Nero fiddled while Rome blazed! We possess the record of the main
fact, but all details connected with that memorable performance have
perished in the lapse of ages. We can imagine, however, that the novelty
and horrid grandeur of the situation by no means interfered with the
skill and execution of the imperial amateur; but rather added a force
and brilliancy to his playing, for which it may not have been usually
remarkable. If he had at all a turn for improvisation, an opportunity
then offered for his making a great hit; the roaring of the flames, the
crash of falling buildings, the coarse laughter of a brutal soldiery,
mingling with the shrieks of women and children, and with the shouts
changing to the half-curse, half-prayer, of the death agony of brave,
true-hearted men, striving to rescue the helpless ones, and perishing in
the exercise of their noble daring, all must have afforded a suggestive
theme for the _crescendo and diminuendo_ of the tyrant’s catgut, which
may have been handed down to posterity, until the tradition may have
furnished the thesis of that classic and artistic composition, the
“Battle of Prague.”
Everybody considers Nero a hateful tyrant, and everybody may be in
the main right; although good Dr. Goldsmith, in his interesting Roman
history (which has been perpetually “abridged for the use of schools”
ever since it was written, and is not half short enough yet), has
probably applied too deep a coating of lamp-black even to Nero. But,
though as manners and customs change, the outward seeming of things
varies with them, human nature, too bad ever to be all good, and too
good to be all bad, remains much the same, despite the preaching of
Paul, and the watering-pot of Apollos.
Thus, while in the heart of mighty London vice filled model prisons
with the recklessly depraved, or, far worse, the recklessly
hypocritical--while hospital-wards teemed with those comparatively
fortunate victims of disease and improvidence whom some good Samaritan
had thus far rescued, when a frightful majority were dying untended in
reeking alleys and other hotbeds of pestilence--while covetousness and
hatred were scarcely restrained from breaking forth into rapine and
murder by the strong arm of the law--my Lord Alfred Courtland, and the
leeches who sought to prey upon his youth and inexperience, drove
down to Blackwall to nibble a small fry of ridiculous little
fishes, enveloped in batter, called whitebait, and esteemed, for some
undiscoverable reason, a delicacy.
Exactly as the clock struck five, a dark, well-appointed drag, with
three bays and a chestnut--all thorough-bred, or thereabouts--drew up at
the entrance to the Pandemonium. Captain O’Brien, handing the reins to a
dark-whiskered, good-looking young fellow, who was his companion on the
box, descended, and entering the club, was introduced by D’Almayne to
Lord Alfred Courtland and Jack Beaupeep; the first mentioned individual
acknowledging his salutation by the slightest possible removal of the
hat, together with an all but invisible motion of the head, the latter
by a profound salaam, together with the diffident remark--
“Sir, you do me proud.”
“Not at all, sir, not at all; on the contrary, it’s proud I am to make
your acquaintance, and you a mimber of the government, too. Did ye know
Smith O’Brien, now?” Not waiting a reply, he continued--“Oh, he’s a
great legislathur entirely; and sure them that don’t die first will live
to see him prime-minister of this country, one of these fine mornings;
and a _prime_ minister he’ll make, sure! ‘Justice to Ireland’ will be
found engraved in copper-plate on his heart, by any gentleman who may
have the pleasure of attending the _post-mortem_ examination of his
remains, and long life to ’em!”
“Are we waiting for any one?” inquired Horace, fearful lest his
Hibernian associate should disgust Lord Alfred by his offensive
familiarity at first starting. “Guillemard has, I see, already taken his
seat. Have you any objection to pull up at the Guards’ Club, O’Brien?
There are three or four army men who have promised to come, and your
drag will carry them easily.”
The Captain agreeing to this--as indeed he appeared willing to agree
to any and everything suggested by D’Almayne--they took their places;
O’Brien insisting on Lord Alfred succeeding to the box-seat, vacated for
that purpose by the dark-whiskered, hawkeyed youth, who was none other
than Phil Tirrett, the horse-breeder’s son, whom Horace D’Almayne had
designated as a very promising young scoundrel--a style of character
which he was so well able to recognise, and so thoroughly competent
to form an opinion upon, that we feel convinced he only did the young
gentleman’s merits justice.
By no means captivated by O’Brien’s manners or address, Lord Alfred was
at first haughty and monosyllabic; but perceiving that D’Almayne was us
scrupulously polite to this son of Erin as to the most polished member
of the fashionable world, it occurred to him that in his character
of man-about-town the correct thing was to assume a general
languid citizen-of-the-worldship; and, as a duty to his presumed
imperturbability, to appear, not all things to all men, but the same
thing to every man. Thus, rousing himself, he paid a die-away and
meaningless compliment to the workmanlike manner in which Captain
O’Brien--“Ar--put his team along, and--ar--the correct style of the
whole affair.”
This led to an equestrian and sporting rhapsody on the part of the Hon.
Terence, interspersed with anecdotes--strange, if true--of the dams and
the sires, and the own brothers and sisters, of the individual members
of the team, and especially of the chestnut, which had been--“The
sweetest thing, sir, across a stiff country that ever man rode; no day
was too long and no burst too fast for him, bedad! and the bitterest
moment ever I, Terence O’Brien, knew (barring the loss of me maternal
grandmother, by spontaneous combustion, from fortuitously sitting down
upon a lighted cinder, which had providentially popped out of the fire
for that purpose), was when I staked him above the near hock at Melton,
last season; and he’s never been fit to gallop since, or it isn’t in
harness ye’d see him now--and him costing me a cool £400, and worth all
the money now, if he was but sound,” &c. &c.
The witty author of _Tristram Shandy_, in introducing to the reader that
most lovable of humorists, my Uncle Toby, has discoursed eloquently on
the various hobby-horses which take possession of, and enslave, the mind
of man. Fortification, which was my Uncle Toby’s mania, engrossed
his thoughts, and influenced his conversation, until nothing but his
simplicity and kindness of heart saved him from degenerating into a
complete bore; but when a man’s hobby-horse is the equine animal itself,
you can no more unhorse him than if he were--as assuredly he ought to
have been, if mind and body had borne a proper affinity to each other--a
centaur. O’Brien _was_ a centaur, and having once mounted his hobby,
he rode him all the way to Blackwall, to Lord Alfred’s extinction, or
thereabouts; but considering that a certain amount of “turf” adheres to
the character of a man-about-town, he bore the infliction like a--well,
suppose, though we have foresworn slang as low, we for this once say--a
brick.
Three guardsmen, and a young heavy dragoon, who lived to consume beer
and cigars, and produce moustachios and stupidity were duly added to the
party; and by the time they reached Blackwall everybody grew hungry, and
prepared to do ample justice to the whitebait. Of course, everybody
has at some period of their earthly career eaten a Blackwall dinner, and
such feeds are all exactly alike. First appears a course of fish,
enough to constitute a dinner in itself: sea-fish, river-fish,
pond-fish--fishes boiled, fried, stewed, and bedeviled in various ways,
which it would require the knowledge of the supposed inventor of cooks
himself to detail; then come the wonderful whitebait themselves, their
stupid little bodies enveloped in skeleton dresses of batter; and then
fishes are ignored, and develop, according to the “Vestiges of Creation”
theory, into the higher forms of animal, into which the highest form of
all--man--pitches cannibal-like, until the culinary cosmos is resolved
into its pristine chaotic elements. And around this hecatomb of
slaughtered zoology and feasting humanity skip nimble waiters, furnished
with bottles of every shape and hue; for, since Noah first discovered
the seductive beverage, wine-bibbing has been a levelling principle,
by means of which the lords of the creation have been accustomed
to assimilate themselves to their subjects the brutes, despite the
hydraulic pressure of Father Matthew, and all others who have pledged
themselves to cold-water such degrading customs. And, indeed, we fear
that of the two parties whose respective mottoes might be “_in vino
veritas_” and “truth lies at the bottom of a well,” the latter will
continue to constitute the minority until the end of the chapter; or, as
Jack Beaupeep expressed the same sentiment, when D’Almayne propounded
to him a somewhat similar theory, be “safe to kick the bucket, if they
don’t put their foot in it in any other way:” but that misguided young
man not only made, but rejoiced in shocking bad puns.
The dinner had been done ample justice to--the wines (and their name
was legion) had not been at all neglected--Lord Alfred had become quite
intimate with the guardsmen, who, as the wine unlocked their tongues,
began, in a quiet, gentlemanly way, to quiz everything and everybody,
especially the heavy dragoon, who rejoiced in the patronymic of
Gambier--a name on which the other military gentlemen were pleased to
exercise their wit whenever they addressed him. As, for example, 1st
guardsman, _loquitur_:----
“I say, Beaupeep, have you heard Fred’s (2nd guardsman’s) last?”
“I haven’t even heard his first,” was the rejoinder.
“No; I should think not,” continued No. 1; “he made that when he was
quite a _baby in arms_.”
“Ye may as well say before he could speak, while ye are about it,”
suggested O’Brien.
“Bravo, Captain! you won’t better that,” said the narrator.
“However, Fred’s last and worst was this--‘Why is the gallant cornet
opposite, an addition to any mess-table?’ Do you give it up? ‘Because
he’s half game and half beer!’”
“I dare say it’s very funny,” muttered the heavy subject of the jest,
“but I don’t see the point myself.”
“It’s a _pint_ of half-and-half,” observed Jack Beaupeep, explanatorily.
“Or ‘heavy’ wet, if he were out in the rain,” added guardsman No. 2.
“Talking of heavy wet, puts _me_ in mind of coming down with the dust.
When are you going to perform that operation in regard to the Windsor
Steeple-chase?” inquired the cornet, surlily; who, not having anything
witty to reply to his assailant, substituted instead the most unpleasant
topic he could select.
“That is soon answered,” was the rejoinder; “whenever you’ll make a
fresh match between the horses, and give Rattletrap a chance of showing
Teacaddy the way home, when he’s not been pricked in shoeing by a
confounded blacksmith.”
“Oh! if that’s all, you may hand over the cash to-morrow morning,”
returned the dragoon; “the mare’s in first-rate order, and I’m game to
back her for a match, hurdle-race, steeple-chase, or what you will,” was
the confident reply.
“Ah! is it a steeple-chase now, ye’re talking of?” interrupted O’Brien,
filling himself a tumbler of Claret; “sure an’ I’ve got a horse I’d be
proud to enter, if it wasn’t jist putting me hand in your pockets and
taking the money out of ’em; for if he’s in the race, I’d name the winner
before they start.”
“He must be a wonderful animal, Captain,” observed the first guardsman;
“high-pressure, express train style of quadruped, eh?”
“Furnished with a _screw_-propeller, more likely,” added his companion,
ironically.
“Faith, an’ ye’re wrong there entirely: it’s little of the screw ye’ll
find about Broth-of-a-boy. Talk about railroads, indeed, I never knew
what flying was till the day I first galloped him in the Phoenix Park. I
only wish I’d had him in Spain, when I served with the legion of Sir
De Lacy Evans; it isn’t overtaken and kilt entirely by their blackguard
dragoons I’d have been then--though it’s little but hard blows and hard
swearing they got out of me, as it was, the Lord be praised!”
“Hear, hear! a story, a story!”
“Military reminiscences of Captain O’Brien! order, order!”
“Silence for the noble anecdote!”
“Out with it, Captain!” &c. &c., were some of the exclamations with
which the Hibernian’s last speech was hailed by various members of the
party, upon whom the whitebait (?) was beginning to tell.
Thus urged, that worthy, clearing his throat by a sip at the Claret,
which half emptied the tumbler, began:--
“Well, boys” (here he caught a look from Horace D’Almayne, which caused
him, nothing abashed, to add parenthetically), “if in the congeniality
of good fellowship you will permit me to call ye so, the story’s nothing
so very wonderful, after all--it was just a bit of a spree, do ye see,
nothing more; but such as it is ye’re welcome to it”--(polite aside
from Jack Beaupeep for Lord Alfred’s benefit--“You’re _too_ liberal,
really!”) “I was with Sir De Lacy Evans in Spain, captain in a
regiment of lancers; a rare set of rattling dogs they were, too--up
to everything, from robbing a henroost to burning towns and sacking
monasteries”--(Beaupeep aside--“A decidedly _sac-religious_ act that
last!”)
“On one occasion, we were stationed at a place distant about four miles
from a village occupied by a strong body of Carlists; well, sir, for
several nights running, our sentinels on the side towards the village
were assassinated--stabbed through the heart they were! We had ’em
doubled, two men to each post; bedad, the only improvement that effected
was, we got two men murdered instead of one; and yet the scamp that did
it always contrived to get away clear and clean--we never so much as
clapped eyes on him! Well, I bothered and puzzled the matter over, and
thought of this thing and that thing, and at last I got hold of a notion
I fancied might work well; so I cut off to our Colonel, and ‘Colonel,’
says I, ‘with your kind permission, I think I can stop these
assassinations.’ ‘What is it, O’Brien?’ says he, ‘you’re a clever,
rising young officer, and a man that bids fair to be an ornament to his
profession;’ but I won’t trouble ye with the illegant eulogy he was so
polite as to pronounce upon me that day”--(“Hear, hear!” from Beaupeep
and the guardsmen). “So I jist obtained his permission to select two
well-mounted troopers out of my own company, and leave to do what
I pleased with them and myself during the night, and that was all I
wanted. I happened at that time to have a particularly fast mare--a
sweet thing she was, bay, with black points, nearly thorough-bred, a
head like an antelope, and as to pace, ’gad there wasn’t a horse in
the regiment could come near her. Before nightfall I picked out my two
troopers--sharp, plucky young fellows, that I knew I could depend upon
if it came to hard fighting, each of them well mounted; and I took care
to see that their horses and the mare were properly fed and watered, so
as to be fit for a stiff burst; then I amused myself with sharpening the
point of my lance till it was as keen as a razor. About a stone’s
throw from the post where the sentry they used to assassinate was
stationed”--(“Of course, the same man every night till further notice,”
murmured Jack Beaupeep, continuing his running commentary)--“there was
a thicket of olive bushes and other shrubs; behind this, as soon as it
grew dusk, I posted my men with the horses, while I availed myself of a
rise in the ground to advance nearer, and lie down, hidden from sight
by a stunted bush or two. Well, I waited and waited, and watched and
watched, so that a mouse could not have stirred without my noticing it;
but nothing did I see, except the shadowy figure of the sentinel pacing
up and down in the moonlight, as though he were the discontented ghost
of one of his murdered comrades”--(“Very pretty--quite poetical, I
declare!” from Beaupeep).
“Well, at last, just about a quarter of an hour before daybreak, which
is the darkest period of the night in those latitudes, whether I had
dozed off for a minute I don’t know, but I was startled by a noise
differing from the monotonous tread of the sentinel, and which sounded
to my ear like the cracking of a dry twig; in another moment I perceived
a dark, round object moving upon the ground, which I soon made out to
be the head of a man drawing himself along, snake-fashion, upon his
stomach--while so close had he got to the unconscious soldier that I
perceived, if I would save the poor lad’s life, not an instant was to be
lost. I therefore gave the signal to my troopers to come up, and drawing
my sword, rushed forward to secure the assassin. As I did so, a light
active figure sprang up from the ground, and brandishing a long keen
dagger, made a furious stab at the sentry; but, fortunately, my approach
confused the scoundrel, so that he missed his stroke, and, instead
of killing the man, merely inflicted a slight flesh wound of no
consequence. Notwithstanding his surprise,--for, as the soldier
afterwards declared to me, his antagonist seemed to have risen out of
the earth,--the sentry attempted to seize him; but he contrived to slip
out of his hands like an eel, and before I could reach the spot, had
disappeared in the darkness. In another moment the dull sound of a
horse’s feet galloping over the turf proved to me that he was away; but
my own horse being brought up, I sprang into the saddle, snatched my
lance from the trooper who held it, and ordering the men to follow me,
started in pursuit. ’Pon me conscience, gentlemen, I niver reflect
on me feelings at that critical moment but it makes me--Ah, well! I’ll
trouble your Lordship for the Claret.”