I BEGIN A LIFE WITHOUT A SIMILITUDE WITH A SIMILE--START OFF WITH FOUR
HORSES--AND, FINALLY, I MAKE MY FIRST APPEARANCE ON ANY STAGE, UNDER THE
PROTECTION OF THE "CROWN."
In the volume I am going to write, it is my intention to adhere rigidly
to the truth--this will be _bona fide_ an autobiography--and, as the
public like novelty, an autobiography without an iota of fiction in the
whole of it, will be the greatest novelty yet offered to its
fastidiousness. As many of the events which will be my province to
record, are singular and even startling, I may be permitted to sport a
little moral philosophy, drawn from the kennel in Lower Thames Street,
which may teach my readers to hesitate ere they condemn as invention
mere matters of absolute, though uncommon fact.
Let us stand with that old gentleman under the porch of Saint Magnus's
Church, for the rain is thrashing the streets till they actually look
white, and the kennel before us is swelled into a formidable, and hardly
fordable brook. That kennel is the stream of life--and a dirty and a
weary one it is, if we may judge by the old gentleman's looks. All is
hurried into that common sewer, the grave! What bubbles float down it!
Everything that is fairly in the middle of the stream seems to sail with
it, steadily and triumphantly--and many a filthy fragment enters the
sewer with a pomp and dignity not unlike the funeral obsequies of a
great lord. But my business is with that little chip; by some means it
has been thrust out of the principal current, and, now that it is out,
see what pranks it is playing. How erratic are its motions!--into what
strange holes and corners it is thrust! The same phenomenon will happen
in life. Once start a being out of the usual course of existence, and
many and strange will be his adventures ere he once more be allowed to
regain the common stream, and be permitted to float down, in silent
tranquillity, to the grave common to all.
About seven o'clock in the evening of the 20th of February, 17---, a
post-chaise with four horses drove with fiery haste up to the door of
the Crown Inn, at Reading. The evening had closed in bitterly. A
continuous storm of mingled sleet and rain had driven every being who
had a home, to the shelter it afforded. As the vehicle stopped, with a
most consequential jerk, and the steps were flung down with that clatter
post-boys will make when they can get four horses before their leathern
boxes, the solitary inmate seemed to shrink further into its dark
corner, instead of coming forward eagerly to exchange the comforts of
the blazing hearth for the damp confinement of a hired chaise. Thrice
had the obsequious landlord bowed his well-powdered head, and, at each
inclination, wiped off; with the palm of his hand, the rain-drops that
had settled on the central baldness of his occiput, ere the traveller
seemed to be aware that such a man existed as the landlord of the Crown,
or that that landlord was standing at the chaise-door. At length a
female, closely veiled, and buried in shawls like a sultana, tremblingly
took the proffered arm, and tottered into the hotel. Shortly after,
mine host returned, attended by porter, waiter, and stable-boy--and
giving, by the lady's orders, a handsome gratuity to each of the
post-boys, asked for the traveller's luggage. There was none! At this
announcement, the landlord, as he afterwards expressed himself was
"struck all of a heap," though what he meant by it was never clearly
comprehended, as any alteration in his curiously squat figure must have
been an improvement. While he remained in perplexity and in the rain,
the latter of which might easily have been avoided, another message
arrived from the lady, ordering fresh horses to be procured, and those,
with the chaise, to be kept in readiness to start at a moment's warning.
More mystery and more perplexity! In fact, if these combined causes
had been allowed to remain much longer in operation, the worthy
landlord, instead of carrying on his business profitably, would have
been carried off peremptorily, by a catarrh, his wife's nursing, and a
doctor; but, fortunately, it struck one of the post-boys that rain was
not necessary to a conversation, and sleet but a bad solvent of a
mystery; so the posse adjourned into the tap, in order that the subject
might be discussed more at the ease of the gentlemen who fancied
themselves concerned in it.
"And you have not seen her face?" said mine host of the Crown.
"Shouldn't know her from Adam's grandmother," said the post-boy who had
ridden the wheel-horses. "Howsomedever, I yeerd her sob and moan like a
wheel as vants grease."
"You may say that," said the other post-boy, a little shrivelled old
man, a good deal past sixty; "we lads see strange soights. I couldn't
a-bear to see her siffer in that 'ere manner--I did feel for her almost
as much as if she'd been an 'oss."
The landlord gave the two charioteers _force de complimens_ for the
tenderness of their feelings, the intensity of which he fully
comprehended, as he changed for each his guinea, the bounty of the lady.
When he found them in proper cue, that is to say, in the middle of
their second glass of brandy-and-water, he proceeded in his
cross-examination, and he learned from them that they had been engaged
to wait at a certain spot, on an extensive heath some twelve miles
distant; that they had hardly waited there an hour when a private
carriage, containing the lady in question and a gentleman, arrived; that
the lady, closely veiled, had been transferred from the one conveyance
to the other, and that the post-boys had been ordered to drive with the
utmost speed to the destination where they now found themselves.
This account seemed to satisfy the scruples of the landlord, which, of
course, were by no means pecuniary, but merely moral, when in bounced
the fiery-visaged landlady. He was forced to stand the small-shot of
his wife. Poor man! he had only powder to reply to it, and that, just
now, was woefully damp.
"You lazy, loitering, do-little, much-hindering, prateapace sot! here's
the lady taken alarmingly ill. The physician has been sent for, and his
carriage will be at the door before you blow that ill-looking nose of
yours, that my blessed ten commandments are itching to score down--you
paltry --- ah!"
With a very little voice, and a very great submission, mine host
squeaked out, "Have you seen the lady's face?"
"Face! is it face you want? and ladies' faces too--haven't I got face
enough for you--you apology, you!"
What the good woman said was indubitably true. She had face enough for
any two moderately-visaged wives, and enough over and above to have
supplied anyone who might have lost a portion of theirs. However, I
will be more polite than the landlady, and acquaint the reader, that no
one yet of the establishment had seen the lady's face, nor was it
intended that anyone should.
As this squabble was growing into a quarrel the physician arrived; he
had not been long alone with the unknown, before he sent for a surgeon,
and the surgeon for a nurse. There was so much bustle, alarm, and
secrecy, above-stairs, that the landlord began to consider which of the
two undertakers, his friends, he should favour with the anticipated job,
and rubbed his hands as he dwelt on the idea of a coroner's inquest, and
the attendant dinner. The landlady was nearly raving mad at being
excluded from what she supposed was the bed of death. Hot flannels and
warm water were now eagerly called for--and these demands were looked
upon as a sure sign that dissolution approached.
The stairs approaching the lady's chamber were lined with master,
mistress, man-servant and maid-servants, all eagerly listening to the
awful bustle within. At length there is a dead silence of some minutes.
The listeners shuddered.
"It is all over with her!" ejaculates one tender-hearted manoeuvrer of
the warming-pan, with her apron in the corner her eye. "Poor lady! it
is all over with her!"
It was exactly two in the morning of the 21st that a shrill cry was
heard. Shortly after, the door was flung open by the nurse, and a new
edition of an embryo reefer appeared in her arms, and very manfully did
the play of his lungs make everyone present aware that _somebody_ had
made his appearance. The supposed bed of death turned out to be a bed
of life, and another being was born to wail, to sin, and to die, as
myriads have wailed, and sinned, and died before him.