####################################################################
Transcriber’s Notes
This e-text is based on the print version of ‘The Works of Thomas
Hood, Vol. II,’ published in 1882. Inconsistent and uncommon
spelling and hyphenation have been retained; punctuation and
typographical errors have been corrected. Footnotes have been moved
to the end of the sections in which their respective footnote
anchors are situated.
Small caps have been changed to uppercase letters.
####################################################################
HOOD’S OWN.
THE WORKS
OF
THOMAS HOOD.
COMIC AND SERIOUS, IN PROSE AND VERSE, WITH ALL
THE ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS.
EDITED, WITH NOTES,
BY HIS SON AND DAUGHTER.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
WARD, LOCK, & CO., WARWICK HOUSE,
SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C.
NEW YORK: 10 BOND STREET.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
The Boy at the Nore 1
The Run-Over 4
Johnsoniana 11
The Great Earthquake at Marylebone 16
Ode to St. Swithin 20
The Apparition. A True Story 24
A Blind Man 28
The Supper Superstition. A Pathetic Ballad 30
A Snake-Snack 33
A Storm at Hastings, and the Little Unknown 36
Lines to a Lady on her Departure for India 45
The Nelson 48
Sonnet to a Scotch Girl Washing Linen after her Country
Fashion 51
My Apology 52
Sonnet to a Decayed Seaman 54
The Great Conflagration 55
Huggins and Duggins 97
Domestic Didactics. By an Old Servant 101
Pain in a Pleasure-Boat. A Sea Eclogue 107
A Spent Ball 111
Literary and Literal 113
The Accident 120
Sonnet to Lord Wharncliffe, on his Game Bill 123
Literary Reminiscences. No. I. 124
Ode to Perry, the Inventor of the Patent Perryan Pen 132
Sketches on the Road 139
The Undying One 144
A Gipsy Party 148
Cockle _v._ Cackle 157
A Lawyer’s Letter 162
The Sweep’s Complaint 167
Letter from an Old Sportsman 173
The Sub-Marine 179
The Island 182
Dog-grel Verses. By a poor Blind 188
The Kangaroos. A Fable 193
Literary Reminiscences. No. II. 195
The Domestic Dilemma. A True Story from the German of
Jean Paul Nemand 201
Ode for the Ninth of November 222
Sonnet 228
Rondeau. (Extracted from a Well-known Annual) 229
London Fashions for November. Remarks 230
Symptoms of Ossification 233
The Poacher. A Serious Ballad 234
Sketches on the Road. The Sudden Death 237
I cannot Bear a Gun 252
Trimmer’s Exercise for the Use of Children 257
Some Account of William Whiston 259
The Fox and the Hen. A Fable 263
The Comet. An Astronomical Anecdote 267
Literary Reminiscences. No. III. 270
The Ocean. Considered per se 275
Love and Lunacy 295
Those Evening Bells. “I’d be a Parody.” 331
Lines to a Friend at Cobham 332
The Quakers’ Conversazione 333
Sketches on the Road. The Morning Call 344
The Lament of Toby, the Learned Pig 348
To a Bad Rider 351
My Son and Heir 352
Literary Reminiscences. No. IV. 358
The Carnaby Correspondence 395
A Rise at the Father of Angling 425
Right and Wrong. A Sketch at Sea 431
Patronage 440
Animal Magnetism 452
The Forlorn Shepherd’s Complaint. An Unpublished Poem,
from Sidney 464
Anacreontic. By a Footman 468
[Illustration: “HAVE I A WOTE FOR GRINNAGE?”]
HOOD’S OWN:
OR, LAUGHTER FROM YEAR TO YEAR.
[Illustration: THE ISLE OF MAN.]
THE BOY AT THE NORE.
“Alone I did it!--Boy!”--CORIOLANUS.
I SAY, little Boy at the Nore,
Do you come from the small Isle of Man?
Why, your history a mystery must be,--
Come tell us as much as you can,
Little Boy at the Nore!
You live it seems wholly on water,
Which your Gambier calls living in clover;--
But how comes it, if that is the case,
You’re eternally half seas over,--
Little Boy at the Nore?
While you ride--while you dance--while you float--
Never mind your imperfect orthography;--
But give us as well as you can,
Your watery auto-biography,
Little Boy at the Nore!
LITTLE BOY AT THE NORE LOQUITUR.
I’m the tight little Boy at the Nore,
In a sort of sea negus I dwells;
Half and half ’twixt saltwater and Port,
I’m reckon’d the first of the swells--
I’m the Boy at the Nore!
I lives with my toes to the flounders,
And watches through long days and nights;
Yet, cruelly eager, men look--
To catch the first glimpse of my lights--
I’m the Boy at the Nore.
I never gets cold in the head,
So my life on salt water is sweet,--
I think I owes much of my health
To being well used to wet feet--
As the Boy at the Nore.
There’s one thing, I’m never in debt:
Nay!--I liquidates more than I _oughtor_[1];
So the man to beat Cits as goes by,
In keeping the head above water,
Is the Boy at the Nore.
I’ve seen a good deal of distress,
Lots of Breakers in Ocean’s Gazette;
They should do as I do--rise o’er all;
Aye, a good floating capital get,
Like the Boy at the Nore!
[Illustration: THE BUOY AT THE NORE.]
I’m a’ter the sailor’s own heart,
And cheers him, in deep water rolling;
And the friend of all friends to Jack Junk,
Ben Backstay, Tom Pipes, and Tom Bowling,
Is the Boy at the Nore!
Could I e’er but grow up, I’d be off
For a week to make love with my wheedles;
If the tight little Boy at the Nore
Could but catch a nice girl at the Needles,
We’d have _two_ at the Nore!
They thinks little of sizes on water,
On big waves the tiny one skulks,--
While the river has Men of War on it--
Yes--the Thames is oppress’d with great Hulks,
And the Boy’s at the Nore!
But I’ve done--for the water is heaving
Round my body, as though it would sink it!
And I’ve been so long pitching and tossing,
That sea-sick--you’d hardly now think it--
Is the Boy at the Nore!
[Illustration: AS SAFE AS THE BANK.]
[1] A word caught from some American Trader in passing.
THE RUN-OVER.
“DO you see that ’ere gentleman in the buggy, with the clipt un?”
enquired Ned Stocker, as he pointed with his whip at a chaise, some
fifty yards in advance. “Well, for all he’s driving there so easy like,
and comfortable, he once had a gig-shaft, and that’s a fact, driv right
through his body!”
“Rather him than me,” drawled a passenger on the box, without removing
his cigar from his mouth.
“It’s true for all that,” returned Ned, with a nod of his head equal
to an affidavit. “The shaft run in under one armpit, right up to the
tug, and out again at t’other besides pinning him to the wall of the
stable--and that’s a thing such as don’t happen every day.”
“Lucky it don’t,” said the smoker, between two puffs of his cigar.
“It an’t likely to come often,” resumed Ned, “let alone the getting
over it afterwards, which is the wonderfullest part of it all. To
see him bowling along there, he don’t look like a man pinned to a
stable-wall with the rod through him, right up to the tug--do he?”
“Can’t say he does,” said the smoker.
“For my part,” said Ned, “or indeed any man’s part, most people in such
a case would have said, it’s all up with me, and good reason why, as
I said afore, with a shaft clean through your inside, right up to the
tug--and two inches besides into the stable wall, by way of a benefit.
But somehow he always stuck to it--not the wall, you know--but his own
opinion, that he should get over it--he was as firm as flints about
that--and sure enough the event came off exactly.”
“The better for him,” said the smoker.
“I don’t know the rights on it,” said Ned, “for I warn’t there--but
they do say when he was dextricated from the rod, there was a regular
tunnel through him, and in course the greatest danger was of his
ketching cold in the lungs from the thorough draught.”
“Nothing more likely,” said the fumigator.
“Howsomever,” continued Ned, “he was cured by Dr. Maiden of Stratford,
who give him lots of physic to provoke his stomach, and make him eat
hearty; and by taking his feeds well,--warm mashes at first, and then
hard meat, in course of time he filled up. Nobody hardly believed it,
though, when they see him about on his legs again--myself for one--but
he always said he would overcome it, and he was as good as his word. If
that an’t game, I don’t know what is.”
“No more do I,” said the man with the Havannah.
“I don’t know the philosophy on it,” resumed Ned, “but it’s a remark of
mine about recovering, if a man says he will, he will,--and if he says
he won’t, he won’t--you may book that for certain. Mayhap a good pluck
helps the wounds in healing kindly,--but so it is, for I’ve observed
it. You’ll see one man with hardly a scratch on his face, and says he,
I’m done for--and he turns out quite correct--while another as is cut
to ribbons will say--never mind,--I’m good for another round, and so he
proves, particularly if he’s one of your small farmers. I’ll give you a
reason why.”
“Now then,” said the smoker.
“My reason is,” replied Ned, “that they’re all as hard as
nails--regular pebbles for game. They take more thrashing than their
own corn, and that’s saying something. They’re all fortitude, and
nothing else. Talk about punishment! nothing comes amiss to ’em, from
butt-ends of whips and brickbats down to bludgeons loaded with lead.
You can’t hurt their feelings. They’re jist like badgers, the more you
welt ’em the more they grin, and when it’s over, maybe a turn-up at a
cattle fair, or a stop by footpads, they’ll go home to their missises
all over blood and wounds as cool and comfortable as cowcumbers,
with holes in their heads enough to scarify a whole hospital of army
surgeons.”
“The very thing Scott has characterised,” I ventured to observe, “in
the person of honest Dandie.”
“Begging your pardon, Sir,” said Ned, “I know Farmer Scott very well,
and he’s anything but a dandy. I was just a going to bring forward, as
one of the trumps, a regular out-and-outer. We become friends through
an axident. It was a darkish night, you see, and him a little lushy
or so, making a bit of a swerve in his going towards the middle of
the road, before you could cry Snacks! I was over him with the old
Regulator.”
“Good God!” exclaimed my left-hand companion on the roof. “Was not the
poor fellow hurt?”
“Why, not much for HIM,” answered Ned, with a very decided
emphasis on the pronoun. “Though it would have been a quietus for nine
men out of ten, and, as the Jews say, Take your pick of the basket. But
he looked queer at first, and shook himself, and made a wryish face,
like a man that hadn’t got the exact bit of the joint he preferred.”
“Looked queer!” ejaculated the compassionate passenger, “he must have
looked dreadful! I remember the Regulator, one of the oldest and
heaviest vehicles on the road. But of course you picked him up, and got
him inside, and----”
“Quite the reverse,” answered Ned, quietly, “and far from it; he picked
himself up, quite independent, and wouldn’t even accept a lift on the
box. He only felt about his head a bit, and then his back, and his
arms, and his thighs, and his lines, and after that he guv a nod, and
says he, ‘all right,’ and away he toddled.”
“I can’t credit it,” exclaimed the man on the roof.
“That’s jist what his wife said,” replied Ned, with considerable
composure, in spite of the slur on his veracity. “Let alone two black
eyes, and his collar bone, and the broke rib, he’d a hole in his head,
with a flint sticking in it bigger than any one you can find since
Macadaming. But he made so light on it all, and not being very clear
besides in his notions, I’m blest if he didn’t tell her he’d only been
knockt down by a man with a truck!”
“Not a bad story,” said the smoker on the box.
I confess I made internally a parallel remark. Naturally robust as my
faith is, I could not, as Hamlet says, let “Belief lay hold of me,”
with the coachman’s narrative in his hand, like a copy of a writ. I am
no stranger, indeed, to the peculiar hardihood of our native yeomanry;
but Ned, in his zeal for their credit, had certainly overdrawn the
truth. As to his doctrine of presentiments, it had never been one of
the subjects of my speculations; but on a superficial view, it appeared
to me improbable that life or death, in cases of casualty, could be
predetermined with such certainty as he had averred; and particularly
as I happen to know a certain lady, who has been accepting the Bills
of Mortality at two months’ date, for many years past--but has never
honoured them when due. It was fated, however, that honest Ned was to
be confirmed in his theories and corroborated in his facts.
We had scarcely trotted half a mile in meditative silence, when we
overtook a sturdy pedestrian, who was pacing the breadth as well as
the length of the road, rather more like a land surveyor than a mere
traveller. He evidently belonged to the agricultural class, which
Ned had distinguished by the title of Small Farmers. Like Scott’s
Liddesdale yeoman, he wore a shaggy dreadnought, below which you saw
two well-fatted calves, penned in a pair of huge top-boots--the tops
and the boots being of such different shades of brown as you may
observe in two arable fields of various soil, a rich loam and a clay.
In his hand he carried a formidable knotted club-stick, and a member of
the Heralds’ College would have set him down at once a tenant of the
Earl of Leicester, he looked so like a bear with a ragged staff.
I observed that Ned seemed anxious. One of his leaders was a bolter,
and his wheelers were far from steady; and the man ahead walked not
quite so straightly as if he had been ploughing a furrow. We were
almost upon him--Ned gave a sharp halloo--the man looked back, and
wavered. A minute decided the matter. He escaped Scylla, but Charybdis
yawned for him--in plain prose, he cleared the Rocket, but contrived to
get under the broad wheel of a Warwickshire waggon, which was passing
in the opposite direction. There was still a chance,--even a fly-waggon
may be stopped without much notice--but the waggoner was inside,
sweethearting with three maids that were going to Coventry. Every voice
cried out Woh! but the right one. The horses plodded on--the wheels
rumbled--the bells jingled--we all thought a knell.
Ned instantly pulled up, with his team upon their haunches--we all
alighted, and in a moment the sixteen the Rocket was licensed to
carry were at the fatal spot. In the midst of the circle lay, what we
considered a bundle of last linen just come home from the mangle.
“That’s a dead un,” said the smoker, throwing away as he spoke the
butt-end of a cigar.
“Poor wretch,” exclaimed the humane man from the roof, “what a shocking
spectacle!”
“It’s over his chest,” said I.
“It’s all over,” said the passenger on my right.
“And a happy release,” said a lady on my left; “he must have been a
cripple for life.”
“He can’t have a whole rib in his body,” said a man from the dicky.
“Hall to hattums,” said a gentleman from the inside.
“The worst I ever see, and I’ve had the good luck to see many,” said
the guard.
“No, he can’t get over that,” said Ned himself.
To our astonishment, however, the human mass still breathed. After
a long sigh it opened one eye--the right--then the other--the mouth
gasped--the tongue moved--and at last even spoke, though in disjointed
syllables.
“We’re nigh--hand--an’t we--the nine--milestun?”
“Yes--yes--close to it,” answered a dozen voices, and one in its
bewilderment asked, “Do you live there?” but was set right by the
sufferer himself.
“No--a mile fudder.”
“Where is there a surgeon?” asked the humane man, “I will ride off for
him on one of the leaders.”
“Better not,” said the phlegmatic smoker, who had lighted a fresh cigar
with some German tinder and a lucifer--“not used to saddle--may want a
surgeon yourself.”
“Is there never a doctor among the company?” inquired the guard.
“I am a medical man,” replied a squat vulgar-looking personage. “I sell
Morison’s pills--but I haven’t any about me.”
“Glad of it,” said the smoker, casting a long puff in the other’s face.
[Illustration: “THIS IS THE TIME WHEN CHURCH-YARDS YAWN.”]
“Poor wretch!” sighed the compassionate man. “He is beyond human aid.
Heaven help the widow and the fatherless--he looks like a family man!”
“I were not to blaame,” said the waggoner. “The woife and childerin
can’t coom upon I.”
“Does anyone know who he is?” inquired the coachman, but there was no
answer.
“Maybe the gemman has a card or summut,” said the gentleman from the
inside.
“Is there no house near?” inquired the lady.
“For to get a shutter off on,” added the gentleman.
“Ought we not to procure a postchaise,” inquired a gentleman’s footman.
“Or a shell, in case,” suggested the man from the dicky.
“Shell be hanged!” said the sufferer, in a tone that made us all jump
a yard backward. “Stick me up agin the milestun--there, easy does
it--that’s comfortable--and now tell me, and no nonsense,--be I flat?”
“A little pancakey,” said the man with the cigar.
“I say,” repeated the sufferer, with some earnestness, “be I
flat--quite flat--as flat like as a sheet of paper? Yes or no?”
“No, no, no,” burst from sixteen voices at once, and the assurance
seemed to take as great a load off his mind as had lately passed
over his body. By an effort he contrived to get up and sit upon the
milestone, from which he waved us a good-bye, accompanied by the
following words:--
“Gentlefolk, my best thanks and my sarvice to you, and a pleasant
journey. Don’t consarn yourselves about me, for there’s nothing
dangerous. I shall do well, I know I shall; and I’ll tell you what I’ll
go upon--if I bean’t flat I shall get round.”
JOHNSONIANA.
“None despise puns but those who cannot make them.”--SWIFT.
_To the Editor of the Comic Annual._
SIR,
As I am but an occasional reader in the temporary indulgence of
intellectual relaxation, I have but recently become cognizant
of the metropolitan publication of Mr. Murray’s Mr. Croker’s Mr.
Boswell’s Dr. Johnson: a circumstance the more to be deprecated,
for if I had been simultaneously aware of that amalgamation of
miscellaneous memoranda I could have contributed a personal
quota of characteristic colloquial anecdotes to the biographical
reminiscences of the multitudinous lexicographer, which although
founded on the basis of indubitable veracity, has never transpired
among the multifarious effusions of that stupendous complication
of mechanical ingenuity, which, according to the technicalities
in usage in our modern nomenclature, has obtained the universal
cognomen of the press. Expediency imperiously dictates that the
nominal identity of the hereditary kinsman, from whom I derive my
authoritative responsibility, shall be inviolable and umbrageously
obscured; but in future variorum editions his voluntary addenda
to the already inestimable concatenation of circumstantial
particularisation might typographically be discriminated from
the literary accumulations of the indefatigable Boswell and the
vivacious Piozzi, by the significant classification of Boz, Poz,
and Coz.
In posthumously eliciting and philosophically elucidating the
phenomena of defunct luminaries, whether in reference to corporeal,
physiognomical, or metaphysical attributes, justice demands the
strictest scrupulosity, in order that the heterogeneous may not
preponderate over the homogeneous in the critical analysis.
Metaphorically speaking, I am rationally convinced that the
operative point I am about to develop will remove a pertinacious
film from the eye of the biographer of the memorable Dr. Johnson;
and especially with reference to that reiterated verbal aphorism
so preposterously ascribed to his conversational inculcation,
namely, that “he who would make a pun would pick a pocket;”
however irrelevant such a doctrinarian maxim to the irrefragable
fact, that in that colossal monument of etymological erudition
erected by the stupendous Doctor himself (of course implying his
inestimable Dictionary), the paramount gist, scope, and tendency
of his laborious researches was obviously to give as many meanings
as possible to one word. In order, however, to place hypothesis
on the immutable foundation of fact, I will, with your periodical
permission, adduce a few Johnsonian repartees from my cousin’s
anecdotical memorabilia, which will perspicuously evolve the
synthetical conclusion, that the inimitable author of Rasselas
did not dogmatically predicate such an aggravated degree of moral
turpitude in the perpetration of a double entendre.
Apologistically requesting indulgence for the epistolary laxity of
an unpremeditated effusion,
I remain, Sir,
Your very humble obedient servant,
SEPTIMUS REARDON.
_Lichfield, October 1, 1833._
“Do you really believe, Dr. Johnson,” said a Lichfield lady, “in the
dead walking after death?”--“Madam,” said Johnson, “I have no doubt
on the subject; I have heard the Dead March in Saul.” “You really
believe then, Doctor, in ghosts?”--“Madam,” said Johnson, “I think
_appearances_ are in their favour.”
The Doctor was notoriously very superstitious. The same lady once
asked him--“if he ever felt any presentiment at a winding-sheet in the
candle.”--“Madam,” said Johnson, “if a _mould_ candle, it doubtless
indicates death, and that somebody will go out like a _snuff_; but
whether at Hampton _Wick_ or in _Greece_, must depend upon the
_graves_.”
Dr. Johnson was not comfortable in the Hebrides. “Pray, Doctor, how did
you sleep?” inquired a benevolent Scotch hostess, who was so extremely
hospitable that some hundreds always occupied the same bed.--“Madam,”
said Johnson, “I had not a wink the whole night long; sleep seemed to
_flee_ from my eyelids, and to _bug_ from all the rest of my body.”
The Doctor and Boswell once lost themselves in the Isle of Muck, and
the latter said they must “_spier_ their way at the first body they
met.” “Sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “you’re a scoundrel: you may spear
anybody you like, but I am not going to ‘run a-Muck and tilt at all I
meet.’”
[Illustration: AN ILLUMINATED MS.]
“What do you think of whiskey, Dr. Johnson?” hiccupped Boswell after
emptying a sixth tumbler of toddy. “Sir,” said the Doctor, “it
penetrates my very soul like ‘the _small-still_ voice of conscience,’
and doubtless the worm of the still is the ‘worm that never dies.’”
Boswell afterwards inquired the Doctor’s opinion on illicit
distillation, and how the great moralist would act in an affray between
the smugglers and the Excise. “If I went by the _letter_ of the law, I
should assist the Customs, but according to the _spirit_ I should stand
by the contrabands.”
The Doctor was always very satirical on the want of timber in the
North. “Sir,” he said to the young Laird of Icombally, who was going
to join his regiment, “may Providence preserve you in battle, and
especially your nether limbs. You may grow a walking-stick here, but
you must import a wooden leg.” At Dunsinane the old prejudice broke
out. “Sir,” said he to Boswell, “Macbeth was an idiot; he ought to have
known that every wood in Scotland might be carried in a man’s hand. The
Scotch, Sir, are like the frogs in the fable: if they had a Log they
would make a King of it.”
Boswell one day expatiated at some length on the moral and religious
character of his countrymen, and remarked triumphantly that there was
a Cathedral at Kirkwall, and the remains of a Bishop’s Palace. “Sir,”
said Johnson, “it must have been the poorest of Sees: take your _Rum_
and _Egg_ and _Mull_ altogether, and they won’t provide for a _Bishop_.”
East India company is the worst of all company. A Lady fresh from
Calcutta once endeavoured to curry Johnson’s favour by talking of
nothing but howdahs, doolies, and bungalows, till the Doctor took, as
usual, to _tiffin_. “Madam,” said he, in a tone that would have scared
a tiger out of a jungle, “India’s very well for a rubber or for a
bandana, or for a cake of ink, but what with its Bhurtpore, Pahlumpore,
Barrackpore, Hyderapore, Singapore, and Nagpore, its Hyderabad,
Astrabad, Bundlebad, Sindbad, and Guzzaratbadbad, it’s a _poor_ and
_bad_ country altogether.”
Master M., after plaguing Miss Seward and Dr. Darwin, and a large tea
party at Lichfield, said to his mother that he would be good if she
would give him an apple. “My dear child,” said the parent, feeling
herself in the presence of a great moralist, “you ought not to be good
on any consideration of gain, for ‘virtue is its own reward.’ You ought
to be good disinterestedly, and without thinking what you are to get
for it.” “Madam,” said Dr. Johnson, “you are a fool; would you have the
boy _good for nothing_?”
The same lady once consulted the Doctor on the degree of turpitude to
be attached to her son’s robbing an orchard. “Madam,” said Johnson,
“it all depends upon the weight of the boy. I remember my schoolfellow
Davy Garrick, who was always a little fellow, robbing a dozen of
orchards with impunity, but the very first time I climbed up an apple
tree, for I was always a heavy boy, the bough broke with me, and it was
called a judgment. I suppose that’s why Justice is represented with a
pair of scales.”
Caleb Whitefoord, the famous punster, once inquired seriously of
Dr. Johnson whether he really considered that a man ought to be
transported, like Barrington, the pickpocket, for being guilty of a
double meaning. “Sir,” said Johnson, “if a man means well, the more he
means the better.”
THE GREAT EARTHQUAKE AT MARY-LE-BONE.
“Do you never deviate?”--JOHN BULL.
IT was on the evening of the 7th of November, 18--, that I went by
invitation to sup with my friend P., at his house in Highstreet,
Mary-le-bone. The only other person present was a Portuguese, by
name Senor Mendez, P.’s mercantile agent at Lisbon, a person of
remarkably retentive memory, and most wonderful power of description.
The conversation somehow turned upon the memorable great earthquake
at Lisbon, in the year of our Lord----, and Senor Mendez, who was
residing at that time in the Portuguese capital, gave us a very
lively picture--if lively it may be called--of the horrors of that
awful convulsion of nature. The picture was dreadful; the Senor’s own
house, a substantial stone mansion, was rent from attic to cellar: and
the steeple of his parish church left impending over it at an angle
surpassing that of the famous Leaning Tower of Bologna!
The Portuguese had a wonderfully expressive countenance, with a
style of narration indescribably vivid; and as I listened with the
most intense interest, every dismal circumstance of the calamity
became awfully distinct to my apprehension. I could hear the dreary
ringing of the bells, self-tolled from the rocking of the churches;
the swaying to and fro of the steeples themselves, and the unnatural
heavings and swellings of the Tagus, were vividly before me. As the
agitations increased, the voice of the Senor became awfully tremulous,
and his seat seemed literally to rock under him. I seemed palsied, and
could see from P.’s looks that he was similarly affected. To conceal
his disorder, he kept swallowing large gulps from his rummer, and I
followed his example.
[Illustration: “DO THY SPIRITING GENTLY.”]
This was only the first shock;--the second soon followed, and, to
use a popular expression, it made us both “shake in our shoes.”
Terrific, however, as it was, the third was more tremendous; the order
of nature seemed reversed; the ships in the Tagus sank to the bottom,
and their ponderous anchors rose to the surface; volcanic fire burst
forth from the water, and water from dry ground; the air, no longer
elastic, seemed to become a stupendous solid; swaying to and fro, and
irresistibly battering down the fabrics of ages; hollow rumblings
and moanings as from the very centre of the world, gave warning of
deafening explosions, which soon followed, and seemed to shake the
very stars out of the sky. All this time the powerful features of
the Senor kept working, in frightful imitation of the convulsion he
was describing, and the effect was horrible; I saw P. quiver like an
aspen--there seemed no such thing as terra firma. Our chairs rocked
under us; the floor tossed and heaved; the candles wavered, the windows
clattered, and the teaspoons rang again, as our tumblers vibrated in
our hands.
Senor Mendez at length concluded his narrative, and shortly took leave;
I staid but a few minutes after him, just to make a remark on the
appalling character of the story, and then departed myself,--little
thinking, that any part of the late description was to be so speedily
realised by my own experience!
The hour being late, and the servants in bed, P. himself accompanied me
to the door. I ought to remark here that the day had been uncommonly
serene--not a breath stirring, as was noticed on the morning of the
great catastrophe at Lisbon; however, P. had barely closed the door,
when a sudden and violent motion of the earth threw me from the step
on which I was standing, to the middle of the pavement; I had got
partly up when a second shock, as smart as the first, threw me again
on the ground. With some difficulty I recovered my legs a second
time, the earth in the mean time heaving about under me like the deck
of a ship at sea. The street lamps, too, seemed violently agitated,
and the houses nodded over me as if they would fall every instant.
I attempted to run, but it was impossible; I could barely keep on
my feet. At one step I was dashed forcibly against the wall; at the
next I was thrown into the road; as the motion became more violent
I clung to a lamp-post, but it swayed with me like a rush. A great
mist came suddenly on, but I could perceive people hurrying about,
all staggering like drunken men; some of them addressing me, but so
confusedly as to be quite unintelligible; one--a lady--passed close to
me in evident alarm: seizing her hand, I besought her to fly with me
from the falling houses, into the open fields; what answer she made I
know not, for at that instant, a fresh shock threw me on my face with
such violence as to render me quite insensible. Providentially, in this
state I attracted the notice of some of the night police, who humanely
deposited me, for safety, in St. Anne’s watch-house, till the following
morning; when being sufficiently recovered to give a collected account
of that eventful evening, the ingenious Mr. W., of the Morning Herald,
was so much interested by my narrative that he kindly did me the favour
of drawing it up for publication in the following form.
[Illustration: “WELL! I NEVER COULD KEEP MY LEGS!”]
_Police Intelligence.--Bow Street._
“This morning a stout country gentleman, in a new suit of mud,
evidently town made, was charged with having walked _Waverly_
over-night till he got his _Kennelworth_ in a gutter in Mary-le-bone.
The Jack-o’-lanthorn who picked him up could make nothing out of him,
but that he was some sort of a _Quaker_, and declared that the whole
country was in a _shocking_ state. He acknowledged having taken rather
too much _Lisbon_; but according to Mr. Daly, he sniffed of whiskey ‘as
strong as natur.’ The defendant attempted with a _sotto voce_ (Anglice,
a tipsy voice), to make some excuse, but was stopped and fined in
the usual sum, by Sir Richard. He found his way out of the office,
muttering that he thought it very hard to have to pay _five hogs_ for
being only as drunk as _one_.”
ODE TO ST. SWITHIN.
“The rain it raineth every day.”
THE Dawn is overcast, the morning low’rs,
On ev’ry window-frame hang beaded damps
Like rows of small illumination lamps,
To celebrate the Jubilee of Show’rs!
A constant sprinkle patters from all leaves,
The very Dryads are not dry, but soppers,
And from the Houses’ eaves
Tumble eaves-droppers.
The hundred clerks that live along the street,
Bondsmen to mercantile and City schemers,
With squashing, sloshing, and galoching feet,
Go paddling, paddling, through the wet, like steamers,
Each hurrying to earn the daily stipend--
Umbrellas pass of every shade of green,
And now and then a crimson one is seen,
Like an Umbrella _ripen’d_.
Over the way a waggon
Stand with six smoking horses, shrinking, blinking,
While in the George and Dragon
The man is keeping himself dry--and drinking!
The Butcher’s boy skulks underneath his tray,
Hats shine--shoes don’t--and down droop collars,
And one blue Parasol cries all the way
To school, in company with four small scholars!
[Illustration: PRIDE AND HUMILITY.]
Unhappy is the man to-day who rides,
Making his journey sloppier, not shorter;
Aye, there they go, a dozen of outsides,
Performing on “a Stage with real water!”
A dripping Pauper crawls along the way,
The only real willing out-of-doorer
And says, or seems to say,
“Well, I am poor enough--but here’s a _pourer!_”
The scene in water colours thus I paint,
Is your own Festival, you Sloppy Saint!
Mother of all the Family of Rainers!
Saint of the Soakers!
Making all people croakers,
Like frogs in swampy marshes, and complainers!
And why you mizzle forty days together,
Giving the earth your water-soup to sup,
I marvel--Why such wet, mysterious weather?
I wish you’d _clear it up_!
Why cast such cruel dampers
On pretty Pic Nics, and against all wishes
Set the cold ducks a-swimming in the hampers,
And volunteer, unask’d, to wash the dishes?
Why drive the Nymphs from the selected spot,
To cling like lady-birds around a tree--
Why spoil a Gipsy party at their tea,
By throwing your cold water upon hot?
Cannot a rural maiden, or a man,
Seek Hornsey-Wood by invitation, sipping
Their green with Pan,
But souse you come, and show their Pan all dripping!
Why upon snow-white table-cloths and sheets,
That do not wait, or want a second washing,
Come squashing?
Why task yourself to lay the dust in streets,
As if there were no Water-Cart contractors,
No pot-boys spilling beer, no shop-boys ruddy
Spooning out puddles muddy,
Milkmaids, and other slopping benefactors!
A Queen you are, raining in your own right,
Yet oh! how little flatter’d by report!
Even by those that seek the Court,
Pelted with every term of spleen and spite.
Folks rail and swear at you in every place;
They say you are a creature of no bowel;
They say you’re always washing Nature’s face,
And that you then supply her,
With nothing drier,
Than some old wringing cloud by way of towel!
The whole town wants you duck’d, just as you duck it,
They wish you on your own mud porridge supper’d,
They hope that you may kick your own big bucket,
Or in your water-butt go sous! heels up’ard!
They are, in short, so weary of your drizzle,
They’d spill the water in your veins to stop it--
Be warn’d! You are too partial to a mizzle--
Pray _drop it_!
[Illustration: “IT NEVER RAINS BUT IT POURS.”]
[Illustration: A FIGURE OF SPEECH:--A BROAD SCOTCHMAN.]
THE APPARITION.
A TRUE STORY.
“To keep without a reef in a gale of wind like that--Jock was the only
boatman on the Firth of Tay to do it!”--
“He had sail enough to blow him over Dundee Law.”--
“She’s emptied her ballast and come up again,--with her sails all
standing--every sheet was belayed with a double turn.”
I give the sense rather than the sound of the foregoing speeches, for
the speakers were all Dundee ferry-boatmen, and broad Scotchmen, using
the extra-wide dialect of Angus-shire and Fife.
At the other end of the low-roofed room, under a coarse white sheet,
sprinkled with sprigs of rue and rosemary, dimly lighted by a small
candle at the head, and another at the feet, lay the object of
their comments--a corpse of startling magnitude. In life, poor Jock
was of unusual stature, but stretching a little, perhaps, as is
usual in death, and advantaged by the narrow limits of the room, the
dimensions seemed absolutely supernatural. During the warfare of the
Allies against Napoleon, Jock, a fellow of some native humour, had
distinguished himself by singing about the streets of Dundee, ballads,
I believe his own, against old Boney. The nick-name of Ballad-Jock was
not his only reward; the loyal burgesses subscribed among themselves,
and made him that fatal gift, a ferry-boat, the management of which
we have just heard so seriously reviewed. The catastrophe took place
one stormy Sunday, a furious gale blowing against the tide, down
the river--and the Tay is anything but what the Irish call “weak
tay,” at such seasons. In fact, the devoted Nelson, with all sails
set,--fair-weather fashion,--caught aback in a sudden gust,--after
a convulsive whirl capsized, and went down in forty fathoms, taking
with her two-and-twenty persons, the greater part of whom were on
their way to hear the celebrated Dr. Chalmers,--even at that time
highly popular,--though preaching in a small church at some obscure
village, I forget the name, in Fife. After all the rest had sunk in
the waters, the huge figure of Jock was observed clinging to an oar,
barely afloat,--when some sufferer probably catching hold of his feet,
he suddenly disappeared, still grasping the oar, which afterwards
springing upright into the air, as it rose again to the surface, showed
the fearful depth to which it had been carried. The body of Jock was
the last found; about the fifth day, it was strangely enough deposited
by the tide almost at the threshold of his own dwelling, at the Craig,
a small pier or jetty, frequented by the ferry-boats. It had been
hastily caught up, and in its clothes laid out in the manner just
described, lying as it were in state, and the public, myself one, being
freely admitted, as far as the room would hold, it was crowded by
fish-wives, mariners, and other shore-haunters, except a few feet next
the corpse, which a natural awe towards the dead kept always vacant.
The narrow death’s door was crammed with eager listening and looking
heads, and by the buzzing without, there was a large surplus crowd in
waiting before the dwelling for their turn to enter it.
On a sudden, at a startling exclamation from one of those nearest
the bed, all eyes were directed towards that quarter. One of the
candles was guttering and sputtering near the socket,--the other just
twinkling out, and sending up a stream of rank smoke,--but by the
light, dim as it was, a slight motion of the sheet was perceptible
just at that part where the hand of the dead mariner might be supposed
to be lying at his side! A scream and shout of horror burst from all
within, echoed, though ignorant of the cause, by another from the
crowd without. A general rush was made towards the door, but egress
was impossible. Nevertheless horror and dread squeezed up the company
in the room to half their former compass: and left a far wider blank
between the living and the dead! I confess at first I mistrusted my
sight; it seemed that some twitching of the nerves of the eye, or
the flickering of the shadows, thrown by the unsteady flame of the
candle, might have caused some optical delusion; but after several
minutes of sepulchral silence and watching, the motion became more
awfully manifest, now proceeding slowly upwards, as if the hand of the
deceased, still beneath the sheet, was struggling up feebly towards
his head. It is possible to conceive, but not to describe, the popular
consternation,--the shrieks of women,--the shouts of men--the struggles
to gain the only outlet, choked up and rendered impassable by the very
efforts of desperation and fear!--Clinging to each other, and with
ghastly faces that _dared_ not turn from the object of dread, the
whole assembly backed with united force against the opposite wall,
with a convulsive energy that threatened to force out the very side
of the dwelling--when, startled before by silent motion, but now by
sound,--with a smart rattle something fell from the bed to the floor,
and disentangling itself from the death drapery, displayed--a large
pound Crab!--The creature, with some design, perhaps sinister, had
been secreted in the ample clothes of the drowned seaman, but even
the comparative insignificance of this apparition gave but little
alleviation to the superstitious horrors of the spectators, who
appeared to believe firmly, that it was only the Evil One himself,
transfigured.--Wherever the crab straddled sidelong, infirm beldame
and sturdy boatman equally shrank and retreated before it,--aye, even
as it changed place, to crowding closely round the corpse itself,
rather than endure its diabolical contact. The crowd outside, warned
by cries from within, of the presence of Mahound, had by this time
retired to a respectful distance, and the crab, doing what herculean
sinews had failed to effect, cleared itself a free passage through
the door in a twinkling, and with natural instinct began crawling as
fast as he could clapperclaw, down the little jetty before mentioned
that led into his native sea. The Satanic Spirit, however disguised,
seemed everywhere distinctly recognised. Many at the lower end of the
Craig lept into their craft; one or two even into the water, whilst
others crept as close to the verge of the pier as they could, leaving
a thoroughfare--wide as “the broad path of honour,”--to the Infernal
Cancer. To do him justice, he straddled along with a very unaffected
unconsciousness of his own evil importance. He seemed to have no aim
higher than salt water and sand, and had accomplished half the distance
towards them, when a little decrepit poor old sea-roamer, generally
known as “Creel Katie,” made a dexterous snatch at a hind claw, and
before the Crab-Devil was aware, deposited him in her patchwork
apron, with an “Hech, Sirs, what for are ye gaun to let gang siccan a
braw partane?” In vain a hundred voices shouted out, “Let him bide,
Katie,--he’s no cannie;” fish or fiend, the resolute old dame kept a
fast clutch of her prize, promising him, moreover, a comfortable simmer
in the mickle pat, for the benefit of herself and that “puir silly body
the gudeman:” and she kept her word. Before night the poor Devil was
dressed in his shell, to the infinite horror of all her neighbours.
Some even said that a black figure, with horns, and wings, and hoofs,
and forky tail, in fact old Clooty himself, had been seen to fly out
of the chimney. Others said that unwholesome and unearthly smells, as
of pitch and brimstone, had reeked forth from the abominable thing,
through door and window. Creel Kate, however, persisted, aye, even to
her dying day and on her deathbed, that the Crab was as sweet a Crab
as ever was supped on; and that it recovered her old husband out of a
very poor low way,--adding, “And that was a thing, ye ken, the Deil a
Deil in the Dub of Darkness wad hae dune for siccan a gude man, and
kirk-going Christian body, as my ain douce Davie.”
A BLIND MAN
Is a Blackamoor turned outside in. His skin is fair, but his lining is
utter dark; his eyes are like shotten stars,--mere jellies; or like
mock-painted windows since the tax upon daylight: what his mind’s eye
can be, is yet a mystery with the learned, or if he hath a mental
capacity at all--for, “out of sight is out of mind.”
Wherever he stands, he is antipodean, with his midnight to your noon.
The brightest sunshine serves only to make him the gloomier object;
like a dark house at a general illumination. When he stirs, it is like
a Venetian blind, being pulled up and down by a string; he is a human
kettle tied to a dog’s tail, and with much of the same tin twang in
his tone. With botanists he is a species of solanum, or night-shade,
whereof the berries are in his eyes;--amongst painters he is only
contemned, for his ignorance of clare-obscure; but by musicians
marvelled at for playing, ante-sight, on an invisible fiddle. He stands
against a wall with his two blank orbs, like a figure in high relief,
howbeit but seldom relieved; and though he is fond of getting pence,
yet he is confessedly blind to his own interest.
[Illustration: A MISGUIDED MAN.]
In his religion he is a materialist, putting no faith but in things
palpable. In politics, no visionary; in his learning a smatterer, his
knowledge of all being superficial; in his age a child, being yet in
leading-strings; in his life immortal, for death may lengthen his
night, but can put no end to his days; in his courage, heroic, for
he winks at no danger; in his pretensions humble, confessing that he
is nothing, even in his own eyes; in his malady hopeless, for eyes
of _looking_-glass would not help him to see. To conclude--he is
pitied by the rich, relieved by the poor, oppressed by the beadle, and
horse-whipped by the fox-hunter, for not giving the view holloa!
[Illustration: “BE TO THEIR FAULTS A LITTLE BLIND.”]
THE SUPPER SUPERSTITION.
A PATHETIC BALLAD.
“Oh flesh, flesh how art thou fishified.”--MERCUTIO.
I.
’Twas twelve o’clock by Chelsea chimes,
When all in hungry trim,
Good Mister Jupp sat down to sup
With wife, and Kate, and Jim.
II.
Said he, “Upon this dainty cod
How bravely I shall sup,”--
When, whiter than the table-cloth,
A GHOST came rising up!
III.
“O, father dear, O, mother dear,
Dear Kate, and brother Jim,--
You know when some one went to sea,--
Don’t cry--but I am him!
IV.
“You hope some day with fond embrace
To greet your absent Jack,
But oh, I am come here to say
I’m never coming back!
V.
“From Alexandria we set sail,
With corn, and oil, and figs,
But steering ‘too much Sow,’ we struck
Upon the Sow and Pigs!
VI.
“The Ship we pump’d till we could see
Old England from the tops;
When down she went with all our hands,
Right in the Channel’s Chops.
VII.
“Just give a look in Norey’s chart,
The very place it tells;
I think it says twelve fathom deep,
Clay bottom, mixed with shells.
VIII.
“Well, there we are till ‘hands aloft,’
We have at last a call;
The pug I had for brother Jim,
Kate’s parrot too, and all.
IX.
“But oh, my spirit cannot rest,
In Davy Jones’s sod,
Till I’ve appear’d to you and said,--
Don’t sup on that ’ere Cod!
X.
“You live on land, and little think
What passes in the sea;
Last Sunday week, at 2 P.M.,
That cod was picking me!
XI.
“Those oysters too, that look so plump,
And seem so nicely done,
They put my corpse in many shells,
Instead of only one.
XII.
“O, do not eat those oysters then,
And do not touch the shrimps;
When I was in my briny grave,
They suck’d my blood like imps!
XIII.
“Don’t eat what brutes would never eat,
The brutes I used to pat,
They’ll know the smell they used to smell;
Just try the dog and cat!”
XIV.
The Spirit fled--they wept his fate,
And cried, Alack, alack!
At last up started brother Jim.
“Let’s try if Jack was Jack!”
XV.
They call’d the Dog, they call’d the Cat,
And little Kitten too,
And down they put the Cod and sauce,
To see what brutes would do.
XVI.
Old Tray lick’d all the oysters up,
Puss never stood at crimps,
But munch’d the Cod--and little Kit
Quite feasted on the shrimps!
XVII.
The thing was odd, and minus Cod
And sauce, they stood like posts;
O, prudent folks, for fear of hoax,
Put no belief in Ghosts!
[Illustration: FRIENDS AWAITING A SAILOR’S RETURN.]
A SNAKE-SNACK.
“Twine ye, twine ye.”--SIR W. SCOTT.
IT was my good fortune once, at Charing Cross, to witness the feeding
of the Boa Constrictor; rather a rare occurrence, and difficult of
observation, the reptile not being remarkable for the regularity of
its dinner-hour; and a very considerable interval intervenes, as the
world knows, between Gorge the First, and Gorge the Second, Gorge the
Third, and Gorge the Fourth. I was not in time to see the serpent’s
first dart at the prey; she had already twisted herself round her
victim,--a living White Rabbit--who with a large dark eye gazed
piteously through one of the folds, and looked most eloquently that
line in Hamlet--
“O could I shuffle off this mortal _coil_!”
[Illustration: THE BOA AFTER A MEAL.]
The Snake evidently only embraced him in a kill-him-when-I-want-him
manner, just firmly enough to prevent an escape--but her lips were
glued on his, in a close “Judas’ kiss.” So long a time elapsed, in
this position, both as marble-still as poor old Laocoon with his
leaches on, that I really began to doubt the tale of the Boa’s ability
in swallowing; and to associate the hoax before me, with that of the
Bottle Conjuror. The head of the snake, in fact, might have gone
without difficulty into a wine-glass, and the throat, down which the
rabbit was to proceed whole, seemed not at all thicker than my thumb.
In short, I thought the reported _cram_ was nothing but _stuff_,
and the only other visitor declared himself of my opinion: “If that
’ere little wiper swallows up the rabbit, I’ll bolt um both!” and he
seemed capable of the feat. He looked like a personification of what
Political Economists call the Public Consumer; or, Geoffrey Crayon’s
Stout Gentleman, seen through Carpenter’s Solar Microscope; a genuine
Edax Rerum; one of your devourers of legs of mutton and trimmings, for
wagers: the delight of eating-houses, and the dread of ordinaries. The
contrast was whimsical, between his mountain of mummy, and the slim
Macaroni figure of the Snake, the reputed Glutton. However, the Boa
began at last to prepare for the meal, by lubricating the muzzle of the
Rabbit with her slimy tongue, and then commenced in earnest,
As far as in her lay to take him in,
A stranger dying with so fair a skin.
The process was tedious--“one swallow makes a summer”--but it gradually
became apparent, from the fate of the head, that the whole body might
eventually be “lost in the Serpentine.” The Reptile, indeed, made ready
for the rest of the interment by an operation rather horrible. On a
sudden, the living cable was observed, as a sailor would say, to haul
in her slack, and with a squeeze evincing tremendous muscular power,
she reduced the whole body into a compass that would follow the head
with perfect ease. It was like a regular smash in business:--the poor
rabbit was completely broken--and the wily winder-up of his affairs
recommenced paying herself in full. It was a sorry sight and sickening.
As for the Stout Gentleman, he could not control his agitation. His
eyes rolled and watered; his jaws constantly yawned like a panther’s;
and his hands with a convulsive movement were clasped every now and
then on his stomach;--but when the whole rabbit was smothered in
snake, he could restrain himself no longer, and rushed out of the
menagerie as if he really expected to be called upon to fulfil his
rash engagement. Anxious to ascertain the true nature of the impulse,
I hurried in pursuit of him, and after a short but sharp chase, I saw
him dash into the British Hotel, and overheard his familiar voice--the
same that had promised to swallow both Snake and Snack--bellowing out,
guttural with hunger--“Here!--waiter!--Quick!--Rabbits in onions for
two!”
[Illustration: THE GREAT SEA SERPENT DISCOVERED FROM THE MAST-HEAD.]
A STORM AT HASTINGS
AND THE LITTLE UNKNOWN.
’TWAS August--Hastings every day was filling--
Hastings, that “greenest spot on memory’s waste!”
With crowds of idlers willing or unwilling
To be bedipped--be noticed--or be braced,
And all things rose a penny in a shilling.
Meanwhile, from window and from door, in haste
“Accommodation bills” kept coming down,
Gladding “the world of letters” in that town.
Each day pour’d in new coach-fulls of new cits,
Flying from London smoke and dust annoying,
Unmarried Misses hoping to make hits,
And new-wed couples fresh from Tunbridge toying.
Lacemen and placemen, ministers and wits,
And Quakers of both sexes, much enjoying
A morning’s reading by the ocean’s rim,
That sect delighting in the sea’s broad brim.
[Illustration: AN ABRIDGMENT OF ALL THAT IS PLEASANT IN MAN.]
And lo! amongst all these appear’d a creature,
So small, he almost might a twin have been,
With Miss Crachami--dwarfish quite in stature,
Yet well proportion’d--neither fat nor lean,
His face of marvellously pleasant feature.
So short and sweet a man was never seen--
All thought him charming at the first beginning--
Alas, ere long they found him far too winning!
He seem’d in love with chance--and chance repaid
His ardent passion with her fondest smile,
The sunshine of good luck, without a shade,
He staked and won--and won and staked--the bile
It stirr’d of many a man and many a maid,
To see at every venture how that vile
Small gambler snatch’d--and how he won them too--
A living Pam, omnipotent at loo!
[Illustration: A TIDE-WAITER.]
Miss Wiggins set her heart upon a box,
’Twas handsome, rosewood, and inlaid with brass,
And dreamt three times she garnish’d it with stocks,
Of needles, silks, and cottons--but alas!
She lost it wide awake.--We thought Miss Cox
Was lucky--but she saw three caddies pass
To that small imp:--no living luck could loo him!
Sir Stamford would have lost his Raffles to him!
And so he climb’d--and rode, and won--and walk’d,
The wondrous topic of the curious swarm
That haunted the Parade. Many were balk’d
Of notoriety by that small form
Pacing it up and down:--some even talk’d
Of ducking him--when lo! a dismal storm
Stepp’d in--one Friday, at the close of day--
And every head was turn’d another way--
Watching the grander guest. It seem’d to rise
Bulky and slow upon the southern brink
Of the horizon--fann’d by sultry sighs--
So black and threatening, I cannot think
Of any simile, except the skies
Miss Wiggins sometime _shades_ in Indian ink--
_Miss_-shapen blotches of such heavy vapour,
They seem a deal more solid than her paper.
As for the sea, it did not fret, and rave,
And tear its waves to tatters, and so dash on
The stony-hearted beach;--some bards would have
It always rampant, in that idle fashion,--
Whereas the waves roll’d in, subdued and grave,
Like schoolboys, when the master’s in a passion,
Who meekly settle in and take their places,
With a very quiet awe on all their faces.
Some love to draw the ocean with a head,
Like troubled table-beer,--and make it bounce,
And froth and roar, and fling--but this, I’ve said,
Surged in scarce rougher than a lady’s flounce:--
But then, a grander contrast thus it bred
With the wild welkin, seeming to pronounce
Something more awful in the serious ear,
As one would whisper that a lion’s near--
Who just begins to roar; so the hoarse thunder
Growl’d long--but low--a prelude note of death,
As if the stifling clouds yet kept it under,
But still it mutter’d to the sea beneath
Such a continued peal, as made us wonder
It did not pause more oft to take its breath,
Whilst we were panting with the sultry weather,
And hardly cared to wed two words together,
But watch’d the surly advent of the storm,
Much as the brown-cheek’d planters of Barbadoes
Must watch a rising of the Negro swarm:--
Meantime it steer’d, like Odin’s old Armadas,
Right on our coast;--a dismal, coal-black form;--
Many proud gaits were quell’d--and all bravadoes
Of folly ceased--and sundry idle jokers
Went home to cover up their tongs and pokers.
So fierce the lightning flashed. In all their days
The oldest smugglers had not seen such flashing,
And they are used to many a pretty blaze,
To keep their Hollands from an awkward clashing
With hostile cutters in our creeks and bays:--
And truly one could think without much lashing
The fancy, that those coasting clouds so awful
And black, were fraught with spirits as unlawful.
The gay Parade grew thin--all the fair crowd
Vanish’d--as if they knew their own attractions,--
For now the lightning through a near hand cloud
Began to make some very crooked fractions--
Only some few remain’d that were not cow’d,
A few rough sailors, who had been in actions,
And sundry boatmen, that with quick yeo’s,
Lest it should _blow_,--were pulling up the _Rose_:
(No flower, but a boat)--some more hauling
The _Regent_ by the head:--another crew
With that same cry peculiar to their _calling_--
Were heaving up the _Hope_:--and as they knew
The very gods themselves oft get a mauling
In their own realms, the seamen wisely drew
The _Neptune_ rather higher on the beach,
That he might lie beyond his billows’ reach.
And now the storm, with its despotic power
Had all usurp’d the azure of the skies,
Making our daylight darker by an hour,
And some few drops--of an unusual size--
Few and distinct--scarce twenty to the shower,
Fell like huge tear-drops from a Giant’s eyes--
But then this sprinkle thicken’d in a trice
And rain’d much _harder_--in good solid ice.
Oh! for a very storm of words to show
How this fierce crash of hail came rushing o’er us!
Handel would make the gusty organs blow
Grandly, and a rich storm in music score us!--
But ev’n his music seem’d composed and low,
When we were _handled_ by this Hailstone Chorus;
Whilst thunder rumbled, with its awful sound,
And frozen comfits roll’d along the ground--
As big as bullets:--Lord! how they did batter
Our crazy tiles:--And now the lightning flash’d
Alternate with the dark, until the latter
Was rarest of the two:--the gust too dash’d
So terribly, I thought the hail must shatter
Some panes,--and so it did--and first it smash’d
The very square where I had chose my station
To watch the general illumination.
Another, and another, still came in,
And fell in jingling ruin at my feet,
Making transparent holes that let me win
Some samples of the storm:--Oh! it was sweet
To think I had a shelter for my skin,
Culling them through these “loopholes of retreat”--
Which in a little we began to glaze--
Chiefly with a jacktowel and some baize!
By which, the cloud had pass’d o’erhead, but play’d
Its crooked fires in constant flashes still,
Just in our rear, as though it had array’d
Its heavy batteries at Fairlight Mill,
So that it lit the town, and grandly made
The rugged features of the Castle Hill
Leap, like a birth, from chaos, into light,
And then relapse into the gloomy night--
As parcel of the cloud:--the clouds themselves,
Like monstrous crags and summits everlasting,
Piled each on each in most gigantic shelves,
That Milton’s devils were engaged in blasting.--
We could e’en fancy Satan and his elves
Busy upon those crags, and ever casting
Huge fragments loose--and that we _felt_ the sound
They made in falling to the startled ground.
And so the tempest scowl’d away,--and soon,
Timidly shining through its skirts of jet,
We saw the rim of the pacific moon,
Like a bright fish entangled in a net,
Flashing its silver sides,--how sweet a boon,
Seem’d her sweet light, as though it would beget,
With that fair smile, a calm upon the seas--
Peace in the sky--and coolness in the breeze!
Meantime the hail had ceased:--and all the brood
Of glaziers stole abroad to count their gains;--
At every window, there were maids who stood
Lamenting o’er the glass’s small remains,--
Or with coarse linens made the fractious good,
Stanching the wind in all the wounded panes,--
Or, holding candles to the panes, in doubt:
The wind resolved--blowing the candles out.
No house was whole that had a southern front,--
No green-house but the same mishap befell:--
_Bow_-windows and _bell_-glasses bore the brunt,--
No sex in glass was spared!--For those who dwell
On each hill side, you might have swam a punt
In any of their parlours;--Mrs. Snell
Was slopp’d out of her seat,--and Mr. Hitchin
Had a _flow’r_-garden wash’d into a _Kitchen_.
[Illustration: SHE FROM OCEAN RISING.]
But still the sea was mild, and quite disclaim’d
The recent violence.--Each after each
The gentle waves a gentle murmur framed,
Tapping, like Woodpeckers, the hollow beach.
Howbeit his _weather eye_ the seaman aim’d
Across the calm, and hinted by his speech
A gale next morning--and when morning broke
There was a gale--“quite equal to bespoke.”
Before high water--(it were better far
To christen it not _water_ then, but _waiter_,
For then the tide is _serving at the bar_)
Rose such a swell--I never saw one greater!
Black, jagged billows rearing up in war
Like ragged roaring bears against the baiter,
With lots of froth upon the shingle shed,
Like stout pour’d out with a fine _beachy head_.
No open boat was open to a fare,
Or launch’d that morn on seven-shilling trips;
No bathing woman waded--none would dare
A dipping in the wave--but waived their dips;
No seagull ventured on the stormy air,
And all the dreary coast was clear of ships;
For two _lea shores_ upon the river Lea
Are not so perilous as one at sea.
Awe-struck we sat, and gazed upon the scene
Before us in such horrid hurly-burly,--
A boiling ocean of mix’d black and green,
A sky of copper colour, grim and surly,--
When lo, in that vast hollow scoop’d between
Two rolling Alps of water,--white and curly!
We saw a pair of little arms a-skimming,
Much like a first or last attempt at swimming!
Sometimes a hand--sometimes a little shoe--
Sometimes a skirt--sometimes a hank of hair,
Just like a dabbled seaweed, rose to view,
Sometimes a knee, sometimes a back was bare--
At last a frightful summerset he threw
Right on the shingles. Any one could swear
The lad was dead--without a chance of perjury,
And batter’d by the surge beyond all surgery!
However, we snatch’d up the corse thus thrown,
Intending, Christian-like, to sod and turf it,
And after venting Pity’s sigh and groan,
Then Curiosity began with _her_ fit;
And lo! the features of the Small Unknown!
’Twas he that of the surf had had this surfeit!--
And in his fob, the cause of late monopolies!
We found a contract signed Mephistopheles!
A bond of blood, whereby the sinner gave
His forfeit soul to Satan in reversion,
Providing in this world he was to have
A lordship over luck, by whose exertion
He might control the course of cards, and brave
All throws of dice,--but on a sea excursion
The juggling Demon, in his usual vein,
Seized the last cast--and _Nick’d_ him in the _main_!
LINES
TO A LADY ON HER DEPARTURE FOR INDIA.
Go where the waves run rather Holborn-hilly,
And tempests make a soda-water sea,
Almost as rough as our rough Piccadilly,
And think of me!
Go where the mild Madeira ripens _her_ juice,--
A wine more praised that it deserves to be:
Go pass the Cape, just capable of ver-juice,
And think of me!
[Illustration: KETCHING ITS PREY.]
Go where the Tiger in the darkness prowleth
Making a midnight meal of he and she;
Go where the Lion in his hunger howleth,
And think of me!
Go where the serpent dangerously coileth,
Or lies along at full length like a tree,
Go where the Suttee in her own soot broileth,
And think of me!
Go where with human notes the Parrot dealeth
In mono-_polly_-logue with tongue as free,
And like a woman, all she can revealeth,
And think of me!
Go to the land of muslin and nankeening,
And parasols of straw where hats should be,
Go to the land of slaves and palankeening,
And think of me!
Go to the land of Jungles and of vast hills,
And tall bamboos--may none _bamboozle_ thee!
Go gaze upon their Elephants and Castles,
And think of me!
Go where a cook must always be a currier,
And parch the pepper’d palate like a pea,
Go where the fierce musquito is a worrier,
And think of me!
[Illustration: “A SOW WESTER OFF THE CAPE:--PIGS IN THE TROUGH OF THE
SEA.”]
Go where the maiden on a marriage plan goes,
Consign’d for wedlock to Calcutta’s quay,
Where woman goes for mart, the same as mangoes,
And think of me!
Go where the sun is very hot and fervent,
Go to the land of pagod and rupee,
Where every black will be your slave and servant,
And think of me!
THE NELSON.
This here, your honour, upon wheels, is the true genuine real
_Nelson’s Car_.
GUIDE TO GREENWICH HOSPITAL.
“THE Nelson,” I repeated to myself, as I read that illustrious name on
the dicky of the vehicle--“the Nelson.” My fancy instantly converted
the coach into a first-rate, the leaders and wheelers into sea-horses,
the driver into Neptunus, brandishing a trident, and the guard into a
Triton blowing his wreathed shell. There was room for one on the box,
so I climbed up, and took my seat beside the coachman. “Now, clap on
all sail,” said I, audibly, “I am proud to be one of the crew of the
great Nelson, the hero of Aboukir.”
“Begging your pardon, Sir,” said the coachman, “the Hero ain’t a booker
at Mrs. Nelson’s: it goes from some other yard.” Gracious powers! what
a tumble down stairs for an idea! As for mine, it pitched on its head,
as stunned and stupefied as if it had rolled down the whole flight
at the Monument. “I have made a Bull, indeed,” I exclaimed, as the
noted inn at Aldgate occurred to my memory; “but we are the slaves of
association,” I continued, addressing the coachman, “and the name of
Nelson identified itself with the Union Jack.”
“I really can’t say,” replied the coachman, very civilly, “whether
the name of Mrs. Nelson is down to the Slave Associations or not: but
as for Jack, if you mean Jack Bunce, he’s been off the Union these
six months. Too fond of the _Bar_, Sir” (here he tipped me the most
significant of winks), “to keep his seat on the _Bench_.”
“I alluded, my good fellow, to Nelson, the wonder of the maritime
world--the dauntless leader when yard was opposed to yard, and seas
teemed with blood.”
“We’re all right--as right as a trivet,” said the coachman, after a
pause of perplexity; “I thought our notions were getting rather wide
apart, and that one of us wanted putting straight; but I see what you
mean, and quite go along with your opinion, step for step. To be sure,
Mrs. Nelson has done the world and all for coaching; and the Wonder
_is_ the crack of all the drags in London, and so is the Dauntless,
let yard turn out agin yard, as you say, any day you like. And as for
leaders, and teams full of blood, there’s as pretty a sprinkling of
blood in the tits I’m now tooling of--”
“The vehicles of the proprietress, and the appearance of the animals,
with their corresponding caparisons,” said I, “have often gratified my
visual organs and elicited my mental plaudits.”
“That’s exactly what _I_ says,” replied the coachman, very briskly,
“there’s no humbug nor no nonsense about Mrs. Nelson. You never see her
a standing a-foaming and fretting in front o’ the Bank, with a regular
mob round her, and looking as if she’d bolt with the Quicksilver. And
you never see her painted all over her body, wherever there’s room for
’em, with Saracen Heads, and Blue Boars, and Brown Bears, from her
roller bolts to her dicky and hind boot. She’s plain and neat, and
nothin’ else--and is fondest of having her body of a claret colour,
pick’d out with white, and won’t suffer the Bull, no where, except on
the back-gammon board.”
I know not how much further the whimsical description might have gone,
if a strapping, capless, curly-headed lass, running with all her might
and main, had not addressed a screaming retainer to the coachman. With
some difficulty he pulled up, for he had been tacitly giving me a proof
that the craft of _his_ Nelson was a first-rate, with regard to its
rate of travelling.
“If you please, Mr. Stevens,” said the panting damsel, holding up
something towards the box--“if you please, Mr. Stevens, mother’s gone
to Lonnon--in the light cart--and will you be so kind as to give
her--her linchpin.”
Mr. Stevens took the article with a smile, and I fancied with a sly
squeeze of the hand that delivered it.
“If such a go had been anyone’s but your mother’s, Fanny,” he slyly
remarked, “I should have said it was somebody in love.” The Dispatch
was too strictly timed to allow of further parley; the horses broke, or
were rather broken, into a gallop, in pursuit of the mother of Fanny,
the Flower of Waltham; and the pin secretly acting as a spur, we did
the next five mile in something like twenty minutes.
In spite, however, of this unusual speed, we never overtook Mrs.
Merryweather and her cart till we arrived at the Basing-House, where we
found her chirping over a cup of ale; as safe and sound as if linchpins
had never been invented; in fact, she made as light of the article,
when it was handed to her, as if it had been only a pin out of her gown!
[Illustration: FANCY PORTRAIT--MRS. NELSON.]
“Well, I must say one thing for Mrs. Nelson,” said our coachman, as he
resumed his seat on the box, “and that’s this. There’s no pinning at
the Bull. She sets her face against everything but the patent boxes.
She may come to a runaway with a bolter--or drop the ribbons--or make a
mistake in clearing a gate, by being a little lushy--but you’ll never
see Mrs. Nelson lying flat on her side in the middle of the road, with
her insides gone to smash, and her outsides well distributed, because
she’s been let go out of the yard without one of her pins.”
[Illustration: THE STAMP DUTY ON SCOTCH LINEN.]
SONNET
TO A SCOTCH GIRL, WASHING LINEN AFTER HER COUNTRY FASHION.
WELL done and wetly, thou Fair Maid of Perth,
Thou mak’st a washing picture well deserving
The pen and pencilling of Washington Irving:
Like dripping Naiad, pearly from her birth,
Dashing about the water of the Firth,
To cleanse the calico of Mrs. Skirving,
And never from thy dance of duty swerving
As there were nothing else than dirt on earth!
Yet what is thy reward? Nay, do not start!
I do not mean to give thee a new damper,
But while thou fillest this industrious part
Of washer, wearer, mangler, presser, stamper,
Deserving better character--thou art
What Bodkin would but call--“a common tramper.”
MY APOLOGY.
GENTLE READERS,
For the present month, there must be what Dr. Johnson called a solution
of continuity in my “Literary Reminiscences.” Confined to my chamber
by what ought to be termed _room_atism--then attacked by my old
livery complaint--and finally, by a minor, but troublesome malady,
the Present has too much prevailed over the Past, to let me indulge
in any retrospective reviews. In such cases, on the stage, when a
Performer is unable to support his character, a substitute is usually
found to read the part; but, unfortunately, in the present case there
is no part written, and consequently it cannot be read. But apropos of
theatricals--there is an anecdote on point.
In the Olympic days of the great Elliston, there was one evening a
tremendous tumult at his Theatre, in consequence of the absence of a
favourite performer. One man in the pit--a Butcher--was especially
vociferous in his cry for “Carl! Carl! Carl!” Others called for the
Manager, who duly made his appearance, and black as the weather
looked, he was the very sort of pilot to weather the storm. With one
of his princely bows he proceeded to address the House. “Ladies
and Gentlemen--but by your leave I will address myself to a single
individual. I will ask that gentleman (pointing to the vociferous
Butcher) what right he has to demand the appearance of Mr. Carl?”
“’Cos,” said the Butcher, “’cos he’s down in the Bill.” Such an
undeniable answer would have staggered any other Manager than Elliston,
but he was not easily to be disconcerted. “Because he is down in the
bill!” he echoed, in a tone of the loftiest indignation: “Ladies and
Gentlemen, the Mr. Carl, so unseasonably, so vociferously and so
unfeelingly called for, is at this very moment labouring under severe
illness--he is in bed. And let me ask, is a man, a fellow-creature,
a human being, to be torn from his couch, from his home, on a cold
night, from the affectionate attentions of his wife and family, at
the risk of his valuable life perhaps, to go through a fatiguing part
because he happens to be DOWN IN THE BILL?” [Cries of “Shame, shame!”
from all parts of the house.] “And yet, ladies and gentlemen, there
stands a man--if I may call him so--a Butcher, that for his own selfish
gratification--the amusement of a few short hours--would risk the very
existence of a deserving member of society, a good husband, father,
friend, and one of your favourite actors, and all, forsooth, because
he is DOWN IN THE BILL!” [Universal hooting, with cries of “Turn him
out.”] “By all means,” acquiesced the Manager, with one of his best
bows--and the indignant pittites actually hooted and kicked their own
champion out of the theatre, as something more than a Butcher, and less
than a Christian.
Now I am myself, gentle readers, in the same predicament with Mr.
Carl. Like him I am an invalid--and like him I am unfortunately down
in the Bill. It would not become me to set forth my own domestic or
social virtues, or to hint what sort of gap my loss would make in
society--still less would it consist with modesty to compare myself
with a favourite actor--but as a mere human being I throw myself on
your mercy, and ask, in common charity, would you have had me leave
my warm bed, to shiver in a printer’s damp sheets, at the risk of my
reputation perhaps, and for the mere amusement of some half hour, or
more probably for no amusement at all--simply because I was “_down in
the Bill_?”
But there is no such Butcher, or Butcheress, or little Butcherling,
amongst you; and by your good leave and patience, the instalment of my
Reminiscences that is over due, shall be paid with interest in the NEXT
NUMBER.
[Illustration: THE TOP OF HIS PROFESSION.]
SONNET TO A DECAYED SEAMAN.
HAIL! seventy-four cut down! Hail, Top and Lop!
Unless I’m much mistaken in my notion,
Thou wast a stirring Tar, before that hop
Became so fatal to thy locomotion;--
Now, thrown on shore, like a mere weed of ocean,
Thou readest still to men a lesson good,
To King and Country showing thy devotion,
By kneeling thus upon a stump of wood!
Still is thy spirit strong as alcohol;
Spite of that limb, begot of acorn-egg,--
Methinks,--thou Naval History in one Vol.--
A virtue shines, e’en in that timber leg,
For unlike others that desert their Poll,
Thou walkest ever with thy “Constant Peg!”
THE GREAT CONFLAGRATION.
_Dreadful Fire--Destruction of both Houses of Parliament--The Speaker’s
House gutted--Reports of Incendiarism._
IT is our unexpected lot to announce that the Houses of Lords and
Commons, so often threatened with combustion, are in a state of actual
ignition. At this moment, both fabrics are furiously burning. We are
writing this paragraph without the aid of lamp or candles; by the mere
reflection of the flames. Nothing is known of the origin of the fire,
although it is throwing a light upon everything else.--_Evening Star._
The devouring element which destroyed Covent Garden and Drury Lane,
the Royalty and the Pantheon, has made its appearance on a new stage,
equally devoted to declamatory elocution. St. Stephen’s Chapel is in
flames! The floor which was trodden by the eloquent legs of a Fox,
a Burke, a Pitt, and a Sheridan, is reduced to a heap of ashes; and
the benches which sustained the Demosthenic weight of a Wyndham, a
Whitbread, and a Wilberforce, are a mere mass of charcoal. The very
roof that re-echoed the classicalities of Canning is nodding to its
fall. In Parliamentary language, Fire is in possession of the House:
the Destructive spirit is on its legs, and the Conservative principle
can offer but a feeble opposition.--_Daily Post._
The blow is struck. What we have long foreseen has come to pass.
Incendiarism triumphs! The whole British Empire, as represented by the
three estates, is in a blaze! The Throne, the Lords, and the Commons,
are now burning. The cycle is complete. The spirit of Guy Fawkes
revives in 1834!
England seems to have changed places with Italy; London with Naples.
We stand hourly on the brink of a crater; every step we take is on
a solfaterra--not a land of Sol Fa, as some musical people would
translate it; but a frail crust, with a treacherous subsoil of ardent
brimstone! At length the eyes of our rulers are opened; but we must
ask, could nothing short of such an eruption awaken them to a sense
of the perilous state of the country? For weeks, nay, months past, at
the risk of being considered alarmists, we have called the attention
of the legislature and magistracy to a variety of suspicious symptoms
and signs of the times, and in particular to the multiplied chemical
inventions, for the purpose of obtaining instantaneous lights. Well
are certain matches or fire-boxes called Lucifers, for they may be
applied to the most diabolical purposes! The origin of the fire cannot
raise the shadow of a doubt in any reasonable mind. Accident is out
of the question. Tell us not of tallies. We have just tried our
milk-woman’s, and it contained so much water, that nothing could make
it ignite.--_Britannic Guardian_.
The Houses of Parliament are in flames. We shall stop the press to give
full particulars. Our reporters are at the spot, and Mons. C----, the
celebrated Salamander, is engaged to give a description of the blazing
_interiors_, exclusively for this journal.--_Daily Times._
_From a Correspondent._
On Thursday evening, towards seven o’clock, I was struck by the
singular appearance of the moon silvering the opposite chimneys with
a blood-red light, a lunar phenomenon, which I conceived belonged
only to our theatres. It speedily occurred to me that there must be
a conflagration in my vicinity, and after a little hunting by scent
as well as sight, I found myself in front of the Houses of Lords
and Commons, which were burning with a rapidity and brilliancy that
I make bold to say did not always characterise their proceedings.
By favour of my natural assurance, which seemed to identify me with
the firemen, I was allowed to pass through the lines of guards and
policemen, who surrounded the blazing pile, and was thus enabled to
select a favourable position for overlooking the whole scene. It was
an imposing sight. The flames rose from the Peers’ in a volume, as red
as the Extraordinary Red Book, and the House of Commons was not at
all behind-hand in voting supplies of timber and other combustibles.
Westminster Hall reminded me vividly of a London cry, “Hall hot, Hall
hot,” that was familiar in our childhood--and the Gothic architecture
of the Abbey seemed unusually _florid_. Instead of dingy stone, the
venerable pile appeared to be built of the well-baked brick of the
Elizabethan age. Indeed, so red-hot was its aspect, that it led to a
ludicrous misapprehension on the part of the populace. A procession,
bearing several male and female figures in a state of insensibility,
naturally gave rise to the most painful conjectures, inferring loss of
human life by the devouring element, but I have reason to believe it
was only the Dean and Chapter saving the Wax-Work. As far as my own
observation went, the first object carried out certainly bore a strong
resemblance to General Monk.
In the meantime a select party had effected an entrance into the Hall,
but not without some serious delay, occasioned, I believe, by somebody
within bringing the wrong key, that belonged to a tea-caddy. However,
at last they entered, and I followed their example. The first person
I beheld was the veteran Higginbottom, so unfairly, but facetiously,
put to death by the authors of the Rejected Addresses; for no man is
more alive to his duty. But he was sadly hampered. First came one
Hon. Gent. said to be Mr. Morrison, and insisted on directing the
_Hose_ department; and next arrived a noble Lord from Crockford’s, who
wouldn’t sit out, but persisted in taking a hand, and playing, though
every body agreed that he played too high. I mention this, because some
of the journals have imputed mismanagement to the engines, and have
insinuated that the pipes wanted organising; indeed, I myself overheard
a noble director of the Academy of Music lamenting that the firemen did
not “play in concert.”
[Illustration: PLAYING AT HAZARD.]
The same remark applies with greater force to the House of Commons.
Here all was confusion worse confounded, and Higginbottom’s station
was enviable, compared with that of some of the poor fellows in St.
Stephen’s Chapel. A considerable number of members had arrived, and
without any attention to their usual parliamentary rules, were all
making motions at once, which nobody seconded. The most prominent,
I was informed, were Mr. Hume, Mr. O’Connell, Mr. Attwood, Mr.
Buckingham, Mr. Pease, Sir Andrew, and Mr. Buxton--the latter almost
covered with blacks. The clamour was terrific, and I really expected
that the poor foremen who held the pipes would be torn in pieces. Every
body wanted to command the Coldstream. Nothing but shouts of “Here!
here! here!” answered like an Irish echo by cries of “There! there!
there!” “Oh, save my savings!”--“My poor, Poor Bill!” “More water--more
water for my Drunkenness!” “Work awa, lads, work awa--it’s no the
Sabbath, and ye may just play at what ye like!”
In pleasing contrast to this tumult, was the unusual and cordial
unanimity of the members of both Houses, in rescuing whatever was
portable from the flames. It was a delightful novelty to see the
Lords helping the Commons in whatever they moved or carried. No party
spirit--no Whig, pulling at one leg of the table, whilst a Tory tugged
at another in the opposite direction. They seemed to belong to the
Hand-in-Hand. Peers and Commoners were alike seen burthened with loads
of papers or furniture. Mr. Calvert, in particular, worked like any
porter. Of course, in rescuing the papers and parchments, there was no
time for inspecting their contents, and some curious results were the
consequence. Every body remembers the pathetic story in the Tatler,
of the lover who saved a strange lady from a burning theatre, under
the idea that he was preserving the mistress of his affections, and
some similar mistakes are currently reported to have occurred at the
late conflagration--and equally to the chagrin of the parties. I go
by hearsay, and cannot vouch for the facts, but it is said that the
unpopular Six Acts, including what I believe is called the Gagging
Act, were actually preserved by Mr. Cobbett. Mr. O’Connell saved the
Irish Coercion Bill, whilst the Reform Bill was snatched like “a brand
out of the fire,” by a certain noble Duke, who resolutely set his face
against it in all its stages! Amongst others, Mr. Ricardo saved an old
tattered flag, which he thought was “the standard of value.”
[Illustration: CRIBBAGE:--ONE FOR HIS NOB AND TWO FOR HIS HEELS.]
However deficient in general combination, and concentration of
energies, individual efforts were beyond all praise. The instances of
personal exertion and daring were numerous. Mr. Rice worked amidst
the flames till he was nearly baked; and everybody expected that Mr.
Pease would be parched. The greatest danger was from the melted metal
pouring down from the windows and roof. The heads of some of the Hon.
Gentlemen were literally nothing but lead. Great apprehensions were
entertained of the falling in of one of the walls, which eventually
gave way, but fortunately everybody had retreated on the timely warning
of a gentleman, Mr. O’Connell, I believe, who declared that he saw a
Rent in it.
I did not enter the House of Lords, which was now one mass of glowing
fire, but directed my attention towards the Speaker’s mansion, which
was partially burning. The garden behind was nearly filled with
miscellaneous property--and numbers of well-dressed gentlemen were
every moment rushing into the house, from which they issued again,
laden with spits, sauce-pans, and other culinary implements. I, myself,
saw one zealous individual thus encumbered--with a stew-pan on his
head, the meat-screen under one arm, the dripping-pan under the other,
the frying-pan in his right hand, the grid-iron in his left, and the
rolling-pin in his mouth. Indeed, it is said that every article in the
kitchen was saved down to the salt-box; and the cook declares that such
was the anxiety to save her she was “cotched up in twelve gentlemen’s
arms, and never felt her feet till the corner of Abingdon Street.”
The whole of the Foot Guards were in attendance, as well as a
great number of the police, but the thieves had mustered in great
force, and there was a good deal of plundering, which was however
checked temporarily by a gentleman said to be one of the members and
magistrates for Essex, who jumped up on a railing and addressed the
populace to the following effect, “How do you hall dare!”
The origin of the fire is involved in much mystery; nor is it correctly
ascertained by whom it was first discovered. Some say that one of the
serjeants, in taking up the insignia, was astonished to find the mace
as hot as ginger. Others relate that a Mr. Spell, or Shell, or Snell,
whilst viewing the House, although no dancer, began suddenly, and in
his boots, to the utter amazement of his companions and Mrs. Wright,
the housekeeper, to jump and caper like a bear upon a hotted floor.
This story certainly seems to countenance a report that the mischief
originated in the warming apparatus, an opinion that is very current,
but, for my own part, I cannot conceive that the Collective Wisdom,
which knows how to lay down laws for us all, should not know how to lay
down flues. Rumours of Incendiarism are also very generally prevalent,
and stories are in circulation of the finding of half-burnt matches and
other combustibles. But these facts rest on very frail foundations. The
links said to have been found in the Speaker’s garden have turned out
to be nothing but German sausages; and another cock-and-a-bull that has
got abroad will probably come to no better end. A Mr. Dudley affirms
that he smelt the fire before it broke out, at Cooper’s Hill; but such
olfactories are too much like manufactories to be believed.
I am, Sir, your most obedient Servant,
X. Y. Z.
_Another Account._
The writer of these lines, who resides in Lambeth, was first awakened
to a sense of conflagration by a cry of “Fire” from a number of persons
who were running in the direction of Westminster Bridge. Owning myself
a warm enthusiast on the subject of ignition, and indeed not having
missed a fire for the last fifty years, except one, and that was only a
chimney, it may be supposed the exclamation in question had an electric
effect. We are all the slaves of some physical bias, strange as it may
appear to others with opposite tendencies. It is recorded of some great
marshal that he disliked music, but testified the liveliest pleasure at
a salvo of artillery or a roll of thunder, and the rumble of an engine
has the same effect on the author of these lines. To say I am a guebre,
or fire-worshipper, is only to confess the truth. I have a sort of
observatory erected on the roof of my house, from which, if there be a
break-out within the circuit of the metropolis, it may be discovered,
and before going to bed I invariably visit this look-out.
Every man has his hobby-horse, and, figuratively speaking, mine was
always kept harnessed and ready to run to a fire with the first engine.
Many a time I have arrived before the turncocks, though I perhaps had
to traverse half London, and I scarcely remember an instance that I
did not appear long before the water. Habit is second nature--I verily
believe I could sniff a conflagration by instinct; and if I was not, I
ought to have been, the trainer of the firemen’s dog, which at present
attracts so much of the public attention, by his eager running along
with the Sun, the Globe, the British, and the Hand-in-Hand.
[Illustration: “’TIS DISTANCE LENDS ENCHANTMENT TO THE VIEW.”]
Of course I have seen a great many fires in my time--Rotherhithe,
the theatres, the Custom-house, &c. &c. I remember in the days of
Thistlewood and Co., when the metropolis was expected to be set on
fire, I slept for three weeks in my clothes in order to be ready for
the first alarm; for I had the good fortune to witness the great riots
of 1780, when no less than eight fires were blazing at once, and a
lamentable sight it was. I say lamentable, because it was impossible
to be present at them all at the same time; but my good genius directed
me to Langdale’s the Distiller, which made (excuse the vulgar popular
phrase) a very satisfactory flare-up.
The Rotherhithe fire, not the recent little job, but some fifteen
or twenty years ago, was also on a grand scale, and very lasting.
The engine-pipes were wilfully cut; and I remember some of my
friends rallying me on my well-known propensity, jocularly accusing
me of lending my knife and my assistance. The Custom-house was a
disappointment; it certainly cleared itself effectually, but it was
done by day-light, and consequently the long-room fell short of my
anticipations. Drury-lane and Covent-garden were better: but I have
observed generally that theatres burn with more attention to stage
effect. They avoid the noon; a dark night to a fire is like the black
letters in a benefit-bill, setting off the red ones.
The destruction of the Kent Indiaman I should like to have witnessed,
but contrary to the opinion of many experienced amateurs I conceive
the Dartford Mills must have been a failure. Powder magazines make
very indifferent conflagrations; they are no sooner on fire than they
are off,--all is over before you know where you are, and there is no
getting under, which quite puts you out. But fires, generally, are not
what they used to be. What with gas, and new police, steam, and one
cause or other, they have become what one might call slow explosions.
A body of flame bursts from all the windows at once, and before B 25
can call fi-er in two syllables, the roof falls in, and all is over.
It was not so in _my_ time. First a little smoke would issue from a
window-shutter, like the puff of a cigar, and after a long spring of
his rattle, the rheumatic watchman had time to knock double and treble
knocks, from No. 9 to No. 35, before a spark made its appearance out of
the chimney-pot. The Volunteers had time to assemble under arms, and
muffle their drums, and the bell-ringers to collect in the belfry, and
pull an alarm peal backwards. The parish engines even, although pulled
along by the pursy churchwardens, and the paralytic paupers, contrived
to arrive before the fire fairly broke out in the shape of a little
squib-like eruption from the garret-window. The affrighted family,
fourteen in number, all elaborately drest in their best Sunday clothes,
saved themselves by the street-door, according to seniority, the
furniture was carefully removed, and after an hour’s pumping, the fire
was extinguished without extending beyond the room where it originated,
namely a bed-room on the second floor. Such was the progress _in my
time_ of a fire, but it is the fashion now to sacrifice everything
to _pace_. Look at our race-horses, and look at our fox-hounds,--and
I will add look at our conflagrations. All that is cared for is a
burst--no matter how short, if it be but rapid. The devouring element
never sits down now to a regular meal--it pitches on a house and
_bolts_ it.
But I am wandering from the point. The announcement of both Houses of
Parliament being in flames thrilled through every fibre. It seemed
to promise what I may call a crowning event to the Conflagrationary
Reminiscences of an Octogenarian. I snatched up my hat, and rushed into
the street, at eighty years of age, with the alacrity of eighteen, when
I ran from Highgate to Horselydown, to be present at the gutting of a
ship chandler’s. As the bard says--
“Ev’n in our ashes live their wonted _fires_,”
and I could almost have supposed myself a fireman belonging to the
Phœnix. My first step into the street discouraged me, the moonlight was
so brilliant, and in such cases the most splendid blaze is somewhat
“shorn of its beams.” But a few steps reassured me. Even at the Surrey
side of the river the sparks and burning particles were falling like
flakes of snow--I mean of course the red snow formerly discovered by
Captain Ross, and the light was so great that I could have read the
small print of the Police Gazette with the greatest ease, only I don’t
take it in. I of course made the best of my way towards the scene, but
the crowd was already so dense that I could only attain a situation on
the Strand opposite Cotton Gardens, up to my knees in mud. Both Houses
of Parliament were at this time in a blaze, and no doubt presented as
striking objects of conflagration as the metropolis could offer. I say,
“no doubt,”--forgetting jammed against a barge with my back towards
the fire, I am unable to state anything on my own authority as an
eye-witness, excepting that the buildings on the Surreyside exhibited
a glowing reflection for some hours. At last the flowing of the tide
caused the multitude to retreat, and releasing me from my retrospective
position allowed me to gaze upon the ruins. By what I hear, it was a
most imposing sight--but in spite of my Lord Althorpe, I cannot help
thinking that Westminster Hall, with its long range, would have made
up an admirable fire. Neither can I agree with the many that it was an
Incendiary Act, that passed through both houses so rapidly. To enjoy
the thing, a later hour and a darker night would certainly have been
chosen. Fire-light and moon-light do not _mix well_:--they are best
_neat_.
I am, Sir, Yours, &c.,
SENEX.
_Various Accounts._
WE are concerned to state that Sir Jacob Jubb the new member for Shrops
was severely burnt, by taking his seat in the House, on a bench that
was burning under him. The danger of his situation was several times
pointed out to him, but he replied that his seat had cost him ten
thousand pounds, and he wouldn’t quit. He was at length removed by
force.--_Morning Ledger._
A great many foolish anecdotes of the fire are in circulation. One
of our contemporaries gravely asserts that the Marquis of Culpepper
was the last person who left the South Turret, a fact we beg leave to
question, for the exquisite reason that noble lord alluded to is at
present at Constantinople.--_The Real Sun._
We are enabled to state that the individual who displayed so much
coolness in the South Turret was Captain Back.--_The Public Journal._
[Illustration: FANCY PORTRAIT:--CAPTAIN BACK.]
It is said that considerable interest was evinced by the members of the
House of Commons who were present at the fire, as to the fate of their
respective Bills. One honourable gentleman, in particular, was observed
anxiously watching the last scintillations of some burnt paper. “Oh, my
Sabbath Observances!” he exclaimed, “There’s an end of religion! There
go the Parson and Clerk!”--_Public Diary._
The Earl of M. had a very narrow escape. His lordship was on the point
of kicking a bucket when a labourer rushed forward and snatched it out
of the way. The individual’s name is M’Farrel. We understand he is a
sober, honest, hard-working man, and has two wives, and a numerous
family; the eldest not above a year old.--_Daily Chronicle._
The exclamation of a noble lord, high in office, who was very active
at the fire, has been very incorrectly given. The words were as
follows:--“Blow the Commons! let ’em flare up--but oh,--for a save-all!
a save-all.”--_Morning News._
The public attention has been greatly excited by the extraordinary
statement of a commercial gentleman, that he smelt the fire at the Cock
and Bottle, in Coventry. He asserts that he mentioned the fact in the
commercial room to a deaf gentleman, and likewise to a dumb waiter, but
neither have any recollection of the circumstance. He has been examined
before the Common Council, who have elicited that he actually arrived
at Coventry on the night in question, by the Tallyho, and the near
leader of that coach has been sent for by express.--_New Monitor._
We were in error in stating that the Atlas was the first engine at
the scene of action. So early as five o’clock Mr. Alderman A. arrived
with his own garden engine, and began immediately to play upon the
Thames.--_British Guardian._
It must have struck everyone who witnessed the operations in the House
of Commons, that there was a lamentable want of “order! order! order!”
A great many gentlemen succeeded in making pumps of themselves, without
producing any check on the flames. The conduct of the military also was
far from unexceptionable. On the arrival of the Coldstream at the fire
they actually refused to fall in. Many declined to stand at ease on the
burning rafters--but what is the public interest to a private?--_Public
Advertiser._
_Monsieur C.’s Account. (Exclusive.)_
WHEN I am come first to the fire it was not long burnt up; and I was
oblige to walk up and down the floor to keep myself warm. At last, I
take my seat on the stove, quite convenient to look about. In the House
of Commons there was nobody, and I am all alone. The first thing I
observe was a great many rats, ratting about--but they did not known
which way to turn. So they were all burnt dead. The flames grew very
fast; and I am interested very much with the seats, how they burned,
quite different from one another. Some seats made what you call a great
splutter, and popped and bounced, and some other seats made no noise
at all. Mr. Bulwer’s place burned of a blue colour; Mr. Buckstone’s
turned quite black; and there was one made a flame the colour of a
drab. I observe one green flame and one orange, side by side, and they
hiss and roar at one another very furious. The gallery cleared itself
quite quickly, and the seat of Messieurs the reporters, exploded itself
like a cannon of forty-eight pounds. The speaking chair burnt without
any sound at all.
When everything is quite done in the Commons I leave them off, and go
to the House of Lords, where the fire was all in one sheet, and almost
the whole of its inside burnt out. I was able in this room to take
off my great coat. I could find nothing to be saved except one great
ink-stand, that was red hot, and which I carry away in my two hands.
Likewise here, as well as in the Commons, I bottled up several bottles
of smoke, to distribute afterwards, at five guineas a-piece, and may be
more; for I know the English people admire such things, and are fond
after reliques, like a madness almost. I did not make a long stop, for
whenever I was visible, the pompiers was so foolish as play water upon
me, and I was afraid of a catch-cold. In fact, when I arrive at home,
I find myself stuffed in my head, and fast in my chest, and my throat
was a little horse. I am going for it into a bath of boiling water, and
cannot write any more at full length.
_A Letter to a Labouring Man._
BUSHELL,
When you made a holiday last Whitsuntide to see the Sights of London,
in your way to the Waxwork and Westminster Abbey, you probably noticed
a vast pile of buildings in Palace Yard, and you stood and scratched
that shock head of yours, and wondered whose fine houses they were.
Seeing you to be a country clodpole, no doubt some well-dressed
vagabond, by way of putting a hoax upon the hawbuck, told you that in
those buildings congregated all the talent, all the integrity and
public spirit of the country--that beneath those roofs the best and
wisest, and the most honest men to be found in three kingdoms, met
to deliberate and enact the most wholesome, and just, and judicious
laws for the good of the nation. He called them the oracles of our
constitution, the guardians of our rights, and the assertors of our
liberties. Of course, Bushell, you were told all this; but nobody told
you, I dare say, that within those walls your master had lifted up his
voice, and delivered the only sound, rational, and wholesome, upright,
and able speeches that were ever uttered in St. Stephen’s Chapel. No,
nobody told you that. But when I come home, Bushell, I will lend you
all my printed speeches, and when you have spelt them, and read them,
and studied them, and got them by heart, bumpkin as you are, Bushell,
you will know as much of legislation as all our precious members
together.
[Illustration: “OUR CONSTITUTION’S GONE!”]
Well, Bushell, the fine houses you stood gaping at are burnt down,
gutted, as the vulgar call it, and nothing is left but the bare walls.
You saw Farmer Gubbins’ house, or, at least, the shell of it, after
the fire there: well, the Parliament Houses are exactly in the same
state. There is news for you! and now, Bushell, how do you feel? Why,
if the well-dressed vagabond told you the truth, you feel as if you had
had a stroke--for all the British Constitution is affected, and you
are a fraction of it, that is to say, a British subject. Your bacon
grows rusty in your mouth, and your table-beer turns to vinegar on your
palate. You cannot sleep at night, or work by day. You have no heart
for anything. You can hardly drag one clouted shoe after another. And
how do you look? Why, as pale as a parsnip, and as thin as a hurdle,
and your carroty locks stand bolt upright as if you had just met old
Lawson’s ghost with his head under his arm. I say thus you must feel
and look, Bushell, if what the well-dressed vagabond told you is the
truth. But is that the case? No. You drink your small-beer with a sigh
and smack of delight; and you bolt your bacon with a relish, as if, as
the virtuous Americans say, you could “go the whole hog.” Your clouted
shoes clatter about as if you were counting hobnails with the Lord
Mayor, and you work like a young horse, or an old ass, and at night
you snore like an oratorio of jews’ harps. Your face is as bold and
ruddy as the Red Lion’s. Your carroty locks lie sleek upon your poll,
and as for poor old Lawson’s ghost, you could lend him flesh and blood
enough to set him up again in life. But what, say you, does all this
tend to? I will tell you, Bushell. There are a great many well-dressed
vagabonds, besides the one you met in Palace Yard, who would persuade
a poor man that a House of Lords or Commons is as good to him as his
bread, beer, beef, bacon, bed, and breeches; and therefore I address
this to you, Bushell, to set such notions to rights by an appeal to
your own back and belly. And now I will tell you what you shall do. You
shall go three nights a week to the Red Lion (when your work is done),
and you may score up a pint of beer, at my cost, each time. And when
the parson, or the exciseman, or the tax-gatherer, or any such gentry,
begin to talk of that deplorable great burning, and the national
calamity, and such-like trash, you shall pull out my letter and read
to them--I say, Bushell, you shall read this letter to them, twice
over, loudly and distinctly, and tell them from me, that the burning of
twenty Parliament Houses wouldn’t be such a national calamity as a fire
at No. 1, Bolt Court.
PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE.
_To Mary Price, Fenny Hall, Lincolnshire._
O Mary,--I am writing in such a quiver, with my art in my mouth, and
my tung sticking to it. For too hole hours Ive bean Doin nothink but
taking on and going off, I mean into fits, or crying and blessing
goodness for my miraclus escape. This day week I wear inwallopped in
flams, and thinkin of roth to cum, and fire evverlasting. But thenks
to Diving Providings, hear I am, althowgh with loss of wan high brew
scotched off, a noo cap and my rite shew. But I hav bean terrifid to
deth. Wen I was ate, or it mite be nine, I fell on the stow, and hav
had a grate dred of fire evver since. Gudge then how low I felt at the
idear of burning along with the Lords and Communer’s. It as bean a
Warnin, and never, no, never never never agin will I go to Clandestiny
parties behind Mississis backs. I now see my errer, but temtashun
prevaled, tho the clovin fut of the Wicked Wan had a hand in it all:
Oh Mary, down on yure marrybones, and bless yure stars for sitiating
you in a loanly stooped poky place, wear you cant be lead into liteness
and gayty, if you was evver so inclind. Fore wipping willies and a
windmill is a dullish luck out, shure enuff, but its better then moor
ambishus prospex, and stairing at a grate fire, like a suckin pig, till
yure eyes is reddy to drop out of yure hed!
[Illustration: “WHY DON’T THE MEN PROPOSE?”]
You no wen Lady Manners is absent, a certin person allways givs a good
rowt:--and I had a card in Coarse. I went verry ginteel, my Cloke cost
I wont say Wot, and a hat and fethers to match. But it warnt to be.
After takin off my things, I had barely set down, wen at the front
dore there cums a dubble nock without any end to it, and a ring of the
bell at the saim time, like a triangle keepin cumpany with a big drum.
As soon as the door were opened a man with a pail face asked for the
buckits, and that was the fust news we had of the fire. Oh Mary, never
trust to the mail sects! They are all Alick from the Botcher and Backer
that flurts at the front dore, down to the deer dissevers you throw
away yure arts upon. For all their fine purfessions, they are only
filling your ears with picrust, they make trifles of yure afections,
and destroy yure comfits for life. They think no moore of parjuring
themselvs then I do of sweeping the earth. If yure wise you will sit
yure face agin all menkind and luv nonsense, as I meen to in futer,
or may be, wen you are dreeming of brid cake and wite fevers, you may
find yureself left with nothink but breeches of prommis. John Futman
is a proof in pint. Menny tims Ive give him a hiding at number fore,
and he allways had the best of the lardur at our stolin meatings, and
God nose Ive offun alloud him to idelize me wen I ort to have bean at
my wurks, besides larning to rite for his sack. Twenty housis afire
ort not to hav abaited his warmth, insted of witch to jump up at the
fust allurm and run away, leaving me to make my hone shifts. A treu
luver wood have staid to shear my fat. O Mary, if ever there was a
terryfickle spectikle that was won. Flams before and flams behind,
and flams overhead. Sich axing and hollowing out, and mobbing and
pumpin, and cussing and swaring, and the peple’s rushes into the Hous
purvented all gitting out. For my hone parts, I climed up the dresser,
and skreeked, but nobbody was man enuff to purtect. Men ant what they
was. I am sick of the retches! It used to be femails fust, but now its
furniter. I fully thort one gintleman was comin to cotch me up in arms,
but he prefered the fish kettle. As for the sogers they marcht off to
the wind seller and the pantry, ware they maid beleave to preserve
the gusberry gam. How I was reskewd at last Lord nose, for my hed was
unsensible tell I found meself setten on the pickid pinted ralings of
St. Margret’s Church, with my fethers all frizzild, and a shew off. But
of all lossis, my ridicule was most serius, for it had my puss in it.
How and ware it broke out is a mistery. Sum say both Howses was under
minded. Sum say the Common members got over heatid in there fluency.
A grate deal of property was burned, in spit of Lord Allthorp,
who ingaged every cotch, cab, and gobbing porter as conveyancers.
Westmunster may thenk his Lordship it did not lose its All. They say
the Lords and Communs was connectid with a grate menny historicle
associashuns, wich of coarse will hav to make good all dammage.
Fortnately, the Speker’s mornin, noon, and evning services of plait was
not at home, or it mite hav sufferd, for they say goold and silver as
stud the fire verry well, melted down when it got furthur off. Tauking
of plait a gentilman, who giv his card, Mr. William Soames, were verry
kind and partickler in his inquerries efter Mr. Speker’s vallybles. I
hope he will hav a place givn him for his indevvers.
Ware the poor burnt-out creturs will go noboddy nose. Sum say Exter
Hall, sum say the Refudge for the Destitut, and sum say the King will
lend them his Bensh to set upon! All I no is, I’ve had a frite that
will go with me to my grave. I am allways snifing fire by day and
dreeming on it by nite. Ony last Fryday I allarmd the hole naberhood by
screaching out of winder for the warter to be plugged up. Liting fires,
or striking lite, or making tindur, throes me into fits.
[Illustration: A REFINED WOMAN.]
I shall nevver be the womman I was; but that is no excus for John’s
unconstancy. I don’t dare to take my close off to go to bed, and I
practice clambering up and down by a rop in case, and I giv police M
25 a shillin now and than to keep a specious eye to number fore, and
be reddy to ketch anny won in his harms. But it cums to munny, and
particly givin the ingin keeper a pint of bear from time to time,
and drams to the turncox: where there’s nabers fires will happen,
howevver cerefull and precocius you may be youreself. I dred our too
nex dores; number three is a Gurmin fammily, and them orrid forriners
think nothink of smocking siggars in bed, witch will ketch sum day to
a curtainty. Number fiv is wus; since his wif’s deth Mr. Sanders has
betuck himself to comicle studis, and offin has a littel blo up amung
his pistles and morters. O! Mary, how happy is them as livs lick you,
as the song says, “Fur from the buzzy aunts of men.” If yu’re inflamd
its nobbody’s folt but youre hone. Pray take the gratest car. Have sure
eyes about you, and luck out for sparks; watever the men may say, don’t
allow backerpips or long snufs, and let evvery boddy be thurrowly put
out. Don’t neglect to rake out evvery nite, see that evvery sole in
the hows is turnd down or xtinguished, and allways blo yureself out
befour you go to yure piller. Thenk gudness you nevver larnd to reed,
and therefor will not take anny bucks to bed with you. Allways ware
stuff or woollin, insted of lite cottons and gingums, in case of the
coles throwin out coffens or pusses, by witch munny persons gains their
ends. In case of yure pettycots catchin don’t forgit standin on yure
hed, as recommended by the Human Society, becoz fire burns uppards,
but its a posishun as requiers practis. Have yure chimbly swept reglar
wonce a munth, and wen visiters cum neveer put hot coles in the warmin
pan, for fear you forgit and leave it in the spair bed. Remember fire
is a good sarvent but a bad master, and sure enuff wen it is master it
never gives a sarvent a munth’s notis. To be shure we have won marsy
in town that is unbenone in the country, and that is Swingeing; there
is no cornstax or heyrix in St. Jims’s Square. That is yure week pint,
and I trembil for the barns; a rockite or a roaming candle mite set you
in a blaze. But I hop and trust wat I say will never pruve the truth.
Oppydildock is good for burns, and I am, dear Mary,
Yure old and afexionate feller sarvent,
ANN GALE.
[Illustration: THE SWELL MOB.]
THE JUBB LETTERS.
_From Lady Jubb to Mrs. Phipps, Housekeeper at the Shrubbery,
Shrewsbury, Shrops._
MRS. PHIPPS,
You will prepare the house directly for the family’s return, not that
our coming back is absolutely certain, but events have happened to
render our stay in Portland Place very precarious. All depends upon
Sir Jacob. In Parliament or out of Parliament his motions must guide
ours. By this time what has happened will be known in Shropshire, but I
forbid your talking. Politics belong to people of property, and those
who have no voice in the country ought not to speak. In your inferior
situations it’s a duty to be ignorant of what you know. The nation is
out of your sphere, and besides, people out of town cannot know the
state of the country. I want to put you on your guard; thanks to the
press, as Sir Jacob says, public affairs cannot be kept private, and
the consequence is, the ignorant are as well informed as their betters.
The burning of both Houses of Parliament I am afraid cannot be hushed
up--but it is not a subject for servants, that have neither upper nor
lower members amongst them, and represent nobody. I trust to you, Mrs.
Phipps, to discourage all discussions in the kitchen, which isn’t the
place for parliamentary canvassing. The most ridiculous notions are
abroad. I should not be surprised even to hear that Sir Jacob had lost
his seat, because the benches were burnt, but we have been deprived
of none of our dignities or privileges. You will observe this letter
is _franked_; the fire made no difference to your master, he is not
dissolved, whatever the Blues may wish--he is still Sir Jacob Jubb,
Baronet, M.P.
[Illustration: THE LIGHT HORSE.]
The election of Sir Jacob at such a crisis was an act of Providence.
His firmness at the fire affords an example to posterity; although
the bench was burning under him he refused to retreat, replying
emphatically, “I will sit by my order.” As far as this goes you may
mention, and no more. I enjoin upon all else a diplomatic silence. Sir
Jacob himself will write to the bailiff, and whatever may be the nature
of his directions, I desire that no curiosity may be indulged in, and
above all, that you entertain no opinions of your own. You cannot
square with the upper circles. I would write more, but I am going to
a meeting, I need not say where, or upon what subject. I rely, Mrs.
Phipps, on your discretion, and am, &c.,
ARABELLA ANASTASIA JUBB.
_To T. Crawfurd, junior, Esquire, the Beeches, near Shrewsbury, Shrops._
DEAR TOM,
Throw up your cap and huzza. There’s glorious news, and so you’ll say
when I tell you. I could almost jump out of my skin for joy! Father’s
dismembered! The House of Commons caught fire, and he was dissolved
along with the rest.
[Illustration: “THE LAST DAYS OF POMP--.”]
I’ve never been happy since we came up to London, and all through
Parliament. The election was good sport enough. I liked the riding up
and down, and carrying a flag; and the battle, with sticks, between
the Blues and the Yellows, was famous fun; and I huzza’d myself hoarse
at our getting the day at last. But after that came the jollup, as we
used to say at Old Busby’s. Theme writing was a fool to it. If father
composed one maiden speech he composed a hundred, and he made me
knuckle down and copy them all out, and precious stupid stuff it was. A
regular physicker, says you, and I’d worse to take after it. He made us
all sit down and hear him spout them, and a poor stick he made.--Dick
Willis, that we used to call Handpost, was a dab at it compared to him.
He’s no better hand at figures, so much the worse for me. Did you ever
have a fag, Tom, at the national debt? I don’t know who owes it, but I
wish he’d pay it, or be made bankrupt at once. I’ve worked more sums
last month than ever I did at school in the half year,--geography the
same. I had to hunt out Don Carlos and Don Pedro, all over the maps. I
came in for a regular wigging one day, for wishing both the Dons were
well peppered, as Tom Tough says. I’ve seen none of the sights I wanted
to see. He wouldn’t let me go to the play, because he says the theatres
are bad schools, and would give me a vicious style of elocution. The
only pleasure he promised me was to sit in the gallery at the Commons
and see him present his petitions. Short-hand would have come next,
that I might take down his speechifying--for he says the reporters all
garble. An’t I well out of it all--and a place he was to get for me
besides, from the Prime Minister? I suppose the Navy Pay, to sit on a
high stool and give Jack Junk one pound two and ninepence twice a year.
I’d rather be Jack Junk himself, wouldn’t you, Tom? But father’s lost
his wicket, and huzza for Shropshire! In hopes of our soon meeting, I
remain, my dear Tom,
Your old chum and schoolfellow,
FREDERICK JUBB.
P.S.--A court gentleman has just come in, with a knock-me-down-again.
He says there’s to be a new election. I wish you’d do something; it
would be a real favour, and I will do as much for you another time.
What I want of you is, to get your father to set up against mine. Do
try, Tom--there’s a good fellow. I will ask every body I know to give
your side a plumper.
[Illustration: AN ADDER UP.]
_To Mr. Roger Davis, Bailiff, the Shrubbery, near Shrewsbury._
DAVIS,
I hope to God this will find you at home--I am writing in a state
of mind bordering on madness. I can’t collect myself to give
particulars--you will have a newspaper along with this--read that,
and your hair will stand on end. Incendiarism has reached its height
like the flaming thing on the top of the Monument. Our crisis is come.
To my mind--political suicide--is as bad as felo de se. Oh Whigs,
Whigs, Whigs--what have you brought us to! As the Britannic Guardian
well says--England is gone to Italy--London is at Naples--and we are
all standing on the top of Vesuvius. I have heard--and I believe
it--that an attempt has been made to choke Aldgate Pump. A Waltham
Abbey paper says positively that the mills were recently robbed of 513
barrels of powder, the exact number of the members for England and
Wales. What a diabolical refinement--to blow up a government with its
own powder! I can hardly persuade myself I am in England. God knows
where it will spread to--I mean the incendiary spirit. The dry season
is frightful--I suppose the springs are all dry. Keep the engine
locked in the stable for fear of a cut at the pipes. I’ll send you
down two more. Let all the labourers take a turn at them, by way of
practice. I’m persuaded the Parliament houses were burnt on purpose.
The flue story is ridiculous. Mr. Cooper’s is a great deal more to the
point. I believe everything I hear. A bunch of matches was found in
the Speaker’s kitchen. I saw something suspicious myself--some said
treacle, but I say tar. Have your eyes about you--lock all the gates,
day as well as night--and above all, watch the stacks. One Tiger is not
enough--get three or four more, I should have said Cæsar, but you know
I mean the house-dog. Good mastiffs,--the biggest and savagest you can
get. The gentry will be attempted first--beginning with the M.P.’s.
You and Barnes and Sam must sit up by turns--and let the maids sit up
too--women have sharp ears and sharp tongues.--If a mouse stirs I would
have them squall--danger or no danger. It’s the only way to sleep in
security--and comfort. I have read that the common goose is a vigilant
creature--and saved Rome. Get a score of them at the next market--don’t
stand about price--but choose them with good cackles. Alarm them now
and then to keep them watchful, Fire the blunderbuss off every night,
and both fowling pieces and all the pistols. If all the Gentry did
as much, it might keep the country quiet. If you were to ring the
alarm-bell once or twice in the middle of the night, it would be as
well--you would know then what help to depend upon. Search the house
often from the garret to the cellar, for combustibles--if you could
manage to go without candles, or any sort of light, it would be better.
[Illustration: THE MOVEMENT PARTY.]
You’d find your way about in the dark after a little practice. Pray
don’t allow any sweethearts; they may be Swings and Captain Rocks in
disguise, and their pretended flames turn out real. I’ve misgivings
about the maids. Tie them up and taste their liver, before they eat
it themselves--I mean the house-dogs; but my agitation makes me
unconnected. The scoundrels often poison them, before they attempt
robbery and arson. Keep the cattle in the cowhouse for fear of their
being houghed and hamstrung. Surely there were great defects somewhere.
The Houses could not have been properly protected--if they had been
watched as well as they were lighted--but it is too late to cast any
blame on individuals. A paltry spirit of economy has been our bane. A
few shillings would have purchased a watch-dog; and one or two geese in
each house might have saved the capitol of the constitution! But the
incendiary knew how to choose his time--an adjournment when there were
none sitting.
I say incendiary, because no doubt can exist in any cool mind, that
enters into the conflagration. I transcribe conclusive extracts from
several papers, the editors of which I know to be upright men, and they
all write on one side.
“We are confidently informed,” says the Beacon, “that a quantity of
tar-barrels was purchased at No. 2, High-street, Shadwell, about ten
o’clock on the morning of the fire. There was abundant time before six
a.m., for removing the combustibles to Westminster. The purchaser was a
short, squat, down-looking man, and the name on his cart was I. Burns.”
“Trifling circumstances,” says the Sentinel, “sometimes point to great
results. Our own opinion is formed. We have made it our business to
examine the Guys in preparation for the impending anniversary of the
Gunpowder Plot, and we affirm that every one of the effigies bore a
striking resemblance to some member or other of assemblies we need not
name. These are signs of the times.”
“We should be loth,” says the Detector, “to impute the late calamity to
any particular party: but we may reasonably inquire what relative stake
in the country is possessed by the Whigs and the Tories. The English
language may be taken as a fair standard. The first may lay claim to
perri-_wig_, scratch-_wig_, tie-_wig_, bob-_wig_, in short, the whole
family of the perruques, with _whig_-maleery. The latter, not to
mention other good things, have a vested right in ora_tory_, his_tory_,
terri_tory_, and vic_tory_. Can a man of common patriotism have a doubt
which side it is his interest to adhere to?”
[Illustration: “WHEN SHALL WE THREE MEET AGAIN?”]
That last paragraph, Davis, is what I call sound argument. Indeed I
don’t see how it is to be answered. You see they are all nem. con.
as to our danger, and decidedly reckon fire an inflammatory agent.
Take care what you read. Very pernicious doctrines are abroad, and
especially across the Western Channel. The Irish are really frightful.
I’m told they tie the cows’ tails together, and then saw off their
horns for insurrectionary bugles. The foundations of society are
shaken all over the world--the Whiteboys in Ireland, and the Blacks
in the West Indies, all seem to fight under the same colours. It’s
time for honest men to rally round themselves--but I’m sorry to say
public spirit and love of one’s country are at a low ebb. There’s too
much Americanism. One writer wants us to turn all our English wheat
to Indian corn, and to grow no sort of apples but Franklin pippins.
We want strong measures against associations and unions. There’s
demagogues abroad--and they wear white hats. By-the-bye, I more
than half suspect that fellow Johnson is a delegate. Take him to the
ale-house, and treat him freely--it may warm him to blab something.
Besides, you will see what sort of papers the public-houses take in.
You may drop a hint about their licenses. Give my compliments to Dr.
Garratt, and tell him I hope he will preach to the times, and take
strong texts. I wish I could be down amongst you, but I cannot desert
my post. You may tell the tenantry, and electors--I’m burnt out and
gutted--but my heart’s in the right place--and devoted to constituents.
Come what may, I will be an unshaken pillar on the basis of my circular
letter. Don’t forget any of my precautions. I am sorry I did not bring
all the plate up to town--but at the first alarm bury it. Take in no
letters or notices; for what you know they may be threatenings. If
any Irishman applies for work, discharge him instantly. All the old
spring-guns had better be set again, they are not now legal, but I am
ministerial, and if they did go off, the higher powers would perhaps
wink at them. But it’s fire that I am afraid of, fire that destroyed
my political roof, and may now assail my paternal one. Walk, as I may
say, bucket in hand, and be ready every moment for a break out. You
may set fire to the small faggot stack, and try your hands at getting
it under--there’s nothing worse than being taken by surprise. Read
this letter frequently, and impress these charges on your mind. It
is a sad change for England to have become, I may say, this fiery
furnace. I have not the least doubt, if properly traced, the burning
cliff at Weymouth would be found to be connected with Incendiarism, and
the Earthquakes at Chichester with our political convulsions. Thank
Providence in your prayers, Davis, that your own station forbids your
being an M.P., for a place in parliament is little better than sitting
on a barrel of gunpowder. Honour forbids to resign, or I should wish I
was nothing but a simple country gentleman. Remember, and be vigilant.
Once more I cry Watch, Watch, Watch! By adopting the motions I propose,
a conflagration may be adjourned sine die, which is a petition
perpetually presented by
Your anxious but uncompromising Master,
JACOB JUBB, M.P.
_To Lady Jubb, at 45, Portland Place._
RESPECTED MADAM,
I received your Ladyship’s obliging commands, and have used my best
endeavours to conform to the wishes condescended therein. In respect
to political controversy, I beg to say I have imposed a tacit silence
on the domestic capacities as far as within the sphere of my control,
but lament to say the Bailiff, Mr. Davis, is a party unamenable to
my authority, and as such has taken liberties with decorum quite
unconsistent with propriety and the decency due. However reluctant
to censoriousness, duty compels to communicate subversive conduct
quite unconformable to decency’s rules and order in a well-regulated
establishment. I allude to Mr. Davis’s terrifically jumping out from
behind doors and in obscure dark corners, on the female domestics, for
no reasonable purpose I can discover, except to make them exert their
voices in a very alarming manner. The housemaid, indeed, confirms me
by saying in her own words, “he considered her skreek the best skreek
in the family.” If impropriety had proceeded no further, I should have
hesitated to trouble your Ladyship with particulars; but Mr. Davis,
not satisfied with thus working on the unsophisticated terrors of
ignorant females, thought proper to horrify with inflammatory reports.
[Illustration: A MARKED MAN.]
[Illustration: WAPPING OLD STARES.]
One night, as a prominent instance, about twelve o’clock, he rang the
alarm bell so violently, at the same time proclaiming conflagration,
that the law of preservation became our paramount duty, and, as a
consequence, we all escaped in a state of dishabille only to be
ambiguously hinted at, by saying that time did not allow to put on my
best lutestring to meet the neighbouring gentry--and must add, with
indignation, in the full blaze of a heap of straw, thought proper to
be set on fire by Mr. Davis in the fore-court. I trust your Ladyship
will excuse a little warmth of language, in saying it was highly
reprehensible; but I have not depictured the worst. I, one evening,
lighted up what I conceived to be a mould candle, and your Ladyship
will imagine my undescribable fright when it exploded itself like a
missile of the squib description, an unwarrantable mode, I must say,
of convincing me, as Mr. Davis had the audaciousness to own to,
that we may be made to be actors in our own combustion. To suppose
at my years and experience, I can be unsensible of the danger of
fire, must be a preposterous notion; but all his subsequent acts
partake an agreeable character. For fear of being consumed in our
beds, as he insidiously professed, he exerted all his influential
arguments to persuade the females to set up nocturnally all night,
a precaution of course declined, as well as his following scheme,
being almost too much broached with absurdity to enumerate. I mean
every retiring female reposing her confidence on a live goose in her
chamber, as were purchased for the express purpose, but need not add
were dispensed with by rational beings. I trust your ladyship will
acquit of uncharitableness if I suspect it was out of vindictive
feelings at their opposition to the geese that Mr. Davis insinuated a
strict inquiry into every individual that came into the house, as far
even as requiring to be personally present at all that passed between
the dairymaid and her cousin. It escaped memory to say that when the
feminine department refused to be deprived of rest, the male servants
were equally adverse to go to bed, being spirited up by Mr. Davis to
spend the night together, and likewise being furnished with the best
strong ale in the cellar by his imperious directions, which, by way of
climax to assurance, was alleged to be by order of Sir Jacob himself.
I say nothing reflectively on his repeatedly discharging his artillery
at unseasonable hours, the shock principally concerning my own nervous
constitution, which was so vibrated as to require calling in physical
powers: and Doctor Tudor, considering advanced age and infirmity, is
of opinion I may require to be under his professional hands for an
ensuing twelvemonth. Of startling effects upon other parties I may
make comments more unreserved, and without harsh extenuation must
say, his letting off reports without due notice, frequently when the
females had valuable cut glass and china in their hands, or on their
trays, was blamable in the extreme, to express the least of it. Another
feature which caused much unpleasantness, was Mr. Davis persisting to
scrutinise and rummage the entire premises from top to bottom, but on
this characteristic tediousness forbids to dwell, and more particularly
as mainly affecting himself, such as the flow of blood from his nose,
and two coagulated eyes, from the cellar door, through a peculiar
whim of looking for every thing in a state of absolute obscurity. I
may add, by way of incident, that Mr. Davis walks lame from a canine
injury in the calf of his leg, which I hope will not prove rabid in the
end,--but the animals he has on his own responsibility introduced on
the premises, really resemble, begging your Ladyship’s pardon for the
expression, what are denominated D.’s incarnate.
Such, your Ladyship, is the unpropitious posture of domestic affairs
at the Shrubbery, originating, I must say, exclusively from the
unprecedented deviations of Mr. Davis. A mild construction would infer,
from such extraordinary extravagance of conduct, a flightiness, or
aberration of mind in the individual, but I deeply lament to say a
more obvious cause exists to put a negative on such a surmise. For
the last week Mr. Davis has betrayed an unusual propensity to pass
his evenings at the George Tavern, and in consequence has several
times exhibited himself in a Bacchanalian character to our extreme
discomforture, and on one occasion actually trespassed so far beyond
the bounds of modesty, as to offer me the rudeness of a salute. I
blush to impart such details to your Ladyship; but justice demands an
explicit statement, however repulsive to violated reserve and the rules
of virtue. Amongst less immoral actions, I must advert to the arrival
of two new engines with a vast number of leathern buckets, I fear
ordered by Mr. Davis at my honoured master’s expense, and which are
periodically exercised in pumping every day, by the gardeners and the
hinds, being induced thereto by extra beverages of strong beer. By such
means the aquatic supply of the well is frequently exhausted by playing
upon nothing,--and at this present moment I am justified in stating we
have not sufficient water to fulfil culinary purposes, or the demands
of cleanliness. I feel ashamed to say there is not a strictly clean cap
in the whole household.
[Illustration: THE UNITED SERVICE.]
In short, Madam, we labour under an aggravated complication of
insubordination, deprivation, discomfort, and alarm, daily and nightly,
such as to shock my eyes whilst it grieves my heart, and I may almost
say turns my head to be present at, without sufficient authority to
dictate or power to enforce a course more consistent with the line of
rectitude. As my sway does not extend to Mr. Davis, I humbly beseech
your Ladyship’s interference and influence in the proper quarter,
in behalf, I may say, of a body of persecuted females, some of whom
possess cultivated minds and sensitive feelings beyond their sphere.
I remain, respected Madam,
Your Ladyship’s most obliged and very humble Servant,
AMELIA PHIPPS.
P.S.--One of Mr. Davis’s savage bull-baiting dogs has just rushed with
a frightful crash into the china-closet, in pursuit of the poor cat.
_To Sir Jacob Jubb, Baronet, M.P._
HONNERD SUR,
Yure faver enclosin the Ruings of the Parlimint houses cam dully to
hand, and did indeed put up all the hares on my hed. It cam like the
bust of a thunder bolt. You mite hav nockt me down with the fether of a
ginny ren. My bran swum. I seamed rooted to the hearth--and did not no
weather I was a slip or a wack, on my hed or my heals. I was perfecly
unconshunable, and could no more kollect meself then the Hirish tiths.
I was a long Tim befor I cud perswade meself that the trooth was trew.
But sich a dredful fire is enuff to unsettil wons resin. A thowsend
ears mite role over our heds, and not prodeuce sich a blo to the
constitushun. I was barley sensible. The Currier dropt from my hands
wen I cam to the perrygraft witch says “Our hops are at an end. The
Hous of Communs is a boddy of Flams, and so is the Hous of Pears! The
Lords will be dun!”
[Illustration: GENERAL ELECTION.]
Honnerd Sur, I beg to kondole as becums on yure missin yure seat. It
must have bean the suddinest of shox, & jest wen goin to sit after
standin for the hole county, on yure hone futting, at your sole
expens. But I do hop and trust it will not be yure dissolushun, as sum
report; I do hop it is onely an emty rummer pict up at sum publick
Hous. At such an encindery crisus our wust frend wood be General
Elixion, by stirrin up inflametory peple, particly if there was a
long pole. You see, Sir Jacob, I konker in evvery sentashus sentemint
in yure respected Letter. The Volkano you menshun I can enter into.
Theres a great deal of combustibul sperits in the country that onely
wants a spark to convart them into catarax:--and I greave to say evvery
inflammetory little demy Gog is nust, and has the caudle support of
certin pappers. Im alludin to the Press. From this sort of countenins
the nashunal aspec gits moor friteful evvery day. I see no prospex for
the next gennerashun but rocking and swinging. I hav had a grate menny
low thorts, for wat can be moor dispiritin then the loss of our two
gratest Publick Housis! There is nothin cumfortable. There is a Vesuvus
under our feat, and evvery step brings us nearer to its brinks. Evvery
reflective man must say we are a virgin on a precipus.
Honnerd Sur! In the mean tim I hav pade atenshuns to yure letter, and
studid its epistlery derecshuns, witch I hav made meself very particler
in fulfiling to the utmost xtent. If the most zellus effuts have not
sucksedid to wish I humbly beg to blame but wat is dew may fall on me,
and hope other peples shears will visit their hone heds. The axident
with the spring gun was no neglex of mine. After Barnes settin it
himself, his tumblin over the wier must be lade to his hone dore along
with his shot legs. I sent for two surgings to sea to him, and they
cauld in too moor, so that he is certin of a good dressin, but he was
very down-harted about gitting a livin, till I tolled him yure honner
wood settle on him for the rest of his days. I may say the lik of the
other axident to Sanders and Sam, who got badly woundid wile wotchin
the stax, by apprehendin won another after a sanguine conflic by
mistake for incinderies. I have promist in yure honners nam to reword
them boath hansumly for their vigilings, but they stedfistly refus
to padrol anny moor after dusk, tho they ar agreble by daylit, which
leavs me at my whits ends for Firegards, as strange men wood not be
trusswurthy.
Honnered Sur--I am sorry I cood not git the mad servents to set up
for theaves, even for wun nite runnin. I tried the Currier on them,
but it didn’t wurk on there minds; they tuck lites in their hands and
waukd to there pillers as if they hadn’t a car on there heds, and wen
I insistid on their allarmin me they all give me warnin. As for the
swetharts there’s a duzzen domesticatted luvers in the kitchen, and
I’m sorry to say I can’t give them all a rowt. I ketchd the cook’s bo
gettin in at a winder, and sercht his pockets for feer of fosfrus, but
he contaned nothin xcept a cruckid sixpens, a taler’s thimbel, and a
tin backy-box, with a lock of hare witch did not match with cook’s. It
is dangerus wurk. Becus I luck after the mades candels they tie strings
to the banesters to ketch my fut, and I have twice pitcht from the
hed to the futt of the stars. I am riting with my forrid brandid and
brown pepperd, and my rite hand in a poltus from gropping in the dark
for cumbustibils in the cole seller, and diskivering nothin but the
torturous kat and her kittings.
[Illustration: “TWO HEADS ARE BETTER THAN ONE.”]
Honnerd Sur--I got six capitol gees a bargin, but am verry dubbius
weather they possess the propperty that ort to make them wakful and
weary of nites. The old specious may be lost. The Roman gees you
menshun wood certinly hav nevver sufferd themselves to be stolen
without a cakeling, as our hone did too nites ago. As for the wotch
dogs, to be candied, they were all errors in gudgment. There was to
much Bul in the bread. The verry fust nite they were let lose they flew
in a rag, and began to vent their caning propensities on each other’s
curcases. I regret to say too was wurrid to deth before the next
mourning, and the rest were so full of bad bits and ingeries in there
vitties they were obligated to be kild. In shutting Seazer with the
blunderbush, I lament to ad it hung fire, and in liftin it up it went
off of its hone hed and shot the bucher’s horse at the gait, and he has
thretind to tak the law if he isn’t made good, as he was verry vallyble.
Honnerd Sur--Accordin to orders I tuck Johnson the suspishus man evvery
nite to the Gorge, and told him to caul for wat he likt, witch was
allways an ot suppir and Punch. As yet he as diskivered nothin but sum
lov nonsins about a deary-made, so that its uncertin weather he is a
dillygate or not; but I shood say a desinin won, for by sum artful
meens he allways manniged to make me drunk fust, and gennerally lent
a hand to carry me home. I told the landlord to let him have aney
thing he wantid and yure Honner wood pay the skore, but I think it was
unprudent of Mr. Tapper to let him run up to ten pound. But it isn’t
all drink, but eating as well--Johnson has a very glutinous appetit,
and always stix to the tabel as long as there is meet.
Honnerd Sur--Last fridy morning there was grate riotism and sines of
the populus risin, and accordin I lost no time in berryin the plait as
derected by yure ordirs. I am gratifid to say the disturbans turned out
onely a puggleistical fit; but owen to our hurry and allarm, the spot
ware the plait was berrid went out of our heads. We have since dug up
the hole srubbery, but without turnin up anny thing in its shape. But
it cant be lost, tho’ it isnt to be found. The gardner swares the srubs
will all di from being transplanted at unpropper sesin--but I trust it
is onely his old grumblin stile witch he cannot git over.
Honnerd Sur--The wust is to cum. In casis of Fire the trooth is shure
to brake out suner or latter, so I may as well cum to the catstrophy
without any varnish on my tail. This morning according to yure order, I
hignitted the littel faggit stak, fust takin the precawshuny meshure
of drawin up a line of men with buckits, from the dux-pond to the sene
of combusting. Nothin can lay therefor on my sholders: it all riz
from the men strikin for bear, wen they ort to hav bean handin warter
to won another. I felt my deuty to argy the pint, which I trust will
be apruved, and wile we were cussin and discussin the fire got a hed
that defide all our unitted pours to subdo. To confess the fax, the
fire inguns ware all lokt up in a stabble with a shy key that had lost
itself the day before, and was not to be had wen we wantid to lay hands
on it. Not that we could have wurkd the inguns if they had faverd with
their presens, for want of hands. Evvery boddy had run so offen at
the allarm bell that they got noboddy to go in there steed. It was an
hawful site; the devowring ellemint swallerd won thing after another as
sune as cotched, and rushed along roring with friteful violins. Were
the finger of Providins is the hand as does we must not arrange it,
but as the him says, “we must submit and humbel Bee.” Heavin direx the
winds, and not us. As it blue towards the sow the piggry sune cotchd,
and that cotchd the foul housis, and then the barn cotchd with all the
straw, and the granery cotchd also, witch it wood not have dun if we
had puld down the hay stax that stud between. That was all the cotching
excep the hay stax, from Jenkins runnin about with a flaimin tale to
his smoak frock. At last, by a blessin, when there was no moor to burn
it was got under and squentched itself, prays be given without loss of
lif or lim. Another comfit is all bein inshured in the Sun, enuff to
kiver it; and I shud hop they will not refus to make gud on the ground
that it was dun wilful by our hone ax and deeds. But fire officis are
sumtimes verry unlibberal, and will ketch hold of a burning straw,
and if fax were put on their oths I couldn’t deni a bundil of rags,
matchis, candel ends, and other combustibils pokt into the faggits, and
then litin up with my hone hand. Tim will sho. In the meenwhile I am
consienshusly easy, it was dun for the best, though turned out for the
wust, and am gratified to reflect that I hav omitted nothin, but have
scruppleusly fulfild evvery particler of yure honner’s instruxions, and
in hop of approval of the saim, await the faver of furthir commands,
and am,
Honnerd Sur Jacob,
Your humbel, faithful, and obedient Servint,
ROGER DAVIS.
[Illustration: LIGHT-FINGERED.]
HUGGINS AND DUGGINS.
A PASTORAL AFTER POPE.
TWO swains or clowns--but call them swains--
While keeping flocks on Salisbury Plains,
For all that tend on sheep as drovers,
Are turned to songsters, or to lovers,
Each of the lass he called his dear,
Began to carol loud and clear.
First Huggins sang, and Duggins then,
In the way of ancient shepherd men;
Who thus alternate hitch’d in song,
“All things by turns, and nothing long.”
HUGGINS.
Of all the girls about our place,
There’s one beats all in form and face;
Search through all Great and Little Bumpstead,
You’ll only find one Peggy Plumpstead.
[Illustration: FOLLOW MY LEADER.]
DUGGINS.
To groves and streams I tell my flame,
I make the cliffs repeat her name:
When I’m inspired by gills and noggins,
The rocks re-echo Sally Hoggins!
HUGGINS.
When I am walking in the grove,
I think of Peggy as I rove.
I’d carve her name on every tree,
But I don’t know my A, B, C.
DUGGINS.
Whether I walk in hill or valley,
I think of nothing else but Sally.
I’d sing her praise, but I can sing
No song, except “God save the King.”
HUGGINS.
My Peggy does all nymphs excel,
And all confess she bears the bell,--
Where’er she goes swains flock together,
Like sheep that follow the bellwether.
DUGGINS.
Sally is tall and not too straight,--
Those very poplar shapes I hate;
But something twisted like an S,--
A crook becomes a shepherdess.
HUGGINS.
When Peggy’s dog her arms imprison,
I often wish my lot was hisn;
How often I should stand and turn,
To get a pat from hands like hern.
DUGGINS.
I tell Sall’s lambs how blest they be,
To stand about and stare at she;
But when I look, she turns and shies,
And won’t bear none but their sheep’s-eyes!
HUGGINS.
Love goes with Peggy where she goes.--
Beneath her smile the garden grows;
Potatoes spring, and cabbage starts,
’Tatoes have eyes, and cabbage hearts!
DUGGINS.
Where Sally goes it’s always spring,
Her presence brightens every thing;
The sun smiles bright, but where her grin is,
It makes brass farthings look like guineas.
HUGGINS.
For Peggy I can have no joy,
She’s sometimes kind, and sometimes coy,
And keeps me, by her wayward tricks,
As comfortless as sheep with ticks.
[Illustration: RAMSAY’S GENTLE SHEPHERD.]
DUGGINS.
Sally is ripe as June or May,
And yet as cold as Christmas day;
For when she’s asked to change her lot,
Lamb’s wool,--but Sally, she wool not
HUGGINS.
Only with Peggy and with health,
I’d never wish for state or wealth;
Talking of having health and more pence,
I’d drink her health if I had fourpence.
DUGGINS.
Oh, how that day would seem to shine,
If Sally’s banns were read with mine;
She cries, when such a wish I carry,
“Marry come up!” but will not marry.
DOMESTIC DIDACTICS.
BY AN OLD SERVANT.
IT is not often when the Nine descend that they go so low as into
areas; it is certain, nevertheless, that they were in the habit of
visiting John Humphreys, in the kitchen of No. 189, Portland Place,
disguised, no doubt, from mortal eye, as seamstresses or charwomen--at
all events, as Winifred Jenkins says, “they were never ketch’d in the
fact.” Perhaps it was the rule of the house to allow no followers, and
they were obliged to come by stealth, and to go in the same manner;
indeed, from the fragmental nature of John’s verses, they appear
to have often left him very abruptly. Other pieces bear witness of
the severe distraction he suffered between his domestic duty to the
Umphravilles, twelve in family, with their guests, and his own secret
visitors from Helicon. It must have been provoking, when seeking for
a simile, to be sent in search of a salt-cellar; or when hunting
for a rhyme, to have to look for a missing teaspoon. By a whimsical
peculiarity, the causes of these lets and hindrances are recorded in
his verses, by way of parenthesis: and though John’s poetry was of a
decidedly serious and moralising turn, these little insertions give
it so whimsical a character, as to make it an appropriate offering
in the present work. Poor John! the grave has put a period to his
didactics, and the publication of his lays in “Hood’s Own,” therefore,
cannot give him pain, as it certainly would have done otherwise, for
the MSS. were left by last will and testament “to his very worthy
master, Joshua Umphraville, Esq., to be printed in Elegant Extracts,
or Flowers of English Poetry.” The Editor is indebted to the kindness
of that gentleman for a selection from the papers; which he has been
unable to arrange chronologically, as John always wrote in too great a
hurry to put dates. Whether he ever sent any pieces to the periodicals
is unknown, for he kept his authorship as secret as Junius’s, till
his death discovered his propensity for poetry, and happily cleared
up some points in John’s character, which had appeared to his
disadvantage. Thus when his eye was “in fine frenzy rolling,” bemused
only with Castalian water, he had been suspected of being “bemused with
beer;” and when he was supposed to indulge in a morning sluggishness,
he was really rising with the sun, at least with Apollo. He was accused
occasionally of shamming deafness, whereas it was doubtless nothing but
the natural difficulty of hearing more than Nine at once. Above all,
he was reckoned almost wilfully unfortunate in his breakage; but it
appears that when deductions for damage were made from his wages, the
poetry ought to have been stopped, and not the money. The truth is,
John’s master was a classical scholar, and so accustomed to read of
Pegasus, and to associate a Poet with a Horseman, that he never dreamt
of one as a Footman.
[Illustration: NOT UP YET.]
The Editor is too diffident to volunteer an elaborate criticism of the
merits of Humphreys as a Bard--but he presumes to say thus much, that
there are several Authors, of the present day, whom John ought not to
walk behind.
THE BROKEN DISH.
WHAT’S life but full of care and doubt,
With all its fine humanities,
With parasols we walk about,
Long pigtails and such vanities.
We plant pomegranite trees and things,
And go in gardens sporting,
With toys and fans of peacocks’ wings,
To painted ladies courting.
We gather flowers of every hue,
And fish in boats for fishes,
Build summer-houses painted blue,--
But life’s as frail as dishes.
Walking about their groves of trees,
Blue bridges and blue rivers,
How little thought them two Chinese
They’d both be smash’d to shivers.
ODE TO PEACE.
WRITTEN ON THE NIGHT OF MY MISTRESS’S GRAND ROUT.
OH Peace! oh come with me and dwell--
But stop, for there’s the bell.
Oh Peace! for thee I go and sit in churches,
On Wednesday, when there’s very few
In loft or pew--
Another ring, the tarts are come from Birch’s.
Oh Peace! for thee I have avoided marriage--
Hush! there’s a carriage.
Oh Peace! thou art the best of earthly goods--
The five Miss Woods.
Oh Peace! thou art the Goddess I adore--
There come some more.
Oh Peace! thou child of solitude and quiet--
That’s Lord Drum’s footman, for he loves a riot.
Oh Peace!
Knocks will not cease.
Oh Peace! thou wert for human comfort plann’d--
That’s Weippert’s band.
Oh Peace! how glad I welcome thy approaches--
I hear the sound of coaches.
Oh Peace! oh Peace!--another carriage stops--
It’s early for the Blenkinsops.
Oh Peace! with thee I love to wander,
But wait till I have show’d up Lady Squander,
And now I’ve seen her up the stair,
Oh Peace!--but here comes Captain Hare.
Oh Peace! thou art the slumber of the mind,
Untroubled, calm and quiet, and unbroken,--
If that is Alderman Guzzle from Portsoken,
Alderman Gobble won’t be far behind;
Oh Peace! serene in worldly shyness,--
Make way there for his Serene Highness!
Oh Peace! if you do not disdain
To dwell amongst the menial train,
I have a silent place, and lone,
That you and I may call our own;
Where tumult never makes an entry--
Susan, what business have you in my pantry?
Oh Peace! but there is Major Monk,
At variance with his wife--Oh Peace!
And that great German, Vander Trunk,
And that great talker, Miss Apreece;
Oh Peace! so dear to poets’ quills--
They’re just beginning their quadrilles--
Oh Peace! our greatest renovator;--
I wonder where I put my waiter--
Oh Peace!--but here my Ode I’ll cease;
I have no peace to write of Peace.
A FEW LINES ON COMPLETING FORTY-SEVEN.
When I reflect with serious sense,
While years and years run on,
How soon I may be summoned hence--
There’s cook a-calling John.
Our lives are built so frail and poor,
On sand and not on rocks,
We’re hourly standing at Death’s door--
There’s some one double-knocks.
All human days have settled terms,
Our fates we cannot force;
This flesh of mine will feed the worms--
They’re come to lunch of course.
And when my body’s turn’d to clay,
And dear friends hear my knell,
O let them give a sigh and say--
I hear the upstairs bell.
TO MARY HOUSEMAID,
ON VALENTINE’S DAY.
Mary, you know I’ve no love-nonsense,
And, though I pen on such a day,
I don’t mean flirting, on my conscience,
Or writing in the courting way.
Though Beauty hasn’t form’d your feature,
It saves you, p’rhaps, from being vain,
And many a poor unhappy creature
May wish that she was half as plain.
Your virtues would not rise an inch,
Although your shape was two foot taller,
And wisely you let others pinch
Great waists and feet to make them smaller.
You never try to spare your hands
From getting red by household duty,
But, doing all that it commands,
Their coarseness is a moral beauty.
Let Susan flourish her fair arms
And at your odd legs sneer and scoff,
But let her laugh, for you have charms
That nobody knows nothing of.
[Illustration: WHAT ODD LEGS!]
PAIN IN A PLEASURE-BOAT.
A SEA ECLOGUE.
“I apprehend you!”--SCHOOL OF REFORM.
BOATMAN.
SHOVE off there!--ship the rudder, Bill--cast off! she’s under way!
MRS. F.
She’s under what?--I hope she’s not! good gracious, what a spray!
BOATMAN.
Run out the jib, and rig the boom! keep clear of those two brigs!
MRS. F.
I hope they don’t intend some joke by running of their rigs!
[Illustration: SEE-VIEW:--BROAD STARES.]
BOATMAN.
Bill, shift them bags of ballast aft--she’s rather out of trim!
MRS. F.
Great bags of stones! they’re pretty things to help a boat to swim!
BOATMAN.
The wind is fresh--if she don’t scud, it’s not the breeze’s fault!
MRS. F.
Wind fresh, indeed, I never felt the air so full of salt!
BOATMAN.
That Schooner, Bill, harn’t left the roads, with oranges and nuts!
MRS. F.
If seas have roads, they’re very rough--I never felt such ruts!
BOATMAN.
It’s neap, ye see, she’s heavy lade, and couldn’t pass the bar.
MRS. F.
The bar! what, roads with turnpikes too? I wonder where they are!
BOATMAN.
Ho! brig ahoy! hard up! hard up! that lubber cannot steer!
MRS. F.
Yes, yes,--hard up upon a rock! I know some danger’s near!
Lord, there’s a wave! it’s coming in! and roaring like a bull!
BOATMAN.
Nothing, Ma’am, but a little slop! go large, Bill! keep her full!
MRS. F.
What, keep her full! what daring work! when full, she must go down!
BOATMAN.
Why, Bill, it lulls! ease off a bit--it’s coming off the town!
Steady your helm! we’ll clear the _Pint_! lay right for yonder pink!
MRS. F.
Be steady--well, I hope they can! but they’ve got a pint of drink!
BOATMAN.
Bill, give that sheet another haul--she’ll fetch it up this reach.
MRS. F.
I’m getting rather pale, I know, and they see it by that speech!
I wonder what it is, now, but----I never felt so queer!
BOATMAN.
Bill, mind your luff--why Bill, I say, she’s yawing--keep her near!
MRS. F.
Keep near! we’re going further off; the land’s behind our backs.
[Illustration: STERNE’S MARIA.]
BOATMAN.
Be easy, Ma’am, it’s all correct, that’s only ’cause we tacks:
We shall have to beat about a bit,--Bill, keep her out to sea.
MRS. F.
Beat who about? keep who at sea?--how black they look at me!
BOATMAN.
It’s veering round--I knew it would! off with her head! stand by!
MRS. F.
Off with her head! whose? where? what with?--an axe I seem to spy!
BOATMAN.
She can’t not keep her own, you see; we shall have to pull her in!
MRS. F.
They’ll drown me, and take all I have! my life’s not worth a pin!
BOATMAN.
Look out you know, be ready, Bill--just when she takes the sand!
MRS. F.
The sand--O Lord! to stop my mouth! how every thing is planned!
BOATMAN.
The handspike, Bill--quick, bear a hand! now Ma’am, just step
ashore!
MRS. F.
What! an’t I going to be kill’d--and welter’d in my gore?
Well, Heaven be praised! but I’ll not go a sailing any more!
A SPENT BALL.
“The flying ball.”--GRAY.
A BALL is a round, but not a perpetual round, of pleasure. It spends
itself at last, like that from the cannon’s mouth; or rather, like that
greatest of balls, “that great globe itself,” is “dissolved with all
that it inherits.”
[Illustration]
Four o’clock strikes. The company are all but gone, and the musicians
“put up” with their absence. A few “_figures_,” however, remain, that
have never been danced, and the hostess, who is all urbanity and
turbanity, kindly hopes that they will stand up for “one set more.” The
six figures jump at the offer; they “wake the Harp,” get the fiddlers
into a fresh scrape, and “the Lancers” are put through their exercise.
This may be called the Dance of Death, for it ends every thing. The
band is disbanded, and the Ball takes the form of a family circle. It
is long past the time when church-yards yawn, but the mouth of Mamma
opens to a bore, that gives hopes of the Thames Tunnel. Papa, to whom
the Ball has been anything but a force-meat one, seizes eagerly upon
the first eatables he can catch, and with his mouth open and his eyes
shut, declares, in the spirit of an “Examiner” into such things, that a
“Party is the madness of many for the gain of a few.” The son, heartily
tired of a suit of broad cloth cut narrow, assents to the proposition,
and having no further use for his curled head, lays it quietly on
the shelf. The daughter droops; art has had her Almack’s, and nature
establishes a Free and Easy. Grace throws herself, skow-wow any-how, on
an ottoman, and Good Breeding crosses her legs. Roses begin to relax,
and Curls to unbend themselves; the very Candles seem released from the
restraints of gentility, and getting low, some begin to smoke, while
others indulge in a gutter. Muscles and sinews feel equally let loose,
and by way of a joke, the cramp ties a double-knot in Clarinda’s calf.
Clarinda screams. To this appeal the maternal heart is more awake than
the maternal eyes, and the maternal hand begins hastily to bestow its
friction, not on the leg of suffering, but on the leg of the sofa.
In the mean time, paternal hunger gets satisfied; he eats slower,
and sleeps faster, subsiding, like a gorged Boa Constrictor, into
torpidity; and in this state, grasping an extinguished candle, he
lights himself up to bed. Clarinda follows, stumbling through her steps
in a doze-à-doze; the brother is next, and Mamma having seen with half
an eye, or something less, that all is safe, winds up the procession.
Every Ball, however, has its rebound, and so has this in their
dreams--with the mother who has a daughter, as a Golden Ball; with the
daughter, who has a lover, as an eye-ball; with his son, who has a
rival, as a pistol-ball; but with the father, who has no dreams at all,
as nothing but the blacking-ball of oblivion.
LITERARY AND LITERAL.
THE March of Mind upon its mighty stilts,
(A spirit by no means to fasten mocks on,)
In travelling through Berks, Beds, Notts, and Wilts,
Hants--Bucks, Herts, Oxon,
Got up a thing our ancestors ne’er thought on,
A thing that, only in our proper youth,
We should have chuckled at--in sober truth,
A Conversazione at Hog’s Norton!
A place whose native dialect, somehow,
Has always by an adage been affronted,
And that it is all _gutturals_, is now
Taken for grunted.
Conceive the snoring of a greedy swine,
The slobbering of a hungry Ursine Sloth--
If you have ever heard such creature dine--
And--for Hog’s Norton, make a mix of both!--
O shades of Shakspeare! Chaucer! Spenser!
Milton! Pope! Gray! Warton!
O Colman! Kenny! Planche! Poole! Peake!
Pocock! Reynolds! Morton!
O Grey! Peel! Sadler! Wilberforce! Burdett!
Hume! Wilmot Horton!
Think of your prose and verse, and worse--delivered in Hog’s
Norton!--
The founder of Hog’s Norton Athenæum
Framed her society
With some variety
From Mr. Roscoe’s Liverpool museum;
Not a mere pic-nic, for the mind’s repast,
But tempting to the solid knife-and-forker,
It held its sessions in the house that last
Had killed a porker.
It chanced one Friday,
One Farmer Grayley stuck a very big hog,
A perfect Gog or Magog of a pig-hog,
Which made of course a literary high day,--
Not that our Farmer was a man to go
With literary tastes--so far from suiting ’em,
When he heard mention of Professor _Crowe_,
Or Lalla-_Rookh_, he always was for shooting ’em!
In fact in letters he was quite a log,
With him great Bacon
Was literally taken.
[Illustration: “’TIS PLEASANT SURE TO SEE ONE’S SELF IN PRINT.”]
And Hogg--the Poet--nothing but a Hog!
As to all others on the list of Fame,
Although they were discuss’d and mention’d daily,
He only recognised one classic name,
And thought that _she_ had hung herself--_Miss Baillie_!
To balance this, our Farmer’s only daughter
Had a great taste for the Castalian water--
A Wordsworth worshipper--a Southey wooer,--
(Though men that deal in water-colour cakes
May disbelieve the fact--yet nothing’s truer)
She got the _bluer_
The more she dipped and dabbled in the _Lakes_.
The secret truth is, Hope, the old deceiver,
At future Authorship was apt to hint,
Producing what some call the _Type-us_ Fever,
Which means a burning to be seen in print.
Of learning’s laurels--Miss Joanna Baillie--
Of Mrs. Hemans--Mrs. Wilson--daily
Dreamt Anne Priscilla Isabella Grayley;
And Fancy hinting that she had the better
Of L.E.L. by one initial letter,
She thought the world would quite enraptur’d see
“LOVE LAYS AND LYRICS
BY
A P I G.”
Accordingly, with very great propriety,
She joined the H. N. B. and double S.,
That is,--Hog’s Norton Blue Stocking Society;
And saving when her Pa his pigs prohibited,
Contributed
Her pork and poetry towards the mess.
This feast, we said, one Friday was the case
When farmer Grayley--from Macbeth to quote--
Screwing his courage to the “sticking place,”
Stuck a large knife into a grunter’s throat;--
A kind of murder that the law’s rebuke
Seldom condemns by shake of its peruke,
Showing the little sympathy of _big-wigs_
With _pig-wigs_!
The swine--poor wretch!--with nobody to speak for it,
And beg its life, resolved to have a squeak for it;
So--like the fabled swan--died singing out,
And, thus, there issued from the farmer’s yard
A note that notified without a card,
An invitation to the evening rout.
[Illustration: BREAKING UP, NO HOLIDAY.]
And when the time came duly,--“At the close of
The day,” as Beattie has it, “when the ham--”
Bacon and pork were ready to dispose of,
And pettitoes and chit’lings too, to cram,--
Walked in the H. N. B. and double S.’s,
All in appropriate and swinish dresses,
For lo! it is a fact, and not a joke,
Although the Muse might fairly jest upon it,
They came--each “Pig-faced Lady,” in that bonnet
We call _a poke_.
The Members all assembled thus, a rare woman
At pork and poetry was chosen _chairwoman_;--
In fact, the bluest of the Blues, Miss Ikey,
Whose whole pronunciation was so piggy,
She always named the authoress of “_Psyche_”--
As Mrs. _Tiggey_!
And now arose a question of some moment,--
What author for a lecture was the richer,
Bacon or Hogg? there were no votes for Beaumont,
But some for _Flitcher_;
While others, with a more sagacious reasoning,
Proposed another work,
And thought their pork
Would prove more relishing from Thomson’s Season-ing!
But, practised in Shakspearian readings daily--
O! Miss Macaulay! Shakspeare at Hog’s Norton!--
Miss Anne Priscilla Isabella Grayley
Selected _him_ that evening to snort on.
In short, to make our story not a big tale,
Just fancy her exerting
Her talents, and converting
The Winter’s Tale to something like a pig-tale!
Her sister auditory
All sitting round, with grave and learned faces,
Were very plauditory,
Of course, and clapped her at the proper places;
Till fanned at once by fortune and the Muse,
She thought herself the blessedest of Blues.
But Happiness, alas! has blights of ill,
And Pleasure’s bubbles in the air explode;--
There is no travelling through life but still
The heart will meet with breakers on the road!
With that peculiar voice
Heard only from Hog’s Norton throats and noses,
Miss G., with Perdita, was making choice
Of buds and blossoms for her summer posies,
When coming to that line, where Proserpine
Lets fall her flowers from the wain of Dis;
Imagine this--
Uprose on his hind legs old Farmer Grayley,
Grunting this question for the club’s digestion,
“Do _Dis’s Waggon_ go from the Ould Bäaley?”
[Illustration]
THE ACCIDENT.
“We thought she never would ride it out, and expected her every
moment to go to pieces.”--NAVAL SKETCH BOOK.
“THERE you go, you villain--that’s the way to run over people! There’s
a little boy in the road--you’d better run over _him_, for you won’t
call out to him, no, not you, for a brute as you are! You think poor
people an’t common Christians,--you grind the faces of the poor, you
do. Ay, cut away, do--you’ll be Wilful Murdered by the Crowner some
day! I’ll keep up with you and tell the gentlemen on the top! Women
wasn’t created for you to gallop over like dirt, and scrunch their
bones into compound fractions.--Don’t get into his coach, Ma’am! he’s
no respect for the sects--he’ll lay you up in the hospital for months
and months, he will, the inhuman hard-hearted varmin!”
The speaker, a little active old woman, had run parallel with the coach
some fifty yards, when it stopped to take up a lady who was as prompt
as ladies generally are, in giving dinner instructions to the cook,
and setting domestic lessons to the housemaid, besides having to pack
a parcel, to hunt for her clogs, to exchange the cook’s umbrella for
her own, and to kiss all her seven children. Mat, thus reduced to a
door-mat, was unable to escape the volley which the Virago still poured
in upon him; but he kept a most imperturbable face and silence till he
was fairly seated again on the box.
“There, gentlemen,” said he, pointing at the assailant with his whip;
“that’s what I call gratitude. Look at her figure now, and look at what
it was six months ago. She never had a waist till I run over her.”
“I hope, friend, thee art not very apt to make these experiments on the
human figure,” said an elderly Quaker on the roof. “Not by no means,”
answered Mat; “I have done very little in the accidental line--nothing
worth mentioning. All the years I’ve been on the road, I’ve never
come to a kill on the spot; them sort o’things belongs to Burrowes,
as drives over one with the Friend in Need, and he’s got quite a name
for it. He’s called ‘Fatal Jack.’ To be sure, now I think of it, I was
the innocent cause of death to one person, and she was rather out of
the common.” “You fractured her limbs, p’r’aps?” inquired one of the
outsides. “No such thing,” said Mat, “there was nothing fractious in
the case; as to running over her limbs, it was the impossible thing
with a woman born without legs and arms.” “You must allude to Miss
Biffin,” said the outsider--“the Norfolk phenomenon.”
“Begging your pardon,” said Mat, “it was before the Phenomenon was
started. It was one of the regular old long-bodied double-coaches,
and I drove it myself. Very uneasy they were; for springs at that
time hadn’t much spring in ’em; and nobody on earth had thought of
Macadaming Piccadilly. You could always tell whether you were on the
stones, or off, and no mistake. I was a full hour behind time--for
coaches in them days wasn’t called by such names as Chronometers and
Regulators, and good reason why. So I’d been plying a full hour after
time, without a soul inside, except a barrel of natives for a customer
down the road: at last, a hackney-coach pulls up, and Jarvey and the
waterman lifts Miss Biffin into my drag. Well, off I sets with a light
load enough, and to fetch up time astonished my team into a bit of a
gallop--and it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to keep one’s seat
on the box, the coach jumped so over the stones. Well, away I goes,
springing my rattle till I come to the gate at Hyde Park Corner, where
one of my insides was waiting for me--and not very sorry to pull up,
for the breath was almost shook out of my bellows. Well, I opens the
door, and what do I see lying together at the bottom of the coach,
but Miss Biffin bruised unsensible, and the head out of the barrel of
oysters!”
[Illustration: FANCY PORTRAIT--OLD SARUM.]
“I do hope, friend,” said the elderly Quaker, “that thou didst replace
them on their seats.”
“To be sure I did,” answered Mat, “and the oysters took it quietly
enough, without opening their mouths; but it didn’t go quite so smooth
with Miss B. She talked of an action for damages, and consulted
counsel; but, Lord bless you, when it came to taking steps agin us, she
hadn’t a leg to stand upon!”
[Illustration: DICKY BIRDS.]
SONNET.
TO LORD WHARNCLIFFE, ON HIS GAME-BILL.
I’m fond of partridges, I’m fond of snipes,
I’m fond of black cocks, for they’re very good cocks--
I’m fond of wild ducks, and I’m fond of woodcocks--
And grouse that set up such strange moorish pipes.
I’m fond of pheasants with their splendid stripes--
I’m fond of hares, whether from Whig or Tory--
I’m fond of capercailzies in their glory,--
Teal, widgeons, plovers, birds in all their types:
All these are in your care, Law-giving Peer,
And when you next address your Lordly Babel,
Some clause put in your Bill, precise and clear,
With due and fit provision to enable
A man that holds all kinds of game so dear
To keep, like Crockford, a good Gaming Table.
LITERARY REMINISCENCES.
No. I.
TIME was, I sat upon a lofty stool,
At lofty desk, and with a clerkly pen
Began each morning, at the stroke of ten,
To write in Bell and Co.’s commercial school;
In Warnford Court, a shady nook and cool,
The favourite retreat of merchant men;
Yet would my quill turn vagrant even then,
And take stray dips in the Castalian pool.
Now double entry--now a flowery trope--
Mingling poetic honey with trade wax--
Blogg, Brothers--Milton--Grote and Prescott--Pope--
Bristles--and Hogg--Glyn Mills and Halifax--
Rogers--and Towgood--Hemp--the Bard of Hope--
Barilla--Byron--Tallow--Burns--and Flax!
MY commercial career was a brief one, and deserved only a sonnet in
commemoration. The fault, however, lay not with the muses. To commit
poetry indeed is a crime ranking next to forgery in the counting-house
code; and an Ode or a song dated Copthall Court, would be as certainly
noted and protested as a dishonoured bill. I have even heard of an
unfortunate clerk, who lost his situation through being tempted by the
jingle to subscribe under an account current
“Excepted all errors
Made by John Ferrers,”
his employer emphatically declaring that Poetry and Logwood could never
coexist in the same head. The principal of _our_ firm on the contrary
had a turn for the Belles Lettres, and would have winked with both
eyes at verses which did not intrude into an invoice or confuse their
figures with those of the Ledger. The true cause of my retirement from
Commercial affairs was more prosaic. My constitution, though far from
venerable, had begun to show symptoms of decay: my appetite failed,
and its principal creditor, the stomach, received only an ounce in the
pound. My spirits daily became a shade lower--my flesh was held less
and less firmly--in short, in the language of the price current, it
was expected that I must “submit to a decline.” The Doctors who were
called in, declared imperatively that a mercantile life would be the
death of me--that by so much sitting, I was hatching a whole brood of
complaints, and that no Physician would insure me as a merchantman from
the Port of London to the next Spring. The Exchange, they said, was
against me, and as the Exchange itself used to ring with “Life let us
Cherish,” there was no resisting the advice. I was ordered to abstain
from Ashes, Bristles, and Petersburg yellow candle, and to indulge in
a more generous diet--to take regular country exercise instead of the
Russia Walk, and to go to bed early even on Foreign Post nights. Above
all I was recommended change of air, and in particular the bracing
breezes of the North. Accordingly I was soon shipped as per advice,
in a Scotch Smack, which “_smacked_ through the breeze,” as Dibdin
sings so merrily, that on the fourth morning we were in sight of the
prominent old Steeple of “Bonny Dundee.”
My Biographer, in the Book of Gems, alludes to this voyage, and
infers from some verses--“Gadzooks! must one swear to the truth of a
song?”--that it sickened me of the sea. Nothing can be more unfounded.
The marine terrors and disagreeables enumerated in the poem, belong
to a Miss Oliver, and not to me, who regard the ocean with a natural
and national partiality. Constitutionally proof against that nausea
which extorts so many wave-offerings from the afflicted, I am as
constant as Captain Basil Hall himself, in my regard “for the element
that never tires.” Some washy fellows, it is true, _Fresh_-men from
Cambridge and the like, affect to prefer river or even pond water for
their aquatics--the tame ripple to the wild wave, the prose to “the
poetry of motion.” But give _me_ “the multitudinous sea,” resting
or rampant, with all its variable moods and changeable colouring.
Methought, when pining under the _maladie du pays_, on a hopeless, sick
bed, inland, in Germany, it would have relieved those yearnings but to
look across an element so instinct with English associations, that it
would seem rather to unite me to than sever me from my native island.
And, truly, when I did at last stand on the brink of the dark blue
sea, my home-sick wishes seemed already half fulfilled, and it was not
till many months afterwards that I actually crossed the Channel. But
I am, besides, personally under deep obligations to the great deep.
Twice, indeed, in a calm, and in a storm, has my life been threatened
with a salt-water catastrophe; but that quarrel has long been made
up, and forgiven, in gratitude for the blessing and bracing influence
of the breezes that smack of the ocean brine. Dislike the sea!--With
what delight aforetime used I to swim in it, to dive in it, to sail
on it! Ask honest Tom Woodgate, of Hastings, who made of me, for a
landsman, a tolerable boatsman. Even now, when do I feel so easy in
body, and so cheerful in spirit, as when walking hard by the surge,
listening, as if expecting some whisperings of friendly but distant
voices, in its eternal murmuring. Sick of the sea! If ever I have
a water-drinking fancy, it is a wish that the ocean brine had been
sweet, or sour instead of salt, so as to be potable; for what can be
more tempting _to the eye_ as a draught, than the pure fluid, almost
invisible with clearness, as it lies in some sandy scoop, or rocky
hollow, a true “Diamond of the Desert,” to say nothing of the same
living liquid in its effervescing state, when it sparkles up, hissing
and bubbling in the ship’s wake--the very Champaigne of water! Above
all what intellectual solar and soothing syrup have I not derived from
the mere contemplation of the boundless main,--the most effectual and
innocent of mental sedatives, and often called in aid of that practical
philosophy it has been my wont to recommend in the present work. For
whenever, owing to physical depression, or a discordant state of the
nerves, my personal vexations and cares, real or imaginary, become
importunate in my thoughts, and acquire, by morbid exaggeration, an
undue prominence and importance, what remedy then so infallible as
to mount to my solitary seat in the look-out, and thence gaze awhile
across the broad expanse, till in the presence of that vast horizon,
my proper troubles shrink to their true proportions, and I look on
the whole race of men, with their insignificant pursuits, as so many
shrimpers! But this is a digression--We have made the harbour of
Dundee, and it is time to step ashore in “stout and original Scotland,”
as it is called by Doctor Adolphus Wagner, in his German edition of
Burns[2].
Like other shipments, I had been regularly addressed to the care of a
consignee:--but the latter, not anxious, probably, to take charge of
a hobbledehoy, yet at the same time unwilling to incur the reproach
of having a relative in the same town and not under the same roof,
peremptorily declined the office. Nay, more, she pronounced against
me a capital sentence, so far as returning to the place from whence I
came, and even proceeded to bespeak my passage and reship my luggage.
Judging from such vigorous measures the temper of my customer, instead
of remonstrating, I affected resignation, and went with a grave face
through the farce of a formal leave-taking; I even went on board, but
it was in company with a stout fellow who relanded my baggage; and
thus, whilst my transporter imagined, good easy soul! that the rejected
article was sailing round St. Abb’s Head, or rolling off the Bass, he
was actually safe and snug in Dundee, quietly laughing in his sleeve
with the Law at his back. I have a confused recollection of meeting,
some three or four days afterwards, a female cousin on her road to
school, who at sight of me turned suddenly round, and galloped off
towards home with the speed of a scared heifer.
My first concern was now to look out for some comfortable roof, under
which “for a consideration” one would be treated as one of the family.
I entered accordingly into a treaty with a respectable widower, who had
no sons of his own, but in spite of the most undeniable references, and
a general accordance as to terms, there occurred a mysterious hitch in
the arrangement, arising from a whimsical prepossession which only came
afterwards to my knowledge--namely, that an English laddie, instead
of supping parritch, would inevitably require a rump-steak to his
breakfeast! My next essay was more successful; and ended in my being
regularly installed in a boarding-house, kept by a Scotchwoman, who was
not so sure of my being a beefeater. She was a sort of widow, with a
seafaring husband “as good as dead,” and in her appearance not unlike a
personification of _rouge et noir_, with her red eyes, her red face,
her yellow teeth, and her black velvet cap. The first day of my term
happened to be also the first day of the new year, and on stepping from
my bed-room, I encountered our Hostess--like a witch and her familiar
spirit--with a huge bottle of whiskey in one hand, and a glass in the
other. It was impossible to decline the dram she pressed upon me, and
very good it proved, and undoubtedly strong, seeing that for some time
I could only muse its praise in expressive silence, and indeed, I was
only able to speak with “a _small still_ voice” for several minutes
afterwards. Such was my characteristic introduction to the Land of
Cakes, where I was destined to spend the greater part of two years,
under circumstances likely to materially influence the colouring and
filling up of my future life.
To properly estimate the dangers of my position, imagine a boy of
fifteen, at the Nore, as it were, of life, thus left dependent on
his own pilotage for a safe voyage to the Isle of Man; or conceive
a juvenile Telemachus, without a Mentor, brought suddenly into the
perilous neighbourhood of Calypso and her enchantments. It will hardly
be expected, that from some half-dozen of young bachelors, there came
forth any solemn voice didactically warning me in the strain of the
sage Imlac to the Prince of Abyssinia. In fact, I recollect receiving
but one solitary serious admonition, and that was from a she cousin of
ten years old, that the Spectator I was reading on a Sunday morning,
“was no the Bible.” For there was still much of this pious rigour
extant in Scotland, though a gentleman was no longer committed to
Tolboothia Infelix, for an unseasonable promenade during church time.
It was once, however, my fortune to witness a sample of the _ancien
régime_ at an evening party composed chiefly of young and rather
fashionable persons, when lo! like an Anachronism confounding times
past with times present, there came out of some corner an antique
figure, with quaintly cut blue suit and three-cornered hat, not unlike
a very old Greenwich Pensioner, who taking his stand in front of the
circle, deliberately asked a blessing of formidable length on the thin
bread and butter, the short cake, the marmalade, and the Pekoe tea. And
here, _en passant_, it may be worth while to remark, for the benefit of
our Agnews and Plumtres, as illustrating the intrinsic value of such
sanctimonious pretension, that the elder Scotland, so renowned for
armlong graces, and redundant preachments, and abundant psalm-singing,
has yet bequeathed to posterity a singularly liberal collection of
songs, the reverie of Divine and Moral, such as “can only be sung when
the punch-bowl has done its work and the wild wit is set free[3].”
To return to my boarding-house, which with all its chairs, had none
appropriated to a Professor of Moral Philosophy. In the absence of
such a monitor, nature, fortunately for myself, had gifted me with a
taste for reading, which the languor of ill-health, inclining me to
sedentary habits, helped materially to encourage. Whatever books, good,
bad, or indifferent, happened to come within my reach, were perused
with the greatest avidity, and however indiscriminate the course, the
balance of the impressions thence derived was decidedly in favour of
the allegorical lady, so wisely preferred by Hercules when he had
to make his election between Virtue and Vice. Of the material that
ministered to this appetite, I shall always regret that I did not
secure, as a literary curiosity--a collection of halfpenny Ballads,
the property of a Grocer’s apprentice, and which contained, amongst
other matters, a new version of Chevy Chase, wherein the victory was
transferred to the Scots. In the mean time, this bookishness acquired
for me a sort of reputation for scholarship amongst my comrades, and
in consequence my pen was sometimes called into requisition, in divers
and sometimes delicate cases. Thus for one party, whom the Gods had
not made poetical, I composed a love-letter in verse; for another,
whose education had been neglected, I carried on a correspondence with
reference to a tobacco manufactory in which he was a sleeping partner;
whilst, on a graver occasion, the hand now peacefully setting down
these reminiscences, was employed in penning a most horrible peremptory
invitation to pistols and twelve paces, till one was nicked. The
facts were briefly these. A spicy-tempered captain of Artillery, in a
dispute with a superior officer, had rashly cashiered himself by either
throwing up or tearing up his commission. In this dilemma he arrived
at Dundee, to assume a post in the Customs, which had been procured
for him by the interest of his friends. To his infinite indignation,
however, he found that instead of a lucrative surveyorship, he had
been appointed a simple tide-waiter! and magnificent was the rage with
which he tore, trampled, and danced on the little official paper book
wherein he had been set to tick off, bale by bale, a cargo of “infernal
hemp.” Unluckily, on the very day of this revelation, a forgery was
perpetrated on the local Bank, and those sapient Dogberries, the
town officers, saw fit to take up our persecuted ex-captain, on the
simple ground that he was the last stranger who had entered the town.
Rendered almost frantic by this second insult, nothing would serve
him in his paroxysm but calling somebody out, and he pitched at once
on the cashier of the defrauded Bank. As the state of his nerves
would not permit him to write, he entreated me earnestly to draw up a
defiance, which I performed, at the expense of an agony of suppressed
laughter, merely to imagine the effect of such a missive on the man of
business--a respectable powdered, bald, pudgy, pacific little body,
with no more idea of “going out” than a cow in a field of clover. I
forget the precise result--but certainly there was no duel.
[2] The Baron Dupotet de Sennevoy and Doctor Elliotson, will
doubtless be glad to be informed, that the inspired Scottish
Poet was a believer in their magnetismal mysteries--at least in
the article of reading a book behind the back. In a letter to
Mr. Robert Ainslie, is the following passage in proof. “I have
no doubt but scholarcraft may be caught, as a Scotchman catches
the itch--by friction. How else can you account for it that born
blockheads, by mere dint of _handling_ books, grow so wise that
even they themselves are equally convinced of and surprised at
their own parts? I once carried that philosophy to that degree,
that in a knot of country folks, who had a library amongst them,
and who, to the honour of their good sense, made me factotum
in the business; one of our members, a little wiselook, squat,
upright, jabbering body of a tailor, I advised him instead of
turning over the leaves, _to bind the book on his back_. Johnnie
took the hint, and as our meetings were every fourth Saturday,
and Pricklouse having a good Scots mile to walk in coming, and
of course another in returning, Bodkin was sure to lay his hand
on some heavy quarto or ponderous folio; with and under which,
wrapt up in his gray plaid, he grew wise as he grew weary all
the way home. He carried this so far, that an old musty Hebrew
Concordance, which we had in a present from a neighbouring
priest, _by mere dint of applying it as doctors do a blistering
plaster, between his shoulders_, Stitch, in a dozen pilgrimages,
acquired as much rational theology as the said priest had done by
forty years’ perusal of its pages.”
[3] A. Cunningham.
ODE TO PERRY,
THE INVENTOR OF THE PATENT PERRYAN PEN.
“In this good work, Penn appears the greatest, usefullest of God’s
instruments. Firm and unbending when the exigency requires it--soft
and yielding when rigid inflexibility is not a desideratum, fluent
and flowing, at need, for eloquent rapidity--slow and retentive
in cases of deliberation--never spluttering or by amplification
going wide of the mark--never splitting, if it can be helped, with
any one, but ready to wear itself out rather in their service--all
things as it were with all men, ready to embrace the hand of Jew,
Christian or Mahometan,--heavy with the German, light with the
Italian, oblique with the English, upright with the Roman, backward
in coming forward with the Hebrew,--in short, for flexibility,
amiability, constitutional durability, general ability, and
universal utility, it would be hard to find a parallel to the great
Penn.”
PERRY’S CHARACTERISTICS OF A SETTLER.
I.
O! Patent, Pen-inventing Perrian Perry!
Friend of the Goose and Gander,
That now unplucked of their quill-feathers wander,
Cackling, and gabbling, dabbling, making merry,
About the happy Fen,
Untroubled for one penny-worth of pen,
For which they chant thy praise all Britain through,
From Goose-Green unto Gander-Cleugh!--
II.
Friend to all Author-kind--
Whether of Poet or of Proser,--
Thou art composer unto the composer
Of pens,--yea, patent vehicles for Mind
To carry it on jaunts, or more extensive
_Perry_grinations through the realms of Thought;
Each plying from the Comic to the Pensive,
An Omnibus of intellectual sort!
III.
Modern Improvements in their course we feel;
And while to iron-railroads heavy wares,
Dry goods, and human bodies, pay their fares,
Mind flies on steel,
To Penrith, Penrhyn, even to Penzance.
Nay, penetrates, perchance,
To Pennsylvania, or without rash vaunts,
To where the Penguin haunts!
IV.
In times bygone, when each man cut his quill
With little Perryan skill,
What horrid, awkward, bungling tools of trade
Appear’d the writing implements home-made!
What Pens were sliced, hew’d, hack’d, and haggled out,
Slit or unslit, with many a various snout,
Aquiline, Roman, crooked, square, and snubby,
Stumpy and stubby;
Some capable of ladye-billets neat,
Some only fit for Ledger-keeping Clerk,
And some to grub down Peter Stubbs his mark,
Or smudge through some illegible receipt;
Others in florid caligraphic plans,
Equal to Ships, and wiggy Heads, and Swans!
V.
To try in any common inkstands, then,
With all their miscellaneous stocks,
To find a decent pen,
Was like a dip into a lucky box:
You drew,--and got one very curly,
And split like endive in some hurly-burly;
The next, unslit, and square at end, a spade;
The third, incipient pop-gun, not yet made;
The fourth a broom; the fifth of no avail,
Turn’d upwards, like a rabbit’s tail;
And last, not least, by way of a relief,
A stump that Master Richard, James, or John,
Had tried his candle-cookery upon,
Making “roast-beef!”
VI.
Not so thy Perryan Pens!
True to their M’s and N’s,
They do not with a whizzing zig-zag split,
Straddle, turn up their noses, sulk, and spit,
Or drop large dots,
Huge fullstop blots,
Where even semicolons were unfit.
They will not frizzle up, or, broom-like, drudge
In sable sludge--
Nay, bought at proper “Patent Perryan” shops,
They write good grammar, sense, and mind their stops;
Compose both prose and verse, the sad or merry--
For when the Editor, whose pains compile
The grown-up Annual, or the Juvenile,
Vaunteth his articles, not women’s, men’s,
But lays “by the most celebrated Pens,”
What means he but thy Patent Pens, my Perry?
VII.
Pleasant they are to feel!
So firm! so flexible! composed of steel
So finely temper’d--fit for tenderest Miss
To give her passion breath,
Or Kings to sign the warrant stern of death--
But their supremest merit still is this,
Write with them all your days,
Tragedy, Comedy, all kinds of plays--
(No Dramatist should ever be without ’em)--
And, just conceive the bliss,--
There is so little of the goose aboot ’em,
One’s safe from any hiss!
VIII.
Ah! who can paint that first great awful night,
Big with a blessing or a blight,
When the poor Dramatist, all fume and fret,
Fuss, fidget, fancy, fever, funking, fright,
Ferment, fault-fearing, faintness--more f’s yet:
Flushed, frigid, flurried, flinching, fitful, flat,--
Add famished, fuddled, and fatigued, to that;
Funeral, fate-foreboding--sits in doubt,
Or rather doubt with hope, a wretched marriage,
To see his Play upon the stage come out;
No stage to him! it is Thalia’s carriage,
And he is sitting on the spikes behind it,
Striving to look as if he didn’t mind it!
IX.
Witness how Beazley vents upon his hat
His nervousness, meanwhile his fate is dealt:
He kneads, moulds, pummels it, and sits it flat,
Squeezes and twists it up, until the felt
That went a Beaver in, comes out a Rat!
Miss Mitford had mis-givings, and in fright,
Upon Rienzi’s night,
Gnaw’d up one long kid glove, and all her bag,
Quite to a rag.
Knowles has confess’d he trembled as for life
Afraid of his own “Wife;”
Poole told me that he felt a monstrous pail
Of water backing him, all down his spine,--
“The ice-brook’s temper”--pleasant to the chine!
For fear that Simpson and his Co. should fail.
Did Lord Glengall not frame a mental pray’r,
Wishing devoutly he was Lord knows where?
Nay, did not Jerrold, in enormous drouth,
While doubtful of Nell Gwynne’s eventful luck,
Squeeze out and suck
More oranges with his one fevered mouth,
Than Nelly had to hawk from North to South?
Yea, Buckstone, changing colour like a mullet,
Refused, on an occasion, once, twice, thrice,
From his best friend, an ice,
Lest it should hiss in his own red-hot gullet.
X.
Doth punning Peake not sit upon the points
Of his own jokes, and shake in all his joints,
During their trial?
’Tis past denial.
And does not Pocock, feeling, like a peacock,
All eyes upon him, turn to very meacock?
And does not Planché, tremulous and blank,
Meanwhile his personages tread the boards,
Seem goaded by sharp swords,
And call’d upon himself to “walk the plank?”
As for the Dances, Charles and George to boot,
What have they more
Of ease and rest, for sole of either foot,
Than bear that capers on a hotted floor?
XI.
Thus pending--does not Mathews, at sad shift
For voice, croak like a frog in waters fenny?--
Serle seem upon the surly seas adrift?--
And Kenny think he’s going to Kilkenny?--
Haynes Bayly feel Old ditto, with the note
Of Cotton in his ear, a mortal grapple
About his arms, and Adam’s apples
Big as a fine Dutch codling in his throat?
Did Rodwell, on his chimney-piece, desire
Or not to take a jump into the fire?
Did Wade feel as composed as music can?
And was not Bernard his own Nervous Man?
Lastly, don’t Farley, a bewildered elf,
Quake at the Pantomime he loves to cater,
And ere its changes ring, transform himself?--
A frightful mug of human delf?
A spirit-bottle--empty of “the cratur”?
A leaden-platter ready for the shelf?
A thunderstruck dumb-waiter?
XII.
To clench the fact,
Myself once guilty, of one small rash act,
Committed at the Surrey
Quite in a hurry,
Felt all this flurry,
Corporal worry,
And spiritual scurry,
Dram-devil--attic curry!
All going well
From prompter’s bell,
Until befel
A hissing at some dull imperfect dunce--
There’s no denying,
I felt in all four elements at once!
My head was swimming, while my arms were flying,
My legs for running--all the rest was frying!
[Illustration: HIS-TRIONICS.]
XIII.
Thrice welcome, then, for this peculiar use,
Thy pens so innocent of goose!
For this shall Dramatists, when they make merry,
Discarding Port and Sherry,
Drink--“Perry!”
Perry, whose fame, pennated, is let loose
To distant lands,
Perry, admitted on all hands,
Text, running, German, Roman,
For Patent Perryans approach’d by no man!
And when, ah me! far distant be the hour!
Pluto shall call thee to his gloomy bow’r,
Many shall be thy pensive mourners, many!
And Penury itself shall club its penny,
To raise thy monument in lofty place;
Higher than York’s, or any son of War;
Whilst Time all meaner effigies shall bury,
On due pentagonal base,
Shall stand the Parian, Perryan, perriwig’d Perry
Perch’d on the proudest peak of Penman Mawr!
[Illustration: “PENNSYLVANIA.”]
SKETCHES ON THE ROAD.
THE CHECK-STRING.
THOSE who have travelled much, as inside passengers in a long
stage-coach, whilst they admired the facility of starting off with
one, must have occasionally remarked the difficulty of stopping with
it, just at the point where it would be convenient to be set down.
An ailing man may not have voice enough to lock all the four wheels
at once; and should he be, as is probable, a nervous man besides,
he will not without some hesitation make up his mind to request of
some stentorian neighbour the loan of a set of lungs. In a six-inside
coach, the timid occupier of a middle seat has no chance whatever,
unless to take advantage of the first casual halt, or an upset. Even
in the four-inside vehicle, a weakly, shy traveller’s case is equally
hopeless, supposing the passengers on the roof to have properly tucked
up the skirts of their great and little coats. To a bold, brassy fellow
even, with a tongue like a trumpet, it is anything but an easy affair
to say woh! with any effect to a Dart that is flying at twelve miles
within the hour. The coachman, who ought to hear, will not: the horses
hear but do not understand: the coach cannot hear: the outsiders admire
the pace too much to hear anything but the patter of the hoofs. At
last, when he has succeeded, the stout gentleman with the big voice,
who wants to run home, finds generally that he has a good hundred yards
or two allowed him of law, measured, as the Irish always mete it out,
_backwards_.
It was after a more serious dilemma,--for a little nervous bashful
man with a little squeaking voice like Punch’s, though he was not so
fond of exhibiting it, after suffering himself to be carried two miles
beyond his house, had at last fractured the small bone of his leg, by
opening the door in despair and jumping out,--that a discussion ensued
in the Brighton “Age” as to the best means of being let out to order.
Many different methods had been proposed before the little florid plump
gentleman in black delivered his opinion, with his back to the horses.
“For my own part, ratiocinating on hackney-coaches, I should
hypothetically propose check-strings.”
“Lord forbid!” exclaimed a voice from the other seat, on the same side.
Nobody remembered to have heard that voice before, from London to
Crawley Common.
The friend to check-strings seemed thunderstruck by the explosion. He
screwed himself round to take a look at his neighbour--didn’t like him
at all--turned back again--stole another look--liked him worse than
before--then looked for the third time, and hated him. His seat became
uneasy--he had found a choke-pear, very like a hedgehog, and very like
a bull terrier, he could neither kill it nor let it alone. It clung to
him like a burr which you pull off your hat that it may stick on your
right-hand glove, thence to be transferred to the left-hand one, and
so on alternately till you finally get rid of it on your pantaloons.
The “Lord forbid,” like Macbeth’s “Amen,” stuck in his throat--it
buzzed in his head like a fly in a horse’s ear. However, he held his
uncomfortable peace till silence itself became insupportable. At last
he broke out:
“Humph! Doubtful as I am whether common coach conversation ought to
be tied by strict rules of logic, still I cannot suppress the remark,
that when one gentleman syllogistically brings forward a proposition
of check-strings, for another gentleman to cry ‘Lord forbid,’ does
not appear to my mind to be following a regular line of argument. But
perhaps the forbidding gentleman will have the goodness to explain the
colloquial anomaly.”
The forbidding gentleman thus appealed to, good-humouredly apologised.
It was a mere slip of the tongue, he said: the words escaped from him
involuntarily; but his fellow-traveller would probably excuse him, in
consideration of the fact, that on account of a check-string he had
lost the only hope of affluence he ever had in his life.
“Indeed, Sir! why then I excuse the colloquial irregularity with all my
heart,” said the warm man, putting both his hands into his pockets;
“but, upon my life, Sir, it must have been a very extraordinary
consequence.”
[Illustration: A CHINESE PUZZLE.]
“A very simple one, Sir,” returned the other. “The facts are briefly
these: my maternal uncle had lately returned from India with an immense
fortune, a handsome portion of which was my own in expectance, on no
worse authority than his own promise. He was a widower with an only
daughter, with whom, and himself, I one evening found myself in the
carriage, on our way to a dinner-party given by a nobleman, then
intimately connected with East Indian affairs. We were very late:
and my uncle, the Nabob, who rode backward, was extremely fidgety,
insisting that we were going beyond our destination. Every other minute
he was thrusting his head out of the front window to dispute with the
coachman, who in truth, was a little less sober, and more obstinate,
than became him. And so we went onwards, till my uncle’s temper, always
irritable, was worked up almost to combustion. In such moods he was
rather apt to give vent to serio-comic ebullitions; and my ill-fortune
has gifted me with risible muscles of exquisite sensibility. I was
in the very midst of an ill-smothered laugh, when my fair cousin,
giving me a sudden push, and then clasping her hands, exclaimed that
we were going past the house. I instantly jumped up and made for the
check-string, but with no more effect than if I had pulled at anything
else. Gracious Heaven! I had better have pulled the string of a
shower-bath, full of scalding hot water, to pour itself on my devoted
head!--By that one infernal pull, Sir, I pulled myself out of half a
plum!”
“A sad pull, indeed, Sir!” said the florid plump man in black.
“But--humph--begging your pardon, Sir, I cannot really derive any such
deduction from the premises.”
[Illustration: “A SPLIT WITH DUCROW.”]
“A moment’s patience, Sir,” continued the unfortunate coach-stopper.
“Lord forbid check-strings,--Lord forbid all strings whatever! I was in
despair, Sir. I could have sunk through the bottom of the carriage!--I
believe I went down on my knees. I said everything I could think
of--and begged fifty thousand pardons, but my uncle was obdurate. ‘Pray
don’t mention it,’ he said, in his most caustic tone--‘it has saved me
fifty thousand pounds. It’s a very good practical joke, although it
will not read quite so well in my will.’”
“But surely, Sir,” objected the plump man, “your uncle never acted on a
conclusion, jumped to, as I may say, by such very imperfect inferences?”
“You did not know my uncle, Sir,” answered the unfortunate kinsman,
with a deep sigh. “But you shall judge of his character from the
clause itself:--Item, I give and bequeath to my jocose nephew, Arthur
Carruthers Oliphant, _for pulling his uncle’s pigtail_, the sum of one
shilling, sterling.”
THE UNDYING ONE.
“He shall not die.”--_Uncle Toby._
I.
OF all the verses, grave or gay,
That ever whiled an hour,
I never knew a mingled lay
At once so sweet and sour,
As that by Ladye Norton spun,
And christened “The Undying One.”
II.
I’m very certain that she drew
A portrait, when she penn’d
That picture of a perfect Jew,
Whose days will never end:
I’m sure it means my Uncle Lunn,
For he is an Undying One.
III.
Those twenty years he’s been the same,
And may be twenty more;
But Memory’s Pleasures only claim
His features for a score;
Yet in that time the change is none--
The image of th’ Undying One!
[Illustration: AN INN-QUEST.]
IV.
They say our climate’s damp and cold,
And lungs are tender things;
My uncle’s much abroad and old,
But when “King Cole” he sings,
A Stentor’s voice, enough to stun,
Declares him an Undying One.
V.
Others have died from needle-pricks,
And very slender blows;
From accidental slips or kicks,
Or bleedings at the nose;
Or choked by grape-stone, or a bun--
But he is the Undying One!
VI.
A soldier once, he once endur’d
A bullet in the breast--
It might have kill’d--but only cured
An asthma in the chest;
He was not to be slain with gun,
For he is the Undying One.
VII.
In water once too long he dived,
And all supposed him beat,
He seem’d so cold--but he revived
To have another heat,
Just when we thought his race was run,
And came in fresh--th’ Undying One!
VIII.
To look at Meux’s once he went,
And tumbled in the vat--
And greater Jobs their lives have spent
In lesser boils than that,--
He left the beer quite underdone,
No bier to the Undying One!
IX.
He’s been from strangulation black,
From bile, of yellow hue,
Scarlet from fever’s hot attack,
From cholera morbus blue;
Yet with these dyes--to use a pun--
He still is the Undying One.
X.
He rolls in wealth, yet has no wife
His three per Cents. to share;
He never married in his life,
Or flirted with the fair;
The sex he made a point to shun,
For beauty an Undying One.
XI.
To judge him by the present signs,
The future by the past,
So quick he lives, so slow declines,
The Last Man won’t be last,
But buried underneath a ton
Of mould by the Undying One!
XII.
Next Friday week, his birth-day boast,
His ninetieth year he spends,
And I shall have his health to toast
Amongst expectant friends,
And wish--it really sounds like fun--
Long life to the Undying One!
A GIPSY PARTY.
“Come stain your cheeks with nut or berry,
You’ll find a gipsy’s life is merry.”--GIPSY GLEE.
I DO not know what imp of mischief could have put such a fancy into
the dreaming head of Mrs. Carnaby, except Puck--but on a fine morning
in August she awoke with a determination to get up a gipsy party, and
have a day’s pleasure “under the green-wood tree.” She opened her
mind therefore to Mr. C----, as soon as he had opened his eyes, and
before breakfast they had arranged the whole affair. Hornsey Wood was
stale, and Norwood was rejected, for the very paradoxical reason that
it was such a haunt for Gipsies; and Mrs. Carnaby meant to take even
her youngest children. After a good deal of debating, Hainault was the
Forest fixed upon;--it lay so handy to Whitechapel, and the redletter
day was marked to be the Wednesday in the following week, because then
Master Carnaby would only lose half a day’s schooling.
Accordingly, on the Wednesday, the Dryads of Wanstead were startled
by the rumble of a well-laden tax-cart up that avenue which once led
to a princely mansion; and the vehicle at last stopped, and set down
its insides and outsides just where the lines of trees branch off into
another verdant alley. “It was,” Mrs. Carnaby remarked, “a delicious
green spot, and very handy to the Green Man for getting porter.” Mrs.
C---- was assisted out of the cart; and then Miss C---- was lifted out
by Mr. Hodges; and then the children were lifted out by the Mother; and
then the nursemaid, an awkward plainlooking girl that nobody helped,
tumbled out. In the mean time, Master C---- jumped out, all agog after
blackberrying and birdnesting; and had swarmed half up a tree before
his mother’s vigilance discovered, at a single glance, that he was
tearing his trowsers, and had his best clothes on. This was a bad
setting out for the boy; and the horse was not better, for directly
he got out of harness, and felt himself free and at grass, after two
or three preliminary kicks and plunges, it occurred to him to indulge
in a roll, and so he rolled over a pigeon pie that was unfortunately
unpacked, and finished by getting very much up with his fore-legs in
a basket of ginger beer. But it was only a moment of enthusiasm; and,
like other old nags, he betook himself to eating his green grass salad
as gravely as a judge. None of the performers were fortunate in their
debut. The first thing Mrs. Carnaby did in her hurry to save the pop,
was to pop down one of the children on the basket of knives and forks;
but it was a sharp child and soon got up again: and the first thing the
other twin did was to trip over a stump, and fall, as Betty nursemaid
said, “with its face in a fuz.” The first thing Mr. Hodges did, was
to take Miss Carnaby round the waist and give her a smacking kiss; in
return for which, as her first act, she gave him a playful push, that
sent him, with his white ducks, into a muddy miniature pond, that had
recently been stirred up by a cow in search of a cold bath. The first
thing that Mr. C---- did was to recommend some brandy as a preventive
against catching cold; but the last thing the brandy bottle had done
had been to stay at home in the cupboard. Mr. Hodges, therefore, walked
off to the Green Man for his health’s sake; and Master Carnaby sneaked
off, nobody knew where, for the sake of blackberries;--while the
Nursemaid, for the sake of society, took a romantic walk with the two
twins, and a strange footman. Gipsies are a wandering race, and all the
performers topped their parts; the very horse roamed away like a horse
that had neither parish nor settlement: and Mr. Carnaby would have gone
roaming after him, if his Wife and Daughter had not hung round his neck
and made him swear not to leave ’em till the others returned, which was
afterwards softened down to taking a little walk, provided he didn’t
go out of sight and hearing. In the mean time Mrs. and Miss C---- laid
the cloth, and began to review the eatables, not without lamenting over
the smash of the pigeon pie; and when they came to plan their second
course they found that the chief remove, a cold round of beef, had been
pinned on the way down by a favourite bull-dog, that Master Carnaby had
smuggled into the party. Luckily for the dog, he had also gone roving,
with the whole forest before him, as naturally as if he had belonged to
Bampfylde Moore Carew, the King of the Gipsies.
[Illustration: COIL AND RECOIL.]
[Illustration: DEADLY NIGHTSHADE.]
Mrs. Carnaby was one of those characters emphatically called fidgets;
she never rested till each individual came back, and she never rested
when they did. Mr. C. was the first to return, and not in the first
of tempers. He had been done out of his long-anticipated rural walk
by setting his foot, before he had gone a hundred yards, on a yard of
snake, and it had frightened him so that Mrs. Carnaby expected “it
would turn his whole mash of blood, and give him the yellow jaundice.”
Mr. Hodges came in second, but to the impatient eye of Miss C.
certainly did not proceed from the Green Man with the straightness of a
bullet from a rifle. Master Carnaby was a good third, for he had been
well horse-whipped, just as he had got three little red blackberries
and five thorns in his fingers, by a gentleman who did not approve of
his trespassing upon his grounds. Boxer the bull-dog was fourth; he
came back on three-legs, with his brindle well peppered with number
six by the gamekeeper, to cure him of worrying park rabbits. In fact,
poor Boxer, as Mrs. C. exclaimed, “was bleeding like a pig,” and the
grateful animal acknowledged her compassionate notice by going and
rubbing his shot hide against her shot silk, in return for which he
got a blow quite hard enough to shiver the stick of something between
a parasol and an umbrella. As for the nurse-maid and the twins they
did not return for an hour, to the infinite horror of the mother; but
just as they were all sitting down to dinner Betsey appeared with her
charge, walked off their feet, with their “pretty mouths all besmeared”
with blue and red juice; but no one of the party was botanist enough
to tell whether the berries they were munching were hips and haws, or
bilberries, or deadly nightshade, but maternal anxiety made sure it
was the “rank pison.” Accordingly dinner was postponed, and they set
to get up an extempore fire to make the kettle hot, and as soon as the
water was warm enough, these “two pretty babes” were well drenched,
and were soon as perfectly uncomfortable as they had been two months
before in a rough steam trip to Margate. As soon as peace was restored
it transpired, from an examination of the children, and a very cross
examination of the nurse-maid, that they had met with a _real_ gipsy
woman in the forest who had told Betty’s fortune, but had omitted to
prognosticate that her mistress would give her warning on the spot, and
that _her_ gipsying would end, as it actually did, in finding herself
suddenly out of place in the middle of a forest. Like other servants,
when they lose a comfortable situation, “some natural tears she shed,”
but did not wipe them soon, as did “our general mother,” for the very
excellent reason that she had spread her pocket handkerchief on the
ground to sit upon, somewhere between Wanstead and Walthamstow, and had
left it as a waif to the lord of the manor.
[Illustration: BACKING OUT OF GOING TO MARKET.]
Dinner time then came again, to the especial delight of the two empty
children, though, thanks to the horse and dog, it was principally
broken victuals. But on sitting down and counting heads Master C. had
a second time absconded during the last bustle; and, as his mother
could not touch a morsel for anxiety, Mr. Carnaby was obliged to set
out fasting to look for him, and had soon the satisfaction of finding
him sitting hatless crying in a wet ditch, and scraping a suit of brown
off a suit of blue with an old oyster shell. His father, in the first
transport of anger and hunger, gave him what boys call “a regular
larruping,” then a good rubbing down with a bunch of fern, and then
brought him back to the cold collation, with the comfortable threat
that he should go without his dinner. As soon as the culprit could
explain for sobbing, he told them that “he had gone for a little walk,
like, and saw the most capital donkey with a saddle and bridle feeding
wild about the forest as if he belonged to nobody, and he just got on
him like, like they used to do at Margate; and then the donkey set off
full tear, and never stopped till he came to a tent of gipsies in the
middle of the wood; and they all set upon him, and swore at him like
anything for running away with their donkey; and then all of a sudden
he lost his hat and his handkerchief, and his money out of his pockets
like conjuring; then they told him to run for his life, and so he did,
and as for the mud it was all along of jumping over a hedge that had no
other side to it.” This intelligence threw Mrs. Carnaby into an agony
of horror which could only be pacified by their immediately packing up
and removing, eatables and all, to a less lonesome place by the side
of the road, an operation that was performed by their all pulling and
pushing at the cart, as the horse had taken French leave of absence.
It was now Miss Carnaby’s turn to be discomfited: her retiring
disposition made her wince under the idea of dining in public; for
being market day at Romford, they were over-looked by plenty of farmers
and pig butchers: consequently, after a very miffy dialogue with her
mother, the young lady took herself off, as she was desired, with “her
romantical notions,” to a place of more solitude, and Mr. Hodges, as in
gallantry bound, postponed his dinner till his tea to keep her company.
In the mean time, Betsey, who had been sent up to the Green Man for
the porter, returned with the empty tankard, and a terrified tale of
being “cotch’d hold on by a ruffian in the wood, that had drunk up all
the beer to all their very good healths.” The first impulse of Mr.
Carnaby was to jump up to do justice on the vagabond, but Mrs. C----
had the presence of mind to catch hold of his coat-flaps so abruptly,
that before he could well feel his legs, he found himself sitting in
a large plum pie, which the children had just set their hearts upon;
of course it did not mend his temper to hear the shout from a dozen
ragged boys who were looking on; and in the crisis of his vexation,
he vented such a fervent devil’s blessing on gipsy parties, and all
that proposed them, that Mrs. Carnaby was obliged to take it up, and
to tell him sharply, what in reality was true enough, that “if people
did have gipsy parties, it didn’t follow that their stupid husbands
was to sit down on plum pies.” Heaven knows to what size and shape
this little quarrel might have ripened, but for the appearance of Miss
Carnaby, who, with a terrified exclamation sat herself down, and after
a vain attempt to recover, went off into a strong fit of what her
mother called “kicking hysterics.” The cause was soon explained by the
appearance of Mr. Hodges, with one eye poached black, and a dog-bite
in the calf of his leg, because “he had only stood looking on at two
men setting wires for rabbits, thinking to himself if he watched them
well he could learn how to do it.” Fortunately, Miss Carnaby came to
just in time to concur with her father and Mr. Hodges in the opinion,
that the best thing they could all do was to pack up and go home, but
which was stoutly combated by Mrs. Carnaby, who insisted that she
was resolved to take tea in a wood for once in her life, and she was
seconded by the children and Master C----, who said they hadn’t had any
pleasure yet. It was an unanswerable argument; sticks were collected,
a fire was made, the kettle boiled, the tea-things were set in order,
the bread and butter was cut, and pleasure began to smile on the gipsy
party so placidly that Mr. Hodges was encouraged to begin playing “In
my Cottage near a Wood,” on the key bugle, but was obliged to break
off in the middle, on finding that it acted as a bugle call to a corps
of observation, who came and stood round to see “Rural Felicity.”
Mrs. Carnaby, however, was happy; but “there is many a slip between
the tea-cup and the lip.” She was in the triumphant fact of pouring
the hot water on her best souchong, in her best china tea-pot, when
a very well-charged gun went off just on the other side of the park
palings, and Mrs. Carnaby had not been born like her Grace, old Sarah
of Marlborough, “before nerves came in fashion.” The tea-kettle dropped
from her hand upon the tea-pot, which it dashed to atoms, and then lay
on its side, hot watering the daisies and the dandelions that had the
luck to grow near it. “Misfortunes never come single,” and the gun,
therefore, acted like a double one in its inflictions; for no sooner
did Boxer recognise its sound than he jumped up, and with an alarming
howl dashed through the rest of the tea service, as if he had absorbed
another ounce of number six: a fresh shout from the bystanders welcomed
this new disaster, and with the true spirit of “biting a bitten cur,”
they began to heap embarrassments on the disconcerted gipsyers. They
kept pitching sticks into the fire till it grew a bonfire, and made
cockshies of the remaining crockery; some audacious boys even helped
themselves to bread and butter, as if on the principle that the open
air ought to keep open house. As there were too many assailants to
chastise, the only remedy was to pack up and take to the road as
fast as they could, with a horse which they found with two broken
knees, the consequence of his being too curious in the construction
of a gravel-pit. “You may say what you like,” said Mr. Carnaby, in
his summing up, “but for my part I must say of gipsying, that it’s
impossible to take to it without being regularly ‘done brown.’”
[Illustration: THE FORTUNE HUNTER.]
COCKLE _v._ CACKLE.
THOSE who much read advertisements and bills,
Must have seen puffs of Cockle’s Pills,
Call’d Anti-bilious--
Which some Physicians sneer at, supercilious,
But which we are assured, if timely taken,
May save your liver and bacon;
Whether or not they really give one ease,
I, who have never tried,
Will not decide;
But no two things in union go like these--
Viz.--Quacks and Pills--save Ducks and Pease.
Now Mrs. W. was getting sallow,
Her lilies not of the white kind, but yellow,
And friends portended was preparing for
A human Pâté Périgord;
She was, indeed, so very far from well,
Her Son, in filial fear, procured a box
Of those said pellets to resist Bile’s shocks,
And--tho’ upon the ear it strangely knocks--
To save her by a Cockle from a shell!
But Mrs. W., just like Macbeth,
Who very vehemently bids us “throw
Bark to the Bow-wows,” hated physic so,
It seem’d to share “the bitterness of Death:”
Rhubarb--Magnesia--Jalap, and the kind--
Senna--Steel--Assa-fœtida, and Squills--
Powder or Draught--but least her throat inclined
To give a course to Boluses or Pills:
No--not to save her life, in lung or lobe,
For all her lights or all her liver’s sake,
Would her convulsive thorax undertake,
Only one little uncelestial globe!
’Tis not to wonder at, in such a case,
If she put by the pill-box in a place
For linen rather than for drugs intended--
Yet for the credit of the pills let’s say
After they thus were stow’d away,
Some of the linen mended;
But Mrs. W. by disease’s dint,
Kept getting still more yellow in her tint,
When lo! her second son, like elder brother,
Marking the hue on the parental gills,
Brought a new charge of Anti-tumeric Pills,
To bleach the jaundiced visage of his Mother--
Who took them--in her cupboard--like the other.
“Deeper and deeper, still,” of course,
The fatal colour daily grew in force;
Till daughter W. newly come from Rome,
Acting the self-same filial, pillial, part,
To cure Mamma, another dose brought home
Of Cockles;--not the Cockles of her heart!
These going where the others went before,
Of course she had a very pretty store;
And then--some hue of health her cheek adorning,
The Medicine so good must be,
They brought her dose on dose, which she
Gave to the upstairs cupboard, “night and morning.”
Till wanting room at last, for other stocks,
Out of the window one fine day she pitch’d
The pillage of each box, and quite enrich’d
The feed of Mister Burrell’s hens and cocks,--
A little Barber of a by-gone day,
Over the way
Whose stock in trade, to keep the least of shops,
Was one great head of Kemble,--that is, John,
Staring in plaster, with a _Brutus_ on,
And twenty little Bantam fowls--with _crops_.
Little Dame W. thought when through the sash
She gave the physic wings,
To find the very things
So good for bile, so bad for chicken rash,
For thoughtless cock, and unreflecting pullet!
But while they gathered up the nauseous nubbles,
Each peck’d itself into a peck of troubles,
And brought the hand of Death upon its gullet.
They might as well have addled been, or ratted,
For long before the night--ah woe betide
The Pills! each suicidal Bantam died
Unfatted!
Think of poor Burrell’s shock,
Of Nature’s debt to see his hens all payers,
And laid in death as Everlasting Layers,
With Bantam’s small Ex-Emperor, the Cock,
In ruffled plumage and funereal hackle,
Giving, undone by Cockle, a last Cackle!
To see as stiff as stone, his unlive stock,
It really was enough to move his block.
Down on the floor he dash’d, with horror big,
Mr. Bell’s third wife’s mother’s coachman’s wig;
And with a tragic stare like his own Kemble,
Burst out with natural emphasis enough,
And voice that grief made tremble,
Into that very speech of sad Macduff--
“What!--all my pretty chickens and their dam,
At one fell swoop!--
Just when I’d bought a coop
To see the poor lamented creatures cram!”
After a little of this mood,
And brooding over the departed brood,
With razor he began to ope each craw,
Already turning black, as black as coals;
When lo! the undigested cause he saw--
“Pison’d by goles!”
To Mrs. W.’s luck a contradiction,
Her window still stood open to conviction;
And by short course of circumstantial labour,
He fix’d the guilt upon his adverse neighbour;--
Lord! how he rail’d at her: declaring now,
He’d bring an action ere next Term of Hilary,
Then, in another moment, swore a vow,
He’d make her do pill-penance in the pillory!
She, meanwhile distant from the dimmest dream
Of combating with guilt, yard-arm or arm-yard,
Lapp’d in a paradise of tea and cream;
When up ran Betty with a dismal scream--
“Here’s Mr. Burrell, Ma’am, with all his farm-yard!”
Straight in he came, unbowing and unbending,
With all the warmth that iron and a barber
Can harbour;
To dress the head and front of her offending,
The fuming phial of his wrath uncorking;
In short, he made her pay him altogether,
In hard cash, very _hard_, for ev’ry feather,
Charging of course, each Bantam as a Dorking;
Nothing could move him, nothing make him supple,
So the sad dame unpocketing her loss,
Had nothing left but to sit hands across,
And see her poultry, “going down ten couple.”
[Illustration: HALFPENNY HATCH.]
Now birds by poison slain,
As venom’d dart from Indian’s hollow cane,
Are edible; and Mrs. W.’s thrift,--
She had a thrifty vein,--
Destined one pair for supper to make shift,--
Supper as usual at the hour of ten:
But ten o’clock arrived and quickly pass’d,
Eleven--twelve--and one o’clock at last,
Without a sign of supper even then!
At length, the speed of cookery to quicken,
Betty was called, and with reluctant feet,
Came up at a white heat--
“Well, never I see chicken like them chicken!
My saucepans, they have been a pretty while in ’em!
Enough to stew them, if it comes to that,
To flesh and bones, and perfect rags; but drat
Those Anti-biting Pills! there is no bile in ’em!”
A LAWYER’S LETTER.
_To Mr. Richard Walton, 32, Lincoln’s Inn._
DEAR DICK,
IN re Pedro--Pike, Row, Badgery, and Crump, Mr. Theodore Hook’s
attorneys, offered three years ago, and continued the allowance
up to last Easter Term, to give me, with unexampled liberality,
eighteen shillings per week as copying clerk, and to undertake the
management of the Common Law--attend to the Chancery Department--do the
out-door business--make out Bills of Costs--and make myself generally
useful--which I have been doing as long as my health permitted. Not
being strong, though with an attachment to the profession, I have been
compelled to withdraw my record, and to sue out a Writ of Certiorari to
carry my line of life into another court. Hearing that Don Pedro was
about to bring an action against Don Miguel and Company, and that lots
of John Does and Richard Roes were wanted, I took a retainer from an
agent of the great Portuguese professional gentleman, and have really
embarked in the cause. Being out here on the circuit, as one might call
it (Mr. Chief Justice Sartorius goes it), and knowing the interest you
take in my verdicts, I shall write at intervals the particulars of
plaintiff’s demand, and account of set-off on the part of the enemy’s
fleet, or Defendant. Pray call on Mr. Wilson, the Common Law Clerk at
Pike, Row, and Co., and tell him I have four hours to myself and a
chance of being paid, but do this if possible without the knowledge of
the Principals. White of the same office, when I enlisted, was to have
taken the benefit of the act, but on mustering at Gravesend, he did not
attend the roll call, and was struck off the Rolls. I can’t but say,
putting Truth on her oath in the Admiralty Court, that when the Blue
Peter gave legal notice to quit, I felt some regret at leaving a land
where I might have been, so to speak, a tenant at will. Nor was it much
better when I came to the Nore. I heartily wished, with Mr. Matthews,
that if Britannia does rule the waves, she would rule them evener! but
it was “rule refused.” The sea ran very rough, and you will understand
me when I say I took nothing by my motion. There was the thought of my
mother, besides, and the numberless feelings for which, though matters
of everyday practice, it is difficult to show cause.
You remember Sugden with Hart & Co., and will not be surprised to hear
that he volunteered to convince Don Miguel of his defective title.
A few hours, however, sufficed to disgust him with conveyancing, as
it is practised in the Marine Courts; and I heard him, by a verbal
instrument, assign over with technical formality, the whole ship to the
Devil, his Heirs, Executors, Administrators, and Assigns.
As for Butterworth, the Captain gave instructions with regard to the
stays, and Butterworth in going aloft fell overboard. We thought for
some time that he was dead, but after rubbing, and other means of
revival, we had the satisfaction of seeing him moving for a new trial,
and that he was beginning _de novo_.
You may conceive, professionally, our joy at entering the Douro with
a prospect of being invited within the Bar,--but the anchors were
instructed to stay proceedings, and we stayed the same. As I took notes
of what happened afterwards, I will give you a rough draft.
_Michaelmas Term, Oct. 31._ Admiral took Counsel’s opinion with
regard to the Fort of St. Michael. Held that an action would lie.
Judgment affirmed.
_Nov. 2._ Action of assault and battery. Admiral’s ship opened the
case, and the others followed on the same side. Hills crowded with
witnesses. Enemy’s damages laid at a hundred and fifty men. Tax off
a hundred.
[Illustration: DRAKE DISPERSING THE ARMADA.]
3. Discovering flaws and amending same. At intervals term reports.
Pollock died of his wounds, and was struck off the paper. Gave him
an undertaking.
4. _A dies non._ Poor Horne seized with lockjaw, and preparing for
the long vacation.
5. Notice of action. Enemy’s Fleet put in an appearance, but _non
pros_. Horne demised.
6. Joined issue with enemy’s flag ship. Wetherell killed by a ball
lodging in the Inner Temple, and Denman subpœnaed by a bullet out
of the main-top. Enemy attempted to put an officer and fifty men in
possession--but we served them with an ejectment. Night coming on,
agreed to withdraw a juror.
7. A violent storm, and a sail under a distress. Taken in execution
by a wave,--levied on longboat and three men, and all the hen-coops.
8. Fell in with a Portuguese brig, and lodged a detainer. Have not
received my share of prize, but have got a cognovit.
9. Enemy moved for a new trial. Bore up and fired a broadside;
replied to same. Admiral endeavoured, by intercepting the rear-most
ships, to cut off the entail. Boarding again,--obliged to fight
with all my Power of Attorney. Gave quarter to one man, he was such
a special pleader. Verdict--drawn battle.
10. Chitty fell overboard from the mizen chains. Action of trover
failed. Filed a bill of him in Ocean’s Chancery, and sent an office
copy to his Widow.
11. Enemy brought a fresh action. Boarding again, and obliged to
defend in person. Enemy nonsuited with costs.
To abbreviate pleadings, you will see that our time has been Term time.
Plenty of work at overhours, and I am sorry to say no extra charge. But
I am not going to take a bill of exceptions. I comfort myself for the
loss of my arm--I have lost that limb of the law, Dick--by reflecting
that I am now like Nelson, except the blind eye, and that I do not
follow the Hamiltonian system. Sometimes, however, as I look homeward,
and remember “dear Morton,” I sigh to join you by a _Surrey-joinder_,
and to taste your _Surrey-butter_. I think that is the legal mode of
expressing it.
Nothing can behave better than our men--from the principals down to the
juniors. They fight as if they belonged to Lyon’s Inn. However, a good
many have been ticked off,--including Tyndale, Thessiger, Phillips,
Spankie, Scarlett, Gurney, Wilde, Burney, and some others of our
acquaintance, who have received a general release. For my own part----
[LETTER ENCLOSING THE ABOVE.]
SIR.
Am sorry to Say the man as writ the Inclosed letter, with a bit of
a log, fell Down the Main Hatchway on the 16th instant at 2 P. M.
Was carried down to Cockpit. But the Doctor pronounced it a Bad
Job, and after saying O Law three times was a Corps. He left no
Will nor no property, and was Sowed up and heaved overboard, same
day in lat. 41, 5 N., long. 8, 50 W.
I take the Liberty of writing This that you may inform Parents,
provided there’s father or mother, as well as to his widow and
children, if so be. Should you be encouraged to come out to us in
your friend’s Place, you will be heartily welcome, and lots of as
jolly good fighting as hearts can wish. So no more at present from
Your Humble Servant
THOMAS BENYON.
N.B. Go to the Duncan’s Head in Wapping, and Captain Bligh will tell
you all about the Bounty. That’s if you mean to ’list.
[Illustration: “I HAVE A SILENT SORROW HERE.”]
THE SWEEP’S COMPLAINT.
“I like to meet a sweep--such as come forth with the dawn, or
somewhat earlier, with their little professional notes, sounding
like the peep, peep, of a young sparrow.”--ESSAYS OF ELIA.
----“A voice cried Sweep no more!
Macbeth hath murdered sweep.”--SHAKSPEARE.
ONE morning ere my usual time
I rose, about the seventh chime,
When little stunted boys that climb
Still linger in the street:
And as I walked, I saw indeed
A sample of the sooty breed,
Though he was rather run to seed,
In height above five feet.
A mongrel tint he seem’d to take,
Poetic simile to make,
DAY through his MARTIN ’gan to break,
White overcoming jet.
From side to side he cross’d oblique,
Like Frenchman who has friends to seek,
And yet no English word can speak,
He walk’d upon the fret:
And while he sought the dingy job,
His lab’ring breast appear’d to throb
And half a hiccup half a sob
Betray’d internal woe.
To cry the cry he had by rote
He yearn’d, but law forbade the note,
Like Chanticleer with roupy throat,
He gaped--but not a crow!
I watch’d him, and the glimpse I snatch’d
Disclosed his sorry eyelids patch’d
With red, as if the soot had catch’d
That hung about the lid;
And soon I saw the tear-drop stray,
He did not care to brush away;
Thought I the cause he will betray--
And thus at last he did.
[Illustration: A WIND-FALL.]
Well, here’s a pretty go! here’s a Gagging Act, if ever there was a
gagging!
But I’m bound the members as silenced us, in doing it had plenty of
magging.
They had better send us all off, they had, to the School for the
Deaf and Dumb,
To unlarn us our mother tongues, and to make signs and be regularly
mum.
But they can’t undo natur--as sure as ever the morning begins to
peep,
Directly I open my eyes, I can’t help calling out Sweep
As natural as the sparrows among the chimbley-pots that say Cheep!
For my own part I find my suppress’d voice very uneasy,
And comparable to nothing but having your tissue stopt when you are
sneezy.
Well, it’s all up with us! tho’ I suppose we mustn’t cry all up.
Here’s a precious merry Christmas, I’m blest if I can earn either
bit or sup!
If crying Sweep, of mornings, is going beyond quietness’s border,
Them as pretends to be fond of silence oughtn’t to cry hear, hear,
and order, order.
I wonder Mr. Sutton, as we’ve sut-on too, don’t sympathise with us
As a Speaker what don’t speak, and that’s exactly our own cus.
God help us if we don’t not cry, how are we to pursue our callings?
I’m sure we’re not half so bad as other businesses with their
bawlings.
For instance, the general postmen, that at six o’clock go about
ringing,
And wake up all the babbies that their mothers have just got to
sleep with singing.
Greens oughtn’t to be cried no more than blacks--to do the unpartial
job,
If they bring in a Sooty Bill, they ought to have brought in a Dusty
Bob.
Is a dustman’s voice more sweet than ourn, when he comes a seeking
arter the cinders,
Instead of a little boy like a blackbird in spring, singing merrily
under your windows?
There’s the omnibus cads as plies in Cheapside, and keeps calling
out Bank and City;
Let his Worship, the Mayor, decide if our call of Sweep is not just
as pretty.
I can’t see why the Jews should be let go about crying Old Close
thro their hooky noses,
And Christian laws should be ten times more hard than the old stone
laws of Moses.
Why isn’t the mouths of the muffin-men compell’d to be equally shut?
Why, because Parliament members eat muffins, but they never eat no
sut.
Next year there won’t be any May-day at all, we shan’t have no heart
to dance,
And Jack in the Green will go in black like mourning for our
mischance;
If we live as long as May, that’s to say, through the hard winter
and pinching weather,
For I don’t see how we’re to earn enough to keep body and soul
together.
I only wish Mr. Wilberforce or some of them that pities the niggers,
Would take a peep down in our cellars, and look at our miserable
starving figures,
A-sitting idle on our empty sacks, and all ready to eat each other,
And a brood of little ones crying for bread to a heart-breaking
Father and Mother.
They haven’t a rag of clothes to mend, if their mothers had thread
and needles,
But crawl naked about the cellars, poor things, like a swarm of
common black beadles.
If they’d only inquired before passing the Act and taken a few such
peeps,
I don’t think that any real gentleman would have set his face
against sweeps.
Climbin’s an ancient respectable art, and if History’s of any vally,
Was recommended by Queen Elizabeth to the great Sir Walter Raleigh,
When he wrote on a pane of glass how I’d climb, if the way I only
knew,
And she writ beneath, if your heart’s afeard, don’t venture up the
flue.
As for me I was always loyal, and respected all powers that are
higher,
But how can I now say God save the King, if I an’t to be a Cryer?
There’s London milk, that’s one of the cries, even on Sunday the law
allows,
But ought black sweeps, that are human beasts, to be worser off than
black cows?
Do _we_ go calling about, when it’s church time, like the noisy
Billingsgate vermin,
And disturb the parson with “All alive O!” in the middle of a
funeral sermon?
But the fish won’t keep, not the mackarel won’t, is the cry of the
Parliament elves,
Every thing, except the sweeps I think, is to be allowed to keep
themselves!
Lord help us! what’s to become of us if we mustn’t cry no more?
We shan’t do for black mutes to go a standing at a death’s door.
And we shan’t do to emigrate, no not even to the Hottentot nations,
For as time wears on, our black will wear off, and then think of our
situations!
And we should not do, in lieu of black-a-moor footmen, to serve
ladies of quality nimbly,
For when we we’re drest in our sky-blue and silver, and large
frills, all clean and neat, and white silk stockings, if they
pleased to desire us to sweep the hearth, we couldn’t resist the
chimbley.
[Illustration: A REVERSE IN BUSINESS.]
LETTER FROM AN OLD SPORTSMAN.
DEAR SIR,
I RECEAVED your’s of the first last, wich I should have anser’d it
sooner, only I have ad the Roomatiz in my fingers, so you must Pleas to
excus my crampd hand.
As to my Sporting Reminis-cences, as you are pleasd to say, I have
look’d them out in the dixenary, and kno verry well what it is. I beg
leaf to Say, I have forgot all my recolections, and can not bring to
mind any of my old Rememberances.
As for Hunting, I shall never take a fence at it agen, altho I sumtims
Ride to cover on the old Gray, wich is now be come quite Wite. The last
tim I went out, we dru Hazelmere copses down to Broxley wood; then
we dru Broxley wood over to Fox thorp; then we dru Fox thorp over to
Middle ford, and then we dru Middle ford, in short, it was all drawing
and no painting for want of a brush.
Sir William Chase coming to be his father’s hare, he set up a coarsing
club, but being short of long dogs, and there hairs falling of, it was
obleged to discourse, and is now turned into a conversasiony.
In regard to shuting, I have never dun anny thing Since percussion
Captiousness cum up, wich I am Told they are sharper then Flints. The
last hare I kild was 2 long ears ago, and the Last fezzant, But there’s
a long tail belonging to that, wich you shall have when you cum over,
as I hop you wil, with your Horse’s; I have good entertainment for
boath, as the french Say, at my table D’ oats. The lads go out after
Burds now and then, but I seldum cum at the rites of there shuting--you
kno
Wat is Hits is Histery,
But what is mist is mistery.
[Illustration: WHICH WAY DID THE FOX GO?]
Talking of shuting, hav you seen Ubbard’s new guns like wauking
sticks--there a cappital defence agin cappital offences; as you may
ether stick a feller or Shute him; or boath together. I wish farmer
Gale had carrid one last friday, for he was Rob’d cuming from markit by
a foot paddy Irish man, that knockd him down to make him Stand. Luckly
he had nothing on him when Stopd but sum notes of the Barnsby bank that
had bin stopd the weak afore.
In the fishing line I am quite Dead bait, tho I have had manny a Good
run in my tim, Partickler when the keeper spide me out were I hadent
got Leaf. The last tim I went I could hardly un do my rod for roomatiz
in my joints, and I got the Lumbago verry bad wen I cum back, and its
atax I doant like. Beside wich I found very Little big fish on a count
of the pochers, who Kil em al in colde blood. I used sumtims to float
and sumtims to fli, but our waters is so over fished theres no fish to
be had, and as I am very musicle, I dont like trolling without a catch,
the last jack I caut was with my boot, and was only a foot long.
[Illustration: FLY FISHING.]
As for raceing, I never cared much a bout it, and in regard of betting,
I am Better with out it, tho I al ways take the feeld wen I am Able,
and suport the Farmer’s Plate with al my Mite.
Our Wist club is going of, Some of the members go on so; two of em are
perpetuly quareling like anny thing but double dummies, for one plays
like Hoyle and the other like Vinegar. The young men hav interduced
Shorts, but I doant think theyle Last long. They are al so verry Sharp
at the Pints, and as for drinking, I never se sich Liquorish Chaps in
my life. They are al ways laying ods, even at Super, when theyle Bet
about the age of a Roosted foul, with they cal Chicken hazzard, or
about the Wait of a Curran py, with they cal the Currancy question.
They al so smoke a grate manny seagars, but they cant Put the old men’s
pips out, wich it Wood be a Burning shame if they did. I am sorry to
say politicks has Crept in; Sum is al for reform, and some is al for
none at al, and the only thing they agre in is, that the Land lord
shant bring in no Bil. There is be sides grate dis-cushins as to the
new game laws, sum entertaning douts wen sum peple go out a shuting,
wether even acts of Parliament will inable them to shute anny game.
The crickit Club is going on uncomon wel. They are 36 members with out
rekoning the byes; our best man at Wickit is Captin Batty--he often
gets four notches running; and our best boler is Use Ball, tho we
sumtims get Dr. Pilby to bolus. As for the crickit Bal, it is quit wore
out, wich the gals say they are verry Sory for it, as they took a grate
intrest in our matches.
My lads are boath of em marred, wich mayhap you have Herd,--and if
the gals are not, I Believe its no falt of theres. They hope youle
cum to the Wake, wich is next Sunday weak, for they Say there will be
High fun, al tho I think it is Rather Low. The only use of waking that
I can See, is to pervent folkes Sleeping, and as for there jumping
and throwing up their Heals, I see no Pleasur in it. If they had the
Roomatiz as Bad as I have, they woudent be for Dancing there fandangoes
at that rat, and Kicking for partners.
Our county Member, Sir William Wiseacre, is going to bring in a bil
“for the supression of the Barbarus past-time of bul beating, and for
the better incorigement of the nobul art of Cockin,” by wich al buls,
wether inglish or irish, are to be Made game of no longer, and al such
as are found at anny ring or stake are libel to be find. They cal it
here the Cock and Bul Act, wich I think is a very good name. It has
causd grate diversion in manny peple’s opinions, but most of us Think
the cocks is quite as Bad as the buls. The same Barrownet as tried to
interduce Forkenry, but the first atempts as been verry Hawkward. The
forkens flu at a herin, who tried to be above there atax, for the more
they pecked him the more they maid him sore, but a boy flying a Kite
skared em al away togither.
[Illustration: WHERE’S YOUR HAWKER’S LICENSE?]
Last week was our grand archery Meetin, and the first prize was won by
Little Master Tomkins, of grove House. I supose his fondnes for lolli
pops made him ame best at bulls Eyes. The Miss Courtenays were there
as usul, and in comparison of arch Angles look ralyarcher.--The wags
propposed miss Emilyshood have the second prize for shuting in too a
cows Eye that came to nere the target; she says she wos so nervus, it
put her arrow into a quiver. In the middle of the meeting we herd a Bad
playd Key buggle, and out of the shrubbery, were they had bin hiding,
Jumpd Revd. Mister Crumpe and assistants; he is Rector of Bow and Curat
of Harrow, and was disgised in every thing green, as Robin Hood and
his mery Men; after geting Little John to string his bow for him, I am
sorry to say, Robin Hood shot Worst of every Body, for he did not even
hit the target, and we should have never Seen wear his arrow went, but
by hereing it smash in to the conservatorry. When we came to look for
the prize, a silver Arrow, every Body had lost it, for it had dropt
out of the case, and would never have been found, but for Revd. mister
Crumpe sittin downe on the lawne, and wich made Him jump up agen, as
miss Courtenay said out of Byron, like “a warrior bounding from its
Barb.” The Toxophilus Club is very flurrishing, but talk of expeling
sum members for persisting in wereing peagreen insted of lincon, and
puttin on there spanish Hats and fethers the rong side before.
Thank you for the Hoisters, wich was verry good. Mary has took the
shels to make her a groto, of wich I think is very shameful, as I
wanted them to Friten the Burds. Old Mark Lane, the man as Cheated you
out of them oats, has bean sent to jail for Stealing barly. I am sadly
Afearde old Marks corn will give Him 14 ears of Bottany.
Pleas to Remember me to al inquiring friends, if they should think it
woth wile to Ask after me.
From your Humbel servant,
ANDREW AXELTREE.
P.S. I forgot to menshun the subskripshon Stag hounds kep by the same
members as the wist club, and its there wim to have fifty too dogs
to the pack. If old Bil, the huntsman, was drest like Pam, theyd be
complet. They have had sum cappital runs dooring the season. As you
write for the sporting Maggazins, you may like to notice an apereance
rather noo in the felde, I mean the Grate Creol Curnel Brown, who is
very pompus, and hunts with Pompey, his black servant, after him. I
have got a Deal more to Say, but carnt for want of Room. Mary says I
should Cros it, wich I wood, but I doant Wish to put you to the expense
of a Dubble leter.
THE SUB-MARINE.
IT was a brave and jolly wight,
His cheek was baked and brown,
For he had been in many climes
With captains of renown,
And fought with those who fought so well
At Nile and Camperdown.
His coat it was a soldier coat,
Of red with yellow faced,
But (merman-like) he look’d marine
All downward from the waist;
His trousers were so wide and blue,
And quite in sailor taste!
He put the rummer to his lips,
And drank a jolly draught;
He raised the rummer many times--
And ever as he quaff’d,
The more he drank the more the ship
Seem’d pitching fore and aft!
The ship seemed pitching fore and aft,
As in a heavy squall;
It gave a lurch and down he went,
Head-foremost in his fall!
Three times he did not rise, alas!
He never rose at all!
But down he went right down at once,
Like any stone he dived,
He could not see, or hear, or feel--
Of senses all deprived!
At last he gave a look around
To see where he arrived!
And all that he could see was green,
Sea-green on every hand!
And then he tried to sound beneath,
And all he felt was sand!
There he was fain to lie, for he
Could neither sit nor stand!
And lo! above his head there bent
A strange and staring lass;
One hand was in her yellow hair,
The other held a glass;
A mermaid she must surely be
If ever mermaid was!
Her fish-like mouth was opened wide,
Her eyes were blue and pale,
Her dress was of the ocean green,
When ruffled by a gale;
Thought he “beneath that petticoat
She hides a salmon-tail!”
She look’d as siren ought to look,
A sharp and bitter shrew,
To sing deceiving lullabies
For mariners to rue,--
But when he saw her lips apart,
It chill’d him through and through!
With either hand he stopp’d his ears
Against her evil cry;
Alas, alas, for all his care,
His doom it seem’d to die,
Her voice went ringing through his head
It was so sharp and high!
He thrust his fingers farther in
At each unwilling ear,
But still in very spite of all
The words were plain and clear;
“I can’t stand here the whole day long,
To hold your glass of beer!”
With open’d mouth and open’d eyes,
Up rose the sub-marine,
And gave a stare to find the sands
And deeps where he had been:
There was no siren with her glass!
No waters ocean-green!
The wet deception from his eyes
Kept fading more and more,
He only saw the bar-maid stand
With pouting lip before--
The small green parlour of the Ship,
And little sanded floor.
[Illustration: BOARDING-SCHOOL.]
THE ISLAND.
“Oh had I some sweet little Isle of my own!”--MOORE.
IF the author of the Irish Melodies had ever had a little Isle so much
his own as I have possessed, he might not have found it so sweet as the
song anticipates. It has been my fortune, like Robinson Crusoe, and
Alexander Selkirk, to be thrown on such a desolate spot, and I felt so
lonely, though I had a follower, that I wish Moore had been there. I
had the honour of being in that tremendous action off Finisterre, which
proved an end of the earth to many a brave fellow. I was ordered with
a boarding party to forcibly enter the Santissima Trinidada, but in
the act of climbing into the quarter-gallery, which, however, gave no
quarter, was rebutted by the butt-end of a marine’s gun, who remained
the quarter-master of the place. I fell senseless into the sea, and
should no doubt have perished in the waters of oblivion, but for the
kindness of John Monday, who picked me up to go adrift with him in one
of the ship’s boats. All our oars were carried away, that is to say we
did not carry away any oars, and while shot was raining, our feeble
hailing was unheeded. In short, as Shakspeare says, we were drifting
off by “the current of a heady fight.” As may be supposed, our boat was
anything but the jolly-boat, for we had no provisions to spare in the
middle of an immense waste. We were, in fact, adrift in the cutter with
nothing to cut. We had not even junk for junketing, and nothing but
salt-water, even if the wind should blow fresh. Famine indeed seemed to
stare each of us in the ace; that is we stared at one another; but if
men turn cannibals, a great allowance must be made for a short ditto.
We were truly in a very disagreeable pickle, with oceans of brine and
no beef, and, like Shylock, I fancy we would have exchanged a pound of
gold for a pound of flesh. The more we drifted Nor, the more sharply we
inclined to gnaw,--but when we drifted Sow, we found nothing like pork.
No bread rose in the east, and in the opposite point we were equally
disappointed. We could not compass a meal anyhow, but got mealy-mouth’d
notwithstanding. We could see the Sea mews to the eastward, flying over
what Byron calls the Gardens of Gull. We saw plenty of Grampus, but
they were useless to all intents and porpusses, and we had no bait for
catching a bottle-nose.
[Illustration: THE POUND OF FLESH.]
[Illustration: CATCHING A BOTTLE-NOSE.]
Time hung heavily on our hands, for our fast days seemed to pass very
slowly, and our strength was rapidly sinking from being so much afloat.
Still we nourished Hope, though we had nothing to give her. But at last
we lost all prospect of land, if one may so say when no land was in
sight. The weather got thicker as we were getting thinner; and though
we kept a sharp watch, it was a very bad look-out. We could see nothing
before us but nothing to eat and drink. At last the fog cleared off,
and we saw something like land right a-head, but alas, the wind was
in our teeth as well as in our stomachs. We could do nothing but keep
her near, and as we could not keep ourselves full, we luckily suited
the course of the boat; so that after a tedious beating about--for
the wind not only gives blows, but takes a great deal of beating--we
came incontinently to an island. Here we landed, and our first impulse
on coming to dry land was to drink. There was a little brook at hand
to which we applied ourselves till it seemed actually to murmur at
our inordinate thirst. Our next care was to look for some food, for
though our hearts were full at our escape, the neighbouring region was
dreadfully empty. We succeeded in getting some natives out of their
bed, and ate them, poor things, as fast as they got up, but with some
difficulty in getting them open; a common oyster-knife would have been
worth the price of a sceptre. Our next concern was to look out for a
lodging, and at last we discovered an empty cave, reminding me of an
old inscription at Portsmouth, “The whole of this place to let.” We
took the precaution of rolling some great stones to the entrance, for
fear of last lodgers,--that some bear might come home from business,
or a tiger to tea. Here, under the rock, we slept without rocking,
and when, through the night’s failing, the day broke, we saw with the
first instalment of light that we were upon a small desert isle, now
for the first time an Isle of Man. Accordingly, the birds in this wild
solitude were so little wild, that a number of boobies and noddies
allowed themselves to be taken by hand, though the asses were not such
asses as to be caught. There was an abundance of rabbits, which we
chased unremittingly, as Hunt runs Warren; and when coats and trousers
fell short, we clothed our skins with theirs, till, as Monday said,
we each represented a burrow. In this work Monday was the tailor, for
like the maker of shadowy rabbits and cocks upon the wall, he could
turn his hand to anything. He became a potter, a carpenter, a butcher,
and a baker--that is to say, a master butcher and a master baker, for
I became merely his journeyman. Reduced to a state of nature, Monday’s
favourite phrase for our condition, I found my being an officer
fulfilled no office; to confess the truth, I made a very poor sort of
savage, whereas Monday, I am persuaded, would have been made a chief by
any tribe whatever. Our situations in life were completely reversed;
he became the leader and I the follower, or rather, to do justice to
his attachment and ability, he became like a strong big brother to a
helpless little one.
[Illustration: IN EMBARRASSED CIRCUMSTANCES.]
We remained in a state of nature five years, when at last a whaler of
Hull--though the hull was not visible--showed her masts on the horizon,
an event which was telegraphed by Monday, who began saying his prayers
and dancing the College Hornpipe at the same time with equal fervour.
We contrived by lighting a fire, literally a _feu-de-joie_, to make a
sign of distress, and a boat came to our signal deliverance. We had a
prosperous passage home, where the reader may anticipate the happiness
that awaited us; but not the trouble that was in store for me and
Monday. Our parting was out of the question; we would both rather have
parted from our sheet anchor. We attempted to return to our relative
rank, but we had lived so long in a kind of liberty and equality,
that we could never resume our grades. The state of nature remained
uppermost with us both, and Monday still watched over and tended me
like Dominie Sampson with the boy Harry Bertram; go where I would, he
followed with the dogged pertinacity of Tom Pipes; and do what I might,
he interfered with the resolute vigour of John Dory in Wild Oats. This
disposition involved us daily, nay, hourly, in the most embarrassing
circumstances; and how the connexion might have terminated I know not,
if it had not been speedily dissolved in a very unexpected manner. One
morning poor Monday was found on his bed in a sort of convulsion, which
barely enabled him to grasp my hand, and to falter out, “Good-bye, I am
go--going--back--to a state of nature.”
[Illustration: A GOOD ACTION MEETS ITS OWN REWARD.]
DOG-GREL VERSES, BY A POOR BLIND.
“Hark! hark! the dogs do bark,
The beggars are coming....”--OLD BALLAD.
OH what shall I do for a dog?
Of sight I have not got a particle,
Globe, Standard, or Sun,
Times, Chronicle--none
Can give _me_ a good leading article.
A Mastiff once led me about,
But people appeared so to fear him--
I might have got pence
Without his defence,
But Charity would not come near him.
A Blood-hound was not much amiss,
But instinct at last got the upper;
And tracking Bill Soames,
And thieves to their homes,
I never could get home to supper.
A Fox-hound once served me as guide,
A good one at hill and at valley;
But day after day
He led me astray,
To follow a milk-woman’s tally.
A turnspit once did me good turns
At going and crossing, and stopping;
Till one day his breed
Went off at full speed,
To spit at a great fire in Wapping.
A Pointer once pointed my way,
But did not turn out quite so pleasant,
Each hour I’d a stop
At a Poulterer’s shop
To point at a very high pheasant.
[Illustration: THE BATH GUIDE.]
A Pug did not suit me at all,
The feature unluckily rose up;
And folks took offence
When offering pence,
Because of his turning his nose up.
A Butcher once gave me a dog,
That turn’d out the worst one of any;
A Bull dog’s own pup,
I got a toss up,
Before he had brought me a penny.
My next was a Westminster Dog,
From Aistrop the regular cadger;
But sightless, I saw
He never would draw
A blind man so well as a badger.
A greyhound I got by a swop,
But, Lord! we soon came to divorces:
He treated my strip
Of cord like a slip,
And left me to go my own courses.
A poodle once tow’d me along,
But always we came to one harbour
To keep his curls smart,
And shave his hind part,
He constantly call’d on a barber.
My next was a Newfoundland brute,
As big as a calf fit for slaughter;
But my old cataract
So truly he back’d
I always fell into the water.
I once had a sheep-dog for guide,
His worth did not value a button;
I found it no go,
A Smithfield Ducrow,
To stand on four saddles of mutton.
My next was an Esquimaux dog,
A dog that my bones ache to talk on,
For picking his ways
On cold frosty days
He pick’d out the slides for a walk on.
Bijou was a lady-like dog,
But vex’d me at night not a little,
When tea-time was come
She would not go home,
Her tail had once trail’d a tin kettle.
I once had a sort of a Shock,
And kiss’d a street post like a brother,
And lost every tooth
In learning this truth--
One blind cannot well lead another.
A terrier was far from a trump,
He had one defect, and a thorough,
I never could stir,
’Od rabbit the cur!
Without going into the Borough.
My next was Dalmatian, the dog!
And led me in danger, oh crikey!
By chasing horse heels,
Between carriage wheels,
Till I came upon boards that were spiky.
The next that I had was from Cross,
And once was a favourite spaniel
With Nero, now dead,
And so I was led
Right up to his den like a Daniel.
A mongrel I tried, and he did,
As far as the profit and lossing,
Except that the kind
Endangers the blind,
The breed is so fond of a crossing.
A setter was quite to my taste,
In alleys or streets broad or narrow
Till one day I met
A very dead set,
At a very dead horse in a barrow.
[Illustration: “DOG-BERRY.”]
I once had a dog that went mad,
And sorry I was that I got him;
It came to a run,
And a man with a gun
Pepper’d _me_ when he ought to have shot him.
My profits have gone to the dogs,
My trade has been such a deceiver,
I fear that my aim
Is a mere losing game,
Unless I can find a Retriever.
THE KANGAROOS.
A FABLE.
A PAIR of married kangaroos
(The case is oft a human one too)
Were greatly puzzled once to choose
A trade to put their eldest son to:
A little brisk and busy chap,
As all the little K.’s just then are--
About some two months off the lap,--
They’re not so long in arms as men are.
A twist in each parental muzzle
Betray’d the hardship of the puzzle--
So much the flavour of life’s cup
Is framed by early wrong or right,
And Kangaroos we know are quite
Dependent on their “rearing up.”
The question, with its ins and outs,
Was intricate and full of doubts;
And yet they had no squeamish carings
For trades unfit or fit for gentry,
Such notion never had an entry,
For they had no armorial bearings.
Howbeit they’re not the last on earth
That might indulge in pride of birth;
Whoe’er has seen their infant young
Bob in and out their mother’s pokes,
Would own, with very ready tongue,
They are not born like common folks.
Well, thus the serious subject stood,
It kept the old pair watchful nightly,
Debating for young hopeful’s good,
That he might earn his livelihood,
And go through life (like them) uprightly.
Arms would not do at all; no, marry,
In that line all his race miscarry;
And agriculture was not proper,
Unless they meant the lad to tarry
For ever as a mere clod-hopper.
He was not well cut out for preaching,
At least in any striking style;
And as for being mercantile--
He was not form’d for over-reaching.
The law--why there still fate ill-starr’d him,
And plainly from the bar debarr’d him:
A doctor--who would ever fee him?
In music he could scarce engage,
And as for going on the stage
In tragic socks I think I see him!
He would not make a rigging-mounter;
A haberdasher had some merit,
But there the counter still ran counter,
For just suppose
A lady chose
To ask him for a yard of ferret!
A gardener digging up his beds,
The puzzled parents shook their heads.
“A tailor would not do because--”
They paused and glanced upon his paws.
Some parish post, though fate should place it
Before him, how could he embrace it?
In short each anxious Kangaroo
Discuss’d the matter through and through;
By day they seem’d to get no nearer,
’Twas posing quite--
And in the night
Of course they saw their way no clearer!
At last thus musing on their knees--
Or hinder elbows if you please--
It came--no thought was ever brighter!
In weighing every why and whether,
They jump’d upon it both together--
“Let’s make the imp a _short-hand writer_!”
MORAL.
I wish all human parents so
Would argue what their sons are fit for;
Some would-be critics that I know
Would be in trades they have more wit for.
LITERARY REMINISCENCES.
No. II.
TO do justice to the climate of “stout and original Scotland,” it
promised to act kindly by the constitution committed to its care. The
air evidently agreed with the natives; and auld Robin Grays and John
Andersons were plenty as blackberries, and Auld Lang Syne himself
seemed to walk, bonneted, amongst these patriarchal figures in the
likeness of an old man covered with a mantle. The effect on myself
was rather curious--for I seemed to have come amongst a generation
that scarcely belonged to my era; mature spinsters, waning bachelors,
very motherly matrons, and experienced fathers, that I should have
set down as uncles and aunts, called themselves my cousins; reverend
personages, apparently grandfathers and grandmothers, were simply
great uncles and aunts: and finally I enjoyed an interview with a
relative oftener heard of traditionally, than encountered in the
body--a great-great grandmother--still a tall woman and a tolerable
pedestrian, going indeed down the hill, but with the wheel well
locked. It was like coming amongst the Struldbrugs; and truly, for any
knowledge to the contrary, many of these Old Mortalities are still
living, enjoying their sneeshing, their toddy, their cracks, and
particular reminiscences. The very phrase of being “Scotch’d, but not
killed,” seems to refer to this Caledonian tenacity of life, of which
the well-known Walking Stewart was an example: he was an annuitant in
the County-office, and as the actuaries would say, died very hard. It
must be difficult for the teatotallers to reconcile this longevity with
the imputed enormous consumption of ardent spirits beyond the Tweed.
Scotia, according to the evidence of Mr. Buckingham’s committee, is an
especially drouthie bodie, who drinks whiskey at christenings, and at
buryings, and on all possible occasions besides. Her sons drink not by
the hour or by the day, but by the week,--witness Souter Johnny:--
“Tam lo’ed him like a vera brither,
They had been fou for weeks thegither.”
Swallowing no thin washy potation, but a strong overproof spirit,
with a smack of smoke--and “where there is smoke there is fire,” yet
without flashing off, according to temperance theories, by spontaneous
combustion. On the contrary, the canny northerns are noted for
soundness of constitution and clearness of head, with such a strong
principle of vitality as to justify the poetical prediction of C***,
that the world’s longest liver, or Last Man, will be a Scotchman.
All these favourable signs I duly noted; and prophetically refrained
from delivering the letter of introduction to Doctor C----, which was
to place me under his medical care. As the sick man said, when he
went into the gin-shop instead of the hospital, I “trusted to natur.”
Whenever the weather permitted, therefore, which was generally when
there were no new books to the fore, I haunted the banks and braes, or
paid flying visits to the burns, with a rod intended to punish that
rising generation amongst fishes called trout. But I whipped in vain.
Trout there were in plenty, but like obstinate double teeth, with a bad
operator, they would neither be pulled out nor come out of themselves.
Still the sport, if so it might be called, had its own attractions, as,
the catching excepted, the whole of the Waltonish enjoyments were at
my command, the contemplative quiet, the sweet wholesome country air,
and the picturesque scenery--not to forget the relishing the homely
repast at the shealing or the mill; sometimes I went alone, but often
we were a company, and then we had for our attendant a journeyman
tobacco-spinner, an original, and literary withal, for he had a reel in
his head, whence ever and anon he unwound a line of Allan Ramsay, or
Beattie, or Burns. Methinks I still listen, trudging homewards in the
gloaming, to the recitation of that appropriate stanza, beginning--
“At the close of the day when the hamlet was still,”
delivered with a gusto perhaps only to be felt by a day-labouring
mechanic, who had “nothing but his evenings to himself.” Methinks I
still sympathise with the zest with which he dwelt on the pastoral
images and dreams so rarely realised, when a chance holiday gave
him the fresh-breathing fragrance of the living flower in lieu
of the stale odour of the Indian weed; and philosophically I can
now understand why poetry, with its lofty aspirations and sublimed
feelings, seemed to sound so gratefully to the ear from the lips of
a “squire of low degree.” There is something painful and humiliating
to humanity in the abjectness of mind, that too often accompanies the
sordid condition of the working classes; whereas it is soothing and
consolatory to find the mind of the poor man rising superior to his
estate, and compensating by intellectual enjoyment for the physical
pains and privation that belong to his humble lot. Whatever raises
him above the level of the ox in the garner, or the horse in the
mill, ought to be acceptable to the pride, if not to the charity, of
the fellow creature that calls him brother; for instance, music and
dancing, but against which innocent unbendings some of our magistracy
persist in setting their faces, as if resolved that a low neighbourhood
should enjoy no dance but St. Vitus’s, and no fiddle but the Scotch.
To these open-air pursuits, sailing was afterwards added, bringing
me acquainted with the boatmen and fishermen of The Craig, a hardy
race, rough and ready-witted, from whom perchance was first derived my
partiality for all marine bipeds and sea-craft, from Flag Admirals down
to Jack Junk, the proud first-rate to the humble boatie that “wins the
bairns’ bread.” The Tay at Dundee is a broad noble river, with a racing
tide, which, when it differs with a contrary wind, will get up “_jars_”
(Anglicè waves) quite equal to those of a family manufacture. It was
at least a good preparatory school for learning the rudiments of boat
craft; whereof I acquired enough to be able at need to take the helm
without either going too near the wind or too distant from the port.
Not without some boyish pride I occasionally found myself intrusted
with the guidance of the Coach-Boat--so called from its carrying the
passengers by the Edinburgh Mail--particularly in a calm, when the
utmost exertions of the crew, four old man-of-war’s-men, were required
at the oars. It not unfrequently happened, however, that “the laddie”
was unceremoniously ousted by the unanimous vote, and sometimes by the
united strength, of the ladies, who invariably pitched upon the oldest
old gentleman in the vessel to
“_Steer_ her up and haud her gaun.”
The consequence being the landing with all the baggage, some half-mile
above or below the town--and a too late conviction, that the _Elder_
Brethren of our Trinity House were not the best Pilots.
It was during one of these brief voyages, that I witnessed a
serio-comic accident, at which the reader will smile or sigh according
to his connexion with the Corporation of London. I forget on what
unconscious pilgrimage it was bound, but amongst the other passengers
one day, there was that stock-dove of a gourmand’s affection, a five
lively turtle. Rich and rare as it was, it did not travel unprotected
like Moore’s heroine, but was under the care of a vigilant guardian,
who seemed as jealous of the eyes that looked amorously at his charge,
as if the latter had been a ward in Chancery. So far--namely, as far
as the middle of the Tay--so good; when the spirit of mischief, or
curiosity, or humanity, suggested the convenience of a sea-bath, and
the refreshment the creature might derive from a taste of its native
element. Accordingly, Testudo was lifted over the side, and indulged
with a dip and a wallop in the wave, which actually revived it so
powerfully, that from a playful flapping with its fore-fins it soon
began to struggle most vigorously, like a giant refreshed with brine.
In fact, it paddled with a power which, added to its weight, left no
alternative to its guardian but to go with it, or without it. The event
soon came off. The man tumbled backward into the boat, and the turtle
plunged forward into the deep. There was a splash--a momentary glimpse
of the broad back-shell--the waters closed, and all was over--or
at least under! In vain one of the boatmen aimed a lunge with his
boat-hook, at the fatal spot in particular--in vain another made a blow
with his oar at the Tay in general--whilst a third, in his confusion,
heaved a coil of rope, as he would, could, should, might, or ought to
have done to a drowning Christian. The Amphibious was beyond their
reach, and no doubt, making westward and homeward with all its might,
with an instinctive feeling that
“The world was all before it where to choose
Its place of rest, and Providence its guide.”
Never shall I forget, whilst capable of reminiscences, the face of that
mourning mate thus suddenly bereaved of his turtle! The unfortunate
shepherd, Ding-dog, in Rabelais, could hardly have looked more utterly
and unutterably dozed, crazed, mizmazed, and flabbergasted, when his
whole flock and stock of golden-fleeced sheep suicidically sheepwashed
themselves to death, by wilfully leaping over-board! He said little
in words, but more eloquently clapped his hands to his waistcoat, as
if the loss, as the nurses say, had literally “flown to his stomach.”
And truly, after promising it both callipash and callipee, with the
delicious green fat to boot, what cold comfort could well be colder
than the miserable chilling reflection that there was
“Cauld kail in Aberdeen?”
THE DOMESTIC DILEMMA; A TRUE STORY, FROM THE GERMAN OF JEAN PAUL NEMAND.
CHAPTER I.
“I AM perfectly at my wits’ ends!”
As Madame Doppeldick said this, she thrust both her fat hands into
the pockets of her scarlet cotton apron, at the same time giving her
head a gentle shake, as if implying that it was a case in which heads
and hands could be of no possible avail. She was standing in a little
dormitory, exactly equidistant from two beds, between which her eyes
and her thoughts had been alternating some ten minutes past. They were
small beds,--pallets,--cots,--cribs, troughs upon four legs, such
as the old painters represent the manger in their pictures of the
Nativity. Our German beds are not intended to carry double, and in such
an obscure out-of-the way village as Kleinewinkel, who would think of
finding any thing better in the way of a couch than a sort of box just
too little for a bed, and just too large for a coffin? It was between
two such bedlings, then, that Madame Doppeldick was standing, when she
broke out into the aforesaid exclamation--“I am perfectly at my wits’
ends!”
Now, the wits’ ends of Madame Doppeldick scarcely extended farther
from her scull than the horns of a snail. They seldom protruded far
beyond her nose, and that was a short one; and moreover they were apt
to recede and draw in from the first obstacle they encountered, leaving
their proprietor to feel her own way, as if she had no wits’ ends at
all. Thus, having satisfied themselves that there were only two beds
in the rooms, they left the poor lady in the lurch, and absolutely
at a nonplus, as to how she was to provide for the accommodation of a
third sleeper, who was expected to arrive the same evening. There was
only one best bed-room in the house, and it happened to be the worst
bed-room also; all for Gretchen, the maid-servant, went home nightly to
sleep at her mother’s. To be sure a shake-down might be spread in the
parlour; but to be sure the parlour was also a shop of all sorts; and
to be sure the young officer would object to such accommodations; and
to be very sure, Mr. Doppeldick would object equally to the shake-down,
and giving up the two beds overhead to his wife and the young officer.
“God forgive me,” said the perplexed Madame Doppeldick as she went
slowly down the stairs;--“but I wish Captain Schenk had been killed at
the battle of Leipzig, or had got a bed of glory anywhere else, before
he came to be billeted on us!”
[Illustration: “I’LL TAKE A BED WITH YOU.”]