Once upon a time, that is to say, in this our time,—the exact year,
month, and day are of no matter,—there dwelt in the city of London a
substantial citizen, who united in his single person the dignities of
wholesale fruiterer, alderman, common-councilman, and member of the
worshipful Company of Patten-makers; who had superadded to these
extraordinary distinctions the important post and title of Sheriff, and
who at length, and to crown all, stood next in rotation for the high and
honourable office of Lord Mayor.
He was a very substantial citizen indeed. His face was like the full
moon in a fog, with two little holes punched out for his eyes, a very
ripe pear stuck on for his nose, and a wide gash to serve for a mouth.
The girth of his waistcoat was hung up and lettered in his tailor’s shop
as an extraordinary curiosity. He breathed like a heavy snorer, and his
voice in speaking came thickly forth, as if it were oppressed and stifled
by feather-beds. He trod the ground like an elephant, and eat and drank
like—like nothing but an alderman, as he was.
This worthy citizen had risen to his great eminence from small
beginnings. He had once been a very lean, weazen little boy, never
dreaming of carrying such a weight of flesh upon his bones or of money in
his pockets, and glad enough to take his dinner at a baker’s door, and
his tea at a pump. But he had long ago forgotten all this, as it was
proper that a wholesale fruiterer, alderman, common-councilman, member of
the worshipful Company of Patten-makers, past sheriff, and, above all, a
Lord Mayor that was to be, should; and he never forgot it more completely
in all his life than on the eighth of November in the year of his
election to the great golden civic chair, which was the day before his
grand dinner at Guildhall.
It happened that as he sat that evening all alone in his counting-house,
looking over the bill of fare for next day, and checking off the fat
capons in fifties, and the turtle-soup by the hundred quarts, for his
private amusement,—it happened that as he sat alone occupied in these
pleasant calculations, a strange man came in and asked him how he did,
adding, ‘If I am half as much changed as you, sir, you have no
recollection of me, I am sure.’
The strange man was not over and above well dressed, and was very far
from being fat or rich-looking in any sense of the word, yet he spoke
with a kind of modest confidence, and assumed an easy, gentlemanly sort
of an air, to which nobody but a rich man can lawfully presume. Besides
this, he interrupted the good citizen just as he had reckoned three
hundred and seventy-two fat capons, and was carrying them over to the
next column; and as if that were not aggravation enough, the learned
recorder for the city of London had only ten minutes previously gone out
at that very same door, and had turned round and said, ‘Good night, my
lord.’ Yes, he had said, ‘my lord;’—he, a man of birth and education, of
the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-Law,—he who had
an uncle in the House of Commons, and an aunt almost but not quite in the
House of Lords (for she had married a feeble peer, and made him vote as
she liked),—he, this man, this learned recorder, had said, ‘my lord.’
‘I’ll not wait till to-morrow to give you your title, my Lord Mayor,’
says he, with a bow and a smile; ‘you are Lord Mayor _de facto_, if not
_de jure_. Good night, my lord.’
The Lord Mayor elect thought of this, and turning to the stranger, and
sternly bidding him ‘go out of his private counting-house,’ brought
forward the three hundred and seventy-two fat capons, and went on with
his account.
‘Do you remember,’ said the other, stepping forward,—‘_do_ you remember
little Joe Toddyhigh?’
The port wine fled for a moment from the fruiterer’s nose as he muttered,
‘Joe Toddyhigh! What about Joe Toddyhigh?’
‘_I_ am Joe Toddyhigh,’ cried the visitor. ‘Look at me, look hard at
me,—harder, harder. You know me now? You know little Joe again? What a
happiness to us both, to meet the very night before your grandeur! O!
give me your hand, Jack,—both hands,—both, for the sake of old times.’
‘You pinch me, sir. You’re a-hurting of me,’ said the Lord Mayor elect
pettishly. ‘Don’t,—suppose anybody should come,—Mr. Toddyhigh, sir.’
‘Mr. Toddyhigh!’ repeated the other ruefully.
‘O, don’t bother,’ said the Lord Mayor elect, scratching his head. ‘Dear
me! Why, I thought you was dead. What a fellow you are!’
Indeed, it was a pretty state of things, and worthy the tone of vexation
and disappointment in which the Lord Mayor spoke. Joe Toddyhigh had been
a poor boy with him at Hull, and had oftentimes divided his last penny
and parted his last crust to relieve his wants; for though Joe was a
destitute child in those times, he was as faithful and affectionate in
his friendship as ever man of might could be. They parted one day to
seek their fortunes in different directions. Joe went to sea, and the
now wealthy citizen begged his way to London, They separated with many
tears, like foolish fellows as they were, and agreed to remain fast
friends, and if they lived, soon to communicate again.
When he was an errand-boy, and even in the early days of his
apprenticeship, the citizen had many a time trudged to the Post-office to
ask if there were any letter from poor little Joe, and had gone home
again with tears in his eyes, when he found no news of his only friend.
The world is a wide place, and it was a long time before the letter came;
when it did, the writer was forgotten. It turned from white to yellow
from lying in the Post-office with nobody to claim it, and in course of
time was torn up with five hundred others, and sold for waste-paper. And
now at last, and when it might least have been expected, here was this
Joe Toddyhigh turning up and claiming acquaintance with a great public
character, who on the morrow would be cracking jokes with the Prime
Minister of England, and who had only, at any time during the next twelve
months, to say the word, and he could shut up Temple Bar, and make it no
thoroughfare for the king himself!
‘I am sure I don’t know what to say, Mr. Toddyhigh,’ said the Lord Mayor
elect; ‘I really don’t. It’s very inconvenient. I’d sooner have given
twenty pound,—it’s very inconvenient, really.’—A thought had come into
his mind, that perhaps his old friend might say something passionate
which would give him an excuse for being angry himself. No such thing.
Joe looked at him steadily, but very mildly, and did not open his lips.
‘Of course I shall pay you what I owe you,’ said the Lord Mayor elect,
fidgeting in his chair. ‘You lent me—I think it was a shilling or some
small coin—when we parted company, and that of course I shall pay with
good interest. I can pay my way with any man, and always have done. If
you look into the Mansion House the day after to-morrow,—some time after
dusk,—and ask for my private clerk, you’ll find he has a draft for you.
I haven’t got time to say anything more just now, unless,’—he hesitated,
for, coupled with a strong desire to glitter for once in all his glory in
the eyes of his former companion, was a distrust of his appearance, which
might be more shabby than he could tell by that feeble light,—‘unless
you’d like to come to the dinner to-morrow. I don’t mind your having
this ticket, if you like to take it. A great many people would give
their ears for it, I can tell you.’
His old friend took the card without speaking a word, and instantly
departed. His sunburnt face and gray hair were present to the citizen’s
mind for a moment; but by the time he reached three hundred and
eighty-one fat capons, he had quite forgotten him.
Joe Toddyhigh had never been in the capital of Europe before, and he
wandered up and down the streets that night amazed at the number of
churches and other public buildings, the splendour of the shops, the
riches that were heaped up on every side, the glare of light in which
they were displayed, and the concourse of people who hurried to and fro,
indifferent, apparently, to all the wonders that surrounded them. But in
all the long streets and broad squares, there were none but strangers; it
was quite a relief to turn down a by-way and hear his own footsteps on
the pavement. He went home to his inn, thought that London was a dreary,
desolate place, and felt disposed to doubt the existence of one
true-hearted man in the whole worshipful Company of Patten-makers.
Finally, he went to bed, and dreamed that he and the Lord Mayor elect
were boys again.
He went next day to the dinner; and when in a burst of light and music,
and in the midst of splendid decorations and surrounded by brilliant
company, his former friend appeared at the head of the Hall, and was
hailed with shouts and cheering, he cheered and shouted with the best,
and for the moment could have cried. The next moment he cursed his
weakness in behalf of a man so changed and selfish, and quite hated a
jolly-looking old gentleman opposite for declaring himself in the pride
of his heart a Patten-maker.
As the banquet proceeded, he took more and more to heart the rich
citizen’s unkindness; and that, not from any envy, but because he felt
that a man of his state and fortune could all the better afford to
recognise an old friend, even if he were poor and obscure. The more he
thought of this, the more lonely and sad he felt. When the company
dispersed and adjourned to the ball-room, he paced the hall and passages
alone, ruminating in a very melancholy condition upon the disappointment
he had experienced.
It chanced, while he was lounging about in this moody state, that he
stumbled upon a flight of stairs, dark, steep, and narrow, which he
ascended without any thought about the matter, and so came into a little
music-gallery, empty and deserted. From this elevated post, which
commanded the whole hall, he amused himself in looking down upon the
attendants who were clearing away the fragments of the feast very lazily,
and drinking out of all the bottles and glasses with most commendable
perseverance.
His attention gradually relaxed, and he fell fast asleep.
When he awoke, he thought there must be something the matter with his
eyes; but, rubbing them a little, he soon found that the moonlight was
really streaming through the east window, that the lamps were all
extinguished, and that he was alone. He listened, but no distant murmur
in the echoing passages, not even the shutting of a door, broke the deep
silence; he groped his way down the stairs, and found that the door at
the bottom was locked on the other side. He began now to comprehend that
he must have slept a long time, that he had been overlooked, and was shut
up there for the night.
His first sensation, perhaps, was not altogether a comfortable one, for
it was a dark, chilly, earthy-smelling place, and something too large,
for a man so situated, to feel at home in. However, when the momentary
consternation of his surprise was over, he made light of the accident,
and resolved to feel his way up the stairs again, and make himself as
comfortable as he could in the gallery until morning. As he turned to
execute this purpose, he heard the clocks strike three.
Any such invasion of a dead stillness as the striking of distant clocks,
causes it to appear the more intense and insupportable when the sound has
ceased. He listened with strained attention in the hope that some clock,
lagging behind its fellows, had yet to strike,—looking all the time into
the profound darkness before him, until it seemed to weave itself into a
black tissue, patterned with a hundred reflections of his own eyes. But
the bells had all pealed out their warning for that once, and the gust of
wind that moaned through the place seemed cold and heavy with their iron
breath.
The time and circumstances were favourable to reflection. He tried to
keep his thoughts to the current, unpleasant though it was, in which they
had moved all day, and to think with what a romantic feeling he had
looked forward to shaking his old friend by the hand before he died, and
what a wide and cruel difference there was between the meeting they had
had, and that which he had so often and so long anticipated. Still, he
was disordered by waking to such sudden loneliness, and could not prevent
his mind from running upon odd tales of people of undoubted courage, who,
being shut up by night in vaults or churches, or other dismal places, had
scaled great heights to get out, and fled from silence as they had never
done from danger. This brought to his mind the moonlight through the
window, and bethinking himself of it, he groped his way back up the
crooked stairs,—but very stealthily, as though he were fearful of being
overheard.
He was very much astonished when he approached the gallery again, to see
a light in the building: still more so, on advancing hastily and looking
round, to observe no visible source from which it could proceed. But how
much greater yet was his astonishment at the spectacle which this light
revealed.
The statues of the two giants, Gog and Magog, each above fourteen feet in
height, those which succeeded to still older and more barbarous figures,
after the Great Fire of London, and which stand in the Guildhall to this
day, were endowed with life and motion. These guardian genii of the City
had quitted their pedestals, and reclined in easy attitudes in the great
stained glass window. Between them was an ancient cask, which seemed to
be full of wine; for the younger Giant, clapping his huge hand upon it,
and throwing up his mighty leg, burst into an exulting laugh, which
reverberated through the hall like thunder.
Joe Toddyhigh instinctively stooped down, and, more dead than alive, felt
his hair stand on end, his knees knock together, and a cold damp break
out upon his forehead. But even at that minute curiosity prevailed over
every other feeling, and somewhat reassured by the good-humour of the
Giants and their apparent unconsciousness of his presence, he crouched in
a corner of the gallery, in as small a space as he could, and, peeping
between the rails, observed them closely.
It was then that the elder Giant, who had a flowing gray beard, raised
his thoughtful eyes to his companion’s face, and in a grave and solemn
voice addressed him thus: