CHAPTER VIII.

“ALL is quiet, thank Heaven! the Captain is as fast as a church,”

thought Madame Doppeldick, as she stood in nocturnal dishabille, on the

little landing-place, at the stair-head. “Now then, my own Dietrich,”

she whispered, “are you ready to run?” For like the best of wives, as

she was, she did not much care to go anywhere without her husband.

But the deliberate Dietrich was not prepared to escort her. He had

chosen to undress as usual, with his transcendental pipe in his mouth;

indeed it was always the last thing that he took off before getting

into bed, so that till all his philosophy was burned to ashes, his mind

would not consent to any active corporeal exertion, especially to any

locomotion so rapid as a race. At last he stood balancing, made up for

the start; his eyes staring, his teeth clenched, his fists doubled,

and his arms swinging, as if he were about to be admitted a burgess of

Andernach--that is to say, by leaping backwards over a winnowing fan,

with a well poised pail of water in his arms, in order to show if he

accomplished it neatly.

“The night-light may be left burning where it is, Dietrich.”

“Now then, Malchen!”

“Now then Dietrich,--and run gently--on your toes!”

No sooner said than done. The modest Malchen with the speed of a young

wild elephant made a rush across the room, and, with something of a

jump and something more of a scramble, plunged headlong into the bed.

The phlegmatic Dietrich was a thought later, from having included

the whole length of the landing-place in his run, to help him in his

leap, so that just as his bulk came squash! upon the coverlet, his

predecessor was tumbling her body, skow-wow, bow-wow, any-how, over the

side of the bedstead.

[Illustration: COUNTRY QUARTERS.]

“Sancta Maria!” sobbed Madame Doppeldick, as she settled into hysterics

upon the floor.

“Potz-tausend!” said Mr. Doppeldick, as he crawled backwards out of the

bed like a crab.

“Ten thousand devils!” bellowed Captain Schenk--a suppressed

exclamation that the first shock had driven from his mouth into his

throat, from his throat into his lungs, and from thence into his

stomach; but which the second shock had now driven out again in full

force.

[Illustration: THE BEARER OF THE GREAT SEAL.]

* * * * *

“Why, I thought, Mister Jean Paul Nemand (says the reader), that we

left the Captain safe and sound, in his own bed, next the window, with

the patch-work coverlet?”

“And so we did, Mister Carl Wilhelm Jemand (says the author,) but it

was so short, that in five minutes he caught the cramp. Wherefore, as

there was a second spare bed in the room, and as honest Dietrich had

said nothing of other lodgers, and as of all blessings we ought to

choose the biggest, the Captain determined to give it a trial--and

between you and me he liked the bed well enough, till he felt a sort of

smashing pain all over his body, his eyes squeezing out of his face,

his nose squeezing into it, and his precious front teeth, at a gulp,

going uninvited down his gullet!”

[Illustration: “WHY DID YOU SUP ON PORK?”]

ODE FOR THE NINTH OF NOVEMBER.

O Lud! O Lud! O Lud!

I mean of course that venerable town,

Mention’d in stories of renown,

Built formerly of mud;--

O Lud, I say, why didst thou e’er

Invent the office of a Mayor,

An office that no useful purpose crowns,

But to set Aldermen against each other,

That should be Brother unto Brother,--

Sisters at least, by virtue of their gowns

But still if one must have a Mayor

To fill the Civic chair,

O Lud, I say,

Was there no better day

To fix on, than November Ninth so shivery

And dull for showing off the Livery’s livery?

[Illustration: FINDING A MAY’R’S NEST.]

Dimming, alas!

The Brazier’s brass,

Soiling th’ Embroiderers and all the Saddlers,

Sopping the Furriers,

Draggling the Curriers,

And making Merchant Tailors dirty paddlers:

Drenching the Skinners’ Company to the skin,

Making the crusty Vintner chiller,

And turning the Distiller

To cold without instead of warm within;--

Spoiling the bran-new beavers

Of Wax-chandlers and Weavers,

Plastering the Plasterers and spotting Mercers,

Hearty November-cursers--

And showing Cordwainers and dapper Drapers

Sadly in want of brushes and of scrapers;

Making the Grocer’s company not fit

For Company a bit;

Dying the Dyers with a dingy flood,

Daubing incorporated Bakers,

And leading the Patten-makers,

Over their very pattens in the mud,--

O Lud! O Lud! O Lud!

“This is a sorry sight,”

To quote Macbeth--but oh, it grieves me quite,

To see your Wives and Daughters in their plumes--

White plumes not white--

Sitting at open windows catching rheums,

Not “Angels ever bright and fair,”

But angels ever brown and sallow,

With eyes--you cannot see above one pair,

For city clouds of black and yellow--

And artificial flowers, rose, leaf, and bud,

Such sable lilies

And grim daffodilies

Drooping, but not for drought, O Lud! O Lud!

I may as well, while I’m inclined,

Just go through all the faults I find:

Oh Lud! then, with a better air, say June,

Could’st thou not find a better tune

To sound with trumpets, and with drums,

Than “See the Conquering Hero comes,”

When he who comes ne’er dealt in blood!

Thy May’r is not a War Horse, Lud,

That ever charged on Turk or Tartar,

And yet upon a march you strike

That treats him like--

A little French if I may martyr--

Lewis Cart-Horse or Henry Carter!

[Illustration: ARMS FOUND.]

O Lud! I say

Do change your day

To some time when your Show can really show;

When silk can seem like silk, and gold can glow.

Look at your Sweepers, how they shine in May

Have it when there’s a sun to gild the coach,

And sparkle in tiara--bracelet--brooch--

Diamond--or paste--of sister, mother, daughter;

When grandeur really may be grand--

But if thy Pageant’s thus obscured by land--

O Lud! it’s ten times worse upon the water!

Suppose, O Lud, to show its plan,

I call, like Blue Beard’s wife, to sister Anne.

Who’s gone to Beaufort Wharf with niece and aunt

To see what she can see--and what she can’t;

Chewing a saffron bun by way of cud,

To keep the fog out of a tender lung,

While perch’d in a verandah nicely hung

Over a margin of thy own black mud,

O Lud!

Now Sister Anne, I call to thee,

Look out and see:

Of course about the bridge you view them rally

And sally,

With many a wherry, sculler, punt, and cutter;

The Fishmongers’ grand boat, but not for butter,

The Goldsmiths’ glorious galley,--

Of course you see the Lord Mayor’s coach aquatic,

With silken banners that the breezes fan,

In gold all glowing,

And men in scarlet rowing,

Like Doge of Venice to the Adriatic;

Of course you see all this, O Sister Anne?

“No, I see no such thing!

I only see the edge of Beaufort Wharf,

With two coal lighters fasten’d to a ring:

And, dim as ghosts,

Two little boys are jumping over posts;

And something farther off,

That’s rather like the shadow of a dog,

And all beyond is fog.

If there be any thing so fine and bright,

To see it I must see by second sight.

Call this a Show? It is not worth a pin!

I see no barges row,

No banners blow;

The show is merely a gallanty-show,

Without a lamp or any candle in.”

But sister Anne, my dear,

Although you cannot see, you still may hear?

Of course you hear, I’m very sure of that,

The “Water parted from the Sea” in C,

Or “Where the Bee sucks,” set in B,

Or Huntsman’s chorus from the Freyschutz frightful,

Or Handel’s Water Music in A flat.

Oh music from the water comes delightful!

It sounds as no where else it can:

You hear it first,

In some rich burst,

Then faintly sighing,

Tenderly dying

Away upon the breezes, Sister Anne.

“There is no breeze to die on;

And all their drums and trumpets, flutes and harps,

Could never cut their way with ev’n three sharps

Through such a fog as this, you may rely on.

I think, but am not sure, I hear a hum,

Like a very muffled double drum,

And then a something faintly shrill,

Like Bartlemy Fair’s old buz at Pentonville.

And now and then hear a pop,

As if from Pedley’s Soda Water shop.

I’m almost ill with the strong scent of mud,

And, not to mention sneezing,

My cough is, more than usual, teasing;

I really fear that I have chill’d my blood,

O Lud! O Lud! O Lud! O Lud! O Lud!”

[Illustration: THE HOUSE ADJOURNED.]

SONNET.

THE sky is glowing in one ruddy sheet;--

A cry of fire! resounds from door to door;

And westward still the thronging people pour;--

The turncock hastens to F. P. 6 feet,

And quick unlocks the fountains of the street;

While rumbling engines, with increasing roar,

Thunder along to luckless Number Four,

Where Mr. Dough makes bread for folks to eat.

And now through blazing frames, and fiery beams,

The Globe, the Sun, the Phœnix, and what not,

With gushing pipes throw up abundant streams,

On burning bricks, and twists, on rolls--too hot--

And scorching loaves,--as if there were no shorter

And cheaper way of making toast-and-water!

RONDEAU.

[EXTRACTED FROM A WELL-KNOWN ANNUAL.]

O CURIOUS reader, didst thou ne’er

Behold a worshipful Lord May’r

Seated in his great civic chair

So dear?

Then cast thy longing eyes this way,

It is the ninth November day,

And in his new-born state survey

One here!

To rise from little into great

Is pleasant; but to sink in state

From high to lowly is a fate

Severe.

Too soon his shine is overcast,

Chill’d by the next November blast;

His blushing honours only last

One year!

He casts his fur and sheds his chains,

And moults till not a plume remains--

The next impending May’r distrains

His gear.

He slips like water through a sieve--

Ah, could his little splendour live

Another twelvemonth--he would give

One ear!

[Illustration: FANCY PORTRAIT:--THE LORD MAYOR.]

LONDON FASHIONS FOR NOVEMBER.

REMARKS.

NO season has offered such _variétés_ in costume as the early part

of the present month. Fancy dresses of the most _outré_ description

have appeared, even in the streets. Short waists and long, full

sleeves and empty, broad skirts and narrow, whole skirts, half skirts,

and none at all, have been indifferently worn. For the _Promenade_,

rags and tatters of all kinds have been in much favour; very few

buttons are worn; and the coats, waistcoats, and pantaloons, have

been invariably padded and stuffed with hay or straw. We observed

several _exquisites_ making morning calls in scare-crow great-coats;

the skirts, lappels, collars, and cuffs, picturesquely, but not too

formally, jagged _à la Vandyke_. The prevailing colours--all colours

at once. Wigs have been very general--both _en buzz_ and _frizzé_;

these have been commonly composed of deal shavings; but in some cases

of tow, and sometimes horse-hair. For the evening party, a few squibs

and crackers are stuck in the _perruque_ or hat, and the boots and

shoes are polished up with a little pitch or tar; sometimes a Catherine

wheel has been added _en coquarde_. Frills, collars, and ruffles, of

_papier coupé_, have entirely superseded those of cambric or lace, and

shirts of every description are quite discarded. Paint has been in much

request, and ruddle seems to have been preferred to _rouge_; patches

are also much worn, not on the countenance, but on the clothes; for

these the favourite _matériel_ is tartan, plush of any colour, or

corduroy. Several dandies appeared on the 5th with gloves, but they

are not essential requisites to be in the _ton_: canes are discarded;

even a riding-whip would be reckoned to evince _mauvais goût_, but

a half-penny bunch of matches “_à la main_” is indispensable to a

fashionable aspirant. The old practice of being carried abroad in

chairs has been universally revived; and it must be confessed, that it

exhibits the Figure to much advantage.

[Illustration]

Amongst the _Nouveautés_, we observed the following _Caractère_, as

making a felicitous _début_. The coast was _à-la-militaire_, of the

colour formerly so much in vogue under the name of _fumée de Londres_,

turned up with _flamme d’enfer_. It was _garni_ with very dead gold;

and slashed _à l’Espagnole_, back and front. The pantaloons were

equally _bizarre_; one leg being composed of Scotch tartan, and the

other of blue striped bed-ticking, made very full, _en matelot_, in

compliance with the prevailing taste for navals. The wig was made of

green and white willow shavings, with a large link for a _queue_, tied

on with a _nœud_ of red tape. The hat, brown, somewhat darker than

the Devonshire beaver, but disinclining to black. It had no brim, and

was without a crown. A tarnished badge of the Phœnix Fire Office, on

the bust, gave a _distingué_ air to the whole Figure, which was going

down Bond-street, and excited a sensation quite _à-l’envie_ by its

appearance in the World of Fashion.

N.B.--We are requested to state that the above described figure

was entirely invented and manufactured by little Solomon Levy, of

Hollywell-street, Strand, who has a variety always on show, about the

metropolis.

SYMPTOMS OF OSSIFICATION.

“An indifference to tears, and blood, and human suffering, that

could only belong to a _Boney-parte_.”--_Life of Napoleon._

TIME was, I always had a drop

For any tale or sigh of sorrow;

My handkerchief I used to sop

Till often I was forced to borrow;

I don’t know how it is, but now

My eyelids seldom want a drying;

The doctors, p’rhaps, could tell me how--

I fear my heart is ossifying!

O’er Goethe how I used to weep,

With turnip cheeks and nose of scarlet,

When Werter put himself to sleep

With pistols kiss’d and clean’d by Charlotte;

Self-murder is an awful sin,

No joke there is in bullets flying,

But now at such a tale I grin--

I fear my heart is ossifying!

The Drama once could shake and thrill

My nerves, and set my tears a stealing,

The Siddons then could turn at will

Each plug upon the main of feeling;

At Belvidera now I smile,

And laugh while Mrs. Haller’s crying;

’Tis odd, so great a change of style--

I fear my heart is ossifying!

That heart was such--some years ago,

To see a beggar quite would shock it,

And in his hat I used to throw

The quarter’s savings of my pocket:

I never wish--as I did _then_!--

The means from my own purse supplying,

To turn them all to gentlemen--

I fear my heart is ossifying!

We’ve had some serious things of late,

Our sympathies to beg or borrow,

New melo-drames, of tragic fate,

And acts and songs, and tales of sorrow;

Miss Zouch’s case, our eyes to melt,

And sundry actors sad good-bye-ing.

But Lord!--so little have I felt,

I’m sure my heart is ossifying!

THE POACHER.

A SERIOUS BALLAD.

But a bold pheasantry, their country’s pride,

When once destroyed can never be supplied.

GOLDSMITH.

BILL BLOSSOM was a nice young man,

And drove the Bury coach;

But bad companions were his bane,

And egg’d him on to poach.

They taught him how to net the birds,

And how to noose the hare;

And with a wiry terrier,

He often set a snare.

Each “shiny night” the moon was bright,

To park, preserve, and wood

He went, and kept the game alive,

By killing all he could.

[Illustration: A BUCK-ANEER!]

Land-owners, who had rabbits, swore

That he had this demerit--

Give him an inch of warren, he

Would take a yard of ferret.

At partridges he was not nice;

And many, large and small,

Without Hall’s powder, without lead,

Were sent to Leaden-Hall.

He did not fear to take a deer,

From forest, park, or lawn;

And without courting lord or duke,

Used frequently to _fawn_.

Folks who had hares discovered snares--

His course they could not stop:

No barber he, and yet he made

Their hares a perfect crop.

To pheasant he was such a foe,

He tried the keeper’s nerves;

They swore he never seem’d to have

_Jam_ satis of _preserves_.

The Shooter went to beat, and found

No sporting worth a pin,

Unless he tried the _covers_ made

Of silver, plate, or tin.

In Kent the game was little worth,

In Surrey not a button;

The Speaker said he often tried

The _Manors_ about _Sutton_.

No county from his tricks was safe:

In each he tried his lucks,

And when the keepers were in _Beds_,

He often was at _Bucks_.

And when he went to _Bucks_, alas!

They always came to _Herts_;

And even _Oxon_ used to wish

That he had his deserts.

But going to his usual _Hants_,

Old _Cheshire_ laid his plots:

He got entrapp’d by legal _Berks_,

And lost his life in _Notts_.

[Illustration: LUNAR CAUSTIC.]

SKETCHES ON THE ROAD.

THE SUDDEN DEATH.

THERE are several objections to one-horse vehicles. With two wheels,

they are dangerous; with four, generally cruel inventions, tasking one

animal with the labour of two. And, in either case, should your horse

think proper to die on the road you have no survivor to drag your

carriage through the rest of the stage; or to be sent off galloping

with the coachman on his back for a coadjutor.

That was precisely Miss Norman’s dilemma.

If a horse could be supposed to harbour so deadly a spite against his

proprietor, I should believe that the one in question chose to vent

his animosity by giving up the ghost just at the spot where it would

cause most annoyance and inconvenience. For fourteen months past he

had drawn the Lady in daily airings to a point just short of the Binn

Gate;--because that fifty yards further would have cost sixpence; a sum

which Miss Norman could, or believed she could, but ill spare out of a

limited income. At this very place, exactly opposite the tall elm which

usually gave the signal for turning homeward, did Plantagenet prefer to

drop down stone dead: as if determined that his mistress should have to

walk every inch of it, to her own house.

But Miss Norman never walked.

[Illustration: “TAKE CARE OF THE PENCE, AND THE POUNDS WILL TAKE CARE

OF THEMSELVES.”]

Pedestrianism was, in her opinion, a very vulgar exercise, unavoidable

with the poor, and to some people, as Postmen, Bankers’ clerks,

Hawkers, and the like, a professional mode of progression, but a bodily

exertion very derogatory to persons of birth and breeding. So far was

this carried, that she was once heard to declare, speaking of certain

rather humble obsequies, “she would rather live for ever than have a

walking funeral!” On another occasion, when the great performance of

Captain Barclay, in walking a thousand miles in a thousand hours, was

submitted to her opinion, she said “it was a step she did not approve.”

[Illustration: DESCENDED FROM THE CONQUEROR.]

It might be surmised from such declarations, that she was incapable of

personal locomotion, through some original infirmity, for instance,

such as results from the rickets; whereas, so far from allowing any

deficiency on the part of her nurse or parents, in putting her to

her feet, Miss Norman professed to have the perfect command of all

her limbs, and would have felt extremely offended at a hint that she

could not dance. It was quite another weakness than any bodily one

which restricted her promenades, and made her feet almost as useless

to her as those of the female Chinese. Pride was in fault; and partly

her surname, for suggesting to one of her ancestors that he was a

descendant of William the First of England: a notion, which, after

turning his own head, had slightly crazed those of his successors, who

all believed, as part and parcel of their inheritance, on the strength

of the “Norman” and some dubious old pedigree, that the Conqueror was

their great Progenitor.

The hereditary arrogance engendered by this imaginary distinction, had

successively displayed itself by outbreaks of different character,

according to the temperament of the individual who happened to be head

of the family: with Miss Norman, the last of _her_ line, it took the

form of a boast that every branch and twig of her illustrious tree had

always ridden “in their own carriage.” I am not quite sure whether

she did not push this pretension further back than the date of the

invention of “little houses on wheels” would warrant; however, it held

good, in local tradition, for several generations, although the family

vehicle had gradually dwindled down from an ample coach to a chariot,

a fly, and, finally, the one-inside sedan-chair upon wheels, which the

sudden death of Plantagenet left planted fifty yards short of the Binn

Gate. To glance at the whole set-out, nobody would ever have attributed

high birth and inherent gentility to its owner. ’Twas never of a piece.

For once that the body was new-painted, the arms were thrice refreshed

and touched up, till the dingy vehicle, by the glaring comparison,

looked more ancient than the quarterings. The crest was much oftener

renewed than the hammer-cloth; and Humphrey, the coachman, evidently

never got a new suit all at once. He had always old drab to bran-new

bright sky-blue plush; or _vice versâ_. Sometimes a hat in its first

gloss got the better of its old tarnished band; sometimes the fresh

gold lace made the brown beaver look still more an antique. The same

with the harness and the horse, which was sometimes a tall spanking

brute, who seemed to have outgrown the concern; at other times, a

short pony-like animal, who had been put into the shafts by mistake.

In short, the several articles seemed to belong the more especially

to Miss Norman because they belonged so little to each other. A few

minutes made a great change in her possessions, instead of a living

horse, hight Plantagenet, she was proprietor of certain hundred-weights

of dogs’-meat.

[Illustration: “WARRANTED QUIET TO RIDE OR DRIVE.”]

It was just at this moment that I came up with my gig; and knowing

something of the lady’s character, I pulled up in expectation of a

scene. Leaving my own bay, who would stand as steady as a mute at

death’s door, I proceeded to assist the coachman in extricating his

horse; but the nag of royal line was stone dead: and I accompanied

Humphrey to the carriage-door to make his report.

A recent American author has described as an essential attribute

of high birth and breeding in England, a certain sort of quakerly

composure, in all possible sudden emergencies, such as an alarm of

the house on fire, or a man falling into a fit by one’s side; in

fact, the same kind of self-command which Pope praises in a lady

who is “mistress of herself, though China fall.” In this particular

Miss Norman’s conduct justified her pretensions. She was mistress of

herself, though her horse fell. She did not start--exclaim--put her

head out of the window, or even let down the front glass: she only

adjusted herself more exactly in the middle of the seat, drew herself

bolt upright, and fixed her eyes on the back of the coach-box. In this

posture Humphrey found her.

“If you please, Ma’am, Planty-ginit be dead.” The lady acquiesced with

the smallest nod ever made.

“I’ve took off the collar, and the bit out, and got un out o’

harness entirely; but he be as unanimate as his own shoes;” and the

informant looked earnestly at the lady to observe the effect of the

communication. But she never moved a muscle; and honest Humphrey was

just shutting the coach-door, to go and finish the laying out of the

corpse, when he was recalled.

“Humphrey!”

“What’s your pleasure, Ma’am?”

“Remember, another time----”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“When a horse of mine is deceased----”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Touch your hat.”

The abashed coachman instantly paid up the salute in arrear. Unblessed

by birthright with self-possession, he had not even the advantage of

experience in the first families, where he might have learned a little

from good example: he was a raw uncouth country servant, with the great

merit of being cheap, whom Miss Norman had undertaken to educate; but

he was still so far from proficient, that in the importance of breaking

the death to his mistress, he had omitted one of those minor tokens of

respect which she always rigorously exacted.

It was now my own turn to come forward, and as deferentially as if

she had been indeed the last of the Conqueror’s Normandy pippins,

I tendered a seat in my chaise, which she tacitly declined, with a

gracious gesture of head and hand.

“If you please, Ma’am,” said Humphrey, taking care to touch his hat,

and shutting his head into the carriage so that I might not overhear

him, “he’s a respectable kind of gentleman enough, and connected with

some of the first houses.”

“The gentleman’s name?”

“To be sure, Ma’am, the gentleman can’t help his name,” answered

Humphrey, fully aware of the peculiar prejudices of his mistress; “but

it be Huggins.”

[Illustration: “ONE MAY GO FARTHER AND FARE WORSE”--AS THE HORSE SAID]

“Shut the door.”

It appeared, on explanation with the coachman, that he had mistaken

me for a person in the employ of the opulent firm of Naylor and

Co., whose province it was to travel throughout Britain with samples

of hardware in the box-seat of his gig. I did not take the trouble

to undeceive him, but determining to see the end of the affair, I

affected to hope that the lady would change her mind; and accordingly

I renewed, from time to time, my offer of accommodation, which was

always stiffly declined. After a tolerably long pause on all sides, my

expectation was excited by the appearance of the W---- coach coming

through the Binn Gate, the only public vehicle that used the road.

At sight of the dead horse, the driver (the noted Jem Wade) pulled

up--alighted--and standing at the carriage-door with his hat off, as if

he knew his customer, made an offer of his services. But Miss Norman,

more dignified than ever, waved him off with her hand. Jem became more

pressing, and the lady more rigid. “She never rode,” she condescended

to say, “in _public_ vehicles.” Jem entreated again; but “she was

accustomed to be driven by her _own_ coachman.” It was in vain that in

answer he praised the quietness of his team, the safety of his patent

boxes, besides promising the utmost steadiness and sobriety on his

own part. Miss Norman still looked perseveringly at the back of her

coach-box; which, on an unlucky assurance that “he would take as much

care of her as of his own mother,” she exchanged for a steady gaze at

the side-window, opposite to the coachman, so long as he remained in

the presence.

“By your leave, Ma’am,” said Humphrey, putting his hand to his hat, and

keeping it there, “Mr. Wade be a very civil-spoken careful whip, and

his coach loads very respectable society. There’s Sir Vincent Ball on

the box.”

“If Sir Vincent Ball chooses to degrade himself, it is no rule for

_me_,” retorted the lady, without turning her head; when, lo! Sir

Vincent appeared himself, and politely endeavoured to persuade her out

of her prejudices. It was useless. Miss Norman’s ancestors had one

and all expressed a very decided opinion against stage-coaches, by

never getting into one; and “she did not feel disposed to disgrace a

line longer than common, by riding in any carriage but her own.” Sir

Vincent bowed and retreated. So did Jem Wade, without bowing, fervently

declaring “he would never do the civil thing to the old female sex

again!”

[Illustration: “JACK’S AS GOOD AS HIS MASTER.”]

The stage rattled away at an indignant gallop; and we were left once

more to our own resources. By way of passing the time, I thrice

repeated my offers to the obdurate old maiden, and endured as many

rebuffs. I was contemplating a fourth trial, when a signal was made

from the carriage window, and Humphrey, hat in hand, opened the door.

“Procure me a post-chaise.”

“A po-shay!” echoed Humphrey, but, like an Irish echo, with some

variation from his original--“Lord help ye, Ma’am, there bean’t such a

thing to be had ten miles round--no, not for love nor money. Why, bless

ye, it be election time, and there bean’t coach, cart, nor dog-barrow,

but what be gone to it!”

“No matter,” said the mistress, drawing herself up with an air of lofty

resignation. “I revoke my order; for it is far, very far from the kind

of riding that I prefer. And Humphrey----”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Another time--”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“Remember once for all--”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“I do not choose to be blest, or the Lord to help me.”

Another pause in our proceedings, during which a company of ragged

boys, who had been black-berrying, came up, and planted themselves,

with every symptom of vulgar curiosity, around the carriage. Miss

Norman had now no single glass through which she could look without

encountering a group of low-life faces staring at her with all their

might. Neither could she help hearing some such shocking ill-bred

remarks as, “Vy don’t the frizzle-vigged old Guy get into the gemman’s

drag?” Still the pride of the Normans sustained her. She seemed to draw

a sort of supplementary neck out of her bosom, and sat more rigidly

erect than ever, occasionally favouring the circle, like a mad bull at

bay, with a most awful threatening look, accompanied ever by the same

five words:

“I CHOOSE to be alone.”

It is easy to say choose, but more difficult to have one’s choice. The

blackberry boys chose to remain; and in reply to each congé only proved

by a general grin how very much teeth are set off to advantage by

purple mouths. I confess I took pity on the pangs even of unwarrantable

pride, and urged my proposal again with some warmth; but it was

repelled with absolute scorn.

“Fellow, you are insolent.”

“Quis Deus vult perdere,” thought I, and I determined to let her take

her fate, merely staying to mark the result. After a tedious interval,

in which her mind had doubtless looked abroad as well as inward, it

appeared that the rigour of the condition, as to riding only in her own

carriage, had been somewhat relaxed to meet the exigency of the case. A

fresh tapping at the window summoned the obsequious Humphrey to receive

orders.

“Present my compliments at the Grove--and the loan of the chariot will

be esteemed a favour.”

“By your leave, Ma’am, if I may speak--”

“You may _not_.”

Humphrey closed the door, but remained for a minute gazing on the

panel, at a blue arm, with a red carving-knife in its hand, defending a

black and white rolling-pin. If he meditated any expostulation, he gave

it up, and proceeded to drive away the boys, one of whom was astride

on the dead Plantagenet, a second grinning through his collar, and two

more preparing to play at horses with the reins. It seemed a strange

mode enough that he took to secure the harness, by hanging it, collar

and all, on his own back and shoulders; but by an aside to me, he

explained the mystery, in a grumble,

“It be no use in the world. I see the charrot set off for Lonnon.

I shan’t go compli_ment_ing no Grove. I’se hang about a bit at the

George, and compli_ment_ a pint o’ beer.”

Away he went, intending, no doubt, to be fully as good as his word: and

I found the time grow tedious in his absence. I had almost made up my

mind to follow his example, when hope revived at the sound of wheels,

and up came a tax-cart carrying four insides, namely, two well-grown

porkers, Master Bardell the pig-butcher, and his foreman Samuel Slark,

or, as he was more commonly called, Sam the Sticker. They were both

a trifle “the worse for liquor,” if such a phrase might honestly be

applied to men who were only a little more courageous, more generous,

and civil and obliging to the fair sex, than their wont when perfectly

sober. The Sticker, especially--in his most temperate moments a perfect

sky-blue-bodied, red-faced, bowing and smirking pattern of politeness

to females, was now, under the influence of good ale, a very Sir

Calidore, ready to comfort and succour distressed damsels, to fight for

them, live or die for them, with as much of the chivalrous spirit as

remains in our times. They inquired, and I explained in a few words the

lady’s dilemma, taking care to forewarn them, by relating the issue of

my own attempts in her behalf.

“Mayhap you warn’t half purlite or pressing enough,” observed Sam,

with a side wink at his master. “It an’t a bit of a scrape, and a

civil word, as will get a strange lady up into a strange gemman’s gig.

It wants warmth-like, and making on her feel at home. Only let me

alone with her, for a persuader, and I’ll have her up in our cart--my

master’s that is to say--afore you can see whether she has feet or

hoofs.”

In a moment the speaker was at the carriage-door, stroking down his

sleek forelocks, bowing, and using his utmost eloquence, even to the

repeating most of his arguments twice over. She would be perfectly

safe, he told her, sitting up between him and master, and quite

pleasant, for the pigs would keep themselves to themselves at the back

of the cart, and as for the horse, he was nothing but a good one,

equal to twelve mile an hour--with much more to the same purpose. It

was quite unnecessary for Miss Norman to say she had never ridden

in a cart with two pigs and two butchers; and she did not say it.

She merely turned away her head from the man, to be addressed by

the master, at the other window, the glass of which she had just

let down for a little air. “A taxed cart, Madam,” he said, “mayn’t

be exactly the wehicle, accustomed to, and so forth; but thereby,

considering respective ranks of life, why, the more honour done to your

humbles, which, as I said afore, will take every care, and observe

the respectful; likewise in distancing the two hogs. Whereby, every

thing considered, namely, necessity and so forth, I will make so bold

as hope, Madam, excusing _more_ pressing, and the like, and dropping

ceremony for the time being, you will embrace us at once, as you shall

be most heartily welcome to, and be considered, by your humbles, as a

favour besides.”

[Illustration: “NONE BUT THE BRAVE DESERVE THE FAIR.”]

The sudden drawing up of the window, so violently as to shiver the

glass, showed sufficiently in what light Miss Norman viewed Master

Bardell’s behaviour. It was an unlucky smash, for it afforded what the

tradesman would have called “an advantageous opening” for pouring in a

fresh stream of eloquence; and the Sticker, who shrewdly estimated the

convenience of the breach, came round the back of the carriage, and as

junior counsel “followed on the same side.” But he took nothing by the

motion. The lady was invincible, or, as the discomfited pair mutually

agreed, “as hard for to be _convinced into a cart_, as any thing on

four legs.” The blackberry boys had departed, the evening began to

close in, and no Humphrey made his appearance. The butcher’s horse was

on the fret, and his swine grumbled at the delay. The master and man

fell into consultation, and favoured me afterwards with the result, the

Sticker being the orator. It was man’s duty, he said, to look after

women, pretty or ugly, young or old; it was what we all came into the

world to do, namely, to make ourselves comfortable and agreeable to

the fair sex. As for himself, purtecting females was his nature, and

he should never lie easy agin, if so be he left the lady on the road;

and providing a female wouldn’t be purtected with her own free will,

she ought to be forced to, like any other ’live beast unsensible of its

own good. Them was his sentiments, and his master followed ’em up. They

knowed Miss Norman, name and fame, and was both well-known respectable

men in their lines, and I might ax about for their characters. Whereby,

supposing I approved, they’d have her, right and tight, in their cart,

afore she felt herself respectfully off her legs.

Such were the arguments and the plan of the bull-headed pair. I

attempted to reason with them, but my consent had clearly been only

asked as a compliment. The lady herself hastened the catastrophe.

Whether she had overheard the debate, or the amount of long pent-up

emotion became too overwhelming for its barriers, I know not, but Pride

gave way to Nature, and a short hysteric scream proceeded from the

carriage. Miss Norman was in fits! We contrived to get her seated on

the step of the vehicle, where the butchers supported her, fanning her

with their hats, whilst I ran off to a little pool near at hand for

some cold water. It was the errand only of some four or five minutes,

but when I returned, the lady, only half conscious, had been caught

up, and there she sate, in the cart, right and tight, between the two

butchers, instead of the two Salvages, or Griffins, or whatever they

were, her hereditary supporters. They were already on the move. I

jumped into my own gig, and put my horse to his speed; but I had lost

my start, and when I came up with them, they were already galloping

into W----. Unfortunately her residence was at the further end of the

town, and thither I saw her conveyed, struggling in the bright blue,

and somewhat greasy, arms of Sam the Sticker, screaming in concert with

the two swine, and answered by the shouts of the whole rabblement of

the place, who knew Miss Norman quite as well, by sight, as “her own

carriage!”

[Illustration: “I’M AFRAID I’M IN LOW COMPANY!”]

[Illustration: A MINOR CANON.]

I CANNOT BEAR A GUN.

“Timidity is generally reckoned an essential attribute of the fair

sex, and this absurd notion gives rise to more false starts than

a race for the Leger. Hence screams at mice, fits at spiders,

faces at toads, jumps at lizards, flights from daddy longlegs,

panics at wasps, _sauve qui peut_ at sight of a gun. Surely, when

the military exercise is made a branch of education at so many

ladies’ academies, the use of the musket would only be a judicious

step further in the march of mind. I should not despair, in a

month’s practice, of making the most timid British female fond of

small-arms.”--HINTS BY A CORPORAL.

IT can’t be minced, I’m quite convinced

All girls are full of flam,

Their feelings fine and feminine

Are nothing else but sham.

On all their tricks I need not fix,

I’ll only mention one,

How many a Miss will tell you this,

“I cannot bear a gun!”

There’s cousin Bell can’t ’bide the smell

Of powder--horrid stuff!

A single pop will make her drop,

She shudders at a puff.

My Manton near, with aspen fear

Will make her scream and run:

“It’s always so, you brute, you know

I cannot bear a gun!”

About my flask I must not ask,

I must not wear a belt,

I must not take a punch to make

My pellets, card or felt;

And if I just allude to dust,

Or speak of number one,

“I beg you’ll not--don’t talk of shot,

I cannot bear a gun!”

Percussion cap I dare not snap,

I may not mention Hall,

Or raise my voice for Mr. Joyce,

His wadding to recall;

At Hawker’s book I must not look,

All shooting I must shun,

Or else--“It’s hard, you’ve no regard,

I cannot bear a gun!”

The very dress I wear no less

Must suit her timid mind,

A blue or black must clothe my back,

With swallow-tails behind;

By fustian, jean, or velveteen,

Her nerves are overdone:

“Oh do not, John, put gaiters on,

I cannot bear a gun!”

E’en little James she snubs, and blames

His Liliputian train,

Two inches each from mouth to breach,

And charged with half a grain--

His crackers stopp’d, his squibbing dropp’d.

He has no fiery fun,

And all thro’ her “How dare you, Sir?

I cannot bear a gun!”

[Illustration: “JAMES’S POWDER.”]

Yet Major Flint,--the Devil’s in’t!

May talk from morn to night,

Of springing mines, and twelves and nines,

And volleys left and right,

Of voltigeurs and tirailleurs,

And bullets by the ton:

She never dies of fright, or cries

“I cannot bear a gun!”

It stirs my bile to see her smile

At all his bang and whiz,

But if I talk of morning walk,

And shots as good as his,

I must not name the fallen game:

As soon as I’ve begun,

She’s in her pout, and crying out,

“I cannot bear a gun!”

Yet, underneath the rose, her teeth

Are false, to match her tongue:

Grouse, partridge, hares, she never spares,

Or pheasants, old or young--

On widgeon, teal, she makes a meal,

And yet objects to none:

“What have I got, it’s full of shot!

I cannot bear a gun!”

At pigeon-pie she is not shy,

Her taste it never shocks,

Though they should be from Battersea,

So famous for blue rocks;

Yet when I bring the very thing

My marksmanship has won,

She cries “Lock up that horrid cup,

I cannot bear a gun!”

Like fool and dunce I got her once

A box at Drury Lane,

And by her side I felt a pride

I ne’er shall feel again:

To read the bill it made her ill,

And this excuse she spun,

“Der Freyschütz, oh, seven shots; you know,

I cannot bear a gun!”

Yet at a hint from Major Flint,

Her very hands she rubs,

And quickly drest in all her best,

Is off to Wormwood Scrubbs.

The whole review she sits it through,

With noise enough to stun,

And never winks, or even thinks,

“I cannot bear a gun!”

[Illustration: WOOLWICH WARREN.]

She thus may blind the Major’s mind

In mock-heroic strife,

But let a bout at war break out,

And where’s the soldier’s wife,

To take his kit and march a bit

Beneath a broiling sun?

Or will she cry, “My dear, good-bye,

I cannot bear a gun?”

If thus she doats on army coats,

And regimental cuffs,

The yeomanry might surely be

Secure from her rebuffs;

But when I don my trappings on,

To follow Captain Dunn,

My carbine’s gleam provokes a scream,

“I cannot bear a gun.”

It can’t be minced, I’m quite convinced,

All girls are full of flam,

Their feelings fine, and feminine,

Are nothing else but sham;

On all their tricks I need not fix,

I’ll only mention one,

How many a Miss will tell you this,

“I cannot bear a gun!”

TRIMMER’S EXERCISE, FOR THE USE OF CHILDREN.

Here, come, Master Timothy Todd,

Before we have done you’ll look grimmer,

You’ve been spelling some time for the rod,

And your jacket shall know I’m a Trimmer.

You don’t know your A from your B,

So backward you are in your Primer;

Don’t kneel--you shall go on _my_ knee,

For I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.

This morning you hinder’d the cook,

By melting your dumps in the skimmer;

Instead of attending your book,--

But I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.

To-day, too, you went to the pond,

And bathed, though you are not a swimmer:

And with parents so doting and fond--

But I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.

After dinner you went to the wine,

And help’d yourself--yes, to a brimmer;

You couldn’t walk straight in a line,

But I’ll make you to know I’m a Trimmer.

[Illustration: FANCY PORTRAIT--MRS. TRIMMER.]

You kick little Tomkins about,

Because he is slighter and slimmer;

Are the weak to be thump’d by the stout?

But I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.

Then you have a sly pilfering trick,

Your school-fellows call you the nimmer,--

I will cut to the bone if you kick!

For I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.

To-day you made game at my back:

You think that my eyes are grown dimmer,

But I watch’d you, I’ve got a sly knack!

And I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.

Don’t think that my temper is hot,

It’s never beyond a slow simmer;

I’ll teach you to call me Dame Trot,

But I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.

Miss Edgeworth, or Mrs. Chapone,

Might melt to behold your tears glimmer;

Mrs. Barbauld would let you alone,

But I’ll have you to know I’m a Trimmer.

[Illustration: LITTLE JACK AND HIS TRIMMER.]

SOME ACCOUNT OF WILLIAM WHISTON.

“That boy is the brother of Pam----.”--JOSEPH ANDREWS.

“WILLIAM certainly _is_ fond of whist!”

This was an admission drawn, or extracted, as Cartwright would say,

like a double tooth from the mouth of William’s mother; an amiable and

excellent lady, who ever reluctantly confessed foibles in her family,

and invariably endeavoured to exhibit to the world the sunny side of

her children.

There can be no possibility of doubt that William _was_ fond of whist.

He doted on it. Whist was his first passion--his first love; and in

whist he experienced no disappointment. The two were made for each

other.

[Illustration: CARDY MUMS.]

William was one of a large bunch of children, and he never grew up. On

his seventh birthday a relation gave him a miniature pack of cards, and

made him a whist-player for life. Our bias dates much earlier than some

natural philosophers suppose. I remember William, a mere child, being

one day William of Orange, and objecting to a St. Michael’s because it

had no pips.

At school he was a total failure; except in reckoning the odd tricks.

He counted nothing by honours, and the schoolmaster said of his head

what he has since said occasionally of his hand that “it held literally

nothing.”

At sixteen, after a long maternal debate between the black and red

suits, William was articled to an attorney: but instead of becoming

a respectable land-shark, he played double-dummy with the Common-Law

Clerk, and was discharged on the 6th of November. The principal

remonstrated with him on a breach of duty, and William imprudently

answered that he was aware of his duty, like the ace of spades. Mr.

Bitem immediately banged the door against him, and William, for the

first time in his life--to use his own expression, “got a slam.”

William having served his time, and, as he calls it, followed suit for

five years, was admitted as an attorney, and began to play at that

finessing game, the Law. _Short-hand_ he still studied and practised;

though more in parlours than in court.

William at one period admired Miss Hunt, or Miss Creswick, or Miss

Hardy, or Miss Reynolds; a daughter of one of the great card-makers, I

forget which--and he cut for partners, but without “getting the Lady.”

His own explanation was that he “_was discarded_.” He then paid his

addresses to a Scotch girl, a Miss MacNab, but she professed religious

scruples about cards, and he _revoked_. I have heard it said that she

expected to match higher; indeed William used to say she “looked over

his hand.”

William is short, and likes shorts. He likes nothing of _longs_, but

the St. John of them: and he only takes to _him_, because that saint

is partial to a _rubber_. Whist seems to influence his face as well as

form; it is like a knave of clubs. I sometimes fancy whist could not

go on without William, and certainly William could not go on without

whist. His whole conversation, except on cards, is wool-gathering;

and on that subject is like wool--carded. He “speaks by the card,”

and never gives equivocation a chance. At the Olympic once he had a

quarrel with a gentleman about _the lead_ of Madame Vestris or Miss

Sydney: he was required to give his card, and he gave the “Deuce of

Hearts.” This was what he termed “calling out.”

Of late years William only goes out like a bad rushlight, earlyish of

a night, and quits every table that is not covered with green baize

with absolute disgust. The fairies love by night to “_gambol_ on the

_green_,” and so does William, and he is constantly humming with great

gusto,

“Come unto these yellow sands,

_And then take hands_.”

The only verses, by the way, he ever got by heart. He never cared to

play much with the Muses. They stick, he used to say, at Nine.

William can sit longer--drink less--say as little--pay or receive as

much--shuffle as well--and cut as deeply as any man on earth. You may

leave him safely after dinner, and catch him at breakfast time without

alteration of attitude or look. He is a small statue erected in honour

of whist, and like Eloquence, “holds his hand well up.” He is content

to ring the changes on thirteen cards a long Midsummer night; for he

does not _play_ at cards--he _works_ at them, and considering the

returns, for very low wages. William never was particularly lucky; but

he bears the twos and threes with as much equanimity as any one, and

seems, horticulturally speaking, to have grafted Patience upon Whist.

I do not know whether it is the family motto, but he has upon his

seal--with the great Mogul for a crest--the inscription of “Packs in

Bello.”

William is now getting old (nearly fifty-two), with an asthma;

which he says makes him rather “weak in trumps.” He is preparing

himself accordingly to “take down his score,” and has made his

will, bequeathing all he has or has not, to a whist club. His

funeral he directs to be quite private, and his gravestone a plain

one, and especially “that there be no cherubims carved thereon,

forasmuch,”--says this characteristic document, “that they never hold

Honours.”

[Illustration: A DOUBLE AT LONG’S.]

THE FOX AND THE HEN.

A FABLE.

Speaking within _compass_, as to fabulousness I prefer _Southcote_

to _Northcote_.--PIGROGROMITUS.

ONE day, or night, no matter where or when,

Sly Reynard, like a foot-pad, laid his pad

Right on the body of a speckled Hen,

Determined upon taking all she had;

And like a very bibber at his bottle,

Began to draw the claret from her throttle;

Of course it put her in a pretty pucker.

And with a scream as high

As she could cry,

She called for help--she had enough of sucker.

Dame Partlet’s scream

Waked, luckily, the house-dog from his dream,

And with a savage growl

In answer to the fowl,

He bounded forth against the prowling sinner.

And, uninvited, came to the Fox Dinner.

[Illustration: NATIVES OF THE SILLY ISLANDS.]

Sly Reynard, heedful of the coming doom,

Thought, self-deceived,

He should not be perceived,

Hiding his _brush_ within a neighbouring _broom_;

But quite unconscious of a Poacher’s snare,

And caught in copper noose,

And looking like a goose,

Found that his fate “had hung upon a _hare_;”

His tricks and turns were rendered of no use to him,

And, worst of all, he saw old surly Tray

Coming to play

Tray-Deuce with him.

Tray, an old Mastiff bred at Dunstable,

Under his Master, a most special constable,

Instead of killing Reynard in a fury,

Seized him for legal trial by a Jury;

But Juries--Æsop was a sheriff then--

Consisted of twelve Brutes and not of Men.

But first the Elephant sat on the body--

I mean the Hen--and proved that she was dead,

To the veriest fool’s head

Of the Booby and the Noddy.

Accordingly, the Stork brought in a bill

Quite true enough to kill;

And then the Owl was call’d--for mark,

The Owl can witness in the dark.

To make the evidence more plain,

The Lynx connected all the chain.

In short there was no quirk or quibble

At which a legal Rat could nibble;

The Culprit was as far beyond hope’s bounds,

As if the Jury had been _packed_--of hounds.

Reynard, however, at the utmost nick,

Is seldom quite devoid of shift and trick;

Accordingly our cunning Fox,

Through certain influence, obscurely channel’d,

A friendly Camel got into the box,

When ’gainst his life the Jury was impanel’d.

Now, in the Silly Isles such is the law,

If Jurors should withdraw,

They are to have no eating and no drinking,

Till all are starved into one way of thinking.

Thus Reynard’s Jurors, who could not agree,

Were lock’d up strictly, without bit or mummock,

Till every beast that only had _one_ stomach,

Bent to the Camel who was blest with _three_.

To do them justice, they debated

From four till ten, while dinner waited

When thirst and hunger got the upper,

And each inclined to mercy, and hot supper:

“Not guilty” was the word, and Master Fox

Was freed to murder other hens and cocks.

MORAL.

What moral greets us by this tale’s assistance

But that the Solon is a sorry Solon,

Who makes the full stop of a Man’s existence

Depend upon a _Colon_?

[Illustration: PRO BONO PUBLICO.]

THE COMET.

AN ASTRONOMICAL ANECDOTE.

“I cannot fill up a blank better than with a short history of this

self-same _Star_ling.”--STERNE’S SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY.

AMONGST professors of astronomy,

Adepts in the celestial economy,

The name of H*******l’s very often cited,

And justly so, for he is hand and glove

With ev’ry bright intelligence above;

Indeed, it was his custom so to stop,

Watching the stars upon the house’s top,

That once upon a time he got be-knighted.

In his observatory thus coquetting

With Venus--or with Juno gone astray,

All sublunary matters quite forgetting

In his flirtations with the winking stars,

Acting the spy--it might be upon Mars--

A new André;

Or, like a Tom of Coventry, sly peeping,

At Dian sleeping;

Or ogling thro’ his glass

Some heavenly lass

Tripping with pails along the Milky Way;

Or looking at that Wain of Charles the Martyrs:--

Thus he was sitting, watchman of the sky,

When lo! a something with a tail of flame

Made him exclaim,

“_My_ stars!”--he always put that stress on _my_--

“_My_ stars and garters!”

“A comet, sure as I’m alive!

A noble one as I should wish to view;

It can’t be Halley’s though, _that_ is not due

Till eighteen thirty-five.

Magnificent!--how fine his fiery trail!

Zounds! ’tis a pity, though he comes unsought--

Unask’d--unreckon’d,--in no human thought--

He ought--he ought--he ought

To have been caught

With scientific salt upon his tail!”

[Illustration: “POSSE COMETATIS.”]

“I look’d no more for it, I do declare,

Than the Great Bear!

As sure as Tycho Brahe is dead,

It really enter’d in my head

No more than Berenice’s Hair!”

Thus musing, Heaven’s Grand Inquisitor

Sat gazing on the uninvited visitor

Till John, the serving-man, came to the upper

Regions, with “Please your Honour, come to supper.”

“Supper! Good John, to-night I shall not sup

Except on that phenomenon--look up!”

“Not sup!” cried John, thinking with consternation

That supping on a _star_ must be _star_vation,

Or ev’n to batten

On Ignes Fatui would never fatten,

His visage seem’d to say,--that very odd is,--

But still his master the same tune ran on,

“I can’t come down,--go to the parlour, John,

And say I’m supping with the heavenly bodies.”

“The heavenly bodies!” echoed John, “Ahem!”

His mind still full of famishing alarms,

“’Zooks, if your Honour sups with _them_,

In helping, somebody must make long arms!”

He thought his master’s stomach was in danger,

But still in the same tone replied the Knight,

“Go down, John, go, I have no appetite;

Say I’m engaged with a celestial stranger.”--

Quoth John, not much au fait in such affairs,

“Wouldn’t the stranger take a bit down stairs?”

“No,” said the master, smiling, and no wonder,

At such a blunder,

“The stranger is not quite the thing you think,

He wants no meat or drink,

And one may doubt quite reasonably whether

He has a mouth,

Seeing his head and tail are joined together.

Behold him,--there he is, John, in the South.”

John look’d up with his portentous eyes,

Each rolling like a marble in its socket.

At last the fiery tad-pole spies,

And, full of Vauxhall reminiscence, cries,

“A rare good rocket!”

“A what! A rocket, John! Far from it!

What you behold, John, is a comet;

One of those most eccentric things

That in all ages

Have puzzled sages

And frighten’d kings;

With fear of change that flaming meteor, John,

Perplexes sovereigns, throughout its range”--

“Do he?” cried John;

“Well, let him flare on,

_I_ haven’t got no sovereigns to change!”

[Illustration: THE HARVEST MOON.]

LITERARY REMINISCENCES.

No. III.

MY first acquaintance with the press--a memorable event in an author’s

experience--took place in Scotland. Amongst the temporary sojourners

at our boarding-house, there came a legal antiquarian who had been

sent for from Edinburgh, expressly to make some unprofitable researches

amongst the mustiest of the civic records. It was my humour to think,

that in Political as well as Domestic Economy, it must be better to

sweep the Present than to dust the Past; and certain new brooms were

recommended to the Town Council in a quizzing letter, which the then

editor of the Dundee Advertiser or Chronicle, thought fit to favour

with a prominent place in his columns. “’Tis pleasant sure,” sings

Lord Byron, “to see one’s self in print,” and according to the popular

notion I ought to have been quite up in my stirrups, if not standing

on the saddle, at thus seeing myself, for the first strange time, set

up in type. Memory recalls, however, but a very moderate share of

exaltation, which was totally eclipsed, moreover, by the exuberant

transports of an accessory before the fact, whom, methinks, I still

see in my mind’s eye, rushing out of the printing-office with the wet

sheet steaming in his hand, and fluttering all along the High Street,

to announce breathlessly that “we were in.” But G. was an indifferent

scholar, even in English, and therefore thought the more highly of

this literary feat. It was this defective education, and the want of

a proper vent for his abundant love nonsense in prose or verse, that

probably led to the wound he subsequently inflicted on his own throat,

but which was luckily remedied by “a stitch in time.” The failure of

a tragedy is very apt to produce something like a comedy, and few

afterpieces have amused me more than the behaviour of this Amicus

Redivivus, when, thus dramatising the saying of “cut and come again,”

he made what ought to have been a posthumous appearance amongst his

friends. In fact, and he was ludicrously alive to it, he had placed

himself for all his supplementary days in a false position. Like the

old man in the fable, after formally calling upon Death to execute

a general release, he had quietly resumed his fardel, which he bore

about, with exactly the uneasy ridiculous air of a fine-would be

gentleman, who is sensitively conscious that he is carrying a bundle.

For the sake of our native sentimentalists who profess dying for love,

as well as the foreign romanticists who affect a love for dying, it may

not be amiss to give a slight sketch of the bearing of a traveller who

had gone through half the journey. I had been absent some months, and

was consequently ignorant of the affair, when lo! on my return to the

town, the very first person who accosted me in the market-place was our

felo-de-se; and truly, no Bashful Man, “with all his blushing honours

thick upon him,” in the presence of a damp stranger, could have been

more divertingly sheepish, and awkwardly backward in coming forward

as to manner and address. Indeed, something or the embarrassment of

a fresh introduction might naturally be felt by an individual, thus

beginning again, as the lawyers say, _de novo_, and renewing ties he

had virtually cast off. The guilty hand was as dubiously extended to

me as if it had been a dyer’s,--its fellow meanwhile performing sundry

involuntary motions and manipulations about his cravat, as if nervously

mistrusting the correctness of the ties or the stability of a buckle.

As for his face, there was a foolish, deprecatory smile upon it that

would have puzzled the pencil of Wilkie; and even Liston himself could

scarcely have parodied the indescribable croak with which, conscious of

an unlucky notoriety, he inquired “if I had heard”--here, a short husky

cough--“of anything particular?”

“Not a word,” was the answer.

“Then you don’t know”(--more fidgeting about the neck, the smile

rather sillier, the voice more guttural, and the cough worse than

ever)--“then you don’t know”--but, like Macbeth’s amen, the confession

literally stuck in the culprit’s throat; and I was left to learn, an

hour afterwards, and from another source, that “Jemmy G*** had _fought

a duel with himself_, and cut his own weazand, about a lady.”

For my own part, with the above figure, and all its foolish features

vividly imprinted on my memory, I do not think that I could ever

seriously attempt “what Cato did, and Addison approved,” in my own

person. On the contrary, it seems to me that the English moralist gave

but an Irish illustration of “a brave man struggling with the storms

of fate,” by representing him as wilfully scuttling his own hold,

and going at once to the bottom. As for the Censor, he plainly laid

himself open to censure, when he used a naked sword as a stomachic--a

very sorry way, by the way, when weary of conjectures, of enjoying

the benefit of the doubt, and for which, were I tasked to select an

inscription for his cenotaph, it should be the exclamation of Thisby,

in the Midsummer Night’s Dream--

“This is old Ninny’s tomb.”

_Mais revenons à nos moutons_, as the wolf said to her cubs. The

reception of my letter in the Dublin Newspaper encouraged me to forward

a contribution to the Dundee Magazine, the Editor of which was kind

enough, as Winifred Jenkins says, to “wrap my bit of nonsense under

his Honour’s Kiver,” without charging anything for its insertion.

Here was success sufficient to turn a young author at once into “a

scribbling miller,” and make him sell himself, body and soul, after

the German fashion, to that minor Mephistopheles, the Printer’s Devil!

Nevertheless, it was not till years afterwards, and the lapse of

term equal to an ordinary apprenticeship, that the Imp in question

became really my Familiar. In the meantime, I continued to compose

occasionally, and, like the literary performances of Mr. Weller Senior,

my lucubrations were generally committed to paper, not in what is

commonly called written hand, but an imitation of print. Such a course

hints suspiciously of type and antetype, and a longing eye to the Row,

whereas, it was adopted simply to make the reading more easy, and

thus enable me the more readily to form a judgment of the effect of

my little efforts. It is more difficult than may be supposed to decide

on the value of a work in MS., and especially when the handwriting

presents only a swell mob of bad characters, that must be severally

examined and re-examined to arrive at the merits or demerits of the

case. Print settles it, as Coleridge used to say; and to be candid, I

have more than once reversed, or greatly modified a previous verdict,

on seeing a rough proof from the press. But, as Editors too well know,

it is next to impossible to retain the tune of a stanza, or the drift

of an argument, whilst the mind has to scramble through a patch of

scribble scrabble, as stiff as a gorse cover. The beauties of the

piece will as naturally appear to disadvantage through such a medium

as the features of a pretty woman through a bad pane of glass; and

without doubt, many a tolerable article has been consigned hand over

head to the Balaam Box for want of a fair copy. Wherefore, O ye Poets

and Prosers, who aspire to write in Miscellanies, and above all, O ye

palpitating Untried, who meditate the offer of your maiden essays to

established periodicals, take care, pray ye take care, to cultivate a

good, plain, bold, round text. Set up Tomkins as well as Pope or Dryden

for a model, and have an eye to your pothooks. Some persons hold that

the best writers are those who write the best hands, and I have known

the conductor of a magazine to be converted by a crabbed MS. to the

same opinion. Of all things, therefore, be legible; and to that end,

practise in penmanship. If you have never learned, take six lessons of

Mr. Carstairs. Be sure to buy the best paper, the best ink, the best

pens, and then sit down and do the best you can; as the schoolboys

do--put out your tongue, and take pains. So shall ye haply escape the

rash rejection of a jaded editor; so, having got in your hand, it is

possible that your head may follow; and so, last not least, ye may

fortunately avert those awful mistakes of the press which sometimes

ruin a poet’s sublimest effusion, by pantomimically transforming his

roses into noses, his angels into angles, and all his happiness into

pappiness.

THE OCEAN.

CONSIDERED PER SE.

“A man whom both the waters and the wind, in that vast tennis-court

have made the ball for them to play upon, entreats you pity

him.”--PERICLES.

IT was during a voyage to Margate, many summers ago--before steam

_was_--that the little episode occurred which I am going to relate, by

way of text, to some observations on the ocean.

The importance of the Mariner’s Compass to the sailor is as well

known universally as the utility of the little one-eyed instrument,

for which Whitechapel is so famous, to the tailor: but its mode of

action, and the manner of its application, must be far less generally

understood. Whether the plougher of the deep mends his checked shirts

with the Needle, or sews the canvas into sails with it, or uses it,

after a battle, to extract the splinters from his hard tarry hand,

are speculations likely enough to be entertained by the plougher of

the land; at least by those clod-_compelling_ turners of the furrows,

mid-county born and bred, who, despite of their predilection for such

naval ballads as Tom Bowling and Jack Junk, have never set their

simple eyes on ship or sailor, or the sea which they subdue. To many

Londoners even, who jostle the tar in the streets, and behold tier

after tier of masted vessels from their lower Bridge,--who have

perchance stood and stared at the Compass itself in some shop-window

of Leadenhall, or the still more maritime Minories, the Card with

its _Card_-inal Points, is an undeciphered hieroglyphic. It did not

violently surprise me, therefore, to see a simple-looking creature of

this latter class go and take a long wondering look into the binnacle,

like a child peeping at the tortoise in an Italian’s show-box; and

doubtless, to his callow apprehension, the veering Guide was as much

a thing of life and instinct as the outlandish reptile to the urchin.

It was not until after a tedious poring at it--long enough, if there

were any truth in animal magnetism, for the Needle and the Man to

have understood one another by mutual sympathy--that the wonderer

made up to the steersman, and begged for an elucidation of the marine

mystery. Fortunately for the querist, the helmsman, along with all the

characteristic good-nature of his fraternity, had none of the coyness,

as to the secrets of the craft, with which the ripe sailor is apt to

treat the raw voyager; perhaps not without cause. The nautical truths,

masonic, may deserve to be obtained by degrees of probation: in the

present case the unreserved communication of occult knowledge led to

anything but a satisfactory result. No one could take more pains--call

them pleasures rather--than the honest man at the wheel, to explain the

use and properties of the Compass: he boxed it again and again for the

benefit of the gaping neophyte; a benevolent smile, and the twinkling

of his blue eyes, declaring that he felt amply repaid by the supposed

proficiency of his pupil,--when, all of a sudden, his well-earned

pride was dashed to the deck by the pupil’s turning away on his heel,

with a hunch of his shoulders, a blank look, and a dissatisfied grunt,

exclaiming,

“Well, arter all, I don’t see how the turning round of that ’ere little

needle can move about the rudder!”

I should have been no Christian man, but a brute beast, had I not

sympathised with the feelings of the steersman. Contempt took the lead.

All “the dismal hiss of universal scorn,” ascribed to Milton’s devils,

seemed condensed into his whistle. Next came Resentment, wishing back

the Cockney-Tailor to his shop-board, sitting on his own needle--and

then came Pity, inducing the milder reflection,

“I wonder the poor gentleman’s friends allows him to go about by

himself!”

I doubt whether the force of contempt and pity could further go: and

yet--to confess a truth--shall I?--dare I?--say, that to the intense

sea-ignorance which incurred the scorn, anger, and compassion of our

Palinurus, I look back with ENVY?

Methinks, every British Heart of Oak recoils, and every British head of

the same material shakes itself, at such an avowal! Every lip that ever

helped to chorus Rule Britannia, curls itself up--noses which never

sniffed sea-weed tacitly snub me,--eyes which never glimpsed the ocean

avert themselves in disgust. I am bespattered with salt-water oaths

and tobacco-juice. The Thames Yacht Clubs, on the strength of having

learned to bellow “Elm a-lee!”--“Ard-hup!” and “Oist-away!” agree to

run me down. The very clerks of the Navy Pay Office propose to seize me

up to the dingy fresh-water Neptune in their fore-court. Captain Basil

Hall swears, on his best anchor-button, to keel-haul me daily, for six

months, in “the element which never tires.” The last of the Dibdins

asks for my card. Campbell flares up with the “Meteor Flag of England,”

and vows to knock me down with its staff;--nay, our Sailor King himself

repudiates me, as a subject, for not relishing his _High Seas_!

It can’t be helped. When one is confessing, there is no place under

the sun like the Ocean for “making a clean breast of it:”--and am

not I here staggering and tumbling--soberly tipsy--aboard a lubberly

Dutch-built hull, becalmed in a heavy swell--dreaming, when I can

sleep, that I am a barrel-churn, revolving with my inside full of

half-turned cream or incipient butter;--and finding, when I awake, that

dreams do not go so altogether by contraries?

If this perpetual motion hold, the cargo of cheeses we shipped at

Dordrecht, flat as single Glo’sters, will be delivered in London

spherical as bowls! The Jung Vrouw herself, before she reaches the

Nore, will be a washing-tub! I have doubts whether the salt beef,

produced at this day’s luncheon, was, originally, a round. The leathern

conveniency that I brought aboard, a fair and square trunk, is already

almost a portmanteau;--and, what is worse, every several morsel I have

swallowed this blessed day without bliss, seems rolling itself into

a bolus or a pill,--whether of opium or ipecacuanha, I leave you to

divine. If the calm should continue, I may become--who knows?--a Ball

myself--a Master Biffin! Every half-hour, on feeling my knees and

elbows, I find joints by this friction losing some of their asperities,

and getting obtuser. A little more, and I shan’t have a good point

about me!

Is such as this a season to be squeamishly retentive in delivering

one’s sentiments? Or, rather, is not open candour inevitable; seeing

that you cannot have any reserve even with the merest stranger? It

is impossible to keep your feelings to yourself. In spite, then, of

Britannia, the Yacht Club, the Navy Pay,--of Dibdin, Campbell, and

Basil Hall,--of the Lords of the Admiralty, with Portsmouth, Devonport,

and Gosport, to boot--in spite of the Royal William, nay, in spite of

my very self, the truth will out!--not sneaking out, or stepping out,

or backing out, but bolting out, in a plain unequivocal straightforward

style. I DO envy the simple man, with his sheer ignorance about rudders

and compasses. I _do_ detest and abominate the ocean--or to phrase it

more mildly--the sea and I cannot agree with each other--there is sure

to be falling-out between us--we can never be bosom friends.

The Marine Society must despise me for it; my Elder Brethren of the

Trinity House will long to dispose of me as Joseph was made _away with_

by _his_ elder Brethren; Boatswain Smith will preach, write Tracts

and distribute them, against me: the Greenwich Pensioners will bind

themselves by a round robin to kick me with me with their knottiest

legs; Long Tom Coffin himself will be for fetching me, with a shroud in

one hand, and a dead-light in the other; but I cannot eat my words.

[Illustration: SEE-SAW.]

It is no time, when you cannot keep your legs, to “stand bandying

compliments with your sovereign,” that is, Neptune. If he were present

at this moment, in this cabin, I would tell him, from this my seat on

its floor, that he might very much improve his paternal estate, to

wit, by levelling, and still more by draining it. I would flatly say

to him, lying flat on my face as it now happens, that a few little

gravel walks, merely across and across it, would be of rare advantage

both for show and use. For ’tis a sorry pleasure-garden that is all

fish-pond; and, finally, I would broadly hint to him, from the broad

of my back, as I am at this present---- But this is bullying Taurus

behind his back. There is no sea-god present, only the Skipper. How he

skips in such weather, give him his pick of all the ropes in the ship,

is a miracle I would fain see ere I believe in it. For my own part I

cannot even step deliberately over a thread. Perhaps, without going too

curiously into the Doctrine of Predestination, as regards the soul, it

may hold good as concerns the body. Undoubtedly there be some men born

to sit fast upon horses; others to fall off therefrom as if they had

soaped saddles. Some to slide and skate upon the ice; others only to

slip, straddle, and sprawl upon it. Some to walk, or at least waddle,

on ships’ decks; others to flop, flounder, wallow, and grovel thereon.

That is my destiny. None can be more safe on the Serpentine, or sure

in the saddle;--but Fate, long before my great-great-great-grandfather

was put to his feet, forbade me sea-legs. An average pedestrian on

land, on the caulked plank I am a born cripple, hopeless of cure. Put

me apprentice to the Goodwin, or the Dudgeon Light, at the end of my

term you shall find me as unsafe on my soles as when I first paid my

footing. Even now, whilst Hans Vandergroot and his crew are comfortably

promenading, I rock and totter, balancing one end against the other,

like a great rickety babe, until, after some posturing and scrambling,

I trip up over nothing, and fall flat on everything. An earthquake in

London, when its streets are what is called greasy, could not more

puzzle my centre of gravity; if, indeed, I was not born a mathematical

monster, devoid of that material point!

By way of clincher, Fate, who never does things by halves, whilst

foredooming me incapable of standing my ground at sea, has also denied

me the power of settling it. A camp-stool is sure to decamp with me; a

chair, as if it stood on Siberian ice, suddenly throws itself on its

back, and behold me in an extempore sledge! Barrels roll from under

me; coils of rope shuffle me off. Even on the plain bare hard deck,

or cabin floor, I throw demi-summersets, as if I had been returned to

Parliament to represent the Antipodes by sitting on the back of my head.

To complete the Sea Curse,--there are three Fates, and each had a

boon for me at my birth--it was ordained that, like the great Nelson,

I should never sail from fresh water into salt, without knowing it by

a general rising and commotion, which might be called figuratively, a

Mutiny at the Nore.

Like the standing and sitting infirmity, it is incurable. On my voyage

outwards I tried every popular recipe; the hard ones first, to wit, raw

carrots, raw onions, sailors’ biscuit with Dutch cheese, hard-boiled

eggs, hard dumplings, raw stockfish. Next the easy ones: namely, cream

cheese, Welsh rabbits, maccaroni, very hasty pudding, and insupportable

soup. Then the neutrals: such as chewed blotting-paper, dry oatmeal,

pounded egg-shells, scraped chalk, and unbaked dough.

To wash these down, I took, by prescription, tea without milk, coffee

without sugar, bark without wine, water without brandy; and these

formulæ all failing, I then tried them, as witches pray, backwards;

brandy without water, wine without bark, and so forth. The experimental

combinations followed; rum and milk, and mustard; eggs and wine, and

camomile tea; gin and beer, and vinegar; sea-water and salad-oil,

mulled, with sugar and nutmeg. Of which last, I drank by advice most

prodigiously, the Doctors of the Marine College dispensing always on

the Homœopathic principle, that a large dose of anything, whereof a

little would set you wrong on the land, will set you right on the sea.

I need hardly say that, with my predisposed _necessitarian_ viscera,

all these infallible remedies failed of any effect, except to aggravate

my case. Nothing short of liquid lead, maybe, or potable plaster of

Paris, would have proved a settler.

Happy the man who hath never been driven in his despair to test,

detest, invoke, evoke, swallow, and unswallow, such drugs and draughts

of the naval Pharmacopœia! Thrice happy civic simpleton who hath never

learned how the rudder revolveth, at the risk of _turning round_

himself!

Vandergroot is visibly in course of transformation. At every visit

to the cabin he looks more and more like a Dutch-pin. He talks to me

roundly, and gets blunter and blunter! The last time I felt, I had no

small to my back. If I may guess at my own figure, it is now about

an oval. I must look like one of Leda’s babies, just emerged, with

their insignificant buds of legs and arms, from the egg! From an oval

to a circle is but a step. Heaven help me when I get landed, round

and sound, as they say of cherries! How shall I get home--how get

up--(there will be a short way down)--mine own stairs? How shall I sit?

Instead of my old library chair, I must borrow its three-legged stool

of the terrestrial globe!

Either my head swims, or the cabin is getting circular! I shall roll

about in it like a bolus in its box! If I am not merely giddy, I am

already as spherical as the earth; a little flatted, or so, that is,

towards the poles. What a horrible rough calm! I will down on my knees,

if I have knees, and with clasped hands, if hands remain to me, pray,

beg, and supplicate for a dismal storm to batter me into shape again,

though it be but nine-bobble-square!

I get more and more candid and communicative every moment. I can keep

nothing to myself: you shall have my whole heart. I abhor, loathe,

execrate, the sea! If I could throw up my hat, my cry would be “Land

for ever!” A fico for Tom Tough! Down with Duncan Howe, and Jervis! No

Dibdin!

If ever I get ashore, able to chalk upon a wall, you shall read--Ask

for Stoke Pogis! Try Lupton Parva! If ever I get to a dry desk again,

to write verse upon,--and the poetry of the ocean is all on the

land, its prose only upon the sea, you shall have a rare new melody,

published by Power, to some such strain as this:--

The sea! the D----!

The terrible horrible sea!

The stormy, tumbling,

Qualmy-jumbling,

Spirit-humbling,

Shingle-stumbling,

Sea-weed fumbling,

Wearing, crumbling,

Mischief-mumbling,

Growling, grumbling,

Like thunder far off rumbling-- --

That last line halteth in its feet, as well it may, when the poet

cannot keep his legs. Oh! it is well for Cornwall, born perchance “with

one foot on sea and one foot on shore” at the Land’s End,--I have seen

a picture of it by Turner, a bare bleak rocky promontory, with some

nineteen gulls and cormorants sitting thereon, each with its tail

turned contemptuously towards the barren granite, feldspar, and like

sordid soils which there represent land.--It is well enough for him to

chaunt laudations of the briny element, and cry up those amphibia, his

first cousins almost, the Nereids and Tritons. Or it may become those

others, born in a berth, and christened in brine, with Neptune for

sponsor, to sing slightingly of the dry ground, on which they cannot

claim even a parish. But my nativity was otherwise cast--I am a grass

lamb, yeaned on the green sward--oh sweet sweet sweet Cropton-le-Moor,

down in dear dear Wiltshire!

[Illustration: “HOW ARE YOU OFF FOR MONEY?”

“WHY I’M OFF WITH ALL MY MASTER’S.”]

That pastoral reminiscence hath made me worse. It has given me an

appetite--for acres. Methinks I yearn and long and crave for nice

clay, delicious mould, and crisp pebbles, in a paroxysm of that

strange bulimy that attacks the African Dirt Eater. Something of

Nebuchadnezzar’s grazing propensity comes along with it. Gracious

Heaven! can it be possible that, after having been battered and shaken

out of all shape,--a mere mass of living flesh, like the unlicked

ursine cub,--this same Circean Jung Vrouw has taken it into her

figure-head to beat, bang, bump, and rumbledy-thump me into another

form, a horse, a ram, or a brindled bull!

Thrice brute and beast-hyæna! Were-wolf! Dragon! horned Devil! that

thou wast, my Land-steward, Peter Stuckey! after counselling me before

thy last audit to abate my rents, to volunteer to reduce them thyself

by absconding, across sea, with the whole receipt! Thrice Soland goose,

booby, noddy, sea-calf, land-donkey, and loggerhead turtle was I, thus

impoverished, instead of economising, to pursue thee on an element

where I cannot control my out-goings!

Donner and Blitzen! what a crash! my rash prayer was heard: there is a

storm coming--as the Powers proposed to storm Angiers in King John’s

days--from all the four quarters at once! I must needs turn in: but

how vilely this bed is made with the foot two yards higher than the

head! No, the head is highest--perpendicular. I designed to lie down,

and here I am standing bolt erect on my heels--no, on my head. It

must be getting cold: the very trunks, stools and tables are making

a move towards the stove--nay, now we are in some sudden peril, for

they are all doing their best to rush up the cabin-stair. Whew--that

sea last shipped must needs have put all the Dutchmen’s pipes out.

Another plunge; and a flood of brine soaks me through, shirt, sheet,

and blankets. There is no washing put out here, I perceive; ’tis all

done at home. What a complex, chaotic motion,--the ship tosses and

flings like a wild desert-born horse, that is trying to rear, kick up

behind, turn round and round, and roll on his back at one and the same

moment. This is no Dutch ship, but a Dutch fair--with the drums, gongs,

speaking-trumpets, and other discords, all braying together; and I am

on the rocking-horse, the round-about, in the up-and-down, and each

of the swings, all at once! Another crash! The Jung Vrouw is bereaved

of her little one, alias the long-boat. How kind of Vandergroot to

come down to tell me of it, direct through the sky-light, instead of

going round by the stair! How kind of that table, lying on its back,

to catch him in its legs! Angels of grace be near us! He tells me, as

he sways up and down, partly in High, partly in Low Dutch, that the

Jung Vrouw herself is washed overboard! But no--I misconstrued him.

’Tis only her great ruddy staring figure-head--which the blundering

Holland shipwrights had stuck astern, on the crown of the tiller--that

is gone adrift. Oh how I wish from my soul of souls that I could see

the Commodore of the Thames Yachts now pulling, within hail, in the

Wenus! Or, the last Dibdin taking a chair--or the chair taking him--in

this cabin! Or, Campbell essaying to write down a new sea-song on yon

topsy-turvy table! And oh! to behold the author of “The deep deep Sea”

sitting on the poop, singing to that floating Young Woman’s head and

bust, taken by mistake for a mermaid’s!

Another shout. Pieter Pietersoon, in heaving the lead, hath chucked

himself in along with it! I do not wonder; he heaveth after my own

fashion, by wholesale. Have I not within the last two hours rejected,

discharged, and utterly cast from me in disgust, the whole ocean,

nay all the oceans, German, Atlantic, Pacific--the Arctic last, its

solid calms, the next best things to Terra Firma, not so violently

disagreeing with me as the rest. And do I not know and feel that I

am now about to give up Neptune, trident and all, with the whole

salt-water mythology? I warrant, ere ten minutes to come, there shall

not remain within me so much as a syren’s mirror, or her tortoise-shell

comb:--not one solitary Triton will be left on my stomach. Some

unsavoury odour about the cabin--marvellously like the smell of oil

paint--hath just given me a new turn, by conjuring up all the nauseous

pictures of marine allegories, which even on steady dry land, used to

stir and provoke my spleen.

Oh! that they were all here, President, R.A., and A.R.A., in a string,

climbing after me up this perilous slippery stair, to the more perilous

slippery deck, there to crawl on all-fours to the ship’s side, and

clinging like cats or monkeys to the quarter boards, take a trembling

peep at what Vandergroot calls “den wild zee!” What an awful sight!

The tempest-tost sky is as troubled as the ocean: whilst betwixt the

jagged base of the low black cloud, and the still jaggeder crest of

the sea, the red angry lightning restlessly darts to and fro, as if in

search of whatever presuming mortal dares fare between them! Oh tell

me, Mister Elias Martin--if you a’nt dead--is the tossing crest of

yonder mad black billow, that comes racing after us, at all like the

black worsted fringe which your brethren are apt to hang on the necks

of their marine Arabians? But hush, yonder comes Neptune himself, in

his state-coach--aye, hats off--the wind hath taught ye manners. Lo!

yonder he stands,--Pshaw! no, no, no,--Zounds! you are all gaping at

honest Hans Vandergroot. Look to starboard--to the left hand! That’s

the gentleman, without his castor, nor indeed overwell togged otherwise

for wet weather--with his beard lather’d but not shaved--standing up in

an oyster-shell drag, and attempting, like a sorry whip as he is, to

tool his team of bokickers with a potato-fork. Did you ever see four

such unbroke brutes as he hath to keep together--neither reined-up,

nor down, nor indeed, any ribbons to hold at all--and as I would have

laid a pony to nothing, there they go, no pace at all, cause why? they

are just come to some invisible sea obelisk, and each horse is for

going down a road of his own. Did you ever set eyes on such action? No

stepping out--but all pawing and prancing and putting their feet down

again where they picked them up, like Ducrow’s dancing stud; as sure

as I’m a judge, they have all got the string-halt in their fore-legs,

because they can’t have it in their hinder ones! You may swear safely

that they have four bad colds besides, and look what a rabble of

naked postillions are hanging on by their manes, because they have no

saddles, and if they had, they would never be able to sit in them with

those salmon tails! Between ourselves, Elias, ’tis no great shakes of

a show; the Lord Mayor’s pageant on the water beats it all to sticks;

and if you make a picture of it, you will be a fool for your pains. Yet

have I seen paintings by first-rate hands as like to this same trumpery

Sadlers’ Wells water spectacle----

Murder! murder! Help! help! O Lord! A surgeon and a shutter, if there

be such comfortable things in this unneighbourly neighbourhood. O! oh!

oh! oh! Woe is me! I am not--I am now certain and sure I am not a Ball!

I have limbs and members! legs and arms! like other people’s, only

they’re broke; and a very distinct back. My head! Oh! my head, my head;

there are nine lumps thereon, and there are nine cabin stairs.

The real Sea-King, in resentment, I suppose, of my untimely caricature

of him and his state-coach, after spitting nine gallons of foam in my

face, knocked me flat with a wave, and then kicked me down stairs;

and here I am again trying to anoint my bruises with trunks, and bind

them up with stools and tables, on the hard-hearted oak planks of the

cabin-floor. Yet is it easier with me than I first feared. My legs are

not broken but merely bent. I am only bandy and not lame for life; but

my sea-sickness is not cured. Am I likely to put up, better or worse,

think you, with Neptune and his satellites, for this unhandsome usage?

[Illustration: “FRIEND! DOST THEE CALL THIS THE PACIFIC?”]

The Jung Vrouw, meanwhile, is as giddy as ever, nay, worse ten times

told. She hath taken a tinge of high-flying, deep-living, German

Romanticism into her wooden head, and is trying, plunge after plunge,

to drown herself, and to make me commit wilful suicide along with her,

whether I will or not. After that, there is no hope; but oh! yet oh,

my Fates, let me die upon land. I have a horror of shipboard! The idea

of severing all ties in this cabin is trebly agonising. Why, the very

table is tied to the floor, the candlestick to the table, the snuffers

to the candlestick, the extinguisher to the snuffers. Only the burning

candle is unattached, and there--there it jumps into bed! No matter; it

could as soon set fire to the Thames. Another squall! How she groans,

creaks, squeaks, strains, grinds, and squeezes, like a huge walnut in

Neptune’s crackers? Accursed Jung Vrouw! thou wilt be the widowing

of my poor dear old one! Accursed Peter Stuckey, thou wilt be the

murdering of my poor deaf old self!

I know not, for a surety, by reason that everything about me is

quaking and shaking, but I suspect I am trembling like an aspen. It

is impossible to hear, in the midst of this universal hubbub, but

methinks, I am wailing and weeping aloud. But one may as well make

a manly exit. Like other men, in such sea extremities, I would fain

betake me to the rum-cask; but either Hans Vandergroot sails on

Temperance principles, or I have looked in the wrong place. I will try

a stave or two instead.

“Full fathom five--”

[Illustration: THE BEST BOWER ANCHOR.]

Alas! it will not go down. I am too much out of sorts for even the

“delicate Ariel.” It was one thing for Shakspeare, sailing, hugging

the shore, never out of sight of land, on the safe serene coasts of

Bohemia, to compose such a sea song for the wood and canvas Tempests of

the stage; but it is another guess thing to hear it, as I do, howled

through hoarse ship-ropes, by Boreas himself, in a real storm. What

comfort to me that everything about me shall suffer a sea-change?--that

my bones shall turn, forsooth, into coral? I would not give a bad

doit, with some of these poor metacarpal bones of mine to be rubbing

the gums of the Royal Infant of Spain. I am not so blindly ambitious

as to wish that these two precious useful balls of mine, turned into

pearls, should shine in the British crown itself, or, what is more

tempting, in the hair of the beautiful Countess of B. What if some

economical jeweller--I think I feel him at it--should take it into his

head to split them, for setting in a ring? As for the Syren’s knell,

I would as lief have it as long hereafter as may be, from the plain

prosaic old sexton of St. Sepulchre’s. I have no depraved yearning

to be first wet-nursed to death, and then “lapped in Elysium,” by

Mermaids, the most cold, flabby, washy, fishy, draggletails ever

invented to give any human fancy the ague--half-and-half monsters,

neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red herring. A whole cargo of them,

nay a glut of them, leaping alive, unfit for loving or eating, is not

worth one loveable real woman at Billingsgate, or one of the eatable

maids on her stall. I could never imagine the boldest and gallantest

boatswain encountering such a sea-witch, on a lone beach--combing the

shrimps out of her wet sandy mud-coloured hair, and wriggling her

foolish tail about, curling, or stretching it, or trying to put it into

her pocket, forgetting that she has no pockets, as a shy man in company

does not know what to do with his hands--I could never fancy him

looking on such a creature, however attached to the fair sex, without

his recoiling till he tumbled over his own pigtail, singing out, with a

slight variation of a line of Dibdin’s,

“Avert yon ’oman, gracious Heaven!”

For other sea-temptations, I would not give my old white pony, that

stumbles over every stone in his road, and some out of it, to ride

like that Lord Godolphin Arion over the seas on the fairest fish that

was ever foaled. Speaking under fear of death, I would rather, waving

all the romance, ride in a rill by a roadside on a stickle-back. On

my solemn word, I would far liefer bestride even a pond perch with

his dorsal fin erect. But hark! What means that dreadful cry? Our

death-bell is tolling in Dutch--“Del, del, is verlooren!”

I must scramble, crawl, haul myself, spite of my sprained ankles, up

unto the deck how I may. Next best unto witnessing our own funeral is

the seeing how we are done to death.

What a sight! Here is the tiller tied hard a-port, or hard a-lee, as

hard as they can tie it. Further back is the Skipper himself, entangled

dismally by some cord or other to the stern-rails; and yonder is his

mate, with a hundred and fifty turns of rope round himself and the

mizen-mast, which he seems trying to strengthen. The gunner, as I take

him to be, with a preposterous superfluity of breeching, is made fast

to look through a hole, which seems to have been meant for a window to

a cannon; and the carpenter, well pinioned and tethered by a stout

rope to the back-stay, is sheepishly dangling therefrom, whenever his

side of the ship is uppermost, like unto the Lamb of the Order of the

Golden Fleece. The cook, having given away both his hands, is spliced,

as if for life, unto the capstan. Adam Vaart is double-turned and

double-knotted to the main-mast, and Hendrick his brother is belayed

down, on the broad of his back, in the place of the lost long-boat.

Should the anchor be dropped, Jan Bart is sure, even from head to foot,

to go along with it. Poor little Yacob Yops, the apprentice, hath

been turned over, and re-bound into a ring-bolt, by articles which

are called rope-yarns; and lo, up yonder, lashed by his legs to the

rattlines, hangs Diedrick Dumm-Kopf, head downwards, like a split cod

left there to dry, in the main shrouds!

Oh! that I were bound myself round and round all the ribs, from the top

to the bottom, with good six-twist, lest even thus, in articulo mortis,

I burst, split my sides, and die with excess of laughter. The Skipper,

honest Hans, with much difficulty, for he grievously mistrusts his

breathing to the beating of the wave, opening his mouth when it comes,

and sealing up his lips when it is gone, hath let me into the whole

secret. Considering the wild sea, he saith, and that no man can tie

himself so surely as another man can, to some more steadfast substance,

they had been all fastened, at their own special wish and agreement,

to such hold-fasts as pleased them best, by Diedrick Dumm-Kopf, who

was afterwards to provide for his safety as he judged surest, in order

that he might liberate them again when the storm should be blown over.

That accordingly, after first tying them all as securely as he was

able, the said Diedrick betook himself to the main rigging, about half

way up, to which he lashed himself by the ankles, holding on likewise

with his hands, and his great clasp-knife in his mouth. That the Jung

Vrouw driving before the wind and sea, they made shift, as they were to

navigate her pretty comfortably for some twenty minutes or thereby,

when all of a sudden they saw Diedrick, being seized with a vertigo,

let go his hold and drop into his present posture, from which he could

never recover himself; and it was that dismal sight which had extorted

the universal outcry that I heard.

I am sicker of the sea than ever! Is the safety of a Christian man’s

life, and soul maybe, of no more interest than to be gambled away by

such a set of Dutch Bottoms with Asses’ heads on their shoulders! Oh!

that the worthy Chairman and all the Underwriters of Lloyd’s were here

present on this deck--the mere sight of the Skipper’s countenance

there, with not so much meaning in it as a smoked pig’s face, for

_that_ means to be eaten, would scare them from all sea-risks for ever!

Thanks be to Heaven! yonder’s a sail. It makes straight towards

us--they come aboard. A Pilot?--well said! Oh, honest, good, dear

Pilot, as you love a distressed poor countryman--as you understand

the compass and how rudders are turned--if you know what a rope’s end

is,--take the biggest bit of a cable you can pick, and give yonder

Dutch sea-calves a round dozen a piece; ’twill cost you no great pains,

seeing they are tied up ready to your hand. Pish! never mind their

offence; they have mutinied against themselves. Smite, and spare not. I

will go ashore meanwhile, in your boat. Hollo there! help me down. Take

heed to my footing. Catch me, all of you, in your arms. Now I am in.

No, I an’t! I an’t! I an’t!

If ye had not hauled me in again with that same boat-hook, I was

drown’d. My shoulder bleeds for it, but I forgive. Never heed me: look

to your helms and sails. ’Tis only a gallon or two of sea-water, just

swallowed, that is indisposed to go on shore with me. I am used to it,

indeed I am. Pray, what is the name of this blessed boat? The Lively

Nancy. Lively indeed! The Jung Vrouw was a Quakeress to her! At every

jump she takes, my heart leaps also. Pray, pray, pray take in some

canvas. You think you be sailing, but you are committing suicide. They

mind me no more than stones. Oh! oh! I am out of Danger’s frying-pan

into its fire! Peter Stuckey will be a murtherer after all!

What a set of dare-devils! They grin like baboons whilst she is driving

with half her deck under water! I will shut mine eyes and hold fast

by something. I am worse than ever. I give myself up. Oh! oh! what an

awful roaring, hissing, grinding noise we are come into! The bottom of

the sea is coming out, or else the bottom of the boat! Hah! Help! help!

I am heels upward! Why did not some kindly soul forewarn me that she

was going to stop short on the beach? Stand all aside, and let me leap

upon the sand. Ah! I have made my nose spout gore in my over-haste to

kiss my native land!

[Illustration: “WHY DON’T YOU LOOK OUT FOR WORK?”]

Blessed be dry ground! Farewell, ocean! farewell, Jung Vrouw and Lively

Nancy! Take my advice, and get married both of you to young farmers.

Farewell, ye hang-dogs that saved me! Share my blessing amongst you;

’tis all I have upon me or in me. Farewell, Neptune! We’ll part

friends. If you ever come to Cropton-le-Moor, I shall be glad to see

you, and not till then. Hans! Jan! Pieter! farewell one and all of you;

“and if a merry meeting may be wished, God prohibit it.” Now for a

sweet, safe, still, silent land-bed! Set me but within a run and a jump

of one, and in two clipped current minutes I will be fast asleep in it,

even like the Irishman who forgot to say his prayers, but remembered to

say amen.

LOVE AND LUNACY.

The Moon--who does not love the silver moon,

In all her fantasies and all her phases?

Whether full-orb’d in the nocturnal noon,

Shining in all the dewdrops on the daisies,

To light the tripping Fairies in their mazes,

Whilst stars are winking at the pranks of Puck;

Or huge and red, as on brown sheaves she gazes;

Or new and thin, when coin is turn’d for luck;

Who will not say that Dian is a Duck?

But, oh! how tender, beautiful and sweet,

When in her silent round, serene and clear,

By assignation loving fancies meet,

To recompense the pangs of absence drear!

So Ellen, dreaming of Lorenzo, dear,

But distant from the city mapp’d by Mogg,

Still saw his image in that silver sphere,

Plain as the Man with lantern, bush, and dog,

That used to set our ancestors a-gog.

And so she told him in a pretty letter,

That came to hand exactly as Saint Meg’s

Was striking ten--eleven had been better;

For then he might have eaten six more eggs,

And both of the bedevill’d turkey-legs,

With relishes from East, West, North, and South,

Draining, beside, the teapot to the dregs;

Whereas a man, whose heart is in his mouth,

Is rather spoilt for hunger and for drouth.

[Illustration: ABSTRACTION.]

And so the kidneys, broiling hot, were wasted;

The brawn--it never enter’d in his thought;

The grated Parmesan remained untasted;

The potted shrimps were left as they were bought,

The capelings stood as merely good for nought,

The German sausage did not tempt him better,

Whilst Juno, licking her poor lips, was taught

There’s neither bone nor skin about a letter,

Gristle, nor scalp, that one can give a setter.

Heav’n bless the man who first devised a mail!

Heav’n bless that public pile which stands concealing

The Goldsmiths’ front with such a solid veil!

Heav’n bless the Master, and Sir Francis Freeling,

The drags, the nags, the leading or the wheeling,

The whips, the guards, the horns, the coats of scarlet,

The boxes, bags, those evening bells a-pealing!

Heav’n bless, in short, each posting thing, and varlet

That helps a Werter to a sigh from Charlotte.

So felt Lorenzo as he oped the sheet,

Where, first, the darling signature he kiss’d,

And then, recurring to its contents sweet

With thirsty eyes, a phrase I must enlist,

He _gulp’d_ the words to hasten to their gist;

In mortal ecstasy his soul was bound--

When, lo! with features all at once a-twist,

He gave a whistle, wild enough in sound

To summon Faustus’s Infernal Hound!

Alas! what little miffs and tiffs in love,

A snubbish word, or pouting look mistaken,

Will loosen screws with sweethearts hand and glove,

Oh! love, rock firm when chimney-pots were shaken,

A pettish breath will into huffs awaken,

To spit like hump-back’d cats, and snarling Towzers!

Till hearts are wreck’d and founder’d, and forsaken,

As ships go to Old Davy, Lord knows how, Sirs,

While heav’n is blue enough for Dutchmen’s trowsers!

“The moon’s at full, love, and I think of you”--

Who would have thought that such a kind P.S.

Could make a man turn white, then red, then blue,

Then black, and knit his eyebrows and compress

His teeth, as if about to effervesce

Like certain people when they lose at whist!

So look’d the chafed Lorenzo, ne’ertheless,

And, in a trice, the paper he had kiss’d

Was crumpled like a snowball in his fist!

Ah! had he been less versed in scientifics,

More ignorant, in short, of what is what:

He ne’er had flared up in such calorifics;

But he _would_ seek societies, and trot

To clubs, Mechanics’ institutes, and got

With Birkbeck--Bartley--Combe--George Robins--Rennie,

And other lecturing men. And had he not

That work, of weekly parts, which sells so many,

The Copper-bottomed Magazine--or “Penny?”

But, of all learned pools whereon, or in,

Men dive like dabchicks, or like swallows skim,

Some hardly damp’d, some wetted to the skin,

Some drown’d like pigs when they attempt to swim,

Astronomy was most Lorenzo’s whim,

(’Tis studied by a Prince amongst the Burmans);

He loved those heavenly bodies which, the Hymn

Of Addison declares, preach solemn sermons,

While waltzing on their pivots like young Germans.

Night after night, with telescope in hand,

Supposing that the night was fair and clear,

Aloft, on the house-top, he took his stand,

Till he obtained to know each twinkling sphere

Better, I doubt, than Milton’s “Starry Vere;”

Thus, reading thro’ poor Ellen’s fond epistle,

He soon espied the flaw--the lapse so sheer

That made him raise his hair in such a bristle,

And like the Boatswain of the Storm-Ship whistle.

“The moon’s at full, love, and I think of thee,”--

“Indeed! I’m very much her humble debtor,

But not the moon-calf she would have me be,

Zounds! does she fancy that I know no better?”

Herewith, at either corner of the letter

He gave a most ferocious, rending, pull;--

“O woman! woman! that no vows can fetter,

A moon to stay for three weeks at the full!

By Jove! a very pretty cock-and-bull!

“The moon at full! ’twas very finely reckon’d!

Why so she wrote me word upon the first--

The twelfth, and now upon the twenty-second--

Full!--yes--it must be full enough to burst!

But let her go--of all vile jilts the worst”--

Here with his thumbs he gave contemptuous snaps,

Anon he blubber’d like the child that’s nurs’d,

And then he hit the table frightful raps,

And stamped till he had broken both his straps.

“The moon’s at full--and I am in her thought--

No doubt; I do believe it in my soul!”

Here he threw up his head, and gave a snort

Like a young horse first harness’d to a pole:

“The moon is full--aye, so is this d--d bowl!”

And, grinning like the sourest of curmudgeons,

Globe--water--fishes--he dash’d down the whole,

Strewing the carpet with the gasping gudgeons;

Men do the strangest things in such love-dudgeons.

“I fill her thoughts--her memory’s vice-gerent?

No, no,--some paltry puppy--three weeks old--

And round as Norval’s shield”--thus incoherent

His fancies grew as he went on to scold;

So stormy waves are into breakers roll’d,

Work’d up at last to mere chaotic wroth--

This--that--heads--tails--thoughts jumbled uncontroll’d

As onions, turnips, meat, in boiling broth,

By turns bob up, and splutter in the froth.

[Illustration: HOME’S DOUGLAS.]

“Fool that I was to let a baby face--

A full one--like a hunter’s--round and red--

Ass that I am, to give her more a place

Within this heart”--and here he struck his head.

“’Sdeath are the Almanack-compilers dead?

But no--’tis all an artifice--a trick,

Some newer face--some dandy under-bred--

Well--be it so--of all the sex I’m sick!”

Here Juno wonder’d why she got a kick.

“‘The moon is full’--where’s her infernal scrawl?

‘And you are in my thought: that silver ray

Will ever your dear image thus recall’--

My image? Mine! She’d barter it away

For Pretty Poll’s on an Italian’s tray!

Three weeks, full weeks,--it is too plain--too bad--

Too gross and palpable! Oh cursed day!

My senses have not crazed--but if they had--

Such moons would worry a Mad Doctor mad!

“Oh Nature! wherefore did you frame a lip

So fair for falsehood? Wherefore have you drest

Deceit so angel-like?” With sudden rip

He tore six new buff buttons from his vest

And groped with hand impetuous at his breast,

As if some flea from Juno’s fleecy curls

Had skipp’d to batten on a human chest,

But no--the hand comes forth, and down it hurls

A lady’s miniature beset with pearls.

Yet long upon the floor it did not tarry,

Before another outrage could be plann’d:

Poor Juno, who had learn’d to fetch and carry,

Pick’d up and brought it to her master’s hand,

Who seized it, and the mimic feature scann’d;

Yet not with the old loving ardent drouth,

He only saw in that fair face, so bland,

Look how he would at it, east, west, north, south.

A moon, a full one, with eyes, nose, and mouth.