army. They do no more than flank the pageant. Nor may
the pantry hold too many secrets. Within reason, everything should be
set out at once, or at least a gossip of its coming should run before.
Otherwise, if the stew is savory, how shall one reserve a corner for the
custard? One must partition himself justly--else, by an over-stowage at the
end, he list and sink.
I am partial to picnics--the spreading of the cloth in the woods or beside
a stream--although I am not avid for sandwiches unless hunger press me.
Rather, let there be a skillet in the company and let a fire be started!
Nor need a picnic consume the day. In summer it requires but the late
afternoon, with such borrowing of the night as is necessary for the
journey home. You leave the street car, clanking with your bundles like an
itinerant tinman. You follow a stream, which on these lower stretches, it
is sad to say, is already infected with the vices of the city. Like many a
countryman who has come to town, it has fallen to dissipation. It shows the
marks of the bottle. Further up, its course is cleaner. You cross it in the
mud. Was it not Christian who fell into the bog because of the burden on
his back? Then you climb a villainously long hill and pop out upon an open
platform above the city.
The height commands a prospect to the west. Below is the smoke of a
thousand suppers. Up from the city there comes the hum of life, now
somewhat fallen with the traffic of the day--as though Nature already
practiced the tune for sending her creatures off to sleep. You light a
fire. The baskets disgorge their secrets. Ants and other leviathans think
evidently that a circus has come or that bears are in the town. The chops
and bacon achieve their appointed destiny. You throw the last bone across
your shoulder. It slips and rattles to the river. The sun sets. Night like
an ancient dame puts on her jewels:
And now that I have climbed and won this height,
I must tread downward through the sloping shade
And travel the bewildered tracks till night.
Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed
And see the gold air and the silver fade
And the last bird fly into the last light.
By these confessions you will see how unfit I am to comment on the old cook
book of Sir Kenelm Digby. Yet it lies before me. It may have escaped your
memory in the din of other things, that in the time when Oliver Cromwell
still walked the earth, there lived in England a man by the name of Kenelm
Digby, who was renowned in astrology and alchemy, piracy, wit, philosophy
and fashion. It appears that wherever learning wagged its bulbous head, Sir
Kenelm was of the company. It appears, also, that wherever the mahogany did
most groan, wherever the possets were spiced most delicately to the nose,
there too did Sir Kenelm bib and tuck himself. With profundity, as
though he sucked wisdom from its lowest depth, he spouted forth on the
transmutation of the baser metals or tossed you a phrase from Paracelsus.
Or with long instructive finger he dissertated on the celestial universe.
One would have thought that he had stood by on the making of it and that
his judgment had prevailed in the larger problems. Yet he did not neglect
his trencher.
And now as time went on, the richness of the food did somewhat dominate his
person. The girth of his wisdom grew no less, but his body fattened. In
a word, the good gentleman's palate came to vie with his intellect. Less
often was he engaged upon some dark saying of Isidore of Seville. Rather,
even if his favorite topic astrology were uppermost about the table, his
eye travelled to the pantry on every change of dishes. His fingers, too,
came to curl most delicately on his fork. He used it like an epicure,
poking his viands apart for sharpest scrutiny. His nod upon a compote was
much esteemed.
Now mark his further decline! On an occasion--surely the old rascal's head
is turned!--he would be found in private talk with his hostess, the Lady of
Middlesex, or with the Countess of Monmouth, not as you might expect, on
the properties of fire or on the mortal diseases of man, but--on subjects
quite removed. Society, we may be sure, began to whisper of these snug
parleys in the arbor after dinner, these shadowed mumblings on the balcony
when the moon was up--and Lady Digby stiffened into watchfulness. It was
when they took leave that she saw the Countess slip a note into her lord's
fingers. Her jealousy broke out. "Viper!" She spat the words and seized her
husband's wrist. Of course the note was read. It proved, however, that Sir
Kenelm was innocent of all mischief. To the disappointment of the gossips,
who were tuned to a spicier anticipation, the note was no more than a
recipe of the manner that the Countess was used to mix her syllabub, with
instruction that it was the "rosemary a little bruised and the limon-peal
that did quicken the taste." Advice, also, followed in the postscript on
the making of tea, with counsel that "the boiling water should remain upon
it just so long as one might say a _miserere_." A mutual innocence being
now established, the Lady Digby did by way of apology peck the Countess on
the cheek.
Sir Kenelm died in 1665, full of years. In that day his fame rested chiefly
on his books in physic and chirurgery. His most enduring work was still to
be published--"The Closet Opened."
It was two years after his death that his son came upon a bundle of his
father's papers that had hitherto been overlooked. I fancy that he went
spying in the attic on a rainy day. In the darkest corner, behind the
rocking horse--if such devices were known in those distant days--he came
upon a trunk of his father's papers. "Od's fish," said Sir Kenelm's son,
"here's a box of manuscripts. It is like that they pertain to alchemy or
chirurgery." He pulled out a bundle and held it to the light--such light as
came through the cobwebs of the ancient windows. "Here be strange matters,"
he exclaimed. Then he read aloud: "My Lord of Bristol's Scotch collops are
thus made: Take a leg of fine sweet mutton, that to make it tender, is
kept as long as possible may be without stinking. In winter seven or eight
days"--"Ho! Ho!" cried Sir Kenelm's son. "This is not alchemy!" He drew out
another parchment and read again: "My Lord of Carlile's sack posset, how
it's made: Take a pottle of cream and boil in it a little whole cinnamon
and three or four flakes of mace. Boil it until it simpreth and bubbleth."
By this time, as you may well imagine, Sir Kenelm's son was wrought to an
excitement. It is likely that he inherited his father's palate and that the
juices of his appetite were stirred. Seizing an armful of the papers, he
leaped down the attic steps, three at a time. His lady mother thrust a
curled and papered head from her door and asked whether the chimney were
afire, but he did not heed her. The cook was waddling in her pattens. He
cried to her to throw wood upon the fire.
That night the Digby household was served a delicacy, red herrings broiled
in the fashion of my Lord d'Aubigny, "short and crisp and laid upon a
sallet." Also, there was a wheaten flommery as it was made in the West
Country--for the cook chose quite at random--and a slip-coat cheese as
Master Phillips proportioned it. Also, against the colic, which was
ravishing the country, the cook prepared a metheglin as Lady Stuart mixed
it--"nettles, fennel and grumel seeds, of each two ounces being small-cut
and mixed with honey and boiled together." It is on record that the Lady
Digby smiled for the first time since her lord had died, and when the
grinning cook bore in the platter, she beat upon the table with her spoon.
The following morning, Sir Kenelm's son posted to London bearing the
recipes, with a pistol in the pocket of his great coat against the crossing
of Hounslow Heath. He went to a printer at the Star in Little Britain whose
name was H. Brome.
Shortly the book appeared. It was the son who wrote the preface: "There
needs no Rhetoricating Floscules to set it off. The Authour, as is well
known, having been a Person of Eminency for his Learning, and of Exquisite
Curiosity in his Researches. Even that Incomparable Sir Kenelme Digbie
Knight, Fellow of the Royal Society and Chancellour to the Queen Mother,
(Et omen in Nomine) His name does sufficiently Auspicate the Work." The
sale of the book is not recorded. It is supposed that the Lady Middlesex,
so many of whose recipes had been used, directed that her chair be carried
to the shop where the book was for sale and that she bought largely of it.
The Countess of Dorset bought a copy and spelled it out word for word to
her cook. As for the Lady Monmouth, she bought not a single copy, which
neglect on coming to the Digbys aroused a coolness.
To this day it is likely that a last auspicated volume still sits on its
shelf with the spice jars in some English country kitchen and that a worn
and toothless cook still thumbs its leaves. If the guests about the table
be of an antique mind, still will they pledge one another with its honeyed
drinks, still will they pipe and whistle of its virtues, still will they--
"EAT"--A flaring sign hangs above the sidewalk. By this time, in our
noonday search for food, we have come into the thick of the restaurants. In
the jungle of the city, here is the feeding place. Here come the growling
bipeds for such bones and messes as are thrown them.
The waiter thrusts a card beneath my nose. "Nice leg of lamb, sir?" I waved
him off. "Hold a bit!" I cried. "You'll fetch me a capon in white broth as
my Lady Monmouth broileth hers. Put plentiful sack in it and boil it until
it simpreth!" The waiter scratched his head. "The chicken pie is good," he
said. "It's our Wednesday dish." "Varlet!" I cried--then softened. "Let it
be the chicken pie! But if the cook knoweth the manner that Lord Carlile
does mix and pepper it, let that manner be followed to the smallest
fraction of a pinch!"
On Buying Old Books
By some slim chance, reader, you may be the kind of person who, on a visit
to a strange city, makes for a bookshop. Of course your slight temporal
business may detain you in the earlier hours of the day. You sit with
committees and stroke your profound chin, or you spend your talent in the
market, or run to and fro and wag your tongue in persuasion. Or, if you be
on a holiday, you strain yourself on the sights of the city, against being
caught in an omission. The bolder features of a cathedral must be grasped
to satisfy a quizzing neighbor lest he shame you later on your hearth, a
building must be stuffed inside your memory, or your pilgrim feet must wear
the pavement of an ancient shrine. However, these duties being done and the
afternoon having not yet declined, do you not seek a bookshop to regale
yourself?
Doubtless, we have met. As you have scrunched against the shelf not to
block the passage, but with your head thrown back to see the titles up
above, you have noticed at the corner of your eye--unless it was one of
your blinder moments when you were fixed wholly on the shelf--a man in
a slightly faded overcoat of mixed black and white, a man just past the
nimbleness of youth, whose head is plucked of its full commodity of hair.
It was myself. I admit the portrait, though modesty has curbed me short of
justice.
Doubtless, we have met. It was your umbrella--which you held villainously
beneath your arm--that took me in the ribs when you lighted on a set of
Fuller's Worthies. You recall my sour looks, but it was because I had
myself lingered on the volumes but cooled at the price. How you smoothed
and fingered them! With what triumph you bore them off! I bid you--for I
see you in a slippered state, eased and unbuttoned after dinner--I bid you
turn the pages with a slow thumb, not to miss the slightest tang of their
humor. You will of course go first, because of its broad fame, to the page
on Shakespeare and Ben Jonson and their wet-combats at the Mermaid. But
before the night is too far gone and while yet you can hold yourself from
nodding, you will please read about Captain John Smith of Virginia and his
"strange performances, the scene whereof is laid at such a distance, they
are cheaper credited than confuted."
In no proper sense am I a buyer of old books. I admit a bookish quirk
maybe, a love of the shelf, a weakness for morocco, especially if it is
stained with age. I will, indeed, shirk a wedding for a bookshop. I'll
go in "just to look about a bit, to see what the fellow has," and on an
occasion I pick up a volume. But I am innocent of first editions. It is
a stiff courtesy, as becomes a democrat, that I bestow on this form
of primogeniture. Of course, I have nosed my way with pleasure along
aristocratic shelves and flipped out volumes here and there to ask their
price, but for the greater part, it is the plainer shops that engage me. If
a rack of books is offered cheap before the door, with a fixed price upon a
card, I come at a trot. And if a brown dust lies on them, I bow and sniff
upon the rack, as though the past like an ancient fop in peruke and buckle
were giving me the courtesy of its snuff box. If I take the dust in my
nostrils and chance to sneeze, it is the fit and intended observance toward
the manners of a former century.
I have in mind such a bookshop in Bath, England. It presents to the street
no more than a decent front, but opens up behind like a swollen bottle.
There are twenty rooms at least, piled together with such confusion of
black passages and winding steps, that one might think that the owner
himself must hold a thread when he visits the remoter rooms. Indeed, such
are the obscurities and dim turnings of the place, that, were the legend of
the Minotaur but English, you might fancy that the creature still lived in
this labyrinth, to nip you between his toothless gums--for the beast grows
old--at some darker corner. There is a story of the place, that once a raw
clerk having been sent to rummage in the basement, his candle tipped off
the shelf. He was left in so complete darkness that his fears overcame his
judgment and for two hours he roamed and babbled among the barrels. Nor was
his absence discovered until the end of the day when, as was the custom,
the clerks counted noses at the door. When they found him, he bolted up the
steps, nor did he cease his whimper until he had reached the comforting
twilight of the outer world. He served thereafter in the shop a full two
years and had a beard coming--so the story runs--before he would again
venture beyond the third turning of the passage; to the stunting of his
scholarship, for the deeper books lay in the farther windings.
Or it may appear credible that in ages past a jealous builder contrived the
place. Having no learning himself and being at odds with those of better
opportunity, he twisted the pattern of the house. Such was his evil temper,
that he set the steps at a dangerous hazard in the dark, in order that
scholars--whose eyes are bleared at best--might risk their legs to the end
of time. Those of strict orthodoxy have even suspected the builder to have
been an atheist, for they have observed what double joints and steps and
turnings confuse the passage to the devouter books--the Early Fathers in
particular being up a winding stair where even the soberest reader might
break his neck. Be these things as they may, leather bindings in sets of
"grenadier uniformity" ornament the upper and lighter rooms. Biography
straggles down a hallway, with a candle needed at the farther end. A room
of dingy plays--Wycherley, Congreve and their crew--looks out through an
area grating. It was through even so foul an eye, that when alive, they
looked upon the world. As for theology, except for the before-mentioned
Fathers, it sits in general and dusty convention on the landing to the
basement, its snuffy sermons, by a sad misplacement--or is there an
ironical intention?--pointing the way to the eternal abyss below.
It was in this shop that I inquired whether there was published a book on
piracy in Cornwall. Now, I had lately come from Tintagel on the Cornish
coast, and as I had climbed upon the rocks and looked down upon the sea, I
had wondered to myself whether, if the knowledge were put out before me, I
could compose a story of Spanish treasure and pirates. For I am a prey to
such giddy ambition. A foul street--if the buildings slant and topple--will
set me thinking delightfully of murders. A wharf-end with water lapping
underneath and bits of rope about will set me itching for a deep-sea plot.
Or if I go on broader range and see in my fancy a broken castle on a hill,
I'll clear its moat and sound trumpets on its walls. If there is pepper
in my mood, I'll storm its dungeon. Or in a softer moment I'll trim its
unsubstantial towers with pageantry and rest upon my elbow until I fall
asleep. So being cast upon the rugged Cornish coast whose cliffs are so
swept with winter winds that the villages sit for comfort in the hollows,
it was to be expected that my thoughts would run toward pirates.
There is one rock especially which I had climbed in the rain and fog of
early morning. A reckless path goes across its face with a sharp pitch to
the ocean. It was so slippery and the wind so tugged and pulled to throw me
off, that although I endangered my dignity, I played the quadruped on the
narrower parts. But once on top in the open blast of the storm and safe
upon the level, I thumped with desire for a plot. In each inlet from the
ocean I saw a pirate lugger--such is the pleasing word--with a keg of rum
set up. Each cranny led to a cavern with doubloons piled inside. The
very tempest in my ears was compounded out of ships at sea and wreck and
pillage. I needed but a plot, a thread of action to string my villains on.
If this were once contrived, I would spice my text with sailors' oaths and
such boasting talk as might lie in my invention. Could I but come upon a
plot, I might yet proclaim myself an author.
With this guilty secret in me I blushed as I asked the question. It seemed
sure that the shopkeeper must guess my purpose. I felt myself suspected as
though I were a rascal buying pistols to commit a murder. Indeed, I seem
to remember having read that even hardened criminals have become confused
before a shopkeeper and betrayed themselves. Of course, Dick Turpin and
Jerry Abershaw could call for pistols in the same easy tone they ordered
ale, but it would take a practiced villainy. But I in my innocence wanted
nothing but the meager outline of a pirate's life, which I might fatten to
my uses.
But on a less occasion, when there is no plot thumping in me, I still feel
a kind of embarrassment when I ask for a book out of the general demand. I
feel so like an odd stick. This embarrassment applies not to the request
for other commodities. I will order a collar that is quite outside the
fashion, in a high-pitched voice so that the whole shop can hear. I could
bargain for a purple waistcoat--did my taste run so--and though the
sidewalk listened, it would not draw a blush. I have traded even for
women's garments--though this did strain me--without an outward twitch.
Finally, to top my valor, I have bought sheet music of the lighter kind and
have pronounced the softest titles so that all could hear. But if I desire
the poems of Lovelace or the plays of Marlowe, I sidle close up to the
shopkeeper to get his very ear. If the book is visible, I point my thumb at
it without a word.
It was but the other day--in order to fill a gap in a paper I was
writing--I desired to know the name of an author who is obscure although
his work has been translated into nearly all languages. I wanted to know a
little about the life of the man who wrote _Mary Had a Little Lamb_, which,
I am told, is known by children over pretty much all the western world. It
needed only a trip to the Public Library. Any attendant would direct me to
the proper shelf. Yet once in the building, my courage oozed. My question,
though serious, seemed too ridiculous to be asked. I would sizzle as I
met the attendant's eye. Of a consequence, I fumbled on my own devices,
possibly to the increase of my general knowledge, but without gaining what
I sought.
They had no book in the Bath shop on piracy in Cornwall. I was offered
instead a work in two volumes on the notorious highwaymen of history, and
for a moment my plot swerved in that direction. But I put it by. To pay the
fellow for his pains--for he had dug in barrels to his shoulders and had a
smudge across his nose--I bought a copy of Thomson's "Castle of Indolence,"
and in my more energetic moods I read it. And so I came away.
On leaving the shop, lest I should be nipped in a neglect, I visited the
Roman baths. Then I took the waters in the Assembly Room. It was Sam
Weller, you may recall, who remarked, when he was entertained by the select
footmen, that the waters tasted like warm flat-irons. Finally, I viewed
the Crescent around which the shirted Winkle ran with the valorous Dowler
breathing on his neck. With such distractions, as you may well imagine,
Cornish pirates became as naught. Such mental vibration as I had was now
gone toward a tale of fashion in the days when Queen Anne was still alive.
Of a consequence, I again sought the bookshop and stifling my timidity, I
demanded such volumes as might set me most agreeably to my task.
I have in mind also a bookshop of small pretension in a town in Wales. For
purely secular delight, maybe, it was too largely composed of Methodist
sermons. Hell fire burned upon its shelves with a warmth to singe so poor a
worm as I. Yet its signboard popped its welcome when I had walked ten miles
of sunny road. Possibly it was the chair rather than the divinity that
keeps the place in memory. The owner was absent on an errand, and his
daughter, who had been clumping about the kitchen on my arrival, was
uninstructed in the price marks. So I read and fanned myself until his
return.
Perhaps my sluggishness toward first editions--to which I have hinted
above--comes in part from the acquaintance with a man who in a linguistic
outburst as I met him, pronounced himself to be a numismatist and
philatelist. One only of these names would have satisfied a man of less
conceit. It is as though the pteranodon should claim also to be the
spoon-bill dinosaur. It is against modesty that one man should summon all
the letters. No, the numismatist's head is not crammed with the mysteries
of life and death, nor is a philatelist one who is possessed with the
dimmer secrets of eternity. Rather, this man who was so swelled with
titles, eked a living by selling coins and stamps, and he was on his way
to Europe to replenish his wares. Inside his waistcoat, just above his
liver--if he owned so human an appendage--he carried a magnifying glass.
With this, when the business fit was on him, he counted the lines and dots
upon a stamp, the perforations on its edge. He catalogued its volutes, its
stipples, the frisks and curlings of its pattern. He had numbered the very
hairs on the head of George Washington, for in such minutiae did the value
of the stamp reside. Did a single hair spring up above the count, it would
invalidate the issue. Such values, got by circumstance or accident--resting
on a flaw--founded on a speck--cause no ferment of my desires.
For the buying of books, it is the cheaper shops where I most often prowl.
There is in London a district around Charing Cross Road where almost every
shop has books for sale. There is a continuous rack along the sidewalk,
each title beckoning for your attention. You recall the class of
street-readers of whom Charles Lamb wrote--"poor gentry, who, not having
wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little learning at the open
stalls." It was on some such street that these folk practiced their
innocent larceny. If one shopkeeper frowned at the diligence with which
they read "Clarissa," they would continue her distressing adventures across
the way. By a lingering progress up the street, "Sir Charles Grandison"
might be nibbled down--by such as had the stomach--without the outlay of
a single penny. As for Gibbon and the bulbous historians, though a whole
perusal would outlast the summer and stretch to the colder months, yet with
patience they could be got through. However, before the end was come even a
hasty reader whose eye was nimble on the page would be blowing on his nails
and pulling his tails between him and the November wind.
But the habit of reading at the open stalls was not only with the poor. You
will remember that Mr. Brownlow was addicted. Really, had not the Artful
Dodger stolen his pocket handkerchief as he was thus engaged upon his book,
the whole history of Oliver Twist must have been quite different. And Pepys
himself, Samuel Pepys, F.R.S., was guilty. "To Paul's Church Yard," he
writes, "and there looked upon the second part of Hudibras, which I buy
not, but borrow to read." Such parsimony is the curse of authors. To thumb
a volume cheaply around a neighborhood is what keeps them in their garrets.
It is a less offence to steal peanuts from a stand. Also, it is recorded in
the life of Beau Nash that the persons of fashion of his time, to pass a
tedious morning "did divert themselves with reading in the booksellers'
shops." We may conceive Mr. Fanciful Fopling in the sleepy blink of those
early hours before the pleasures of the day have made a start, inquiring
between his yawns what latest novels have come down from London, or whether
a new part of "Pamela" is offered yet. If the post be in, he will prop
himself against the shelf and--unless he glaze and nod--he will read
cheaply for an hour. Or my Lady Betty, having taken the waters in the
pump-room and lent her ear to such gossip as is abroad so early, is now
handed to her chair and goes round by Gregory's to read a bit. She is
flounced to the width of the passage. Indeed, until the fashion shall
abate, those more solid authors that are set up in the rear of the shop,
must remain during her visits in general neglect. Though she hold herself
against the shelf and tilt her hoops, it would not be possible to pass. She
is absorbed in a book of the softer sort, and she flips its pages against
her lap-dog's nose.
But now behold the student coming up the street! He is clad in shining
black. He is thin of shank as becomes a scholar. He sags with knowledge. He
hungers after wisdom. He comes opposite the bookshop. It is but coquetry
that his eyes seek the window of the tobacconist. His heart, you may be
sure, looks through the buttons at his back. At last he turns. He pauses on
the curb. Now desire has clutched him. He jiggles his trousered shillings.
He treads the gutter. He squints upon the rack. He lights upon a treasure.
He plucks it forth. He is unresolved whether to buy it or to spend the
extra shilling on his dinner. Now all you cooks together, to save your
business, rattle your pans to rouse him! If within these ancient buildings
there are onions ready peeled--quick!--throw them in the skillet that the
whiff may come beneath his nose! Chance trembles and casts its vote--eenie
meenie--down goes the shilling--he has bought the book. Tonight he will
spread it beneath his candle. Feet may beat a snare of pleasure on the
pavement, glad cries may pipe across the darkness, a fiddle may scratch its
invitation--all the rumbling notes of midnight traffic will tap in vain
their summons upon his window.
Any Stick Will Do To Beat A Dog
Reader, possibly on one of your country walks you have come upon a man with
his back against a hedge, tormented by a fiend in the likeness of a dog.
You yourself, of course, are not a coward. You possess that cornerstone of
virtue, a love for animals. If at your heels a dog sniffs and growls, you
humor his mistake, you flick him off and proceed with unbroken serenity. It
is scarcely an interlude to your speculation on the market. Or if you work
upon a sonnet and are in the vein, your thoughts, despite the beast, run
unbroken to a rhyme. But pity this other whose heart is less stoutly
wrapped! He has gone forth on a holiday to take the country air, to thrust
himself into the freer wind, to poke with his stick for such signs of
Spring as may be hiding in the winter's leaves. Having been grinding in an
office he flings himself on the great round world. He has come out to smell
the earth. Or maybe he seeks a hilltop for a view of the fields that lie
below patched in many colors, as though nature had been sewing at her
garments and had mended the cloth from her bag of scraps.
On such a journey this fellow is travelling when, at a turn of the road, he
hears the sound of barking. As yet there is no dog in sight. He pauses. He
listens. How shall one know whether the sound comes up a wrathful gullet or
whether the dog bays at him impersonally, as at the distant moon? Or maybe
he vents himself upon a stubborn cow. Surely it is not an idle tune he
practices. He holds a victim in his mind. There is sour venom on his
churlish tooth. Is it best to go roundabout, or forward with such a nice
compound of innocence, boldness and modesty as shall satisfy the beast? If
one engross oneself on something that lies to the lee of danger, it allays
suspicion. Or if one absorb oneself upon the flora--a primrose on the
river's brim--it shows him clear and stainless. The stupidest dog should
see that so close a student can have no evil in him. Perhaps it would be
better to throw away one's stick lest it make a show of violence. Or it may
be concealed along the outer leg. Ministers of Grace defend us, what an
excitement in the barnyard! Has virtue no reward? Shall innocence perish
off the earth? Not one dog, but many, come running out. There has gone
a rumor about the barn that there is a stranger to be eaten, and it's
likely--if they keep their clamor--there will be a bone for each. Note how
the valor oozes from the man of peace! Observe his sidling gait, his skirts
pulled close, his hollowed back, his head bent across his shoulder, his
startled eye! Watch him mince his steps, lest a lingering heel be nipped!
Listen to him try the foremost dog with names, to gull him to a belief that
they have met before in happier circumstances! He appeals mutely to the
farmhouse that a recall be sounded. The windows are tightly curtained. The
heavens are comfortless.
You remember the fellow in the play who would have loved war had they not
digged villainous saltpetre from the harmless earth. The countryside, too,
in my opinion, would be more peaceful of a summer afternoon were it not
overrun with dogs. Let me be plain! I myself like dogs--sleepy dogs
blinking in the firelight, friendly dogs with wagging tails, young dogs in
their first puppyhood with their teeth scarce sprouted, whose jaws have not
yet burgeoned into danger, and old dogs, too, who sun themselves and give
forth hollow, toothless, reassuring sounds. When a dog assumes the cozy
habits of the cat without laying off his nobler nature, he is my friend. A
dog of vegetarian aspect pleases me. Let him bear a mild eye as though he
were nourished on the softer foods! I would wish every dog to have a full
complement of tail. It's the sure barometer of his warm regard. There's no
art to find his mind's construction in the face. And I would have him with
not too much curiosity. It's a quality that brings him too often to the
gate. It makes him prone to sniff when one sits upon a visit. Nor do I like
dogs addicted to sudden excitement. Lethargy becomes them better. Let them
be without the Gallic graces! In general, I like a dog to whom I have been
properly introduced, with an exchange of credentials. While the dog is by,
let his master take my hand and address me in softest tones, to cement the
understanding! At bench-shows I love the beasts, although I keep to the
middle of the aisle. The streets are all the safer when so many of the
creatures are kept within.
Frankly, I would enjoy the country more, if I knew that all the dogs were
away on visits. Of course, the highroad is quite safe. Its frequent traffic
is its insurance. Then, too, the barns are at such a distance, it is only a
monstrous anger can bring the dog. But if you are in need of direction you
select a friendly white house with green shutters. You swing open the gate
and crunch across the pebbles to the door. To the nearer eye there is a
look of "dog" about the place. Or maybe you are hot and thirsty, and there
is a well at the side of the house. Is it better to gird yourself to danger
or to put off your thirst until the crossroads where pop is sold?
Or a lane leads down to the river. Even at this distance you hear the
shallow brawl of water on the stones. A path goes off across a hill, with
trees beckoning at the top. There is a wind above and a wider sweep of
clouds. Surely, from the crest of the hill the whole county will lie before
you. Such tunes as come up from the world below--a school-bell, a rooster
crowing, children laughing on the road, a threshing machine on the lower
meadows--such tunes are pitched to a marvellous softness. Shall we follow
the hot pavement, or shall we dare those lonely stretches?
There is a kind of person who is steeped too much in valor. He will cross a
field although there is a dog inside the fence. Goodness knows that I would
rather keep to the highroad with such humility as shall not rouse the
creature. Or he will shout and whistle tunes that stir the dogs for miles.
He slashes his stick against the weeds as though in challenge. One might
think that he went about on unfeeling stalks instead of legs as children
walk on stilts, or that a former accident had clipped him off above the
knees and that he was now jointed out of wood to a point beyond the biting
limit. Or perhaps the clothes he wears beneath--the inner mesh and very
balbriggan of his attire--is of so hard a texture that it turns a tooth. Be
these defenses as they may, note with what bravado he mounts the wall! One
leg dangles as though it were baited and were angling for a bite.
There is a French village near Quebec whose population is chiefly dogs.
It lies along the river in a single street, not many miles from the point
where Wolfe climbed to the Plains of Abraham. There are a hundred houses
flat against the roadway and on the steps of each there sits a dog. As I
went through on foot, each of these dogs picked me up, examined me nasally
and passed me on, not generously as though I had stood the test, but rather
in deep suspicion that I was a queer fellow, not to be penetrated at first,
but one who would surely be found out and gobbled before coming to the
end of the street. As long as I would eventually furnish forth the common
banquet, it mattered not which dog took the first nip. Inasmuch as I would
at last be garnished for the general tooth, it would be better to wait
until all were gathered around the platter. "Good neighbor dog," each
seemed to say, "you too sniff upon the rogue! If he be honest, my old nose
is much at fault." Meantime I padded lightly through the village, at first
calling on the dogs by English names, but later using such wisps as I had
of French. "Aucassin, mon pauvre chien. Voici, Tintagiles, alors donc mon
cherie. Je suis votre ami," but with little effect.
But the dogs that one meets in the Canadian woods are of the fiercest
breed. They border on the wolf. They are called huskies and they are so
strong and so fleet of foot that they pull sleds for hours across the
frozen lakes at almost the speed of a running horse. It must be confessed
that they are handsome and if it happens to be your potato peelings and
discarded fish that they eat, they warm into friendliness. Indeed, on these
occasions, one can make quite a show of bravery by stroking and dealing
lightly with them. But once upon a time in an ignorant moment two other
campers and myself followed a lonely railroad track and struck off on a
path through the pines in search of a certain trapper on a fur farm. The
path went on a broken zigzag avoiding fallen trees and soft hollows,
conducting itself on the whole with more patience than firmness. We walked
a quarter of a mile, but still we saw no cabin. The line of the railroad
had long since disappeared. An eagle wheeled above us and quarrelled at our
intrusion. Presently to test our course and learn whether we were coming
near the cabin, we gave a shout. Immediately out of the deeper woods there
came a clamor that froze us. Such sounds, it seemed, could issue only from
bloody and dripping jaws. In a panic, as by a common impulse we turned and
ran. Yet we did not run frankly as when the circus lion is loose, but in a
shamefaced manner--an attempt at a retreat in good order--something between
a walk and a run. At the end of a hundred yards we stopped. No dogs had
fallen on us. Danger had not burst its kennel. We hallooed again, to rouse
the trapper. At last, after a minute of suspense, came his answering voice,
the sweetest sound to be imagined. Whereupon I came down from my high stump
which I had climbed for a longer view.
I am convinced that I am not alone in my--shall I say diffidence?--toward
dogs. Indeed, there is evidence from the oldest times that mankind, in its
more honest moments, has confessed to a fear of dogs. In recognition of
this general fear, the unmuzzled Cerberus was put at the gate of Hades.
It was rightly felt that when the unhappy pilgrims got within, his fifty
snapping heads were better than a bolt upon the door. It was better for
them to endure the ills they had, than be nipped in the upper passage. He,
also, who first spoke the ancient proverb, _Let sleeping dogs lie_, did no
more than voice the caution of the street. And he, also, who invented the
saying that the world is going to the bow-wows, lodged his deplorable
pessimism in fitting words.