boisterous jovial companion. He is seldom known to laugh even in the
midst of his gaiety; but maintains the same grave, lion-like demeanour.
He is very slow at comprehending a joke; and is apt to sit puzzling at
it, with a perplexed look, while the rest of the company is in a roar.
This gravity has, perhaps, grown on him with the growing weight of his
character; for he is gradually rising into patriarchal dignity in his
native place. Though he no longer takes an active part in athletic
sports, yet he always presides at them, and is appealed to on all
occasions as umpire. He maintains the peace on the village-green at
holiday games, and quells all brawls and quarrels by collaring the
parties and shaking them heartily, if refractory. No one ever pretends
to raise a hand against him, or to contend against his decisions; the
young men having grown up in habitual awe of his prowess, and in
implicit deference to him as the champion and lord of the green.
[Illustration: Quelling the Brawl]
He is a regular frequenter of the village inn, the landlady having been
a sweetheart of his in early life, and he having always continued on
kind terms with her. He seldom, however, drinks anything but a draught
of ale; smokes his pipe, and pays his reckoning before leaving the
tap-room. Here he "gives his little senate laws;" decides bets, which
are very generally referred to him; determines upon the characters and
qualities of horses; and indeed plays now and then the part of a judge,
in settling petty disputes between neighbours, which otherwise might
have been nursed by country attorneys into tolerable lawsuits. Jack is
very candid and impartial in his decisions, but he has not a head to
carry a long argument, and is very apt to get perplexed and out of
patience if there is much pleading. He generally breaks through the
argument with a strong voice, and brings matters to a summary
conclusion, by pronouncing what he calls the "upshot of the business,"
or, in other words, "the long and short of the matter."
Jack once made a journey to London, a great many years since, which has
furnished him with topics of conversation ever since. He saw the old
king on the terrace at Windsor, who stopped, and pointed him out to one
of the princesses, being probably struck with Jack's truly yeoman-like
appearance. This is a favourite anecdote with him, and has no doubt had
a great effect in making him a most loyal subject ever since, in spite
of taxes and poor's rates. He was also at Bartholomew-fair, where he had
half the buttons cut off his coat; and a gang of pick-pockets, attracted
by his external show of gold and silver, made a regular attempt to
hustle him as he was gazing at a show; but for once they found that they
had caught a tartar, for Jack enacted as great wonders among the gang as
Samson did among the Philistines. One of his neighbours, who had
accompanied him to town, and was with him at the fair, brought back an
account of his exploits, which raised the pride of the whole village;
who considered their champion as having subdued all London, and eclipsed
the achievements of Friar Tuck, or even the renowned Robin Hood himself.
Of late years the old fellow has begun to take the world easily; he
works less, and indulges in greater leisure, his son having grown up,
and succeeded to him both in the labours of the farm and the exploits of
the green. Like all sons of distinguished men, however, his father's
renown is a disadvantage to him, for he can never come up to public
expectation. Though a fine, active fellow of three-and-twenty, and
quite the "cock of the walk," yet the old people declare he is nothing
like what Ready-Money Jack was at his time of life. The youngster
himself acknowledges his inferiority, and has a wonderful opinion of the
old man, who indeed taught him all his athletic accomplishments, and
holds such a sway over him, that I am told, even to this day, he would
have no hesitation to take him in hands, if he rebelled against paternal
government.
The squire holds Jack in very high esteem, and shows him to all his
visitors as a specimen of old English "heart of oak." He frequently
calls at his house, and tastes some of his home-brewed, which is
excellent. He made Jack a present of old Tusser's Hundred Points of good
Husbandrie, which has furnished him with reading ever since, and is his
text-book and manual in all agricultural and domestic concerns. He has
made dog's ears at the most favourite passages, and knows many of the
poetical maxims by heart.
Tibbets, though not a man to be daunted or fluttered by high
acquaintances; and though he cherishes a sturdy independence of mind and
manner, yet is evidently gratified by the attentions of the squire,
whom he has known from boyhood, and pronounces "a true gentleman every
inch of him." He is also on excellent terms with Master Simon, who is a
kind of privy councillor to the family; but his great favourite is the
Oxonian, whom he taught to wrestle and play at quarter-staff when a boy,
and considers the most promising young gentleman in the whole county.
[Illustration: Quarter-Staff]
[Illustration: Mulligatawney Club]
BACHELORS.
The Bachelor most joyfully
In pleasant plight doth pass his daies,
Good fellowship and companie
He doth maintain and kepe alwaies.
EVANS' OLD BALLADS.
There is no character in the comedy of human life that is more difficult
to play well than that of an old bachelor. When a single gentleman,
therefore, arrives at that critical period when he begins to consider it
an impertinent question to be asked his age, I would advise him to look
well to his ways. This period, it is true, is much later with some men
than with others; I have witnessed more than once the meeting of two
wrinkled old lads of this kind, who had not seen each other for several
years, and have been amused by the amicable exchange of compliments on
each other's appearance that takes place on such occasions. There is
always one invariable observation, "Why, bless my soul! you look younger
than when last I saw you!" Whenever a man's friends begin to compliment
him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing
old.
I am led to make these remarks by the conduct of Master Simon and the
general, who have become great cronies. As the former is the younger by
many years, he is regarded as quite a youthful gallant by the general,
who moreover looks upon him as a man of great wit and prodigious
acquirements. I have already hinted that Master Simon is a family beau,
and considered rather a young fellow by all the elderly ladies of the
connexion; for an old bachelor, in an old family connexion, is something
like an actor in a regular dramatic corps, who seems "to flourish in
immortal youth," and will continue to play the Romeos and Rangers for
half a century together.
Master Simon, too, is a little of the chameleon, and takes a different
hue with every different companion; he is very attentive and officious,
and somewhat sentimental, with Lady Lillycraft; copies out little
namby-pamby ditties and love-songs for her, and draws quivers, and
doves, and darts, and Cupids, to be worked in the corners of her pocket
handkerchiefs. He indulges, however, in very considerable latitude with
the other married ladies of the family; and has many sly pleasantries to
whisper to them, that provoke an equivocal laugh and tap of the fan. But
when he gets among young company, such as Frank Bracebridge, the
Oxonian, and the general, he is apt to put on the mad wig, and to talk
in a very bachelor-like strain about the sex.
In this he has been encouraged by the example of the general, whom he
looks up to as a man who has seen the world. The general, in fact, tells
shocking stories after dinner, when the ladies have retired, which he
gives as some of the choice things that are served up at the
Mulligatawney Club, a knot of boon companions in London. He also repeats
the fat jokes of old Major Pendergast, the wit of the club, and which,
though the general can hardly repeat them for laughing, always make Mr.
Bracebridge look grave, he having a great antipathy to an indecent
jest. In a word, the general is a complete instance of the declension in
gay life, by which a young man of pleasure is apt to cool down into an
obscene old gentleman.
[Illustration: "I saw him and Master Simon conversing with a buxom
milkmaid in a meadow."--PAGE 87.]
I saw him and Master Simon, an evening or two since, conversing with a
buxom milkmaid in a meadow; and from their elbowing each other now and
then, and the general's shaking his shoulders, blowing up his cheeks,
and breaking out into a short fit of irrepressible laughter, I had no
doubt they were playing the mischief with the girl.
As I looked at them through a hedge, I could not but think they would
have made a tolerable group for a modern picture of Susannah and the two
elders. It is true the girl seemed in no wise alarmed at the force of
the enemy; and I question, had either of them been alone, whether she
would not have been more than they would have ventured to encounter.
Such veteran roisters are daring wags when together, and will put any
female to the blush with their jokes; but they are as quiet as lambs
when they fall singly into the clutches of a fine woman.
In spite of the general's years, he evidently is a little vain of his
person, and ambitious of conquests. I have observed him on Sunday in
church eyeing the country girls most suspiciously; and have seen him
leer upon them with a downright amorous look, even when he has been
gallanting Lady Lillycraft with great ceremony through the churchyard.
The general, in fact, is a veteran in the service of Cupid rather than
of Mars, having signalised himself in all the garrison towns and country
quarters, and seen service in every ball-room of England. Not a
celebrated beauty but he has laid siege to; and if his words may be
taken in a matter wherein no man is apt to be over veracious, it is
incredible what success he has had with the fair. At present he is like
a worn-out warrior, retired from service; but who still cocks his beaver
with a military air, and talks stoutly of fighting whenever he comes
within the smell of gunpowder.
I have heard him speak his mind very freely over his bottle, about the
folly of the captain in taking a wife; as he thinks a young soldier
should care for nothing but his "bottle and kind landlady." But, in
fact, he says, the service on the continent has had a sad effect upon
the young men; they have been ruined by light wines and French
quadrilles. "They've nothing," he says, "of the spirit of the old
service. There are none of your six-bottle men left, that were the souls
of a mess-dinner, and used to play the very deuce among the women."
As to a bachelor, the general affirms that he is a free and easy man,
with no baggage to take care of but his portmanteau; but, as Major
Pendergast says, a married man, with his wife hanging on his arm, always
puts him in mind of a chamber candlestick, with its extinguisher hitched
to it. I should not mind all this if it were merely confined to the
general; but I fear he will be the ruin of my friend, Master Simon, who
already begins to echo his heresies, and to talk in the style of a
gentleman that has seen life, and lived upon the town. Indeed, the
general seems to have taken Master Simon in hand, and talks of showing
him the lions when he comes to town, and of introducing him to a knot of
choice spirits at the Mulligatawney Club; which, I understand, is
composed of old nabobs, officers in the Company's employ, and other "men
of Ind," that have seen service in the East, and returned home burnt out
with curry and touched with the liver complaint. They have their
regular club, where they eat Mulligatawney soup, smoke the hookah, talk
about Tippoo Saib, Seringapatam, and tiger-hunting; and are tediously
agreeable in each other's company.
[Illustration: Conjugal Extinguisher]
[Illustration: A Literary Antiquary]
A LITERARY ANTIQUARY.
Printed bookes he contemnes, as a novelty of this latter age;
but a manuscript he pores on everlastingly; especially if the
cover be all moth-eaten, and the dust make a parenthesis
between every syllable.
MICO-COSMOGRAPHIE, 1628.
The squire receives great sympathy and support in his antiquated humours
from the parson, of whom I made some mention on my former visit to the
Hall, and who acts as a kind of family chaplain. He has been cherished
by the squire almost constantly since the time that they were
fellow-students at Oxford; for it is one of the peculiar advantages of
these great universities that they often link the poor scholar to the
rich patron, by early and heartfelt ties, that last through life,
without the usual humiliations of dependence and patronage. Under the
fostering protection of the squire, therefore, the little parson has
pursued his studies in peace. Having lived almost entirely among books,
and those, too, old books, he is quite ignorant of the world, and his
mind is as antiquated as the garden at the Hall, where the flowers are
all arranged in formal beds, and the yew-trees clipped into urns and
peacocks.
His taste for literary antiquities was first imbibed in the Bodleian
Library at Oxford; where, when a student, he passed many an hour
foraging among the old manuscripts. He has since, at different times,
visited most of the curious libraries in England, and has ransacked many
of the cathedrals. With all his quaint and curious learning, he has
nothing of arrogance or pedantry; but that unaffected earnestness and
guileless simplicity which seem to belong to the literary antiquary.
He is a dark, mouldy little man, and rather dry in his manner: yet, on
his favourite theme, he kindles up, and at times is even eloquent. No
fox-hunter, recounting his last day's sport, could be more animated than
I have seen the worthy parson, when relating his search after a curious
document, which he had traced from library to library, until he fairly
unearthed it in the dusty chapter-house of a cathedral. When, too, he
describes some venerable manuscript, with its rich illuminations, its
thick creamy vellum, its glossy ink, and the odour of the cloisters that
seemed to exhale from it he rivals the enthusiasm of a Parisian epicure,
expatiating on the merits of a Perigord pie, or a _Pâté de Strasbourg_.
His brain seems absolutely haunted with love-sick dreams about gorgeous
old works in "silk linings, triple gold bands, and tinted leather,
locked up in wire cases, and secured from the vulgar hands of the mere
reader;" and, to continue the happy expression of an ingenious writer,
"dazzling one's eyes, like eastern beauties peering through their
jealousies."
He has a great desire, however, to read such works in the old libraries
and chapter-houses to which they belong; for he thinks a black-letter
volume reads best in one of those venerable chambers where the light
struggles through dusty lancet windows and painted glass; and that it
loses half its zest if taken away from the neighbourhood of the
quaintly carved oaken book-case and Gothic reading-desk. At his
suggestion, the squire has had the library furnished in this antique
taste, and several of the windows glazed with painted glass, that they
may throw a properly tempered light upon the pages of their favourite
old authors.
The parson, I am told, has been for some time meditating a commentary on
Strutt, Brand, and Douce, in which he means to detect them in sundry
dangerous errors in respect to popular games and superstitions; a work
to which the squire looks forward with great interest. He is also a
casual contributor to that long-established repository of national
customs and antiquities, the Gentleman's Magazine, and is one of those
that every now and then make an inquiry concerning some obsolete customs
or rare legend; nay, it is said that several of his communications have
been at least six inches in length. He frequently receives parcels by
coach from different parts of the kingdom, containing mouldy volumes and
almost illegible manuscripts; for it is singular what an active
correspondence is kept up among literary antiquaries, and how soon the
fame of any rare volume, or unique copy, just discovered among the
rubbish of a library, is circulated among them. The parson is more busy
than common just now, being a little flurried by an advertisement of a
work, said to be preparing for the press, on the mythology of the middle
ages. The little man has long been gathering together all the hobgoblin
tales he could collect, illustrative of the superstitions of former
times; and he is in a complete fever lest this formidable rival should
take the field before him.
[Illustration: A Bookworm]
Shortly after my arrival at the Hall, I called at the parsonage, in
company with Mr. Bracebridge and the general. The parson had not been
seen for several days, which was a matter of some surprise, as he was an
almost daily visitor at the Hall. We found him in his study, a small,
dusky chamber, lighted by a lattice window that looked into the
churchyard, and was overshadowed by a yew-tree. His chair was surrounded
by folios and quartos, piled upon the floor, and his table was covered
with books and manuscripts. The cause of his seclusion was a work which
he had recently received, and with which he had retired in rapture from
the world, and shut himself up to enjoy a literary honeymoon
undisturbed. Never did boarding-school girl devour the pages of a
sentimental novel, or Don Quixote a chivalrous romance, with more
intense delight than did the little man banquet on the pages of this
delicious work. It was Dibdin's Bibliographical Tour; a work calculated
to have as intoxicating an effect on the imaginations of literary
antiquaries, as the adventures of the heroes of the Round Table on all
true knights; or the tales of the early American voyagers on the ardent
spirits of the age, filling them with dreams of Mexican and Peruvian
mines, and of the golden realm of El Dorado.
The good parson had looked forward to this bibliographical expedition as
of far greater importance than those to Africa, or the North Pole. With
what eagerness had he seized upon the history of the enterprise! With
what interest had he followed the redoubtable bibliographer and his
graphical squire in their adventurous roamings among Norman castles and
cathedrals, and French libraries, and German convents and universities;
penetrating into the prison-houses of vellum manuscripts and exquisitely
illuminated missals, and revealing their beauties to the world!
When the parson had finished a rapturous eulogy on this most curious and
entertaining work, he drew forth from a little drawer a manuscript
lately received from a correspondent, which perplexed him sadly. It was
written in Norman-French in very ancient characters, and so faded and
mouldered away as to be almost illegible. It was apparently an old
Norman drinking song, that might have been brought over by one of
William the Conqueror's carousing followers. The writing was just
legible enough to keep a keen antiquity hunter on a doubtful chase;
here and there he would be completely thrown out, and then there would
be a few words so plainly written as to put him on the scent again. In
this way he had been led on for a whole day, until he had found himself
completely at fault.
The squire endeavoured to assist him, but was equally baffled. The old
general listened for some time to the discussion, and then asked the
parson if he had read Captain Morris's or George Stephens's or Anacreon
Moore's bacchanalian songs; on the other replying in the negative, "Oh,
then," said the general, with a sagacious nod, "if you want a drinking
song, I can furnish you with the latest collection--I did not know you
had a turn for those kind of things; and I can lend you the
Encyclopaedia of Wit into the bargain. I never travel without them;
they're excellent reading at an inn."
It would not be easy to describe the odd look of surprise and perplexity
of the parson at this proposal; or the difficulty the squire had in
making the general comprehend, that though a jovial song of the present
day was but a foolish sound in the ears of wisdom, and beneath the
notice of a learned man, yet a trowl written by a tosspot several
hundred years since was a matter worthy of the gravest research, and
enough to set whole colleges by the ears.
I have since pondered much on this matter, and have figured to myself
what may be the fate of our current literature, when retrieved piecemeal
by future antiquaries, from among the rubbish of ages. What a Magnus
Apollo, for instance, will Moore become among sober divines and dusty
schoolmen! Even his festive and amatory songs, which are now the mere
quickeners of our social moments, or the delights of our drawing-rooms,
will then become matters of laborious research and painful collation.
How many a grave professor will then waste his midnight oil, or worry
his brain through a long morning, endeavouring to restore the pure text,
or illustrate the biographical hints of "Come tell me, says Rosa, as
kissing and kissed;" and how many an arid old book-worm, like the worthy
little parson, will give up in despair, after vainly striving to fill up
some fatal hiatus in "Fanny of Timmol!"
[Illustration: "Come, tell me, says Rosa, as kissing and kissed"]
Nor is it merely such exquisite authors as Moore that are doomed to
consume the oil of future antiquaries. Many a poor scribbler, who is
now apparently sent to oblivion by pastry-cooks and cheesemongers, will
then rise again in fragments, and flourish in learned immortality.
After all, thought I, time is not such an invariable destroyer as he is
represented. If he pulls down, he likewise builds up; if he impoverishes
one, he enriches another; his very dilapidations furnish matter for new
works of controversy, and his rust is more precious than the most costly
gilding. Under his plastic hand trifles rise into importance; the
nonsense of one age becomes the wisdom of another; the levity of the wit
gravitates into the learning of the pedant, and an ancient farthing
moulders into infinitely more value than a modern guinea.
[Illustration: The Farm-House]
THE FARM-HOUSE
--Love and hay
Are thick sown, but come up full of thistles.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
I was so much pleased with the anecdotes which were told me of
Ready-Money Jack Tibbets, that I got Master Simon, a day or two since,
to take me to his house. It was an old-fashioned farm-house, built of
brick, with curiously twisted chimneys. It stood at a little distance
from the road, with a southern exposure, looking upon a soft green slope
of meadow. There was a small garden in front, with a row of beehives
humming among beds of sweet herbs and flowers. Well-scoured milking
tubs, with bright copper hoops, hung on the garden paling. Fruit trees
were trained up against the cottage, and pots of flowers stood in the
windows. A fat superannuated mastiff lay in the sunshine at the door;
with a sleek cat sleeping peacefully across him.
Mr. Tibbets was from home at the time of our calling, but we were
received with hearty and homely welcome by his wife--a notable, motherly
woman, and a complete pattern for wives, since, according to Master
Simon's account, she never contradicts honest Jack, and yet manages to
have her own way, and to control him in everything. She received us in
the main room of the house, a kind of parlour or hall, with great brown
beams of timber across it, which Mr. Tibbets is apt to point out with
some exultation, observing that they don't put such timber in houses
now-a-days. The furniture was old-fashioned, strong, and highly
polished; the walls were hung with coloured prints of the story of the
Prodigal Son, who was represented in a red coat and leather breeches.
Over the fireplace was a blunderbuss, and a hard-favoured likeness of
Ready-Money Jack, taken, when he was a young man, by the same artist
that painted the tavern sign; his mother having taken a notion that the
Tibbetses had as much right to have a gallery of family portraits as the
folks at the Hall.
The good dame pressed us very much to take some refreshment, and tempted
us with a variety of household dainties, so that we were glad to
compound by tasting some of her home-made wines. While we were there,
the son and heir-apparent came home; a good-looking young fellow, and
something of a rustic beau. He took us over the premises, and showed us
the whole establishment. An air of homely but substantial plenty
prevailed throughout; everything was of the best materials, and in the
best condition. Nothing was out of place, or ill made; and you saw
everywhere the signs of a man that took care to have the worth of his
money, and that paid as he went.