GEORGE CRUIKSHANK'S
OMNIBUS.
[Illustration: PREFACE.
"DE OMNIBUS REBUS ET QUIRUSDAN ALIIS."]
PUBLISHED BY TILT & BOGUE, 86, FLEET STREET
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK'S
OMNIBUS.
ILLUSTRATED WITH ONE HUNDRED ENGRAVINGS ON STEEL
AND WOOD.
"De Omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis."
EDITED BY LAMAN BLANCHARD, ESQ.
LONDON:
TILT AND BOGUE, FLEET STREET.
MDCCCXLII.
LONDON:
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
"Our Preface" described.
My Portrait 1
My last pair of Hessian Boots 8
Epigram 13
Love seeking a Lodging 14
Frank Heartwell; or, Fifty Years Ago, 15, 39, 76, 112, 144,
177, 210, 246, 282.
Monument to Napoleon 26
Photographic Phenomena; or, the New School of Portrait Painting 29
Commentary on the New Police Act--Punch _v._ Law 33
Original Poetry, by the late SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY, Knt.
"Ode to the Human Heart," "On Life et cetera," &c. 35
Love has Legs 52
Bernard Cavanagh, the Irish Cameleon 53
The Ass on the Ladder 54
Omnibus Chat 59
Scene near Hogsnorton 61
Chancery Lane Enigma ib.
Sonnets to Macready 63
Large Order to a Hom[oe]opathic Apothecary, &c. 64
"My Vote and Interest." A Communication from Mr. Simpleton
Schemer, of Doltford Lodge, Crooksley 65
The Census 72
Love's Masquerading 75
The Livery--Out of London 89
Omnibus Chat 92
Legend of Van Diemen's Land 92
The Girl and the Philosopher 94
The Grave of the Suicide (who thought better of it). ib.
A Rigid Sense of Duty 95
Frights 97
A Peep into a Leg-of-Beef Shop 100
A Few Notes on Unpaid Letters 102
First Discovery of Van Demon's Land 104
The Muffin Man 120
A Tiger Hunt in England 121
Omnibus Chat 124
Ingenious Rogueries 124
The Sister Sciences of Botany and Horticulture 126
Photogenic Pictures, No. II. 127
A Negro Boy in the West Indies ib.
Legend of the Kilkenny Cats 128
Mademoiselle Rachel 129
Frights!--No. II. 130
A Short Cruise at Margate 132
Epigrams 134
Passionate People 135
Our New Cooks 141
A Song of Contradictions 143
A Warm Reception 151
Tea-Table Tattle 152
Omnibus Chat 155
The Fashions ib.
Playbills and Playgoing ib.
A Romance of the Orchestra 156
One of the Curiosities of Literature 157
An Incident of Travel 158
Here's a Bit of Fat for You 159
Heiress Presumptive ib.
Letter from Mrs. Toddles 160
Frights!--No. III. Haunted Houses, &c. 161
Little Spitz; by Michael Angelo Titmarsh 167
Last Night of Vauxhall; by Laman Blanchard 172
A Tale of the Times of Old 176
An Anacreontic Fable ib.
How to Raise the Wind; by Captain Marryatt, R.N. 182
Peep at Bartholomew Fair; by Alpha 188
Omnibus Chat 191
Association of Ideas ib.
Boys at School 194
The Laceman's Lament ib.
The Height of Impudence 195
Mrs. T. again 196
The Artificial Floor for Skating 197
Duns Demonstrated; by Edward Howard, Author of
"Rattlin the Reefer" 199
The Second Sleeper Awakened. Translated by Ali 202
Just Going Out; by Laman Blanchard 204
A Theatrical Curiosity 216
Sliding Scales 217
Sketches Here, There, and Everywhere;
by A. Bird. A Stage-coach Race 218
Another Curiosity of Literature 222
A Horrible Passage in My Early Life 223
Two of a Trade 225
Omnibus Chat 226
The Two Naval Heroes ib.
Tar and Feathers 227
An Acatalectic Monody 228
Third Meeting of the Bright-ish Association for the
Advancement of Everything ib.
Rum Corks in Stout Bottles 229
A Highway Adventure 230
Bearded like the Pard ib.
Some Account of the Life and Times of Mrs. Sarah Toddles;
by Sam Sly 231
The Fire at the Tower of London 233
Miss Adelaide Kemble 238
Jack Gay, Abroad and at Home; by Laman Blanchard 240
The King of Brentford's Testament; by Michael Angelo Titmarsh 244
The Fire King Flue 254
A Passage in the Life of Mr. John Leakey 255
Omnibus Chat 260
The Clerk, a Parody ib.
The British Association 261
Playing on the Piano 262
November Weather 263
Mrs. Toddles ib.
Jack-o'lantern 265
Christmas. By Sam Sly 266
A Snap-Dragon. By Charles Hookey Walker, Esq. 267
Sonnet to "Some One" ib.
The Hom[oe]opathist's Serenade. By Dr. Bulgardo ib.
What do you do that for? 268
Lines by a Y--g L--y of F--sh--on 271
The Frolics of Time. A Striking Adventure.
By Laman Blanchard, Esq. 272
A Peep (Poetic) at the Age. By A. Bird 276
A Still-life Sketch 277
A Tale of an Inn 278
"Such a Duck!" 281
The Postilion 289
"The Horse by the Head" 292
A Floating Recollection 293
The Pauper's Chaunt 294
Sketches Here, There, and Everywhere 295
Mrs. Toddles 299
Sonnet to Mrs. Toddles 300
Postscript 304
LIST OF ETCHINGS ON STEEL.
"DE OMNIBUS REBUS ET QUIBUSDAM ALIIS."
PAGE
PREFACE _to face title_
PORTRAIT OF GEORGE CRUIKSHANK 1
FRANK HEARTWELL, OR FIFTY YEARS AGO. 15
COMMENTARY UPON THE NEW POLICE ACT, NO. I. 33
COMMENTARY UPON THE NEW POLICE ACT, NO II. 34
FRANK HEARTWELL'S FIRST INTERVIEW WITH BRADY 47
"RUSH TO POLL"--AN ELECTION SQUIB 65
FRANK HEARTWELL AND SAMBO, IN THE HOLD OF THE TENDER 85
FRIGHTS, NO. I.--"FLYING BEADLES" 97
FRANK HEARTWELL, BEN, AND SAMBO, AMUSING THE NATIVES 116
PORTRAIT OF RACHEL IN THE CHARACTER OF MARIE STUART 129
FRIGHTS, NO. II.--"THIEVES."--"THE STRANGE CAT" 130
RICHARD BROTHERS, THE PROPHET, AT MRS. HEARTWELL'S 147
FRIGHTS, NO. III.--"GHOSTS" 161
FRANK HEARTWELL DISCOVERING TREASURE 181
A SKATING PARTY 197
FRANK HEARTWELL PREPARING TO SWIM TO THE WRECK 214
BREAKING INTO "THE JEWEL ROOM" AT THE TOWER 233
PORTRAIT OF MISS ADELAIDE KEMBLE 238
FRANK HEARTWELL SEIZING BRADY 252
JACK O'LANTERN 265
FRANK HEARTWELL 287
LIST OF WOOD-CUTS.
PAGE
1. The peep-show _Preface_
2. Bust of Shakspeare with pipe 2
3. G. C. in a drawing-room 4
4. G. C. and a cabman 5
5. A pair of bellows 6
6. My last pair of Hessians 8
7. A pair of shoes 13
8. Love seeking a lodging 14
9. Monument to Napoleon 26
10. Photographic painting 29
11. The sun painting all the world and his wife 32
12. Love has legs 52
13. The ass climbing the ladder 54
14. The ass on the ladder 54
15. The boy on the ladder 54
16. Ditto 56
17. A large order 64
18. Love masquerading 75
19. Foot-boy and bread 90
20. Footman and pups 91
21. Coachman and dumplings 92
22. A rigid sense of duty 95
23. Mrs. Toddles 96
24. Leg-of-beef shop 100
25. The Flying Dutchman 106
26. Kangaroo dance 109
27. Kangaroo and fiddler 111
28. The muffin-man 120
29. The strange cat 131
30. The round hat and the cocked hat 132
31. Sailor chasing Napoleon 134
32. A passionate man 138
33. T tree 152
34. Emperor of China cutting off his own nose 153
35. Chinese cavalry 153
36. Tea-pot 154
37. The fashions 155
38. The boy's revenge 159
39. The living pincushion 159
40. Mrs. Toddles 160
41. Materials for making a ghost 163
42. The ghost 163
43. The bell-pull and the pigtail 166
44. Little Spitz 167
45. Last night of Vauxhall--the balloon 172
46. Simpson à la Shakspeare 175
47. Cupid with an umbrella 176
48. Love breaking hearts 176
49. Height of impudence 195
50. Mrs. Toddles at Margate 196
51. Ditto 196
52. The Dun 200
53. The Second Sleeper 202
54. Sliding Scale 217
55. Mile-stones--on the Rail-road 222
56. Butcher's Boy 225
57. Tar and Feathers 227
58. Corks 229
59. Turnpikeman and the Elephant 230
60. Three Figures of Fashion 230
61. Plan of the Tower of London 233
62. Bowyer Tower 235
63. Camperdown Anchor 235
64. Lady Jane's Room 236
65. The Fire-king Flue 236
66. Grenadiers playing on the Piano 262
67. Fireman playing on a Piano 263
68. Colonel Walker (or Talker) 264
69. Mrs. Toddles in a Fit 264
70. Such a Duck 281
71. The Horse by the Head 292
72. Sheer Tyranny 294
73. Sheer Kindness 294
74. Pope's Guard 296
75. Building an Angel 297
76. Mrs. Toddles in the Dickey 299
77. Mrs. T. and the Colonel dancing 299
78. As Broad as it's Long 300
[Illustration]
OUR PREFACE.
We have been entreated by a great many juvenile friends to "tell 'em
all about our Engraved Preface in No. I.;" and entreaties from tender
juveniles we never could resist. So, for their sakes, we enter into
a little explanation concerning the great matters crowded into "our
Preface." All children of a larger growth are, therefore, warned to
skip this page if they please--it is not for them, who are, of course,
familiar with the ways of the world--but only for the little dears who
require a Guide to the great Globe they are just beginning to inhabit.
SHOWMAN.--"Now then, my little masters and missis, run home to
your mammas, and cry till they give you all a shilling apiece, and
then bring it to me, and I'll show you all the pretty pictures."
So now, my little masters and misses, have you each got your No. 1
ready? Always take care of that. Now then, please to look at the top of
the circular picture which represents the world, and there you behold
Her Majesty Queen Victoria on her throne, holding a court, with Prince
Albert, in his field-marshal's uniform, by her side, and surrounded by
ladies, nobles, and officers of state. A little to the right are the
heads of the Universities, about to present an address. Above the throne
you behold the noble dome of St. Paul's, on each side of which may be
seen the tall masts of the British navy. Cast your eyes, my pretty
dears, below the throne, and there you behold Mr. and Mrs. John Bull,
and three little Bulls, with their little bull-dog; one little master is
riding his papa's walking-stick, while his elder brother is flying his
kite--a pastime to which a great many Bulls are much attached. Miss Bull
is content to be a little lady with a leetle parasol, like her mamma.
To the right of the kite you behold an armed man on horseback, one of
those curious figures which, composed of goldbeater's skin, used to be
sent up some years ago to astonish the natives; only they frightened 'em
into fits, and are not now sent up, in consequence of being put down.
And now you see "the world goes round." Turn your eyes a little to the
right to the baloon and parachute, and then look down under the smoke
of a steamer, and you behold a little sweep flourishing his brush on
the chimney-top, and wishing perhaps that he was down below there with
Jack-in-the-green. Now then, a little more to the right--where you see
a merry dancing-group of our light-heeled and light-hearted neighbours,
the leader of the party playing the fiddle and dancing on stilts, while
one of his countrymen is flying his favourite national kite--viz., the
soldier. In the same vicinity, are groups of German gentlemen, some
waltzing, and some smoking meerschaums; near these are foot-soldiers
and lancers supporting the kite-flyer. Now, near the horse, my little
dears, you will see the mule, together with the Spanish muleteers, who,
if not too tired, would like to take part in that fandango performed to
the music of the light guitar. Look a little to the left, and you behold
a quadrille-party, where a gentleman in black is pastorale-ing all the
chalk off the floor; and now turn your eyes just above these, and you
behold a joyful party of convivialists, with bottles in the ice-pail
and bumpers raised, most likely to the health of our gracious Queen, or
in honour of the Great Captain of the Age. And now, my little dears,
turn your eyes in a straight line to the right, and you will perceive
St. Peter's at Rome, beneath which are two young cardinals playing at
leap-frog, not at all frightened at the grand eruption of Mount Vesuvius
which is going on in the distance. From this you must take a leap on to
the camel's back, from which you will obtain a view of the party sitting
just below, which consists of the grand Sultan smoking desperately
against Ali Pacha. Now, look a little lower down, and you will see a
famous crocodile-catcher of the Nile, said to bear a striking resemblance
to Commodore Napier; and now, look upwards again to the farthest verge,
and you behold the great Pyramid, and a wild horseman chasing an ostrich
not so wild as himself. Now, the world goes round a little more, and
you see some vast mountains, together with the temples of Hindostan;
and upon the palm-tree you will find the monkeys pulling one another's
tails, being very uneducated and having nothing else to do: here, also,
you will discern the Indian jugglers, one throwing the balls, and another
swallowing the sword, a very common thing in these parts. And now, my
little dears, you can plainly see several very independent gentlemen
and loyal subjects standing on their heads in presence of the Emperor
of ever so many worlds, and the brother of the sun and moon; and behind
these, hiding the wall of China, you will see a quantity of steam, (for
they are in hot water there,) that issues from the tea-kettles. Leaving
his Celestial Majesty smoking his opium, and passing the junks, temples,
and pagodas, you see a Chinese joss upon his pedestal; and now you can
descend and join that pretty little tea-party, where you will recognise
some of your old acquaintances on tea-cups; only, if you are afraid of
the lion which you see a long way off, you can turn to the left, and
follow the tiger that is following the elephant like mad: and now, my
little dears, you can jump for safety into that palanquin carried by the
sable gentry, or perhaps you would join the party of Persians seated a
little lower, only they have but one dish and no plates to eat out of.
Just above this dinner-party you behold some live venison, or a little
antelope eating his grass for dinner while a boa-constrictor is creeping
up with the intention of dining upon him; so you had better make your
way to that giraffe, who is feeding upon the tops of trees, which habit
is supposed to have occasioned the peculiar shape of that remarkable
quadruped; and now you fall again in the way of that ramping lion, from
whose jaws a black is retreating only to encounter a black brother more
savage than the wild beast. And now, if your eye follows that gang of
slaves, chained neck to neck, who are being driven off to another part
of the world, you will see what treatment they are doomed to experience
there, in the flogging which is being administered to one of their
colour--that is to say, black as the vapour issuing from that mountain in
the distance; it is Chimborao, or Cotapaxi, I can't say exactly which,
but it shall be whichever you please, my pretty little dears. In the
smoke of it an eagle is carrying off a lamb--do you see?--Stop, let me
wipe the glasses!--Ah, yes, and now you can clearly behold a gentleman
of the United States smoking his cigar in his rocking-chair. A little
behind is another gentleman driving his sleigh, and in front you won't
fail to see an astonishing personage, who has just caught a cayman,
or American crocodile, which he is balancing on his walking-stick, on
purpose to amuse little boys and girls like you. At his side is the
celebrated runaway nigger represented by Mr. Mathews, who says, "Me no
likee confounded workee; me likee to sit in a sun, and play fiddle all
day." Over his head is a steam-vessel, and at his feet an Indian canoe;
towards it a volume of smoke is ascending from a fire, round which some
savages are dancing with feeling too horrible to think of. So instead of
stopping to dinner here, my little masters and misses, you would much
rather, I dare say, take pot-luck with that group of gipsies above, who
are going to regale upon a pair of boiled fowls, which I hope they came
honestly by. Talking of honesty, we start upwards to the race-course; and
now goes the world round again, until you get sight of a gentleman with a
stick in his hand, who has evidently a great stake in the race, and who
is so rejoiced at having won, that he is unconscious of what he is all
the while losing in the abstraction of his pocket-book. And now we are
in the midst of the fair, where we see the best booth, and merry doings
in the shape of a boxing-match; but as "music has charms," turn your
eyes and your ears too some little distance downwards in the direction
of the organ player and the tambourine, where you will find some jovial
drinkers, not far from the harp and violin of the quadrille-party. I
hope their music won't be drowned by the noise of that Indian, to the
left, beating the tom-tom, while the nautch-girls are dancing as if they
couldn't help it, all to amuse the mighty Emperor of all the Smokers and
Prince of Tobacco, who is seated, hookah in hand, in the centre of the
globe--where we must leave him to his enjoyment, tracing our way back
to the jovial drinking-party, where you will see Jack capering ashore,
and getting on perhaps a little too fast, while the donkey-boy above him
can't get on at all, and the fox-hunter, still higher up, seems to be
in danger of getting off--especially if his horse should happen to be
startled by his brother-sportsman's gun behind him. And now, my little
dears, the gun has brought us round again to the royal guards, where the
band is playing, in glorious style, God save the Queen! And thus ends,
where it began, my History of the World!
[Illustration: George Cruikshank]
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK'S OMNIBUS.
"MY PORTRAIT."
I respectfully beg leave to assure all to whom "My Portrait" shall
come, that I am not now moved to its publication, for the first time,
by any one of the ten thousand considerations that ordinarily influence
modest men in presenting their "counterfeit presentments" to the public
gaze. Mine would possibly never have appeared at all, but for the
opportunity thus afforded me of clearing up any mistakes that may have
been originated by a pen-and-ink sketch which recently appeared in a
publication entitled "Portraits of Public Characters."
The writer of that sketch was evidently animated by a spirit of
kindness, and to kindness I am always sensitively alive; but he has
been misinformed--he has represented me "as I am not," instead of "as I
am;" and although it is by no means necessary that I should offer "some
account of myself" in print, it is desirable that I should, without
fatiguing anybody, correct some half-dozen of the errors into which my
biographer has fallen.
A few words of extract, and a few more of comment, and my object, as the
moralist declares when he seeks to lure back _one_ sinner to the paths of
virtue, will be fully attained.
The sketch, which professes to be "my portrait," opens thus:--
(1.) "I believe Geo. Cruikshank dislikes the name of _artist_, as
being too common-place."
I have my dislikes; but it happens that they always extend to things,
and never settle upon mere names. He must be a simpleton indeed who
dislikes the name of artist when he is not ashamed of his art. It is
possible that I may once in my life, when "very young," have said that I
would rather carry a portmanteau than a portfolio through the streets;
and this, perhaps from a recollection of once bearing a copper-plate,
not sufficiently concealed from the eyes of an observant public, under
my arm, and provoking a salutation from a little ragged urchin, shouting
at the top of his voice, hand to mouth--"_There goes a copper plate
en-gra-_VER!" It is true, that as I walked on I experienced a sense of
the uncomfortableness of that species of publicity, and felt that the
eyes of Europe were very inconveniently directed to me; but I did not,
even in that moment of mortification, feel ashamed of my calling: I did
not "dislike the name of artist."
(2.) "When a very young man, it was doubtful whether the weakness
of his eyes would not prove a barrier to his success as an artist."
When a very young man, I was rather _short-sighted_, in more senses than
one; but weak eyes I never had. The blessing of a strong and healthy
vision has been mine from birth; and at any period of time since that
event took place, I have been able, even with one eye, to see very
clearly through a millstone, upon merely applying the single optic,
right or left, to the centrical orifice perforated therein. But for the
imputation of weakness in that particular, I never should have boasted
of my capital eye; especially (as an aged punster suggests) when I am
compelled to use the capital I so often in this article.
(3.) "The gallery in which George first studied his art, was,
if the statement of the author of 'Three Courses and a Dessert'
may be depended on, the tap-room of a low public-house, in the
dark, dirty, narrow lanes which branch off from one of the great
thoroughfares towards the Thames. And where could he have found a
more fitting place? where could he have met with more appropriate
characters?--for the house was frequented, to the exclusion
of everybody else, by Irish coal-heavers, hodmen, dustmen,
scavengers, and so forth!"
[Illustration]
I shall mention, _en passant_, that there are _no_ Irish coal-heavers:
I may mention, too, that the statement of the author adverted to is not
to be depended on; were he living, I should show why. And now to the
scene of my so-called "first studies." There was, in the neighbourhood
in which I resided, a low public-house; it has since degenerated into
a gin-palace. It was frequented by coal-heavers only, and it stood
in Wilderness-lane, (I like to be particular,) between Primrose-hill
and Dorset-street, Salisbury-square, Fleet-street. To this house of
inelegant resort, (the sign was startling, the "Lion in the Wood,")
which I regularly passed in my way to and from the Temple, my attention
was one night especially attracted, by the sounds of a fiddle, together
with other indications of festivity; when, glancing towards the tap-room
window, I could plainly discern a small bust of Shakspeare placed over
the chimney-piece, with a short pipe stuck in its mouth, thus--
This was not clothing the palpable and the familiar with golden
exhalations from the dawn, but it was reducing the glorious and immortal
beauty of Apollo himself to a level with the common-place and the vulgar.
Yet there was something not to be quarrelled with in the association
of ideas to which that object led. It struck me to be the perfection
of the human picturesque. It was a palpable meeting of the Sublime and
the Ridiculous; the world of Intellect and Poetry seemed thrown open to
the meanest capacity; extremes had met; the highest and the lowest had
united in harmonious fellowship. I thought of what the great poet had
himself been, of the parts that he had played, and the wonders he had
wrought, within a stone's-throw of that very spot; and feeling that even
he might have well wished to be there, the pleased spectator of that
lower world, it was impossible not to recognise the fitness of the pipe.
It was the only pipe that would have become the mouth of a poet in that
extraordinary scene; and without it, he himself would have wanted majesty
and the right to be present. I fancied that Sir Walter Raleigh might have
filled it for him. And _what_ a scene was that to preside over and to
contemplate[1]! What a picture of life was there! It was as though Death
were dead! It was _all_ life. In simpler words, I saw, on approaching
the window and peeping between the short red curtains, a swarm of jolly
coal-heavers! Coal-heavers all--save a few of the fairer and softer
sex--the wives of some of them--all enjoying the hour with an intensity
not to be disputed, and in a manner singularly characteristic of the
tastes and propensities of aristocratic and fashionable society;--that is
to say, they were "dancing and taking refreshments." They only did what
"their betters" were doing elsewhere. The living Shakspeare, had he been,
indeed, in the presence, would but have seen a common humanity working
out its objects, and have felt that the _omega_, though the last in the
alphabet, has an astonishing sympathy with the _alpha_ that stands first.
This incident, may I be permitted to say, led me to study the characters
of that particular class of society, and laid the foundation of scenes
afterwards published. The locality and the characters were different,
the spirit was the same. Was I, therefore, what the statement I have
quoted would lead anybody to infer I was, the companion of dustmen,
hodmen, coal-heavers, and scavengers? I leave out the "and so forth" as
superfluous. It would be just as fair to assume that Morland was the
companion of pigs, that Liston was the associate of louts and footmen, or
that Fielding lived in fraternal intimacy with Jonathan Wild.
(4.) "With Mr. Hone" (afterwards designated "the most noted
infidel of his day") "he had long been on terms not only of
intimacy, but of warm friendship."
A very select class of associates to be assigned to an inoffensive artist
by a friendly biographer; coal-heavers, hodmen, dustmen, and scavengers
for my companions, and the most noted infidel of his day for my intimate
friend! What Mr. Hone's religious creed may have been at that time, I am
far from being able to decide; I was too young to know more than that he
seemed deeply read in theological questions, and, although unsettled in
his opinions, always professed to be a Christian. I knew also that his
conduct was regulated by the strictest morality. He had been brought up
to detest the Church of Rome, and to look upon the "Church of England"
service as little better than popish ceremonies; and with this feeling,
he parodied some portions of the Church service for purposes of political
satire. But with these publications _I had nothing whatever to do_; and
the instant I heard of their appearance, I entreated him to withdraw
them. That I was his friend, is true; and it is true, also, that among
his friends were many persons, not more admired for their literary
genius, than esteemed for their zeal in behalf of religion and morals.
(5.) "Not only is George a decided liberal, but his liberalism has
with him all the authority of a moral law."
I have already said, that I never quarrel with names, but with things;
yet as so many and such opposite interpretations of the terms quoted are
afloat, and as some of them are not very intelligible, I wish explicitly
to enter my protest against every reading of the word "liberal," as
applicable to me, save that which I find attributed to it in an old and
seemingly forgotten dictionary--"Becoming a gentleman, generous, not
mean."
(6.) "Even on any terms his genius could not, for some time past,
be said to have been marketable, Mr. Bentley the bookseller having
contrived to monopolise his professional labours for publications
with which he is connected."
This assertion was to a certain extent true, while I was illustrating
Oliver Twist and Jack Sheppard, works to which I devoted my best
exertions; but so far from effecting a monopoly of my labours, the
publisher in question has not for a twelvemonth past had from me more
than a single plate for his monthly Miscellany; nor will he ever have
more than that single plate per month; nor shall I ever illustrate any
other work that he may publish.
(7.) "He sometimes sits at his window to see the patrons of
'Vite Condick Ouse' on their way to that well-known locality on
Sundays," &c.
As my "extraordinary memory" is afterwards defined to be "something
resembling a supernatural gift," it ought to enable me to recollect this
habit of mine; yet I should have deemed myself as innocent of such a
mode of spending the Sabbath as Sir Andrew Agnew himself, but for this
extraordinary discovery. I am said to have "the most vivid remembrance of
anything droll or ludicrous;" and yet I cannot remember sitting at the
window "on a Sunday" to survey the motley multitude strolling towards
"Vite Condick Ouse." I wish the invisible girl would sell me her secret.
(8.) "He is a very singular, and, in some respects, eccentric
man, considered, as what he himself would call, a 'social being.'
The ludicrous and extraordinary fancies with which his mind is
constantly teeming often impart a sort of wildness to his look,
and peculiarity to his manner, which would suffice to _frighten
from his presence_ those unacquainted with him. He is often so
uncourteous and abrupt in his manner as to incur the charge of
seeming rudeness."
[Illustration]
Though unaccustomed to spend the Sabbath day in the manner here
indicated, I have never yet been regarded as _Saint_ George; neither, on
the other hand, have I ever before been represented as the Dragon! Time
was, when the dove was not more gentle; but now I "frighten people from
my presence," and the isle from its propriety. The "Saracen's Head" is
all suavity and seductiveness compared to mine. Forty thousand knockers,
with all their quantity of fright, would not make up my sum. I enter
a drawing-room, it may be supposed, like one prepared to go the whole
griffin. Gorgons, and monsters, and chimeras dire, are concentrated by
multitudes in my person.
The aspect of Miss Jemima Jones, who is enchanting the assembled party
with "See the conquering hero comes," instantaneously assumes the
expression of a person singing "Monster, away." All London is Wantley,
and all Wantley is terror-stricken wherever I go. I am as uncourteous as
a gust of wind, as abrupt as a flash of lightning, and as rude as the
billows of the sea. But of all this, be it known that I am "unconscious."
This is acknowledged; "he is himself unconscious of this," which is true
to the very letter, and very sweet it is to light at last upon an entire
and perfect fact. But enjoying this happy unconsciousness--sharing it
moreover with my friends, why wake me from the delusion! Why excite my
imagination, and unstring my nerves, with visions of nursery-maids flying
before me in my suburban walks--of tender innocents in arms frightened
into fits at my approach, of five-bottle men turning pale in my presence,
of banquet-halls deserted on my entrance!
[Illustration]
(9.) "G. C. is the only man I know moving in a respectable sphere
of life who is a match for the under class of cabmen. He meets
them on their own ground, and fights them with their own weapons.
The moment they begin to swagger, to bluster, and abuse, he darts
a _look_ at them, which, in two cases out of three, has the effect
of reducing them to a tolerable state of civility; but if looks
do not produce the desired results--if the eyes do not operate
like oil thrown on the troubled waters, he talks to them in tones
which, aided as his words and lungs are by the fire and fury
darting from his eye, and the vehemence of his gesticulation,
silence poor Jehu effectually," &c.
Fact is told in fewer words than fiction. It so happens that I never had
a dispute with a cabman in my life, possibly because I never provoked
one. From me they are sure of a civil word; I generally open the door to
let myself in, and always to let myself out; nay, unless they are very
active indeed, I hand the money to them on the box, and shut the door
to save them the trouble of descending. "The greatest is behind"--_I
invariably pay them more than their fare_; and frequently, by the
exercise of a generous forgetfulness, make them a present of an umbrella,
pair of gloves, or a handkerchief. At times, I have gone so far as to
leave them a few sketches, as an inspection of the albums of their wives
and daughters (they _have_ their albums doubtless) would abundantly
testify.
(10.) "And yet he _can_ make himself exceedingly agreeable both
in conversation and manners when he is in the humour so to do. I
have met with persons who have been loaded with his civilities and
attention. I _know_ instances in which he has spent considerable
time in showing strangers everything curious in the house; he is
a collector of curiosities."
* * * * *
[Illustration]
No single symp---- I was about to say that no single symptom of a
curiosity, however insignificant, is visible in my dwelling, when by
audible tokens I was (or rather am) rendered sensible of the existence
of a _pair of bellows_. Well, in these it must be admitted that we
_do_ possess a curiosity. We call them "bellows," because, on a close
inspection, they appear to bear a much stronger resemblance to "bellows"
than to any other species of domestic implement; but what in reality
they are, the next annual meeting of the great Scientific Association
must determine; or the public may decide for themselves when admitted
hereafter to view the precious deposit in the British Museum. In the mean
time, I vainly essay to picture the unpicturable.
Eccentric, noseless, broken-winded, dilapidated, but immortal, these
bellows have been condemned to be burnt a thousand times at least; but
they are bellows of such an obstinate turn of mind that to destroy them
is impossible. No matter how imperative the order--how immediate the hour
of sacrifice, they are sure to escape. So much for old maxims; we may
"sing old Rose," but we cannot "burn the bellows." As often as a family
accident happens--such as the arrival of a new servant, or the sudden
necessity for rekindling an expiring fire, out come _the_ bellows, and
forth go into the most secret and silent corners of the house such sounds
of wheezing, squeaking, groaning, screaming, and sighing, as might be
heard in a louder, but not more intolerable key, beneath the roaring
fires of Etna. Then, rising above these mingled notes, issues the rapid
ringing of two bells at once, succeeded by a stern injunction to the
startled domestic "never on any account to use those bellows again," but,
on the contrary, to burn, eject, and destroy them without reservation
or remorse. One might as well issue orders to burn the east wind. A
magic more powerful even than womanly tenderness preserves them; and six
weeks afterwards forth rolls once more that world of wondrous noises.
Let no one imagine that I have really sketched the bellows, unless I had
sketched their multitudinous _voice_. What I have felt when drawing Punch
is, that it was easy to represent his eyes, his nose, his mouth; but that
the one essential was after all wanting--the _squeak_. The musician who
undertook to convey by a single sound a sense of the peculiar smell of
the shape of a drum, could alone picture to the _eye_ the howlings and
whisperings of the preternatural bellows. Now you hear a moaning as of
one put to the torture, and may detect both the motion of the engine and
the cracking of the joints; anon cometh a sound as of an old beldame
half inebriated, coughing and chuckling. A sigh as from the depths of
a woman's heart torn with love, or the "lover sighing like furnace,"
succeeds to this; and presently break out altogether--each separate
note of the straining pack struggling to be foremost--the yelping of a
cur, the bellowing of a schoolboy, the tones of a cracked flute played
by a learner, the grinding of notched knives, the slow ringing of a
muffled muffin-bell, the interrupted rush of water down a leaky pipe, the
motion of a pendulum that does not know its own mind, the creaking of a
prison-door, and the voice of one who crieth the last dying speech and
confession; together with fifty thousand similar sounds, each as pleasant
to the ear as "When am I to have the eighteen-pence" would be, to a man
who never had a shilling since the day he was breeched. The origin of
the bellows, I know not; but a suspicion has seized me that they might
have been employed in the Ark had there been a kitchen-fire there; and
they may have assisted in raising a flame under the first tea-kettle
put on to celebrate the laying of the first stone of the great wall of
China. They are ages upon ages older than the bellows of Simple Simon's
mother; and were they by him to be ripped open, they could not possibly
be deteriorated in quality. The bellows which yet bear the inscription,
"Who rides on these bellows?
The prince of good fellows,
Willy Shakspeare,"
are a thing of yesterday beside these, which look as if they had been
industriously exercised by some energetic Greek in fanning the earliest
flame of Troy. To descend to later days, they must have invigorated
the blaze at which Tobias Shandy lighted his undying pipe, and kindled
a generous blaze under that hashed mutton which has rendered Amelia
immortal. But "the days are gone when beauty bright" followed quick upon
the breath of the bellows: their effect at present is, to give the fire a
bad cold; they blow an influenza into the grate. Empires rise and fall,
and a century hence the bellows may be as good as new. Like puffing, they
will know no end.
(11.) And lastly--for the personality of this paragraph warns
me to conclude--"In person G. C. is about the middle height and
proportionably made. His complexion is something between _pale_
and _clear_; and his hair, which is tolerably ample, _partakes_
of a _lightish hue_. His face is of the angular form, and his
forehead has a _prominently receding_ shape."
As Hamlet said to the ghost, I'll go no further! The indefinite
complexion, and the hair "partaking" of an opposite hue to the real one,
may be borne; but I stand, not upon my head, but on my forehead! To a man
who has once passed the Rubicon in having dared to publish his portrait,
the exhibition of his mere profile can do no more injury than a petty
larceny would after the perpetration of a highway robbery. But why be
tempted to show, by an outline, that my forehead is innocent of a shape
(the "prominently receding" one) that never yet was visible in nature or
in art? Let it pass, till it can be explained.
"He delights in a handsome pair of whiskers." Nero had one flower flung
upon his tomb. "He has somewhat of a dandified appearance." Flowers soon
fade, and are cut down; and this is the "unkindest cut of all." I who,
humbly co-operating with the press, have helped to give permanence to the
name of dandy--I who have all my life been breaking butterflies upon
wheels in warring against dandyism and dandies--am at last discovered to
be "somewhat" of a dandy myself.
"Come Antony, and young Octavius, come!
Revenge yourselves--"
as you may;--but, dandies all, I have not done with you yet. To resume.
"He used to be exceedingly partial to Hessian boots." I confess to
the boots; but it was when they were worn even by men who walked on
loggats. I had legs. Besides, I was very young, and merely put on my
boots to _follow_ the fashion. "His age, if his looks be not deceptive,
is _somewhere between_ forty-three and forty-five." A very obscure
and elaborated mode of insinuating that I am forty-_four_. "Somewhere
between!" The truth is--though nothing but extreme provocation should
induce me to proclaim even truth when age is concerned,--that I
am "somewhere between" twenty-seven and sixty-three, or I may say
sixty-four;--but I hate exaggeration.
_Exit_, G. CK.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 1: An exact representation of it will embellish a future
"Omnibus."]
MY LAST PAIR OF HESSIAN BOOTS.
"Ah! sure a pair was never seen
So justly formed--"
[Illustration]
Hoby would say, that as "all are not men who bear the human form," so
all are not boots that bear the pedal shape. All boots, for example,
are not Hessians; nor are all Hessians like my last pair. Mathews used
to tell a story of some French Hoby, who, having with incredible genius
constructed a pair of boots, which Tom Thumb when a little boy could
no more have got on than Cinderella's sister could the magic slipper,
refused to part with them for any sum of money--he had "made them in
a moment of enthusiasm." Myriads of such moments were consumed in the
construction of my last pair. The boots published by Mr. Warren in
magazines and country newspapers, exhibiting the grinning portrait of a
gentleman in the interesting act of shaving, or a cat bristling up and
outwondering Katerfelto, were vulgar in form, and dull of polish, beside
mine Hessians. Pleasant it was, just as I was budding into life, to draw
them on, and sit with one knee crossing the other, to contemplate my
favourite leg. I used to wish myself a centipede, to wear fifty pairs of
Hessians at a time.
To say that the boots "fitted like gloves" would be to pay the most
felicitous pair of white kids a compliment. They had just as many natural
wrinkles as they ought to have; and for the tassels--we have all seen
the dandies of that day take out a comb, and comb the tassels of their
fire-bucket-looking boots as often as they got into disorder; but mine
needed no aid from such trickery and finessing.
I had strolled forth at the decline of a day in spring, and had
afterwards dined at Long's--my boots and I. They had evidently been the
admiration of every observer. I was entirely satisfied with _them_,
and consequently with myself. Returned home, a pair of slippers was
substituted for them, and with my feet on the fender and the vapour of a
cigar enwrapping me like a dressing-gown, I sat contemplating "my boots."
Thought reverted to the fortunes of my Lord Marquis of Carabas, and I
saw in my Hessians a brighter destiny than Puss in hers won for him. I
thought too of the seven-leagued boots of my ancient friends the Ogres,
and felt that I could take Old and New Bond Streets at a step.
That night those boots melted into thin air. There was "nothing like
leather" visible there in the morning. My golden vision had vanished as
suddenly as Alnaschar's--only his perished amidst the crash and clatter
of a basket of crockery kicked into the clouds; mine had stolen away in
solemn silence. Not a creak was heard, yet the Hessians were gone.
It was the remark of my housekeeper that boots could not go without
hands. Such boots I thought might possibly have walked off by themselves.
But when it was discovered that a window-shutter had been forced open,
and sundry valuables carried away, it was plain that some conceited and
ambitious burglar had eloped with my boots. The suspicion was confirmed
by the detection of a pair of shoes conscientiously left behind, on the
principle that exchange is no robbery. Ugh!--such shoes. Well might I
declare that nothing like leather was visible. What odious feet had been
thrust into my desecrated Hessians! I put my legs into mourning for their
loss; and, convinced that I should never procure such another pair, sank
from that moment into mere Wellingtons.
It was not long after this, that, seated in a coffee-room in Piccadilly,
my attention was drawn to the indolent and comfortable attitude of a
person, who, with his legs stretched conspicuously along the cushioned
bench, was reading a newspaper. How it was I can hardly tell; but my eye
was irresistibly attracted to his boots, just as Othello's was to the
handkerchief bound round the wounded limb of Cassio. He seemed to be
proud of them; they were ostentatiously elevated into view. The boots
were Hessians. Though not now worn in their very "newest gloss," they
were yet in excellent, I may say in enviable condition. My anxious glance
not only wandered over their polished surface, but seemed to penetrate to
their rich bright linings, the colour whereof was now no more a secret to
me than were those silken tassels that dangled to delight the beholder. I
knew _my_ boots again. The wearer, having the newspaper spread before his
face, could not notice any observation directed to his lower extremities;
my opportunity of inspection therefore was complete. They _were_ my
Hessians. My first impulse was to ring the bell for a boot-jack, and
claim them upon the spot; but before I could do so the stranger suddenly
sprang upon his feet, seized his hat, and with one complacent glance at
those tasselled habiliments, which were far from having lost all their
"original brightness," swaggered out of the coffee-room.
Curiosity prompted me to follow--I caught a glimpse of the bright backs
of my boots as they flashed round the corner of a neighbouring street.
Pursuing them, I surveyed the wearer; and now perceived that not even
those incomparable Hessians could transform a satyr into Hyperion, or
convert a vulgar strut into the walk of a gentleman. Those boots were
never made for such limbs--never meant to be "sported" after so villanous
a fashion. You could see that his calves were indifferently padded,
and might have sworn the swaggerer was a swell blackleg--one of the
shabby-genteel, and visibly-broken-down class. Accordingly, after a turn
or two, it was anything but surprising to see him squeeze himself into a
narrow passage over the door of which was written the word "Billiards."
I heard my boots tramping up the dingy staircase to which the passage
led--and my feet, as though from sympathy, and what the philosopher calls
the "eternal fitness of things," were moving after them--when the "_cui
bono?_" forcibly occurred to my mind! If I should demand my Hessians,
was there a probability of obtaining them? and if I should obtain them,
was there a possibility of my ever wearing them again? Could I think of
treading in the boots of a blackleg, albeit they never were his own? No,
I gave them up to the profanation which was their destiny. I called up
Hamlet's reflection on the vile uses to which we may return; and as for
the gambler, who in once virtuous boots threaded the paths of vice and
depravity, I kicked him--"with my mind's toe, Horatio"--and passed on.
Shakspeare, in one of the most touching and beautiful of his sonnets,
tells us how he bemoaned his outcast state,
"And troubled deaf heaven with his bootless cries;"
but with no such cries of mine is the reader doomed to be troubled.
Indeed, when I parted from my Hessians on the occasion referred to, I
never dreamed of mentioning them more. I had heard, as it seemed, their
last creak. Not only were they out of sight, but out of mind. It appeared
just as likely that I should ever again be excited on their account, as
that I should hang them up à-la-General-Bombastes, and make war upon
their adventurous displacer. Yet it was not three months after the event
recorded, that in the city, in broad-daylight, my hat was all but lifted
off by the sudden insurrection of my hair, on recognising my boots again.
Yes, the very boots that once were mine, "_et nullus error!_" or, as
we say in English, "and no mistake!" As easily to be identified were
they as the freckled, wrinkled, shrunken features of a beloved friend,
parted from in plump youth. I knew my boots, if I may so say, by their
_expression_. Altered as they were, to me were they the same:--"alike,
but oh! how different."
"The light of other days had faded."
It could not be said of either Hessian, that it figured on a "leg" this
time. The wearer was evidently a collector in the "cast-off" line--had
been respectable, and was still bent on keeping up appearances. This was
plainly indicated by the _one_ tassel which the pair of boots yet boasted
between them--a brown-looking remnant of grandeur, and yet a lively
compromise with decay. The poor things were sadly distorted; the heels
were hanging over, illustrating the downward tendency of the possessor;
and there was a _leetle_ crack visible at the side. They were Dayless and
Martinless--dull as a juryman--worn out like a cross-examined witness.
They would take water like a teetotaller. There was scarcely a kick left
in them. They were in a decline of the galloping sort; and appeared just
capable of lasting out until an omnibus came by. A walk of a mile would
have ensured emancipation to more than one of the toes that inhabited
them.
My once "lovely companions" were faded, but not gone. It was my fortune
to meet them again soon afterwards, still further eastward. The
recognition, as before, was unavoidable. They were _the_ boots, but
"translated" out of themselves; another pair, yet the same. The heels
were handsomely cobbled up with clinking iron tips, and a worsted tassel
of larger dimensions had been supplied to match the remaining silk one.
The boots thus regenerated rendered a rather equivocal symmetry to the
legs of an attorney's clerk, whose life was spent in endless errands
with copies of writs to serve, and in figuring at "free-and-easys"
and spouting-clubs. They were well able to bear him on his daily and
nightly rounds, for the new soles were thicker than any client's head
in Christendom. This change led me naturally enough into some profound
speculations upon "wear and tear," and much philosophical musing on the
absorption and disappearance of soles and heels after a given quantity
of perambulation. But while I was wondering into what substances and
what shapes the old leather might be passing, and also how much of my
own original self (for we all become other people in time) might yet
be remaining unto me, I lost sight for ever of the lawyer's clerk,
but not of my boots--for I suspect he effected some legal transfer of
them to a client who was soon as legally transferred to the prison in
Whitecross-street; since, passing that debtors' paradise soon after,
I saw the identical boots (the once pale blue lining was now of _no_
colour) carried out by an aged dame, who immediately bent her steps,
like one well acquainted with the way, towards "mine uncle's" in the
neighbourhood.
Hessians that can escape from a prison may work their way out of a
pawnbroker's custody; and my Hessians had something of the quality of
the renowned slippers of Bagdad,--go where they might, they were sure to
meet the eye of their original owner. The next time I saw the boots, they
were on the foot-board of a hackney-coach; yea, on the very feet of the
Jarvey. But what a falling-off! translation was no longer the word. They
had suffered what the poet calls a sea-change. The tops were cut round;
the beautiful curve, the tassels, all had vanished. One boot had a patch
on one side only; the other, on both. I thought of the exclamation of
Edmund Burke,--"The glory of Europe is extinguished for ever!" Instinct
told me they were _the_ boots; but--
"The very Hoby who them made,
Beholding them so sore decay'd,
He had not known his work."
I hired the coach, and rode behind my own boots: the speculative fit
again seized me. I recollected how
"All that's bright must fade,"
and "moralized the spectacle" before me. How many had I read of--nay seen
and known--who had started in life like my boots,--bright, unwrinkled,
symmetrical,--and who had sunk by sure degrees, by wanderings farther and
farther among the puddles and kennels of society, even into the same
extremity of unsightly and incurable distortion.
----"Not Warren, nor Day and Martin,
Nor all the patent liquids o' the earth,
Shall ever brighten them with that jet black
They owed in former days."
My very right to my own property had vanished. They had ceased to be
_my_ boots; they were ceasing to be _boots_. They cost me something
nevertheless; for having in my perturbation merely told the driver to
"drive on," he took me to Bayswater instead of Covent-garden; and, as the
price of my abstraction, abstracted seven-and-six-pence as his fare.
From a hackney-coachman they seem to have descended to the driver of what
had once been a donkey; to one who cried "fine mellow pears," "green ripe
gooseberries," and other hard and sour assistants in the destruction of
the human race. This I discovered one day by seeing "my boots" dragged to
a police-office (their owner in them), where indeed one of the pair--if
pair they might still be called--figured as a credible witness; it having
been employed as a weapon, held by the solitary strap that yet adhered to
it, for inflicting due punishment on the head of its master's landlord,
a ruffian who had had the brutal inhumanity to tap at the door of an
innocent tenant, and ask for his rent.
It is probable that in this skirmish they sustained some damage, and
required "renovation" once more; for I subsequently saw them at one of
those "cobbler's-stalls" which are fast disappearing (the stall becoming
a shop, and the shop an emporium), with an intimation in chalk upon
the soles--"to be sold." Of the original Hessians nothing remained but
a portion of the leggings. They had been soled and re-soled; the old
patches had disappeared; and there was now a patch upon the new fronts
which they had acquired. Having had them _from_ the last, _to_ the last
I resolved to track them; and now found them in the possession of a
good ancient watchman of the good ancient time in Fleet-street, from
whose feet, however, they were one night treacherously stolen as he sat
quietly slumbering in his box. The boots wandered once more into vicious
paths, having become the property of a begging-letter impostor of that
day, in whose company they were seen to stagger out of a gin-shop--then
to run away with their tenant--to bear him, all unconscious of kennels,
on both sides of the road, faster than lamplighter or postman can
travel--and finally to trip him up against the machine of a "needy
knifegrinder" (his nose coming into collision with the revolving stone),
who, compassionating the naked feet of his seemingly penniless and sober
fellow-lodger, had that very morning presented him with part of a pair of
boots, as being better than no shoe-leather. This fragmentary donation
was the sad remnant of my Hessians--the "last remains of princely York."
When we give a pair of old boots to the poor, how little do we consider
into what disgusting nooks and hideous recesses they may carry their
new owner! Let no one shut up the coffers of his heart, or check even
momentarily the noble impulse of charity; but it is curious to note what
purposes a bashful maiden's left-off finery may be made to serve on the
stage of a show at Greenwich fair; how an honest matron's muff, passed
into other hands, may be implicated in a case of shop-lifting; how the
hat of a great statesman may come to be handed round to ragamuffins for
a collection of half-pence for the itinerant conjuror; or how the satin
slippers of a countess may be sandalled on the aching feet of a girl
whose youth is one weary and wretched caper upon stilts!
"My Hessians"--neither mine, nor Hessians, now--were on their last
legs. Theirs had not been "a beauty for ever unchangingly bright." They
had experienced their decline; their fall was nigh. Their earliest
patchings suggested, as a similitude, the idea of a Grecian temple, whose
broken columns are repaired with brick; the brick preponderates as ruin
prevails, until at length the original structure is no more. The boots
became one patch! Such were they on that winter-morn, when a ruddy-faced
"translator" sat at his low door, on a low stool, the boots on his lap
undergoing examination. After due inspection, his estimate of their value
was expressed by his adopting the expedient of Orator Henley; that is to
say, by cutting the legs off, and reducing what remained of their pride
to the insignificance of a pair of shoes; which, sold in that character
to a match-vender, degenerated after a few weeks into slippers. _Sic
transit_, &c.
Of the appropriation of the amputated portion no very accurate account
can be rendered. Fragments of the once soft and glossy leather furnished
patches for dilapidated goloshes; a pair or two of gaiter-straps were
extricated from the ruins; and the "translator's" little boy manufactured
from the remains a "sucker," of such marvellous efficacy that his father
could never afterwards keep a lapstone in the stall.
As for the slippers, improperly so called, they pinched divers corns,
and pressed various bunions in their day, as the boots, their great
progenitors, had done before them, sliding, shuffling, shambling, and
dragging their slow length along; until in the ripeness of time, they,
with other antiquities, were carried to Cutler-street, and sold to a
venerable Jewess. She, with knife keen as Shylock's, ripped off the
soles--all besides was valueless even to her--and, not without some pomp
and ceremony, laid them out for sale on a board placed upon a crippled
chair. Yes, for sale; and to that market for soles there soon chanced to
repair an elderly son of poverty; who, having many little feet running
about at home made shoes for them himself. The soles became his; and
thus of the apocryphal remains of my veritable Hessians, was there just
sufficient leather left to interpose between the tender feet of a child,
and the hard earth, his mother!
[Illustration]
ON A WICKED SHOEMAKER.
You say he has sprung from Cain;--rather
Confess there's a difference vast:
For Cain was a son of the _first_ father
While he is "a son of the last."
[Illustration]
LOVE SEEKING A LODGING.
At Leila's heart, from day to day,
Love, boy-like, knock'd, and ran away;
But Love grown older, seeking then
"Lodgings for single gentlemen,"
Return'd unto his former ground,
And knock'd, but no admittance found--
With his rat, tat, tat.
His false alarms remember'd still.
Love, now in earnest, fared but ill;
For Leila in her heart could swear,
As still he knock'd, "There's no one there."
A single god, he then essay'd
With single knocks to lure the maid--
With his single knock.
Each passer-by, who watch'd the wight,
Cried "Love, you won't lodge there to-night!"
And love, while listening, half confess'd
That all was dead in Leila's breast.
Yet, lest that light heart only slept,
Bold Love up to the casement crept--
With his tip, tap, tap.
No answer;--"Well," cried Love, "I'll wait,
And keep off Envy, Fear, and Hate;
No other passion there shall dwell,
If I'm shut out--why, here's a bell!"
He rang; the ring made Leila start,
And Love found lodgings in her heart--
With his magic ring.
L. B.
[Illustration: Designed Etched & Published by George Cruikshank May 1st
1841.]
FRANK HEARTWELL; OR FIFTY YEARS AGO.
BY BOWMAN TILLER.
CHAPTER I.
It was about half a century ago in the closing twilight of an autumnal
evening at that period of the season when the falling of the sear and
yellow leaves indicated the near approach of winter, that a lady was
seated at work in one of those comfortable parlours which, as far as
the memory of living man can go back, were at all times considered
essential to an Englishman's ideas of enjoyment, and which certainly
were not and are not to be found, approaching to the same degree of
commodious perfection, in any other part of the world. By her side sat
a beautiful boy some seven or eight years of age, whose dark glossy
ringlets hung clustering down his shoulders over the broad and open
white cambric collar of his shirt. His full and fair face bore the
ripened bloom of ruddy health, and his large blue eyes, even though a
child, were strongly expressive of tenderness and love. The lady herself
was fair to look upon, possessing a placid cast of countenance which,
whilst it invited esteem and confidence, calmly repelled impertinence
or disrespect; her eyes, like those of her son, were mild and full, and
meltingly blue, and through the shades of long dark lashes discoursed
most eloquently the language of affectionate solicitude and fond regard;
and it was impossible to look upon them, or be looked upon by them,
without experiencing a glow of pleasure, warming and nourishing all the
better feelings and purposes of the heart. In age she was twenty-six, but
matronly anxiety gave her the appearance of being some two or three years
older; her figure was faultless, and the tight sleeve of her gown fitting
closely to her arm, and confined with a bracelet of black velvet at the
wrist, displayed the form of a finely moulded limb; and the painter or
the sculptor would have been proud to copy from so admirable a model.
The floor of the room was covered with a soft Turkey carpet, which,
though somewhat faded, still retained in many parts its richness of
colours. The panelled walls were of oak that had endured for more than
one generation; and though time had thrown his darkened shadows over
them, as if to claim them for his own, art had been called in aid, if not
to defeat his claims, yet to turn them to advantage; for the blackened
wood was polished to a mirror-like brightness, and instead of dispensing
gloom, its reflections were light and cheerful. Suspended in the upper
compartments and surrounded with oval frames, tastefully carved and gilt,
were well executed portraits by the celebrated masters of those and
earlier days.
Between the two windows, where the whole of the light was thrown upon
the person, hung suspended a pier looking-glass in a well-carved
mahogany frame surrounded by the plume of the Prince of Wales, bearing
the appropriate motto for the reflecting tablet itself, "Ich Dien;" and
at the corners, in open work, were cut full-ripe ears of corn in their
golden glory, sheaved together with true-love knots.
In one angle of the room stood a lofty circular dumb-waiter, its planes
decreasing as they rose in altitude and bearing a display of wine-glasses
with those long white tortuous spiral columns, which, like the screw of
Archimedes, has puzzled older heads than those of childhood to account
for the everlasting turns. There were, also, massive articles of plate
of various periods, from the heavy spoons with the sainted apostles
effigied at the extremity of the handles, to the silver filigree wrought
sugar-stand, with its basin of blue enamelled glass. There were also
numerous figures of ancient China, more remarkable for their fantastic
shapes than either for ornament or for use.
The tables were of dark mahogany, the side slabs curiously deviced, and
the legs assuming something of an animal form with the spreading paw
of the lion or the tiger on each foot. One table, however, that was
carefully placed so as to be remote from danger, had a raised open-work,
about two inches in height, round the edges of its surface, to protect
and preserve the handsome and much-prized tea-service, which had been
brought by a seafaring ancestor as a present from the "Celestial Empire."
A commodious, soft-cushioned, chintz-covered sofa occupied one side
of the parlour, and the various spaces were filled with broad and
high-backed mahogany chairs, whose capacious seats were admirable
representatives of composure and ease. But there was one with
wide-spreading arms, that seemed to invite the weary to its embrace; it
was stuffed with soft material, and covered entirely with thick yellow
taffeta, on which many an hour of laborious toil had been expended to
produce in needle-work imitations of rich fruit and gorgeous flowers;
it was a relic of antiquity, and the busy fingers that had so skilfully
plied the task had long since yielded to mouldering decay.
The fire-place was capacious, and its inner sides were faced with
earthenware tiles, on which were represented scenes and sketches taken
from scripture history. It is true that some of the delineations bore
a rather incongruous character: the serpent erecting itself on the tip
of its tail to beguile Eve; the apple, whose comparative dimensions
was calculated to set the mouth of many a schoolboy watering; and not
unfrequently a mingling of the Selectæ e Profanis amongst the groups
caused curious speculations in the youthful mind. But who can call
to recollection the many evening lectures which this constant fund
of instruction and amusement afforded, without associating them with
pleasing remembrances of innocence and peace?
The fire-grate was large, and of the old-fashioned kind, somewhat of a
basket-like form, small at the bottom, but spreading out into wider range
as its side boundaries ascended.
Lighted tapers were on the table, together with a lady's work-box, and
the small, half-rigged model of a vessel, which the boy had laid down
that he might peruse the history and voyages of Philip Quarll, and now,
sitting by his mother's knee, he was putting questions to her relative to
the sagacious monkeys who were stated to have been poor Philip's personal
attendants and only friends.
Emily Heartwell was, in every sense of the term, the "beloved" wife of a
lieutenant in the British royal navy, who had bravely served with great
credit to himself and advantage to the honour of his country's flag;
but unfortunately becoming mixed up with the angry dissensions that had
arisen amongst political partisans through the trial of Admiral Keppel
by court-martial, he remained for some length of time unemployed, but
recently, through the influence and intervention of his former commander
and patron, Sir George (afterwards Lord) Rodney, he had received an
appointment to a ship-of-the-line that was then fitting out to join that
gallant admiral in the West Indies.
The father of Lieutenant Heartwell had risen from humble obscurity to the
command of a West Indiaman; and his son having almost from his childhood
accompanied him in his voyages, the lad had become early initiated in
the perils and mysteries of a seaman's life, so that on parting with
his parent he was perfectly proficient in all the important duties that
enable the mariner to counteract the raging of the elements, and to
navigate his ship in safety from port to port. What became of the father
was never accurately known. He was bound to Jamaica with a valuable cargo
of home manufactures; he was spoken off the Canaries, and reported all
well; but from that day no tidings of him had been heard, and it was
supposed that the ship had foundered at sea, and all hands perished.
By some fortuitous circumstance, young Heartwell had been brought under
the especial notice of the intrepid Rodney, who not only placed him on
the quarter-deck of his own ship, but also generously patronised and
maintained him through his probationary term, and at its close, though
involved in difficulties himself, first procured him a lieutenant's
commission, and then presented him with a handsome outfit, cautioning him
most seriously, as he was a good-looking fellow, not to get entangled by
marriage, at least, till he had attained post-rank, or was regularly laid
up with the gout, when he was perfectly at liberty to take unto himself
a wife.
But the lieutenant had a pure, unsophisticated mind, sensibly alive to
all the blandishments of female beauty, but with discretion to avoid that
which he considered meretricious, and to prize loveliness of feature only
when combined with principles of virtue rooted in the heart. Ardently
attached to social life, it can excite but little wonder that on mature
acquaintance with the lady who now bore his name, he had forgotten the
injunction of his commander; and, being possessed of a little property,
the produce of well-earned prize-money, he offered himself to the
acceptance of one who appeared to realise his most fervent expectations;
and, when it is considered that to a remarkably handsome person the young
lieutenant united some of the best qualities of human nature, my fair
readers will at once find a ready reason for his suit not being rejected.
In short, they were married. The father of Mrs. Heartwell, a pious
clergyman, performed the ceremony, and certainly in no instance could
there have been found two persons possessing a stronger attachment, based
on mutual respect and esteem.
An uncle, the brother of the lieutenant's father had, when a boy, gone
out to the East Indies, but he kept up very little communication with
his family, and they had for some time lost sight of him altogether,
when news arrived of his having prospered greatly, and the supposition
was that he had amassed a considerable fortune. As this intelligence,
however, was indirect, but little credit was given to it, and it probably
would have passed away from remembrance, or at least been but little
thought of, had not letters arrived announcing the uncle's death, and
that no will could be discovered.
The lieutenant, as the only surviving heir, was urged to put in his
claim; and, though he himself was not very sanguine in his expectations
that his uncle had realised a large fortune, yet it gratified him to
think that there might be sufficient to assist in securing a respectable
and comfortable maintenance for his wife and child during his absence.
From an earnest desire to surprise Mrs. Heartwell with the pleasing
intelligence, he had for the first time since their union refrained
from informing her of his proceedings; and on the afternoon of the day
on which our narrative opens, he had appointed to meet certain parties
connected with the affair at the office of Mr. Jocelyn Brady, a reputed
clever solicitor in Lincoln's Inn, when the whole was to be finally
arranged, and the deeds and papers placed in his possession in the
presence of witnesses.
Cherishing not only the hope, but also enjoying the conviction, that
in a short time he should be able to gladden her heart, the lieutenant
imprinted a warm and affectionate kiss on the lips of his wife, and
pressing his boy in his arms with more than his usual gaiety, he bade
them farewell for a few hours, promising at his return to communicate
something that would delight and astonish them.
But, notwithstanding the hilarity of her husband, an unaccountable
depression weighed heavily on the usually cheerful spirits of Mrs.
Heartwell; and, whilst returning the embrace of her husband, a
presentiment of distress, though she knew not of what nature or kind,
filled her bosom with alarm; and a heavy sigh--almost a groan--burst
forth before she had time to exercise consciousness, or to muster
sufficient energy to restrain it. The prospect of, and the near approach
to, the hour of their separation, had certainly oppressed her mind,
but she would not distress her husband by openly yielding to the
manifestation of grief that might render their parting more keenly
painful. She had vigorously exerted all her fortitude to bear up against
the anticipated trial which awaited her, of bidding a long adieu to the
husband of her affections and the father of her child; but the pressure
which now inflicted agony was of a different character to what she had
hitherto experienced. It was a foreboding of calamity as near at hand, an
undefined and undefinable sensation, producing faintness of spirit and
sickness of heart; her limbs trembled, her breath faltered, and she laid
her head upon his shoulder and burst into convulsive sobbings, that shook
her frame with violent agitation.
I am no casuist to resolve doubtful cases, but I would ask many
thousands who have to struggle with the anxious cares, the numerous
disappointments, and all the various difficulties that beset existence,
whether they have not had similar distressing visitations, previous to
the arrival of some unforeseen calamity. What is it, then, that thus
operates on the faculties to produce these symptoms? It cannot be a
mere affection of the nervous system, caused by alarming apprehensions
of the future, for, in most instances, nothing specific has been known
or decided. May it not, therefore, be looked upon as a wise and kind
ordination of providence, to prepare the mind for disastrous events that
are to follow?
The lieutenant raised the drooping head of his wife, earnestly gazed on
her expressive countenance, kissed away her tears, and then exclaimed,
"How is this, Emily? what! giving way to the indulgence of sorrow
at a moment when prosperity is again extending the right hand of
good-fellowship? We have experienced adverse gales, my love, but we have
safely weathered them; and now that we have the promise of favourable
breezes and smooth sailing, the prospect of renewed joy should gladden
your heart."
"But are you not soon to leave me, Frank?" returned Mrs. Heartwell, as
she strove to subdue the feelings which agitated her, "and who have I now
in the wide world but you?"
The lieutenant fervently and fondly pressed her to his heart, whilst
with a mingled look of gentle reproach and ardent affection he laid his
disengaged hand on the head of his boy, who raising his tear-suffused
eyes to the countenance of his mother, as he endeavoured to smile,
uttered, "Do not be afraid mama, I will protect you till papa comes back!"
The silent appeal of her husband and the language of her child promptly
recalled the wife and the parent to a sense of her marital and
maternal duties--she instantly assumed a degree of cheerfulness; and
the lieutenant engaging to be home as early as practicable, took his
departure to visit his professional adviser.
The only male attendant (and he was looked upon more in the character of
a humble friend than as a servant) on the lieutenant's establishment was
an attached and faithful seaman, of some five-and-thirty years of age,
who had undeviatingly adhered to the fortunes of his officer from the
first moment of his entering into the naval service. He had served under
Rodney from boyhood, first in the Prince George ninety-eight--then in
the Dublin seventy-four; and, subsequently, when the admiral hoisted his
flag, he accompanied him in his career of glory, and was present in those
memorable engagements which ultimately raised the British ensign to its
proud supremacy on the ocean.
Possessed of a lively and contented turn of mind, Ben Brailsford was
always cheerful and gay--his temper and his disposition coincided--there
was, at all times, a pleasant smile upon his cheek and a kind word upon
his tongue, and, in point of fact, his only faults were an occasional
indulgence to excess in his favourite beverage--grog, and his still
more excessive loquacity when spinning a tough yarn about his favourite
commander, Rodney, though it not unfrequently happened that one helped on
the other.
I have already remarked that young Frank--for he was named after his
father--was by his mother's side, and questioning her upon the subject of
Philip Quarll's monkeys--but though desirous of imparting instruction to
her son, yet her spirit was too much bowed down even to attend to him;
besides, this was a matter of natural history with which she was but
little acquainted, and, therefore, he was referred to honest Ben, as the
best authority to answer his inquiries. Ben was accordingly summoned,
and smoothing down his hair over his forehead with his hard horny hand
as he entered the room, he "hoped as madam was well and master Frank all
ship-shape."
"I am thinking of your master's departure, Ben," returned the lady, "and
therefore cannot be very easy in my mind, when I consider the risks to
which he will be exposed on the turbulent ocean, both in the storm and in
the battle."
"Bless you, my lady," returned the seaman, "what's the vally of a bit
of a breeze, where there's skill and judgment to read the face of the
heavens, and good practical seamanship to ease her with the helm, when
the wild seas break over us--and as for a fight, why its pretty sharp
work whilst it lasts, but when it's over and the grog abroach--not, my
lady, as I ever gives way to more than does me good--but as I was a
saying, when the action's ended and the grog sarved out"--and here he
cast his eyes towards a well-replenished liquor-case that stood in the
corner, and from which he had often been supplied--"why we shares it
along with our prisoners, and drinks to the mortal memory of them as is
gone."
"But it must be a dreadful spectacle, Ben, to witness the dead and the
dying mingled together," said the lady, with a shudder, "the slain and
the wounded in one promiscuous heap."
"Bless you, my lady, that comes o' not knowing the jometry of the thing,"
returned Brailsford, in a tone and expression that evidenced experience;
"they aren't by no manner o' means in one permiskus heap, for as soon
as we find an onfortinate shipmate has let go the life-lines--and its
easy diskivered by pressing the hand over the heart and feeling for the
pallypitation--just for all the world Master Frank, as you'd listen for
the ticking of a watch in a noisy place--and if so be as you don't find
that there's not never no wibration, but all is motionless, from the
main-spring having been carried away, so that the wheels have run down,
why we knows well enough that the doctor's knife and all his medicine
chest wouldn't get him to lend a hand to run out another gun, or rouse
aboard the main-tack--so we launches him out at the port as expended
stores, and we turns-to with a hearty good will to avenge his death."
"But do they serve the officers so?" inquired Mrs. Heartwell, whose
cheeks had become blanched during the plain recital of the seaman;
"surely there is some funeral ceremony, some--" and she paused.
"Bless you, my lady, what's the odds so as you're happy," responded Ben,
scratching his head, whilst a good-humoured smile mantled over his face;
"but the real truth of the thing is, that the officers being a sort of
privileged class, expect a cast of the chaplin's _wadee mecum_--that's
the parson's Latin for prayer-book, Master Frank; but to my thinking a
poor dev--that is, I means an onfortinate as sticks his spoon in the
beckets for a full-due and loses the number of his mess, whilst sarving
his country heart and soul--has rubbed out a multitude of sins whilst
sponging his gun in the regard of dooty."
"I dearly love my country, Ben; I should be unworthy the name of
Englishwoman if I did not," returned the lady with fervour, as in the
course of conversation she endeavoured to overcome her depression; "but
why fight at all?"
This query to one of Rodney's tars would have been quite sufficient,
had the law been administered then as it is in the present day, to have
subjected the questioner to a commission of lunacy; and Ben gave his
mistress an earnest look, shading his eyes with his hand that he might
not be deceived by the glare of the lights. At first he thought she was
in joke, but finding from the unchangeableness of her countenance that
she was serious, he replied--
"Well, my lady, in regard o' the upshot of fighting, it isn't for an
onedecated tar like myself to dilute upon the religion of the thing; but,
bless you, my lady, suppose as you had the English ensign hoisted on the
staff, or, for the matter o' that, at the gaff-end, and an enemy was to
dare to presume to be so onveterate bould as to fire a shot at it;" he
warmed as he proceeded, "why wouldn't you, my lady, open your ports and
run out your guns for the honour of ould England's glory? And when your
guns are run out, why what's the use on 'em if you don't clap a match to
the touch-holes and pour in a reg'lar broadside?"
"Oh, it must be horrible work, Ben," said Mrs. Heartwell, as the picture
of her husband, mangled and dying, was visibly presented to her view;
"you throw the supposed dead overboard without being certain that life is
extinct--"
"Avast, my lady, avast; we never does that--no, no; a shipmate or a
messmate aren't so easily expended," returned Ben, with a solemn shake
of the head. "But there's a sort of nat'ral inkstink amongst us tars--a
kind of cable-splice with each other, so that we knows at once as well
as any doctor as ever sarved his time at pill-building when the strands
are drawn, and the craft has slipped from its moorings; that is, my lady,
jist as this here, we can tell in a moment when a shipmate or messmate
has broke adrift and got beyond hail; bless you, they're all _distinct_
afore we gives 'em a launch, and as for the wounded, why they're carried
below to the cockpit to get dressed, or to have their precious limbs
lopped off like old junk, condemned as onsarviceable. But what's the
odds, my lady, so as you're happy?"
One of Ben's peculiarities, and which long habit had rendered perfectly
familiar to him, was the general use of the expression "What's the odds
so as you're happy?" and as he mostly contrived to lug it in whatever
the course of conversation might be, it often happened that it found
utterance on very inappropriate occasions. The idea of happiness
connected with the amputating of a limb would never have entered the mind
of any other person than Ben; but his mistress was too much accustomed to
the humane and generous disposition of the worthy seaman to suppose that
he was indulging in levity, or ridiculing distress; she was perfectly
aware that all Ben intended to convey was, that "a contented mind might
be supported under every trial and misfortune."
Young Frank had listened, as he always did, very attentively to Ben's
explanations and descriptions, and though the delicate sensibilities
of the lad were very naturally wounded by the recital of narratives of
deeds of blood and violence, yet when the seaman entered upon details
of chivalrous enterprise connected with the necessity of asserting his
country's honour, his youthful heart would glow with earnest desire to be
enrolled amongst the brave of his native land. His mother had discouraged
his unmatured but ambitious aspirings; her maternal solicitude had looked
forward with sickening dread at the thoughts of her only child being
exposed to the perils of the ocean. She had endured the long-suffering of
anxious care and hope deferred during the absence of her husband, and her
very soul dwelt with increased alarm and apprehension on the probability
that not only would an additional weight of anxiety and distress encumber
the every-day circumstances of life should her boy become a mariner, but
there was also the certainty that in his departure she would lose one
of the principal props to animated existence; the dear little companion
of her leisure hours, with whom she could unreservedly converse upon a
subject that was ever uppermost in her thoughts,--his father. Then the
idea of loneliness preyed upon her mind; and, there is something so cold
and chilling in the thoughts of being left alone in the world, cut off
from connexions that were once eminently endearing to the affections,
to sit hour after hour, and day after day, communing with one's own sad
heart, to pass the nights in sleepless retrospection, as visions of past
enjoyment flit in pleasing array before the imagination, and then to turn
the mind's eye to the obscure but dreaded events of the coming future,
where all is darkened by gloomy forebodings; there is a keen and horrible
distress in such meditative contemplations, that is calculated to waste
the stoutest frame, and to unsettle the soundest reason; and happy indeed
are they who seek for consolation from whence it alone can be obtained.
Although Mrs. Heartwell experienced more pain than pleasure at Ben's
recitals of storms and battles, yet she not unfrequently provoked him
into narratives of danger and of death, for the purpose--as she hoped--of
deterring her son from entering upon so hazardous an occupation as that
of a seaman. But whilst she partially succeeded in awakening the acute
sensibilities of the lad as to the difficulties to be encountered, so
also was the pride and curiosity of an adventurous spirit aroused, and
young Frank grew more attached to the interesting accounts of foreign
lands, and delineations of distant countries, than frightened at the
tales of the battle and the breeze.
Philip Quarll had been laid aside whilst Ben stood conversing with his
mistress--whom he at all times honoured with the appellation of "my
lady,"--but now the seaman was requested to sit down and explain the
nature of the monkeys, the book was resumed, and Frank inquired "whether
Ben had ever seen an ape wild in the woods."
"Why, yes, Master Frank," responded the seaman, as he seated himself near
the table, but at a respectful distance from his mistress. "I have seen
'em hanging on by the eye-lids amongst the trees."
"Hanging on by the eye-lids, Ben!" repeated Frank, in surprise; "why how
could they do that?"
"Why to be sure, Master Frank, they warn't exactly holding fast by the
eye-lids," returned the seaman, smiling; "but we uses the term as a
figure o' speech, meaning as it's next to dancing upon nothing."
This did not much mend the lad's knowledge of the matter, but as he was
eager to hear something of the monkey tribe, he inquired "And how much
bigger, Ben, is a Chimpanzee than an ape?"
"A what, Master Frank--a Jem Pansy?" demanded the seaman, looking at the
picture of Quarll with his attendants. "Do they call them Jem Pansies?
well, to my thinking, it arn't natral to give a christen-like name to
such oncivilized brutes as haven't got no rational faculties."
Frank explained, and the two were soon in deep and earnest conversation
upon the relative qualities and characteristics of monkeys, whilst Mrs.
Heartwell continued her work, occasionally listening to their discourse,
but her thoughts principally engrossed by contemplating the coming
separation from her husband. The ancient clock, which stood on a bracket
at the first landing of the stairs, struck nine, and the lady, who had
for some time been growing more and more uneasy at the lieutenant's stay,
directed Ben to have the supper things in readiness, and when he had
left the room, Frank was desired to prepare himself for bed. Kneeling at
his mother's feet, with hands closed together, he repeated his evening
prayer, imploring the Divine Being to bless his parents--the servant
lighted him to his room--and weary nature soon found refreshment in the
sweet repose of undisturbed slumber.
Another hour passed away, and the anxious wife grew more restless and
uneasy; she laid her watch upon the table, and though the hour was late,
yet she felt impatient at the tardy movement of the hands, hoping that
each succeeding minute would bring her husband home. But still he came
not, and time continued to progress, unheeding both the joy and the
sorrow that accompanied his eventful career. In vain did she strive to
subdue the fluctuating emotions that, like the undulating swell of the
ocean giving warning of an approaching tempest, seemed to indicate that
a severe trial was at hand. Every foot-fall in the street had excited
hope, which died away with the receding sound; and the almost hysterical
and sudden gush of delight was succeeded by a revulsion of sickening
uncertainty and fearful surmisings. Why or wherefore, she could not tell.
But midnight was drawing near, the weather which had been fine became
tempestuous, the winds howled and the rain beat against the windows, and
the streets were deserted, except by the ancient watchman, whose slow and
heavy tread could not be mistaken for the eager springiness of vigorous
strength prompted by ardent affection hurrying to the home of the heart.
Mrs. Heartwell tried to compose her mind by reading, but the effort was
futile; the constant changes in the course of her thoughts disconnected
the sentences, and the visions which torturing apprehensions conjured up
were infinitely more vivid than the incidents recorded on the printed
page. At length, weary nature claimed her due, and she fell into uneasy
slumber; but though the mortal frame had yielded to fatigue, and strove
to gain refreshing energy by repose, the intellect was still awake and
powerful to witness the conflicting occurrences that filled up the scenic
representations in the dramatic shiftings of her dream.
And oh, how fearfully confused were the visions of Mrs. Heartwell's
restless sleep! She saw her husband struggling with the waves as the
lightning flashed and the wild tempest howled above his head, and she
rushed into the vortex of the dark and bubbling waters to try and snatch
him from destruction. But vain were her endeavours to approach him--they
were hurled hither and thither upon the crests of the foaming billows,
but could not grasp each other's hands; and then the scene suddenly
changed, and she beheld the lieutenant wounded and bleeding on the deck
as the stream of life was ebbing fast away. They were surrounded by the
thunder and the smoke of battle; dark and vindictive, and gore-stained
countenances were peering upon her through the curling vapours, and there
was one amongst them more dark, more vindictive, more sanguinary than the
rest, but the thickened and dense atmosphere was constantly throwing it
into obscurity, so as to leave no especial tracings on the memory. She
tried to get to her husband, but still that mysterious being constantly
debarred her progress; her limbs became paralysed; she could see the
lieutenant most distinctly, though the rest were enveloped in gloom; and
as he looked at her with his sight fast fading away, the dim eyes were
still expressive of the inseparable mingling of anxious solicitude and
fervent tenderness.
Once more the picture changed; she was in her own dwelling, in that very
parlour, clasped in his embrace as the fervid kiss of affection was
impressed upon her lips. She would have chided his delay, but the delight
that glowed within her bosom and the sound of his voice in cheerful
greeting dispelled the anguish she had endured, and stifled the language
of reproach before it could find utterance--She was again happy in his
society. The lieutenant took his usual seat by the fireside opposite to
his wife, and she was gazing upon him with feelings of gratification
rendered more rich and delightful from the previous suffering she had
experienced, when suddenly his features assumed a rigid and swollen
aspect, a livid hue was on his cheeks, his limbs were stark and
motionless, as he sat stiffly erect, whilst his eyes almost starting from
his head were fixed intently upon her.
"You are ill, Frank," was her imagined exclamation, as she essayed to
rise from her chair but could not. "Oh do not look upon me thus--speak,
speak to me," but the figure remained immovable--not a muscle of the
face was stirred, and again that dark mysterious countenance, with its
undefined outlines and misty filling up, appeared between them. "Oh, what
is this, Frank?" uttered she, in a voice shrill and piercing through the
extremity of agony; and bursting the bonds of sleep, she sprang from
her chair at the very instant that Ben opened the door of the room, and
looked round it in surprise. "Where is he, Ben, where is he?" demanded
the agitated woman, as she stared wildly on the vacant seat.
"Bless you, my lady," responded the seaman as he stood within the
half-opened door, "I thought as Muster Heartwell were here, seeing as he
hailed me jist now in the kitchen, and I've come to see what his pleasure
is?"
A thrill of horror instantaneously seized upon every portion of Mrs.
Heartwell's frame--a sensation that for the moment struck at the very
seat of vitality, and was carried through the entire system. "It cannot
be," at length she uttered; "no one has opened the doors--the servants
are all in bed:" she gasped for breath as she falteringly continued,
"Father of Heaven, in mercy relieve me from this dreadful state. Yes,
yes, it must have been--it is nothing more than a dream," and seating
herself upon the sofa, she buried her face upon the pillow, and burst
into unrestrained and irrepressible tears.
Ben had implicitly obeyed the instructions of his mistress in seeing the
supper materials prepared, and at the accustomed hour the maid-servants
went to bed, leaving the gallant seaman alone in the kitchen to the
enjoyment of his pipe and a well-filled stiff glass of cold grog.
Unaccustomed to scrutinise the conduct of his superiors, Ben gave himself
but little trouble or consideration for the unusually long-continued
absence of his master; and if a thought did obtrude it was merely to
conjecture that the lieutenant might have fallen in with some old
messmates or friends, who, in the height of enjoyment over their social
or festive intercourse, had induced him to stay out beyond his ordinary
time for returning. It is true Ben reasoned upon deductions based upon
what he himself would have done under similar circumstances; for though
the worthy tar had practised a little of the amiable towards Sally the
housemaid, yet he was unacquainted with, and consequently could not well
account for, the secret and hidden springs that prompted the undeviating
attention of Mr. Heartwell in studying the comfort and happiness of his
wife as intimately connected with his own.
Ben sat smoking and cogitating upon the station he should probably occupy
when again upon the element he loved to control, and his spirit rose as
he contrasted the busy routine of duty on board a smart ship at sea, with
the idle and quiet of a calm life on shore even with Sally to sweeten it.
He fancied himself once more at the weather wheel, as with a predominant
feeling of pride he kept the given point of the compass without vibrating
from the direct course he was ordered to steer; and then in his watch
below with his brother tars keeping up Saturday night with grog, and
jest, and jocund song; and as he made repeated applications to the jorum
of strong beverage by his side, his fancy peopled the vacant space around
him with messmates and shipmates till both pipe and glass were emptied,
and he unconsciously resigned himself to the close embraces of a sailor's
Morpheus.
He, too, had been dreaming, but it was of the mere ordinary concerns
of the forecastle or main-top, without experiencing a single terrific
sensation except when the supposed sonorous hail of the first lieutenant
through his speaking-trumpet afforded a convincing testimonial that
something more was expected in the exercise of their duties than the
playfulness of childhood. But Ben heard it fearlessly, for he not only
knew what he had to do, but he was also well versed in the most approved
method of doing it, and ever active and obedient, he performed his task
with alacrity and skill. Whilst thus involved in all the intricate mazes
of visionary speculation, he thought he heard the well remembered sound
of his master's voice calling upon him; and springing to his feet, he
rubbed his eyes as he gave the usual responsive "Ay, ay, Sir," and found
the lieutenant standing before him. But the delusion almost instantly
ceased--the figure receded and disappeared, and as the door of the
kitchen was shut, Ben concluded in his mind that it was all moonshine
as to the appearance, that he really had heard his master's call, and
hurrying up stairs he entered the parlour at the moment when his mistress
awoke in such thrilling agony.
The flow of tears relieved her overcharged heart, and without questioning
the seaman she sent him below again, and prostrating herself before
her Maker, she offered up an earnest prayer for fortitude to undergo
affliction, and tranquillity of mind to meet every dispensation that
might occur--it was the poor dependant created, supplicating the high and
Almighty creator; it was the weak and the defenceless imploring the aid
of the Omnipotent. The appeal was heard and answered--the broken and the
contrite spirit was not despised; and Mrs. Heartwell arose from her knees
strengthened in the confidence that HE who spread abroad immeasurable
space and displayed the firmament as his handy work--who fed the young
ravens when they cried, and clothed the lilies of the field in all their
beauty, would not desert her in the hour of tribulation.
[Illustration]
MONUMENT TO NAPOLEON!
On the removal of Napoleon's remains, I prepared the above
design for a monument; but it was not sent, because it was not
wanted. There is this disadvantage about a design for _his_
monument;--it will suit nobody else. This could not, therefore, be
converted into a tribute to the memory of the late distinguished
philosopher, Muggeridge, head master of the grammar-school at
Birchley; nor into an embellishment for the mausoleum of the
departed hero Fitz-Hogg, of the Pipeclays. It very often happens,
however, that when a monument to a great man turns out to be a
misfit, it will, after a while, be found to suit some other great
man as well as if his measure had been taken for it. Just add a
few grains to the intellectual qualities, subtract a scruple or so
from the moral attributes--let out the philanthropy a little and
take in the learning a bit--clip the public devotion, and throw an
additional handful of virtues into the domestic scale--qualify the
squint, in short, or turn the aquiline into a snub--these slight
modifications observed, and any hero or philosopher may be fitted
to a hair with a second-hand monumental design. The standing
tribute "We _ne'er_ shall look upon his like again," is of course
applicable in _every_ case of greatness.
* * * * *
"Is this the man of thousand thrones,
Who strew'd our earth with hostile bones!
And can he _thus_ survive!"
* * * * *
So Byron sang, in accents of astonishment, long before the object of it
was even once buried. Is the note of wonder less called for, and less
natural now--now that the world has lived to witness, not only the first,
but the second funeral of its Imperial Agitator? Is _this_ Napoleon le
Grand! and looked Alexander after _this_ fashion--barring the decorations
of his bony extremities!
Agitator still! Aye, Agitator even in thine ashes thou must be
called--whatsoever name else thou mayst be destined to survive! Whether
Boney, Bonyparty, Buonaparte, Napoleon, Emperor! Whether in the future,
as in the past, thou shalt be addressed by any one of that astounding
collection of titles which the most metaphysical and admiring of thy
biographers once gathered from the public journals and set forth in
startling array--as Monster, Tyrant, Fiend, Upstart, Usurper, Rebel,
Regicide, Traitor, Wretch, Villain, Knave, Fool, Madman, Coward,
Impostor--or these again with suitable adjectives to reinforce them, as
Unnatural Monster, Sanguinary Tyrant, Diabolical Fiend, Corsican Upstart,
Military Usurper, Wicked Rebel, Impious Regicide, Perfidious Traitor,
Vile Wretch, Base Villain, Low-born Knave, Rank Fool, Egregious Madman,
Notorious Coward, Detestable Impostor;--or this other set of epithets,
which, in more countries than France, and not unsparingly in our own,
have since been associated with thy name--as Conqueror, Potentate,
Preserver, Genius, Liberator, Law-giver, Statesman, Ruler, Regenerator,
Enthusiast, Martyr, Hero, Benefactor--these again being reinforced as
before, thus--Invincible Conqueror, Mighty Potentate, Glorious Preserver,
Guardian Genius, Generous Liberator, Enlightened Law-giver, Magnificent
Statesman, Wise Ruler, National Regenerator, Sincere Enthusiast, Devoted
Martyr, Triumphant Hero, Beneficent Benefactor:--by these names, by any
one of them possibly, thou mayst not be especially distinguished in after
times; but as Agitator at least thou must be hailed while language lasts!
--It may justly be doubted whether the figure thus looking down upon
a pyramid of skulls, is indeed "the man of thousand thrones"--whether
he _does_ "thus survive." The design is one of those that "show men as
they ought to be, not as they are." That opening of the coffin at St.
Helena opens up a world of curiosity, of wonder, and alarm. All the
spectators were awed and astounded at the absence of the great Dictator
of the Grave--Change! All the beholders were stricken to marble, or
melted into water-drops, to see Death looking like Life; to survey the
pale and placid features of the Emperor, expressing the serenity of
repose, not the workings of decay--to witness a sign of power beyond that
which ordinary clay may boast, and to feel that a "divinity did hedge"
indeed the hero-king, in preserving all that was mortal of the exiled
chief from the ravages of the worm. There lay the Emperor Napoleon--(he
was recognised then by the authorities, and should the parties meet
in the Shades, even George the Fourth can no longer style him General
Buonaparte)--there lay the Emperor--not simply in his habit as he lived,
but in the very flesh which he took with him out of Longwood. There
was the positive and unwasted substance--and there too was the seeming
spirit. The eyes only were wanting to give it reality and consciousness.
The Mighty Watcher had fallen asleep, but who could say that he never
again was to wake up? The restless Visionary had sunk, torpid, into a
dream of years. The Monarch had abdicated the throne of Life without
finally crossing its confines. At best, the spectacle presented an
extraordinary compromise with the insatiate Destroyer. The Archer had for
once half-missed his aim.
Now, it will be remembered that Fauntleroy was considered to
bear a decided resemblance to Napoleon--a very respectable
"likeness-done-in-this-style" sort of portrait--and Fauntleroy, as we
all hear, is said to be alive still! Somebody has remarked--in fact we
remarked it ourselves--that _on dit_ is French for "a lie;" and so it
may be in this particular: still the coincidence is curious. Even the
likeness of Napoleon is associated with things living; but Napoleon
himself has been seen, recognised, identified--looking like life
itself--sleeping, sightless, but not dead.
We have all been reminded lately of the manner in which his return from
Elba was announced in the _Moniteur_. It will bear repetition here:--"1st
announcement--The demon has escaped from banishment: he has run away from
Elba. 2d--The Corsican dragon has landed at Cape Juan. 3d.--The tiger has
shown himself at Gap--the troops are advancing from all sides, in order
to arrest his progress--he cannot possibly escape. 4th--The monster has
really advanced as far as Grenoble--we know not to what treachery to
ascribe it. 5th--The tyrant is actually at Lyons. Fear and terror seized
all at his appearance. 6th--The usurper has ventured to approach the
capital to within sixty hours' march. 7th--Buonaparte is advancing by
forced marches--but it is impossible he should reach Paris. 8th--Napoleon
will reach under the walls of Paris to-morrow. 9th--The Emperor is at
Fontainbleau. 10th--Yesterday evening his Majesty the Emperor made
his public entry, and arrived at the palace of the Tuileries--nothing
can exceed the universal joy!" What would be his reception now, were
he--as he escaped so strangely from Elba, and worked his way still more
strangely from under the willow of St. Helena--were he to _wake_ where he
is! The people cried VIVE _l'Empereur_ as the coffin that held him was
borne by. And truly the Emperor yet _lives_ in France!
[As for me, who have skeletonised him prematurely, paring down
the Prodigy even to his hat and boots, I have but "carried out"
a principle adopted almost in my boyhood, for I can scarcely
remember the time when I did not take some patriotic pleasure in
persecuting the great Enemy of England. Had he been less than
that, I should have felt compunction for my cruelties; having
tracked him through snow and through fire, by flood and by field,
insulting, degrading, and deriding him everywhere, and putting him
to several humiliating deaths. All that time, however, he went on
"overing" the Pyramids and the Alps, as boys "over" posts, and
playing at leap-frog with the sovereigns of Europe, so as to kick
a crown off at every spring he made--together with many crowns and
sovereigns into my coffers. Deep, most deep, in a personal view of
matters, are my obligations to the Agitator--but what a Debt the
country _owes to him!_]
[Illustration]
PHOTOGRAPHIC PHENOMENA, OR THE NEW SCHOOL OF PORTRAIT-PAINTING.
"Sit, cousin Percy; sit, good cousin Hotspur!"--HENRY IV.
"My lords, be seated."--_Speech from the Throne._
I.--INVITATION TO SIT.
Now sit, if ye have courage, cousins all!
Sit, all ye grandmamas, wives, aunts, and mothers;
Daughters and sisters, widows, brides, and nieces;
In bonnets, braids, caps, tippets, or pelisses,
The muff, mantilla, boa, scarf, or shawl!
Sit all ye uncles, godpapas, and brothers,
Fathers and nephews, sons, and next of kin,
Husbands, half-brother's cousin's sires, and others;
Be you as Science young, or old as Sin:
Turn, Persian-like, your faces to the sun!
And have each one
His portrait done,
Finish'd, one may say, before it's begun.
Nor you alone,
Oh! slight acquaintances! or blood relations!
But sit, oh! public Benefactors,
Whose portraits are hung up by Corporations.
Ye Rulers of the likeness-loving nations,
Ascend you now the Photographic throne,
And snatch from Time the precious mornings claim'd
By artists famed
(In the Court Circular you'll find them named).
Sit too, ye laurell'd Heroes, whom detractors
Would rank below the statesman and the bard!
Sit also, all ye Actors,
Whose fame would else die with you, which is hard:
Whose _Falstaffs_ here will never _Slenders_ prove.
So true the art is!
M.P.'s, for one brief moment cease to move;
And you who stand as Leaders of great Parties,
Be sitting Members!
Ye intellectual Marchers, sit resign'd!
And oh! ye Authors, men of dazzling mind,
Perchance with faces foggy as November's,
Pray sit!
Apollo turned R.A.
The other day,
Making a most decided hit.
They say.
Ph[oe]bus himself--he has become a Shee!
(Morning will rank among the Knights full soon)
And while the Moon,
Who only draws the tides, is clean outdone,
The Stars are all astonishment to see
Earth--sitting for her portrait--to the Sun!
II.--THE PROCESS OF THE PORTRAITURE.
It's all very fine, is it not, oh! ye Nine?
To tell us this planet is going too fast,
On a comet-like track through the wilderness vast:
Instead of collision, and chances of splitting
In contact with stars rushing down the wrong line,
The world at this moment can't get on--for sitting:
And Earth, like the Lady enchanted in _Comus_,
Fix'd fast to her chair
With a dignified air,
Is expecting to sit for a century there;
Much wondering, possibly, half in despair,
How the deuce she's to find her way back to her domus.
"Keep moving," we know, was the cry long ago;
But now, never hare was "found sitting," I swear,
Like the crowds who repair
To old Cavendish Square,
And mount up a mile and a quarter of stair.
In procession that beggars the Lord Mayor's show!
And all are on tiptoe, the high and the low,
To sit in that glass-cover'd blue studio;
In front of those boxes, wherein when you look
Your image reversed will minutely appear,
So delicate, forcible, brilliant, and clear,
So small, full, and round, with a life so profound,
As none ever wore
In a mirror before;
Or the depths of a glassy and branch-shelter'd brook,
That glides amidst moss o'er a smooth-pebbled ground.
Apollo, whom Drummond of Hawthornden styled
"Apelles of flowers,"
Now mixes his showers
Of sunshine, with colours by clouds undefiled;
Apelles indeed to man, woman, and child.
His agent on earth, when your attitude's right,
Your collar adjusted, your locks in their place,
Just seizes one moment of favouring light,
And utters three sentences--"Now it's begun,"--
"It's going on now, sir,"--and "Now it is done;"
And lo! as I live, there's the cut of your face
On a silvery plate,
Unerring as fate,
Worked off in celestial and strange mezzotint,
A little resembling an elderly print.
"Well, I _never_!" all cry; "it is cruelly like you!"
But Truth is unpleasant
To prince and to peasant.
You recollect Lawrence, and think of the graces
That Chalon and Company give to their faces;
The face you have worn fifty years doesn't strike you!
III.--THE CRITICISMS OF THE SITTERS--THE MORAL.
"Can this be _me_! do look, mama!"
Poor Jane begins to whimper;
"I _have_ a smile, 'tis true;--but, pa!
This gives me quite a simper."
Says Tibb, whose plays are worse than bad,
"It makes my forehead flat;"
And being classical, he'll add,
"I'm blow'd if I'm like _that_."
Courtly, all candour, owns his portrait true;
"Oh, yes, it's like; yes, very; it will do.
Extremely like me--every feature--_but_
That plain pug-nose; now mine's the Grecian cut!"
Her Grace surveys her face with drooping lid;
Prefers the portrait which Sir Thomas did;
Owns that o'er this _some_ traits of truth are sprinkled;
But views the brow with anger--"Why, it's wrinkled!"
"Like _me_!" cries Sir Turtle; "I'll lay two to one
It would only be guess'd by my foes;
No, no, it is plain there are spots in the sun,
Which accounts for these spots on my nose."
"A likeness!" cries Crosslook, the lawyer, and sneers;
"Yes, the wig, throat and forehead I spy,
And the mouth, chin, and cheeks, and the nose and the ears,
But it gives me a cast in the eye!"
* * * * *
Thus needs it the courage of old Cousin Hotspur,
To sit to an artist who flatters no sitter;
Yet Self-love will urge us to seek him, for what spur
So potent as that, though it make the truth bitter!
And thus are all flocking, to see Ph[oe]bus mocking,
Or making queer faces, a visage per minute;
And truly 'tis shocking, if winds should be rocking
The building, or clouds darken all that's within it,
To witness the frights
Which shadows and lights
Manufacture, as like as an owl to a linnet.
For there, while you sit up,
Your countenance lit up,
The mists fly across, a magnificent rack;
And your portrait's a patch, with its bright and its black,
Out-Rembrandting Rembrandt, in ludicrous woe,
Like a chimney-sweep caught in a shower of snow.
Yet nothing can keep the crowd below,
And still they mount up, stair by stair;
And every morn, by the hurry and hum,
Each seeking a prize in the lottery there,
You fancy the "last day of drawing" has come. L. B.
[Illustration: [All the World and his Wife must recollect that they are
not figuring before a mere mortal artist with whom they may all the while
laugh and chat. Here you must sit mute and motionless. You _may_ wink;
you may perhaps just put on a smile; but you _must not_ laugh; for if you
do, one half of your head will go off!]]
[Illustration: COMMENTARY upon the late--"New Police Act" by which it
appears that ... ...
Designed Etched & Published by George Cruikshank-- June 1st 1841]
PUNCH _v._ LAW.
I was dozing over the last half-dozen glasses of a bowl of punch (the
rest of the club having departed) when the waiter at the British came
into the coffee-room to remind me that it was Saturday night, and that in
obedience to the New Police Act it was absolutely necessary that I should
take my departure before Sunday morning--the door must be finally closed
at twelve o'clock, and it then wanted but five minutes. This appeal, and
a "Now, Sir, if you please," a few times repeated, were not more than
half heard; sleep seized me irresistibly, and in twenty seconds more I
was dreaming that I had fallen fast asleep, with the punch-bowl for a
nightcap.
"Come, move on--make way here, will you though?--move on, you sir! No
Punch and Judy now; it's unlegal by the law; ain't you awor o' the New
Police Act what's put it down?" Such was the arbitrary order which in my
dream Serjeant Higginbotham of the X division issued, as he pushed his
way into the centre of a crowd of urchins assembled round that little
stage on which Punch was playing off his antics in unapproachable style.
As the words fell from his lips, they smote my heart with the fear that
a revolution in the country must inevitably follow. Punch to be put down
by Act of Parliament! Judy to be snatched away for ever by a vote of
both Houses! Mirth, fun, jollity, to be legislated into nothing--in the
passing of a clause, or the twinkling of the Speaker's eye! Impossible;
put Punch down in one place, lo! he is up again in another; stifle his
voice in the east, and hark! you hear him the next minute squeaking in
the west, like the piping shepherd-boy, "as though he should never grow
old." This was consolatory to my feelings; but yet methought, the mere
intent, the bare threat of the legislature to banish the people's own
Punch, their time-honoured favourite, would paralyse all London at first,
and then all London would be seen on its legs rushing to the Queen's
palace to petition!
To my astonishment, not a soul in that crowd took the smallest notice
of Serjeant Higginbotham's imperative command to be off. Punch went on
squeaking and rapping away; the troop of boys, girls, and miscellanies
around, continued to grin, laugh, scream, and stretch their necks to
stare over one another's heads as though they never could look enough;
and what was more, the policeman, who had penetrated into the midst of
them, and of whose presence they appeared so singularly heedless, stood
there, grinning, laughing, screaming, and stretching his neck to stare
too. There indeed stood Serjeant H., his truncheon dropping from one
hand, while the other was tightly pressed against his side, where he
seemed to be in imminent peril of a split. That truncheon he had scarce
uplifted, when the laugh seized him, and his arm fell powerless. Serjeant
Higginbotham, six feet high, was a little boy again. How he laughed and
roared. I heard his "Ho! ho!" for days afterwards, and can even now see
the tears run down his cheeks, fringing his whiskers like dewdrops on a
bush.
Close by was a youngster flying his kite contrary to law; on the approach
of a policeman, he let go, turned to run, caught a glimpse of Punch--and
there he stood fascinated by the fun. His pursuer, who was close behind
him, was just about to catch him by the collar, when he too stopped
short, and with distended jaws almost doubled the horse-laugh of the
side-aching serjeant. Up came a sweep with the illegal cry of 'we-weep'
on his lips, but he could not break the law by giving utterance to the
cry--for laughter. Presently came by a genius playing an organ, and
another blowing a trumpet--the policemen heard not the unlawful music,
and it suddenly ceased, stopped by the irresistible and all-absorbing
Punch. A boy came next trundling his hoop, with 46 D trundling after
him; in two minutes they were standing side by side, laughing from ear
to ear. A dustman had just raised his voice and got out, "du--" when his
bell seemed to stop of itself, and "My eye!" was all he could articulate.
A lad behind a hackney-coach jumped down, scorning a three-miles ride,
under the influence of the prevailing risibility. All were drawn
insensibly into the vortex of laughter. Every violator of the new law,
albeit aware of having fallen under the vigilant observation of the
police, lost on the instant all sense of responsibility, all inclination
to shun the danger of apprehension, and joining the crowd, became utterly
unconscious of any law but the law of nature, and supremely blessed in
ignorance of the very existence of a constable. More astounding still
was the suddenness with which the rush of policemen from all quarters,
pursuing the offenders, came to a stand-still. Each in turn followed his
intended victim into the charmed circle, gave up the chase in the moment
of success, and surrendered himself captive to Punch instead of taking a
prisoner.
"And those who came to seize, remain'd to laugh."
At length, half the trades, half the schools, all the idlers, and all the
policemen of the metropolis, seemed gathered there together. And there
they all stood spell-bound, wrought upon by one common emotion; shaking
their sides against one another, and sending up a roar, compared with
which the thunder of the Danish kettle-drums and cannon of old was a dead
silence.
Here, methought, is a lesson for legislators! They would put down that
which puts down nuisances, and turns public disturbers into the happiest
and most harmless of mortals! And they would suppress it by agents who
came in contact with the enemy only to join his ranks, "for we have all
of us one human heart." Put down Punch! Fifty Parliaments could never
do it! There's a divinity doth hedge him. Punch for a time can suppress
kite-flying, hoop-trundling, bell-ringing, and trumpet-blowing--which the
law cannot; how then should Punch himself be put down? Immortal puppet!
the true friend of the people, and the promoter of good-humour among all
her Majesty's loving subjects!
Such _would_ have been my reflections; but the accumulated roar of the
laughing throng awoke me--when I found that the waiter was snoring very
loud in the lobby of the coffee-room. The house had long been shut for
the night; and having violated the law, I was obliged to content myself
with a broiled bone and a bed at the British--with an extra tumbler of
_punch_!
[Illustration: COMMENTARY upon the "New Police Act" (N^o.2.)
Designed Etched & Published by George Cruikshank June 1st 1841]
"ORIGINAL POETRY:"
BY THE LATE SIR FRETFUL PLAGIARY, KNIGHT,
MEMBER OF THE DRAMATIC AUTHORS' ASSOCIATION, FELLOW OF
THE PARNASSIAN SOCIETY, &C.
* * * * *
_Now first printed from the original copies in the handwriting of
that popular Author._
EDITED BY LAMAN BLANCHARD.
We have considerable pleasure in discharging the duty imposed upon us, of
transcribing the MSS. which one of Sir Fretful Plagiary's numerous living
descendants has placed in our hands, and of submitting to the public
the following specimens of "something new." Whatever may be thought
in other respects of these, the latest emanations--or, as some with
equal correctness perhaps would say, effusions--of an immortal genius,
we unhesitatingly pronounce them to be original. _These poems bear no
resemblance to anything ever before offered to the public._ Now this is
a declaration which cannot fail to awaken in the reader's mind a strong
suspicion that the ideas are mere imitations, and the language a mere
echo, of the thoughts and expressions of other poets. In this solitary
instance the acute reader will be mistaken in his supposition. There is
no one line that can be called an _imitation_--no phrase that can be
pronounced an _echo_. Line after line is equally emphatic, interesting,
melodious, and--original. This fact we might establish by citing at full
length a remarkably novel and curious production of Sir Fretful's, which,
with the fineness of Shakspeare and Dryden united, opens thus:--
"Farewell! thou canst not teach me to forget;
The power of beauty I remember yet."
But we prefer proceeding at once to a strikingly harmonious, and
singularly analytical composition, bearing the designation of an
ODE TO THE HUMAN HEART.
BLIND Thamyris, and blind Mæonides,
Pursue the triumph and partake the gale!
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees,
To point a moral or adorn a tale[2].
Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears,
Like angels' visits, few and far between,
Deck the long vista of departed years.
Man never is, but always to be bless'd;
The tenth transmitter of a foolish face,
Like Aaron's serpent, swallows up the rest,
And makes a sunshine in the shady place.
For man the hermit sigh'd, till woman smiled,
To waft a feather or to drown a fly,
(In wit a man, simplicity a child,)
With silent finger pointing to the sky.
But fools rush in where angels fear to tread,
Far out amid the melancholy main;
As when a vulture on Imaus bred,
Dies of a rose in aromatic pain.
Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast,
Look on her face, and you'll forget them all;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall.
My way of life is fall'n into the sere;
I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear,
Who sees through all things with his half-shut eyes.
Oh! for a lodge in some vast wilderness!
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
Fine by degrees and beautifully less,
And die ere man can say 'Long live the Queen.'
If in the above any reader should be reminded of the "long resounding
march and energy divine" of poets past or present, it can only be because
our illustrious and profusely-gifted bard has clustered together more
remarkable, and we trust they will long prove memorable, lines, than any
one of his predecessors has in the same space given an example of. That
poem can be of no inferior order of merit, in which Milton would have
been proud to have written one line, Pope would have been equally vain
of the authorship of a second, Byron have rejoiced in a third, Campbell
gloried in a fourth, Gray in a fifth, Cowper in a sixth, and so on to
the end of the Ode; which thus realises the poetical wealth of that
well-known line of Sir Fretful's,
"Infinite riches in a little room."
But we must not, by prosaic comment, detain the impatient reader from
other specimens of the striking originality of this writer's powers.
Among some fragments thrown loose in his desk, we find the following:--
When lovely woman stoops to folly,
And finds too late that men betray,
There's such a charm in melancholy,
I would not if I could be gay.
Again:
There's a beauty for ever unchangingly bright,
For coming events cast their shadows before;
Oh! think not my spirits are always as light,
Like ocean-weeds cast on the surf-beaten shore.
We have pronounced these two stanzas to be original; and they are:
but with reference to the first of them we admit that a distinguished
living critic, to whom it was shown, remarked that it did remind him a
little of something in some other author--and he rather thought it was
Goldsmith; a second critic, equally eminent, was forcibly reminded by it
of something which he was convinced had been written by Rogers. _So much
for criticism!_ To such treatment is original genius ever subjected. Its
traducers cannot even agree as to the derivation of the stolen property;
they cannot name the author robbed. One cries, Spenser; another, Butler;
a third, Collins. We repeat, it is the fate of Originality.
"Garth did not write his own Dispensary,"
says Pope jeeringly; Campbell has had his Exile of Erin vehemently
claimed by a desperate wrestler for renown; and at this very time a
schoolmaster in Scotland is ready to swear that the author of the "Burial
of Sir John Moore" never wrote a line of it. But we now pass to another
piece by Sir Fretful; and this, whether its sentiments be of a high or a
low order, its imagery appropriate or incongruous, is entirely his own:--
Lives there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself has said,
"Shoot folly as it flies?"
Oh! more than tears of blood can tell,
Are in that word farewell, farewell!
'Tis folly to be wise.
And what is friendship but a name,
That boils on Etna's breast of flame?
Thus runs the world away:
Sweet is the ship that's under sail
To where yon taper cheers the vale,
With hospitable ray!
Drink to me only with thine eyes
Through cloudless climes and starry skies!
My native land, good night!
Adieu, adieu, my native shore;
'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more--
Whatever is is right!
We have thought it expedient to point out briefly the peculiar beauty of
some of our author's lines; but it cannot be necessary to point out the
one peculiar and exclusive quality of his writings--his perspicacity--his
connectedness. His verse "flows due on to the Propontic, nor knows
retiring ebb." You are never at a loss to know what he means. In his
sublimest passages he is intelligible. This is his great beauty. No poet
perhaps is so essentially _logical_. We close our specimens with another
short poem; it is entitled,
"ON LIFE, ET CETERA."
Know then this truth, enough for man to know:
Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow,
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.
Retreating lightly with a lovely fear
From grave to gay, from lively to severe,
To err is human, to forgive divine,
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
The feast of reason and the flow of soul.
* * * * *
We ne'er shall look upon his like again,
For panting time toils after him in vain,
And drags at each remove a lengthening chain;
Allures to brighter worlds, and leads the way
With sweet, reluctant, amorous delay!
Leaving this great poet's samples of the mighty line, or, as it is
sometimes called, the lofty rhyme, to "speak for themselves," we conclude
with a word or two on a subject to which _one_ of his effusions here
printed has (thanks to what are called the critics) unexpectedly led--we
mean the subject of Literary Loans, or, as they are more familiarly and
perhaps felicitously designated, Literary Thefts. A critic of high repute
has said, "A man had better steal anything on earth, than the thoughts
of another;" agreed, unless when he steals the thought, he steal the
words with it. The economising trader in Joe Miller who stole his brooms
ready made, carried on a prosperous business. Some authors steal only the
raw material; or rather, they run away with another man's muse, but for
fear of detection, and to avoid the charge of felony, leave the drapery
behind--a practice which cannot be too severely reprehended. It is the
same principle on which, according to Sheridan (Sir Fretful's _friend!_)
gipsies disguise stolen children to make them pass for their own. Now
Sir Fretful, alluding to Shakspeare in a poem which has never yet been
published, says very nobly--
"Hereditary bondsmen, know ye not
He wants that greatest art, the art to blot!"
If we might dare to parody (Scott said it was a sin to parody--"We are
seven") any one line sanctified by the genius of a Plagiary, we should
say that too many of his descendants want that greatest art, the art to
steal. They steal--but not with integrity. There may be, nay there is,
such a thing as honest theft--equitable robbery--prigging with justice
and honour. We hold that in all cases of literary borrowing, or robbery
(for it comes to the same thing), it is ten million times better to
rob or borrow without the least disguise, equivocation, or mutilation
whatsoever. Take the line as you find it. Don't crack it as you would
a nut, picking out the idea, appropriating it to your own purpose, and
leaving only the husk behind. You will never get an artificial shell to
grow round it; it will never be the nut it was before. Take it whole.
Prudery in these cases is often worse than folly--it is shabbiness. It is
folly, when, after stealing a fine symmetrical thought, a whole morning
is spent in disguising, distorting, and deforming it, until at last all
that remains of it merge into the unprofitable moral--"of no use to
anybody but the owner." It is shabbiness, when, as is the practice of
prose-writers, a splendid passage is purloined, and a bargain is struck
with conscience; when, just for decency's sake, six words of the sentence
are publicly attributed by inverted commas to the right owner, while all
the rest assumes the character of originality. We may give an example
in the following passage from Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in
France, which we will suppose to be thus printed:--
But the "age of chivalry" is gone; that of sophisters, economists,
and calculators has succeeded; and the "glory of Europe" is
extinguished for ever. The unbought grace of life, the "cheap
defence of nations[3]," the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic
enterprise, "is gone!"
* * * * *
This cunning practice of acknowledging a few words borrowed, with a view
to divert suspicion from the many you have stolen, is like confessing a
lawful debt of sixpence, due to the man which you have just plundered of
fifty pounds; and this practice, Sir Fretful Plagiary, to his immortal
honour, scorned to adopt. Could his original and abundant genius have
stooped to steal, he would have stolen conscientiously; he would have
taken the whole passage outright; instead of spoiling everything he
laid his hands upon, and making (as Dryden says) "the fine woman end
in a fish's tail." War is honourable, manslaying is not; pillage is
legalised by custom, which cannot be said of picking pockets. Thus,
as it is more honourable to pillage than to pilfer, so is it to seize
upon a whole line, or even a couplet, than to extract the essence of it
surreptitiously, or sneak off with a valuable epithet; and it is the more
honest, because every author has a better chance, after the robbery has
served its purpose, of getting back his own.
Had this principle been in operation from the beginning, what confusion
it would have prevented! what discords between authors! what perplexities
in settling their claims to disputed metaphors, and their rights in
contested ideas! From the mere want of this common honesty in purloining,
it is impossible, in many instances, to come to an equitable adjustment.
It is a wise poet that knows his own conceit--or to prevent mistakes, let
us say, his own idea. He sees his private property transferred to the
pages of another, and cannot swear to it. There is no saying which is
yours and which is his. _Tuum_ rhymes to _suum_, and always will.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: The printer's devil had taken upon himself to make the
following addition to these lines:--
Blind Thamyris, and blind Mæonides, (_Something like Milton_).
Pursue the triumph and partake the gale! (_Rather like Pope_).
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees, (_Why, this_ is _Shakspeare_).
To point a moral, or adorn a tale. (_Oh! it's Dr. Johnson_).
To the succeeding lines the same authority had added in succession the
names of Gray Wordsworth, Campbell, and so on throughout the poem. What
does he mean? Does he mean to say he has ever met with any one of these
lines _before?_]
[Footnote 3: Burke.]
FRANK HEARTWELL; OR, FIFTY YEARS AGO.
BY BOWMAN TILLER.