Tongue.”--MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.
“Do you hear the rumour? They say the women are in insurrection,
and mean to make a----.”--THE WOMAN’S PRIZE.
“Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues.”--K. HENRY IV.
“In a word, the Tartars came on.”--ROBINSON CRUSOE.
In my M. S. days,--and like many bookish bachelors of the same
standing,--I was a member of a private literary society, with a name
whereof I only remember that it began in Greek and ended in English.
This re-union was framed on the usual plan of such institutions;
except that the gallantry of the founders had ruled that half the
members might be of the female sex, and accordingly amongst our
“intellectual legs,” we numbered a fair proportion of the hose that are
metaphorically blue. We assembled weekly at the house of some Fellow
that had a house, where an original essay was first read by the author,
and then submitted to discussion, much as a school-boy first spins his
top and then lays it down to be pegged at by the rest of the company.
The subjects, like Sir Roger de Coverley’s picture, generally left a
great deal to be said on both sides, nor were there wanting choppers,
not to say hackers of logic, to avail themselves of the circumstance;
and as we possessed, amongst others, a brace of Irish barristers, a
Quaker, a dissenter to everything, an author who spoke volumes, a
geologist who could find sermons in stones, and one old man eloquent,
surnamed for his discursiveness the rambler, we had usually what Bubb
Doddington has called “a multiplicity of talk.”
It is worthy of record, however, and especially as running counter
to the received opinion of the loquacity of the sex, that no female
member was ever known to deliver or attempt to deliver a sentence on
the subject in debate. Now and then, perchance, a short clearing cough
would flatter us that we were going to benefit by feminine taste and
delicacy of sentiment; but the expectation invariably fell to the
ground, and we might as well have expected an opinion to transpire from
the wax work of Mrs. Salmon or Madame Tussaud. I have since learned, it
is true, from one of the maturest of the she-fellows, that she did once
actually contemplate a few words to the matter in hand, but that at the
very first stitch she lost her needle, by which she meant her tongue,
and then in seeking for her needle she lost the thread of her ideas,
and so gave up the task, she said, as not being “woman’s work.”
It would seem therefore, that a set discourse in company is altogether
incompatible with the innate diffidence and shrinking timidity
of the sex. Milton, indeed, makes this silent modesty a peculiar
characteristic of perfect womanhood, as evinced in the demeanour of
“accomplished Eve.” To mark it the more strongly, he liberally endows
our general mother with fluency of speech in her colloquies with Adam,
so as even to “forget all time” in conversing with him; whereas in
the presence of a third party,--the Angel Visitor for instance, whom
she less bids than makes welcome to her dessert,--she seldom opens
her lips. Nor is this an overstrained picture: the same matronly, or
spinsterly reserve, having survived the Fall, and the confusion of
Babel, and the more womanly of her daughters, however good at what the
Scotch call “a two-handed crack,” in a corner or behind a curtain will
still evince a paradisiacal hesitation, amounting to an impediment, in
addressing the most limited audience. In fact up to a comparatively
recent period, the Miltonic theory was practically acknowledged and
acted upon, at the theatre, the female characters of the Drama being
always represented by proxies of men or boys.
Even in the present age, the début of an actress, having so many
“lengths” to deliver in public, is reckoned one of the severest ordeals
that womanly modesty can undergo. The celebrated Mrs. Siddons described
it as a “fiery trial,”--a “terrible moment,”--and any play-goer who has
witnessed the first appearance of a young lady on any stage will easily
give credit for its agonies. The late Mrs. ---- once described to me
very vividly her sufferings on a like awful occasion:--“The voice that
would not come, and the tremor that would not go--the frame inclining
to sink, and the head determined to swim,--the distinct consciousness
of the presence of the body, with the indistinct impression of the
absence of the mind. Thank Heaven,” she concluded, “that I had not to
‘extort’ the people, as Mawworm calls it, out of my own head--that I
had not to furnish the speech, as well as the courage to utter it; for
I protest that I could not have put together a sentence of my own, for
the saving of my life!”
[Illustration: A FIRST APPEARANCE ON ANY STAGE.]
With such experience and impressions of the inaptitude of the sex for
popular orators, my profound amazement may be conceived when on lately
glancing over the columns of a morning journal, my eye was arrested by
the extraordinary heading of
PUBLIC MEETING OF WOMEN AGAINST THE POOR LAWS.
In the first tumult of my agitation I pitched my Morning Herald, where
Parson Adams threw his Æschylus, namely, behind the fire; but the very
next instant, with a vague notion that it would _blow_ up, I snatched
it out again. I am not certain,--being in weak health and spirits,
and more than commonly nervous,--that I did not cry murder!--My first
sensation, indeed, was a physical one, a complication of acuteness
of earache, with the numbness of lock-jaw:--and then came the moral
consciousness of some stunning domestic calamity, that seemed dilating
every instant from a family into a national visitation. In fact I
recollect nothing at all approaching the first bodily shock, except
once, on the explosion of some neighbouring powder-mills, when a few
highly condensed moments of intense silence were followed by the sudden
burst of an imaginary peal, from a bell assembly of all the steeples
in England; nor can I recall any experience equal to my mental horror
afterwards, unless a certain delirious dream of being run away with by
four gray mares, in the York mail!
It was a considerable time before I could muster resolution to peruse
the speeches, the tone of which my prophetic soul forestalled as
less resembling the notes of the feminine dulcimer, or piano, or
hurdy-gurdy, than those of the masculine brazen trumpet. And should
this seem a _harsh_ anticipation, it must be remembered that I had been
prepared by no previous rehearsals for such a burst of female oratory.
If I had met with a paragraph hinting that certain females had been
observed in rough weather, mysteriously haunting the sea-beach, say of
Scarborough for instance, and gesticulating, as if on speaking terms
with the billows, my classical reminiscences might have recalled the
system by which Demosthenes braced himself against the murmurs and
roarings of a popular assembly--and I might have comprehended that the
hoarse waves were resorted to as oratorical _breakers-in_. But there
was no such warning; and consequently the report came upon me with
all the startling suddenness and crash of a sempstress’s splitting a
piece of stout calico. There was something astounding in the bare idea
of a female voice, so commonly requiring a high pressure to induce
it to sing in private circles, volunteering in public assembly to
spout! A maiden speech even in a man is apt to excite a maidenly fever
of nervousness; and many a rough and tough old sea-commander, who
would have returned a broadside without flinching, has been converted
physiognomically into an admiral of the blue, white, and red, and has
found a bung in his speaking-trumpet, on having to reply to a volley
of thanks. The very subject, so steeped in party spirit,--for alas! it
is undeniable that the woes and wants of the poor have become a party
question,--the very subject so steeped in party spirit, always a raw
unrectified article, and at the present time distilled particularly
above proof, seemed peculiarly unfit for womanly lips. In short I
concluded primâ facie, that a female who could come forward, without
a rehearsal all along shore, or practise on provincial boards, as a
public orator, and on political topics, must needs be what some old
writer calls “a mankind woman,”--and akin to the Hannah Snells and Mary
Ann Talbots, that have heretofore enlisted in our army and navy. How
far I was justified in these forebodings a few extracts will serve to
show.
“Mrs. Susan Fearnley having been voted into the chair, opened the
business of the meeting by exhorting the females present _to take
the question of a repeal of this bill into their own hands_, and
not to rely on the exertions of others, _least of all on the House
of Commons_, but at once to assert _the dignity and equality of the
sex_, and as the chief magistrate of the realm was now a female,
to approach her _respectfully_, and lay their grievances before
her; and, should their application be unsuccessful, she would then
call upon them to resist the enforcement of this cruel law, _even
unto the death_--(loud cheers). Mrs. Grasby said, the new Poor
Law was not concocted by men, but by fiends in the shape of men;
it had been hatched and bred in the bottomless pit--(cheers). She
could wish the authors of this law to be sent to St. Helena, where
Napoleon was sent to, and remain till their bodies were wet with
the dew of heaven, and their hair as long as eagles’ feathers.
She would oppose that law, and she called upon her sisters now
before her to follow her example--(tremendous cheering). Mrs.
Hanson alluded to the personal disfiguration of the hair cutting
off, which excited much disapprobation; this was followed by a
description of the grogram gowns of shoddy and paste in which
the inmates of the bastiles are attired.” The address said, “We
approach your Majesty, and pray that you will exercise your
prerogative, and remove from your councils those heartless men who
are attempting to place us under this horrible law. _We beg leave
to remind your Majesty that allegiance is due only when protection
is extended to the subject._
“Signed on behalf of the Meeting,
“SUSAN FEARNLEY, _Chairwoman_.”
And the report said, “Thanks were then voted with loud cheering to Earl
Stanhope, Mr. J. Fielden, to the Chairwoman, Mrs. Grasby, and Mrs.
Hanson, for their eloquent speeches, and to the other females, who had
got up and managed the meeting. Three groans were then given for the
Whigs, and all who support the Poor Law Bill.”
I have purposely omitted an astounding declaration of the wives and
mothers in the address, about their daughters, hoping that it is only
founded on local scandal; and now, if such another merry meeting may
be wished, what right-thinking Benedict or Bachelor but will join with
me and Dogberry in a “God prohibit it?” When the Steam Washing Company
was first established, there was a loud and shrill outcry against
what were facetiously called the Cock Laundresses, who were roundly
accused of a shameful invasion of woman’s provinces, and favoured
with many sneering recommendations to wear mob caps, and go in stuff
petticoats and pattens. But if Hercules with the distaff be but a sorry
spectacle, surely Omphale with the club cuts scarcely a better figure.
The he-creatures may now fairly retort, that it is as consistent
with manhood to go out washing, as for womanhood to do chairing at
a public meeting. If it be out of character for a fellow in a coat
and continuations to be firsting and seconding linen, it is equally
anomalous for a creature in petticoats to be firsting and seconding
political resolutions; and for my own part, as a matter of taste, I
would rather see a Gentlemen blowing up a copper flue than a Lady
blowing up the foulness of the Poor Law.
In the mean time, there is reason to apprehend that the infection is
gaining ground; the last post having brought me the following letter on
the subject from a country correspondent.
_To the Editor of Hood’s Own, &c., &c._
HONOURED SIR,
I don’t know whether you be married or likely to be in the way of
courting, but whether or not, most likely you have a mother or sister,
or aunt, or she-cousin, or some such connexion of the female sex; as
such will be interested in the following, as a matter that concerns
us all, and particularly men like myself of a quiet turn and domestic
habits.
By station I am only a plain, family man in the farming line, but to my
misfortune, as turns out, I am locally situated in the county of York,
and what’s worse, a great deal too nigh Elland, and where the women
got up the spouting meeting again the Poor Laws that made such a noise
in the country. I’m not a political character myself, and as such have
nothing to object for or against public meetings and speechifyings,
so long as it’s confined to the male kind; but with as good nerves
as most men that can ride to hounds, nothing since incendiarism has
given them such a shook as the breaking out of female elocution, for
in course like the rick burnings and the influenzy, or any other new
kick, it will go through the whole country. My own house has catched
for one, and I will inform you the symptoms it begins with. The Elland
Meeting, you see, was on a Tuesday, and between you and me and the
post, it’s my belief that my mistress was present, though she do say,
it were a visit to her mother. Otherwise I cannot think what could put
her teeth into her head on the Wednesday for the first time, by which
I mean to say her spelling for a new set, if it was not to assist her
parts of speech. Agricultural distress has made gold much more scarce
among farmers than formerly, and I don’t mind saying it’s more than I
could afford comfortably at most times to lay out twenty guineas in
ivory for the sake of a correct pronouncing. However I made no remark,
except to myself, namely, that they wasn’t wanted to keep her tongue
between. For my own part I have always found she could speak plain
enough, and particularly when I couldn’t--by reason of dining at the
ordinary on market days and the like. Any way she always contrived to
speak her mind, but ever since the meeting she seems to have had more
mind to speak; for instance, a long confabbing with every beggar at the
gate, instead of sending off as formerly with nothing but a flea in
their ear, as the saying is. In short, many more things struck me as
suspicious, and amongst the rest, her making an errand again to Eland
for a piece of stuff and a little fustian--in pint of fact, that visit
seemed to set her more agog than before, so as to start a new notion of
going up to London about Betsy’s impediment, and says she, I can kill
two birds, and get my new teeth at the same time. If that don’t look
oratorical, thinks I to myself, then I don’t know what does. However,
last Sunday was a week lets the whole cat out of the bag, as the saying
is as near as may be as follow. It was just after dinner, and only our
two selves quite domestically, Betsy being gone to grandmother’s, and
me going to take my first glass of wine, and so as usual, I nodded to
my good woman, with a “Here’s to ye, Kate!” according to custom--when
lo! and behold, up jumps Madam regularly on her legs opening like a
hound that has just hit the scent, and begins a return thanks, and
delivery of sentiments and so forth, before I knew where I was. Where
she got the knack of it without practice, Lord knows, for it’s more
than ever I was competent to, as for instance, when I’ve been publicly
drunk at our Coursing Club, and the like. However she was five good
minutes long afore she broke down, or recollected herself, I don’t know
which, and I’m free to say, left me so dumbfounded in a mizmaze that I
hadn’t presence of mind to argue the point. However, before going to
bed, I thought best to open gently on the subject, but as might be
expected, the more we differed, the more we debated, which in course
was just what Madam wanted, till at long and at last, seeing that I
was only being practised upon, like Betsy’s piano, I thought proper to
adjourn myself off to roost, but from the nature of my dreams, have
reason to think she continued the argument in her sleep.
And now, honoured Sir, what is to be done to stop such a national
calamity as hangs over us like a thundercloud, unless it’s put down
by the powerful voice of the public press? Not wishing to connect
myself with politics, which all newspapers are more or less inclined
to, and your periodical being mentioned to me by our doctor as an
impartial vehicle, am induced to the liberty of this communication, to
be made use of at your discretion. My own sentiments are very strong
on the subject, but more than I can express by penmanship. We have a
saying here in the north about a crowing hen that seems quite pat to
the case. And if you keep live stock, what can cut a foolisher figure
than a great gawksome hen, leaving her eggs to addle in the neat, or
her chicks, if so be, to the care of the kite, to go a spurring and
sparring about the yard with her hackle up, and trying to crow like
a cock of the walk? So it is with the mistress of a house leaving
her helpless babes, or what is worse, her grown-up girls, to their
own cares and looking after, to go ranting and itineranting all over
the country, henpecking at the heads of the nation, and cackling up
on tables, or in waggons, or on the hustings. It’s my opinion nature
intended the whole sex to be more backward in coming forward, let alone
tattle at tea-drinkings, or gossiping at christenings, or laying-in,
but to be totally unaccustomed to public speaking. As to state affairs,
some do think there’s more talking than doing already, and in course
it will be no cure for it, to match the House of Lords with a House of
Ladies. In the mean time, I don’t mean to come down the money for the
new teeth or the impediment, and hoping that the speeches at Elland
may prove the last dying speeches of female elocution,
I remain, Honoured Sir,
Your very humble Servant to command,
RICHARD PAYNE PILGRIM.
[Illustration: AUDIENCE FIT, THOUGH FEW.]
[Illustration: DISCOVERING THE POLE.]
POEM,--FROM THE POLISH.
Some months since a young lady was much surprised at receiving,
from the Captain of a Whaler, a blank sheet of paper, folded in the
form of a letter, and duly sealed. At last, recollecting the nature
of sympathetic ink, she placed the missive on a toasting fork, and
after holding it to the fire for a minute or two, succeeded in
thawing out the following verses.
From seventy-two North latitude,
Dear Kitty, I indite;
But first I’d have you understand
How hard it is to write.
Of thoughts that breathe and words that burn,
My Kitty, do not think,--
Before I wrote these very lines,
I had to melt my ink.
Of mutual flames and lover’s warmth,
You must not be too nice;
The sheet that I am writing on
Was once a sheet of ice!
The Polar cold is sharp enough
To freeze with icy gloss
The genial current of the soul,
E’en in a “Man of Ross.”
Pope says that letters waft a sigh
From Indus to the Pole;
But here I really wish the post
Would only “post the _coal_.”
So chilly is the Northern blast,
It blows me through and through.
A ton of Wallsend in a note
Would be a billet-doux!
In such a frigid latitude
It scarce can be a sin,
Should Passion cool a little, where
A Fury was iced in.
I’m rather tired of endless snow,
And long for coals again;
And would give up a Sea of Ice,
For some of Lambton’s Main.
I’m sick of dazzling ice and snow,
The sun itself I hate;
So very bright, so very cold,
Just like a summer grate.
For opodeldoc I would kneel,
My chilblains to anoint;
Oh Kate, the needle of the north
Has got a freezing point.
Our food _is_ solids,--ere we put
Our meat into our crops,
We take sledge-hammers to our steaks
And hatchets to our chops.
So very bitter is the blast,
So cutting is the air,
I never have been warm but once
When hugging with a bear.
One thing I know you’ll like to hear,
Th’ effect of Polar snows,
I’ve left off snuff--one pinching day--
From leaving off my nose.
I have no ear for music now;
My ears both left together;
And as for dancing, I have cut
My toes--it’s cutting weather.
I’ve said that you should have my hand
Some happy day to come;
But, Kate, you only now can wed
A finger and a thumb.
Don’t fear that any Esquimaux
Can wean me from my own;
The Girdle of the Queen of Love
Is not the Frozen Zone.
At wives with large estates of snow
My fancy does not bite;
I like to see a Bride--but not
In such a deal of white.
Give me for home a house of brick,
The Kate I love at Kew!
A hand unchopped--a merry eye,
And not a nose of blue!
To think upon the Bridge of Kew,
To me a bridge of sighs;
Oh, Kate, a pair of icicles
Are standing in my eyes!
God knows if I shall e’er return,
In comfort to be lulled;
But if I do get back to port,
Pray let me have it mulled.
[Illustration: KEW BRIDGE.]
[Illustration: A STEP-FATHER.]
A STEP-FATHER.
“Follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, follow me.”--OLD SONG.
I know not what friend, or fiend, or both together, put such a folly
into the head of my maternal parent; but, like Hamlet’s mother, she set
her widow’s cap at the sex, and re-married. A second marriage is seldom
a favourable alteration of state; it is like changing a sovereign
twice over; first into silver, and then into copper. My mother’s step
was of this description! My first father was a plump, short, and
rather Dutch-built little person; but the most merry, good-humoured,
and kind-hearted, yet withal the slowest goer of the human race. His
successor was saturnine in spirit, and stern in temper, a tall bony
figure, remarkable for the length of his nether limbs; he was, to adopt
a school-boy phrase, a Walker by name, and a walker by nature; and
the exercise of this propensity taught me painfully to appreciate the
difference between my dear first Daddy and my Daddy-Long-legs.
My father Heavy-sides was what is called slow and sure: which means
sure to be left behind. He had a solemn creak in his shoes, that
declared how deliberately his toes turned on their hinges; his movement
through life was a minuet de la cour. My Step-father Walker’s was a
galopade. Considered as Foot Soldiers, or adverse parties of infantry,
before one had well marched into his position, the other would have
turned his right flank, cut off his left wing, charged his centre,
harassed his rear, and surrounded his whole body. They were, alas!
literally the quick and the dead, causing between them a race of my
toes against my tears, and, if anything, my toes ran the fastest and
farthest.
There has been lately a good deal of speculation as to the ownership
of a certain poem; but I feel assured that my Step-father was the
practical author of the “Devil’s Walk.” The March of Mind might
possibly have kept up with him, but no March of body could do it; least
of all, such a body as mine, naturally heavy, and furnished with a pair
of lower limbs, very different from those of the son of Scriblerus,
who made his legs his compasses for measuring islands and continents.
Strain them as I would in pursuit of my Step-father, I seemed to
take nothing by my motion; those hopeless coat-flaps were always in
front; like Doctor Johnson’s great Shakspeare, with little Time at his
heels, I panted after him in vain. The pace, as the jockeys say, was
severe. It was literally a flight of steps, for he seemed to fly; if
any gentleman could be in two places at once, like a bird, that man
was my Step-father, or rather Fore-father, for he was always in front.
His stride was that of the Colossus of Rhodes; like Robinson Crusoe,
you could discern one foot-print in the sand, but the other was beyond
discovery. My infatuated mother was nevertheless continually holding
him out to me as an example, and recommending me to “tread in his
steps!”--I wish I had been able! When his friends, or creditors, have
been informed at the door, that he “had just stept out,” how little did
they dream that it meant he was a mile off!