a great deal of moral suicide, wilful murder, and seeking the bubble
reputation in the cannon’s mouth; but I shall ever think that I took
the proper course, for, after the lapse of a few hours, two more of
the General’s red-coats, or General postmen, brought me a large packet
sealed with the War-office Seal, and superscribed “Henry Hardinge;” by
which I was officially absolved from serving on Horse, or on Foot, or
on both together, then and thereafter.
And why, I know not--unless his Majesty doubted the handsomeness of
discharging me in particular, without letting off the rest;--but so it
was, that in a short time afterwards there issued a proclamation, by
which the services of all militia-men were for the present dispensed
with,--and we were left to pursue our several avocations,--of course,
all the lighter in our _spirits_ for being _disembodied_.
[Illustration: SHARP, FLAT, AND NATURAL.]
ODE FOR ST. CECILIA’S EVE.
“Look out for squalls.”--THE PILOT.
O come, dear Barney Isaacs, come,
Punch for one night can spare his drum
As well as Pipes of Pan!
Forget not, Popkins, your bassoon,
Nor, Mister Bray, your horn, as soon
As you can leave the Van;
Blind Billy, bring your violin;
Miss Crow, you’re great in Cherry Ripe!
And Chubb, your viol must drop in
It’s bass to Soger Tommy’s pipe.
Ye butchers, bring your bones:
An organ would not be amiss;
If grinding Jim has spouted his,
Lend yours, good Mister Jones.
Do, hurdy-gurdy Jenny,--do
Keep sober for an hour or two,
Music’s charms to help to paint.
And, Sandy Gray, if you should not
Your bagpipes bring--O tuneful Scot!
Conceive the feelings of the Saint!
Miss Strummel issues an invite,
For music, and turn-out to-night
In honour of Cecilia’s session;
But ere you go, one moment stop,
And with all kindness let me drop
A hint to you, and your profession:
Imprimis then: Pray keep within
The bounds to which your skill was born,
Let the one-handed let alone
Trombone,
Don’t--rheumatiz! seize the violin,
Or Ashmy snatch the horn!
Don’t ever to such rows give birth,
As if you had no end on earth,
Except to “wake the lyre;”
Don’t “strike the harp,” pray never do,
Till others long to strike it too;
Perpetual harping’s apt to tire;
Oh I have heard such flat-and-sharpers,
I’ve blest the head
Of good King Ned,
For scragging all those old Welsh Harpers!
Pray, never, ere each tuneful doing,
Take a prodigious deal of wooing;
And then sit down to thrum the strain,
As if you’d never rise again--
The least Cecilia-like of things:
Remember that the saint has wings.
I’ve known Miss Strummel pause an hour,
Ere she could “Pluck the Fairest Flower,”
Yet without hesitation, she
Plunged next into the “Deep Deep Sea,”
And when on the keys she _does_ begin,
Such awful torments soon you share,
She really seems like Milton’s “Sin,”
Holding the keys of--you know where!
Never tweak people’s ears so toughly,
That urchin-like they can’t help saying--
“O dear! O dear--you call this playing,
But oh, it’s playing very roughly!”
Oft, in the ecstasy of pain,
I’ve cursed all instrumental workmen,
Wish’d Broadwood Thurtell’d in a lane,
And Kirke White’s fate to every Kirkman--
[Illustration: FANCY PORTRAIT:--KIRKE WHITE.]
I really once delighted spied
“Clementi Collard” in Cheapside.
Another word,--don’t be surprised,
Revered and ragged street Musicians,
You have been only half-baptised,
And each name proper, or improper,
Is not the value of a copper,
Till it has had the due additions,
Husky, Rusky,
Ninny, Tinny,
Hummel, Bummel,
Bowski, Wowski,
All these are very good selectables;
But none of your plain pudding-and-tames--
Folks that are called the hardest names
Are music’s most respectables.
Ev’ry woman, ev’ry man,
Look as foreign as you can,
Don’t cut your hair, or wash your skin,
Make ugly faces and begin.
Each Dingy Orpheus gravely hears,
And now to show they understand it!
Miss Crowe her scrannel throttle clears.
And all the rest prepare to band it.
Each scraper ripe for concertante,
Rozins the hair of Rozinante:
Then all sound A, if they know which,
That they may join like birds in June:
Jack Tar alone neglects to tune,
For he’s all over concert-pitch.
A little prelude goes before,
Like a knock and ring at music’s door
Each instrument gives in its name;
Then sitting in
They all begin
To play a musical round game.
Scrapenberg, as the eldest hand,
Leads a first fiddle to the band,
A second follows suit;
Anon the ace of Horns comes plump
On the two fiddles with a trump.
Puffindorf plays a flute.
This sort of musical revoke,
The grave bassoon begins to smoke
And in rather grumpy kind
Of tone begins to speak its mind;
The double drum is next to mix,
Playing the Devil on Two Sticks--
Clamour, clamour,
Hammer, hammer,
While now and then a pipe is heard,
Insisting to put in a word,
With all his shrilly best,
So to allow the little minion
Time to deliver his opinion,
They take a few bars rest.
Well, little Pipe begins--with sole
And small voice going through the _hole_,
Beseeching,
Preaching,
Squealing,
Appealing,
Now as high as he can go,
Now in language rather low,
And having done--begins once more,
Verbatim what he said before.
This twiddling twaddling sets on fire
All the old instrumental ire,
And fiddles for explosion ripe,
Put out the little squeaker’s pipe;
This wakes bass viol--and viol for that,
Seizing on innocent little B flat,
Shakes it like terrier shaking a rat--
They all seem miching malico!
To judge from a ramble unawares,
The drum has had a pitch down stairs;
And the trumpet rash,
By a violent crash,
Seems splitting somebody’s calico!
The viol too groans in deep distress,
As if he suddenly grew sick;
And one rapid fiddle sets off express,--
Hurrying,
Scurrying,
Spattering,
Clattering,
To fetch him a Doctor of Music.
This tumult sets the Haut-boy crying
Beyond the Piano’s pacifying,
The cymbal
Gets nimble,
Triangle
Must wrangle,
The band is becoming most martial of bands,
When just in the middle,
A quakerly fiddle,
Proposes a general shaking of hands!
Quaking,
Shaking,
Quivering,
Shivering,
Long bow--short bow--each bow drawing:
Some like filing,--some like sawing;
At last these agitations cease,
And they all get
The flageolet,
To breathe “a piping time of peace.”
Ah, too deceitful charm,
Like light’ning before death,
For Scrapenberg to rest his arm,
And Puffindorf get breath!
Again without remorse or pity,
They play “The Storming of a City.”
Miss S. herself compos’d and plann’d it--
When lo! at this renew’d attack,
Up jumps a little man in black,--
“The very Devil cannot stand it!
And with that,
Snatching hat,
(Not his own,)
Off is flown,
Thro’ the door,
In his black,
To come back
Never, never, never more?”
Oh Music! praises thou hast had,
From Dryden and from Pope,
For thy good notes, yet none I hope,
But I e’er praised the bad,
Yet are not saint and sinner even?
Miss Strummel on Cecilia’s level?
One drew an angel down from heaven!
The other scar’d away the Devil!
[Illustration: A GRAND UPRIGHT.]
REFLECTIONS ON WATER.
“When the butt is out, we will drink water: not a drop
before.”--TEMPEST.
I have Stefano’s aversion to Water. I never take any by chance into
my mouth, without the proneness of our Tritons and Dolphins of the
Fountain,--to spout it forth again. It is, on the palate, as in tubs
and hand-basins, egregiously washy. It hath not for me, even what
is called “an amiable weakness.” For the sake only of quantity, not
quality, do I sometimes adulterate my Cogniac or Geneva with the
flimsy fluid. Aquarius is not my sign; at the praises heaped on Sir
Hugh Myddelton, for leading his trite streamlet up to London,--my lip
curleth. Methinks if such a sloppy labour could at one time more than
another betray a misguided taste, it was in those days, when we are
told,--“The Grete Conduict, in Chepe, did runne forth Wyne.” And then
to hear talk withal of the New River _Head_,--as if, forsooth, the weak
current poured even from Ware unto London, were capable of that goodly
headed capital, the _caput_, of Stout Porter, or lusty Ale.
The taste for aquatics is none of mine. I laugh at Cowes’--it should
be Calves’--Regattas; it passeth my understanding, to conceive the
pleasure of contending with all your sail and sea, your might and
main, for a prize cup of water. Gentle reader, if ever we two should
encounter at good-men’s feasts, say not before me, that “your mouth
waters,” for fear of my compelled rejoinder, “The more pump you!”
[Illustration: THE ARCH-ENEMY.]
I am told--_Dic mihi_--by Sir Lauder Dick, that the great floods is
Morayshire destroyed I know not how many Scottish bridges,--and I
believe it. The element was always our Arch-Enemy. Witness the Deluge,
when the whole human-kind would have perished, with water on the
chest, but for Noah’s chest on the water. Drowning--by some called
Dying made Easy--is to my notions horrible. Conceive an unfortunate
gentleman--not by any means thirsty--compelled to swill gulp after gulp
of the vapid fluid, even to swelling, “as the water you know will swell
a man.” If I said I would rather be hanged, it would be but the truth;
although “Veritas in _Puteo_” hath given me almost a disrelish for
truth itself.
Excepting their imaginary Castaly, I should be glad to know what poet
hath sung ever in the praise of Water? Of wine, many. “Tak _Tent_,”
saith the Scottish Burns; “O, was ye at the _Sherry_?”--singeth
another. The lofty Douglas, in commending Norval, thus hinteth his
cellar; “His _Port_ I like.” Shakspeare discourseth eloquently of both
as “Red and white,” and addeth,--“with sweet and cunning hand _laid
on_;”--i.e. laid on in pipes. For Madeira, see Bowles of it; and the
Muse of Pringle luxuriates in the Cape. Then is there also Mountain
celebrated by Pope,--“The Shepherd loves the mountain,”--to Moslem,
forbidden draught; yet which Mahomet would condescend to fetch himself,
if it failed in coming to hand. Sack, too,--as dear to Oriental
Sultanas as his Malmsey to Clarence,--is by Byron touched on in his
Corsair; but then, through some Koran-scrupulousness perchance, they
take it--in Water!
Praise there hath been of water; but, as became the subject, in prose;
M. hath written a volume, I am told, in its commendation, and above
all of its nutritive quality; and truly to see it floating the Victory
with all her armament and complement of guns, and men, one must confess
there is some _support_ in it--at least as an outward application! but
then taken internally, look at the wreck of the Royal George!
The mention of Men-of-War, bringeth to mind, opportunely, certain
marine reminiscences, pertinent to this subject, referring some
years backward, when, with other uniform than my present invariable
sables, I was stationed at * * *, on the coast of Sussex. Little
as my present-tense habits and occupations savour of the past
sea-service,--yet, reader, in the Navy List amongst the Commanders, or
years by-gone in the Ship’s Books of H.M.S Hyperion, presently lying
in the sequestered harbour of Newhaven, thou wilt find occurring the
surname of Hood; a name associated by friends, marine and mechanic,
with a contrivance, for expelling the old enemy, water, by a novel
construction of Ships’ pumps.
[Illustration: RUNNING SPIRITS.]
Stanchest of my sect--the Adam’s-Ale-shunners--wert thou, old
Samuel Spiller! in the muster-roll charactered an Able Seaman; but
most notable for a Landsman’s aversion to unmitigated Water, hard,
or soft--fresh or salt! A petty Officer wert thou in that armed
band _versus_ contraband, the Coast Blockade, by some miscalled
the Preventive Service, if service it be to prevent the influx of
wholesome spirits. To do the smuggler bare justice, no seaman,
Nelson-bred, payeth greater reverence, or obedience to that signal
sentence,--“England expects every man to _do_ his _duty_!” than he.
Thine, Spiller, was done to the uttermost. Spirits, legal or illegal,
in tub or flask, or pewter measure, didst thou inexorably seize, and
gauger-like try the depth thereof,--thy Royal Master, His Majesty, at
the latter end of the seizures, faring no better than thy own begotten
sea-urchin, of whom, one day remarking that--“he took after his
father,” the young would-be Trinculo retorted, “Father never leaveth
none to take.” There were strange rumours afloat, and ashore--Samuel!
of thy unprofitable vigilance. Many an illicit _Child_, i.e. a small
keg, hath been laid at thy door. Thou hadst a becoming respect for
thy comrades, as brave men and true, who could stand fire, but the
smugglers, I fear, were ranked a streak higher, as men who could stand
treat. Still were thy misdeeds like much of thy own beverage--beyond
proof. Even as those delinquent utterers of base notes, who swallow
their own dangerous forgeries, so didst thou gulp down whatever
might else have appeared against thee in evidence. There was no
entrapping thee, like rat, or weasel in that Gin, from which deriving a
sea-peerage, thou wert commonly known--with no offence, I trust, to the
Noble Vassal of Kensington--as Lord Hollands.
It was by way of water-penance for one of these Cassio-like
derelictions of Mine Ancient, that one evening--the evening succeeding
the Great Sea Tempest of 1814--I gave him charge of a boat’s crew, to
bring in sundry fragmental relics of some shipwreckt Argosy, that were
reported to be adrift in our offing. In two hours he returned, and like
Venator and Piscator, we immediately fell into dialogue,--Piscator,
i.e. Spiller, “for fear of dripping the carpet,” standing aloof, a vox
et preterea nihil, in a dark entry.
“Well, Spiller,”--my phraseology was not then inoculated with the
quaintness it hath since imbibed from after lecture--“Well, Spiller,
what have you picked up?”
“A jib-boom, I think, Sir, a capital spar; and part of a Ship’s starn.
The ‘Planter of Barbadies’--famous place for rum, Sir.”
“Was there any sea--are you wet?”
“Only up to my middle, Sir.”
“Very well--stow away the wreck, and go to your grog. Tell Bunce to
give you all double allowance.”
“Thank your honour’s honour!”
The voice ceased: and a pair of ponderous sea-soles, with tramp audible
as the marble foot of the Spectre in Giovanni, went hurrying down our
main-hatchway. Certain misgivings of a discrepancy between the imputed
drenching and the weather, an appeal askance of the rum cask, joined
with a curiosity perchance, to inspect the ship-fragments--our flottsom
and jettsom, led me soon afterwards below, and there, in the mess-room,
sate mine officer, high and dry, with a huge tankard in his starboard
hand. I made an obvious remark on it, and had an answer--for Michael
Spiller was no adept in the Chesterfieldian refinements--from the
interior of the drinking-vessel--
“Your Honour’s right, and I ax your Honour’s pardon. I warn’t wet! but
I was _very_ dry!”
A BLOW UP.
“Here we go up, up, up.”--THE LAY OF THE FIRST MINSTREL.
Near Battle, Mr. Peter Baker
Was Powder-maker,
Not Alderman Flower’s flour,--the white that puffs
And primes and loads heads bald, or gray, or chowder,
Figgins and Higgins, Fippins, Filby,--Crowder,
Not vile apothecary’s pounded stuffs,
But something blacker, bloodier, and louder,
Gun-powder!
This stuff, as people know, is _semper
Eadem_; very hasty in its temper--
Like Honour that resents the gentlest taps,
Mere semblances of blows, however slight;
So powder fires, although you only p’rhaps
Strike light.
To make it therefore, is a ticklish business
And sometimes gives both head and heart a dizziness,
For as all human flash and fancy minders,
Frequenting fights and Powder-works well know,
There seldom is a mill without a blow
Sometimes upon the grinders.
But then--the melancholy phrase to soften,
Mr. B.’s mill _transpir’d_ so very often!
And advertised--than all Price Currents louder,
“Fragments look up--there is a rise in Powder.”
So frequently, it caused the neighbours’ wonder,--
And certain people had the inhumanity
To lay it all to Mr. Baker’s vanity,
That he might have to say--“That was _my_ thunder!”
One day--so goes the tale,
Whether, with iron hoof,
Not sparkle-proof,
Some ninny-hammer struck upon a nail,--
Whether some glow-worm of the Guy Faux stamp,
Crept in the building, with Unsafety Lamp--
One day this mill that had by water ground,
Became a sort of windmill and blew round.
With bounce that went in sound as far as Dover, it
Sent half the workmen sprawling to the sky;
Besides some visitors who gained thereby,
What they had asked--permission “to go over it!”
Of course it was a very hard and high blow,
And somewhat differed from what’s called a fly-blow.
At Cowes’ Regatta as I once observed,
A pistol-shot made twenty vessels start;
If such a sound could terrify oak’s heart,
Think how this crash the human nerve unnerved
In fact, it was a very awful thing,--
As people know that have been used to battle,
In springing either mine or mill, you spring
A precious rattle!
The dunniest heard it--poor old Mr. F.
Doubted for once if he was ever deaf;
Through Tunbridge town it caused most strange alarms;
Mr. and Mrs. Fogg,
Who lived like cat and dog,
Were shocked for once into each other’s arms.
Miss M. the milliner--her fright so strong,
Made a great gobble-stitch six inches long;
The veriest quakers quaked against their wish;
The “Best of Sons” was taken unawares,
And kick’d the “Best of Parents” down the stairs;
The steadiest servant dropped the China dish;
A thousand started, though there was but one
Fated to win, and that was Mr. Dunn,
Who struck convulsively, and hooked a fish!
Miss Wiggins, with some grass upon her fork,
Toss’d it just like a hay-maker at work;
Her sister not in any better case,
For taking wine,
With nervous Mr. Pyne,
He jerked his glass of Sherry in her face.
Poor Mistress Davy,
Bobb’d off her bran-new turban in the gravy:
While Mr. Davy at the lower end,
Preparing for a Goose a carver’s labour,
Darted his two-pronged weapon in his neighbour,
As if for once he meant to help a friend.
The nurse-maid telling little “Jack-a-Norey,”
“Bo-peep” and “Blue-cap” at the house’s top,
Scream’d, and let Master Jeremiah drop
From a fourth story!
Nor yet did matters any better go
With Cook and Housemaid in the realms below;
As for the Laundress, timid Martha Gunning,
Expressing faintness and her fear by fits
And starts,--she came at last but to her wits,
By falling in the ale that John left running.
Grave Mr. Miles, the meekest of mankind,
Struck all at once deaf, stupid, dumb, and blind,
Sat in his chaise some moments like a corse,
Then coming to his mind,
Was shocked to find,
Only a pair of shafts without a horse.
Out scrambled all the Misses from Miss Joy’s!
From Prospect House, for urchins small and big,
Hearing the awful noise,
Out rushed a flood of boys,
Floating a man in black, without a wig;--
Some carried out one treasure, some another,--
Some caught their tops and taws up in a hurry,
Some saved Chambaud, some rescued Lindley Murray,
But little Tiddy carried his big brother!
[Illustration: A NON SEQUITUR.]
Sick of such terrors,
The Tunbridge folks resolv’d that truth should dwell
No longer secret in a Tunbridge Well,
But to warn Baker of his dangerous errors;
Accordingly to bring the point to pass,
They call’d a meeting of the broken glass,
The shatter’d chimney pots, and scatter’d tiles,
The damage of each part,
And packed it in a cart,
Drawn by the horse that ran from Mr. Miles;
While Doctor Babblethorpe, the worthy Rector,
And Mr. Gammage, cutler to George Rex,
And some few more, whose names would only vex,
Went as a deputation to the Ex
Powder-proprietor and Mill-director.
Now Mr. Baker’s dwelling-house had pleased
Along with mill-materials to roam,
And for a time the deputies were teased,
To find the noisy gentleman at home;
At last they found him with undamaged skin,
Safe at the Tunbridge Arms--not out--but Inn.
The worthy Rector, with uncommon zeal,
Soon put his spoke in for the common weal--
A grave old gentlemanly kind of Urban,--
The piteous tale of Jeremiah moulded,
And then unfolded,
By way of climax, Mrs. Davy’s turban;
He told how auctioneering Mr. Pidding
Knock’d down a lot without a bidding,--
How Mr. Miles, in fright, had giv’n his mare
The whip she wouldn’t bear,--
At Prospect House, how Doctor Oates, not Titus,
Danc’d like Saint Vitus,--
And Mr. Beak, thro’ Powder’s misbehaving,
Cut off his nose whilst shaving;--
When suddenly, with words that seem’d like swearing,
Beyond a Licenser’s belief or bearing--
Broke in the stuttering, sputtering Mr. Gammage--
“Who is to pay us, Sir,”--he argued thus,
“For loss of cus-cus-cus-cus-cus-cus-cus--
Cus-custom, and the dam-dam-dam-damage?”
Now many a person had been fairly puzzled
By such assailants, and completely muzzled;
Baker, however, was not dash’d with ease--
But proved he practised after their own system,
And with small ceremony soon dismiss’d ’em,
Putting these words into their ears like fleas;
“If I do have a blow, well, where’s the oddity?
I merely do as other tradesmen do,
You, Sir,--and you--and you!
I’m only puffing off my own commodity!”
[Illustration: URGING THE SAIL OF YOUR OWN WORK.]
THE WOODEN LEG.
“Peregrine and Gauntlet heard the sound of the stump ascending the
wooden staircase with such velocity, that they at first mistook
it for the application of drum-sticks to the head of an empty
barrel.”--PEREGRINE PICKLE.
Ever since the year 1799, I have had, in the coachman phrase, an off
leg and a near one; the right limb, thanks to a twelve-pounder, lies
somewhere at Seringapatam, its twin-brother being at this moment under
a table at Brighton. In plain English, I have a wooden leg. Being thus
deprived of half of the implements for marching, I equitably retired,
on half-pay, from a marching regiment, and embarked what remained
of my body, for the land of its nativity, literally fulfilling the
description of man, “with one foot on sea and one on shore,” in the
Shakspearian song.
A great deal has been said and sung of our wooden walls and hearts of
oak, but legs of ditto make but an inglorious figure on the ocean. No
wrestler from Cornwall or Devonshire ever received half so many fair
back-falls as I, the least roll of the vessel--and the equinoctial
gales were in full blow--making me lose, I was going to say, my feet.
I might have walked in a dead calm, and as a soldier accustomed to
exercise, and moreover a foot soldier, and used to walking, I felt a
great inclination to pace up and down the deck, but a general protest
from the cabins put an end to my promenade. As Lear recommends, my
wooden hoofs ought to have been “shod with felt.”
At last the voyage terminated, and in my eagerness to land, I got
into a fishing-boat, which put me ashore at Dungeness. Those who
have enjoyed a ramble over its extensive shingle, will believe that
I soon obtained abundance of exercise in walking with a wooden leg
among its loose pebbles; in fact, when I arrived at Lydd, I was, as
the cricketers say, “stumped out.” It was anything but one of Foote’s
farces.
The next morning saw me in sight of home,--as a provincial bard says--
“But when home gleams upon the wanderer’s eye,
Quicken his steps--he almost seems to fly.”
But I wish he had seen me doing my last half mile over Swingfield Hill.
I found its deep sand anything but a quicksand, in spite of a distinct
glimpse of the paternal roof. I am convinced, when “Fleet Camilla
scours the plain,” she does not do it with sand. At last I stood at
the lodge-gate, which opened, and let me into a long avenue, the path
of which had been newly gravelled, but not well rolled; accordingly,
I cut out considerable work for myself and the gardener, who, as he
watched the holes I picked in his performance, seemed to look on my
advance much as Apollyon did on Pilgrim’s Progress. By way of relief,
I got upon the grass, but my wooden leg, though it was a blackleg,
did not thrive much upon the turf. Arrived at the house door, filial
anxiety caused me to forget to scrape and wipe, and I proceeded to make
a fishy pattern of soles and dabs up the stair carpet. The good wife in
the Scotch song says--
“His very foot has music in’t,
As he comes up the stair.”
If there was any music in mine, it was in the stump, which played a
sort of “Dead March in Saul,” up to the landing-place, where the sound
and sight of my Birnam wood coming to Dunsinane threw my poor mother
into a Macbeth fit of horror, for the preparatory letter which should
have broken my leg to her, had been lost on its passage. As for my
father, I will not attempt to describe his transport, for I came upon
him,
“As fools rush in where angels fear to tread;”